Let me just tell you a few things. Their UI is very intuitive and perfect for those looking for information. For example, when you look up a city in Bing, you’ll be automatically linked to a Wikipedia article for the given city and popular categories associated with the it. You can even open up multiple map apps and have them on top of each other, although the more you have open, the harder it is to process all that wonderful information! Lookie here at a few highlights of the coolest map apps:

1. Local Events: Once you turn on the local events web app, you’ll be able to view events that are happening near you. Numbered pinpoints will appear as an overlay on the map as the events appear. A description is provided, with a location, date, and time of the event. Bing also gives you options to share or save the event. Clicking on the title gives you all the pertinent details about the event: points of contact and summary included.
2. Twitter Maps: If you haven’t already noticed, Twitter instituted the ability to provide locations alongside tweets. Bing takes advantage of this and shows recent Twitter updates on the map, marked again with pinpoints.
3. Photosynth: Have you ever experienced Photosynth by Microsoft? If you haven’t, it’s a tool that you must check out. Photosynth pretty much takes user photos and creates a 3D map that you can move around in and view from different angles.
4. Foursquare: How about a Foursquare map that shows check-ins with pinpoints at the locations and a blurb if they left a to-do, tip, or a shout. Pretty neat overlay for getting some opinions on places to go.
5. Gas Prices: Need to fill up on the good old gasoline? Then you better check out this  application. All information is routed from OPIS. Compare prices by location and find your way there. It’s easy! Pinpoints point to location, as with all apps.
6. Parking Finder: If you’re headed to a crowded and busy area, you’ll need some help finding a nearby parking garage. Find numbers, find locations, and calculate rates to save! A must have for finding parking.
7. Businesses By Category: Much like Google’s searching capabilities, here is Bing’s version of venue location. Search by popular categories and find places of interest. Food, coffee and tea, restaurants, arts and entertainment. Your complete guide to reviews and ratings for places to visit.

Seven is a luck number, so we’ll stop here with the highlights. Just to give you a heads up, there are a few cool applications like Current Traffic, What’s Nearby, Restaurant Finder, and Hotel Finder. Just take your pick and enjoy the application features on Bing. I sure have! I’ll be using this great tool all summer long to find places to go and things to do in my hometown of San Francisco!

http://www.youtube.com/user/googlechrome

Google didn’t lie about the speed. The program itself loads really quickly and pages load miraculously fast. Even with all the tweaks I made to Firefox, Google flat out beats Firefox. That’s why I’ve uninstalled Mozilla Firefox and all my browsing needs have been replaced by Google Chrome. Chrome is an awesome browser. I’ve been using it for a long time now and always the developer’s version. I mainly went with the developer’s version because the extensions were being tested. I’m currently using 5.0.396.0 beta. Part of what makes Google great is the simplicity and the various extensions available for mainstream consumption. The only drawback of Chrome, that I feel, is the consumption of resources. Each open tab is a new process and each installed extension is also a new process. Sometimes Chrome will crash and it doesn’t play too nicely with flash if you have a lot of extensions or tabs open.

Enough said about how much I live for Google products and Google Chrome. Let’s have a look at a couple of extensions that I’ve either installed and uninstalled or still have installed. Let me give you the low down:

1 . Alwitt’s Facebook Enhancer: If you use Facebook, you need this extension. The design might be a little bit lacking, but everything else is sound. Some main features:

- fixed top menu bar that stays fixed even when scrolling
- fixed left filter bar
- bigger profile pictures that pop up a full sized image on hover
- pop up bigger image on mouseover
- highlights today’s birthdays
- bottom menu bar is slightly transparent

  Find the chrome extension here and their Facebook page here.

2 . Delicious Tools: Use delicious to share and manage links? You might find this extension useful. Features:

- ability to save bookmarks
- view your delicious bookmarks and inbox
- customizable keyboard shortcuts

Find the chrome extension here.

3 . Gmail checker:* An effective and efficient Gmail notification tool that sits on the browser toolbar and notifies you of new arriving mail. Features:

- number of unread mail is displayed prominently
- link for Gmail inbox (keeps you signed in)
- shows sender, subject, time, and snippet of your emails
- ability to delete, archive, or mark as read from extension

4 . Google voice: An extension made by Google that allows Google voice users to make calls, listen to voicemail, and get notified. Features:

- make calls, send SMS, preview voicemail and inbox
- turns numbers on websites into callable numbers

Find the chrome extension here.

5 . Stickr: Getting involved with Stickr? Make sure you install the Stickr extension before you start looking at and posting Stickrs.
6 . Stumbleupon: I use Stumbleupon to discover tons of interesting, new, and unique sites. All of this in a social setting, of course. Features:

- stumble from the toolbar with topic filters included
- rate sites up or down and comment on them
- share through other social networks
- access your own favorites

Find the chrome extension here.

7 . Web Developer: If you’re a web developer, then this extension will be invaluable. It’s an official port of the web developer extension from Firefox.

Find the chrome extension here.

8 . Cooliris:** Turns your browser into a 3D wall for viewing images, the web, and almost anything imaginable. Features:

- 3D browsing and mouse flick controls
- search from popular image search engines and YouTube
- comes with video viewing from popular sites including Hulu

Find the chrome extension here and website here.

9 . Turn off the lights:*** Fades the entire page except for the video you’re watching. If you’ve ever used the "dim lights" function on Hulu or in the Divx player, it’s the exact same thing. Simple and functional.
Find the chrome extension here.

10 . Session manager:**** Manage your current browser tabs and reload it whenever you need it. Features:

- create startup pages for daily routines
- group and rename tabs to start up later
- save pages you’ll come back to when researching or shopping.

Find the chrome extension here.

11 . Speed dial: Replace the Chrome new tabs and start tab with a customized version. Features:

- customizable background and speed dials
- fully editable titles and URL

Find the chrome extension here.

The starred extensions have special notes. I’ve listed the reasons below.

*Gmail Checker: I can’t seem to find the download page for this extension anymore. Instead, it looks like it may have been replaced by newer, yet not as functional version.

**Cooliris: Perhaps it wasn’t perfected yet, but the Cooliris extension was a little buddy in my Chrome and would crash all the tabs I had open.

***Turn off the lights: It’s a neat little extension, but I didn’t find too much use for it besides the occasional YouTube video.

****Session Manager: I used this extension for a long while, but then I discovered that it wasn’t as great as I thought it would be. I don’t really need a session manager because I don’t save pages for long. I really used it more for start pages and Speed Dial has taken its spot.

Hope you find these useful and if you any extensions that you’re really fond of, make sure to leave a comment. Cheers and happy chroming!

1 . Twistori: Have a look at some tags based off of Twitter.

2 . Music Visualization: Awesome artist linking.

3 . Infographic on Infographics: The title says it all: it’s an infographic on the data visualizations on the web.

4 . Life vs. Death: In the major struggles and battles of wars, this is a representation of those who lived vs. those who died.

5 . Opinion Space 2.0: Designed to let citizens express their opinions. Opinions show up as dots on a map.

6 . Risks Interconnection Map (RIM) 2010: A network diagram that shows all global risks and their connections.

7 . Flight Patterns in USA: Air traffic over North America.

8 . Britain from Above: A look at Britain from above using GPS and satellites.

9 . Walmart and Sam’s Club: An animation of the growth of Walmart and Sam’s club (it’s exponential growth!)

10 . So You Need A Typeface: A neat flowchart that helps you choose a font to use.

11 . 100 Pixar Characters: 100 Pixar animation characters drawn to scale.

I currently subscribe to Netflix for all my video viewing pleasures and I use Hulu and the CBS website incessantly. I actually check Hulu several times a day, hoping that they’ll have new episodes of my favorite TV shows up and running. With a combination of these three websites, I can keep myself entertained and keep up with the plot lines of my favs.

Rentals cost anywhere from $0.99 to $3.99 and the periods of rental vary from 24 hours to 72 hours. Even after a couple of months, the YouTube store doesn’t have too much to offer. They do have some popular options now, but not many. The store doesn’t compare to anything that Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes currently carries. Ah, alas the YouTube store only allows for rentals and not purchases like Amazon or iTunes.

You’ll be paying through Google Checkout. I haven’t actually tried the store out, so I don’t know about the video or audio quality. If any of you have tried it, let me know how it is. I would think that the quality is at the least, tolerable. The store has a clean layout, too. I’m just concerned about their competitive edge, with such a limited selection. No doubt they’ll be expanding ,but are you willing to pay higher prices for just a rental? I’m gonna stick with Netflix, Hulu, and CBS for now. Don’t forget to check out the store.

1 . Their First Words: Presidential inaugural address search! Search for key words and see who said what!

2 . Browser Statistics: A visualization of browser statistics going back to 2002. Very cool! Looks a bit like the Firefox logo…

3 . Quakes: A visualization of 2.5+ earthquakes recorded in the past seven days.

4 . Circles of Friends: A look at your Last.fm friends.

5 . Flight and Expulsion: Refugees forced to leave their countries. This is a global view.

6 . Web Trends 2007: 200 popular sites put onto a map of the Japanese subway.

7 . Digg’s Bigspy: Digg.com’s most popular articles shown in a scrolling fashion.

8 . Amaztype: A typographic book search.

9 . This is Where We Live: A look at population density in America

TO BE CONTINUED…

1 . Time-band

2 . Google Mail

3 . Coke bottle design

4 . DSLR Design

Concept cars time!

Concept planes!

Concept boats!

   TO BE CONTINUED…

1 . Acrobat.com: It’s a bunch of services rolled into one. These services include file sharing, storage, PDF conversions, editing and previewing files from your computer, and web conferencing. It’s efficient and simple. A must have!

2 . AOL Music: Exactly what it sounds like. An Air application that plays top music from AOL.

3 . Desktop iPhone: This is a good one that not many people know about. This application simulates the iPhone and allows you to make and receive calls. check voicemail and add contacts using Ribbit.

4 . GVoice: If you use Google Voice, this is a good app for checking, deleting, and managing.

5 . Sideline: Want to monitor and search the world of Twitter in real-time? That’s what Yahoo! Sideline is for. This Air application  allows custom searching and lets you follow the trends as they develop.

6 . Tokbox: Yup, that’s right. One of the more popular web-based instant messaging tools at your fingertips. Using the desktop app, you can IM, view contacts, and conduct video chat.

7 . Tweetdeck: Customizable Twitter client full of features. Explore and find out.

8 . uvlayer: Desktop application for discovering, sharing, and organizing digital media including but not limited to Hulu, YouTube, Flickr, and Revision3. Very interactive and fun to use.

9 . Waver: Got Google Wave? Waver allows you to create, reply, and manage waves with ease.

10 . WebKut: Grab full, partial, or custom screenshots from a webpage and save or share it. Easy to use and perfect for capturing webpages.

Feel free to leave a suggestion or your favorite Air applications in the comments. The above applications are the ones that I am most fond of and find the most use for. There are tons more out there, so keep your eyes peeled!

1 . Image-sequencer: I used this tool to create a rotating image banner, each picture with its own link. Glimmer allows for some customization, including the link URL’s and the time between rotations. The rest is handled by the wizard.

2 . Customized Tooltips: I might have to use this more often. You can make your own tooltips using either images or text, making sites fun to visit and interactive! You can mix and match text and images. Check them out!

Don’t take it from me! Check out the Glimmer lab page.

Windows Live Writer is free, efficient, easy to use, and customizable. I love it and have pretty much stopped logging onto this blog’s administrative backend in order to update posts. I only login to moderate comments, create pages, and do things regarding themes and plugins. It does get frustrating, spending so much time in a browser when you’re researching for a post and then writing it up. With Live Writer, I can have a browser window open while creating content. You might be wondering about the features such as embedding pictures and video. Don’t worry, Live Writer is a great tool for embedding resources to accompany your content. Just let me show you in a second.

I should probably mention the Windows Live Writer supports almost every blog imaginable, whether you’re self hosted or not. Another neat thing is that you can have many blog accounts all set up in Writer and you can conveniently switch back and forth as needed. The plugins and support for Windows Live Writer is top-notch.

Here is a list of features and some examples for your enjoyment:

1 . Lots of photo options. Insert either from your desktop or the web and customize size, links, captions, watermarks, borders, and effects all without the use of image editing software. Contrast, crop, rotate, and tilt tools are included. In the picture below, I have resized it, centered it’s alignment, chosen the “Instant Photo” border which gives it the Polaroid look, tilted the photo, and added the “Color Pop” effect. This all in a matter of seconds.

2 .  Photo Albums are a breeze. Insert them as either thumbnails or a Windows Live Album. Photo Albums made easy, which comes in useful if you don’t want to install a WordPress plugin for galleries. For the purposes of display, for the photos below, I choose the “Scatter” style.

View Full Album

3 . Embedding videos couldn’t be any easier! With options to embed from the web, your own files, or an online video service, the possibilities are nearly endless. YouTube seems to be the service of choice with Windows Live Writer, but nearly any embed code can be pasted. Once you input the code, it appears as an object in the editor. You then have the option to resize the object and add a caption. I’ve resized the video below and added a caption.

4 . You can insert maps right in Windows Live Writer (powered by Virtual Earth). You are offered a Road view, Aerial view, and Bird’s Eye View, zoom features, and even a feature to face a particular compass direction. Embedding is done with one click and you can insert a caption.

Windmill in Golden Gate Park, SF, CA

5 . Saving your drafts = easy peasy. You can save drafts either locally (which means you don’t need internet access) or into your blog so that you make adjustments in the backend. If you’re all set, you just need to hit the “publish” button and your content will be online!

6 . It’s easy to insert a table and edit to your heart’s desire.

7 . Editing the properties for your blog post is convenient. WordPress is my platform, so I’ll be explaining this from that standpoint. Categories, tags, publish date, slug, excerpts, and trackback links: all located in the properties pane for easy access.

8 . Blog setup takes a few seconds and is easy. Once you’re set up once, you don’t have to continuously fiddle with settings. They’ll be preserved. Windows Live Writer will also download a template for your blog so you can preview posts against your actual layout.

9 . A few other feature are worth mentioning:

Twitter, Digg, and Flickr plugins are availableHere are a few screenshots of Windows Live in action:

View Full Album

Don’t forget to visit their Writer Zone!

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