The New Scientist has a nice little piece on a mystery solved. Apparently some users of Windows XP and Office XP have noticed their machine behaving as though it has a ghost in it – words automatically inserted into documents, menus and toolbars opening on their own, that sort of thing. Well it seems that it has been traced to the fact that some computer dealers are leaving the voice recognition feature of these products switched on by default, and…

One from the ‘Why?’ department. The Casio Tag Writer mouse is a conventional mouse which contains a tiny printer. This fabulous combination will let you print out tags, snappy quotes or anything else that you might have a need for while using your mouse. Actually thinking about it, I’ve just come up with a good use for it. Printing out URLs. No wait, hmmmm…..[via Mikes List]

The Netsizer site contains a real time Internet growth clock, which counts up as people join this wonderful global community. Fascinating to watch. Oh yes and by the way we are now at 754 million users and counting. [via Mike’s List]

A short piece for all those who still don’t believe that digital cameras are going to all but annihilate the conventional photographic film market over the next few years. When Sports Illustrated is happy to run digital camera piccies, and even have them highlighted in a feature, you know that something really is up. [via dpreview.com]

Oh no, another great Japan oriented site. This one’s called F*ckedgaijin, and it’s full, yes full I tell you, of things that need to be shown to the world. Fabulous. NB. Sample photo is of cat faces superimposed on Japanese driving licences. Why? Beats me.

You (we?) need to get out more. [via Metafilter]

The Future Horizons Web site is, quite frankly, a little bizarre. How else to explain away a place where time travel is promoted alongside anti-gravity and ray guns? A definite mix of fact and fiction, this is strictly a place for those with a good sense of discrimination, and a solid appreciation of the absurd.

Now here’s a nice idea. On the 18th April from 3 – 4pm Brandeis University in the US will observe what they call an Hour of Presence to take a campus wide break. The idea is to encourage staff and students to talk some time out and slow down – in effect to stop and smell the flowers. Quote: ‘Our goal is to provide a space, not to “do,” but to “be” — to reflect on the meaning and purpose…

MciRecorder is a little $29.95 software program that lets you record streaming sound coming over the Internet to an MP3 file. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but apparently it copes with Real, Windows Media and Quicktime, so that’s the major sources covered. Interestingly it will also record conversations conducted over an Internet telephone chat.

Seems like the folks at Lindows.com (remember? – trying to create a new desktop platform to rival Windows based around Linux?) are a bit in the wars at the moment. This article takes a look at the secrecy surrounding the actual product – or lack thereof – whilst this letter spells out why it pays to play by the rules when you’re dealing with the Open Source community.

Chalk this up as one weird idea. A combination keyboard and mouse – basically a keyboard split in two with the right hand side being movable which acts as a mouse. Yes, well someone thought it was worth developing. The prototype and details are on this site. [via Everythingisnt.com]

The Googlematic plug in lets you search the massive Google database via the AOL or MSN messenger clients. I confess that I’m not exactly sure why you would want to do this, but I’m certain that it’s very cool technology indeed.

According to USA Today, a new generation of electronic smart tags – called ePCs or Electronic Product Codes – are heading our way. These low power electronic chips – also known as Radio Frequency ID tags – have apparently been around for around 30 years, identifying military equipment and the like. Now though, with the massive improvements in miniaturisation and power consumption, we are about to see them embedded in everything from grocery items to..er..the kitchen sink. A veritable rash…

Don’t just sit there and be a passive dummy, get up and do something. Like…er…well I don’t know, build your very own Star Wars Stormtrooper costume from the ground up. You know make a body cast, sculpt the parts and form the plastic. This site will give you all the instruction you need. PS – for the really lazy you can always just buy a ready made version from there, but shhh, don’t tell anyone. [via Madville.com]

The folks at JMTek have done it again. Their new keyring sized USB Drive is now up to a whopping 2GB in size. Yes that’s a whole 2 gigabytes of storage (is that really over 1300 floppy diskettes worth?) which you can cart around in your shirt pocket and plug into any computer USB port without a driver. OK so the one caveat is the price – at $995.95 it sure ain’t cheap.