CompUSA has presented me with some excellent discounts on hardware and software lately. Today, I got 60% on Windows Vista Home Premium (~$64 total after discount). I’m in the middle of installing it right now.

You might ask, “Is it wise to blog while upgrading your OS?” To which I would answer, “Probably not.”

“Is it wise to install Vista at all?” … “Probably not.”

But hey, it’s got eye candy! And it was on sale. I’ll keep repeating the mantra when it crashes or doesn’t work. I mean, really, who would exp

Tags: software, Windows Vista

The New York Times has released an application called the Times Reader. This application attempts to emulate the look and easy accessibility of an actual newspaper. It’s available for download now.

Though it’s just in beta, I found the experience quite pleasant. After registering for the free service, I downloaded the application (requires Windows XP and it installs Microsoft .NET 3.0 software) and read a few of the Times’ articles for the day including a detailed story about China’s leaders and their stance on the nation becoming a global power, an article about a new type of keyboard, and an article covering the pros and cons of cell phone insurance.

The New York Times Reader viewing the Technology section

It has several benefits compared to a standard news site or aggregator. The application enables the paper to maintain its typical look, feel, and layout on a computer screen. It does this while also providing enhanced abilities such as adjustable font sizes, links to external websites, and easy navigation to any section of the paper. Of benefit to the NYT is their ability to control the layout and sizing of the advertisements which obviously fund the service.

Another nice feature for the user is the ability to schedule updates. You can have it sync to the server and download the latest articles once a day. In addition to this, it can grab new stores on an interval you set (30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes).

If you’re able to run this application and our looking for a bit more news and depth than the Drudge Report can give you, or perhaps you can’t afford a real newspaper, this would be a great application for you to give a try.

Tags: Drudge Report, New York Times

For those of you who use Blogger, you may be interested to know that there’s a new beta version available. I don’t know what all the features are (the beta page lists them all), but it looks like there’s some new AJAX code running parts of the site in addition to other features meant to make it easier to edit the appearance of your site, add tags to your posts, and control who can read your posts. Not a bad upgrade at all.

However, if you use Safari (Jake, I’m talking to you), it won’t work. Yet.

Tags: Blogger

At my current rate of email usage, I will not exhaust the space I have on my Gmail account for approximately 28 more years.

Google has released a beta version of Google Desktop which, once installed, allows a person to search for files, emails, AOL IM chats, and a few other things. I’ve begun playing around with it and it’s snazzy… it makes finding information in old emails a lot easier and is much quicker than built in search features in Windows XP. One thing to be wary of is not to install this on a computer with sensitive information or with multiple users since the search reveals everything to a person with access to it.

For example, if this is a shared family computer, emails sent by one family member could be easily read by another without needing permission or necessarily even passwords. Also, stored chats can be interesting to look back at but snooping eyes may discover things they’re not meant to see.

Aside from privacy concerns (basically, don’t use it if you’re worried about your info getting into the wrong hands), GD is the handiest desktop search tool I’ve ever used.

If you search Yahoo, I’m currently the number one result for “Jesus Freak.” Unfortunately, I think this is do to a link I contain on most of my pages to a music site named “Jesus Freak Hideout,” but I’m still honored to be recognized by the world’s not-quite-number-one search engine as a “Jesus Freak.”