It's a complex and finicky world that we live in. I love great gimmicks that make life simpler or more efficient or more effective, that just take the hassle out of doing simple things. Here are pictures of a bunch of those simple things that I received via an anonymous email. Enjoy.
I have been listening to Stephen Jobs biography by Walter Iaacson while we drive around the state and city. It is 20 CDs long, so I can load 6 at a time in the Prius. I'm over half way through. It is well worth a "read". Jobs blended a passion for design and technology that revolutionized technology in the past decade. He had a focus and genius that drove both him and his employees to lengths that are at once admirable (great accomplishment) and scary - he could be incredibly cruel to others who didn't meet his demanding and exacting standards.
I have a Mac Mini 1 TB server ... which is a full blown Mac that shares my Dell Win 7 monitors. I slip back and forth between my Dell and Mac by putting one to "sleep" and then waking up the other. The monitors respond to the one that is awake. it takes less than 5 seconds for me to switch between the two systems.
PhotoShop has a huge learning curve and costs money to purchase. MS Paint comes free with MS Windows. It's (almost) clone Mac Paintbrush can be freely downloaded here.
VOIP is an acronym for "Voice Over Internet Protocol". A lot of phone services that work over the Internet are inexpensively replacing land lines and 3G/4G cell phone services. A colleague emailed me to complain that the MagicJack iPhone app was not working for her as she was about to embark on a getaway to Mexico, so I took another look at VOIP services.
Update: Consumer Reports in May 2011 gave Ooma the highest rating for VOIP voice quality. MagicJack was rated as having very poor voice quality. See my article of 25 December 2011: Consumer Reports rates Ooma VOIP Highest.
I attended a wiener roast yesterday where a good friend was showing off a very nice pair of prescription glasses that he purchased on the Internet for $20! He had been testing them and found them to be most satisfactory! He purchased them from a company called Zeni Optical. My friend said that they come from Hong Kong, but thinks that the Hong Kong company is a middle ma for a mainland Chinese company.
