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Type "mnspeak," go to MNspeak, yes? Uh....

Type "mnspeak" into the Firefox browser and you get the popular local MNspeak site, right?

Not so fast: Firefox is typically configured to do a Google search when words not ending in ".com" (or similar) are typed into the address field.

And the first hit for "mnspeak" in Google is Fimoculous, the personal site of former MNspeak owner Rex Sorgatz. When I pointed this out to him, he responded as follows:

Huh. That's interesting.

If you don't put a ".com" at the end of something in the Firefox address bar, it automatically does a Google search for that word and takes you to the first result. I'm apparently the first result for the term "mnspeak":

http://www.google.com/search?q=mnspeak

-Rex

So is MNSpeak losing a lot of traffic this way? I haven't heard from the current management yet, but one Twitter user mused:

wondering how much traffic @fimoculous gets from firefox users like me who type in just the keyword mnspeak (no .com) and end up at his site...

Maybe MNspeak needs to tweak its SEO a bit?

Funny spam-themed mail from local reader

This e-mail from a St. Paul reader made me laugh so hard that I had to share it with you:

Dear Julio Ojeda-Zapata:

You're my main source, on MPR and in the Pioneer Press, for daily tech news, thanks so much. And I'm so amazed at this that I have to point it out to you.

I just went to my Trend Micro spam filter and found that ONLY ONE of the first 100 had to do with Viagra! They're ALL financial--loans, credit, and gambling.

Did they get the memo about my lack of a penis? Do they know something about my finances that I don't know? Could there possibly be a more stunning demonstration of the shift in the economic climate?

Reviews of HP server, Eee PC, Lenovo X300

I reviewed three interesting products in Tech Test Drive columns recently:

MediaSmart Server. This HP home server running Microsoft's Windows Home Server does cool stuff, such as iTunes and photo sharing. It has a few rough edges but great potential. Thank you, Amazon.com, for the review loaner.

Eee PC. I had heard lots about this Asus subnotebook, so I was thrilled to get a review sample (thanks again, Amazon). After playing with this product, I don't think I'd buy one.

I discussed the Eee PC on Minnesota Public Radio's Future Tense this morning.

ThinkPad X300. This pro-grade, supercostly solid-state laptop is a direct competitor to the solid-state (and only slightly less pricey) version of Apple's MacBook Air. Both are fine machines.

Here's a PDF with all above reviews, as they appeared in the Pioneer Press.

The popular Eye-Fi wireless SD card evolves

I'm a big fan of the Eye-Fi Share, a digital-camera flash-storage card with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities.

This has allowed users to designate particular Wi-Fi networks for uploading, and then effortlessly push their just-taken photos from their cameras to blogs or photo-sharing services (and, optionally, to their PCs or Macs if those are nearby).

You'll notice one small rub: You have to use particular networks, not any Wi-Fi network. The card can't simply hop on a public Wi-Fi hotspot, for instance, without a clunky setup process on a computer first.

But a soon-to-be-released successor, called the Eye-Fi Explore, looks to be a big step forward.

In a deal with Wayport, which manages more than 10,000 hotspots, The Eye-Fi people will be giving its users a lot more flexibility in when and where they can upload their photos. If they are at a Wayport location, uploading is free even if others at that hotspot have to pay Wayport for access.

The Eye-Fi Explore will also have a form of geotagging. This means it will be able to register the geographical location of pictures it is uploading, via triangulation with nearby Wi-Fi networks. This is the Skyhook triangulation technology built into Apple's iPhone and iPod touch.

The new Eye-fi features sounds very cool and useful -- I look forward to testing these capabilities.

Want a rotary iPhone dialer? You'll get one.

When Apple opened up its iPhone to third-party developers, all kinds of useful and offbeat application ideas were bandied about.

One that came up again and again: A working software facsimile of a rotary-phone dialer.

Well, Minnesota-based CodeMorphic has developed exactly that.

It's called RetroPhone, and company founders Bill Heyman and Damon Allison showed it to me today ahead of the app's public unveiling at MinneBar tomorrow (I have a story about CodeMorphic and MinneBar in the Pioneer Press).

They're also announcing Aloha, a photo-annotating program inspired in part by Comic Life. Both apps will be among the flood of iPhone programs hitting Apple's App Store in a few weeks.

Behold, RetroPhone (a downloable version of the video, suitable for computer or iPod viewing, is here):

Photoshop Express adds Flickr support, etc.

I recently reviewed Photoshop Express, Adobe's simplified, Web-based counterpart to its famed Photoshop software for photo retouching and organizing.

Now Adobe is adding new online features (you should see them sometime tonight).

The best one is Flickr integration, meaning you can pull in your pictures from that popular service for editing. At launch, Photoshop Express did provide integration with Facebook, Photobucket and Google's Picasa Web Albums.

But Flickr integration automatically makes Photoshop Express a bigger deal because so many people rely on Yahoo's photo-sharing service, and many of those folks dislike its Picnik photo editor. Having Adobe's editor as an alternative rocks.

Photoshop Express also is adding a "save as" feature for more control over your work, and an embeddable player for use on other sites -- such as Facebook, MySpace or your blog -- to show off photos in slideshow form.

Google offers a similar slideshow-player option with Picasa Web Albums.

Update: Google has delayed this. It said in a statement:

"As you know, we were preparing updates to the Photoshop Express beta on May 7th that added significant new functionality to the product. However, prior to going live, we discovered a bug that requires a fix. We're committed to delivering a quality experience with Photoshop Express and don't want to send out an update that isn't ready for prime time. We're working on a quick resolution. Stay tuned -- we'll have an exact time frame on when you can expect these new Photoshop Express features soon."

Update: In case you were still wondering, the Flickr integration is now live.

Philips' Ambilight is no more in this country

Philips once made a huge fuss about Ambilight, a feature on its superb flat-screen TVs that created ambient lighting around the edges. This supposedly increased viewing comfort -- I don't know about that, but I really liked it.

Now I get the word that Ambilight is dead, at least in the United States. That may or may not be related to this news, but it's a shame regardless.

Here's Ambilight in action on a TV I recently had on loan from Philips, partly so I could -- insert irony here -- write all about Ambilight:

"Battlestar Galactica" et al on Zune e-store

NBC got snippy with Apple and pulled all its TV shows from the iTunes Store not long ago. Now it has begun selling episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" and other programs on Microsoft's rival Zune Marketplace e-store.

This new Zune Marketplace content is part of an update today to Zune players, which compete with Apple's iPods, and the Zune desktop software for Windows.

Along with NBC Universal content (including "BG" and "Eureka" from Sci Fi Channel), the new Zune Video Store has material from MTV, Turner Broadcasting and others.

Once I heard about this, I spent the better part of a day trying to download the the awesome second-season "Pegasus" episode of "BG," but I kept getting an error message.

I finally succeeded and put the episode on a couple of Zunes. But now I can't get the video to play on either device. Hmmm.

Regardless, the iTunes Store has a lot more stuff -- including Hollywood movies, as well as many more TV shows than the Zune store offers. Video looks nicer on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch because of a bigger, cinema-style display.

Zune, you still have a long way to go.

Update: Three Battlestar Galactica episodes now appear to be playing normally on my Zunes after syncing or re-syncing to the devices.

The apparent solution to my problem: I need to wait until the download progress bar in the PC software switches from "100 percent" to "In Collection" before attempting a sync to a Zune.

A couple of tech-y gift tips for Mother's Day

Stumped for a last-minute Mother's Day gift? Here are two tech-type options I like:

"Blush"-colored earphones. These V-Moda Vibe earbuds sound great and create a good seal in the ear canal for use in a noisy environment. They are sold in lots of colors (I tested a "midnight blue" set; see red above); a feminine "blush" set went on sale at Apple retail outlets this week -- just in time for gift giving.

Pocket photo viewers. I spotted these in Target's Sunday circular. For $20, buy pocket viewers with space for dozens of photos. Keychain and card-like versions are available for Mom to throw in her purse and gape at pictures of her little darlings whenever she likes. Trying to get review units; stay tuned.

Update: Target sent me samples of the two pocket viewers and, well, I guess you get what you pay for. They aren't bad, but an iPod nano makes a better photo viewer with more capacity, if you can afford it.

I had to poke around in Windows Vista settings for the viewers to be properly recognized by their own software, too, which is kind of a hassle for any kids trying to set this up for their mothers beforehand.

There's apparently Macintosh software on the discs that come with the viewers. But these are mini-CDs, meaning they can't be used with the slot-loading optical drives in MacBooks, MacBook Pros and iMacs.

It's also a shame the drives don't just mount as USB volumes so you can add photos via drag-and-drop.

For about $20 each, though, the viewers do make a nifty gifts once you get pics onto 'em. Try cropping first, roughly to the dimensions of each viewer -- square for the one below, say -- for the best results.