CyberCoyote -- Oct 20, 2005

NOTES and NOTICES

Was there a meeting today? I plan to be there next week. I'll present an overview of "Web 2.0", which is the moniker for the new "version" of the Internet. Since there won't be a lot of you there yet, I'll use it as a "dry run".

I want to learn what members would like to know about Web 2.0. If there is enough interest, I'll update the presentation and run it again, or maybe have a class.
http://cybercoyote.org/internet/version2.shtml

TIPS and TOPICS

Windows Vista -- the replacement for Windows XP -- is on the horizon. You'll want to make sure any new computer you buy before Vista arrives will be be adequate for Vista if you'll want to upgrade. Here are some guidelines:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20051013.html -- article
http://cybercoyote.org/news/blog.html#07 -- Microsoft's recommendations

COMPUTERS

Hard drives are marvels of long term mechanical innovation. Being mechanical, you can actually see what goes on inside them. Their advances rival those of Microprocessors, which of course you can't see inside of. (If God had intended for us to do electronics, he would have made electrons big enough to see.) The link will take you to a movie -- be sure your sound is on so you'll hear the description of what you're seeing.
http://cybercoyote.org/url/135.html

DOWNLOADS

Graphics, Photo Editing, Desktop Publishing and more: Serif Software uses a unique way to promote their products. When they introduce a new version of a product, they make the old version free. Of course Serif hopes you will want to upgrade after you try it, but you can't beat the price if the old version does your job.
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/ -- the free stuff
http://www.serif.com/ -- the latest versions

I just found the PC clock of my dreams. :-) I try to conserve as much space on the Windows Taskbar as possible. I want the room for other things, so I disable the option to show the clock. But I still need a clock. I've tried many PC clocks over the years, but never found one that I really liked until now.

ClocX has an old-time analog face that is also "transparent". I park ClocX in the lower right corner of the screen, set the transparency at 55, and now I seldom miss beer time. It even has a quick calendar (right click the ClocX icon in the Tray and select).
http://www.tenzor.cz/clocx/

DIVERSION

Scientists regularly make observations at dimensions ranging from 10 Billion Light Years down to 100 attometers. That's a range of 41 orders of magnitude, which is a scale of

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.

That's beyond mind-boggling -- even more so than the national debt. The "Secret Worlds" slide show may give you some idea of the scale though. [Best with Internet Explorer and a high-speed connection.]
http://cybercoyote.org/url/138.html

The Obstinate Lighthouse:http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthse.htm

Last modified 11/03/06