Monday, December 12, 2005

- See that little box sitting next to your monitor, the one with the four or five green lights that flicker on and off everytime you visit a new webpage? Don't get use to it, because it will soon be a dinosaur. Sometime in the near future, all internet access will be wireless, whether you want it to or not. Our expectations for internet access will be quite similar to how people thought of the radio in the early 20th century. Simply buy a cheap receiver to pick up the signal (a radio in the 1920s, a laptop, desktop or dumby terminal in the 21st century) and you will have high-speed internet access anywhere in the world, completely for free.

Lets extrapolate this concept even further. See that big, glowing box against the wall of your living room? The rectangle that shows moving pictures, and creates sounds that seem to make sense to your brain? It's probably plugged into your wall so that it can receive electrical power, but also has a second cable which sends it a video and audio signal. Well, the cable which runs into your TV has a very limited future. Soon, the signal your TV receives will be completely wireless, and not coincidentally, it will be on the same digitial signal that also feeds your internet connection. Your phone will also lose its wired connection, and its signal will be split from your TV and your internet.

One more stop on our future imagination ride...the computer that you are using right now has a hard-drive in it. That hard-drive contains all the programs you use on your computer. Don't get too cozy with your hard-drive, it won't be around for long. Eventually all computers will be "dumby terminals." Your storage needs will be maintained by large, scary computers (mainframes), at some site far from your home. You will store all your programs, video games, emails, etc in the designated space that a company provides you, and which of course, you pay for. Since all internet access will be wireless, and much faster than it is today, you will have access to all your programs from anywhere in the world. The downside is that you will have to completely trust the company with which you store your e-mails, photos, and other private files.

I mention all this because there are websites already on the internet, which mimic many of these technologies. For example, here is a free website that provides you with a full-functioning word processor. It lets you store your word processor files on their website, so not only do you have access to a word processor from anywhere you have internet access, but you also have access to any of the word processing files you create with this web-based word processor:
http://www.writely.com

The following free website lets you store files on the internet, and you can share them with anyone, at anytime. You can store up to 1.2 gigabytes of stuff. As long as you access the data once every 14 days, it will stay on the internet in perpetuity (or until the company which provides this service gets bought out, or goes belly-up.)
http://www.sendspace.com/

- I have finally found a website that ends my craving for free fonts. The following website has over 6000 fonts! I guarantee you will find some useful fonts:
http://www.dafont.com/en/

- The top 30 facts about Chuck Norris. Dear lord, this guy might take on Kush! (Kush would slaughter him, but it would fun to watch...from a safe distance. Bad language contained in the following link.)
http://www.4q.cc/chuck/index.php?topthirty

- This link is two weeks late, but I wanted to post it anyhow. Thanksgiving turkey WILL NOT make you sleepy. Here's why:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1122_051122_thanksgiving.html

- Is there a more earnest, and more enchanting TV christmas show than "A Charlie Brown Christmas"? This year marks the 40th consecutive year that a major network has broadcast the show. It was the first Charlie Brown TV special, and widely considered the best of the bunch. Personally, I prefer the Halloween special. I would give my right arm to sit in that pumpkin patch with Linus. The Great Pumpkin would appear if I was there. I just know it! Here are five interesting facts about the Charlie Brown Christmas show:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051206/ENT03/512060345/1035/ENT

- Take a look at this picture of the earth at night-time, from several hundred miles in the atmosphere. This picture does a wonderful job of showing which areas of the globe use the most electrical light. I could stare at this picture for hours:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg