Blogger archiving responsibilities

Do bloggers have a responsibility to archive the content of posts that are linked to, so when the post becomes unreachable the information is still available? 

I linked to a forum post that described how to fix a problem where your iTunes library file became locked.  I didn't post the actual steps, as I didn't get permission from the author.  Then at some point later, the thread was removed from the forums at ipodlounge.  For a while it was available in Google Cache, but then it disappeared.  Now when people find my post from search engines, they can't find the instructions.

Zero gravity water experiments

Boing Boing has a post that links to a video of an interesting experiments run by Don Pettit, on Expedition 6 to the International Space Station.

Ambient Clock

Now this is a device that I would love on my desk at work, if it ships.  The Ambient Clock is a clock that, in addition to displaying the time, also your schedule.  The clock would retrieve your schedule from Google Calendar, though Ambient's wireless network.

The really interesting thing is how it displays your schedule.  It shows the blocks for scheduled appointment around the circumference of the clock.  In addition it displays travel time to meetings as little dots running up to the appointment block.  (The travel time is calculated using Google Maps.)

When no appointments are close the clock glows a calm blue color.  This changes to a yellow shade, within 10 minutes to the event.  When an event is in progress, the clock is in a shade of orange.

iCal - Google Calendar synchronization

Currently if you want to access a calendar with both Google Calendar and iCal, you can only share the calendar one way.  So if you want to make modifications in both places, you need to create two calendars.  One in iCal, and subscribe to it in Google Calendar.  Create other in Google Calendar and subscribe to it in iCal.

It looks like Spanning Sync will make this integration even better.  With Spanning Sync you can modify the calendars in either place, and have the changes reflected in the other.

It is not available yet, but will be entering a private beta next week, with a public beta after that.

[via TUAW]

polycarbonate wheels

I have seen a bunch of posts that mention the D'Vinci Forgiato Radurra wheels.  These are clear polycarbonate wheels that cost about $2000 each.  One problem, besides the gaudiness, is how these wheels will affect the cooling of brakes.  Maybe using these wheels require ceramic brakes.

[via Engadget, AutoBlog]

SiteChecker

SiteChecker is a Firefox extension that notifies you when attempt to navigate to a phishing site.  SiteChecker uses the PhishTank data file.  I know that Firefox 2.0 has phishing detection built in, but the extra check can't hurt.

Update: Here is the new location for the extension.

[via PhishTank Blog]

Google Apps thoughts

It has been a few days since I have switched most of my domains, that I actually care about receiving email for, to Google Apps for Your Domain.  I really like this service.  The setup was was very easy.  I actually like the fact that you can set up the user accounts and aliases even before you switch the mx records.  This allows you to test everything before putting in production.

In this post, I mentioned that I was only going to use fetchmail to collect the mail for my account.  I ended up using it for a few more accounts.  One of them is where I have my logs forwarded to for the servers that I maintain.  Since on want one account to check for these logs.  The other is an account that we use KidzMail for our kids to use.  KidzMail only supports unencrypted POP3 and SMTP, which is not supported by Gmail.