My site of the week, the US Census Bureau, has put together a great website making it easy to search through the mountains of demographic data from the last census. Need to know how many people over the age of 40 live in your county? Stop going door-to-door and head over to factfinder.census.gov.
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Archive for August, 2009
US Census Bureau
Sunday, August 30th, 2009Memory of the Future – August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 30th, 2009Only in science fiction did we ever hear about something called holographic memory. It usually involved some futuristic shiny piece of crystal that held the sum total of all human knowledge. Well, holographic memory is fiction no longer. Some scientists at IBM have developed a prototype system that allows information to be stored three-dimensionally inside a crystal cube. To accomplish this, they use two lasers. These lasers are placed at ninety degree angles to each other, so that their beams intersect somewhere in the crystal. When their beams meet, the molecular composition of that one, tiny place in the crystal is changed. From that point on, this “bit” of information can be retrieved by simply using two lower powered lasers to reflect off of that point. Supposedly, using this technology, a person could store thousands of gigabytes (or terabytes) of information on a piece of crystal no bigger than a chandelier piece.
I’m Eric Spellmann, taking you to the Next Level!
More Information
What is Holographic Memory?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_memory
IBM’s info
http://www.research.ibm.com/topics/popups/deep/storage/html/holo.html
How Does It Work?
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/holographic-memory.htm
Money Factory
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009You know, speaking of cash, what if you suddenly find a huge pile of cash, but it’s disintegrating, burned, or falling apart. Your bank may not exchange it, but the U.S. Treasury might. To exchange it, head to my site of the week, Money Factory. Here, you can get instructions on how to send them your trashy treasure. If they can identify it, they’ll exchange it for crisp new bills, but only at moneyfactory.com.
Join a Processing Club – August 23, 2009
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009There are some very large and fast computers in the world. Problem is, they are also very expensive to operate. So what if you need a high-powered machine, but don’t have any spare change? Just get a few hundred of your friends together to help you. Create a software program that only uses the spare time in a computer to run computations. Divide your mathematical dilemma into pieces and let all of those home computers work on them at the same time. Chances are, you’ll have the answer you’re looking for quicker than if you had actually used one of those supercomputers. This technique is called distributed processing and is gaining in popularity. In fact some people are making serious cash selling this service.
I’m Eric Spellmann, taking you to the Next Level!
More Information
Find a Project
http://distributed.net/
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
http://www.mersenne.org/
Find Aliens
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Mother Proof
Sunday, August 16th, 2009When buying a car, what criteria are important? Well, if you’re a mom, check out my site of the week, Mother Proof. This site rates vehicles based on the needs of mothers. How easy is it load kids into? Are the seats easy to clean? How many grocery bags will it hold? You get the picture. If you have kids, you owe it to yourself to visit motherproof.com.
Cache Increases Speed – August 16, 2009
Sunday, August 16th, 2009When most of us hear the word cash, we think of the green bills with pictures of presidents on them. But have you ever heard of cache, spelled C-A-C-H-E? Cache, specifically Browser cache, can speed up your connection to the Net. Here’s how it works: Whenever you visit a web page, the whole thing, text, pictures, everything is temporarily stored on your hard drive in an area called cache. This area is usually limited to around 5 megabytes, so don’t worry about filling up your system. Whenever you visit a web page for the second time, your system goes out to the server to see if the requested page has changed since you last visited it. If not, it displays the page stored in cache. That’s why pages you’ve already visited seem to pop up quicker. Once the cache gets full, your system automatically erases the oldest information to make room for the new.
I’m Eric Spellmann, taking you to the Next Level!
More Information
What is Cache?
http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci211728,00.html
How to Clear Your Cache
http://www.chami.com/tips/internet/021198I.html
Hollywood Stock Exchange
Sunday, August 9th, 2009What if movie stars were stocks that you could buy and trade? My site of the week, the Hollywood Stock Exchange, pursues that notion in a great online game. You start out with two million play dollars and can buy stock in movie stars and their movies. So, grab those movie reviews and head to hsx.com.
Picking Perfect Passwords – August 9, 2009
Sunday, August 9th, 2009Most people feel pretty safe about their choice in passwords. After all, who could ever guess your Aunt Edna’s fifth poodle’s nickname? But, believe it or not, most people’s passwords are easily guessable. Here’s some guidelines: First, never use a word found in dictionaries. Some hackers actually try to guess your password by trying an entire dictionary against it. One solution is abbreviations. Chances are it would be hard to remember the password, MHALL. However, if you think of it as the first letter in Mary had a little lamb, it’s easy. To be very safe, use a combination of letters and numbers in your passwords.
I’m Eric Spellmann, taking you to the Next Level!
More Information
Some Great Advice
http://www.usewisdom.com/computer/passwords.html
Advice from Google
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/does-your-password-pass-test.html
Visual Thesaurus
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009Thsesaurus’s are typically boring, large tomes. But my site of the night, Visual Thesaurus puts a whole new spin on this reference…literally. Synonymous words are shown as satellites to the main word. You can spin it in 3d and click on another word to make it the center. Heck, it’s fun just to play with, but only at www.visualthesaurus.com.
Careful Computer Cleaning – August 2, 2009
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009Your PC needs cleaning! But be careful. One wrong move and ZAP, your computer’s dead! Never spray any cleaning solution or water onto the computer itself. To clean the monitor, wet a soft cloth with glass cleaner and wipe away the dust. Use the brush nozzle on any vacuum cleaner to get the cookie crumbs out of the keyboard. Now to the hard part, the PC itself. Open up your PC carefully. Use the brush nozzle on the vacuum cleaner again and gently move over the components. To clean the mouse, turn it over, and remove the little rubber ball. Wipe it with a moist cloth and then clean the rollers inside with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol..
I’m Eric Spellmann, taking you to the Next Level.
More Information
How to Clean Your Keyboard (HowCast Video)
http://www.howcast.com/videos/165296-How-To-Clean-a-Computer-Keyboard
The Rest of Your PC
http://www.computerhope.com/cleaning.htm
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