Tools: Can we talk?

LetsPowwow is a Java-based cross-platform screen-sharing software that enables anyone to make a computer screen available to a group of other computers, to text chat and to allow live attendees to take control remotely of the host computer at an unbeatable price: free (well, for up to 10 users, it's free; "pro" versions start at $50). While LetsPowwow isn't as easy to use as GoToMeeting, the tool lives up to its promises. And in an improvement on GoToMeeting, LetsPowwow works not just on Windows but also on Linux and Mac OS. Up to 30 participants can simultaneously view and/or edit a document or file in any file format, and LetsPowwow records and archives meeting sessions. <http://www.letspowwow.com/index.aspx>

Special Report: The 15 Richest Fictional Characters (Forbes)

It had to happen. Our pathological fascination with the super-rich has reached the point where we now venerate even their fictional counterparts. Why not? Don't we already devour the biographies and hang on the advice of made-up people like Donald Trump? Forbes took only the tiniest of next steps in elevating fiction’s caricatures to the status of real people. "To qualify for the Fictional 15, we insisted that members be both fictional (in the sense that we excluded mythological and folkloric figures) and characters (meaning they are part of a narrative story or series of stories). Great wealth was required to be one of the primary attributes of the characters on this list--in other words, we looked for characters that were known, within their universes, for being rich. For the record, here is The List" (and where is John Beresford Tipton, btw):

1. Santa Claus
2. Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks
3. Richie Rich
4. Lex Luthor
5. C. Montgomery Burns
6. Scrooge McDuck
7. Jed Clampett
8. Bruce Wayne
9. Thurston Howell III
10. Willy Wonka
11. Arthur Bach
12. Ebenezer Scrooge
13. Lara Croft
14. Cruella De Vil
15. Lucius Malfoy

Forbes Fictional 15 Methodology

Tools: Passwords Management

Thanks to computerized warfare, you can now get enterprise grade password management endorsed and tested by the U.S. military. Mandylion Research Labs developed this gadget under a Department of Defense research program seeking practical solutions to a uniquely modern battlefield problem: password overload. And the winner is?: A simple, relatively inexpensive ($49.95 list), keychain-sized device that aids in the generation and secure management of any password-based login record:

-> Manages Up to 50 Login Records Simultaneously
-> Schedules new passwords on a regular basis
-> Generates Cryptographically Strong Passwords
-> Complies with All DoD, Govt. & Industry Password Security Policies
-> Manages Root and Group Passwords
-> Approved, Trusted Technology; Recoverable
-> Enterprise Grade
-> Pre-Configurable for User
-> Flexible Design
-> Multi-Layer, Defense-in-Depth Approach

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance? Gramm Leach Bliley? HIPAA? FACTA? FISMA? Regulations now mandate reporting on controls that safeguard your enterprise’s computing systems. Merely having a policy in place is no longer adequate. Management and Governmental entities must now certify that these policies and controls are also operating effectively. Your dog's d.o.b. will no longer suffice.
<http://www.mandylionlabs.com/>

Games: Babble

"Babble is a free online word game with a friendly community. Stop playing those boring old word search puzzles and join the global Babble web community." -- from the website. <http://www.playbabble.com/>

New Media: Typorganism

is a set of Flash-based animated visual communication experiments exploring interactive designing based on the metaphorical notion of typography. Among the experiments: ASCII-O-Matic, a web application that can convert any digital image into an ASCII artwork that can be copied and added to a personal web page; Good news, Bad news, an animated visual display of current breaking news divided in two contrasting groups; Visual Composer, a digital timeline music editor that plays your selected notes in sequence; and (you're gonna love this) EmoType Chat, an experimental tool that enables you to chat with yourself. <http://www.typorganism.com/>

NWO: Complete data destruction on your hard drive

Disk Redactor is a WIPE utility that lets you securely erase any deleted files and prevent them from being recovered. All your private sensitive insecurely erased information will be wiped from free unused space on your drives to ensure complete data destruction. Download

The Holocaust: International Tracing Service

A few months ago, 60 Minutes profiled the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Created by the Red Cross shortly after World War II, it is the largest Holocaust archive in the world, with 16 miles of shelves housing 50 million documents about 17 million victims of the Holocaust, including:

The paper trail for "Frank, Annaliese Marie" as she was sent from Amsterdam to her eventual death at Bergen-Beslen;

A list of 700 men and 300 women ordered to Brnenec-Brunnlitz in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to work in the munitions factory owned by Oskar Schindler;

A "Totenbuch" ["death book"] for a single month recording the execution of one prisoner every two minutes.

During the episode, 60 Minutes accompanies Walter Feiden, Miki Schwartz, and Jack Rosenthal, the first Holocaust survivors to enter the archive.

International Tracing Service: <http://www.its-arolsen.org/>

The rest of the story: 60 Minutes [13 minutes].

Pencil Sharpening: Obadiah Parker's "Hey Ya" cover

Obadiah Parker's folk-hop version of Hey Ya:

More O.P. at <ObadiahParker.com>.
Here's the original by Outkast.

It's a DIY World: WikiMusicGuide

Similar in spirit to Wikipedia, WikiMusicGuide is a free music information site for music lovers by music lovers. <http://www.wikimusicguide.com/>

Search: Build your own Searchbot

"A Searchbot is your own personal search robot that continuously searches the Internet trying to find all the best websites it can on your behalf. When you build a Searchbot you give it a personality and then program it's search circuits with all the things you want to find. You can search for websites based on factual information like tags and locations, or more creative ways like colour and the mood you're in. You can even ask your Searchbot a question and it will talk to other Searchbots to find you an answer....Searchbots.net is an experimental search engine that investigates the use of mythology, personification and game theory as motivational strategies in creating a sustainable search community. Searchbots has a rich history and is unique in that it allows you to search using more 'human' and entertaining types of information like colour and mood. If you picked the colour red you might get a website about tomatoes, communism or angry people." -- from the website. <http://www.searchbots.net>

Science and Technology of Ancient Egypt: Mummies, Tombs and Pharaoh Gold...

"Mummies, elaborate afterlife preparations, buried tombs that require painstaking excavation, mysterious hieroglyphs and wall paintings...a few of the many legacies of ancient Egypt that have captured the attention of people throughout history. You can
explore them further on this site!" -- from the website. <http://www.mos.org/quest/>

Rhetoric: Winston Churchill Speech Interactive

"...Churchill Speech Interactive – an online educational resource that allows you to explore Churchill’s renowned ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, delivered on 5th March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri.The speech is organised along a number of themes, each of which is colour-coded to enable ease of access. The Speech Player synchronises the audio of the speech with analytical tools, supporting commentary and a wealth of rich media resources." -- from the website. <http://www.churchillspeeches.com/>

--

Separated @ Birth: What celebrity do you look like?

"Has anyone ever told you that you look like a famous celebrity? Now it is easy to find your celebrity look alike. Just upload your picture and we will search the world for your celebrity face match... and it's FREE!" -- from the website. <http://www.starsinyou.com/>

Pencil Sharpening: The Michael Jackson Gallery

“Welcome to the Michael Jackson Gallery. You might think Michael Jackson is a genius, a visionary, a true humanitarian, an innovator, and a living legend. You might think history will remember him as the one and only King of Pop. You might think Michael Jackson is a fool, a freak, a child abuser, and a fraud. You might think history will remember him as just another tragic figure of the entertainment industry. Regardless of your opinion about him, Michael Jackson is almost impossible to ignore. He is one of the most photographed men in history. However, we may never know the price Michael has paid for such a unique life in the public eye. Is he a brilliant manipulator of the media or really as bizarre as he is portrayed? Perhaps these images of one of the most celebrated and controversial figures of our time will help you decide.” -- from the website. <http://www.chooseyourdestiny.com/mjgallery.html>

Remedial Education: Could you have passed out of the eighth grade in 1895?

"This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, KS, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS" -- from the website.

The test is comprehensive, covering not only readin', writin' and 'rythmatic, but U.S. history, orthography, and geography. The questions range from finding the interest on $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent through the causes and results of the Revolutionary War to explaining why the Atlantic Coast is colder than the Pacific at the same latitude. Each section has a time limit, with the overall total length of the exam at just over 5 hours. No indication about whether you're allowed to take a bathroom break. The site doesn't provide answers, but you may consult your favorite search engine, a crutch unavailable to the young scholars of 1895.

<Morehead State U. People Publisher>

Creativity: Lazyness is the mother of invention

A recent Duke grad has built a remote-controlled icebox that tosses a beer can at the touch of a button, according to CNN.


The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

The fridge can launch a can of beer up to 20 feet, far enough to reach from the kitchen to the tv room, with a high degree of accuracy. The video shows the appliance using a "beer magazine clip" and a remote firing system that let you determine angles and ballistics to get the beer to any couch potato in range.

Remodeling: A social planning and design site

DesignIn, Inc. is an attempt at simplifying the planning process that goes into any remodeling project by making it easier to visualize and organize plans. A social design and planning site, DesignIn combines bookmarking and conceptual design tools to enable homeowners to create interactive blueprints and to easily connect with unlimited brand name products and community research and design ideas. <http://www.mydesignin.com/>

apps: doPDF - Free PDF Converter

I have recommended to you, and have used myself for some time, PDF 995, a simple but effective tool that converts your documents into pdf files (for easy faxing, etc.). But I just tried and really like doPDF, another nifty little free app for XP that, as its designers say, "installs itself as a virtual printer driver so after a successful installation will appear in your Printers and Faxes list. To create PDF files, you just have to print your documents to the doPDF pdf converter. Open a document (in Word, WordPad, NotePad, et al), choose Print and select doPDF. It will ask you where to save the PDF file and when finished, the PDF file will be automatically opened in your default PDF viewer." Especially useful: you can customize the resolution -- from 72 dpi to 2400 dpi -- to fit your needs. If you're already familiar with PDF 995, there's no particular reason to switch, but if you intend to adopt such an application, either one will do. <http://www.dopdf.com/>

Be Prepared: Everything you wanted to know about Rip Currents but were afraid to ask (U.S. Weather Service)

"...Rip currents are the leading surf hazard for all beachgoers....As waves travel from deep to shallow water, they will break near the shoreline. When waves break strongly in some locations and weakly in others, this can cause circulation cells which are seen as rip currents: narrow, fast-moving belts of water traveling offshore." -- from the website.

How, when and where do rip currents form; how to identify rip currents; how to avoid becoming trapped; best courses of action for survival if caught; how to assist someone struggling to escape; a note on erroneous terms and myths about rip currents; an extensive faq; plus dramatic real-life rip current stories.

DIY: Online Music Collaboration

Collaboration software developer Raveta has released Audio Fabric, a service that enables musicians to play together live over the internet using any type of instrument -- acoustic, electric, MIDI, or voice. Musicians in different locations play together as if they are in the same room using their ordinary broadband connections. Audio Fabric also enables musicians to find each other, record their sessions, archive them, and make them available for download. Using downloaded software, musicians not only can record their sessions, they can also import the sessions into music editing software, participate in an unlimited number of groups and invite other musicians to join the groups they create, store session files, download music files, and use calendaring and message forums to communicate within their groups. <http://www.audiofabric.com/>

"Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you":
An addendum, this item that shows how far back the dream goes.

Duet In The Fast Lane
Smart Computing ~ Tech News
January 1994

The first traffic on the interactive, intercontinental highway was music to the ears — literally.

Recently a demonstration was held in Brussels, Belgium, in which musicians in the United States and Belgium played a duet over phone lines with compact disc-quality sound.

Leaders of the European Economic Community (EEC), as well as telecommunications, software, and entertainment executives from the United States, Europe, and Asia, came to lend an ear to the phones of the future.

The music was passed over special phone lines called ISDN, or Integrated Services Digital Network, that use a special compression technology.

What the industry leaders heard was music by songwriter Alfred Johnson along with singer-songwriter Sara Messenger in the United States and singer/BBC television series composer Daniel Cainer along with guitarist David Szetela in Belgium. They played "That's What She Like," and "On The Underground." The big finale included rounds of
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Frere Jacques."

The performance was staged to show how existing phone and software technologies could be useful for consumers. Musicians could audition over intercontinental networks. Consumers could dial up concerts and tele-jukeboxes, which would allow them to hear new releases, obscure local artists, or hard-to-find classics.

Health: 10 Foods You Should Never Eat (Center for Science in the Public Interest)

"...A Mint Chip Dazzler at Häagen-Dazs stores (three scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, Oreos, chocolate sprinkles, and whipped cream) has 1,270 calories and 38 grams of saturated fat – that's two days' worth. Think of it as a portable T-bone steak with Caesar salad, and baked potato with sour cream. But that's dinner – yet many people have a Dazzler as a dessert after lunch and dinner!...

"Since 1971 the Center for Science in the Public Interest has been a strong advocate for nutrition and health, food safety, alcohol policy, and sound science. Its award-winning newsletter, Nutrition Action Health letter, is the largest-circulation health newsletter in North America, providing reliable information on nutrition and health." -- from the website.

Before you give in to despair over what you can't eat, also read "Ten Super Foods for Better Health" to find fun things you can.
The rest of the story: <http://www.cspinet.org/nah/10foods_bad.html>