Bill

Most of you know that I’m a bull when it comes to online applications like word processors — what’s come to be called “Cloud Computing.” I was an early adopter of Writely (now part of Google Applications), a Beta tester on Zoho, and I’ve tried just about every available Web-based word processor of any […]

Back not too long before Christmas, My-wife-the-shrink and I decided to upgrade our phones. Both of us had Sony-Ericsson z520as, and both of us despised them. Well, actually, the phones weren’t bad, but the software was terrible. I suspect it was awful to begin with, and after Cingular added their crippleware to […]

This may be the newest idea in computing: a simplified, does practically nothing but show you what you’re typing, “word processor.”
I put that in quotes for a simple reason. I’m not sure this thing even qualifies as a word processor. I’m not even sure it’s a text editor, except in a basic sense. It does […]

I received this email today (01/07/08). Every link on the page except for the link to view the card is a genuine link to the Hallmark site. The viewing link is to an executable file. I didn’t take it any farther than that. You may also notice that “recieved” is misspelled […]

Some folks don’t mind losing a little screen space. I resent every square centimeter, every lost pixel. It probably goes back to my VGA days…or maybe I’m just stingy in general. Whatever the case, I don’t want my browser’s controls taking up any more room than they have to. If they’re […]

If you want your correspondents to bother to read your email, put something useful in the subject line. Folks who receive dozens of emails a day don’t have time to respond to stuff labeled “cute,” “LOL,” and other silliness like that. If you want me to look at what you’ve sent, tell me […]

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing with Interclue, a browser helper that gives me previews of links on the pages I visit. There are a number of similar programs (Snap and the now-defunct Browster comes to mind), but none implemented as well or usefully, in my opinion. Most of them […]

Some folks I know have had problems with their iPhones locking up, usually (but not always) when trying to multi-task. While I’m not an iPhone guru (and won’t be for a while — I have a Nokia N75 on contract) I did find some tips on the Apple site while trying to help. […]

…for all my faithful, culture-loving readers. Be sure to have the sound on.
Scrooge.

Steve Bass, over at PC World, mentioned in a newsletter some favorite software of his that’s available free for the asking. I’m not going to steal Steve’s material, but it made me think of some favorite freebies of my own, available from Serif Software.
Serif are British manufacturers of image and graphics software. As […]

Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.
Or maybe men are from Brookstone and women are from every bloody shop in the mall, plus Amazon, eBay and barnesandnoble.com. Men seem to like giving folks useful stuff (gadgets, if you will), and women — well, I’m not sure what women like. Based on my experience, I’m […]

I just quit Facebook.
Here’s why. They have just activated a feature called “Beacon,” that allows participating merchants to automatically tell members’ friends what they have bought, rented, or auctioned. Facebook encourages companies to achieve “word of mouth promotion of your business” to “millions” by using Beacon.
I consider this a gross invasion of privacy. It […]

The security suite that I covered the other day is now available for free trial, with no obligation. As far as I know, anyone can sign up. You can check it out here.
As you can see from the article and comments, I think quite highly of ESS (for whatever that’s worth). It […]

A few weeks ago I wrote about the security applications I used on my own PC. I made the statement that I don’t like security suites, preferring stand-alone programs that tend to do one job well and take up fewer resources than the big cludgy suites like McAfee, Norton and ZoneAlarm. (Forget AOL! It […]

I received this from Aravind, at Zoho, on Tuesday evening. Zoho Writer is by far the best AJAX-based system so far, IMNSHO, and is well worth a look if your only experience has been with Microsoft or Google’s offerings. The only thing that stops me from using it exclusively is that it’s […]

The Nuwai 2 Stage 2×123A Luxeon III (TM-301X-3) (hereafter referred to as the X-3, for obvious reasons), is a small, powerful flashlight powered by two CR123A lithium batteries. It has two illumination levels, a low setting for finding your way around without making a fuss, and a high beam roughly ten times as bright […]

I just ran across a handy service called senduit, conceived and operated by David Karp, the guy behind Tumblr (also a cool idea, sort of between Twitter and Blogger, if you haven’t seen it). Anyway, David’s into minimalism when it comes to Web services, and I love it. Here’s a screenshot […]

The Windows clipboard is an indispensable tool, but it only remembers one thing at a time. The fact that Micro$oft hasn’t bothered to fix that issue in Windows’ entire history tells you a lot about about how much they care about their customers. Yes, I know there’s a clipboard thing in Word, and […]

From my future son-in-law Dez comes this link, presented here without further ado:

Tags: vista, humor, microsoft, parody, operating systems

If you’re a Costco member, or have a friend who is, I just scored a great deal on Sanyo Eneloop hybrids. You get 8 AAs, 4 AAAs, a charger, and 2 ea. C and D adapters to use an AA battery in an appliance requiring the larger sizes, all in a cool little plastic […]