Since last I posted on this site, much has happened, and one of the biggest events of the past few months was Google’s purchase of YouTube for U$1.65 billion (holy cow!). Over the past week or so, YouTube has done a bit of updating to its by color coding certain menus, moving filters, and adding some important site functions to the footer of the site for easier access. More importantly, the site has added advance statistics to track videos, as well as trackback links showing all sites which link to particular videos. Not like I need to tell any of you, but if you haven’t already, check out the vast amounts of content on that site.

Looking for some new blogs to read? Then check out Feeds That Matter, a blog directory of sorts which analyzes Bloglines blog subscriptions to create a list of popular blogs based on topic. “By analyzing this data and combining merging folders that are very similar, we have come up with an automatic way of creating a taxonomy of popular topics and make it easy to find feeds that are most relevant to that topic.” Very simple and quite handy!

Maybe you’re on the road a lot, or you’re bored at work and you’d like to watch some videos, but have no access to a computer. What do you do? You could always flip open your mobile phone and try to search for some videos online, but some sites don’t support phone browsers, or are too cumbersome to browse from a phone. Fortunately, there’s a cool new web app which lets you search through Google Video. Simply type http://srobbin.com/mobilevideo into your phone’s browser, and search away. There are a couple of catches though. You do need to have an unlimited data plan (unless you want to pay the huge bill), your phone’s browser must support XHTML (try Opera Mini, FREE), your phone must have enough storage to download the videos, and your phone must be able to play AVI or MP4 videos. If all these apply to you, you’re in for a nice and easy experience.

I’ve expressed my love for Google Earth quite a few times since it’s first appearance, but always wished it provided a little more real-world information out of the box instead of having to add my own data and coordinates. If you’ve ever felt the same, you might be happy to know you can know, thanks to Geocoordinates from Wikipedia for Google Earth, a website which provides a .KMZ file you can open in Google Earth and which provides coordinates for thousands of Wikipedia entries. Due to the number of possible entries, the database is split up into layers so you’re not overwhelmed by onscreen data.

A couple of days ago I wrote about how it would be possible to ward off telemarketers by creating disposable phone numbers, and now I present you with a way to turn all your numbers into one thanks to a new service called GrandCentral. Just like Grand Central station is a main terminal in New York where subway lines from around the city meet, GrandCentral provides a way to connect your landline, cell number, work number, and more into one so you can pick up the call from any of the numbers you list. The really cool feature of GrandCentral is that you can set up how each incoming call is handled. For example, you can have your significant other’s number ring on any of your lines, but have only the office phone ring when your boss calls. Another very interesting feature is the ability to switch calls between any of your lines with the push of a button.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about certain services or pieces of software that I wish were around when I was in college. Just goes to show how many cool new tools we’ve gained over the past 2 years (now you finally know how old I am ). One of these services is NoteMesh.

Ever since I started subscribing to RSS feeds I’ve been trying out new feed readers whether they be desktop or web-based ones, never staying with one for very long (by the way, I’m currently using the fantastic NewsHutch which I’ll be reviewing shortly). When Google first released Google Reader, I wasn’t very impressed, but with the recent updates, I can say Reader is finally useful.