There have been a couple of times I needed to find stuff on my computer fast! The windows searching capabilities are terrible. Bad Microsoft! I tried Google Desktop a little while ago and I liked it but rarely ever used it. I keep forgetting I have it installed. So When I heard about the new Google Desktop I needed to try it. It now has a docking capability that has plugins that can add other benefits. I have a 19in monitor so I can give up desktop space. I actually have two monitors with two computers on my desk so I can easily give up space on one of my monitors.

I’ve been happy with Yahoo’s Konfabulator with it’s widgets. Some widgets from there are very useful like website monitor and a timer. One thing it doesn’t have is a way to dock them to the side of the desktop. I don’t like having to resize my windows so I can see the widgets. I don’t want to see a widget over something I am trying to read. Now if google desktop had more plugins like the widgets from yahoo it would be perfect for me. So at this time I can see some benefits to Google desktop but it’s not exactly what I need at this time. I will keep using Konfabulator and google desktop as just a searching capability for now.

Couple of times I’ll go into the yahoo chats and see what is up. Recently the user created chat rooms have been down. This action was probably because of a report on a TV station about chat rooms geared to pedophilia. I feel it is good for them to pay more attention in this area. They let things go for way too long. I remember noticing those chat rooms many years ago when my nieces were looking to chat on the internet. I’m glad the sponsors finally pulled the plug but they should have checked where their ads were in the first place.

The only sad thing about this is other non sexual chat rooms were shut down also. It’s been over a week now and haven’t seen any changed yet. Hope they will bring the chat rooms back. Was a good place to chat with others instead of going through IRC. IRC has been around for years, ever since the internet was born. It’s a good chat interface but not a lot of every day folks find it. When the MSN chat rooms closed a couple of years ago, everyone went to the yahoo rooms. They are perfect because it’s on the Yahoo messenger. Easy to access. That was the problem because it allowed children easy access and the predators came as well. Yahoo should just have a couple people checking rooms all the time. People who create bad rooms can get banned. It’s easy. I use to help out on a family oriented board and had to be always aware of who is who. I’m sure Yahoo can hire some people to check the room names at least.

I love everything about science! I used to watch the wizards world and the science guy on tv. I followed some of the experiements and had a fun time doing them. Here’s a webpage about science and experiments one can do themselves. This guy also has his own blog where he talks about some interesting stuff too. I always think trying something out really teaches more than just reading about it. Good place for students who are having problems with science. Found some fascinating stuff on this site and will try some when I have some time. I’ve really gotten to the point where there isn’t a subject that someone hasn’t blogged about.

Lot of places on the internet want you to sign up with an email address. There are far too many places that use the email address as a way to spam! You’ll find all the details in their TOS so that’s how they get away with it. I do understand why an email adress is important because it gives the perception that there is an actual human being signing up. But I actually got fed up getting so much spam so I started to look for other ways of dealing with this problem. There are places on the internet called disposable emails.

One such place is called Spambob.com. I used them a while ago signing up to a newspaper from another state. I just recently found Spamgourmet.com and find them very useful. You can have email addresses that you can just forget about it after using it once or you can keep it as your email for spam. It’s a great idea and wanted to share it with everyone. Another site is KasMail.com and Spamex.com which actually has a browser install also.

Of course you can always use the regular free email services on the internet like yahoo.com, gmail.google.com, and hotmail.com. But the disposable email are a lot easier to use for signing up to something you just want to use for a day or so.

Synergy is a software that I recently found which allows me to use two computers with one keyboard and mouse. A sort of KM switch without the wires. It works over your home network passing the mouse and keyboard info to the other computer via network. When I move the mouse off one screen it switches to the other computer. Exactly the way it works with two monitors on one computer if using windows XP. In theory one can have more than 2 computers. In the management area it has 4 possible positions for the monitors. I was all ready to buy myself a KM switch but this works even better than the ones I was looking at. I can easily copy and paste text between two computers. NOW that’s impressive!