Testament to Mediocrity
Ok, honestly, not all thsi stuff is exactly the next polio vaccine or anything, but many of these are things that I find very neat, and often indicative of the state of the modern world, for better or worse.
JFAX intrigued me from the first, though I've never had a need to use their service. Basically, you pay them 13 bucks a month, and you get a phone number which people can send faxes to, or leave voice mail at, and the faxes and voice mail are both sent to your e-mail account. This strikes me as one of the coolest ways to create a virtual office out there, and If I ever go into business for myself, I will probably chose this service over laying otu the cash (and space) for a fax machine.
Earth 2025 is a web based war game that is completely free, and a bit addictive. Fortuneately, it's designed so you can only spend a few minutes each day playing, so it doesn't eat your soul. It's a lot of fun, and as I said, it's free.
Super Note Tab is an incredible little text editor that I've started using for teverything. Loaded down with powerful features, the kicker is it's shareware, and very cheap shareware at that. While the unregistered versions works pretty darn well, it's on $5 to register, which is worth it just to support something this useful.
Ok, for some of us, the very idea of paying for an Internet browser is repugnant, but bear in mind you get what you pay for. Opera is a fully functioned Web browser (well, it doesn't support Java yet, but th enext release will) that you actually have to buy, for $35 last time I heard. In return, you get a tight little program, the most recent version I had fit on a single floppy, with functions that even Netscape and Internet Explorer don't have.
An idea that's been a long time coming, Nuvomedia will soon be releasing the Rocketbook, a portable reading unit that looks very neat. Imagine being able to buy a book on the net, download it immediately into a device the size of a paperback, and be able to walk off and read it, just like a real book. Now imagine being able to carry 5 or 6 or even moor books in this device. As you can see, I'm pretty excited abotu the prospects of this. In fairness though, while the rocketbook is the neatest one I've seen, two other companies are working on similar products, Softbook, and Everybook
The Brunching Shuttlecocks basically make the best toys on the net. It's easier to go look than to listen to me try to explain it.
What is Alexa? I'm not quite sure myself, but some of my friends use it and say good things abotu it, so you're welcome to find out for yourself
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