It looks like geotagging is back in Flickr. This time it’s built right in vs. the older method that died off a little while back. With the new built-in geotagging, flickr has provided a handy drag and drop interface from the organizr section of your flickr account. You simply zoom to the place on the map where you want your photo to display and drag the thumbnail to that location. There is no more messing with longitude and latitude in the comment and tag fields of your photos. If you still have lon/lat tags from the older geotagging method, flickr prompts you to import all of those photos to their new setup, so you don’t have to go back and remap all of your previously geotagged photos. If you want to just look through the map, you can access it via the flickr explore menu. The maps are now generated via Yahoo maps (makes sense now that Yahoo owns Flickr). Apparently in the next few weeks they’ll be opening up the API’s for this service so hopefully we’ll see some cool new apps based on this new feature. I’m also hopeing someone figures out how to make a Google Earth plug-in for this as well since that was the way I used to access the geotagged photos. I guess we’ll wait and see what happens with this service.

There is a lot more information, including a few screencast sessions, about the new flickr geoblogging on the FlickrBlog

Ever wish you could pit your favorite old-school video games characters against each other? Ever wondered what it would be like if the Metroid man woman were in a battle to the death with Mario, or what would happen if Sonic the Hedgehog were to fight Link from Zelda? Well, wonder now more… Super Smash Flash is a flash game that lets you throw old-school video game characters into battle with each other (street fighter style).

Do you use Flickr? How about some fun tools to make it easier.

FlickrStorm
FlickrStorm is a better search for Flickr. It digs a little deeper than the built-in flickr search to bring you more relevant results

Flickr Leech
Their motto is “because paging sucks.” This tool helps you sort through the millions of images on Flickr by letting you filter what you view, and by letting you view a LOT of thumbnails on one page without having to go page by page as in Flickr’s interface.

It’s the small things that are special. I was buying a roll of mixed fruit Mentos today and noticed that the wrappers are different. They’ve changed the end-foil color to bright pink, and changed a few other elements of the package imaging. They’re now called “fruit” instead of “mixed fruit,” which the old rolls said.

Same great mentos… now with a new look!

Just like you could drive a racecar through New York, You can now fly an airplane over several cities around the word. Googles, the Google Maps Flight Sim is a little Flash app that puts you in a little green and yellow plane where you can fly all over Google Maps satellite pictures of the world.

Have you ever dreamed of signing karaoke with the entire internet? Well guess what, your dreams have come true with the beta release of SingShot. Plug in your computer mic, fire up your browser and in a slick flash interface you can hear other people’s renditions of (somewhat) popular songs, or sing your own. You can rate people’s singing and the system will even give you points on how well you’ve done. For their beta, you can get in for a free 2 week trial for signing (listening is always free). It looks like down the road a ways, they’ll be charging a monthly fee to record your own songs. So if you’ve got people coming over this weekend and nothing to do, why not sing for the internet?

For Jess’ graduation, I told her I’d put together an entertainment PC for her so she could Tivo (that’s a verb now) shows, organize music, watch DVD’s etc. She graduated back in May and I’ve been putting off buying the pieces until just last week when Intel dropped their processor prices. Everything showed up via UPS last Friday so I starting putting the pieces together. At this point, the computer itself is functional, but the entertainment portion still needs a good deal of tweaking. I plan updating my progress on the software side of things as they progress. I thought I’d start with laying out the hardware that went into this baby.

The Guts:
The guts are your pretty standard PC parts. I went with an Intel Pentium D 940 dual core processor. That processor was pretty much determined for me by the case that I chose (more about that later). Ram is 1Gb (512Mb x 2) DDR2 SDRAM (nothing special there). I grabbed a Maxtor 200Gb hard drive and an IO Magic DVD+-R DL burner at Staples earlier in the summer for a pretty good deal with rebates. Nothing too out of the ordinary there… just your everyday computer components.

Capture Card:
For the capture card, I went with the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 l.p. card since the Hauppauge cards are usually the most recommended TV tuner/capture cards out there. I needed the low profile (l.p.) version of the card specifically for the case (again more about that later) that I chose.

Input:
For this computer to be functional in a living room setting, I needed to find a keyboard/mouse that was wireless and wasn’t too intrusive sitting on a coffee table. I did a lot of digging and found there aren’t a whole lot of options out there for HTPC keyboard/mouse combos. I ended up going with the Microsoft Remote Keyboard/Mouse for Windows Media Center Edition. I’m not planning on running Windows MCE, but really liked the layout of this keyboard. My favorite part (and the hardest thing to find in a keyboard) is the built in mouse button in the upper right. So, this is the only thing you need sitting in front of the TV. There is no need for a wireless keyboard and a mouse. I read some reviews about the mouse button being difficult to use, but wasn’t too worried since if things worked the way they were supposed to work there wouldn’t be too much need for mouse control. I’ll admit once I got it up and running it was a little awkward at first, but after a few days I’ve got it down. I did need to download the MCE Rollup 2 to get this working in XP Pro.

The Case:
The case is the thing that makes this computer. I’ve been scouring reviews and HTPC sites all summer trying to find a nice case for this computer. There are a lot of companies out there that make HTPC cases. Some are nice, and some are just huge (definitely not something I’d want in my entertainment center)! I knew going into this that wanting a small case, might lead to sacrifices in other areas of the computer. The case I ended up going with wasn’t just a case, but a full bare bones system with a lot of bells and whistles. I chose the Aopen EPC945-m8 which turned out to be a really nice rig, though a bit of a bear to set up. The thing about the EPC945-m8 that sold me was the size and look. It really looks like it belongs in your entertainment center. It has a lot of nice features built in as well. It comes with the IR port built in (no ugly USB ports to deal with) and includes an MCE remote control. It’s got on-case controls, along with an up-front display. There is a built-in flash card reader. Also the motherboard has a good number of built-in extras as well. It’s got surround sound audio with several optical out ports (in addition to your typical mini-plug ports). It includes several options for video as well with Intel cards. These aren’t your high end gaming cards, but I have a desktop for gaming and really wasn’t planning on playing games on this machine. The included cards provide standard vga out along with a DVI port, composite RGB ports, and an s-video port. That pretty much covered everything I needed for now.

As I put this together, I took a lot of photos that are available in a Flickr set with notes associated for more information. The problems I ran into were mainly due to the small size of this case. It’s not easy to stuff so much hardware into such a little space. It all fit, but there were some pretty tight areas. The drive cage that holds the optical drive on top and the hard drive on the bottom was a bit difficult to get together. The cables (power and data) have to be stretched just right to make them reach the ports on the drives. It didn’t help matters that I had a bad hard drive to start things out and had to do an exchange to get one that worked. The included processor fan is another added bonus. It’s a heatpipe quiet fan system that is actually very quiet. You really don’t hear the thing at all. The only time I notice any real noise coming out of it is when the DVD drive is spinning and a little bit when the hd clicks. One other little issue has popped up has to do with how the machine handles video out. I started with it plugged into a standard computer monitor with the VGA port to get everything installed. Once the OS was on there, I moved it to the living room to hook it to a TV to make sure I could view it on the TV. It didn’t work at first, but all of a sudden I started getting a signal using the S-video out. Seeing that everything worked, I wanted to move it back to the monitor (since it’s a lot easier to see) to finish tweaking software etc. I couldn’t get it to move back to the VGA out. I found a little hidden entry in the FAQ that said you have to hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to swap between the video ports (which wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the somewhat lacking documentation included with the case). Outside of a few difficulties due to the case size and routing stuff around the inside, and the video out thing (which works fine now) I’m very happy with this thing.

Check out my HTPC Flickr Set for more images and information.

Software:
For the software that runs on this baby I’m still playing around with a lot of stuff. I’m planning on going with Meedio which was recently purchased by Yahoo to control the HTPC portion. I’ve got Sage TV for the Tivo-like functionality, and probably some other odds and ends to be figured out later. There is still a lot of fine tuning to do with the software before this thing is ready to roll. I’ll post again down the road a bit when I’m able to get all that worked out.