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Dodging the Chocolate Bullet!
Sometimes it just isn’t safe to go grocery shopping. I mean, not for me. Because some of the folks who set up store displays of tantalizing food really know what they’re doing! Artists they are, truly. Especially around holidays! For us chocolate addicts, that means we’re putting ourselves at risk, every time we step into…
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Baha’i Temple Ceiling
Here’s an enthralling new image of the ceiling of the Baha’i House of Worship in Evanston, Illinois. Taken by Michael Bennett, a Chicago-area resident who frequently walks and takes early-morning pictures of Lake Michigan and its environs. At the center of the Baha’i Temple ceiling is a sacred symbol of the Baha’i Faith — the…
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Stop CryptoLocker Virus by Showing Extensions
There’s a deadly new Windows virus going around: CryptoLocker. Take all the usual precautions. But if you haven’t already done so — change your Windows folder options to show file extensions. Then don’t click open anything that looks like a data file (PDF, JPG, DOC, etc.) but ends in .EXE. Because then it’s a wolf…
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Rubik’s Robots: Real Life Transformers
Real life is increasingly — incessantly — inexorably invading what was once the privileged domain of science fiction. “Rubik’s Robots” — real life transformer robots based on principles of the famous Rubik’s Cube — are in the works at MIT! Erno Rubik, inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, is one of the fascinating people I follow…
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Are All the Good Domain Names Already Taken?
Are all the good domain names already taken? No, they aren’t! Millions of the best, most valuable website domain names are lying around unclaimed. Ripe for the picking — waiting to be registered by someone just like you. You’ve heard the opposite. The world is full of pundits telling you that all the good website…
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Is It “Egotistical” to Own Your Own Name on the Web?
Is it “egotistical” to own your own name as a dot-com? Elitist? Pretentious? Narcissistic? And does it give you an “unfair advantage” over others? Certain readers have been asking questions like these, ever since I started urging you all to register your own names — whenever possible — as dot-com Internet domains. Like I did…
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There’s Hope Yet for a Clean Energy Future
Two energy related news items give me hope! The first is from David Brin’s “Contrary Brin” blog, davidbrin.wordpress.com — his 13 August 2013 entry. The second was shared by Barney Leith on Google+. Sweden Can’t Get Enough Garbage You read that right: Sweden is running out of garbage, thanks to highly efficient recycling habits,…
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Owning Your Own Email Name (for free)
If your name is still available as an Internet “domain name”, buy it now. Ditto your children’s names. Here’s a recent article where I explain why. As I say there, it costs peanuts to take ownership of your web-name: GaryMatthews.com, PeterFlipsen.com, or whatever yours would be. And I stress — again — that you should…
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Owning Your Own (Web) Name: Why You Must Grab It NOW
If your name is still available, snap it up. Now. Please! There will never be a better time. I’m referring to your web-name. Specifically, to the Internet “domain name” that matches your “regular” name. Your “regular” name is the one by which people introduce you. For example, if your name is Ed Smith, then your…
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Ai Hasegawa: Shared-baby Shark Mama
We can all see that the letters in “Ai Hasegawa, Shark Mother” rearrange to spell “Aha! Hogwash! Rare mistake.” But it isn’t hogwash, and it isn’t a mistake. It’s a rare “Aha” moment brought to us by a wacky genius I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more about. Ai Hasegawa is an artist, animator,…
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Owning My Own Name — Part 3
Thank you, Google! By that I mean, thank you for your continuing campaign to raise your search-engine rankings for good, content-driven websites, and for your escalating war against sleazy ones. You’re catching hell for this, Google. But keep giving it back, and keep it up. You’re doing the right thing. By “good, content-driven websites” I…
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A Social-Sharing Privacy Pitfall
Being a late-comer to social-media, I’m discovering its pleasures — and pitfalls. Among the pitfalls is that it’s easy to hold a private conversation in public, without realizing it. And “share” way more than we intended! This happens a lot to politicians and celebrities. They make some unguarded comment, not realizing there’s an open microphone…