I’ve seen two cool new technologies in the last 24 hours…just thought I’d share:

Microsoft Surface: As much as they get ripped on for not being as cool as Apple, I think this is pretty stinkin’ sweet. It’s basically a really huge touch screen that can be used as tabletops at home, restaurants, kiosks, etc. The site has some pretty cool videos. I’ll be interested to see how popular this becomes and how quickly it can be mainstreamed.

I have heard several people talk about how cool the new Yahoo! mail interface is, but I hadn’t looked at it until this morning. It is sweet! It blows G-mail out of the water in looks and functionality. No one who reads this probably cares, but if you’re trying to decide between email services, definitely give the new Yahoo! email system a look.

So, our scanner software (HP Director) is not working now that we installed IE7 on our computers. The browser is definitely better than the five year old IE6, but I knew it wouldn’t take long until an annoyance popped up.

You may or may not be aware of this, but Google has been putting together some free online services that could pose a significant challenge to Microsoft Office. They are called Writely and Google Spreadsheets.

I saw this on a friend’s blog tonight. It’s a service called “Pandora”. You tell the site what type of music you like, and it generates playlists of similar artists. I haven’t really tested it out, but it seems interesting.

Is it just me or is this a little scary? I love Google, but this seems like it might be going a bit too far in the attempt to learn more about customers.

I found this really amusing…

Microsoft has been working for a long time on Internet Explorer 7 to replace their junky piece of crap Internet Explorer 6 web browser. Supposedly the newest version isn’t all that bad, but I think I will still stick with Firefox. The funniest part is that the people who make Firefox, Mozilla, bought the domain name ie7.com. So now when you go to www.ie7.com to get information about Internet Explorer 7, you get a fat Firefox logo in your face ( : I think that’s hilarious.

MSN has a nice application that they update each night. It displays the gas prices of local gas stations and ranks them by price. I already know where the lowest price in Lafayette is, but I figured I’d share this with our few loyal readers…

For my zip code, the link is:

http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=47905&src=QL

In the top right corner of the red box, enter your zip code and you’re good to go…or just replace the “47905″ in the URL with your zip code. Enjoy!

I’m always looking for cool pictures and graphics to use in powerpoint backgrounds, fliers, etc. Most sites offer limited pictures or try to make you pay royalties. However, I recently found a great site called stock.xchng.