Fun stuff with transparent screens has recently hit the Web. Go view the full gallery.

This beats the hell out of the previous item, which briefly mentioned transparency in KDE.

Linux Desktop

Slashdot have spotted a demonstration of Luminocity [sic.] — an experimental OpenGL-intensive window manager for GNOME. For the hi-tech savvy, the site includes stunning videos of Luminocity in action.

An illustration of transparency in KDE

Sneak Peek at Microsoft’s Longhorn

For the curious, there are recent Longhorn screenshots at Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

A few hours ago I was listening to BBC Radio 1. I heard a conversation which made me smile:

Radio Host: “Here is the tie-breaker question: In the year 2000, how many people lived in Miami? Not the whole of Florida, just Miami.”
Caller: “Ummm… 42 million?”.
Radio Host: “Well, according to you, Miami is just a little smaller than England”.

A funny support enquiry from Samsung Electronics:

Caller: “Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?”
Operator: “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand who you are talking about”.
Caller: “On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?”
Operator: “I think you mean the telephone point on the wall”.

Apple developed a mechanism which enables alignment of windows with respect to the ground. This is done simply by rotation of the windows based on sensor data. The idea was recently taken a step forward so that it allows interaction with programs and games, simply by movement of the (PowerBook) laptop.

Playing games by shifting CoG

he World Wide Web is becoming more open, but there are still sites which refuse to accept it. As an example, Microsoft included some sick humour in the download page for .Net specifications. When entering the page with Mozilla Firefox, the download button intentionally gets a bad placement (see screenshot, click to enlarge).

Once the button is clicked, it disappears outside the screen in an animated fashion! No download is possible until the 3^rd click.

Google made their toolbar available only for Internet Explorer. More recently, they were kind enough to refer to the open Google bar, which builds onto other browsers.

The excellent Google Desktop is only available for Windows. A message from Google said that they work improving it, rather than porting it to work under more operating systems. *sigh*

Finally, have a look at this offensive page from Yahoo.

The Public Wiki section on this domain

ome months ago I decided that only urgent messages are worth the use of E-mail. Somehow I just got fed up, even though I was spam-free.

A couple of days ago I took what I hope to be a step towards life without E-mail. I set up a Wiki where most of my correspondence will take place. Wikis are a collection of pages where content is editable by everyone, given access privileges of course. Why not use forums or bulletin boards for rapid communication? Here is a short comparison:

*Dependent on the package