Caught this CNN/Money article today: Google acquires stake in AOL. Yes, yes — AOL will provide image-based ads to Google’s network, Google’s video search will return results that are part of AOL’s premium services … but here’s the kicker:

The deal will “allow users of Google’s recently introduced instant messaging system Google Talk to communicate with users of AOL’s market-leading AIM instant messaging service.”

What is my IM client of choice? AIM. Which one would I like to be using? Google Talk. Why don’t I? Because all my friends are on AIM. This is huge.

On a related note, I downloaded AIM Triton the other day and it installed so much other crap that I disabled it after one reboot. The straw that broke the camel’s back with it was that all links clicked on from within AIM would open in “AOL Explorer,” which is nothing more than an IE skin. Unacceptable. Traditional AIM still works, I’ve still got an installer for it, and I’ll probably never switch to Triton, especially considering that Google Talk will likely supersede it.

Holy crap. Yahoo! bought del.icio.us.

It’s been less than 24 hours since I posted about Gmail’s Web Clips. In that post, I linked to Gmail’s What is ‘Web Clips’? page.

The final sentence on that help page reads as follows: “Note: Clips of your favorite RSS and Atom feeds are displayed randomly, and aren’t targeted to the contents of your mail.” The emphasis is theirs, not mine. That’s neat and all, but I noticed this in my Gmail Inbox today after I ordered a pizza through PizzaHut.com:

Aren’t targeted? I don’t buy it.

Personally I don’t care. The ads on the side are already targeted based on the content of emails. There was a brouhaha over these targeted ads potentially invading Gmail account holders’ privacy, but it seemed to blow over. It never bothered me. Who cares if an algorithm reads my emails? I trust Google. I don’t think Google is going to collect all my personal information and sell it to anyone. But I wish their help pages were more accurate — there’s no way this pizza ad is a coincidence.

Two weeks ago I mentioned MyLinkVault, and said I would review it shortly. I didn’t. The reason I didn’t is because I told the developer, Thomas Rice, what I didn’t like about it, and he carried out many of my suggestions. (!)

I like it better than del.icio.us. It’s still one of my homepages, but only because there’s so much stuff in there that I haven’t moved to MyLinkVault yet. And it’s not because MLV doesn’t have a good add links system — it’s because I’m lazy.

Before I make my recommendation I want to say this. If you like del.icio.us because it’s a social bookmark manager, then don’t switch to MyLinkVault. However, if you use del.icio.us because it’s a networked bookmark manager, then by all means, take a good look at MyLinkVault.

My number one favorite feature on MyLinkVault is that you can see more than one category of links onscreen at one time. On del.icio.us, or even on a web browser’s local bookmarks/favorites, I was forced to organize my links in one of two ways: easy to access, or easy to find. I feel that with MLV, you can do both.

MyLinkVault offers buttons that you can add to your browser’s link bar which allow you to add a page to MLV very quickly and without opening up a new browser window/tab.

I recommend any networked bookmark solution over any local/hard drive based bookmark solution, and I recommend MyLinkVault over any other solution I have encountered.

[UPDATE] I emailed Thomas Rice about this post and he said he plans on rolling out some improvements within a week or so. I look forward to them.

Gmail is now serving RSS feeds and … sponsored ads … on the screen above your Gmail Inbox. You know — what Yahoo! Mail has been doing for years, the thing I hate about all other free web-based email providers, one of the top reasons I switched to Gmail, etc. Google calls the service Web Clips.

I notice that it introduces a new shade of blue to the user interface — a little bit lighter than the prevalent blue, but not white. This is a desimplification in the interface in both terms of color and clutter. What is Google thinking?

Is this the reason Google Reader still tells me “You have recently subscribed to ‘Penny Arcade.'”? Because all of Google’s RSS people have been working on Web Clips? WTF?

The great thing about Google’s mostly blank homepage is that it’s devoid of clutter — unlike Yahoo.com, MSN.com, etc. Google’s personalized homepage featured some clutter, but you have the ability to turn all of it off — and you can still just use the traditional homepage. But I’ll give this to Yahoo! and MSN — their products talk to each other. Google’s different RSS products (Reader, Desktop, Personalized Home, and Gmail) offer zero integration. It’s time to develop a unified homepage — even if it is accessible only by internal developers — simply to ensure that these products work with each other.

I got an email from 1&1 today about new package offerings. What caught my eye is a package called “Beginner Linux,” which now offers 10 MySQL databases, up from 1. “Beginner Linux” appears to be 1&1’s most basic offering. What strikes me is the fact that 1&1’s most basic package includes MySQL databases. Any MySQL databases. The whole reason I switched my hosting from 1&1 to PowWeb was that in order to get MySQL databases, I had to up my 1&1 package from the $5 monthly option to the $10 monthly option. With PowWeb, I got it for $7 per month.

So I dug a little deeper on 1&1’s site. It appears that for $2.99 per month, I can get unlimited subdomains, 10 MySQL databases … did I mention it’s $2.99 per month? WTF? Thirty-six bucks a year? That’s ridiculous. That’s less than Xbox Live. That’s a lot less than what I pay for my cell phone.

So I emailed 1&1, and maybe I’ll change hosts this weekend.

Did CNN.com widen its render width? It’s hard to tell, unless you compare it to sister/daughter site CNN/Money.

I took some screenshots and some measurements. Today’s CNN.com page is 878 pixels wide. CNN/Money is 770 pixels wide. Seven-seventy is logical for an 800×600 display, but 878 doesn’t appear to correspond to anything. This is the same intermediary conclusion I came to by eyeballing it.

This leads me to believe that the main story image was resized improperly, and is too big. (It measures in at 355 pixels wide.) Also, it appears that the “top stories other than THE top story” column is the same width as the “TOP top story” column. So let’s just assume that CNN.com’s CSS or script or whatever resizes the first column to fit the image, then resizes the second column to match the first column.

So the number of pixels over the norm the image goes — doubled — should give us the difference in width between today’s CNN.com and every other CNN.com. Working backwards:

878 – 770 = 108
108 / 2 = 54
355 – 54 = 301
round off one pixel for fudge: 300

So I’m thinking the main image is typically supposed to be 300 pixels wide, but something got messed up, and the whole page scaled up by double that amount.

Gmail now features automatic virus scanning of file attachments. Unlike Yahoo Mail’s virus scanner, Gmail’s scanner does not appear to be powered by a third party such as Norton or McAfee. Apparently, Google has developed this virus scanner internally.

It begs the question: Will Google release its own branded desktop virus scanner? It could integrate with Google Desktop Search. Google Sidebar could inform you of the status of your system scan. You could search Google’s virus encyclopedia. (I find both Norton’s and McAfee’s to be lacking.)

Look for it.

Mozilla today released Firefox 1.5 on its website. My Firefox 1.0.7 (or whatever) couldn’t find an auto-update — I assume Mozilla hasn’t readied the upgrade file yet — So I downloaded the full installer and ran it. It brought in all my settings flawlessly. This isn’t surprising considering that the previous “auto-updates” just downloaded the latest full installer.

Of the three touted features I place the most value on — better back and forward button performance, better pop-up blocking, and arrangeable tabs — I can only say for sure that the tabs are noticeably different. You can rearrange them. This is good. I’ve longed for that feature more than once. Faster back button? I never noticed it crawling before, but it’s certainly pretty good now. And better pop-up management? Every couple days I’d find a site that defeated the previous Firefox’s blocker, but I honestly can’t remember what any of those sites are and if the new Firefox blocks them, I probably won’t notice them anymore anyway.

PS — I uninstalled Google’s Web Accelerator because it seemed to have stopped saving me time. I decided that unnoticeable time savings weren’t worth any RAM hit. So I nuked it.

Additionally — I got an email from Thomas Rice, whose name I didn’t recognize. He’s got a new website called MyLinkVault. He emailed me the link because he read my posts on DP.com about networked bookmark services. I’ve started to use his site, have started a review, and will probably post it on Saturday. I don’t know if he sent me the link with the expectation that I would review it, but I must point out two things that strike me about the fact that he sent me the link:

1. I’m flattered that the guy who owns the site would email me about his new product. (It’s professional-looking.) And

2. I can’t believe there are people out there (besides my RIT friends) who read my site. Yeah, the logs show IPs from all over the world, but who would believe people actually assimilate information they read on DanPremo.com?

Microsoft has a new service in beta, called Windows Live. I read about it on CNN.com, and initially I thought it was something like the OS online, and I was all set to say, “Although a couple years ago I hated this idea because of the likelihood of an annual Windows subscription, I’m now ready to embrace the potential here because — as I’ve discussed with Lewis regarding email — I used to want to own stuff on my hardware, but now I realize that I don’t want my data or communications to be tied to one physical location.”

So then I checked out Windows Live. It’s not what I expected. Before I get to that, let me point out that when you load it up in Firefox (obviously), this text appears at the top:

Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient 🙂

I find it notable that a Microsoft site is promising support for a rival browser right out of the gate. I mean … the promise is right out of the gate. Right.

So really Windows Live seems to be an über-portal. It is not dissimilar to Google’s Personalized Home, with access to email, news, and networked bookmarks, which I have been posting about for (literally) WEEKS!!

Google has to get off their ass and clean up Personalized Home, do more with Bookmarks, and get the RSS reader working — which as Lewis noted, appears to be the first big thing they have completely dropped the ball on.

Finally, this is not the first product Microsoft has offered called Live — Xbox Live has been around for about two years now, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Xbox 360 will feature media integration with standard Windows XP machines, and greater integration with Windows Media Center PCs. I can totally envision a seamless experience that combines Xbox Live and Windows Live whether you are viewing it on your Windows PC or on your TV via your Xbox 360.