Some sort of routing problem in the Great Lakes area (weather-related, no doubt) made it impossible for me to post last Friday. Rather than fight it, I decided to take the weekend off and watch some football.

Posting will resume shortly. I’ve got some good stuff saved up.

I know some people prefer e-mail to RSS. So, two quick questions:

• If I made a weekly digest version of this site available via e-mail, would you subscribe?
• If I posted a Windows/PC tip of the day/week/whatever. would you want the option to receive it via e-mail?

Of course, your e-mail addresses would remain completely private forever and would never be used for any purpose other than the explicit ones you signed up for. I’m not interested in creating an e-mail newsletter empire or building a mailing list. I just want to offer you different options.

Voice your opinion in the comments section of this post, or click here to send me a note.

Microsoft has released its list of MVP Members. Lots of familiar names on the list, and they all deserve a hearty thanks for their efforts to help other people.

I wish Microsoft would make this list more useful, however. Two options come immediately to mind:

1. Add direct links and links to RSS feeds for those MVPs who have Web sites or blogs. It would be really helpful.
2. Add links to searches for newsgroup threads that include posts by each member. You can learn a lot that way. Here, for example, is a search that includes all threads in the Outlook Express group that include the name of MVP Tom Koch.

If you haven’t used the Web-based Expert Zone newsreader, by the way, you’re missing out.

… I would have bought the negatives for this photo shoot and burned them:

Bill Gates Strikes a Pose

Reportedly, these were for a Teen Beat photo spread, 1983. 

Update: J-Walk checked with Snopes, which has the actual provenance of these pics:

Verdict: Real photos; inaccurate description.

These images are actually publicity photos taken of the then 30-year-old Bill Gates coincident with the initial release of Microsoft Windows in 1985. The Corbis photo archive identifies their depiction thusly: “Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, reclines on his desk in his office soon after the release of Windows 1.0. 1985 Bellevue, Washington, USA.”

(Via Boing Boing.)

Best. Parody. Ever.

(Thanks, Gizmodo.)

So the CEO of a giant high-tech company gives a keynote address announcing some new products and his demo crashes. No, not that CEO.

Funny how this one didn’t get as much coverage as the one last week..

Is your monitor dirty? Here’s an easy way to clean your screen.

(via J-Walk Blog)

Update: I’ve changed the date and time on this post so it will stay at the top of my blog through December 31. As of 12:00 noon PST on Wed 29-Dec, more than $2.25 million has been donated to the relief fund through Amazon.com alone. That is an amazing thing. Thanks to everyone who has done so.

Further update: As of noon on Thursday 30-Dec, more than $4.25 million has been donated through the Amazon.com link alone.

I can’t even begin to fathom the scope of the tragedy in South Asia. I do know that we can all help by sending some money to the relief effort. I got a few checks for Christmas that I was thinking of spending on some new toys. The toys can wait.

One very easy way to donate is via Amazon.com. The link below allows you to make a direct donation to the American Red Cross. Amazon takes absolutely nothing, and I get no compensation either.

[Update: Amazon link removed as it’s no longer live.]

If you’d prefer to donate directly, I’ve posted a list of reputable organizations in the extended portion of this post.

Look, we Americans are the richest nation on earth. The CEOs of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch this week received year-end bonuses that add up to more than this country has so far pledged to the relief effort in South Asia. If by any chance those two gentlemen are reading this blog, it would be nice for them to kick in a few millions. If you were lucky enough to get a year-end bonus, this would be a great place to share it. Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can with what I have, and I ask you to join me.
Continue reading “Please help” →

This past summer, Judy and I visited the Pacific Tsunami Museum in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. We learned an amazing amount about this terrifying force of nature.

Which is why we were so spellbound by today’s devastating quake and tsunami in South Asia. I was happy to learn that my friend Woody Leonhard, who lives in hard-hit Phuket, is OK. But 11,000+ people were not so lucky, and literally millions of peopleare homeless tonight.

If you have a few dollars to spare, I urge you to send some to Save the Children. They do good work, and they need our help now.

This just sucks. According to The New York Times:

Federal regulators plan next week to begin considering rules that would end the official ban on cellphone use on commercial flights. Technical challenges and safety questions remain. But if the ban is lifted, one of the last cocoons of relative social silence would disappear, forcing strangers to work out the rough etiquette of involuntary eavesdropping in a confined space.

Imagine a five-hour cross-country flight, on a full plane, with you seated next to a hyperaggressive lawyer playing hardball with some insurance company. In front of a real estate agent returning 20 calls from clients. Behind a guy bragging to his buddy about how wasted he got last night.

Can you imagine anything more annoying? With the possible exception of a Harley-Davidson brand leaf blower, I can’t.

Dear FCC: I don’t care about Janet Jackson showing her boobie for three-tenths pf a second at the Super Bowl. I do care about an airplane full of people chatting on their cellphones. Please get your priorities straight.