Following two release candidates, the 0.4 release of Mozilla Thunderbird is now available. Thunderbird 0.4 features an updated look to Thunderbird’s default theme, including a variety of new icons; better OS integration, cut and paste of images on Windows, and a number of bug fixes and other new features
David Pogue takes up arms against miscellaneous
charges on phone and banking bills, and against innocent
mistakes where customers are repeatedly, routinely overcharged
A novel plastic made by compressing a powdered mixture of two polymers has been produced at room temperature for the first time. The breakthrough holds the promise of plastics that are much more recyclable and more energy efficient to produce
Create your own Picasso style portrait with Mr Picassohead — via The Green Man.
Play with the weirdness of dirtdirt.com’s Dreems. Clicking on any of the three panels swaps a body part, reloading swaps all body parts.
If you like photoshopping sundry bits of carcasses together, send it to the Uncommon Creatures gallery.
Behold the mighty Nohands Kitten in all his incarnations.
If you’ve ever enjoyed flattening your little brother’s carefully constructed tower of blocks, you’ll get a kick out of knocking down the bouncy pink teddy bears.
A new toy from Weebl, the guy who brought me Badger joy, the Monkey can go Anywhere.
Dell has issued a memo to its tech-support staff, telling them not to help Dell customers remove spyware from their systems. Dell has decided that its duty to its users is superceded by its duty to upholding contracts that you sign when you click on the I agree button after downloading software, contracts in which you promise to allow spyware to be installed on your machine, and promise not to try to remove it
Over 38,000 Optus pay TV and Internet subscribers have been double-billed in what has been described by the company as a manual processing error
That’s right: two books of short stories and a website management animal book (probably for Moveable Type users). Info from the horse’s mouth and at O’Reilly
Rumours have it that Sony is planning to let players interact with games using hand gestures, eye movements and emotion sensors in PlayStation 3. There’s a conceptual image of the PS3 doing the rounds that is very pretty, unfortunately its source in unconfirmed making it highly likely that it’s a fake
Toshiba and NEC have won a round in the fight for standardising the format for DVDs as their technology has been embraced by an industry forum, but the real battle is won by convincing consumers and Hollywood
Everyone who uses Perl should be reading the Perl Advent Calendar during Saturnalia. Behind each pixelated cardboard door is an education in using a CPAN module to get the most out your time. Topics covered so far include security, aspect-oriented programming, and validating web forms
Blogger offers support, not only on the everyday help items, but on the really tricky issues of what to do if your mother finds your blog and how not to get fired because of your blog. Perhaps Michael Hanscom should have looked the last one over before he mentioned the arrival of G5s to Redmond on his blog
Newly discovered security flaws in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could let attackers invade a user’s personal computer, but a fix is not yet available
Not many keyboard jockeys could go past a keyboard key pendant.
Thinkgeek is overflowing with wonderful geeky stuff, but their James Bond Stealth Camera is worth pointing out. It’s a teeny digital camera in a Zippo case.
Then there’s the Digital Sundial. Placed on the inside of a north-facing window (south-facing in the northern hemisphere), the sundial can be read through the horizontal mirror. The display updates every ten minutes, and gives a remarkably accurate record of the time during the daylight hours.
Or maybe you’d prefer a crocheted tea cozy for your laptop in red go-faster stripes.
And not to leave out the kiddies, let them create their own fantasy pet with the Discovery Kids Ultimate Labs DNA Explorer. If you get one of these, it’d suggest keeping your junior Einstein away from small pets and younger siblings.
Tapestry is a series of RSS feeds for online comics. They help you keep up to date from within your favourite news aggregator, especially if you happen to miss a few days. While more feeds are coming soon, the small selection does have some gems, including: Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Non Sequitur and The 5th Wave
If you’re heading into a case modding project, the object is usually to improve on the original. In this case, a serious xBox nerd unintentionally turned his gaming machine into Orac
Opte.org announced that they have successfully mapped the entire internet. They are currently compiling a LGL map for all to see. Currently they have a LGL map that has over 5 million edges and has an estimated 50 million hop count. And it only took them 252.68 hours to complete
Applied Digital Solutions are marketing the VeriChip as the world’s only implantable ID technology, claiming they could one day replace credit cards. They are also receiving condemnation from some fundamentalist Christians who believe that this is the fabled ‘mark of the beast’ of biblical lore
Dell is moving its call centre operations for the Latitude and Optiplex computers back to the US from Bangalore, India after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn’t cope with the differing accents and scripted responses. Is this the beginning of a trend where companies recognise that the quality offered by relocation to cheaper centres around the world doesn’t result in customer appreciation and better quality?
In an interesting twist on political correctness, LA County has banned the use of the terms Master/Slave
Jon Lech Johansen, the Norwegian who drew the ire of the Hollywood movie industry by breaking the encryption code for DVDs at age 15, has now cracked the codes for iTunes
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