Heinz's Email Blog September 2006 Archive

It's Irving Berlin Kahn's birthday! In the early 1950s, Kahn helped construct one of the first teleprompters. Fred Barton had presented the idea to Twentieth Century-Fox, who were not interested. ... Read More

The Latin word pandere basically means "to spread" (or, as expandere "to spread out, to expand"). That which spreads also opens up in a way, right? So pandere can mean ... Read More

To get a camel over a pipeline (a feat not uncommon on the Arabian peninsula), build a bridge of sand. For some reason not further explained or investigated, camels refuse ... Read More

What if perceptions fool us not only sometimes (when we look at an optical illusion, for example) but always? What if our memory is ticklish, feeble and unreliable in all ... Read More

Mail Unread Menu, the mail announcer with striking similarities to a kaput escalator, has lost these similarities and gained a menu. From it, you can quickly bring Mail to the ... Read More

Next to the star-shaped asters and ivy, whose blooms are tiny but attract beautiful butterflies, September is yet another month of rose splendor. As cooler temperatures set in, hybrid teas ... Read More

The backslash or reverse solidus, not a character commonly found in any book or periodical, was added to the ASCII character set (whose ^ character has already garnered our interest) ... Read More

Wet daisies or hot sun? Couche soleil or morning in heaven? King penguins or cute cats? Citrus or plum? Santa cat or Halloween bat? Forest or sand castle? If you cannot ... Read More

Japanese family wedding party vacation. Dragonball nostradamus Pamela Anderson. Web software reference blog music design news. These are some of the most popular tags and searches from flickr, del.icio.us (both ... Read More

marginal rate of substitution: the ratio at which one given substitutes for another along an indifference curve. For example, a measure of the number of characters a user is willing ... Read More

It was in 1938. Or 1946. Or 1947. While standing engineer in front of an experimental radar dish or walking through a room in which a magnetron (a vacuum tube ... Read More

AOL adds to AIM Mail, the free email service as totally cool as sprites, free email domains. If you reside in the U.S., you can get a personal domain name ... Read More

When you want to remember a number, break it down into as little syllables as possible, and say it fast. Since memory involves the phonological loop, which holds about 2 seconds ... Read More

Many a great thing can be said about the plum, a fruit of sheer endless variety and delicacy. Today, let's talk about one of the great things made from plums, ... Read More

When mangabey monkeys (named after the Nosy Mangabe, a small island in Madagascar, though they really only inhabit continental Africa along the equator) decide where to go for supper, they ... Read More

On the tips of its toes, a spider waits for the perfect breeze to cast a thread of silk. Riding the current on the dangling, thin parachute, it will travel ... Read More

Knives made for cutting cheese expose huge holes in their blades to give the aromatic dairy product little to stick to. If that's not anti-adhesive enough for your chaource, try ... Read More

If you want to learn about new mail — not necessarily in a Hotmail account — in a timely manner and have a passion for LEDs, diodes and capacitors, try ... Read More

Maybe you can help me. Have you heard of the Polish woman who, for some thirty years or so, meticulously recorded the details of her life that could be counted? ... Read More

Does Rachmaninoff sound like a daisy, Sidney Bechet like a lily and, um, various artists like a rose? If you say so, new software developed by students of professor Jörn ... Read More

The ASCII code page, created in the 1960s and still valid as the way to map common characters to the numbers which represent them inside a computer, includes the circumflex ... Read More

Bells and Whistles for Outlook, ournementis and billis, has learned a few new tricks. In Bells & Whistles 3.0, it is now possibly to set the greetings, formats, fonts, signatures ... Read More

It is a combination of up to 250 different essential oils, ethyl esters, aldehydes and alcohols developed during ripening that makes up the flavor of an apple. No wonder that there ... Read More

As early as 131 B.C., the citizens of Rome could stroll to the forum romanum, the big central marketplace, and get their daily dose of news concerning legal proceedings, governmental ... Read More

In the usually busy afternoon hours of September 9, 1945, the Mark II, an early computer then under construction at Harvard University, was behaving oddly. "Amazing" Grace Murray Hopper, the ... Read More

OE Quick Tools, the all-artificial Valerian for Outlook Express, now remedies another common frustration. With OE Quick Tools 4.0.27, you can specify an address that will receive a Bcc copy ... Read More

With no paper at hand, Hermann Zapf sketched on a mille lire bank note samples of an old Roman inscription he found around Santa Croce in Firenze — the first ... Read More

Marillenknödel, o Marillenknödel (apricot dumpling)! Not only are you simple in principle and simple to cook; not only do you look appealing and taste a lot better; you are also ... Read More

Mulberry, the powerful email program named after a street in Cambridge named after Pyramus and Thisbe, has been updated. Mulberry 4.0.5 brings a new single number on the price tag: ... Read More

The white water lily is not found in too many a pond, but where it takes root, the whole water is soon covered by the beautiful leaves and even more ... Read More

If write you must, bring on the text editor! Get rid of the other windows. Get rid of the other applications. And hidden be the task bar; the menu bar, ... Read More

The Hydra, guarding an entrance to the underworld beneath a lake near Lerna in ancient Greece, had, on top of the body of a hound, more serpentine heads than fit ... Read More

Faced with unemployment and little entrepreneurial opportunity at home, the Swiss of the 17th century spread all across Europe to find work. Far away from home and with the prospect ... Read More

If you wanted to use one of the unwieldy, expensive, beautiful and exciting computer systems in the 1940s or 50s, you'd reserve a block of time (usually, they say, too ... Read More