Today the social news site Digg launched the third version of their site. It is designed to be an improvement on the previous versions, but it will fail. Why? Because the third one of anything always sucks:

• Godfather Part Three
• Return of the Jedi
• Matrix Reloaded
• Billy Baldwin
• Myrrh

A friend emailed me this picture purporting to be of Apple's next project, an iPod car stereo:

Now, it's obviously fake, but it got me wondering what an awesome idea this would actually be. I personally barely use the radio in my car anymore, I have my iPod hooked up to an iTrip and with the multitude of podcasts out there I am never short of something to listen to.

So what features could we see in an Apple car stereo?

• Automatic ripping when a CD is played.Never carry the same CD with you twice, just pop it in the first time you want to hear it and it is ripped to the built-in HD for later listening.
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My sister, in fact. As I struggle along in my futile quest to earn enough to buy an Xbox 360, she goes ahead and signs up for this offer where you get a free Xbox 360 with a mobile phone! You would expect that the phone/contract would be expensive if they are giving away a $400 system with it, but it's only 20 pounds for the phone and 30 pounds a month for the contract. And they are decent phones too, like the RAZR and some of the newer Nokias.

Yet another example of how UK customers get awesome mobile phone deals, while over here in the USA we get ripped off. I guess not everything is chea

I saw a tip somewhere that said having this title on an article had increased a website's traffic twofold. So, in the spirit of mercenary traffic seeking, here are my thoughts on the Da Vinci Code.

I haven't seen the film, I read the book about a year ago and want to wait long enough before I see the film so I may have forgotten some of it. I thought the book was pretty good - another page turning thriller, but of no more religious significance than the latest Michael Chrichton book. How wrong I was... To say people are getting heated up about this film would be an understatement.

My view is this: The book is fiction speculating on the historical conspiracy theory "What if Jesus were married and the church covered it up?" which has no more verifiable truth to it than the people who speculate on "What if the government orchestrated 9-11?" Like any such theories, some people will believe it, others won't, but some people are so offended by the film they are protesting its release. I think that if people have such faith in the Bible, surely their faith should be strong enough that they shouldn't be scared of other people's interpretations of history - whether it is the Da Vinci Code's conspiracy theories or the views of other religious groups who don't accept the Bible as gospel such as Jews and Muslims.

Walking through an electronics store the other week I suddenly got the urge to buy an Xbox 360. The graphics on the demo they had running were awesome, and I have also been hearing really good things about the Xbox Live service and the cool games on it. However, the $400 pricetag is a bit steep, so I filed it in the "would love one but not gonna happen anytime soon" bin.

Then a few days ago, something else happened - while on Google, I decided to look into Google Adsense again and found that the last time I had ads on this site for about a week, I actually made 10 cents from somebody clicking on an ad. I started to wonder, if my extremely low-traffic site can make 10c on a single day - how much could I make if I put my mind to it. I realised I wasn't going to "get rich quick" but with a bit more work I could definitely increase the amount of traffic I got.

Some people say modern cinema is creatively bankrupt. I have two words for these people: Karate Dog.

While channel-hopping tonight, we saw the intriguingly titled : Am My Own Twin on TLC (The Learning Channel).

It turned out to be about a strange condition where people are actually comprised of 2 sets of DNA that fused during the first few days of their conception. Two women had found out that they were so-called "Chimeras" when they had genetic tests done for various reasons, and found out that according to conventional science their children were not genetically theirs. DNA taken from one location on their body was totally different from that taken from another part. As much as it was a serious condition, comments like : "It was discovered that her children seemed to be the biological offspring of her husband and her brother." along with the bizzarreness of the title kept making me laugh.

Now I have a funky dualscreen monitor setup at my new job, I wanted some wallpaper to go across both screens. Not having the time to come up with any of my own, I found Mandolux, a site with LOTS of artsy-fartsy wallpapers for both single, dual and triple-screen setups. Some of them are a bit bohemian for my tastes, but there are plenty of really cool ones on there... Check it out.

So, nearly five months after moving here to the USA and just a couple of weeks after getting my permission to work, I finally have a job. Can't tell you too much about it, but as of Wednesday I will be working for CareerBuilder.com here in Atlanta. I'm really excited to be offered such a great job so soon after looking for work, I was fully expecting to be working at a videostore or something for awhile. So this either means I will have more to write about (as my life might be less boring), or less to write about (as I will be working all the time). I guess time will tell...

Finally received my personalised car (truck) licence plate in the mail, and I'm well chuffed with it. Much as some things in the USA don't make much sense to me, I have to say that the Georgia and USA system for personalised numbers is awesome compared to the extortionate prices I would have had to pay in the UK for anything near as good as the one I got. Basically if you want a specific number plate you just go to the Vehicle Registration office and ask if it is available. If it is you just pay twenty(ish) dollars extra per year to have that as your number plate for the duration of you owning that car. If the number is taken, you can get them to check another and so on.