I'd like to take a minute or 14 to harken back to the good ol' days of the Internet. You know, the days when a visit to the World Wide Web would not produce lifelike video games, revealing images of your next-door neighbor or a directory of Bad Scrabble Hands.
Articles
I've stumped myself with a recent philosophical discussion
I had with, um, myself. Who has the last word in an
email discussion?
It's pretty obvious in a face-to-face
discussion. The last person who talks has the last
word. Even if you
hold your ears and scream really loud, it's apparent
who said the last thing. In a phone conversation, this
I don't consider myself an expert in too many things,
at least outside of baseball history, state capitals
and having a tendency to attract strange females. But
after extensive research on determining the best cell
phone service, maybe I have found my calling.
HA! My
calling! Get it? Anyway, I figured the least I could
do with this newfound ability is to report
What do Elvis, Bing Crosby and Wham all have in common? No, besides being three of the top musical acts of the 20th century. Of course! They all have had Christmas hits!
This just in from the Department of You Can't Be Serious: Pangea Intellectual Properties (PanIP), a technology development company based in San Diego, is suing boatloads of companies for infringing on its patents. The company claims to have patents on e-commerce and Web-based financial banking systems, which means any Web site that conducts shopping on the Internet is violating a patent and could be sued as well.
To quote one of my favorite Different Strokes characters: "Whatcha talkin' bout, Willis?"
I decided to take a break from talking about Web sites and Internet applications for at least one column. Amazingly enough, there are other programs on your computer or close by that can be beneficial. The one I plan to discuss today is more useful than a paperweight, although it may not be as helpful as a stapler or rubber band or the largest watergun museum on the Internet.
There are things I'd rather do than clean my computer
mouse. Really, there are. For instance, licking envelopes
is fun. I also like to cut duct tape with dull scissors.
The thing that separates these other items with cleaning
a mouse is that I need my mouse to perform about 95
percent of my work duties. I need duct tape and envelopes
the other 5 percent whenever I mail chain letters to
I hope at least a few of the 17 people who read this column are interested in building their own Web site, or already have, or would want to if all the letters on their keyboard weren't missing.
The trouble with starting from scratch on the Internet is it's tough to find your newly created URL in the search engine. The good news is there are ways to make it easier. The bad news is you will need more than just the return and shift keys to accomplish this.
Sometimes keeping computer terminology straight is difficult. There are so many definitions, words and acronyms that it is easy to confuse one for the other. For instance, I was talking to my mom the other day about a keyboard, and she thought I meant a music keyboard. Needless to say, she spent hours looking for a delete and escape key on her piano.
I like to dance. I may be the only columnist on the
Web who would make such an outrageous statement.
Not to put other columnists down, but I can't imagine
Dave Barry breaking out into Salsa or George Will doing
the Lambada. If I could imagine that, I wouldn't, because
it creates a very unpretty picture. With or without
guacamole.
Maybe if they had more time, they would visit their