2006 May 06

When I need to bookmark a site, I don't. Either I remember it, keywords related to it, or send myself an email about it. I don't “do” any social bookmarking services yet, and I don't really care to have a million bookmarks in my browser that I'll never remember to click. So, I stumbled into toread – a simple service (Bookmarklet) that'll send the current page you're viewing to your email address. The ironic part is that I had a bookmark sitting on my desktop to remind myself to tell y'all about it. I would've emailed the link to myself, but… that would have put me in an endless loop of sorts. So, don't bookmark the site – bookmarklet it, then use it whenever you feel the need to bookmark something for future reference. Now, I'm off to see if I can find another service: toeread, a Web 2.0 application that'll help you translate the language of sock fuzz stuck between your tootsies.

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AFAIK, few people have a PPU sitting inside their PC. I just wrote about Intel's new CPU last night, but didn't even think of picking up a PPU – a Physics Processing Unit, aimed at the hardcore gamer. Perhaps it's just the word “Physics” that's freaking me out, considering I barely passed physics class in high school. The PPU will push the gaming experience into “amazing” levels, enabling objects to react more naturally to their virtual environments. Even with advancements in 3D graphics acceleration, reality still isn't suspended during gameplay – and while I've not yet seen a PPU in action, I can only imagine how much better my PC gaming experience will be with one. Ageia has their PhysX processor, and nVidia's in the process of developing a PPU solution. The Physics Processing Unit only works with supporting games, and therein lies the rub. Now, if only they could make a chip that would help kids pass physics class!

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Tech-Recipes served up a delicious morsel the other day for all of us Picasa users (no doubt, the best photo manager for Windows on the planet). You can view all your photos easily inside of your default browser (including Firefox). With Picasa open, hit Ctrl+Shift+L to invoke a browser window. Each of those thumbnails is clickable, leading you to browse your photos in a familiar Web browser window – much better than Microsoft's default functionality. I couldn't manage my photos effectively until I picked up Picasa – back when it wasn't free as it is today (since the Google acquisition). Viewing or editing your photos is easy with Picasa, yet the program is powerful enough to win over power users such as myself. I wish they'd issue updates more frequently, however (Picasa holds so much promise). Ponzi has Picasa open all the time.

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From Nelson's links comes a rather fantastic treasure trove of bitmap (pixel) fonts. I've been a font fanatic for years – ever since the very beginning of TrueType. Actually, I suppose I fell in love with the idea of fonts when one of my first dot matrix printers let me change the face of doucments (thereby impressing all of my high school teachers). These are the Style-Force Sempliceâ„¢ Pixelfonts. Use them wherever appropriate – most likely in Terminal applications, or those which require fixed-width proportion. I wouldn't necessarily compose an entire Word document around one of these bad boys, but I suppose if you really want to save space and ink, a bitmap font would be the way to go. I can't believe they're still legible at that size. This, on the heel's of Brad's post on new Vista fonts – with his post claiming that the World's Best Fixed Pitch Font [is] Available. There's a few new fonts right around the corner from Microsoft's ClearType arena: Calibri, Consolas, Meiryo, Cariadings, Cambria, Candara, Constantia, and Corbel.

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This add-in enables you to insert international characters from 26 languages into Office 2003 programs. You can do this in a single click without changing your keyboard or language settings in Office 2003. This download can be used with Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (when using Microsoft Office Word 2003 as the editor), and Word 2003. This release only supports Latin based languages. Insert International characters into documents with just one click; Quickly access recently used characters from the Most Recently Used toolbar; Open multiple language toolbars at the same time; Create your own custom toolbars containing your favorite characters and symbols; Share custom toolbars with colleagues and friends.

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There's a Google Maps Add-In for Outlook now. Quite handy for those of us who still choose to use that PIM. I've been pretty hard on newer releases of Outlook (beyond Outlook 2000), but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to taking the next version of Outlook for a spin. I've seen preliminary pre-beta builds, but I've heard rumors that most of what's changed in Outlook is the plumbing – which was in major need of overhauling. I'm still not sold on the vertical preview pane, but that's easily toggled off. We'll see if they handle RSS correctly in this new version, too; if their implementation is a watered-down version of NewsGator, they'll have missed a tremendous opportunity. Here's to hoping I can upgrade to a better experience soon. Did they really push Microsoft Office 2007 back to 2008?

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