Wow, so I was just on Digg today after coming home from work and I found out that Google Maps now has Street View technology. This is awesome technology! You can click anywhere on Google maps at certain big cities like NYC or LA and they would have a 360 degree view of the street at the exact location where you clicked! You really do have to check it out for yourself to understand how great this is.

This is probably in Beta stages now even though it wasn’t mentioned because the images generate kind of slow and I’m sure Google is working on that to fix that issue. But anyhow, WOW, this is so great! It also looks like these images were pretty recent which is defiantly cool for digital mapping technology.

Haha, I wonder how long they took to canvass the areas! Check it out here!

It’s been a year since I’ve used ViaTalk’s VoIP service and I just wanted to write a little about my experiences on the revolutionary VoIP system. When I applied for ViaTalk exactly one year ago, the company was practically new. VoIP had just been introduced to the mainstream public not too long ago before that. Some of the big companies out there that provide VoIP are Vontage and SunRocket.

Well, you may ask, What is VoIP? VoIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, this technology allows you to use your existing broadband internet connection and use it as a connection for your house or business phone. It’s different from services like Skype because with Skype, you do need your computer on with the program running. With VoIP, it completely replaces your traditional home phone. Some of the advantages of VoIP over the traditional phone is that it’s cheaper, plans feature unlimited calling and it has all the features you can ask for on a phone. Except that it doesn’t use your wall jack, it uses your ethernet jack with your DSL or Cable provider. Changes are is that you already subscribe to broadband internet already so your not paying for more.

Now that you have a clearer understanding of how VoIP works, it’s focus on ViaTalk. ViaTalk, again is a company that’s just about a year old coming out of it’s Beta. The company who owns it is actually a web hosting company, HostRocket. ViaTalk’s service has been really solid over the past year, the only problems I had with them were problems earlier on. I can see that VoIP technology has really evolved, I’ve been receiving better quality calls and few downtime periods. ViaTalk is particularly great because of it’s quality and amount of features for it’s price. They would occasionally offer deals such as $199 for 2 years of service! Which is great because with my old Verizon land line service, I would pay like $50 a month for normal phone service which doesn’t include features such as unlimited calling, 3 way calling or caller ID.

I would defiantly recommend VoIP to anyone. The technology has really evolved into something that you can depend on nowadays. ViaTalk is exceptionally good and I have tried many. Don’t go with Vontage because they charge a lot and their call quality sucks, they were one of the first VoIP companies but surely they did not do it right!

Sign up for ViaTalk’s VoIP today. Click here for special offers.

Today was my first working day for NYPIRG, a environmental advocacy job I applied for. NYPIRG stands for New York Public Interest Research Group. It advocates for New York consumers and have been doing so for over 34 years. This years goals is to push legislation to pass the 15% reduced emissions in New York State by 2015. The plan proposed by Spitzer, our new governor. My job is to inform the public about these issues and gather membership support. My observation day was wonderful and I like it a lot. I will STAY!

We go to a new location everyday and today’s was New Roshelle, New York. Met some wonderful new people, by the end of the day. I really look forward to doing this!

UPDATE!:: (7/3/2007)
Heavy flooding in Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India in the past week. Temperatures in Greece reached 46C (114.80F) this week, as part of a heatwave in southern Europe. China has also had a heatwave in recent days. Torrential rains have battered parts of Texas, where Austin is set for its wettest year on record.

Global Warming is REAL and HERE! Become a member of NYPIRG today!

Stony Books, a bookstore that overcharges on text books for Stony Brook University students have new competition on the net! Facebook’s Marketplace is a new service that allows anyone from their own school network to sell, buy, request items such as textbooks. Too bad Stony Books had bad customer service all this time, maybe students will go back if they were nicer. Go Facebook! It’s like an effective local eBay. No more shipping! Whoo!

Here are some comments from Stony Book goers on Yahoo!:

I called Stony Books to find out their price on an organic chemistry textbook. A man picks up the phone and replies its ” 100 something.” I ask ” Do you know the exact price?” And he replies I don’t know its “100 something.” He can’t use his own time to find out the price. And not only that he sounded very rushy and rude as if he wanted to hang up the phone as soon as possible. They may have cheap books, but don’t expect quality service from them.

The books are excellent, however, the staff is rude. I had accidentally purchased a book not listed with the class (I gave them the course number, they gave me the stack of books). I realized the next day, but they refused to take the book back. The sales person called me a liar, laughed in my face, walked away from me whenever I tried to speak, and made rude comments about me being “arrogant.” I mailed a complaint which was never answered.
Make sure you check over your list before you leave, and don’t trust them to give you the right books. I have never been spoken to like this before in a store, and I will never use them again.

I hope you run out of business Stony Books, no more buying our used books for a little more than nothing!

UPDATE!!***
Stony Books sends me an email that looks a little like this:

Tony,

We would like you to take this entry off. We will do fine. If you have any problems, contact us directly about it.

Stony Books

HAHAHAHA!

What do you do next after installing a fresh copy of Windows XP SP2 from the installation CD supplied by Microsoft ?

Chances are that you’ll connect to the Windows Update website and wait for your computer to download and install the hundreds of security patches / updates released by the Windows team since the launch of XP SP2. Imagine if you have do repeat the exercise on your laptop.

One of the options we discussed sometime back was AutoPatcher XP - it contains all Windows XP hotfixes neatly packaged into an Microsoft style installer. Just run the program over your existing copy of XP SP2 and it will patch it with all the available Windows updates without connecting to the computer.

The only issue with AutoPatcher XP is that it takes two steps - you first have to install the XP SP2 on a computer and then run the AutoPatcher XP program to patch the Windows installation. How about combining them into a single step ?

Enter RyanVM MSFN pack - Unlike AutoPatcher XP which updates your Windows XP SP2 installation, RyanVM’s pack will integrate all patches and hotfixes into your installation CD itself [also called slipstreaming]

This post XP SP2 patch slipstream option is supported for English versions of Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional. Life would have been much smoother had Microsoft not delayed the release of Windows XP SP3 but until then, you can build the XP SP3 installer disk with RyanVM.

– Digital Inspiration

Hahaha. Rumors say that Haitian people eat cats! I went to my boy’s house for the weekend up in Rockland/Nyak. It was nice to get out of the same routine. Went to the mall, bowling, saw Spider Man 3, a nice weekend in general. Friends and I went out to try to catch a deer and beat it with sticks.

Just got home thanks to Joey, drove me all the way back and then his car’s battery died, thanks to OnStar’s road side assistance. I’ll miss all of ya’ll at Stony Brook. Have a nice summer. Time to find something to do!! Out!

As a frequent seller on eBay, I visit the site, a few times a week. When I got to the “my eBay” page, I noticed a little widget for bloggers. It’s ToGo from eBay which features a flash listing of a single item of my choice and displays it in a nice looking box in a blog.

Making the button was an easy process but putting the flash object code into WordPress was difficult because of syntax issues. Anyhow, take a look at this Ford Mustang. It’s obviously not my Mustang! Just an item I chose to test the widget with.

I’ve ran out of Stony Brook meal points about 3 weeks ago, I don’t know how that happened but it did and I haven’t eaten on campus since then. So I kinda missed the food they have here. I had dinner at Kelly yesterday evening and it looked a little something like this.

To my surprise, I actually liked it. I’m sorry the first post of the month has to be something I ate last night, but I liked the picture. Good old fashion chicken and mashed potatoes.