Sunday, January 03, 2010

2010

- How to remove super glue from almost anything.  If I had a nickel for every time super glue got stuck to my fingers, I would have a lot of nickels stuck to my fingers:


- In conversation, when you mention what year it is, how will you phrase the year?  Will you say it is "two thousand and ten", or "two thousand ten" or "twenty ten"?  The following website is pushing the public to phrase the new year as "twenty ten" which sounds best to me.  Think of it this way...in the year 1910, no one said "One thousand nine-hundred and ten."  In the end, I suspect most people will use the phrase "two thousand and ten."


- Which could you live without, the internet or cable TV?  Five years ago this would have been a difficult choice for me.  Now it's easy.  I would ditch cable TV.  Anything I can watch on cable TV I can find on the internet instead.  How about this question: which could you live without, the internet, or your cell-phone?  That's a tougher decision.  Post your choice and why to the comments section.  As of this writing, I cannot honestly decide which I would give up.  I can make arguments for both.


- In 1975 Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen wrote the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8080 personal computer.  From that point in time and until roughly three years ago, any software with the Microsoft label was generally assumed to be the best money can buy.  Those days have disappeared.  Windows 7 is the new and best OS, Microsoft Office is still the most popular office suite application and Internet Explorer continues to dominate the web browser market.  All three computer programs, along with virtually all other Microsoft products, are dwindling in market share, and for good reason: they may no longer be the best.  Companies like Google (especially Google) stole or recruited the cracker-jack programmers from Microsoft.  I mention all this because I want you to try OpenOffice or Google Apps.  OpenOffice is an application suite, like Microsoft Office, developed by Sun Microsystems, the company that created the Java programming language.  OpenOffice does just about everything Microsoft Office does, but it has a simpler design and most importantly, it is completely free.  Google Apps is an online office suite.  It doesn't have as many bells and whistles as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, but it's applications (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.) are all online.  This means as long as you have internet access, you have a word processor or spreadsheet.  All of your files are saved online.  Like OpenOffice, Google apps is completely free.  You probably wont switch from Microsoft Office, but since both are free, why not give them a try?




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