So... I'm a liar...

I guess all I had to do was say I'm not going to blog, and then the flood gates of extremely cool stuff that I just can't shut up about will cometh my way.

I don't even know where to start - but we'll start with the biggest one:

Google Sky - (www.google.com/sky)

This is basically like google maps (or mapquest), but for the universe. Ever curious where all the constellations were? I found it to be really interesting.

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Second - Hulu is now open to the public (in the USA Only). Hulu is basically YouTube for Network TV. They do an okay job keeping up with the recent TV shows - and when I have missed a show, this is the first place I go to. You do get 30 second commercial breaks throughout the show, but I really don't find it that irritating. Free, legal, copyrighted content for 15 or 30 second commercial breaks every now and again is a small price to pay.

On top of that - they are now adding some FULL LENGTH movies. Yes, watch unedited, full length movies for FREE (just again, some breaks for commercials). Some of the movies are the edited for television versions - though I'm finding more of them are unedited. Interesting enough the ones that I cannot link into the blog are the unedited, mature rated movies. Not due to copyright laws, but due to Internet Decency laws or whatever. Funny how they finally managed to work out the problems with copyright laws, but god forbid someone manages to watch your Rate R content that isn't 18.

Also, the list of movies up right now isn't a crap list by any means:

Ice Age, The Big Lebowski , Master and Commander (edited), The Usual Suspects (unedited - and BRILLIANT), Mulholland Drive, and quite a few more. For those that have been switching to watch some content off the web (through either Torrents, YouTube, Netflix and others), Hulu is one to absolutely add to your list.

To illustrate the coolness - here's Ice Age - Unedited - Free - *AND* Legal

For anyone that hasn't seen Ice Age, its at least worth watching the first 5 minutes.



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Lastly (Yeah, I know, Three topics and I said I had nothing to blog about):

For anyone that likes free web based games - specifically anyone that was a fan of the Heroes, Civilization, SimCity, and other semi "turn" based strategies games, you have to check out www.ikariam.com


Its very basic, and starts out nice and slow (this is a game that'll take up a ~10 minutes or so of your day) - but if you select the "Alpha" world to be on, you'll be not just playing a fun game, you'll be playing with Alex, Tow and Me. (yes, its massively multiplayer).

I have to give props to Tow for tracking down this one for us.