Now it seems you can watch the news on your customised Google homepage. Steve Rubel's excellent "Micro Persuasion" blog highlighted this feature to me and I just had to try it out for myself. Apologies Steve for snagging your screenshot - I tried to get my own screenshot but it kept coming up black (if anyone has a great suggestion for capturing screenshots of video files, please let me know). Anyway, I just want to stress that I am not claiming credit for this picture!

I installed the widget link and it quickly loaded on the Google homepage. The sound quality and picture quality are EXCELLENT (which really shocked me because streaming feeds are normally notoriously slow, crackly and jerky).

If you're a news junkie, this is one Google widget that you need to install......as Steve points out in his blog, this is an indication of things to come. With Joost about to launch, we could be looking at the "next big thing" on the internet - live streaming television channels.

I've been reading a fascinating post on the Micro Persuasion blog about using Gmail to set up your own "personal nerve center". Reading this makes me realise the ever-expanding uses for Gmail and other Google applications.

I particularly like the Twitter one where you can get BBC and CNN headlines sent directly to your Google Talk application which is embedded inside Gmail. I am a big news junkie and I have been subscribed to CNN's Breaking News email service for many years now. But if this Twitter / Google Talk thing really starts working without any hitches, I may consider ditching the email service. The cool part is that when a news headline arrives in your Google Talk app, Gmail automatically files it away in your Gmail archive where it can be found and retrieved later.

The other interesting part of the post is having your del.icio.us links and Google Reader "shared links" sent to your email every day for filing. Since I am a big user of both services, this will prove quite useful.

The post has also got me considering the possibility of applying for Google Apps. The lure for me would be the 10GB of email space. But at $50 a year, I think I would probably wait until I see how fast I am going to use up the free 2GB that Gmail already gives users. After 3 years and 5500 emails, I am only at 13% of the storage space.

I was scanning CNN just now and I came upon a news story about a Florida professor who has admitted to spying for Cuba. Then I saw the following paragraph :

"A psychology professor at Florida International University, Alvarez faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy to become an unregistered foreign agent. The couple entered their pleas as part of a deal to avoid a jury trial on previous charges of being Cuban agents who failed to register with the U.S. government".

An "unregistered foreign agent"? So if you register yourself as a spy with the US Government then everything's OK? I can just see it now - a long line of guys in raincoats and sunglasses filling in spy registration forms!