A friend sent this to me (yeah, Bud, I call you a friend, and you can’t stop me!)

The NewScientist has this article about the Ig Nobel prize for 2003. One of the winners was Edward A. Murphy, the “author” of Murphy’s law. Read more of the story behind the law here.

www.dogfriendly.com can help find parks and beaches that allow dogs as well as lodging. For those that can’t get by without their pooch.

… is available here. The knowledgebase article contains a link to the complete download (8.96 MB) or you can supposedly get it via Windows Update. It addresses issues detailed in 22 knowledgebase articles.

MyWay has this link to a Reuter’s article about Yahoo’s newest anti-SPAM move. It allows a premium mail subscriber to create a “base name” and up to 500 variations. The user can create a “new” email address and give it out to whomever they like. If SPAM starts to show up, that one account can be shut down. This is similar to services like Mailshell and SpamGourmet and, when coupled with other anti-SPAM measures like Bayesian filters, can provide the most SPAM-free solution. I never give out my true email address except to people I trust — every other email address is one of my “traps”.

A while ago, quite a while ago, a friend of mine loaned me a PowerBook. I had to return it to him a couple of months ago and I’ve missed it. Well, it looks like he’s gonna be able to loan it to me again! — can’t wait!

Tom Koch’s Inside Outlook Express is a good site for information, tips and downloads that pertain specifically to Outlook Express. Backup tools, registry and file storage information are all there.

I put that in quotes because, well, as they say: YMMV (“your mileage may vary”). The article has them broken up into classes like Computing-Everyone, Computing-Experts, Shopping and Information. They’ve also got them all combined into a zip file that you can download and add to your Favorites folder.

Not a lot of surprises here … i mean their number one shopping site is Amazon.com, but, still, it’s nice having them organized in that way.

PCMag.com has this great article of Google tips. It contains pointers to syntax help on the Google site as well as some things I didn’t knew were available like being able to search paper catalogs like, oh, heck, Williams-Sonoma, West Marine and Land’s End.

I didn’t know Google maintained this list of tools and services before I read the article. Good info.

Most recent version is here — dated October 9. Discussion of the state of the plug-in and announcements of new versions is here.

TechTV reports that the Do-Not-Call list web page, hosted by AT&T, has a web bug on it that could relate the individual signing up on the page to an IP address if the right reports are run. Now, I haven’t given this a lot of thought (yet) but it doesn’t seem to me like this is much of an exposure, is it? I mean, by virtue of going to the web page, doesn’t AT&T already have everything that the web bug will give them? If AT&T is already hosting and managing the FTC’s servers and has sufficient access and rights to put the web bug there in the first place, they certainly have access to all the userinformation. And I can understand, having been in the business for a while, that the web bug would allow AT&T to monitor performance. Still, it seems a little odd.

I think this is probably more a matter of insufficient thought being given to an ordinary business practice.