Monthly Archives: July 2002

general July 12, 2002 posted by

Earth from Above project

I visited the Natural History museum here in London this week, and outside on the rainswept pavement was this lovely exhibition of photographs of our planet and peoples. The Earth from Above exhibition by Yann Arthus-Bertrand is beautiful.

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

Project JellyBean

Who says that you can’t make PCs look interesting? How about a full blown system inside a scale model VW Beetle? Or the AMD powered Nissan GTR PC built in Australia, or even the Ford Focus PC?

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

Funny Fair online

Billed as the Internet’s first and only online funfair and amusement arcade, the free Funnyfair.com site will really light up the faces of any tiny tots in the family. Needs Flash technology. $2.99 gets you a downloaded desktop version, which has to be the bargain of the century.

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

TinyURL

TinyURL is a great little free Web service which lets you convert a long cumbersome URL into something shorter that is easier to paste and/or use. It’s ideal for those long rambling online media addresses or Geocities addresses which seem to go on for ever, and which never work properly when you paste them into an email message. Of course Makeashorterlink.com has been around for a while, but this is one step better because it includes a bookmarklet that you…

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

A Linux user goes back

An intelligently written and interesting piece from a Linux user on why he’s returned – at least for the moment – to using a Windows O/S. Proof, if any’s needed, that Linux still needs more work before it will be ready for the general user’s desktop.

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

OpenOffice

I’ve just been playing around with the new OpenOffice software suite. This is a free open source version of the Microsoft Office suite, with all the usual components such as WP, spreadsheet, graphics, presentation software et al. Ahem…it’s really nice. My only real niggle is that I DO wish developers would realise that a readily accessible word count feature is an essential item in a word processor if you’re a professional writer.

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

Star Wars origami

Why spend all that money plumping up George’s wallet, when with a bit of paper and some ingenuity you can create your own Star Wars empire? Har har!

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general July 12, 2002 posted by

Topping up mobile phones from an ATM

According to this piece from Infosync, mobile network operator Orange will introduce a service next year in the UK to allow users to top up their phones using the nearest Abbey National ATM cash machine. Apparently this kind of useful service already operates in Belgium, Canada and Ireland, which shows just how quickly ATMs have moved on from being mere money dispensers.

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general July 11, 2002 posted by

Free video editing software

Here’s something novel – MovieXone, a completely free of charge video editing package. It’s certainly a brave marketing strategy, and the software doesn’t look too bad. Of course the object is to get you to upgrade, but for those on a budget the price of this Lite version is certainly unbeatable.

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general July 11, 2002 posted by

Vintage Tech

Oh my, it’s a site devoted to nothing but the memory of vintage electronic products. I mean, the Osborne 1 portable computer, Casio digital watches, boomboxes and vintage 70’s CD radios? Who can possibly resist? [via Sharpeworld]

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general July 11, 2002 posted by

Walking GameBoys

Hmm, well this surely does take the proverbial biscuit and cake. Nintendo has apparently hired a bunch of kids to go around advertising its products in several large US cities. The truly sad part is that each child will be expected to wear ‘a 15-inch flat-screen TV on [their] chest and a pack of batteries on [their] back’. So how on earth are these poor youths expected to go back to school next term and look their fellow pupils in…

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general July 11, 2002 posted by

Yet more proof of the pudding

I know everyone else is posting this, but I still need to do it to keep my personal record of the stupidity of the record industry up to date. Singer songwriter Janis Ian’s own take on the sorry state of affairs being orchestrated by the music industry with regard to online music. An excellent read.

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general July 11, 2002 posted by

Bring IMAX 3D cinema to your home?

So talking of iGlasses, how about this? A 3D DVD kit to turn your telly into an IMAX system (‘‘the images will jump out of your TV’). Mind you I can’t say that I’ve been overly impressed with IMAX the two times I’ve been so far – for some reason it just doesn’t seem quite ready yet. Update: And here’s a little review of the system by a kindly fellow called Christoph Bungert. Only NTSC apparently, and slightly nauseating to…

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