She's a svelte, multi-lingual beauty from Sweden. Now, if she just spoke Arabic, too, she'd be perfect. Here's a recent photo: C-Pen 20 Handheld ScannerC-Pen 20 Pen Scanner scans text, numbers, barcodes and small images from forms, invoices and other printed or hand-printed documents/books/magazines. C-Pen recognizes text in over 167 languages. The scanned data is transferred immediately into your PC, laptop or Win XP based handheld device. C-Pen 20 free integration software creates … [Read more...]

There's a fascinating and innovative new "Civilization"-style web-based game in the works where you take the role of a Third World farmer struggling to survive in the neofeudal economic order that is modern "Globalization" for much of the world.  It can be played online, so try it out. BTW, it looks like this game is being developed in Denmark.  It's nice to see a reminder of the vision and compassion that characterized Danish politics before Denmark went … [Read more...]

Speaking of Muslims and the Internet... Islamists using US video games in youth appeal - Yahoo! News Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.[..]"Battlefield 2" ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video … [Read more...]

In order to share an amusing anecdote, I'm going to have to admit doing something I suspect many of us do secretly late at night when no one is watching.  I periodically Google myself.  Yes, I do it and I do it regularly. I like to think it's less ego than procrastination and idle curiosity--it is interesting to observe how information spreads on the Internet and what better case study is available than one's own webpage--but I'll leave that call to the shrinks. Another motivation is, … [Read more...]

My beloved laptop Mjolnir (the name of Thor's hammer) has moved on to greener hotspots.  Please join me in a moment of silence in remembrance of this extraordinarily hard-working, loving and forgiving Dell Latitude C840, which gave me  4 wonderful years.  I'll never forget you, Mjolnir.  Like your storied namesake, you flew true, smote my foes, and always returned to my gloved hand, burning hot...well...until you started flashing a blood-chilling "cannot find optical … [Read more...]

Aggregate your news/bogs with RSSAre you reading blogs by typing in each site's URL and perusing the site to look for updates?  If so, you should hang your head in shame over the time you're wasting.  You should using news aggregator to show you all new headlines/postings in a single place.  That way you have a single page that you can scan to see if your favorite websites (assuming they've set up RSS feeds) have new content for you to come read.  It's a huge time saver.I use … [Read more...]

One of the less obvious advantages of maintaining a blog or any other website is getting to psychoanalyze your visitors (albeit anonymously). In the Information Technology business, this is know as  "web traffic analysis" or "search engine optimization" (the two areas are slightly different, but related).  While web servers cannot tell who its visitors are--they don't know visitors' identities or email addresses--they do log generic information about … [Read more...]

Just now, I came across a Wikipedia article MMORGS (massively multi-player online role-playing games) that really blew me away.  [As usual, I'm amazed at how useful Wikipedia is.  Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that people contribute to and maintain anonymously and without being paid.] Aside from the occasional shoot-em up game with my friend and sometimes unnervingly intense gamer Arman [*], I rarely play computer games.  It's been quite a while since I played any computer … [Read more...]

An article in the New Scientist reports on physicist Jonathan Huebner's rather counterintuitive claim that the rate of technological innovation today is actually quite slow compared to the past--he thinks we experiencing the least innovation, measured in technological breakthroughs per billion people, since the 17th century--and that we may be approaching a "dark age" of technological innovation. As a non-scientist, I am certainly in no position to judge his claim (which will no doubt … [Read more...]