Visualize The Internet! Interesting Web Maps and Diagrams

It's difficult to visualize the Internet. With millions of servers, hubs, ports, etc... The Internet may sound more like an advanced road infrastructure. However, when examining many of these charts below, [which are showing only fractions of the Internet]. The Internet appears to be its own little galaxy. With millions and millions of components all intertwined to create it's whole.

I don't think these maps are too accurate, however they are very entertaining to look at and examine.

Enjoy.

Webnode - Google, Look out!

Ajax-Based Website Builder WebNode delivers an innovative way of creating and editing websites that redefines the industry with website building technology that is easy to use. Users can create active content (articles, polls, FAQ, dynamic lists, e-commerce, site maps and photo galleries) via drag-and-drop from the toolbar, wherever the user wants them to display on the page.

I have used many free hosting websites, and this one beats them all. By a mile [and a half]. It may even be safe to say that Webnode is ahead of google in free website hosting. They have a very simple, straight forward user interface for the beginners; and open css for the more advanced users. They have 20 or so very impressive templates, all of which are completely customizable. Webnode also provides cname and dns information for FREE. Yep, you heard right. Go buy a domain, and have a very impressive website up in under an hour.



You should probably go create a few webnode accounts soon, because as its popularity increases, webnode may have to start charging some users for some of its services.



Overall 5/5. Yeah, this is the first perfect score I have given out, you should probably go check it out!

WebWare 100 - Who Will You Vote For?

Webware continuously stirs up the web 2.0 mixing pot with the Webware 100. They bring forward some of the newest and most unique software and applications pieces to the table, and let the users vote for their favorites. I highly encourage you to head on over and vote in the Webware 100!

Voting is now open for the 2008 Webware 100!

Today we are opening up the user voting on the 2008 Webware 100. This is our yearly awards program where Webware users vote for their favorite Web 2.0 apps. In the 2007 Webware 100, there were more than 480,000 votes cast. And this year we have an even stronger lineup of finalists, so we expect very active voting.

Go vote now or read on for more about the 2008 Webware 100.

As we did in 2007, this year we collected products nominations from users.... [to continue reading this selection please visit the WebWare Website]

Cellular Age - Mobilize Your Blog In Minutes

Have a popular blog? Get a lot of hits? Have a list of email addresses that goes on for pages? Want to expand? Have a cell phone? If you answered yes to most of these questions, you should probably check out Mofuse.

Mofuse allows its users to expand there blog/website to a mobile location in just a few seconds! They also provide you with the option to purchase your own domain and monetization opotions! So now you can shoot a text to all of your loyal fans with the url of your mobile blog! How cool is that!?

Mofuse is easy to set up, and they have a very straight forward website! I highly suggest that anyone who is looking for ways to get ahead of their blogger rivals, try this out. Who knows, maybe it's the next big thing!

Overall 4/5 - What a cool tool! Check it out!

Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft to launch beta of Internet Explorer 8
By Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 10:48 AM
Microsoft will shortly make available the test version of Internet Explorer 8, which is set for final release in the first half of this year.

The Web site ActiveWin on Monday published the contents of a beta invitation, which said Microsoft is nearing a launch date for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, which will be available for download and testing.

According to the Internet Explorer blog, the next version of Microsoft's Web browser is set for release in the first half of the year.

Microsoft executives are expected to reveal further details about the browser's features at the software maker's upcoming Mix conference in Las Vegas next week.

Last year at Mix, Microsoft outlined some of the features planned for IE 8, including standards compliance and tools to ease Web development.

This article was first published as a blog on CNET News.com.

App Jet - Host and Modify Applications - Free

App Jet may be one of the most usefull websites I have ever run across. App Jet allows its users to upload Java scripts and other variation of codes to their website, and they will host them for you, for free! They have a gallry of existing [usefull] applications which you can copy, and modify for your own use!

In fact, for demonstration purposes I will create several applications for my blog! Here is a chat/text box, go ahead, write a comment!














Here are some more usefull applications!
[IP Scanner]







There are a lot of fun applications that are VERY usefull! What are you waiting for? Get over to appjet!

Gimp - Photoshop, Be Gone!

That's right, you heard me! I am longing for those days where EVERYTHING is open source and FREE. I love 2.0 because thats where the internet is [sort of] heading. Well, today's review is on GIMP, a raster editor which is completely free! Yes you heard right! Go get it, this minute! You can get it HERE!

If you are familiar with photoshop at all, you should probably be able to pick GIMP up in under an hour. It uses the same tools, many of the same filters, and it works almost the same way. In fact, many of the shortcut keys are the same! The only major diference is a little bit of power [yeah, for 400 dollars cheaper though, thats ok!] and GIMP uses several windows in its user interface [compared to Photoshops 1 window].

But first, for those of you where wondering what is GIMP and/or photoshop?



The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats

Color Support

GIMP's manipulation tools can be accessed via the toolbox, menu paths, and dialog boxes (which can be grouped in docks). They include filters and brushes, as well as transformation, selection, layer and masking tools.

For example, GIMP comes with 48 standard brushes, plus facilities to create new ones. Brushes (and brush tools) can be used in hard-edged, soft-edged, or eraser modes, be applied at different opacities, or used with different modes for composition.

Selection and masking tools

Animation showing three docked and tabbed dialogs: layers, channels, and paths.GIMP can perform rectangular or circular selection, freehand selection, and "by color" selection. Alternatively, the Smart Selection tool, known as the "Magic Wand", can be used to select contiguous regions. The Intelligent Scissors (iScissors) tool can be used to auto-create paths between regions defined by strong color-changes.

GIMP has support for layers, including transparent layers, which can be shown, hidden, or made semitransparent. It also supports transparent and semitransparent images. Channels add different types of opacity and color effects to images.

Paths

Paths containing line segments or Bezier curves can be created using the Path tool. Paths can be named, saved, and painted (or "stroked") with brushes, patterns, or various line styles. Paths can also be used to create complex selections.

Future

GIMP is primarily developed by unpaid volunteers. The GIMP project uses a development branch of GIMP where new features are added regularly and a stable branch which only receives bug fixes between major versions. Like some other Free software projects the stable and development branches are denoted with even and odd numbers respectively after the first decimal point in the version number. The current stable version of GIMP is 2.4.4.0 (January 30, 2008 (2008-01-30), 26 days ago). The next development version of GIMP will be 2.5.0. Major changes from version 1.2 to version 2.2 included a more polished user interface, further separation of the user interface and back-end and the ability to use brushes that would normally only be able to be used on Photoshop programs. Major changes from version 2.2 to version 2.4 included color management support, scalable brushes, new and rewritten selection tools and overall user interface changes.
For the future it is planned to base GIMP on a more generic graphical library called GEGL, thereby addressing some fundamental design limitations that prevent many enhancements such as native CMYK support. Implementation of this plan was continually put off from 2000 until October 2006, when developer Øyvind Kolås demonstrated a limited working version of GEGL, including a new graphical interface, that had been developed by Sven Neumann, Michael Natterer, and Kolås.
GIMP's user interface is built using GTK+, a widget toolkit originally written for the program. GTK+, as the GIMP Toolkit, was initially a part of the GIMP source tree, but has since been refactored due to its usefulness outside the scope of GIMP. GTK+ is also used as the widget toolkit for the GNOME desktop environment. GTK+ was intended as a replacement for Motif, a proprietary toolkit on which GIMP originally depended. GIMP and GTK+ were originally designed for the X Window System running on Unix-like operating systems, but have since been ported to Microsoft Windows, OS X, and SkyOS.

Citations Wikipedia

Web 2.0 Politics - If I'm President

If I'm President is a network that lets your share your political views with others. It's the youtube for politics.

However this site does through in a blog/news mix, making more like a myspace, video, facebook for politics. Although there weren't very many responses on many of the polls, videos, and news articles, I feel that this site has been well built, and will likely grow in popularity in the comming months.

This site also provides great widget features, which allows users to easily follow thier favorite political leader or story in their own blogs/websites.

Overall 4/5 Go check it out!

Web 2.0 Button Creator!

My Cool Button is a great tool for those of you who are unfamiliar with Adobe flash, photoshop, etc.

Heres a tutorial on how to use this site effectively

Photosynth Beta - Next Gen Surfing

This stuff is really incredible and I incourage you to take a minute to watch this vid