If you listen the rumbles in Silicon Valley, you would think Google's office suite and Apple's Mac OS X operating system were taking over the world. But the further you get outside the Valley, and often within the Valley itself, you see that Microsoft Windows is still the dominant operating system, as are its application counterparts, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office. If you're a real enterprise, it's basically assumed you're running Outlook.

But the biggest drag on using Outlook has got to be the stupid .PST files. With any kind of serious e-mail archiving, they top out at 2 Gigabytes apiece. Keep the same e-mail address for any kind of time, and you're left not only with multiple .PST files, each being 2 Gigs or so, but it's a new job just to keep track of what .PST files correspond with what amount of time.

Running desktop search software, like Google Desktop, helps to find the old e-mails, but often, clicking a link saying to "Reveal in Outlook" leads to a dead end. Sometimes the archives don't open well. Sometimes Outlook chooses to archive to your local desktop instead of to the network, and any kind of bug could leave you with huge gaps.

Meanwhile, with this playing out in companies everywhere, Google is offering about 5 gigabytes of storage space to consumers everywhere through GMail. Just this evening I was told I'm using "221 MB (4%) of your 5123 MB." For business customers, this number is upped to 25 gigabytes of storage. While that's fantastic for new businesses, anybody already using Outlook has to honor the old .PSTs if they want to get to old messages.

But what if you could import old PST files into GMail, honoring the folder hierarchies you had set up, and had the ability to search through all your e-mail, through all its history? While there's no doubt the import of a single 2 Gigabyte PST file would take a good amount of time, the end result - a single, searchable, Web-based e-mail archive for all your messages would be the holy grail. I believe that with all the issues surrounding Microsoft Outlook - including licensing, viruses, and... the PST files, the prospect of moving to GMail would be quite inviting. But until GMail can help migrate away from Microsoft altogether, real growth will be stunted.

Other comments: PST Files to Gmail, Anyone know of a PST to gmail or mbox converter?

The Nintendo Wii is quickly becoming a serious convergence machine - offering not only video game play, but also News and Weather updates, audience polling and an Internet channel. Much like WebTV had tried to do a decade ago, the Wii moves the Web from the little screen (your laptop) to the big screen (TV).

Now, one content stream doesn't just get accessed by multiple operating systems and multiple browsers, but the Web is now being accessed by a multitude of gadgets, from Blackberry handhelds, to iPhones, the iPod Touch, and the Wii, to name a few.

This evening, I spotted a Nintendo Wii checking in on the blog, and not exactly from a visitor looking for news on technology, sports, or even pictures of my beagle. Instead, the first Wii visit I've noticed was your typical lonely Web surfer looking for a late night porn fix, searching for "free girls on webcams without giving address". Interesting.

The Wii browser is an Opera derivative, version 9.30. And I have to assume there is a pretty good chance that whoever is looking for these Internet-living ladies with loose morals is doing so without their parents knowing. Time to turn on parental controls!

Today, Om Malik reported the music tracking and playlist service, MusicMobs, had shut down, and the founder, deciding the best policy was to join the competition, rather than continue to do battle, has now become part of Last.FM. Now, the two services have become one, and in an instant, the dedicated artist, song, and genre pages I'd generated over the last few years were obliterated.

You can see some of my prior mentions of MusicMobs here, here and here.

Now, instead of a site full of charts, album covers and trends showing which artists and songs were the most popular, we've got a note saying the site's moved, and a single link to download my user playlist. Had that been the focus of why I used MusicMobs, that'd have been okay, but I would have preferred it if I could have been given the option to say... download my own generated pages as HTML and host them elsewhere. Maybe I could even utilize the software from MusicMobs or Last.fm and simply point them to the new page, continuing to synchronize my stats.

But it looks like it wasn't meant to be. For the want of a single developer, an entire site was lost. While I still like Last.fm, I hate seeing others I like just go away without warning. Word to the wise would be to go backup your user files at services not named Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! or Apple. On second thought, back those up too. You never know.

One exposure to music from Faithless, led by lead singer Maxi Jazz, will make you sure you've never heard any sound quite like it. I first fell in awe of Faithless' unique vocals in the epic "Insomnia", and gained immeasurable respect for his work with the Iraq War-themed "Mass Destruction", released in 2004. But even that didn't prepare me for the raw message and real emotion shown in his video titled "Bombs" from his latest album, "To All New Arrivals", which hit the iTunes Music Store in early November. While the album hit stores about a year ago, starting in Europe, I only found it today, and ... Wow.

While I highly encourage you to purchase the album (and two accompanying videos) from iTunes, below is the "Bombs" video, courtesy of YouTube. It's very impressive to see an artist I really already like taking such a strong political stance, regardless the consequences.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ps_MBXEdA



If you found this music strong or the message moving, pass it along. I'm dismayed it took me so long to find!