Episode World is a diamond in the rough of community sites, allowing users to update, track, and discuss their favorite television shows. Registered users control the content, by submitting new episodes, synopsis, episode and season numbers, and reviews. Some nifty features on the site are abilities such as bookmarking your favorite episode for quick access to season and episode guides, as well as being able to track which episodes you’ve recently watched. For instance, after watching the last episode of Deadwood (which I hope you all did), you are able to go and checkmark the episode as watched, and this way, you don’t forget which episode you left when it comes to watching again. Kudos to you Episode World.

From the EPW FAQ:

EPisodeWorld.com (short EPW) offers information about TV-Shows. The information offered includes but is not limited to plot outlines, airdates, episode names, main as well as guest cast, and more to come. It’s best described as an online TV Guide, so you can read up on your favorite shows and will know when the next episodes will air. Registered users can actively participate in keeping the information up-to-date by submitting changes to existing episodes or submitting new episodes. Registered users can also customize the information displayed (e.g. language) and can keep track of their favorite shows via bookmarks and mark episodes as watched.

[Episode World]

June 17th was Rails Day 2006, an annual event where teams create new and interesting web applications in just 24 hours, using the Ruby on Rails web application framework. Recently, John from Burm.net has posted an unofficial project page, listing short descriptions and URLs to each of the projects. While his list isn’t complete, some of the projects listed still stand-out as solid web applications, albeit a little rough around the edges. We’re suckers for the social coffee “tasting” project Cuppin, although why anyone would bother taste-testing Starbucks coffee is beyond me.

[Rails Day 2006 Live Projects | Rails Day 2006]

Channel Chooser is a service which recently was gaining a little buzz for allowing users to watch select television stations online for free. While not covering everything completely and missing a lot of the major US and UK networks, there are some treats. You’re not going to get the latest episode of Lost, but with live feeds from BBC News, CSPAN, ESPN, Bloomberg and CCTV, those seeking their fix of English language news are covered. There’s also some good movie channels playing classic, horror and sci-fi (b-movies galore!) and sports fans are well covered with the Golf Channel, and almost every other sport having their own channel. There’s also some aggregate promo-feeds from E!, Comedy Central, and MTV and yikes, 18+ adult channels. HDTV full-screen streaming video this isn’t, but, this is a good time-waster when at work (you know, research) or for those who work from home. Catch it while it lasts and make sure your browser’s ad-blocker is enabled!

[Channel Chooser]

Can you imagine travelling to visit family, sitting down at their computer, starting up any web browser and having complete and secure access to your desktop, including your applications, messages and information? I sure can. Enter the idea of WebOS, a research project by various universities, which has resulted in the creation of EyeOS. EyeOS is an open-source web desktop environment, enabling the user to setup their own small (and easy) EyeOS server (a public server is also available) at home which they can then remotely connect to from virtually any internet-connected PC. Set it up with the many EyeApps available and the user is then able to easily and remotely access email, documents, files, photos, and much much more. This is known as the WebOS, a rich and powerful remote operating system available to the user from any location. Still a little rough around the edges, with a 1.0 release approaching, EyeOS is trying to simplify and revolutionize the way we interact with our data and the internet.

[EyeOS | EyeOS Public Server]

Object-oriented and open-source programming language, Ruby, is considered by some to have a part in revolutionizing web development (led by variant Ruby on Rails and subsequently AJAX on Rails). Created in 1993 by Japanese computer scientist Yukihiro Matsumoto, Ruby is well-known for not only being extremely powerful, but also extremely easy and accessible to developers from all camps (especially fans of PERL, Smalltalk and maybe even Python). Those interested in giving Ruby a go should check out this short and sweet, 15 minute hands-on tutorial, all taking place within your web-browser of choice.

[Ruby hands-on tutorial | Ruby entry @ Wikipedia | Ruby on Rails]

Where would we as a society of nerds be without Star Trek? In a better place? I doubt it. With the perceived failure of Enterprise, some long-time fans of the original Star Trek have decided to keep the Star Trek universe alive. Using a completely fan-built recreation of the original series’ bridge and other sets, a small group of amateur actors and actresses, assisted by various professionals who worked in special effects, writing, costumes and set design on various Star Trek incarnations, are picking up where Kirk, Spock, Scotty and the crew left off. With a goal of making 22 non-profit episodes (a full season), the current episodes are free to download and watch. Professional productions they aren’t, but you can see these fans are putting their hearts into the series and trying to make their mark on the great history of Star Trek.

[Star Trek New Voyages | Episode Downloads]

City Pixel have created a breath-taking pixelated replica of New York City and merged into a giant internet city-as-social network. Registration is free and users are able to explore the city, shop, rent apartments, use public transportation and even make in-world “calls” to other pixelcitizens on the public telephones available throughout the city. Take 1 part Second-Life, 1 part MySpace, and lots of pixels later, you have a New York-style playground for you to explore and meet new people. City Pixel is currently in production on their second city, rumored to be London, which is leading their user-polls for what should come next.

[City Pixel]

The Participatory Culture Foundation has announced the release of the Democracy internet-TV platform’s latest and greatest version (0.8.4.1), addressing many stability issues, adding some new codecs, and cleaning up the interface a little more, among other fixes. But man, what a version number. For those who do not know, Democracy is an internet-television browser, using a built-in RSS reader to display and download video-based content channels using bit-torrent technologies. The ability to grab podcasts, videocasts, video blogs and bit-torrent video feeds are present, and the video player can also be used as a Quicktime replacement, so you can re-watch season 2 of Lost, while downloading the latest episode of Rocketboom in the background. Best of all, it’s free (as in speech, as the slogan goes), open-source and works wonderfully under OSX.

[Get Democracy]

Opera Software has announced the latest full-version release of it’s main product, Opera 9, also known as the red-headed stepchild of browsers. While Opera doesn’t get the buzz that Firefox generates, we do see good things coming for the future of Opera. With Opera being announced for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, we can only imagine how great the future of console gaming will be when we’re able to pause our game and switch over to Opera to look up the game’s walkthrough!

[Opera 9 download]