Usually, mashups and innovative, alternative GUIs for popular websites are slow and mostly unusable, but Tag Galaxy breaks that habit with being really functional, as well as being really, really cool.

Type in a tag - any word, really - into Tag Galaxy, and you’ll get a small solar system of related tags, with more relevant tags being the inner planets, their orbit decreasing with relevance. It’s a cute little 3D tag world, but what makes it so cool is how responsive and fast it is; for example, you can click and drag for rotation, or use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Click a tag, then click another tag, and you’ll get results for both tags combined.

Half of the fun is in discovering what this tool can do, so I’ll leave the rest of the exploration to you. Be warned, though: it’s addictive.

Twitter, the US-based microblogging service that lets you share your heart and mind with the world in 140 characters or less, is not down. I repeat, Twitter is actually working as originally intended.

For the uninitiated, who are used to Twitter in its regular mode, which is a big sign saying that something is wrong, here’s what it means: the form you see at the very top of your page is for posting messages, while the messages below are from your friends. We know, we know; it’s not as fun as the big sign, but life’s a bitch. For those adventurous enough to try it out, be fast, for we all know that this will not last very long.

I’m just kidding, it’s not fully up yet. Seriously, Twitter, take those servers apart and rebuild them from scratch if needed. This can’t go on forever.

Remember my first article on Spotplex? And the second one? Well, unfortunately, they didn’t wake up: Spotplex is offline and I doubt it’s ever coming back.

This is also a wake-up call for anyone that thinks that getting a wildly positive review on Techcrunch is enough to reach stardom. Spotplex, simply, had done many things wrong, and they definitely weren’t the next Digg; they had a chance and the spotlight for a while, but it wasn’t enough to catch on. Better luck next time, folks.

Ultraedit, Notepad, Joe, Textpad: all those editors are created for people who can’t handle Vi. Give it to a normal user, and you can bet that there’s absolutely no way they’re going to find its functions by simply using trial and error. A diehard Vi fan, however, will rather die than admit that Vi is not the best text editor ever created.

I don’t plan to take sides here, since I don’t want to be abducted and interrogated in an old warehouse by a bunch of Vi fanatics; instead, I’ll merely point to jsvi, an online, Javascript version of Vi.

jsvi is actually rather old, but DownloadSquad just dug it out from somewhere; I haven’t seen it before, and hopefully you haven’t either, so there you go.

I did not expect Microsoft to withdraw the offer, but that’s what they did. I’m relieved that the first season of this soap opera is at an end, as I was getting bored out of my mind with all the speculations regarding the issue. But, I’m afraid that the story simply cannot end now.

Microsoft gave up, but they have another business (actually, a multitude of them) to run. They will probably try to buy themselves a different big entrance into the online ad business, although their options aren’t that great.

It will be interesting, however, to see what Yahoo does next. Having been drawn into this mess against their will, they were forced to do a lot of decisions they normally wouldn’t have done. They also explored almost all viable merger/acquisition/partnership options they have. Will they just go back to business as usual, or will they act on any of it? For example, what happens with the Google ad deal, which was - according to both companies - going so well in its testing phase? Will they just pretend it never happened?

Oh no, this cannot end now. Microsoft has ruffled too many feathers with this one, and now both companies need to do something about it, unless they want to sit at the same table in two years, negotiating the same deal under even worse circumstances for both of them. Interesting times are ahead.