Tretakoff Musings

Every time I think the Web can't impress me... The folks at Lab360.com :: The Digital Laboratory of Axis360.com, have found a way to listen to movies online. That's right: listen to movies. Why listen? Hey, when I work from home, I have movies on in the background all day. Not watching, just listening. Scary, but it looks like I am not alone in this, and these folks have made it easy to listen!

Y'know, it occurs to me that some folks don't know they can spy on me whenever I am working from home, with my Webcam . I use the built-in webcam for Yahoo Messenger, through Trillian. When I am not using the camera for MSN Messenger, it's always on here.

I've put up some pictures from my new 3.3MP digital camera, at Tretakoff Central. The shots are from sailing on the Bay on Loren's great boat, Another Pearl . Beautiful day to sail, lots of wind, and patented Northern California eye candy!

Ok...time to give credit where credit is due. While NOTHING will get me away from Trillian, Microsoft's new MSN Messenger 6.0 is pretty slick. Great interface: makes AIM & Yahoo look chlidish. Webcamming is a cinch, and great quality (On Yahoo, it always feels just on the verge of crashing). The experience is definitely more shared. You can really feel like you are connecting. I never thought I'd say that MSN Messenger would be the best of the IM clients. Now, if only more folks were on it: most are on AIM; some on Yahoo; some on MSN. I'll keep Trillian to use one program for them all.

This man's weblog, Fazal Majid's low-intensity weblog , saved me. His article on getting a Tungsten T to work with a Sony Ericsson T68i to use Cingular's GPRS as an ISP got me to try it. When I could not make it work, I emailed him. He worked with me, over the span of weeks, to make it happen! He asked for nothing in return, though I offered a bottle of wine. Finally, he asked if I felt I must give him something in return, I make a donation to charities to feed Ethiopia! What a guy! Even better, Cingular claimed this could not be done. I sent their Tech folks the process Fazal outlined, and now THEY will be using it for their tech support! Who says the Web doesn't have an effect???

What the heck is DataViz thinking??? Beyond Contacts purports to be Outlook on your Palm: all the things Palm forgot to port over, it has. It's HUGE . It doesn't use the built-in info from the Chapura conduits, requires at least 5MB of space...and costs $50! Hey, for all that, I can live without the 2 or 3 fields Chapura doesn't import. What a dog...

Google has released the new Google Toolbar . Majorly cool. AutoFill (Microsoft never figured out that the cool feature on the Mac should be on the PC???), a built-in popup stopper, and Blogging on the fly!