General

Time Warner’s board approves plans to spin off AOL - washingtonpost.com

In a statement, Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said, “We believe AOL will then have a better opportunity to achieve its full potential as a leading independent Internet company.”
Maybe: if they manage to do something about software that’s intrusive, clunky, tempramental, and about [...]

Zoho, a seriously undermentioned contender in the cloud computing arena, has just completed a serious revamping of their online word processor, Zoho Writer.  I’m liking it — seriously liking it.
Check it out and let me know what you think.  While you’re at it, you can check out some of their other online offerings.  These folks [...]

The Linux kiddies have the same blind spot as Google: they seem unable to make the jump from geek to user. Linux will never be the lead OS (any version) until the everyday user is led by the hand through every single step, as with most Windows applications. The only reason Google gets away with [...]

Tesla will supply about 1,000 powertrains for the Smart ForTwo EV, Elon Musk, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said at a conference held in conjunction with the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The electric Smart cars with Tesla components are due to arrive in late 2009 or early 2010.
If the matchup is [...]

“The bulk of Wikipedia is written by 1400 obsessed freaks who do little else but contribute to the site, says a post racing up the Hacker News charts. The post pulls this number from an essay Aaron Swartz wrote more than two years ago, based on some comments by Jimmy Wales.
“Wikipedia’s growth has exploded [...]

If you haven’t checked out Google’s Chrome browser yet (No? What kind of geek are you, anyway?)

Mt. Vesuvius Caldera

then it’s worth downloading the app just to play around with Google Maps.  I’m not talking about Earth, I’m sayin’ Maps here.
The image was reduced from about 600×700 to fit easily on this page, and there were [...]

Some folks may have wondered why I don’t post more to this site.  There are actually several reasons. 
It’s not especially hard to find high-quality material about addiction and recovery online, and I can’t write everything myself.  I avoid posting links to commercial sites like treatment centers and halfway houses because (a) they don’t usually [...]

Some folks may have wondered why I don’t post more to this site.  There are actually several reasons. 
It’s not especially hard to find high-quality material about addiction and recovery online, and I can’t write everything myself.  I avoid posting links to commercial sites like treatment centers and halfway houses because (a) they don’t usually [...]

The RAC Foundation found average reaction times slowed by 35% when 17 to 24-year-olds drove in a simulator while writing or reading texts.
Nearly 50% of drivers aged between 18 and 24 texted while driving, it said.
Previous studies had found reactions were 21% slower among those who had taken cannabis and 12% slower among those who [...]

Since the car can accelerate to 60 miles per hour from a stop in just under four seconds, “you get caught up to trafficpretty fast,” he says, easing off the accelerator. “It kind of spoils you.”
Technology Review: TR35

I’ll be off on a short vacation tomorrow (Friday) through Monday. Back Tuesday. Keep those cards and letters coming, and have a nice weekend yourselves.

I’ve been following this issue casually for some years. Because of the short time this technology has been in use, definitive conclusions are not yet available. Prudent consideration of the information in this article, and understanding of the simple precautions recommended, would seem to be reasonable.
Electromagnetic fields generated by cell phones should be [...]

According to my buddy Steve Bass, over at PCWorld.Com, the latest MS update to correct the DNS vulnerability keeps folks using ZA Free Edition from accessing the Internet after reboot.
If you have any friends using Zone Alarm’s free firewall along with Windows Auto Update, it might be nice to give them a call (they won’t be [...]

A former teen mom rings in with commentary about the teen pregnancy pact…
June 27, 2008 | In 1992, the closest thing my daughter had to a father was my best friend, Alice Moore. Alice and I met as 15-year-old debate partners in Boise, Idaho. When we were both 18, we moved 3,000 miles across the [...]

Tim Conneally at BetaNews discusses the ramifications of ICANNs proposal to release a flood of top-level domains. Looks like an ICANN of worms to me — in short, causing a great deal more trouble than it’s worth. Some things just need to be done slowly, with careful thought, and only as needed. [...]

When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can’t have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user [...]

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the American News Project, a new video journalism site that produces short reports on political and environmental topics.
Investigative Reporting in 10 Minutes or Less

ABERDEEN, Scotland, May 22, 2008 (ENS) - Britain’s Queen Elizabeth is investing in the world’s largest offshore wind turbine and also in the development of offshore windfarms in Scottish waters, her property company The Crown Estate announced on Wednesday.
On April 17, The Crown Estate signed an agreement to purchase a prototype of the world’s largest [...]

Until now, the accepted view had been that our anomalously large Moon had always been a lone wolf. It is believed to have formed some 4.4 billion years ago in the aftermath of a chance encounter between a Mars-sized planetary embryo and our early Earth.
But the paper’s co-authors, planetary scientists Jack Lissauer, at NASA Ames [...]

Dear Readers,
I’ve just started a new blog, The Last Thing I Would Have Expected, dealing with addiction and recovery issues (with a strong 12-step slant). If you, or anyone you know, is in recovery, interested, or in need of it, I’d appreciate your passing the information on.
I don’t “pimp” my blogs in the [...]