Author: gulley

I like the fact that enews.com has all kinds of magazines available for subscription. But it’s missing a few things that would make it truly great. One is more obscure magazines, and another is links back to the home site for each.

The Blogger folks make a damn good service available for free. Their Help Make Blogger Go Faster fund is an example of micropayments (via PayPal) really coming into their own as a web-based currency.

Listen to Christopher Lydon wax eloquent about blogs on The Connection Blog at the WBUR website.

Once you’ve decided on the satellite you’ll use to broadcast your intent to take over the world, you’ll want to see what the view is like from up there.

From the Promising Idea department Concept Map Software from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition is used to organize and represent knowledge. It’s being put to use for a NASA project on Mars exploration.

This sounds more promising than it feels when you use it, but it’s not bad. FindArticles.com tracks down articles in a bunch of magazines.

I’m trying to learn XML and XSL and I stumbled across the W3Schools Online Web Tutorials. They’re very well done. C|NET wasn’t so useful, but W3Schools served my purposes admirably.

The struggle to bring about spelling reform in America had a surprise boost recently. The latest Microsoft spelling dictionary accepts “thru” as an alternative to “through.” The folks at the American Literacy Council take spelling reform very seriously, and this is there preferred spelling of that curious word. It seems like a pretty hopeless cause to me, but this episode did make me reflect on the fact that, in terms of practical motive force, the Microsoft spelling dictionary is probably the most powerful dictionary in the English-speaking world. Move Microsoft and move the world.

If spelling reform interests you, here is a good long list of some variations in traditional English spelling.

Today’s sunspot number is 229 and the solar wind currently has a steady velocity of 371.6 km/sec. If you’re ever in doubt in the future, just check with the Space Weather Bureau.

From the Washington Post comes a discarded ruling from the Supreme Court showing how things really work.