http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=2041+NE+Josephine+Dr,+Hillsboro,+OR+97124&sll=37.09024,-112.412109&sspn=54.79724,118.476563&ie=UTF8&ll=45.540902,-122.985364&spn=0.000749,0.001808&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=45.540753,-122.985334&panoid=XYkzvAe2UII2YNtD0tOp5A&cbp=1,281.96901520324406,,0,5.839042847276948

Not only does that take up several lines, but putting that in an email, instant message, or facebook status could be kind of a problem.

That is why there are several services which can store a long address like the one above, and shrink it down to a small address that is much easier to use. These services store the long address, and give you a short address. When someone accesses the short address, it automatically forwards that someone to the web page at the full long address.

Four of the more popular services that do this are: bit.ly, TinyURL.com, is.gd, and tr.im.

All these services do basically the same thing, but their interface and length of the small URL they give you might be different. As an example, I took the long Google maps URL above and made it smaller using each of the services:

In the future, if you see an address like on of the above, realize that it is a shortened URL to somewhere else. If you ever find yourself needing to shrink a URL, go ahead and give one of these free services a try.

For those who want to run their own URL-shrinking web service, look at lil’url, free open source software that you can install on your own web server.

I have an email system where anything@jacob…com will land in my inbox. That makes it really easy to give a custom email address to different people/sites so I can filter my email based on the TO address.

I didn’t receive a single email about the Olympics in all of that time. But I have received emails from Rotoworld.com about some sort of Fantasy sports thing.

What does this mean? The only person I gave that particular email address to was NBCOlympics. If I’m getting other email to that address, the only conclusion is that NBCOlympics sold off or gave away my email address to others.

Not that I’ll be bothered by the spam, because I’ve now switched all email to that address to arrive in a special spam email account.

Google Chrome did a reasonable job at rending the pages, but it has one problem. It wants to print headers on the top and bottom of all the pages including: the url, the page title, the date, and the page number. For my print job, I don’t want to reveal all that information, and I would prefer to print my pages without it.

In Firefox, I am given a Page Setup option from the File menu where I can customize headers, footers, and margins for printing. I cannot find any such option in Google Chrome.

When I connect the Nokia with my Windows Vista laptop, Windows reports the following services:

• Audio Source
• Headset Audio Gateway
• Object Push (Obex)
• Remote Control

I’m not really sure what these services are or how to use them.

The Nokia also shows up in “Computer” (along side all the connected drives) but clicking on the Nokia/bluetooth icon does nothing.

My Windows Vista laptop identifies the access point security type as WPA-Personal with TKIP encryption. When I try to connect the Nokia to the access point it prompts me for a “shared key.” I input the access point password which is published (and used successfully on my laptop), but after a few seconds the Nokia comes back with “Network connection error.”

• Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 - 71/100
• Google Chrome 0.2.149.29 - 79.100
• Opera 9.52 - 83/100
• Windows Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13 - Too bad to tell. Perhaps 5/100?
• Apple’s Safari 3.1.2 (525.21) - 75/100
• Flock 1.2.5 - 53/100

All the web browsers were run on the same Windows XP system.

Then, out of curiosity, I decided to check the memory usage of each browser and found the following:

• Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 - 55M (After all add-ons were turned off)
• Google Chrome 0.2.149.29 - 41M
• Opera 9.52 - 27M (But then crashed on subsequent loads)
• Windows Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13 - 41M (But still couldn’t render the test at all)
• Apple’s Safari 3.1.2 (525.21) - 41M
• Flock 1.2.5 - 54M

However, I am disappointed that the version of flash installed does not recognized the built in camera or microphone. This means that I can’t send video messages to my friends on Facebook.

So, plus on the fact that flash is included, but a small negative because the flash doesn’t support that camera.

Skype worked well… very nice audio using just the built in speakers and microphone. I talked to my mom for an hour and a half, with only some choppy audio for two brief moments.

I was disappointed that Skype didn’t take advantage of the built in camera to do video conferencing. This isn’t Nokia’s fault, but instead of Skype.

The WOM World / Nokia website is loaning me an N810 device for two weeks for me to review. Seeing as I have many friends who have purchased iPod Touch devices for use as an internet tablet, my primary goal in reviewing the N810 will be to try and evaluate how it might compare against the iPod Touch.

If you have any “does it do …?” sort of questions about the N810, leave a comment and I’ll try to get to your request during my evaluations of the N810.

After your recent announcement about opening Knol, I’m excited to share a few suggestions.

First of all, let me say how excited I am to see Knol come out to play. I’ve got nothing against Wikipedia, but just like there are different vendors for traditional book encyclopedias, I think it is great to have different sources for online encyclopedias. I think Knol will be a good supplement to Wikipedia.

I really like how you can choose different licenses for a knol, work and collaborate in groups, and receive adsense revenue for knols written. I’ve often wondered why I should spend time adding content to someone else’s site, when I could add content to my own and collect advertising revenue for it. With the revenue sharing model of Knol, I feel more comfortable putting forth efforts.

As a suggestion, I think you should also allow Google Analytics to be used on the pages to track traffic, similar to the way you allow Google Analytics to be used on Google Code projects.

One of the things I found confusing when I started using Google Knol is what the policies are for copying other sources, such as copying Wikipedia articles or copying other Google Knol articles. Although I’ve been able to figure this out, if you were to have a Google Groups discussion group for authors to discuss best practices, it would have been a valuable resource for beginning authors.

Finally, Google Knol is unique from Wikipedia in that it can allow multiple articles on the same topic. This can be a valuable incentive to allow more people practice writing articles. For example, I think Google should work with educational institutions, especially high schools, to provide opportunities for students to write knols for their school projects. Allowing high school students to write scholarly articles and reports which can then be peer reviewed online would be valuable preparation for collegiate studies.

Thank you for hosting Knol,
Jacob

BTW - From what I’ve been able to discover about copying articles, Wikipedia articles cannot be copied for use in Knol because Wikipedia articles are licensed under an license incompatible with Creative Commons licenses used by Knol. Knol articles can be copied with attribution, but if a knol uses the Creative Commons non-commercial license, then it cannot be copied to a knol displaying adsense. At least, that is how I read things.