this week on the web

This week on the Web, we turn first to those moments in life when "wow" doesn't quite do it.

Moments like the release of Opera 11.60 beta, for example. Or, in a double-rainbow-related-way, the glimpse of an unusual natural occurrence. These are things that induce a full-grown man (even one who devotes a good portion of his free time to cage fighting) to utter breathy exclamations of awe, wonder and joy.

And thanks to the Internet, we can all share the overwhelming experience of moments like this - indeed, what we might call their sublime terror.

Speaking of which, this week we also heard about an interesting new gadget that lets you set scent alerts for online events. Meaning, this device could fill the room with the smell of pizza - or flowers, for that matter - whenever you get new mail or tweets. (And you thought there must be an app for that - nope, it's a smelly robot!)

Meanwhile, there was good news for open standards - not to mention for anyone who has ever experienced a certain kind of plug-in crash :no: - as Adobe announced it was dropping Flash in favor of HTML5. Can we say they saw the writing on the wall - or maybe the PDF?

Finally, a heads-up to anyone thinking of buying some new hardware or extra storage in the near future. With the ongoing flooding in Thailand impacting the country's high-tech manufacturing sites, prices for external hard drives and PCs are expected to go up and stay high until June of 2012. Time to get creative, friends! Give us your suggestions on ways to get around the coming storage crunch in the comments...

Have a great weekend, everybody!

:cool:

PS: there is a little contest going on over at Mashable... If you would like to nominate us for one of your favorite Internet things, that would be great - thanks!

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