Cool site: TrekEarth

Found this cool photo site as I was doing research for my new blog.  New blog?  More on it later.

Anyway:

“The underlying theme of TrekEarth is learning more about the world through photography. TrekEarth fosters this by allowing photographers to display their work grouped by regions in a supportive and orderly environment.”

I found the site to be fascinating and inspirational, as I try to increase my photography skills and time spent taking pictures.  Sites like this make me want to do and learn more.

Take a look at [TrekEarth] and see what’s happening around the world.

Gordon
Originally uploaded by sith_kicker.

My nephew Gordon might be coming out for the summer. Should he cut his hair before he comes out to California? Cast your vote (which requires you to register for an account at [LiveJournal.com] It’s free so why not?) Or you can leave a comment and decide.

Thinking of being a first-time home buyer in the Bay Area? Well, you might have to put in a couple more hours on the job:

"The San Francisco Bay area had the highest gap... where potential homebuyers had a median household income of $67,770 but needed qualifying income of $160,700 to purchase a median-priced home at $689,240."

[Read the full article]

Check out the flash game [Guess-the-google].  20 images are shown to you and you need to guess the term used to bring up those images.  Worth a couple of plays.

Link provided by Steven.

It looks as if [Friendster] has joined the blogging craze! I just did a test blog at http://giron.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/ It seems simple enough.

The blogging engine is provided by [Six Apart] who also does [TypePad] and recently bought [livejournal.com] It looks like Six Apart is trying to take over all of the blogging community!

• The deal with Friendster provides them with a very good user base and exposure to revenue
• TypePad is a pretty successful subscription service
• livejournal.com is probably not too far behind in becoming (partially probably) a paid service. I think they will probably use livejournal.com more as a test environment, beta testing a few things out on that community then porting those changes over to TypePad and perhaps Friendster, depending on how that deal is structured.

All I have to say is that it’s interesting.

Visit the [Baby Name Wizard] for a visual historical look at your first name’s use. Just enter your name in the upper left corner, next to the flashing cursor. You will need to launch the link in Internet Explorer as it requires Java and some other Internet Explorer aspects. At least I wasn’t able to use it with FireFox. Link provided by Steven.

[Using animated stacking blocks] to tell time. It’s in military format. Watch it for a while to see the animation in action. This cool site brought to you by rsang.

[This lovely puzzle] comes to us courtesy of Steven. So blame him if you can’t solve it.

Catching up on some movie trailers since we haven’t been to the theater in a while. If you view these trailers, most require Apple’s QuickTime to view. Check these out:

• [Batman Begins] - The Dark Knight's tale goes back to Year One. Christian Bale plays a serious Batman. Hopefully this will erase the Schumacher Batman movies from memory.
• [Bride and Prejudice] - From the director of Bend It Like Beckham.
• [Charlie and the Chocolate Factory] - The Tim Burton/Johnny Depp remake of the Gene Wilder classic. I'm sure it's not going to be the same ride.
• [The Longest Yard] - Another remake, this one featuring Adam Sandler.
• [Sin City] - I am looking forward to this adaptation of Frank Miller's noir comic book. Directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez.

Bobby Fisher? Mr. Goodbar? Videos with Bjork in it?

There’s a new beta search engine by Yahoo! that allows you to search for video clips. Go to [video.search.yahoo.com] to try it out. You can play with the preferences so you’re searches aren’t restricted.

Also available in beta by Yahoo! is [My Yahoo! Search] This one is a little more personal. Sign in with your Yahoo! name and start searching. You can save results, share results, search within saved pages you searched on, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Remember, both of these are in beta so it’s still growing. Changes are afoot in search-land.

Farrah told me about [this ad] with Asian actors stating the importance of voting. I never saw it on television, but I did vote nonetheless. If you missed the ad, watch it for gee whiz.

Disposable cell phones that turn into sunflowers??? With the inventors being from Amsterdam I thought the plant/flower type would be different. Interesting idea nonetheless. [Read the story at CNN.com]