A pattern I always come across is that of sites with long (and often pointless) drivel which rarely fits the patience span of readers. According to this item, people will not read an E-mail that is longer than 15 lines. I have come to the conclusion that the more words you write, the less words (in total) will get read.

A good exemplar of succinct reporting is Photo Matt. Here is a bad example:

The E-mail on the right was sent to me from freshmeat.net this morning. It was intended to inform me about an update to Red Feline Backup. Latest release has a progress bar! Could this E-mail not be made shorter?
 
 
 
 
 

CBS News and the BBC report another mad cow woe in Canada. This is likely to sway the U.S. to stick to a current Canadian cattle ban.

One more reason to stick to poultry and fish…

Last night I voiced a problem which I have experienced for over a year. Every once in a while, when using the shortcut stroke, text gets erased for no apparent reason. It turned out that other people suffer from the same problem and here is its cause, explained by James Anderson from alt.comp.sys.palmtops.pilot on January 3rd:

It’s a bug in the keyboard driver: every 16th shortcut it deletes the last 16 characters. The only solution is to disable the driver when you aren’t using the keyboard. When you enable the driver again its shortcut count will start over from zero.

As a strong Palm advocate, it disappoints me that fundametal mistakes can be made. Nonetheless, Palm devices remain notably stable.

When Palm refuses to go right

Cited by: PalmAddict

Questions:

• Which MP3 players are available for the Palm platform?
• Which one is best to choose? (a question I will not answer)

Objective Answer:

• AeroPlayer (left in image below) – Cons: No auto-sync with iTunes. Pros: Use of Ogg files instead of MP3 files makes the application 100% free! (hint: don’t tell anyone)
• PocketTunes (middle) – Cons: Pricy; Windows is recommended. Pros: High-resolution support; Large variety of options.
• RealPlayer (right) – Cons: Forces installation of additional (unnecessary) software upon PRC installation; Rather simple. Pros: Reliable; Easy to use.

Cited by: PalmAddict

This morning I had a recollection of how my Internet experience started. I was about 14 when I went with my mother to buy a modem. Shortly afterwards, while playing tennis, I could not get off my mind the fact that I had spent an afternoon talking to someone from Holland (on IRC). Each one of us has had that first Internet experience, which is worth remembering.

Try it now. Reminisce.

The information revolution is one which few generations live to see. Most will be born to live it.

Many programs fail where it matters the most. They do not layer levels of options so as to allow new users to cope. This is why I have changed the menu that you see on the right. Shall you need more advanced options, press the ‘Extended Menu’ option at the top. Implementation/installation details have been included. On the left:
 
   A restaurant’s minimal menu!

A retrospective item from 76-year-old Harvey Tobkes led me to making some predictions for the future. In 20 years from now our children will raise an eyebrow at:

• how people used to walk around in supermarkets, which have now become warehouses controlled by robotics.
• how we used to type in data using an odd device called a ‘keyboard’.
• the fact people used to go to work.
• the way information was recorded on paper and later binned.