Heinz's Email Blog August 2007 Archive

Windows Live Hotmail, the free email service that 1996's HoTMaiL has become, now comes with 5 GB free and 10 GB paid storage. A few updates fit in there as ... Read More

An iMac and a MacBook? And no desire to bend reaching for the MacBook's keyboard? Or, while we're at it, any other Mac's keyboard? Try teleport. This elegant and easy tool ... Read More

A hand-made piece of paper's rugged edges are called "deckle edges" — from the frames ("deckles") used to press paper pulp into the desired size. If you look closely, you ... Read More

A horseshoe-shaped bone in your neck called the hyoid is the only bone not attached to any of your other bones. Isolated in this manner, the hyoid is held solely ... Read More

Why would people collect ant eggs in the woods surrounding Vienna? Like so many forests, the Vienna woods began as royal hunting grounds. Gradually, other uses were allowed. Lumberjacks, beekeepers and ... Read More

Hard cheese has a tendency to get even harder once its protective rind is removed. A mild, semi-soft butter cheese suffers even worse. Plastic wrap (appropriately called cling-film by the British) ... Read More

AIM Mail and AOL Mail, AOL's free email offerings, now fittingly include AIM instant messaging. A panel shows you online contacts, and you can chat right in your browser. If ... Read More

Multiple clipboards are nice — unless they are spread across multiple computers, of course. To copy some text from one to another, you could send an email, perhaps, or use an ... Read More

Hurtling down some stairs, I have Lieutenant Columbo before my eyes. Always precise in his movements, Peter Falk qua Columbo steps downstairs. His eyes are fixed on a stopwatch, which he ... Read More

It was the year 1834. An important parliamentary reform had been passed, and slavery abolished throughout the British Empire. Time for the prime minister to send a trade delegation to ... Read More

I had: a few soft tortilla wraps, this wonderful rich Camembert cheese, and hunger. Boy do the three go well together! Give it a try maybe. I'll see how Brie works ... Read More

When a milkmaid making butter could not the resist the creamy temptation and nibbled a bit, there were, fortunately, always butter- or, more precisely, cream-flies to blame. This is how ... Read More

Recently, my bell rang. It was a smiling delivery person with a packet for my absent neighbor. "Sure," I said assuringly, "you can leave it with me. I am, however, not ... Read More

No, not mad; not "clean like mad" — "clean like a maid!" If you clean like a maid, you learn an "easy peasy" way to shine a microwave and get rid ... Read More

Instead of clean and salty water, you get a gray and bleak slop? It could be chalk not dissolving easily. Chalk powder is added to salt to make it flow ... Read More

Stubborn but delicious. Smooth but vicious. Who has not yet wrestled with a coconut? I know how to hammer on it, first with a nail to drain the juice and then ... Read More

When something is as deservedly popular as barbecues, questions about its origins inevitably arise. Unfortunately, the source of grilling is obscure. One of the theories — maybe the most agreeable — ... Read More

Take two cigarettes or three and unroll them. Boil some water and make tobacco tea. Let the infusion stand for a couple of minutes. After the tea has cooled, spray ... Read More

If the (constantly growing) storage provided for free in Gmail is not enough for all your messages and attachments, you can now get additional space for an annual fee. The added ... Read More

Want your Mac OS X Mail to be faster? Go vacuum it, either "manually" or with one of those robots that flounder across the floor strategically. Now that Mail has sped ... Read More

It's March 20, 1965. A young singer from France starting for Luxembourg appears live on stage for the Eurovision song contest. Starting a bit nervously, she performs Serge Gainsbourg's Poupée ... Read More

SpeedFiler, the Mercedes-Benz for filing mail in Outlook, has a new smooth Wankel engine. Analyzing messages and folders, SpeedFiler 2.0 can suggest likely target folders with impressive accuracy. Also new is ... Read More

How far away is the thunderstorm? To calculate, you probably count the seconds between a flash of lighting and its clap of thunder, then divide by three (for km) or ... Read More

Mail Forward, the OS X tool that handily forwards all mail coming into one email account to another, now does so for Yahoo! Mail Beta users and IMAP accounts as ... Read More

Why is the sun red at sunset and the sky orange, brown, pink and yellow, but certainly not blue? The sun's white light goes through a filter before it reaches your ... Read More

Receiving his second Nobel Prize, the chemist Linus Pauling played down this remarkable feat. One's chances of getting a Nobel Prize at all are slim: one in several billion (or ... Read More

Spartacus was a slave who escaped from the gladiator school at Capua with a few fellow gladiators in 73 B.C.. Commanding a growing army of slaves, he kept Rome busy ... Read More

If you write about the Rosetta stone or a wall of Thutmose III and want to include quotations, you can rely on images depicting the hieroglyphs — using the fine ... Read More

The space behind your desk should be empty: no bookshelves, no plants, no mirrors, no trash can, no printer. Feng Shui advisers suggest this because that area represents your past, ... Read More

Bloglines, the Google Reader alternative that came before Google Reader, now offers a version optimized for the iPhone: elegant, prizing display estate and dubbed iBloglines. I was not able to ... Read More