If you’re already using iGoogle as your home page, get ready for some changes that are going to make it a lot more social.

While Google has dipped its collective toe in to social networking before, it seems they are going for a more full-on assault this time with new tools being added to its iGoogle start page.

While there seems to be a definite focus on “social” with the widgets they’ve announced so far, this does have a lot of potential for other uses.  Since you can choose who you share each widget with, you could theoretically set up a replacement for FriendFeed, which will probably be killed off soon by new owner Facebook.  All you would need is a widget that allows you to import your activities from other services and you’re done, you’ve got your own FriendFeed that would go much wider than the original based on the brand name alone.  Someone get on developing that, would ya?

If you want to see what is available so far, just head over to google.com/igsocial and check it out.  In the meantime, here is a video they released which ecplains it a bit more in-depth.

If the rumors are true, iTunes 9 could be bringing a whole lot of social media aspects to your music experience.

We reported the other day on how iTunes 9 may be getting Blu-ray support and giving you the ability to organize your iPhone applications, but what we didn’t cover was the rumors of social media integration.  Seeing as The Boy Genius Report now has what is reported to be pictures of this new feature, it seems it may actually be a reality.

Seeing as Apple is notoriously tight lipped, and not very friendly to other companies, it seemed a bit far fetched to us that Steve Jobs would throw open the doors to integrating other social media companies in to the beloved iTunes.  However, if the spy photos are to be believed, and they look pretty legit, you will soon be able to tell every one on Twitter and/or Facebook what you are listening to in iTunes.  You also can apparently just update your status to multiple sites with the new version of iTunes, but that seems a bit out there.  Why turn iTunes in to a social networking app?

Well, the rumors go on to say that Apple is working on just such a thing and that this may be a taste of what is to come.  Again, the pictures look pretty legit, but this just seems so “out there” for such a closed off company.

Where I personally think the rumors really fall down is when it is also claimed you will be able to share music with people on your friends list.  Um… somehow I think those lovable folks over at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may have something to say about that one.

September is usually when the new iPods come out for the year, so it is a pretty safe bet that if any and/or all of this is real, we’ll find it in a about a month.

We’ve warned you time and time again about being careful what you put online, but apparently you can’t help the truly clueless.

TheNextWeb.com came across what may be the ultimate example of stupidity in social media.  Apparently a girl was pretty unhappy with her job and needed to vent.  Well, that’s all fine and well, but perhaps you should remember that you friended your boss on Facebook and he can see everything that you write on your wall messages?  Remember, if you friended someone, and you have it marked to be shared, that means they can see it… including your boss.  Here is the situation as it unfolded, kudos to whomever oroginally thought to take screenshots.

We’ve already discussed how social media can cost you your relationship, that employers are checking out your profiles before they hire you and how posting pictures of yourself partying can land you in jail, but this may be a new low on the stupidity meter for poor choices in social media usage.

Folks, if you befriend your boss on a social network, don’t whine about your job.

At long last the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finally begun moving on the National Broadband Plan, but what is really going to reveal?

Back in April it was announced that the FCC was going to be launching a national broadband initiative, but as we talked about back then, it didn’t sound overly promising to us: The goals were unclear, the definitions were vague and it just didn’t seem to do a whole lot for the actual advancement of the broadband in this country.

Well, Ars Technica dug in to a press release from the FCC entitled “Columbia Institute for Tele-Information to Conduct Independent Review of Telecom Capital Expenditures to Assist FCC.” (PDF link)  (whoa… I think I just fell asleep)  Basically the FCC is asking ISPs what they are doing in the form of investments into their infrastructure.  While the companies are investing, it isn’t clear that they are investing correctly.  As Ars Technica points out, Verizon is deplying "fiber to the home" which runs fiber optic cable directly to your house giving you fell benefit of the speeds.  On the other hand, AT&T is deploying "fiber to the node" which means it is fiber optic only to your local node, and then coaxial or other connection to your home which will not allow you to use the full speed of fiber optic.

In short: even with the government watching over the shoulders of these companies, they are still doing it wrong and the country will continue to lag behind the rest of the world when it comes ot Internet connectivity.  Never mind that AT&T posted a $12.9 billion in profit in 2009 a which is up over 200% from the $4.8 billion they posted in 2005.  Oh goodness me, how silly of all of us to ask them to invest in their infrastructure in a sensible way when they are making so little money…

It looks like someone may have finally smacked Apple up the side of its collective head and told them arranging your iPhone and iPod Touch apps only on the device was a bit of a pain.

Boy Genius Report is reporting that it has received information from a reliable source that iTunes 9 will bring support for Blu-ray, something fans have been been anxious for, but it will also finally allow you to organize your iPhone and iPod Touch applications visually.

Thank you!

As someone who has close to 100 applications on his iPod Touch, dragging them around by finger is okay sometimes, but when you get a new one and want to put it on the second or third page to group like applications together, it is a huge pain. So if I can finally use a mouse on my computer to group them as a I see fit, all the better.

Now if they would just find a way for me to make a folder or stack labeled “Games”… “Social Media”… “Navigation”… etc, that would be a dream come true on the device.

It seems I’m not the only person calling for the death of Internet Explorer 6, now there’s a whole movement!

Last month I wrote a post about Internet Explorer 6 Just Won’t Die, and how as much as it is a horrible browser, people continue to cling to it for some unknown reason.  Well, as of late the hatred for IE 6 has grown to such proportions that there is now an organization of websites that is taking aim at killing off the browser once and for all.

IE6 No More is a loose coalition of web sites that are encouraging people to place a snippet of code in to their sites that will encourage visitors to change their browsers to IE 8, Firefox, Chrome or another browser of their choice.  So far the list of sites joining the movement numbers over 70 and includes such sites as Reddit.tv, Disqus, Justin.tv and many more.

One aspect of the IE 6 problem is corporate users that have no control over what browser they use at work, but the group has a message for those people explaining what they can do.

What about the corporate users?

It’s a pretty common question: “What about corporate users who don’t have control over their choice of web browsers? Aren’t a large majority of IE 6 users in that group?”

We don’t really know. It seems like the best data available as to what percentage of IE 6 users are forced by their company to use the browser is the Digg survey, which shows that 70% of IE 6 users are in this boat: http://blog.digg.com/?p=878. However, there’s no indication how representative that is of the web as a whole — it’s very possible those results only apply to Digg.

Either way, this initiative is targeted straight at those users. We’ve heard from several sources that many corporate IT departments don’t feel any need or urgency to upgrade, and receive very few complaints. We see this as a start — the more complaints the IT department gets (especially from the top), the more pressure they’ll feel to upgrade. Even if they can’t upgrade IE 6 due to legacy applications, they could always install a version of Firefox side-by-side and only use IE 6 for the legacy apps.

For the other subset of IE 6 users, this will be a great notice to let them know that their web experience is seriously degraded, and that they should strongly consider upgrading their web browser.

While we try to keep our code simple at StarterTech, we won’t be adding the code for now, but believe me that we fully support this movement and hope that you will give some serious thought to upgrading when and where you can.

More details of the Xbox Games on Demand program have been revealed, and it just keeps getting more interesting.

Yesterday we brought you some information on the Xbox Games on Demand service, and even more info has popped up now.  First off, the pricing looks like it will be $20 – $30 per game.  Considering the age of these games that sounds about right, but, again, the nice part of this is not having to go out and buy them.  So if you really have a hanering to play Call of Duty 2 at 2 AM, now you can just buy it online and play it.

Secondly, the list we published yesterday was the list for the European market it turns out, so here is the list for the USA via Joystiq:

• Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft)
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (LucasArts)
• Rainbow Six Vegas (Ubisoft)
• BioShock (2K Games)
• Mass Effect (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Ridge Racer 6 (Namco)
• Burnout Paradise (EA)
• Meet The Robinsons (Disney)
• Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (Rockstar Games)
• Call of Duty® 2 (Activision)
• MX vs. ATV Untamed (THQ)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA)
• Viva Piñata 2: Trouble in Paradise (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Need for Speed Carbon (EA)
• Test Drive: Unlimited (Atari)
• Fight Night Round 3 (EA)
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted (EA)
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2K Games/Bethesda Softworks)
• Prey (2K Games)
• Viva Piñata (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Karaoke Revolution American Idol Encore (Konami)
• Kameo: Elements of Power (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Perfect Dark Zero (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Dance Dance Revolution Universe (Konami)

24 games compared to the 21 for Europe!  YAY!  We win!

A dream come true for some will happen next week when Xbox Live adds the ability to download complete games to your hard drive.

Ever had one of those nights when you feel like playing a new Xbox game, but it’s too late to run to the store, or you’re just too lazy? Well, next week Microsoft will be adding a new feature to Xbox Live called “Games on Demand” that will allow you to just buy games directly on your console and download them to your hard drive.  Pricing is rumored to be around the same price you would pay for the physical copy, but there has to be something said for instant gratification.

Here is a list of the first 21 games that you will be able to purchase along with a video of what the checkout process will be like.

* Assassin’s Creed
* Need for Speed: Most Wanted
* Burnout Paradise
* Perfect Dark Zero
* Call of Duty 2
* Prey
* Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
* Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis
* Fight Night Round 3
* SEGA Rally
* Kameo: Elements of Power
* Test Drive: Unlimited
* LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
* Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
* Mass Effect
* Tomb Raider: Legend
* Meet The Robinsons
* Viva Piñata
* MX vs. ATV Untamed
* Viva Piñata 2: Trouble in Paradise
* Need for Speed Carbon

Ever seen pictures of a wall of monitors and gotten envious? Well, now you can be the one inspiring the envy in others with the HP USB graphics adapter.

We’re not totally clear on when the HP USB graphics adapter came out, but boy do we want one (or 6) right about now.  The HP device allows you to run up to seven monitors via USB as seperate screens or as one image wall.  SlipperyBrick (with a nod to Steven at The Iinquisitr for bringing it to my attention) decided to give it a shot and set up six 19″ monitors and one 20″ screen to see if it would really work.  While there have been USB monitor connections in the past, they have been known to be sluggish, so the thinking here is this would either over tax the 2 GB of RAM they had on the Vista desktop they were using, it would look horrible or it wouldn’t even work.

Oh, it works… it works really well.

While they did notice problems with videos under certain situations, they weren’t every day use.  SlipperyBrick opened a YouTube video in each window and was able to play all seven at the same time with no issues.  They were also able to run seen seperate occurances of Internet Explorer with each monitor showing a different web page with no issues.

Now, if you’ve always thought people only did this for gaming, there really are a lot of reasons to run more than one monitor.  You can look at oversized spreadsheets at once, run programs in seperate screens to keep your desktop clutter free, basically it is a multi-tasker’s dream.  While you can do it with certain video cards, it can be complicated, this appears to be easy and straight forward, and for a $59 investment in the adapter (monitors you have to provide), you can be set up to go in no time.

I’m seriously considering ordering one really soon so I can be just that much bigger of a geek.

ABC television and Netflix have reached an agreement to add the alphabet network’s shows to the video subscription service’s library of streaming video content.

While some have criticized the lack of movie selection on the Netflix Watch Instantly service, there is no denying that the television department has been chugging along.  With huge catalogs of episodes from the BBC and CBS already in the catalog, ABC has now joined the fold with shows such as LOST, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and more.

Some shows are available now (LOST seasons 1 – 4 are already in the store for sure), and more shows will be added beginning in September.

This is a great move for both ABC and Netflix, but you have to wonder when this is going to start impacting cable subscriptions and DVD sales.  Why buy when you can just watch on demand?