The site Human Descent is a must-see to anyone who cares for graphics. Below lies a relatively unimpressive image found among the many stunning ones.

Google Suggest is a tool which many Web surfers are talking about these days. Just when you think that Google is the best way of searching the World Wide Web, you find out about a more responsive user interface. Google Suggest will propose completions for search phrases, thereby guiding a user who is less than certain about how to find desired information. The project is still in its testing phase, but it looks promising.

Brought to my attention by Scott Tobkes.

This afternoon I will get my brain scanned. The 3 Tesla MRI equipment will revolve around my head while I listen to music. There is nothing wrong with my brain, but my colleague and friend uses the data to perform her experiments for the Auto-regulation Grand Challenge. On the right is an image from a previous session, back in July 2004.
 
 
 
 

This image-to-text tool is possibly what you need to impress your friends. I produced a very small-scale example. A larger size was possible as well, but it would have taken up much of this page.

Here is the famous Lenna image:

Here is the result of translation/rendering. It is purely text.

It is surprising to see that portals such as Yahoo are still being used. What’s even more surprising is that many people’s entry point (and only central point of navigation) remained Google. Some people have extensive bookmarks (Favorites in M¥¢ro$o£t terminology) which are most frequently used.

Nevertheless, one of the most efficient and convenient ways to browse is from a personal portal — one which you create yourself. My portal consists of about 200 links, sub-divided into some 30 categories. They all reside on the same page so that they are only a single click away. With tabbed browsing, this becomes a crucial factor.

At the top of the page, I choose to have a snapshot of the weather, a clock, and basic search facilities for this site and the World Wide Web.

For good fit of a large number of links, I use 3 columns. Their aggregated width fits all browsers and screen resolutions.

Here are a few extra bits that are worth mentioning:

• Put usernames or numbers below links for quick copy-and-paste.
• Set up keyboard accelerators using the accesskey attribute.
• Group similar links under the same heading and use a hierarchy of header levels.

Also see: Portal Zen Garden

The moral values of salesmen decline and business credibility is lost when almost laughable lies are being made; without guilt! High street shops have been using this strategy for as long as they existed. “While stocks last”, “Limited supplies”, hotel clerks who say “We have just a few rooms left” and travel agents who say “The flight is almost full so make a quick choice”. 95% of the time this must be bogus (simply urging you to make a transaction) and yet nobody rants loudly. Make a stance and become more sceptical.

On the right: “have you seen this man?”
 
 

Hard-drives are far more fragile and error-prone than computer users imagine. From my survey amongst friends and colleagues, it appears that almost nobody retains a remote copy of personal data. If errors were ever to strike, the result would be devastating. I have seen people losing their in-progress Ph.D. thesis, Masters dissertation and work documents. All it takes to prevent such tragedies is one of the following routines:

• Backup on CDR.
• Backup using a remote FTP server. To store only the recent differences, search by the last modified field.
• Free software packages like Rsync.
• Occasional hard-drive to hard-drive copy/mirror (volume sharing, redundancy).