Big Thinkers

Search engines losing popularity. WebSideStory, a San Diego, California-based company that measures Internet audiences, said that as of 6 February, nearly 52 percent of Web surfers arrived at sites by direct navigation and bookmarks, compared with about 46 percent during the same period last year. [That's because they suck. They've always suck. They'll always suck. Except for Google and Daypop. They rule.]

XP users angered by reinstall. To date, the only solution to a 'Data Invalid' error when swapping out system boards has been a complete reinstall of XP, much to the chagrin of users. [Well, nobody's prefect.]

Pump up your laptop. Soon you may be able to supply enough electricity to run a computer without relying on external power sources. [I still say a fart-driven portable would be a good idea. Stinky, but good.]

Go hunting for e-books. As the innovators in that sector begin to fall by the wayside, Microsoft's approach – backed by exceedingly deep pockets – begins to gain adherents. Then one day everyone wakes up to find that Microsoft's software has become the standard. [Wiped out down the stairs. I bet you there's a song in there.]

Hubble Telescope to Get New Prescription. The Hubble Space Telescope, which has produced breathtaking images from the distant reaches of the universe since its early 'vision' problems were corrected in 1993, is getting an even stronger pair of glasses, scientists said on Friday. [It's also getting a new hearing aid.]

Handspring to lower Visor's price. The handheld maker said it will drop the price of its Visor Pro from $249 to $229 and cut the price of its entry-level Visor Neo from $199 to $169. [Eh, it still sucks compared to any Pocket PC.]

Non-Apple Buttonless Mouse.[Up next: a mouseless mouse.]

Star Wars Starfighter. Courage. Skill. Honor. These are the three primary qualities that you must bring to Star Wars Starfighter, a flight action/adventure combining intense air and space combat in rich 3D environments. [As you know, our blockade is perfectly legal.]

Keygen Beats Windows Product Activation. The key maker, apparantly released by a group calling themselves “The Blue List,” poses a more significant problem to Redmond – discerning legit keys from those generated by ill-intentioned users. [Nate Mook has a future in tech journalism, mark my words.]

Just what is a Meme, Anyways? “Memes are stories, songs, habits, skills, inventions and ways of doing things that we copy from person to person by imitation. Human nature can be explained by evolutionary theory, but only when we consider evolving memes as well as genes.” [And I just blogged another meme. Well, it's not a meme yet, but wait until David does a parody of this post. Woo boy.]

Love your geek? Let them know with geek e-cards! Besides “I love you” – other card-topics include congrats on your new PC or Apple – R.I.P. to your old computer… [Even though nobody's going to believe me, I came up with this concept a few years ago. It's about time.]

Linux Beat Windows. This article explains how Linux is considerably faster than either Windows 2000/XP at creating threads and processes. The author also walks through their differences and shows how to use them. [Yes, but what kind of FPS can I expect with Solitaire?]

Bart's way to create bootable CD-ROMs. “A bootable CD-ROM is a CD from which you boot the PC. You (the technical guy) can create and prepare the structure for bootable installation, diagnostics or other CDs. Anybody in your company (without any knowledge about CD burning) can create and maintain these CDs by adding or changing files when needed. He just has to start a batch file and select “Build and Burn” to create a CD. This page is for you if you want to: create bootable CD-ROMs on a regular basis; build and burn fully automatic (optional blank CDRW before burn); use only freeware software to create your CDs; create a bootable CD-ROM with multiple boot images; create a DOS bootable CD-ROM using a hardware independent CD-ROM driver (for SCSI and ATAPI). This page is not for you if: you want to create just one simple bootable CD-ROM. You should use Cdrwin, Nero, or any other well-known application to create CDs.”

FRAT – Site closed down. A fraternity that University of Iowa officials suspended in January took down its Web site on Tuesday. [Was it TKE?]

New filter for Photoshop. Reindeer Games has created a Free 7×7 Custom Filter Plug-in (replacing the 5×5 filter that ships with Photoshop) for creating custom filters in both 8-bits and 16-bits per channel images. [I just wanna get channel five. That's NBC. I'm still peacockless.]

Cringely's Dream: OS X on Intel. While I doubt it will ever happen, I can imagine such a port being tremendously popular if it came pre-installed on Dells and Gateways. [Nothing else could take the wind out of Microsoft's sails.]

Posting from PalmVx. [It works, Meryl. It works very well.]

Apple To Regain Throne. Flaunting images of a Pentium processor strapped to the back of a snail and mocking Intel's dancing lab engineers, Apple's 1998 marketing campaign portrayed Macs as world-class speed champs. Four years later, facing a wide MHz deficit, Apple and Motorola once again are looking to produce “Pentium-crushing” Power Macs.[Yeah, I don't wanna buy a computer unless it's innovative and it matches the drapes.]

PCs Are Incorrect on TV. In TV and movies, the bad guys wear black or have foreign accents. They also use PCs, while the good guys use Macs.[]

Good morning fellow coffee drinkers. I also hate cat pictures, yesterday I ran one. [One more person to fall victim to kittyblogging.]

New AnalogX Utility. “Caching saved 40 minutes 39 seconds of your life.” [I had no idea it would work so well. Expect Mark to announce this new utility on our show in a couple of days.]

Latest Patch Can Crash Browser. The way to fix the problem in the short term will be to tweak the coding on Web pages that contain this directive, called the execScript directive, Microsoft said. [Has anybody actually smacked into this problem?]