You can’t make this up … there really is no Internet on Internet Street.

Andrzej Gromek bought a house in Warsaw, Poland on a street named … Internet.  Wow!  How nice of the City of Warsaw to recognize the Internet by naming a street after it!  

Mr. Gromek soon discovered he could not get a broadband connection in his house.  Turned down by all providers he launched a campaign to the National Telecom Authority in Poland. They first took his letters for a prank, but after a dozen or so decided to look at the matter.  It turns out that Mr Gromek is the only resident on Internet Street actually wanting to use the Internet, and it would not be economically feasible to pull it to one customer only.

Solution: Mr Gromek is now selling his house.   I hope he does not move to a street named after water, electricity or gas…

(Cross-posted from CloudAve)

Tags: broadband, Humor, internet

The 2004 thriller Cellular features three stars: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, and a Nokia 6660 video-phone. The kidnapped school-teacher played by Kim Basinger pieces together a broken phone and reaches a random dude, Ryan (Chris Evans) on cell-phone – this call literally becomes her lifeline.

Ryan effortlessly uses his Nokia miracle-phone in the middle of a wild race in his (stolen) Porsche, even produces the video evidence that will put the bad guys away at the Happy End.

But are Nokia phones really so easy to use in real life?   Read on to find out…

Tags: blackberry, cellular, competition, design, innovation, iPhone, mobile phones, mobility, nokia, touch screen

This 2-person Cessna developed landing gear trouble, and was shown live on all the major news channels while circling to burn off fuel.  They tracked the plane by news helicopters as well as ground crew.. obviously this is not a scripted scene, but a potential disaster situation.  The CNN video below shows the last few minutes of what turned out to be a very successful emergency landing.

Tags: cessna, cnn, emergency landing, foxnews, live news

Google Layoffs - 10,000 Workers Affected reports WebGuild with a bombastic title.  I can beat that: all Google workers will be affected, at least emotionally. 

As to what the real numbers are, several sources point out that while employee headcount is around 20K, Google has about 10K temporary workers, so whichever way you count, laying off 10K workers would equate to:

• eliminating all the temp positions
• letting go 30% of the (extended) workforce, which seems to be the Silicon Valley rule
• cutting the employee headcount to half (if we ignore temps)

Either way it sounds way too dramatic, a step companies in deep structural trouble would resort to.  I seriously doubt this is really coming, but let me be clear: I have no factual information, am simply speculating, or actually responding to speculation.

But there’s something else worth noticing here: the source.  WebGuild had a bit of a clash with Google this spring, when Google withdrew their support of the WebGuild events it used to host.   Their stated reason was WebGuild’s refusal to change the name of their Web 2.0  Conference & Expo, at O’Reilly’s request. Here are the juicy details in a WebGuild post aptly titled Shame On You Tim O’Reilly.  Without getting into details of the original conflict,  suffice to say that WebGuild has been on somewhat of a vendetta against Google ever since.   They’ve been a little bit too trigger-happy with posts reflecting negatively on Google.

Once again, I do not have factual information, but if this indeed turns out to be false information, I wonder if WebGuild went a step too far this time.  (Remember the Steve Jobs death story?)

Read more in  PC World, HipMojo.com, VentureBeat,  ChannelWeb, Valleywag, Search Engine Land,  Google Watch, CNET News, Alley Insider, Beyond Search, Tech Beat.

Tags: false news, Google, job market, layoffs, o'reilly, speculation, web 2.0, webguild

I couldn’t care less when Gmail added those cute smiley, but the newly released themes go beyond cosmetics, they can actually increase your productivity. How? By helping you differentiate between multiple Gmail accounts.  

I have branded (Google Apps, using my own domain) accounts for business and personal use, and a few generic @gmail.com types for subscriptions, lists, online purchases.  It’s all neatly tied together by Gmail Manager, the excellent Firefox extension.  Even then I sometimes find myself typing an email in the wrong account window.  Here’s the solution: give all your Gmail accounts its own distinctive theme.

I don’t really care for the fancy themes, but at least the top row are all subtle, minimalist styles.  Pick one for each of your accounts, you’ll get used to the colors fast and never mix up your accounts again.

Well.. almost.  As usual, Google rolled out this new feature to the generic, @gmail.com accounts only.  Google Apps users will have to wait – lets’ hope not too long.

Related articles:

• Spice up your inbox with colors and themes
• Gmail Gets Themes
• Gmail Themes. That’s Totally Ninja.
• Gmail Themes as Productivity Tools?

Tags: gmail, Google, productivity, skins, themes

Those damn cell-phones…  we’ve long known they tend to fry our brains, then we learned they can also fry our more private parts, down south.  (My most scientific dissertation on the subject made it to TED, presented by Yossi Vardi.)

Now we find out some models, especially the iPhone are secret spy weapons: they take snapshot of your most private body parts and email the compromising photos all automatically, without manual intervention.  (No, I’m not drunk, it’s all here.)

So beware, fellow male victims: don’t carry this thing in your front pocket, anywhere close to the family jewels.

Tags: fertility, Humor, iPhone

Dow and S&P turns positive, reports Yahoo, via Reuters.  Yeah, right,  the ticker next to it proves it.

Tags: dow, online news, stock market, yahoo, yhoo

How old is your work computer? – asks the Wall Street Journal.

Mine is a year-and-a half old.  The dual-core former screamer (obviously not the one the the pic to the right) has become an average slow machine now that quad-core is the standard, but I could not care less.   I don’t need a faster, bigger computer for work, in fact not even for video-conferencing or watching movies.

In fact I (and most of us) don’t even need  1-2 year-old computers, either, now that browser is the computer.

Now, you’ve heard this a zillion times, but let me present another side: the more you use your computers, the slower they get.  In fact it gets worse:  you don’t even have to use your computers, they get slower by themselves.

Why, and more importantly, what’s the solution?  Read the full article on CloudAve – while at it, might as well grab the feed here.

Tags: computer upgrade, dual-core, gmail, Google, hardware, laptop, mcafee, netbook, notebook, pc, quad-core, security, virus-scan, Web Applications, zoho

Originally a little side-project for Atlassian’s FedEx Day, which is their version of the Hackathon, Hack Day, YouNameIt-Day, I bet this video on Atlassian’s Core Values becomes a perfect recruiting tool.

And boy, they have a bunch of openings… have they missed the end-of-the-world-fire-30% memo?

Tags: atlassian, core values, dftc, hiring, startup values

So I’m cutting off Spoke Software who sent me this piece of junk: If you want to keep your job, use Spoke.

Read on for details…

Tags: fear marketing, job hunting, marketing, networking, spam, spoke software