Chad's News

A New Yorker saw a woman on the subway and fell in love instantly, but he was unable to introduce himself. So he posted a description on the internet, and before too long had managed to find out who she was. This just goes to show the viral power of the internet.

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

There are many sites that will calculate your connection speed, but I like this one. It gives statistics for upload, download, and ping, and it also allows you to select from servers worldwide.

Link: http://speedtest.net/

This post should only be of interest to web developers. With Windows Vista, Microsoft decided to update the core web fonts that are used by pretty much everyone. Sigh… Developers will want to install the new fonts on their non-Vista systems—the Slashdot article’s comments have several ways to do this. In addition, CSS font lists should be updated to include the new “C” fonts at the front of the list. There is a matrix in the linked article showing which fonts should go where.

Link: http://www.hunlock.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Internet2 is a dedicated, second-generation internet that allows members (universities and some government/industry) to connect at very high transmission speeds. Currently they’ve achieved 100Gbps, with the theoretical ability to reach 1Tbps. That really puts my 1.5Mbps DSL link to shame. I’m not sure if/when Internet2 will be opened for general use, but even if it is, don’t look for it to be available to residential users any time soon, since it requires a dedicated fiber optic connection as well as specialized equipment.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Ever had a really long web address that you needed to send to someone, or to post in a comment somewhere—just to find that it gets split into pieces by the software? Or perhaps you have a complicated URL that needs to be entered by hand and is prone to error? TinyURL has been around for some time now, and it has the answer to this problem. Simply register the long URL, and TinyURL will give you a much shorter, email-safe URL with which to replace it. Clicking on the short URL will automatically redirect you to the long URL. The short URL never expires, so you can use it with impunity for as long as TinyURL is in existence.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/

Ever found yourself in need of a temporary email address that goes away after a day/week/month? The linked article has several disposable email providers—be sure to check the comments for even more.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

It’s becoming increasingly popular for parents to purchase internet domains named after their newborns, even to the point where the availability of a domain affects the name of the baby. Makes me glad I got cloman.com early on.

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Astute Chad’s News readers are already aware that Skype’s VoIP services were down for about two days. Turns out that the indirect cause of the outage was a massive number of near-simultaneous reboots caused by Windows Update.

Link: http://heartbeat.skype.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Here at the Chad’s News Command Center, we’ve heard quite a few stories about online lovers finally taking the plunge and meeting in person for the first time—usually to dismal results. And while the man in the linked article is an extreme case, it pays to be careful with any romantic prospect that you meet on the internet. I’ve heard of mothers sending pictures of their college-age daughters and claiming them to be their own pictures. And don’t believe anyone who says they’re a minor—most likely it will be some sort of law enforcement official working a sting operation to catch child molesters.

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/…
(via Kim Komando)

This man was called a nerd by someone online. He was so angry at the remark that he drove 1300 miles and burned down the other man’s trailer. Guess it pays to be polite when dealing with people online.

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

A major power outage hit San Francisco and brought down some heavy-duty web sites, including Second Life and craigslist. They were offline for a few hours. This, despite the fact that their hosting facility advertised seamless, 100% uptime. Guess it’s not enough to have just one hosting location.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Regular Chad’s News readers will recall previous posts about Second Life, especially regarding how real-world companies are setting up “stores” in the virtual world. Turns out that many of them aren’t profitable enough to maintain, and the companies are closing up shop.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via digg)