Google, Virgin join forces for ‘Project Virgle’

virgle_logo_final_hi-res.pngJust in case you missed it, I’m passing along the news that the top dogs at Google and the Virgin group are joining forces to launch Project Virgil, a plan to colonize Mars by 2014. The announcement was posted today by Virgin’s founder and president, Sir Richard Branson, on the Google Blog.

Virgle’s goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it’s high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world.

In the years to come, we’ll be sending up a series of spaceships carrying (along with the supplies and tools needed to build the new colony) what eventually will be hundreds of Mars colonists, or Virgle Pioneers — myself among them.

Image via the Official Google Blog.

I suck at April Fools jokes. So I’m not even going to try. Instead, I pass along other people’s. For instance, here’s Computerworld’s list of the Top 10 April Fools jokes on the web — as of last year.

Oh, and then there’s this. Pretty funny.

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Now playing: Pete Townsend – Won’t Get Fooled Again (unplugged)
via FoxyTunes

Mozilla marks 10 years since source code release

mozilla_logo4.gifMozilla, the force behind the popular Firefox web browser (my browser of choice) and the Thunderbird email client, celebrates 10 years of existence on Monday. Mozilla source code was first released on March 31, 1998. The company will air a special retrospective from 11 a.m.-noon Monday on Air Mozilla (via the Mozilla Blog).

Wired also marks the 10-year anniversary with a photo tour of the lizard’s lair.

Mozilla is one of the great success stories of the open source movement. True, its web browser has yet to crush Internet Explorer’s hold on browser usage, a la Godzilla destroying Tokyo. (But who’s the real monster in this story, anyway?) Still, Firefox is the browser of choice for more than 36 percent of Internet users, according to w3 schools. That’s a market share Netscape was unable to accomplish. Not too shabby, if you ask me.

Happy birthday, Mozilla. Here’s to another 10 years of great open source productivity.

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Now playing: Finest Dearest – Tunnel Vision
via FoxyTunes