For those of you who may not have updated thier Firefox browser, version 1.07 is out. It is much easier to update Firefox these day as you can do it from options>advanced.

You will find updates for your extensions too and all install quickly with no apparent problems.

The Google Logo Today (click here to see) announces it’s seventh year. They are a very impressive company and the owners are now on the richest people on the planet lists as a result of their phenomenal growth. They supposedly are very down to earth and very modest in their consumption of goods despite their incredible success. Best wishes to them.

I needed to spell check a web page today. A little looking led me to this neat on-line utility that checks spelling and much more. It output the errors in alphabetical order with line number references. Very handy. It did not know common terms like Blog, however and reported them as spelling errors.

Each year Technology Review dot com releases a list of young innovators in technology. Technology Review is part of MIT. The list was previously known as the TR100, but it is now known as the TR35 because it recognizes those innovators who are under 35 years of age. These are some of the best and brightest young people.

Want to know what is hot in technology? Check out the list.

Each recipient will receive an award at MIT on the 28th of this month.

Opera has finally removed the banner advertisements and license fee for it’s popular web browser, presumably to become more competitive with Firefox. Yippee, it is free.

Time to get a copy and compare to see which of the several free browsers you like best. At under 4 megabytes, the Opera Browser is a lean mean browsing machine — that is very standards compliant.

Last Winter/Spring there were a rash of thefts of laptops from colleges that contained students personal information. One at Berkley was solved, in part, recently when a man in possession of the laptop was arrested. Of course who knows how many copies of the data may have been made before it got to this chap. We also read about several other similiar thefts about that time including one at Grand Rapids Community College (see other news for this one). To our knowledge that one remains unsolved at the present time.

Or does it? Some argue that the availability of too much information will overwhelm us. We are constantly bombarded with information – web pages, emails, chat rooms, satellite and cable tv, bill boards, pod casts, walkmen, ipods, etc. etc. etc. In an interesting article, CNET discusses the effects of so much information at ones fingertips.

What’s undeniable is the Internet’s democratization of information. It’s providing instant access to information and, in a sense, improving the practical application of intelligence for everyone.

You decide the answer … if you have the time and aren’t too busy reading.