Windows Vista test drive

I haven’t tried this myself, but Microsoft has a web site that lets you “test” Windows Vista: The Windows Vista Test Drive allows you to try (or “test drive”) this latest operating system from Microsoft without having to install it on your PC. By simply logging onto our test drive environment using your web browser, …

Open Source or free CD/DVD burners

I recently posted a quasi-review of Nero 7 Ultra Edition ENHANCED. At around the same time, Download Squad had 2 different postings about open source (among other things, this generally means free). CDBurnerXP 4: Free CD/DVD authoring tool Despite its name, CDBurnerXP is not just a CD burning application for Windows XP. It’s actually one …

E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread)

From the New York Times: As I was in the final throes of getting my most recent book into print, an employee at the publishing company sent me an e-mail message that stopped me in my tracks. I had met her just once, at a meeting. We were having an e-mail exchange about some crucial …

Couchville

I heard about this site from Chris. On the Couchville site, you enter your zip/postal code, choose how you view TV (cable, satellite, or over-the-air antenna), and then choose your provider (if you have more than one option in your area). You then are presented with an AJAX-based TV programming schedule. You can drag the …

Avoiding a Computer Wasteland

From BusinessWeek: A large number of companies and consumers upgrade to new computers every three or four years and therefore generate an incredible stream of discarded machines. In the U.S. alone, they ditched somewhere between 50 million and 75 million desktops, laptops, and monitors in 2005, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That amounts to …

Fridays go from casual to e-mail-free

From USA Today: Overwhelmed by e-mail? Some professionals are fighting back by declaring e-mail-free Fridays — or by deleting their entire in-box. Today about 150 engineers at chipmaker Intel (INTC) will kick off “Zero E-mail Fridays.” E-mail isn’t forbidden, but everyone is encouraged to phone or meet face-to-face. The goal is more direct, free-flowing communication …

No postings until Monday or Tuesday

My wife Lisa was induced into labour yesterday (it was scheduled) and we are now the parents of 3 children. We already had 2 boys, and now we have a little girl! Both mother and the baby are doing great and will be coming home this morning. I’ll obviously be a little slow in getting …

Take a Step Back – Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Where do you stand when it comes to your own photography? Are you too emotionally invested in the image? Maybe it is time you took a step back and re-evaluated your photos. We often have an emotional attachment to our images that clouds our view of the quality of an image. A memory of the …

How social can we get?

From MSNBC: The Internet world is relentlessly enthusiastic in its embrace of the latest and greatest, and this year’s new flavor has been social networking. Between MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo and scores of lesser start-ups, social networking seems poised to take over the Internet. Indeed, some digerati have suggested that Facebook, by allowing developers …

Get all your keyboard shortcuts at KeyXL

From Download Squad: KeyXL is one of the largest online databases of keyboard shortcuts around. Search by software, operating system, Windows, Macintosh, Linux and browser based application, this database has it all.