There Are 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) Different Pages in the Internet

How big is the web?  Google said

1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

Google posted a blog saying they find 1 trillion unique URLs.  That's not counting pages with exact content.  To put it into perspective, 1 trillion links is like

a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

on the top of that 1 trillion pages, there are several billion pages added to the web per day.  If that's correct, we will hit 2 trillion roughly this time next year.

Best Media Player - VLC

 

I've used VLC for a long time.  The main reasons I use VLC are:

1. it's fast.
   
2. it plays virtually all files media/types (ie. DVD, VCD, CD, MP3, MOV, WAV, FLV, AVI and ...)
3. it works on many OSes (ie. Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and ...)
   
4. it's an open source program.  (It means both gratis and libre)
   

I thought that's good enough for me only use VLC to watch video in my computer, until I read a lifehacker article - Master Your Digital Media with VLC. 

The article gives out easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions about VLC.  I'm not going to repeat what's in the article, however, I would like to mention one thing.  You could stream video from one computer to another using VLC over the local network or internet.   I think it's a cool feature and it works.

I highly recommend you to try VLC and replace it with whatever you are using to watch video.

Car Sales Drop in June 2008

Recently I came across Calculated Risk Blog.  It's an interesting blog about financial related topics.  Last week, it posted a series of blogs reporting all car manufacturers' sales drop in June 2008 compares to June 2007 except Honda. GM drops 18.2%, Toyota drops 21.4%, Ford drops 28%, Chrysler drops 36% while Honda could achieve 1.1% raise.   If the oil price continues to go up, the outlook for all car manufacturers won't be optimistic.