The Ultimate Comic Map is a cool mashup with Google Maps that displays some of the best comic stores in the world. Made by the guys at Hijinx Comics in San Jose.

At Hijinx comics get priority. Not overpriced "hot" back issues from last month, but quality comics for readers of all ages and tastes. You'll find an extensive array of comic books and graphic novels and that our friendly staff is well-versed in all types of comics, with a fondness for self-published and independent titles.

Sounds like a good store. Must remember to check it out next time around that way.

It's out of season, but I just keep getting drawn to this photo. Cicadas are a great insect.

What happened the last time I opened iPhoto...

C'mon guys...don't you already have a psycho religious mixed-up cult following. Do you really need this sort of thing?

A new ping service called Pingoat has started. Not sure how long ago, but it got a good look [apart from the ugly and irrelevant advertising banner].

Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your blog contents, thus increasing your blog's popularity.

What sets Pingoat apart from Ping-o-Matic is that it provides a bunch of Non-English services, which may appeal to quite a large body of users out there.

Both the Structured Blogging and Microformats sites are no doubt becoming more popular as microformats finally come of age.

Both these sites, which seem to be spearheading the campaign, have alot of information and community participation. Unfortunately the Structured Blogging wiki seems to have been spammed by some idiot [screenshot], but I'm sure it'll be sorted out soon.

There's also a large group of companies lending support. Most of which are search/blogging companies that will benefit from user adoption of the microformats, but that just makes sense. I think everone will benefit from a more semantic web.

Read all of “Structured Blogging & Microformats”

Looks like Ebay is entering into territory that's previously been dominated by Amazon. With the opening of a new specialty site called Ebay Express, Ebay is offering to 'Get is new', 'Get is now', 'Fill your shopping cart' and 'Buy with confidence'.

Cool eh?

The description of Ebay Express says;

At eBay, we know that it's our job to help you grow your business by continuing to attract new customers for your products.

Which strikes me as a little funny because I always thought Ebay was about users auctioning their second-hand goods to each other. My mistake.

After talking with thousands of real-life shoppers, we've found that many customers are looking to buy new, fixed price goods in a more conventional e-commerce experience.

What...they actually talked with thousands of real-life shoppers...cool, that would have been a big effort. You gotta admire a company that goes to all the trouble of actually talking with their customers.

But enough with the mega-corp bashing. Ebay Express looks like it's going to be a great addition to the world of online shopping...but damn, they gotta do something about that UI.

Good luck Ebay. If you can get me a new MacBook Pro for slightly cheaper that retail, you got yourself a customer. But you gotta deliver to Japan.

Heavy Ammunition is worth checking out if you appreciate good Hip Hop. I'd never heard of Dj Spider before I heard this sample of his work, but I'm going to keep an eye out from now on.

Make sure you have a looksee at this short video clip as well. The usage of the Empire's theme is a classic.

John Musser from ProgrammableWeb has posted links to a couple of mashup howtos. Well worth having a look if you're keen to get some google maps on your site.

Agatra is a new service that will remember your passwords for you and even automatically log you into a growing number of sites.

Agatra is a free service that securely stores your passwords online so that they're accessible from anywhere you have an internet connection. It can even log you in directly to most sites!

Pete Cashmore mentions it and gives a good argument for not using such a service. I see his point, but also think there's a lot of non-so-tech-savy users out there that could benefit from such a service.

For some strange reason I've been able to remember the multitude of passwords I have around the web, but with a small consulting business I've got a growing number of username/passwords I'm having to remember for clilents as well.

I'm thinking of using pwsafe which is a command line utility that offers similar functionality [apart from the auto-login bit]. This seems like a better idea if you have ssh access to a boxen on the net, although I still think Agatra is a good idea for a lot of people out there - Althought I'd be careful of storing any bank-related logins if you wish to use the service.

Speaking of Tor, Windows users might be interesting in TorPark.

Welcome to the TorPark download page. Download TorPark for your language, and put it on a USB Flash keychain. Plug it into any internet terminal whether at home, school, or public. Run Torpark.exe and it will launch a Tor circuit connection, which creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer directly to a Tor exit computer, giving the appearance of having the Tor exit computer's IP.

Hot news for the day seems to be Anonym.OS.

Combining the ease of a LiveCD with the ever growing need to remain anonymous in a world where privacy is becoming a bad joke and your attention is worth more $$$ everyday, the Anonym.OS project seems like something I'd like to try out. The ability of Anonym.OS to use Tor is a bit of a deal sealer.

Like sand through the hourglass, so are the vestiges of our privacy. From increased governmental surveilance to corporate content restrictions and data brokers, what you do, where you go, and who you talk to is of more interest to more people every day.

Anonym.OS is an OpenBSD 3.8 Live CD with strong tools for anonymizing and encrypting connections. Standard network applications are provided and configured to take advantage of the tor onion routing network.

Check it.
Download it.

Meebo looks like a good alternative to having a chat client on your 'puter, or if your ISP/company is a nazi and doesn't allow chat through the firewall.

From the Meebo blog about page.

We’re three folks working to bring IM to Web 2.0. Hopefully this lets you get all of your IMing done in one place and makes it easier too.

I can imagine it's going to be hard to supply a effective chat interface through the browser, but if anyone can do it, I hope Ajax Girl and Server Chick can.

It's still in alpha, but give it a try if you're suffering the above mentioned symptoms.

Looks like a worthy addition to the podcast aggregator.

Welcome to SploitCast, the podcast for hackers, geeks, and the security paranoid. We are a group of students and IT professionals that have decided to start a downloadable talk show. SploitCast will discuss a wide variety of topics; these include, but are not limited to, new vulnerabilities, exploit code, security and technology news, and possibly even cute little bunny rabbits (but don't hold your breath). The SploitCast crew will also be conducting interviews and round table discussions with other members of the security industry.

Sploitcast homepage and feed.

I updated iTunes last night and shut down without checking it out. This morning while checking my aggregator I read Cory's post about the new version spying on users.

Yesterday, I updated my version of iTunes to 6.0.2, at the recommendation of Apple's Software Update program. I noticed immediately that iTunes had a new pane in the main window -- the "Mini-Store" which showed albums and tracks for sale by the artist whose song was presently playing.

The question is: how does Apple know which version of the Mini-Store to show you unless iTunes first transmits the current song that you're playing to Apple? I've turned off the Mini-Store, but a look at Apple's site, the iTunes license, and the iTunes documentation does not state whether this turns off this spyware behavior, or whether it merely causes iTunes not to show me things to buy based on the track I'm presently playing.

Cory's post led me to since1968's post - iTunes Update: Apple's Looking Over Your Shoulder. It's a more detailed description of what iTunes is doing.

Sadly, the responses to since1968's post were disappointing to say the least. People just don't seem to care about their privacy as much as they should. What's worse is that users seem to think that because so many companies attempt this practice of stealing your personal information, it's ok and should just be accepted/ignored.

since1968 has posted a update on the topic.

Some people are weird.

There's another good explanation here in The iTunes MiniStore Debacle: What Apple Did Wrong

The aquisitions just don't stop - this time Yahoo! has purchased WebJay. It's best explained from the creator of WebJay [Lucas Gonze] here.

WebJay is a great service and a worthy addition to Yahoo! - Congratulations!

They're finally out, and the Apple site is boasting some big speed increases. Check out the latest iMac and the newly dubbed MacBook Pro.

I want one of each [even though I'm still a little miffed that the PowerPC is on the decline] but like a good little consumer I'm going to wait for some of the reviews to come in before drawing out my ccard. I'm especially interested in hearing about temperatures and fan noise. Let's hope Intel have got their @#$& together in this department.

engadget have posted a good keynote description [step by step] if you're into that sort of thing.

Here's a photo set at Flickr of people's first reactions after seeing Goatse. I remember years ago [when the site was actually up] following a link in a /. post that lead me to Goatse. A lot of the expressions in the photoset are reminiscent of the faces of my work-mates at the time.

This article/howto from AppleFritter is a great read and reveals just the tip of the iceberge in terms of information [public and/or private] that is out there waiting for someone to mine and use.

Keep in mind that many companies and governments are already doing this sort of thing.

Vast deposits of personal information sit in databases across the internet. Terms used in phone conversations have become the grounds for federal investigation. Reputable organizations like the Catholic Worker, Greenpeace, and the Vegan Community Project, have come under scrutiny by FBI "counterterrorism" agents.

"Data mining" of all that information and communication is at the heart of the furor over the recent disclosure of government snooping. "U.S. President George W. Bush and his aides have said his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to al-Qaeda. What has not been acknowledged, according to the Times, is that NSA technicians combed large amounts of phone and Internet traffic seeking patterns pointing to terrorism suspects.

There's an article over at the MacDevCenter describing the Tiger command line tools mdfind and mdls]. The 'md' stands for MetaData.

In addition to the little blue magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of your desktop, Tiger provides the mdfind and mdls commands. When I discovered them while working on my updates to Mac OS X Tiger In A Nutshell, I fell in love. I had the power of Spotlight available to me from the Unix shell. Experienced Unix users will find mdfind's interface familiar. Mac power users who have never used the Unix under the hood of Tiger are in for a treat.

As usual, when it comes to anything to do with Search, John Battelle has an informative write-up about it. This time it's Google's recent annoucement of Google Video Store and Google Pack.

The Google Video Store looks like it may be interesting. Particullay the part Battelle highlights here...

The ability to sell video is great, but not news. We've known that was coming. What is really interesting is the pricing leverage: Google is splitting revenues 70/30 - that's 70 to the content producer. Also very important is that the producers of content are the ones who set the price - again, totally different from traditional models. Thirdly, Google is doing its own DRM. That's very interesting, and probably best left as the subject of another post. Producers can decide to not use DRM, as Charlie Rose did, Feiken told me.

The DRM part doesn't sound that great, but at least, as a content provider, you can opt out of it.

The Google Pack looks a little sinister. It's targeted at unexperienced users [windows only] and will update automatically with which ever applications Google see fit to include. So far the only app that I'd use in the pack is Firefox and sometimes maybe Google Earth. But...

Pack, if it becomes popular, will bring a whole new set of users to Google, mainly because it includes Toolbar and Desktop, which of course means more searches, and more data, and more money for Google.

Can't wait for AllPeers to be released. This TechCrunch post gives a good description of what its all about.

Here's a brief description from the AllPeers site;

AllPeers is a free extension which combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent to transform your favorite browser into a media sharing powerhouse.

Sounds good so far.

...is what's taking place.

The template changes have mainly been inspired by these images by Ando Hiroshige.

It's a bit of a work in progress at the moment.

Learned a few things about fonts sizes in CSS.

I've reduced the width of the site, so there's probably going to be some reformatting of older posts that contain wide images. And I'm still working on the sidebar menu.

This is the first time I've had the name of the blog. The explanation for the name usually goes something like this. I wanted ronin because I was freelancing in Japan. I use to work for large corporations, now I work on my own. The whole masterless samurai / freelance hacker thing just sat right with me. I study Kendo and Iaido, and that seemed to fit in as well.

r0nin was the only thing remotely similar to ronin when I was looking for a domain name, so I stuck with it.

More changes soon.