Wave Hub: Hawaii

In Hawaii, where we are blessed with the second-best wave climate in the world, Wave Energy Converters could supply all the power needs of neighbor islands and 80 percent of Oahu's.

Educational Software

[1/19/09 via frwr-news] - MemoryLifter is a scientific memorization tool based upon the work of Ebbinghaus and Leitner. The FREE MemoryLifter software enables you to lift any kind of information into your Long Term Memory. Many clever, scientific and intelligent features speed up and enhance the memorization process to make your brain the strongest organ in your body.

[8/25/07] FMSLogo is a free implementation of a computing environment called Logo, which is an interactive programming language that is simple, powerful, and best of all fun. [via frwr-news, 8/18/07] (see also Kid's Programming Language)

[7/5/07] Question Writer - Personal Edition is software that lets you make your own multiple-choice quizzes. It's free for personal use, easy to use and even a beginner can create high quality quizzes. [from frwr-news, 2/10/07]

[4/18/07] Q & A is a freeware flashcard program that is simple to use, yet customizable in terms of font, color, and alignment. It includes helpful features such as an intuitive deck editing mode, deck shuffle option, and the ability to import and export decks so you can share decks that you have created with others. [from frwr-news, 4/16/07]

[12/27/06] Educational games from BlackRat Studios [frwr-news, 12/26/06]

chess: man vs. machine

[12/12/06] Although it received little mention in the popular press, Vladimir Kramnik, the world's reigning chess champion, was defeated last week 4-2 by the computer Deep Fritz, in a best-of-six-game match.

The defeat was not really that surprising. When Kramnik last met Deep Fritz four years ago, he battled the computer to a 4-4 tie. Since then, however, the computer has only gotten better. In fact, since 2002, Kramnik's "Elo" rating -- which measures the strength of a chess player -- has dropped, while Deep Fritz (an improvement from IBM's (NYSE: IBM) famous Deep Blue program) increased the number of positions it could calculate per second from 2.7 million to 8 million.

Thirty Pieces of Software

Battle of the Thirty

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

1. Firefox
2. Thunderbird
3. Sunbird
4. Abiword
5. OpenOffice
6. ClamWin
7. Gaim
8. BitTorrent
9. GIMPShop
10. Gnucleus
11. VLC Media Player
12. Juice
13. Audacity
14. RSSOwl
15. Filezilla
16. Keynote
17. MusikCube
18. Handbrake
19. X-Chat 2
20. KeePass
21. TrueCrypt
22. PDFCreator
23. Freemind
24. NASA Worldwind
25. Notepad2
26. HealthMonitor
27. Workrave
28. GanttPV
29. GnuCash
30. True Combat: Elite

[via frwr-news]

Woz speaks

While many of us may now associate Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) more with an iPod than with an iMac, the Apple of old played a key role in developing a new type of computer --- a more, well, personal computer. The Fool's Mac Greer recently talked with the man behind that motherboard --- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the author of iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, a book that he wrote with Gina Smith.

Web Space

[11/19/06] Google is offering web hosting via Google Page Creator. Saw this because Michael Zipf (see Anti-Virus programs) was using it to host his site.

jajah.com

We found another service for making free phone calls over the Internet; it's free to many countries and nearly free to the rest. It's Jajah.com, and using it is reminiscent of the old phone systems that used an operator to connect your call.

There's no software to download, and you don't need a high-speed Internet connection; dial-up will do. You just go to Jajah's Web site and type your phone number in a box on the screen. Then select the country you're calling and type in the phone number you want to reach. A few seconds later your phone will ring and you will hear a message telling you that Jajah is connecting your call.

-- Bob & Joy Schwabach, On Computers

Look ma, no hands!

Teenage boys and computer games go hand-in-hand.

Now, a St. Louis-area teenage boy and a computer game have gone hands-off, thanks to a unique experiment conducted by a team of neurosurgeons, neurologists, and engineers at Washington University in St. Louis.

The boy, a 14-year-old who suffers from epilepsy, is the first teenager to play a two-dimensional video game, Space Invaders, using only the signals from his brain to make movements.

-- via annleach06@TheGreatSecret

World of Science

Eric Weisstein's World of Science contains budding encyclopedias of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, and physics.

This resource has been assembled over more than a decade by internet encyclopedist Eric W. Weisstein with assistance from the internet community.

Eric Weisstein's World of Science is written and maintained by the author as a public service for scientific knowledge and education. Although it is often difficult to find explanations for technical subjects that are both clear and accessible, this web site bridges the gap by placing an interlinked framework of mathematical exposition and illustrative examples at the fingertips of every internet user. [via frwr-news, 9/21/06]

C++ and Java

Bruce Eckel has kindly provided his book "Thinking in C++, Second Edition" free of charge to on-line readers.

Bruce Eckel has provided us with another amazing work of his. "Thinking in Java", 2nd edition, and now the new 3rd edition beta.

[frwr-news, 9/26/06]

[6/4/08] Thinking in C++ is are also here. [frwr-news, 5/21/08]

But perhaps the best place would be from the author's company Mindview.

Free Games

[5/4/07] Game Speed Adjuster [via frwr_news 6/19/06]. I wonder if this'll work with the DOS War2?

[8/31/06] This Windows XP Freeware Game Guide mentions some of the same games below. (So that tells me that they're probably pretty decent.)

[8/30/06] Some commercial-quality games are now available for free downloads including: Abuse (2-D scroller), Grand Theft Auto, Marathon Trilogy (precursor of Halo), Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Star Control II.

[6/3/06] C-evo is a freeware empire building game for Windows.
With a time scope of several thousand years, it covers aspects of exploration and expansion, industry and agriculture, warfare and diplomacy, science and administration. The game is based on Microprose's famous Sid Meier's Civilization and has many basic ideas in common with it. Actually, this project has arised from the wish to correct annoying design mistakes and AI weaknesses of Civ II. The priorities of the C-evo project are considerably different from big commercial games. While those are focused on easy entertainment and mainly compete for the most realistic and exciting up-to-date multimedia, this one aims at ageless challenge. [frwr-news]

[11/26/05] Most of us have whiled away some spare time playing the cheap and cheerful games that come with Windows, while others invest a little more time and money in the latest 3D games. This is an expensive luxury for lots of people, but the good news is that there are plenty of fun games to be had for free. [frwr-news]

Pluto no longer a planet

PLUTO was stripped of its status as a planet when scientists from around the world redefined it as a "dwarf planet", leaving just eight classical planets in the solar system.

Discovered in 1930, Pluto has traditionally been considered the ninth planet, and farthest from the sun, in the solar system.

However, the first definition of a planet approved after a heated debate among some 2500 scientists and astronomers drew a clear distinction between Pluto and the other eight planets.

The need to define what it takes to be a planet stems from technological advances that enable astronomers to look further into space and to measure more precisely the size of celestial bodies in our solar system.

In addition to the categories of “planet” and “dwarf planet”, the definition creates a third category to encompass all other objects, except satellites, to be known as small solar system bodies.

“The eight planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said the IAU resolution, passed in a raised-hands vote after what, by the discreet standards of the astronomical community, was a stormy debate.

fight viruses & spyware

[3/6/13] The best antivirus for 2013.  Neil Rubenking the antivirus/security products for 2013.  AVG took the honors for the best free antivirus (over avast!).  Comodo Cleaning Essentials was the top free cleanup-only antivirus (over malwarebytes, though malwarebytes was the top if you read the review).

[5/11/12] Way back in the day ZoneAlarm set the computer security world alight with a cool, very powerful personal firewall product which defined the world of Windows PC safety for years.

Then the company seemed to lose its way, the technology started to wilt, and their products disappeared from popular use as other products took over. Well they're back.

ZoneAlarm Free AntiVirus + Firewall takes the original personal firewall product and tacks on an anti-virus pack, so you get a two-in-one lock down of your computer where it counts.

[7/16/11] Trying out Multi-AV. "The Multi-AV Scanning Tool is a software utility that provides multiple anti malware command line scanners to find or detect malware as well as remove it from your computer."

Hitman Pro is another one to use to double-check after you used your normal scanner(s).

[1/26/11] Top 10 Best Free Antivirus Software for 2011 (according to SofoTex)

[5/22/05] Free alternatives to Norton and McAfee.

AVG Free Edition

Panda ActiveScan (online scanner)

Trend Micro Housecall (online scanner)

One I'm trying out now is Avast

[8/21/05] AntiVir is another one. I think I tried this before, but decided not to use it. [4/25/10 - Avira has a pretty good review at download.com.]

[8/5/06] Cyberhawk's ActiveDefense technology hunts down and paralyzes threats that are too new or too clever to be recognized by traditional security software. [via frwr-news, 7/23/06]

[8/10/06] Active Virus Shield is free anti-virus for your PC that combines traditional antivirus programs, stopping them before they can infect your computer.
Active Virus Shield is brought to you as a free service of AOL and is based on Kaspersky Lab's award winning Personal Anti-Virus. [frwr-news]

[1/2/08] PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition provides world-leading protection, with rapid database updates, IntelliGuard™ real-time protection and comprehensive system scanning to ensure your system remains safe and virus free. PC Tools products are trusted and used by millions of people everyday to protect their home and business computers against online threats. [via frwr-news]

[7/12/08] Kapersky removal tools [frwr-news, 2008-06-29]

[8/31/08] a couple more: Rising AntiVirus, Moon Secure AV [via frwr-news]

[10/20/09] new, free Microsoft Security Essentials [via twitter.com/cyberlifepc]

For spyware:

Lavasoft Ad-Aware

Spybot Search & Destroy

[7/4/05] Yahoo! Anti-Spy, which comes with the Yahoo! Toolbar, looks like it has promise. Its partner is PestPatrol and, I suspect, is using PestPatrol technology

[7/4/05] According to the Adware Report (found as a google sponsored link), the best spyware product currently is Aluria Software's Spyware Eliminator

[8/21/05] Spyware Tools

[9/28/05] This guy uses multiple layers of security on his computer (see Reader Feedback)

[12/11/05] From frwr-news, I tried out the EMCO Malware Destroyer. It seemed to catch a lot of junk, though there were two items (NMC.WSN and NMC.WHENU.WEATHERCAST) it found but didn't removee.

[12/20/05] Oh yeah, Microsoft AntiSpyware seems to be OK too, though it's still in beta (for WinXP).

[2/27/06] SpyCatcher

[6/3/06] superantispyware might find spyware that others miss, but it's reportedly slow [frwr-news]

[6/13/06] SpyDefense [from frwr-news / haven't tried it out yet, for Windows XP and the like]

Firewalls:

ZoneAlarm

Sygate

[1/19/06] More firewalls

[8/15/05] more scanners

* * *

[5/26/06] Here's a handy place to download free anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewalls

[11/13/06] GeeksToGo mentions many of the products mentioned above

[11/19/06] Michael Zipf's list

[5/25/08] filehippo lists many of the popular anti-virus and spyware programs

The Expert Mind

A man walks along the inside of a circle of chess tables, glancing at each for two or three seconds before making his move. On the outer rim, dozens of amateurs sit pondering their replies until he completes the circuit. The year is 1909, the man is José Raúl Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.

How did he play so well, so quickly? And how far ahead could he calculate under such constraints? "I see only one move ahead," Capablanca is said to have answered, "but it is always the correct one."

He thus put in a nutshell what a century of psychological research has subsequently established: much of the chess master's advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought. This rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well. Just as a master can recall all the moves in a game he has played, so can an accomplished musician often reconstruct the score to a sonata heard just once. And just as the chess master often finds the best move in a flash, an expert physician can sometimes make an accurate diagnosis within moments of laying eyes on a patient.

But how do the experts in these various subjects acquire their extraordinary skills? How much can be credited to innate talent and how much to intensive training? Psychologists have sought answers in studies of chess masters. The collected results of a century of such research have led to new theories explaining how the mind organizes and retrieves information. What is more, this research may have important implications for educators. Perhaps the same techniques used by chess players to hone their skills could be applied in the classroom to teach reading, writing and arithmetic.

The End of Medicine

John Mauldin writes about an intriguing new book by his friend Andy Kessler called The End of Medicine, subtitled "How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor."

What happens when you go to the doctor today? He uses a stethoscope to listen to your heart, looks down your throat and ears, and asks you questions. These were all 19th-century technologies, with some minor updates. X-rays? 80 years or more ago.

Medicine today is focused on fixing what ails you. If you have heart problems, let's put in a stent or repair a valve. Lipitor to help control your cholesterol. Chemotherapy to deal with your cancer, if we can't cut it out.

In short, we spend $1.5 trillion just in the US on trying to fix what goes wrong, and precious little on preventing things from going wrong. Health-conscious people try to eat right, exercise, take supplements, have regular check-ups, and avoid things that are bad for us; but if there is a problem, we go to the doctor to get it fixed.

That is going to change, and it is going to change at an even faster pace than did our cellular phone service. It will come one innovation, one small step at a time; but in 10 years, 15 at the outside, we will be more focused on preventing illness than fixing it.

Your front-line doctor is going to be displaced by technology. It is going to be one of the most massive disruptions in history.

UFOs at NASA?

The search for proof of the existence of UFOs landed Gary McKinnon in a world of trouble.

After allegedly hacking into NASA websites -- where he says he found images of what looked like extraterrestrial spaceships -- the 40-year-old Briton faces extradition to the United States from his North London home. If convicted, McKinnon could receive a 70-year prison term and up to $2 million in fines.

[from frwr-news, 7/15/06]

put your unused computer time to use

Researcher David Baker believes the key to an AIDS vaccine or a cure for cancer may be that old PC sitting under a layer of dust in your closet or the one on your desk doing little else but running a screen saver. Those outdated or idle computers may be just what Baker needs to turn his ideas into scientific breakthroughs.

Baker, 43, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, realized about two years ago that he didn't have access to the computing horsepower needed for his research — nor the money to buy time on supercomputers elsewhere.

So he turned to the kindness — and the computers — of strangers.

Using software made popular in a massive yet so far fruitless search for intelligent life beyond Earth, he and his research team are tapping the computing power of tens of thousands of PCs whose owners are donating spare computer time to chop away at scientific problems over the internet.

Baker's Rosetta@home project is attracting PC users who like the idea of helping find a cure for cancer and admire the way Baker has involved regular people in his research that aims to predict how protein structures unfold at the atomic level.

"We're getting these volunteer virtual communities popping up that are doing wonderful things," Baker said. "People like to get together for good causes."

Baker's work could one day lead to cures to diseases from cancer to Alzheimer's. The project takes a more direct approach to other diseases, including the search for an HIV vaccine. In that case, his team hopes to develop a way to help the body recognize critical parts of the virus' proteins so that it can no longer hide from the body's immune system.

-- Donna Blankinship, Associated Press

fans keep Star Trek alive

Paul Sieber was wearing a "Star Trek" uniform in the deep Virginia woods when he found himself surrounded by a leathery-looking gang.

Fortunately, the ruffians were dressed up as Klingons, and Sieber, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, was preparing to film them with a $6,000 digital video camera. At times like this, Sieber, writer and director of "Starship Farragut," must come to grips with the obvious — not all Klingons are trained actors — and bellow, "Quiet on the set!"

From these Virginia woods to the Scottish Highlands, "Star Trek" fans are filling the void left in a galaxy that has lost "Star Trek." For the first time in nearly two decades, television spinoffs from the original 1960s "Star Trek" series have ended, so fans are banding together to make episodes.

Fan films have been around for years, particularly those related to the "Star Wars" movies. But they now can be downloaded from the Web, and modern computer graphics lend them surprising special effects. And as long as no one is profiting from the work, Paramount, owner of the to "Star Trek" rights, has been tolerant. (Its executives declined to comment.)

Up to two dozen of these fan-made "Star Trek" projects are in various stages of completion, depending what you count as a full-fledged production. Dutch and Belgian fans are filming an episode; there is a Scottish production in the works at www.ussintrepid.org.uk.

There is a group in Los Angeles that has filmed more than 40 episodes, according to its Web site (www.hiddenfrontier.com), and has explored gay themes that the original series never imagined. Episodes by a group in Austin, Texas, at www.starshipexeter.com, feature a ship whose crew had the misfortune of being turned into salt in an episode of the original "Star Trek," but now has been repopulated by Texans.

"I think the networks — Paramount, CBS — I don't think they're giving the fans the 'Trek' they're looking for," said Sieber, a 40-year-old engineer who likens his "Star Trek" project, at www.starshipfarragut.com, to "online community theater."

"The fans are saying, 'Look, if we can't get what we want on television, the technology is out there for us to do it ourselves,' " he added.

And viewers are responding. One series, at www.newvoyages.com, and based in Ticonderoga, N.Y., boasts of 30 million downloads. It has become so popular that Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov in the original "Star Trek," is guest-starring in an episode, and George Takei, who played Sulu, is scheduled to shoot one this year. D.C. Fontana, a writer from the original "Star Trek" series, has written a script.

-- Danny Hakim, New York Times

Who Killed The Electric Car?

[7/8/07] Tesla: The Next Generation. Tesla Motors, based in Silicon Valley, recently began selling its first production car, the Roadster. Beyond its stylish looks, Tesla's top selling points are downright revolutionary: There's absolutely no gasoline. The car is 100% electric. This isn't a hybrid, folks. It can go roughly 221 miles on a single 3.5-hour charge. Zero to 60 MPH in 3.9 seconds, enough to put many Ferraris to shame. Top speed is 125 MPH. The base price -- $109,000 -- isn't for the squeamish, but cheaper models are on the way.

[1/8/07] Unlike hybrid gas-electric offerings from Toyota, Honda, and Ford, the Volt promises to be truly unique -- the first commercial car not powered by the internal combustion engine.

[8/30/06] A new breed of electric car poses an attractive alternative for drivers tired of pricey gas

[7/10/06] Chris Paine's ode ode to General Motors' EV1, an electric car whose brief promise of a future free from dependence on gasoline and its choking by-products was rudely crushed, leaving devoted EV1 owners so devastated that a group of them staged a mock funeral.

Paine was one such owner (executive producer Dean Devlin was another), and if he's hell-bent on finding a conspiracy behind the rise and fall of the EV1 he's also decent enough to allow that a naturally occurring perfect storm of broad-based consumer boneheadedness, corporate bad faith, shortsighted governance and general resistance to change might also have been to blame.

Paine begins in 1990, when car-clogged California's smog crisis, coupled with the fact that GM had recently unveiled the prototype for a workable electric car, prompted the state's Air Resources Board to pass a radical resolution: the Zero Emissions Mandate. It required that within eight years, two percent of all cars sold in California had to be emissions-free, and that the percentage was to reach 10 by 2003. The EV1 was the commercial version of the unfortunately named Impact, which was developed at the behest of notorious CEO Roger Smith (the "Roger" of Michael Moore's 1989 ROGER AND ME) after a custom-built "sun racer" built by GM engineers won the 1987 World Solar Challenge race.

EV1s began rolling into dealerships in California and Arizona in December 1996. The quiet, snazzy-looking two-seater got between 70 and 120 miles to a charge, but was available for lease only; prospective buyers endured long waits, vague delivery dates and intrusive interviews. And they still loved their cars, from celebrities like Tom Hanks, who talked up his on Late Night with David Letterman to Peter Horton, whose EV1 wound up as the last one in private hands.

Paine argues persuasively that as a corporate entity, GM undermined the EV1 at every turn, then cut back production after claiming there was no consumer demand. When leases came due, GM repossessed the cars and crushed them.

He also marshals extensive evidence that the automotive and petroleum industries banded together to force the Zero Emissions Mandate's repeal; that the Reagan and Bush administrations systematically dismantled federal policies supporting fuel economy, conservationism, and alternative fuel sources instituted by President Carter during the '70s gas crisis; and that hidebound automakers poisoned mainstream consumers against the very idea of electric cars by exploiting bigger-is-better status consciousness, resistance to government interference (the same interference that mandated seat belts, air bags and safety glass), and suspicions that tree-hugging sissies wanted to force everyone to drive mingy little golf carts.

Impassioned, unwieldy and padded with celebrity interviews, Paine's documentary ends on a surprisingly upbeat note, suggesting that America's "addiction to oil" is complex and deep-rooted but not hopeless, given the collective will to find a solution. — Maitland McDonagh

[6/26/06] Silicon Valley is trying to do something Detroit couldn't -- build an electric car that people will buy. Start-up Tesla Motors is using money from investors including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to build a sports car you can plug into the wall.

BASIC

[6/23/10 frwr_news] Just BASIC is a programming language for the Windows operating system. It is completely free and it is suitable for creating all kinds of applications for business, industry, education and entertainment. Just BASIC borrows many features from our popular commercial product Liberty BASIC.

[3/11/07] FreeBASIC - as the name suggests - is a free, open-source, 32-bit, MS-QuickBASIC's syntax-compatible compiler, that adds new features such as pointers, unsigned data types, inline-assembly and many others.

[7/10/06] GW-BASIC was once the main language used on home computers and is still useful in learning the fundamentals of computer programming and smaller utility programs.

You can get GWBASIC 3.23, GW-BASIC Manual, Compiler, tutorials, examples and games courtesy of KindlyRat.

[frwr-news, 7/6/06]

Actually though, I like QBasic (and the commercial QuickBasic) much better.

[9/9/06 frwr-news] It is possible to develop GUI applications with well known BASIC syntax in a modern fashion. KBASIC comes with truly Java-like object orientation and backward support for VB6 and QBasic, as it is 100% syntax compatible.

A Virtual Keyboard

Women seem to carry their entire house in their purse. Most gals can usually whip out a band-aid, assorted make-up products, tissues, and of course, a wallet and cell phone, but how about a keyboard? Perhaps a techie like me could. I admit, in addition to the aforementioned items, I usually have my PlayStation Portable (PSP) along with some spare games, digital camera, and extra memory sticks. No my purse isn’t that big, and I don’t actually carry around a humungous keyboard with me. I’m talking about a virtual keyboard that’s about the size of a pack of gum - no joke!

The iTECH Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard has a red plastic window where a projection module uses a red diode laser to emit a keyboard template. The holographic optical element used to display the virtual keyboard then produces a full-size keyboard image onto your desk, or any other flat surface (with no protrusions over 1mm), and allows you to type wherever you are. It will make simulated key click sounds as your fingers press the virtual keys and break the laser, so it will sound like you’re typing.

-- Alison Stewart, MidWeek, June 16, 2006

WebReaper

WebReaper is web crawler or spider, which can work its way through a website, downloading pages, pictures and objects that it finds so that they can be viewed locally, without needing to be connected to the internet. [from frwr-news]

I tried it on my Yahoo fantasy basketball league and it worked pretty decently, though it didn't support the popup windows and crawled only so far.

PC World's Info Centers

Doing product research? Wondering about spyware, Windows, and other major technology topics? Provisioning your small business or home office? Our Info Centers are your one-stop shop for everything you need: reviews, charts, how-to's, articles, downloads, and pricing info on the products and topics that most interest you.

-- from frwr-news

Kid's Programming Language

KPL stands for Kid’s Programming Language. KPL makes it easy for kids to learn computer programming. KPL makes it fun, too, by making it especially easy to program computer games, with cool graphics and sound. KPL is not just for games - it can be used for teaching many different subjects. KPL's emphasis on games is based on the belief that learning is best when learning is fun. KPL's success around the world - which is substantial but still just getting started - is proof that this approach works.

-- from frwr-news

Segway to the rescue

Thieves used to break into as many as five cars a week in the parking garage at Los Angeles' Union Station. Then the Metropolitan Transportation Authority came up with a simple solution: They put a security officer on a Segway Human Transporter.

"The first day that one of the security officers was on the device was pretty much the last day there was a break-in," said Robin Blair, a transportation planning manager for the MTA, which owns about 19 Segways.

Computer Drop-off Event on hold

THE BIANNUAL Computer Drop-off Event involving the Hawaii Computers for Kids Program, CompUSA, Lenox Metals, and the City and County of Honolulu is on hold indefinitely, after the state Department of Health informed the sponsors that commercially generated cathode ray tubes no longer can be dumped into city landfills.

Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition

Discover the basics of digital photography with Adobe® Photoshop® Album Starter Edition software, the free software that makes it easier than ever to view, find, fix, and share your photos. It's fast, easy, and best of all — it's free!

[frwr-news, 5/2/06]

amazing water bridge!

Water Bridge in Germany.... What a feat!

Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering!

This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration.

To those who appreciate engineering projects, here's a puzzle for you armchair engineers and physicists. Did that bridge have to be designed to withstand the additional weight of ship and barge traffic, or just the weight of the water?

Answer:

It only needs to be designed to withstand the weight of the water!

Why? A ship always displaces an amount of water that weighs the same as the ship, regardless of how heavily a ship may be loaded.

Remember your high school physics, and the fly in an enclosed bottle project? Similarly, the super sensitive scale proved that it didn't make any difference whether the fly was sitting on the bottom, walking up the side, or flying around. The bottle, air, and fly were a single unit of mass and always weighed the same.

YouTube.com

Though it debuted only five months ago, YouTube.com attracts 6 million visitors each day to watch two-minute video clips that amount to the Internet's version of "America's Funniest Home Videos" meets "American Idol." Every day, users stock the site with 35,000 homemade videos of lip-syncing, dancing, silly animation and commentaries on any topic, all of which are commented on and rated by viewers.

Going Wireless With RangeMax

If you don’t already have a wireless network setup in your home or office, chances are you’re probably searching for a good solution. Throughout the years I’ve used countless wireless routers both at home and work, but my favorite, and the latest to go through Click Chick’s careful scrutiny is the NetGear RangeMax Wireless Router (Model WPN824).

As soon as I plugged everything in and configured the router and computer, I immediately noticed how powerful the signal strength was no matter where I took my laptop.

-- Alison Stewart, MidWeek, 4/14/06

email better than dope?

A British study commissioned by Hewlett Packard found that a nonstop barrage of email can cause a greater loss of IQ than smoking a small amount of marijuana. Workers who constantly break away from tasks to react to incoming emails and phone messages suffer an average loss of 10 IQ points, the equivalent of missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4- point drop from marijuana.

Apple turns 30

Apple Computer Inc. turned 30 on April Fool's Day.

It was three decades ago when a pair of prank-loving college dropouts, who also shared an interest in electronics, created computer circuit boards in a Cupertino garage, named the product Apple I and sold it to a local computer store.

free (and legal) music and videos

iMesh recently launched a new service that enables users to share about 15 million free songs and videos with P2P file sharing that is 100 percent legal. More than 2 million are original, high-quality songs licensed from the record labels. iMesh is able to do this because of an agreement it signed with digital music distributor MusicNet to supply it with songs. MusicNet’s collection includes inventory from Virgin, HMV, Yahoo! and AOL.

CD-R burnout

Popular CD-R and CD-RW discs used to 'burn' digital photographs, videos and songs for the long haul seem to have a crucial shortcoming, says an IBM information storage expert. The discs, unlike pressed compact discs used for professionally produced music and video recordings, typically last only two to five years.

-- from AARP Bulletin, March 2006

Digital Dave responds.

Microsoft Origami

Microsoft Corp. unveiled its 'Origami' project Thursday, a paperback-book sized portable computer, which is a hybrid between a laptop PC and a host of mobile devices that the world's biggest software maker hopes will create an entirely new market.

Reactions are mixed.

internet growth

the growth of the Internet in the U.S. has stalled. Despite cheaper prices and faster speeds, analysts expect uptake to creep just one percentage point this year, to 65%, and to only 67% by 2009.

bndmod.exe

This was another annoying virus. [see log on 11/9/05] Panda found it but didn't remove it. And I couldn't delete it manually even in safe mode. AntiVir apparently got rid of some other viruses but bndmod.exe was still there. MoveOnBoot didn't work (couldn't even see the file). Finally I tried a WindowsME boot disk and that worked and I could delete the file.

Battle of the Microchip Giants

The greatest, nastiest, costliest and most enduring feud in Silicon Valley — and in all of high-tech — is the 30-year-old fight between Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices. What makes it particularly memorable — and bitter — is that it deals not only with products and markets but with friendships, personal animosities, even paternal loyalties.

LoJack

More than 90 percent of laptops stolen with LoJack installed have been recovered.

What We Don't Know?

In a special collection of articles published beginning 1 July 2005, Science Magazine and its online companion sites celebrate the journal's 125th anniversary with a look forward -- at the most compelling puzzles and questions facing scientists today. A special, free news feature in Science explores 125 big questions that face scientific inquiry over the next quarter-century. [from Cool Tricks and Trinkets]

The Good Earth

Frontier Multimedia presents their second show, "The Good Earth." It's a view of Earth from space - seen from a range of satellites, the space shuttle, and the International Space Station. The views are sometimes beautiful - such as clouds streaming past South Georgia Island - and sometimes bizarre, such as the alien landscape of Lake Disappointment, or the inland Mali delta. [from Cool Tricks and Trinkets]

save on ink

[3/3/06] On the face of it, the logic of buying refilled ink cartridges seems pretty obvious. A new HP 26A cartridge, for use in about two dozen Hewlett-Packard printers, costs $29 at Staples. Buy a $21 Staples-brand remanufactured unit and you save 28 percent. Go to Cartridge World and you pay $18.39, a 37 percent discount.

Walgreens is installing cartridge refilling machines in the photo department of 1,500 of its 5,120 drugstores. Office Depot is testing the same kiosks in Charlotte, N.C., and Minneapolis. These machines, called the Ink-O-Dem, cost about $40,000 and can refill a cartridge in about 2.5 minutes. "We cut out the middlemen," said Harry Nicodem, chief executive of TonerHead, the maker of the kiosk.

The automation gives Walgreens a price advantage: its HP 26A is $14.50. (You can also refill one yourself at home and, after you scrub the ink from your hands, save even more, 65 percent.)

End of story, right? You would go for the cheaper alternatives. But saving money is not just a matter of finding the lowest price. Two recent studies suggest that the more important consideration is the price per page printed, a number that is affected by the quality of a refilled cartridge.

Hewlett-Packard executives argue that you are wasting your money with refills, which is what you might expect the company to say. Manufacturers have a lot riding on a business model in which they sell ink cartridges that can cost a third of what the printer did.

The company has a point. QualityLogic, a Moorpark, Calif., test laboratory found that while new Hewlett-Packard cartridges had a 2 percent failure rate, 70 percent of remanufactured units did not last as long as promised. Hewlett commissioned the study, but Consumer Reports magazine came to a similar conclusion last May. Testers there found that in almost all cases, the refilled cartridges cost as much or more when evaluated on their per-page output.

* * *

[10/30/04] you can get refilled ink cartridges here

Free Utilities

[7/26/10 frwr_news 8/6/09] Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. It supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful but free partition manager to manage their hard disk partition such as Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition and Partition Recovery.

[7/22/10 frwr_news] Snowbird is a simple file-searching utility that seems to be a bit faster than the regular Windows Explorer search.

[7/18/10] A couple of promising-sounding utilities from the 7/29/09 frwr_news.

Auslogics Registry Cleaner v1.5.11.155 - 2208 KB
Keeping the Registry clean and error-free is the key to optimal computer performance. Auslogics Registry Cleaner will help you get rid of registry errors and make your computer as fast as ever, all of this for FREE.

Virtual CloneDrive v5.4.3.2 - 1516 KB
Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.

[6/9/10] Partition Assistant Home Edition is completely FREE partition manager software. It allows you to manage partition, redistribute disk space easily, and you can use it to perform more complicated partition operations on your hard disk, which like the commercial Partition Magic.

[6/8/10] DirGraph provides a graphical view of the space used by your files and directories. It allows you to navigate around this view - zooming in to see greater detail and zooming out to see the bigger picture. [see my separate entry for more]

[1/23/10 frwr-news] EASEUS Partition Master Professional is comprehensive hard disk partition management tool and system partition optimization software; it can let you enjoy all the powerful basic and advanced partition functions for Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 32/64 bit users.

[7/1/09 frwr-news] ImageScaler - "I wrote this program because I've got tired of the poor quality image scaling (i.e. resizing) in image manipulation programs like: PhotoShop, PaintShopPro, Picture Publisher, ACDSee etc. which only offer the crappy bicubic algorithm."

[4/18/09 frwr-news] Paragon Hard Disk Manager Special Edition v8.5 -
Partitioning, cloning, backup, defragging, recovery: managing your hard drive throughout its life normally requires many different functions, and a library of tools. But there is another way. Install Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 SE and you'll get all the most useful hard drive tools collected together in a single, easy-to-use interface. [3/25/12 - no longer offered, so see next paragraph]

[3/25/12 frwr-news] Paragon Partition Manager 11 Free Edition v11 - 43041 KB
Partitioning is not for amateurs. That is why millions of people have
trusted our safe, stable technology and professional software solutions for
over 15 years. Our latest 11 version easily organizes your hard drive and
redistributes free space to enhance system performance.

[12/26/08 frwr-news] Unknown Device Identifier enables you to identify the yellow question mark labeled Unknown Devices in Device Manager. And reports you a detailed summary for the manufacturer name, OEM name, device type, device model and even the exact name of the unknown devices. With the collected information, you might contact your hardware manufacturer for support or search the Internet for the corresponding driver with a simple click.

[7/1/12 frwr-news] Undelete 360 v2.15 - 2697 KB
Powerful but easy to use data recovery software that can restore files and
folders lost due to virus attacks, human errors, software or hardware
failures.

Software supports recovery of files deleted from computers, flash drives,
cameras, and any other data storage. With an optimized algorithm and smart
built-in cache system, the tool has incredibly fast scan of hard drives.
Operating system: Windows 2000 / XP / VISTA / Windows 7 / 2003 or 2008
Server.
[12/22/07 frwr-news] Glary Undelete is a free and easy-to-use yet powerful file undelete solution for FAT and NTFS file systems. It will bring back files emptied from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. It will even recover files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

Glary Undelete works under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32,NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards.

Absolute Uninstaller is similar to standard Windows Add/Remove program but more powerful.The standard Add/Remove program can't uninstall applications completely which often leaves broken registry keys ,unnecessary files on the hard disk.The more junk files your computer have ,the slower it runs. Uninstall Manager can wipe off all the junk files clearly in seconds.It offers a more user-friendly way to remove unneeded applications and to improve your computer efficiency.

[11/11/07 frwr-news] filehippo.com is a good source of freebie utilities

[10/7/07 frwr-news] Drive Rescue is a program for exploring your hard disk, and locating lost files on it. The idea for this program originated from processing a disk with Scandisk--which suddenly contained no data. Since off-the-shelf Windows methods could not recover any of it, this program was successfully created.

[9/14/07 frwr-news] Undeletion Wizard is a file undeletion program for windows. It can recover (undelete) deleted files from your hard disk. Currently Undeletion Wizard supports undeletion only from fat 32 partitions. It can search your hard disk for undeletable files. Advanced Search options allows you to search deleted files by specifying their file names (whole or part) or by their extensions. Undeletion Wizard can also undelete files from deleted directories. It can scan recursively your disk's directory structure.

[1/17/07 frwr-news] Slawdog AquiMem is a small utility for Windows 95-XP that allows you to defragment your system's physical memory. Have you ever noticed that it is nearly impossible to keep your computer running over a week without a crash or system slowdown occuring? Defragmenting RAM is necessary to keep the operating system stable and healthy without the constant need to reboot.

Slawdog AquiMem's purpose is to regain that lost memory and make it available to the application again. This is done by instructing the operating system to remove portions of unused memory and relocating it to the hard drive swap file.

[11/12/06 frwr-news] Ultimate Data Recovery will quickly and easily recover deleted files emptied from the Windows Recycle Bin, or lost due to the format or corruption of a hard drive, virus or trojan infection, unexpected system shutdown or software failure

[11/12/06 frwr-news] Cute Partition Manager (CPM) is an advanced hard disk partition management utility. Using Cute Partition Manager, you can easily add, edit, delete and manage the partitions in your computer.

[11/1/06 frwr-news] Directory Lister will create a file listing the files in your directories. Or simply try

Start --> Run --> cmd
cd \your_directory_here
tree /f > All_Files.txt

[10/31/06 frwr-news] Regular use of computer makes the registry fragmented and cluttered with obsolete and invalid data. Fix My Registry software keeps this critical part of your PC in perfect condition.

[10/27/06 frwr-news] DriverMax is a new program which allows you to easily reinstall all your Windows drivers. No more searching for rare drivers on discs or on the web or inserting one installation CD after the other. Simply export all your current drivers (or just the ones that work ok) to a folder or a compressed file. After reinstalling Windows you will have everything in one place! [for Vista and XP]

[9/27/06 frwr-news] SoftPerfect File Recovery is a free and useful tool to restore accidentally deleted files from hard and floppy disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards and other storage media. It supports the popular file systems such as FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS and NTFS5 with compression and encryption. If your important files disappeared and you can’t find them in the recycle bin, try this software product and get the files back to life. Easy to use, no installation is required.

[9/20/06 junk mail] Registry Defender is a complimentary and easy to use program that can scan for and correct problems in your computers registry. Correcting such problems can provide benefits such as:

• Faster Computer Speeds
• Faster Computer Startup (Boot)
• Fewer Computer Crashes and Internet Freezes
• Fewer Computer Crashes
• Fewer Trojans and Spyware

It's limited to fixing 20 problems at a time, so I just reran it again to fix the problems it didn't fix the first time. As to how well it works, I don't know. But I haven't had any program yet that has fixed the slowdown the my Windows ME inevitably experiences after running for a while (especially after deleting email in my overloaded Outlook Express deleted folder)


[9/10/06] What is gone is gone? Far from it! Avira UnErase recovers data that have been deleted from the hard drive – either accidentally or as a result of a virus infection, an uninstaller or defective software. The danger of important data being lost forever is averted with Avira UnErase.

[9/01/06 frwr-news] Floppy Image v1.5.2 - 135 KB. Creates image files of floppy disks and back (for backup, storage or transfer). You can choose to save the image file compressed, uncompressed or as a self-extracting exe file. You can also add descriptions to your image files.

Floppy Image Creator v1.4.1 - 244 KB
This program allows you to make an exact image of a floppy disk and save it to a file, and of course restore the image to disk when ever required. It is especially useful for making backups of system and/or boot disks.

[8/11/06 frwr-news] AntiCrash a system utility that’s designed to free memory and prevents Windows from crashing. Primarily, the program works by monitoring every application running in the background. It goes further by displaying processor threads, DLL files and other system items you won't ordinarily find in the Control-Alt-Delete menu.

Making Windows more stable must be one of the holy grails of programming. AntiCrash, its designed to spare you from countless boot-ups. Essentially, it provides access to several functions and tasks that tend not to crash the operating system. It controls memory threads and virtually forces commands to reach the system Kernel. AntiCrash is completely multi-threaded, allowing you to work with applications without the usual instabilities and grinding slowdowns.

This utility use an ‘Application Protection Engine’ that can potentially repair problem applications or system files. For example, it automatically fixes annoying memory links that slow your system.

[I'm using it now and it seems to have somewhat improved the slowdown of my system so far. But maybe it's coincidence because it did slow down the second day.]

[7/27/06 frwr-news] With Double Driver you can view which drivers are installed in your system and you can backup the drivers you choose, save and print the drivers list, and more.

(Unfortunately, it found nothing on my Windows ME system)

[6/16/06] What Abexo Free Registry Cleaner? A.F. Registry Cleaner is a utility software to make your computer run smoother and faster. What is registry? Registry is a database where Windows and programs store their data. Why do I need to clean the registry? When data changes i.e. you delete a file, the registry doesn't remove the invalid data, thus in this case a reference to a non-existent file remains in the registry. As the registry gets filled with invalid data, Windows and programs consume more system resources to search the database for any data. Therefore your computer gets slower and slower. [haven't tried it yet, frwr-news, 6/11/06]

[6/16/06] ADRC Data Recovery Tools contains a collection of DIY recovery tools that supports a wide variety drives and file systems.

The software incorporates extremely simple GUI with novice users in mind. The software zooms in to do only critical recovery functions with minimum complexity. It gives you full control to undelete files, disk image back up, restore a backup image, copy files from hard disk with bad sectors, disk cloning, backup, edit and restore your boot parameters. [frwr-news, 6/13/06]

[6/1/06] Driver Magician Lite identifies all the hardware in the system, extracts their associated drivers from the hard disk and backs them up to a location of your choice. Then when you format and reinstall/upgrade your operating system, you can restore all the "saved" drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands. [frwr-news, 2006-06-02]

[5/6/06] Apparently Partition Logic now supports resizing [frwr-news, 4/25/06]

[2/24/06] HDClone Free Edition enables you to move the content from an entire hard drive to another, larger one. The program installs itself on a bootable floppy or CD, and include it`s own operating system, so it runs completely independent from Windows. Once HDClone has created the bootable floppy or CD for you, you can use it to boot your computer and copy the drive content to the new (installed) drive, using a graphical interface. The free version is perfectly suitable to upgrade your existing drive to a larger one. It supports IDE/ATA/SATA hard disks and is able to copy up to 300 MB/min. The software does not recognize a USB mouse or keyboard (after boot), so you need to connect a non-USB mouse and keyboard to operate the copy interface. License: Freeware Windows: 98/ME/2000/XP [from frwr-news]

[11/6/05] Partition Logic is a free alternative to Partition Magic. One big drawback is that it doesn't look like it supports resizing. - frwr-news, 11/5/05

size does matter

A research team led by Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick found that in bat species where the females are promiscuous, the males boasting the largest testicles also had the smallest brains. Conversely, where the females were faithful, the males had smaller testes and larger brains.

"It turns out size does matter," said Pitnick, whose findings were published in December in "Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Science," an online journal.

looking for something?

The number of online searches in the U.S. soared to nearly 5.1 billion searches in December from 3.3 billion a year earlier, despite just a slight uptick in the total number of Americans connecting to the Internet, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

The number of Internet users in the U.S. rose merely 3 percent year-on-year in December to 207 million people.

more traffic than Google

The Internet has a rising star whose name isn't Google. Just over 2 years old, MySpace now has 2 1/2 times the traffic of Google Inc., and it quickly eclipsed Friendster as the top social-networking site where users build larger and larger circles of friends.

-- from frwr-news (of all places)

Homemade Wind Power

is wind power something that could become feasible on an individual home basis? Will you ever see turbines mounted on the roofs of your town? The answer, surprisingly, may be yes, if a small company in the president's home state has anything to say about it.

Sometime this month, Plano, Texas-based Mag-Wind Co. LLC will install the first of its five pre-production model rooftop turbines. The customer: Fort Worth real estate developer Ross Perot, Jr., who is putting one atop his office building in downtown Dallas.

digital cameras

My digital cameras are quite old. My Sony Mavica (with floppy!) still works but the picture isn't that clear. My other camera is a Fuji FinePix 1400Zoom which takes sharper pictures but seems to be flakey with the power often shutting down. (Maybe it needs newer batteries, but they test OK.)

Anyway it may be soon time for a new camera. I'd like to get a camera with a 10x or better zoom (since that's what my Sony has), but those are pretty expensive. Maybe I'll try for a a cheaper camera for general use.

Anyway, I'm writing this because I see that the Fuji FinePix F10 has won the Digital Imaging Websites Association's Platinum Award as "Best Digital Amateur Camera".

Here's a review. It has a 3x optical zoom and has a video function. It uses an XD Picture card and an NP-120 Lithium-Ion battery. The price? Amazon lists it at $289.99 (sold and shipped by TigerDirect). That's actually kind of higher than I was looking for because I can get a higher zoom camera for not much more.

metapad

I've been using editpad for a while as a text editor replacement for notepad. The main problem with notepad is that it has a size limitation. The other main limitation for me is that it doesn't allow one to change the background color (though I see now that it does allow one to change the font).

EditPad fixes that problem, however, the "old" editpad has a bug where linebreaks occasionally appear mysteriously in large files. The newer version, EditPad Lite, fixes this bug, but highlights URLs which is a feature not always desirable to me.

I'm trying out metapad (as mentioned on frwr-news). It seems to handle both of these problems OK. The only quirk I notice so far (on my 1 minute of trying it out) is that that text begins one column over from the left.

Actually, looking again at EditPad Lite, I see I can turn off the syntax coloring for html documents. OK, maybe I'll stick with EditPad Lite then.

Ubunto Linux

Recently a new version of Linux has been climbing the rankings of users'preferences: Ubuntu.

Promoted and supported by Canonical Ltd., it is named after an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others."

- from frwr_news

[5/14/08 frwr_news] Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way.

[1/20/09] After about like four hours for the wubi install, nothing happened on reboot. I found out wubi doesn't support Windows ME.

Apple introduces Intel-powered Macs

The buzzwords for the 2006 technology outlook fly thick and fast in nerd circles: high-definition DVD. A la carte TV shows from the Internet. Windows Vista.

Most of these goodies will take time to reach the masses. One, however, has already arrived, six months ahead of schedule: Apple Computer's switch to Intel chips for its Macintosh computers.

The first such retrofitted model, the iMac, went on sale this month. Like the existing iMac model, which remains available, the new one is a sleek, thin, snow-white flat-panel screen with no actual computer box; the guts of the computer are hidden inside. The new iMac, like the old, is virus-free, spyware-free and gorgeous to behold. It still has a built-in camera for live Internet videoconferences, still can record DVDs, still comes with a remote for controlling music, photo slideshows and DVD playback from across the room, and still has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless networking. Even the price is the same: $1,300 for the 17-inch model, $1,700 for the 20-incher.

But now there's Intel inside.

Intel Leaps Ahead

Intel Corp., whose marketing made its computer chips a household name, is changing its logo for the first time in 37 years.

The dropped ``e'' in Intel will be shed in favor of a swoop around the company's name with the tag line ``Leap Ahead.'' The ``Intel Inside'' phrase, a fixture since 1991, will be dropped, Santa Clara, California-based Intel said yesterday.

Remote-Controlled Humans

Back in the late '90s, scientists at Tokyo University perfected a remote-control device that allowed them to manipulate cockroaches. The device, which was surgically implanted on the insect's back, sent impulses through electrodes that had replaced the host's antennae. It allowed researchers to direct the roach along a specific path, forward or backward, left or right. The tiny backpack also could be fitted with a micro-camera, to create a highly mobile probe that could go where people can't--into the rubble to search for earthquake victims, for example; or under a door to spy on a competitor's marketing meeting.

Those who read about this technological "advance" at the time probably wondered how long it would take before something similar was attempted with people. Not long at all, as it turns out. The first remote-control experiments with humans are here.

Top 10 Weirdest USB Drives

The least weird is the iduck.



There's nine more. [from Cool Tricks and Trinkets #385]

Congress sets 2009 deadline for digital TV

Digital television offers the promise of super-sharp pictures and better sound, and there's now a firm deadline for broadcasters to complete the transition to all-digital signals. Legislation passed by the Senate on Wednesday would require broadcasters to end their traditional analog transmissions by Feb. 17, 2009, and send their signals digitally.