Crocodile Hunter Dies

Killed in a freak — “No nobody’s ever died from a Stingray. Wait, Steve! No! Steve! Don’t poke it with a stick…” — accident.

Love him, hate him, he was certainly a character, and probably the most “aussie” bloke on earth. We’ll miss you Steve.

[Update: and now it’s front page on CNN.]

Trillian dropped by Google

It seems Google have decided to quietly drop Trillian from Google Pack. Whilst no reason was given you have to imagine it was because it competed with Google Talk.

This begs the question as to why Trillian was included in the first place; something that always puzzled me. I'm guessing Google Pack was intended to be an independent application distribution platform — something that could be used to enable the equivelant of Windows Update, but for other software. This would kind of make sense. Though I have a sense I'm looking for sense amidst senselessness.

Either way, Trillian via Pack looks to have run headlong into internal competition. Google Pack will now be more of a "Google" pack than ever… and that's all.

5,000 player gaming

Sometimes ideas come along that are all at once crazy, useless, inventive, inspired and profoundly geeky. Like this one:

“In a darkened Las Vegas conference room, a cheering audience waves cardboard wands in the air. Each wand is red on one side, green on the other. Far in back of the huge auditorium, a camera scans the frantic attendees. The video camera links the color spots of the wands to a nest of computers set up by graphics wizard Loren Carpenter. Carpenter’s custom software locates each red and each green wand in the auditorium. Tonight there are just shy of 5,000 wandwavers. The computer displays the precise location of each wand (and its color) onto an immense, detailed video map of the auditorium hung on the front stage, which all can see. More importantly, the computer counts the total red or green wands and uses that value to control software. As the audience wave the wands, the display screen shows a sea of lights dancing crazily in the dark, like a candlelight parade gone punk. The viewers see themselves on the map; they are either a red or green pixel. By flipping their own wands, they can change the color of their projected pixels instantly.”