An announcement by Bill Gates at the RSA conference: Internet Explorer 7 is set to be released for testing this summer, says Microsoft. It will include anti-spyware functionality, and will not wait for the next version of Windows.

• Info on the IE Blog
• Microsoft press release
• Reversal: Next IE update divorced from Windows (news.com)
• Microsoft to Release New Internet Browser (Yahoo! News)

(from some random web forum, via Tim)

Where would I be without FeedDemon? Between it and Outlook, most of my "content" is organized, filed and (quite intentionally) segregated into workable chunks-o-stuff.

And now FeedDemon version 1.5 is out! From the web site:

This new version offers a ton of new features, but here are the highlights:

• Powerful podcasting tools to automatically download audio files and copy them to your iPod or other media player (that's right - FeedDemon supports media players other than the iPod!)
• Integration with Bloglines and NewsGator Online Services
• Flickr and del.icio.us search channels
• Per-channel newspaper styles
• Improved popup-blocking under XP SP2
• Support for favicons throughout the user interface
• Numerous performance improvements

See the announcement on Nick Bradbury's weblog - He's the quite excellent author of FeedDemon.

If you ever wondered how to spell out the American Idol theme music, well... there ya go.

Now, aren't you glad you read this blog?

In the wow-that's-random category (yeah pun intended), Jim Wright took his new iPod shuffle, as well as three more his friends had, and made a USB RAID array with them on his Mac.

Now that's geeking out. Not sure how useful it is, but it's cool.

[via Doc Searls]

Ummm - WOW...

Google does it again, and takes online mapping and driving directions to the next level. You have to try this - if nothing else it just looks cool. On top of that, it works very well. Animated maps and excellent, clean detail are real eye-openers. Google has a tour to get you acquainted here.

"Maps are great for getting around, but online maps could be a lot better. So Google decided to make dynamic, interactive maps that are draggable — no clicking and waiting for graphics to reload each time you want to view the adjacent parts of a map. Want to be able to type in the name of a region or neighborhood and see any part of it as easily as with a regular street map? Now you can with Google Maps."

Enter an address, hit enter, and voila:

Need directions to a location? Click the live links in the map, and enter a starting address:

Driving directions are fast and in my test (home to office), quite accurate:

Click on mapped items to automatically reorient the map image (animated) and zoom in on the mapped item:

The slider for zoom detail is very nice - much better than others out there - and there are no browser refreshes happening here. No time to look into exactly how this works right now, but it definitely does.

Check it out.