News and Views

Mozilla has released a new version of the Thunderbird email client. It’s got some nice new features; tabbed emails is the main one that stands out at first. I’ve just installed it, which was painless, and so far it looks very good. Unfortunately my calendar plug-in isn’t compatible (yet), but it was synced with Google […]

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I got a Motorola Droid smartphone last week. I’m pretty happy with it, and am pretty sure I will keep it. I agree that the iPhone has a few minor advantages over the Droid: I like the way it feels in my hand better, with its rounded corners. Pinch-zoom would be nice. There are more […]

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I’d been running Windows 2000 on a Pentium 4 computer for several years, and I was starting to feel the limitations. On the Pentium 4, newer programs ran slowly and some of the big C++ compiles I did took forever. With Windows 2000, though I still think it’s perhaps the best OS Microsoft made (from […]

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Have you ever thought about the long instructions you get when you reach the voice mail for a mobile phone? “The number you have dialed, 480 555-1234 is not available. You can leave a message after the tone. After leaving your message, you can hang up, or press pound for other options. To leave a […]

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Mozilla has come out with a new version of Firefox: Version 3.5. There are several improvements in this version. I especially like two of them: 1) They finally seem to have memory management under control. Previous versions of Firefox would seem to slowly take up more and more memory, and never release it even when […]

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I run Linux on my Netbook, and find that it works perfectly well in that application. On my netbook I primarily need a web browser and email, along with the ability to view media and PDFs, and run Skype and ICQ. I don’t think there’s any reason to pay anything for Windows on a Netbook. […]

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I use Firefox to browse the internet, instead of Internet Explorer, of course. Here are a few other things I’ve found that improve my browsing experience. 1) Install Adblock Plus, and activate one of the subscriptions. This will get rid of most ads. 2) Install FlashBlock. This prevents Flash from playing until you click on […]

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In case you missed my last comments on the previous blog, I bought a Kindle. It is my birthday present. It arrived on Friday. I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly it is very nice. Books are easy to download and there is lots of content available (and quite a bit of free content too). […]

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Does anybody who reads my blog have a Kindle eBook reader? It looks like it might be a great way to read books. The new version 2 that just came out is supposed to improve on most of the problems with the first one. On the other hand, it’s very expensive. Though you can download […]

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Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. It’s often mistakenly said that Darwin developed the theory of evolution. This is not accurate. In the mid-19th century it was widely discussed among many biologists that species seem to have developed from other species. The problem was that there was no known mechanism that could explain […]

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