I found a good line speed test, written in Flash.
It traces user IP to discover nearest available servers, and it performes download and upload tests.
Then user has also the possibility to share their results, getting a direct link to show them in a forum, or in a web page.
Tonight, the final match of FIFA World Cup 2006. France vs. Italy…
Google celebrates it with it’s logo, on Google.it and Google.fr: the same GIF, with different colors and a different “title” text (”Forza Azzurri!” and “Allez la France!”).
It’s funny 
It’s also interesting the fact that one comes probably from a modification of the other, because there are some little differences, check out in the animated GIF I created from the two originals.
(Anyway, of course I support my nation… FORZA AZZURRI and… let’s see “ce soir” 
)
For sure, I’m not an hater of France… I have some relatives in Nice, on the southern “Blue Coast” and I was really interested when I heard from TV that French Government launched it’s Geo-Portal, a Web 2.0 site presented like the killer of Google Earth, at least for french territories.
French Televisions and Newspaper plainly promoted “GeoPortail“, highlighting the quality of the photos (that should be only aerial, and not mainly from satellites, like Google Earth) that compose the Geographic map of France.
Even President Chirac talked about GeoPortail like a real prodigy, and like a fresh, new service offered to french population.
It was 23th of June. It’s a pity that the portal was unreachable for the whole first week because of too many connected users. At first, the site was simply too slow to use it, next it was blocked with an “excuses screen”. Is it normal for a governative website?
At last, today I got access. To discover that the service is basically a copy of Google Earth (or Google Maps, to make precise); I tried a couple of locations, and photos seem not to be aerial: quality is lower than Google, and it’s impossibile to zoom in after some magnifications. I don’t know how much GeoPortail costed to French Population, but I’m sure that their money should be spended in a more intelligent way…
UPDATE: Because of TomHTML’s comment, not agreeing with my opinion that photo quality of GeoPortail is low, I’m adding some further comparison:
… on the other side, there’re several parts of France for which Google doesn’t offer high-resolution photos. But I’m asking to myself if it was so important to spend to create a clone of Google Maps (with a very poor search feature, as ArkanGL say in his comment), also considering that Google is adding new and better photos to it’s software, day by day…
Skyscanner is a very good site that helps users to search low-cost companies like EasyJet, MyAir, Ryanair, Meridiana and many more, to comparate european flights (overseas destinations are going to arrive).
Searching with Google, it’s possible to find a lot of sites like this one, but many of these apply additional charges to the basic prices, to earn throught the service, or they’re affiliates to some companies, so they give a partial service. Skyscanner operates in a different way, and it link final users directly to the site of the chosen company, to avoid any additional fee.
With Skyscanner I discovered that I can fly to Mallorca, from Milan, paying about 160 Euros, with return, all fees included… 
“Stupid” and simple ideas are often funny.
This is the case of “The Newspaper Clipping Generator“, a little form that allows users to compose the frontpage of a journal, with the title, the headline, the date and the story you want. The produced image is downloadable as JPEG.
A “click free” interface is the objective of Alex Frank: he built a site (it’s his final artwork for his diploma) that doesn’t need mouse buttons at all. Every action is performed throught movements of user’s mouse.
Comfortable or not? The answer to visitors
This is a Worthy Wiki: wikiHow is a useful and fun site where anyone can write and publish his “how to”, a page to teach others how to do something.
how to Do a Throw in Soccer, how to Meet Your Girlfriend’s Parents, how to Create-Stereo-Photographs… How to Get Angelina Jolie’s Lips :D
A good wiki to search what we’re looking for, and also to browse in free time
OrbitFiles is a new site that offers 1000Mb of free space to store any data, from MP3s to share with friends, to our security backups.
The signup is quick and users can immediately start uploading files, directly with the browser or with the “Hercules” software. No size limits for every uploaded file (if you upload throught browser, there’s a 30Mb per-file limit).
Uploaded files can be “opened for public“, to give the download URLs to friends, with or without a password.
In FAQs on the site they talk about ”no bandwidth limits” (even if it’s hard to trust this…). Speeds, for upload and download, seem to be very good.
Panoramio wants to offer a “global photographic coverage“, with the help of its users: using the famous Google Maps and it’s interactive satellite images, anyone can upload pictures and tell where they were taken: they will appear on the map, for the other users. It’s possible to browse the whole planet and discover pictures available for every areas, or to write the name of a place and ”go there” directly.
Currently the Panoramio archive has about 15.000 pictures.
Vyew is an “online collaboration“ software that doesn’t require any download because it can be used directly on the site, with your browser.
You can try it on the fly, without the (free) registration, clicking on “Start a meeting instantly” on the home page: a new two-users session will start, with an unique code.
Tell the code to a friend, maybe on MSN, and he will insert it, still on the home page, in the “Enter meeting ID:” field. Now you have a real-time shared space, where you can share pictures, files, show what you’ve on your screen, draw and write together on a dashboard and, of course, chat with your interlocutor.
Registered users can start “meetings” with 20 persons at the same time.
