Another new day, another exciting tecno find!

Still staying with CNN Money's25 start-ups to watch, the next one is Bebo. This one I haven't used, but I'm familiar with it, as most Irish school children and students are subscribers to this social networking site. As an older person, I better not subscribe, lest I be seen as a dirty old man! If you go onto the website, you will see a link to webwise.ie, an effort by the Irish Government for school children and other young people to help them surf the web more safely. It contains a fascinating video survey of interviews with young Irish Beboers. Will this one make it? I would bet money on it. It is incredibly popular with the young Irish.

The next one is Meebo, which my favourite podcasters at TWiT discussed. This is an IM tool which basically combines Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, Aim, ICQ etc and allows you, through their servers, to access friends on all these IM services. This makes a lot of sense if you use IM, which has increased in popularity over the last few years. In fact, research shows that amongst teenagers IM is replacing email as a means of communication. I can see this one resolving communication problems and becoming more popular. They claim a few million users, and I can believe it. What I particularly found interesting was the Meebo map showing the IM's sent over the preceding 15 minute slot, via Meebo. Even if you do not use an IM service, like me, browse over to the map! That is fascinating because it shows visually the areas where IM is used most:- the USA east coast, California, Brazil and Europe at the time when I looked (22h00, Greenwich mean time).

Last night on the way home, on my BBC Podcasts, I listed to a piece titled 'Who will explode the next nuclear bomb?' Lovely.... just what I needed to cheer me up. I REALLY wanted to think about this. And they are so cheerful when they tell you how much easier it has become for terrorist groups to make nuclear devices. REALLY??? I am delighted to hear that, no, honestly, I am. *Sigh* Ruined my evening, I can assure you. Go on, click on the link if you're in desperate need of some depression, such as because you are feeling insanely happy this morning and need to temper your early morning cheerfulness with some depression before your colleagues drown you in a cup of lukewarm tea in the staff canteen. And they ended the Podcast by advising me that I am in for a further dose of cheerfulness next week. Great. I really look forward to that.

And of course Mr. Smarty pants here forgot to update his MP3 player (NOT an iPOD, but a solid Sansadisk E270, 6GB, with an in-car FM transmitter for playing it through my car radio) yesterday, so I had no podcasts in the car coming in to the office this morning. Horrible, all that silence. I had to listed to RTELyric, a classical music station in Dublin (yes, I am THAT old).

Oh well, guess I better do some real work!