We all have mouths wide open this weekend with the new features of Flash Player 8. It will become a revolution in the web world, I think. It will be like the huge step from Flash 5 to MX. Collin Moock has posted a good video showing us some of those new features.

Enjoy it and begin to think what you could done in the next Flash release.

Some experts in computer science security believe that they have discovered in the code of the latest "Google Desktop" app, indications that Google is developing a tool of IM. The speculation, that is not new, has gained points after the announcement of "Google Desktop.

After looking at the code of this application, Richard Smith, a popular consultant of security, it declares to have found in his interior references to a new protocol: "google_im://", destined to interact with the navigator of Internet, and that according to the first indications could correspond to "Google Instant Messenger". Smith also has found references to "googlemail://", getting therefore to speculate that the protocol of electronic mail of Google could be intimately integrated with the one of IM.

It would be a clear indication that the boys of Google would be delaying the launching of GMail to do it at the same time.
Some sources:
Afriguru
Noticiasdot (spanish)
Openfutura (spanish)
Hispamp3 (spanish)

Yes, our favourite site has come back. Valyard it's again being updated almost everyday with the best flash and non-flash sites. It's always a good place for inspiration that we always used to visit regulary.

I encourage you to revisit again the site as the new design and the content deserves it.
Valyard English Edition

Thanks Macromedia and Mike Chambers for these nice Goodies. 

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.
GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

Ever since Google started to offer users a GMail e-mail account, which includes storage space of a 1000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your GMail account and retrieve them again.
When you create a new file using GMail Drive, it generates an e-mail and posts it to your account. The e-mail appears in your normal Inbox folder, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. GMail Drive periodically checks your mail account (using the GMail search function) to see if new files have arrived and to rebuild the directory structures. But basically GMail Drive acts as any other hard-drive installed on your computer.
You can copy files to and from the GMail Drive folder simply by using drag'n'drop like you're used to with the normal Explorer folders.

Because the GMail files will clutter up your Inbox folder, you may wish to create a filter in GMail to automatically move the files (prefixed with the GMAILFS letters) to your archived mail folder.

Please note that GMail Drive is still an experimental tool. There's still a number of limitations of the file-system (such as total filename size must be less than 40 characters), and it doesn't make full use of the secure internet protocols available.

Download it here.

Macs have never been the best gaming platforms, but now there's a compromise of sorts. With a little help from Linux and Pear PC, it is now possible to run Darwin on a modded Xbox. Darwin is the open source core of Mac OS X.

Via Tech Report.

When I discover this website I thought that visual effects were done with Flash but not. They are Java applets and they are awesome.

Take a look at the Galaxy Creator or Blue random.
I know this can be achieve with Flash but I think they would be pretty much CPU demanding apps. Maybe Mr. Keith Peters (www.bit-101.com) can correct me if I'm wrong.

Visual Effects with Java