Neat little tutorial on burning DVDs out of avi

Here is the link.

Google Desktop 3

I have never used Google Desktop because of two reasons:

• I do not use Windows if I can avoid it, and Google Desktop is available only for Windows at this time.

• I  do not like when people try to index my private information.

I just came across one of the new “features” of Google Desktop, which is called “search remote“. This allows GD to search for files across all your computers, which is done by quote:

In order to share your indexed files between your computers, we first copy this content to Google Desktop servers located at Google. This is necessary, for example, if one of your computers is turned off or otherwise offline when new or updated items are indexed on another of your machines. We store this data temporarily on Google Desktop servers and automatically delete older flies, and your data is never accessible by anyone doing a Google search.

While I am not paranoid about the security of information that I have on my computers (mostly corporate info, movies, songs etc.), I find it extremely distressing that it would be available on some Google Server. As we have all seen in past, no amount of security is  good enough to keep a determined hacker at bay, I suddenly see all my private information is available to determined talented people around the world. Or worse, I could find it being handed over to govt by Google (all nicely packaged) because it was subpoena-ed  by the court / federal agencies to do so.

Am I being paranoid?!

Flash Earth

Digg carried a post on FlashEarth which integrates MSN Virtual Earth and Google Earth in a browser. I think this is a very cool website. Looks like the days of desktop are virtually (pun intended) over!