Lumpy's Corner

A few days ago I mentioned the possibility that Google may have a browser in the works. Matt Hartley then mentioned it in lockergnome web developer and then it was mentioned in linkswarm. Within a few short hours, my post literally received hundreds of views. I had no idea just how many people were interested in this topic.

I also thought it was rather old news and put it up as a snippet. I guess this is the type of stuff that most folks simply do not follow. I decided, largely at the request of family and friends, to expand on it a little.

Seems like there is more in the rumor mill than I first thought. In fact, it seems, most likely, that Google is working on an Operating System. All of this has been the topic of discussion going back as far as April 2004. (That is about when the buzz started to show up in blogs.) One of my co-workers said that "they will never be able to replace Windows, Windows is too established..."

I just wanted to quickly post that I finally found an RSS reader that does everything I want it to. RSS owl rawks!

First of all, it lets you read the feeds while offline. That is the one feature that most readers don't have. Lumpy must read feeds offline for he does not always have internet. Some other features include:

• Available for Mac, Windows, Linux and Solaris
• Import/export OPML file
• It can import your blogrolls
• It can save the feed in PDF, RTF or HTML format

This is good software and has many more features. I like it so much that you can expect to see in the sidebar very soon. Give it a try; I am sure you will like it.

I was reading my feeds yesterday and I came across a lockergnome by Chris Pirillo. Chris was talking about someone rather careless with a cell phone conversation and it reminded me that I wanted to post a review about this software I tried. I would also suggest you go read Chris' post and take it to heart.

If you are like me, you do worry about the strength of you passwords. If you are a typical PC user however, odds are you do not even know what I mean by password strength.

I was actually wondering if someone would try and do something like this. There seems to be an AdSense Trojan that replaces Google Ads with imposters.

There is more information avialable at Tech Crunch. There is also a give away for the sites that run the Google referal. (Like the one below the banner ad in the right column.) If your PC is infected, the referals will be text links and not graphics.

I am trying Xenu to check for broken links on this site. So far, I am very impressed. It only took about 20 minutes to crawl this entire site via my 115.2 kbps modem.

Now I have to fix them all. :(

I have mentioned many times that I love lockergnome. Before we go any further, this is not a "top 10 list". It is just ten selected reasons. I could go on for days about this resource. Here are ten reasons why:

• A list of 6 keyboards for under 20 bucks
• A method to stress test your PC - free copies for evaluation.
• A list of 5 mice for under 20 bucks
• Upload Express
• Not my thing but still kewl - a game PC for less than 800 bucks
• Kewl Stories
• HDClone free edition
• Resource Hacker
• For you online shoppers Price Pirate
• A list of The Chat Room - You can almost always get help here.

Truth be told, I don't know all that much.... I just know where to look.

To Chris and all the Gnomies, Thanks for all the help over the years.

This is just funny Isolatr, an anti-social web seb site. I have got to try the IM beta.

"With IMolatr you are always listed as away and, if people try and contact you IMolatr will actually set their hands on fire!"

Sounds like a kewl feature to me! Be sure and read the FAQs

For those of you who wish to disconnect, this is your solution.

Kudos to Boing Boing for this gem of a find!

Finally, I managed to get everything back and working. I was ready to turn the PC into a giant paperweight!

Seems like an update to AVG is the most likely cause but I can not be sure. Two days ago, my Outlook began acting weird. Better put, it started acting in a manner that rendered it completely useless. The last event likely to cause this was an update to AVG anti-virus.

I am still not 100% sure that AVG is the culprit but something, somewhere got dorked about the time of the update. Whatever it was and wherever it occurred really messed up Outlook.

I am in love. Not the typical, usual, I "met her at the club and she swept me off my feet" love. No this was far from that. I have seen this apple of my eye around for a long while. I thought nothing of her at first. However, for many a years I kept hearing about her.

I heard good things, like she moves very fast and does not demand much and she, amazingly given the subject matter, is very stable. I heard about her often enough to keep looking her up once in a while. Each time I "checked her out" she looked good, usually somewhat different but always more appealing than before. Each time I yearned though I had to flee. I'm shamed to admit, she still wasn't "easy" enough for me.

I know I shouldn't have been afraid. There were times when I made attempts to conquer her by putting forth an effort. I always ended up aborting and quiting because I could not get her to perform as I wished. Too much work... I wanted effortlessly Easy. Rather than digging in and trying harder at what I could master and for free, I found it easier to spend hard earned money to achieve the performance I desired.