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Say No to Vista !

Computer Interests

Chandler information manager

One Laptop Per Child

Wiki technology is used on this website. It is very useful on intranets or even a stand alone computer.

This wiki implementation is PBwiki where you can create your own free wiki. The service uses basic wiki markup, allows freelinks along with mixed case links and has a very helpful staff. I prefer the simple wiki markup to WYSISYG. One unique feature of PBwiki, is that you can create a private wiki, which requires a password for visitors to view and edit the wiki. I've been using PBwiki since December 05 and have never seen their server go down. You can also easily create a zip archive of your entire PBwiki site. They also have an active forum where you can get answers to your questions.

Note Studio is a wiki implementation that runs on the Palm OS and the PC. The Note Studio blog contains recent developments and there is a forum as well.

Other wiki stuff and Wiki history.

Handspring Visor Palm OS

The Handspring Visor is small Palm OS computer that will fit in your pocket and weighs 6 ounces. It is basically an improved version of the Palm Pilot. It contains the following built-in applications: calendar, address book, memo pad, calculator, world time, expense tracker and To Do lists. It comes with 8 Meg of internal memory for data storage. It can also exchange information with a PC. Thousands of third party programs have been written for it. Useful programs I have for my Visor are Filez from http://www.nosleep.net, Brain Forest (an outlining program), HanDBase (a database program), Mini Calc (a spreadsheet), Note Studio (see Wiki technology) and Fitaly (a replacement keyboard). I now own a Palm Tungston E, since my Visor bit the dust. The Tungston E is a nice fast color machine; it has a slot for a SD memory card and a stereo headphone jack.
I used an Atari Portfolio for several years; it was good for its time, but it was too big (size of a video tape) and too heavy (1 pound).

AXON Idea Processor is a great piece of Windows software for thinking, brainstorming, organizing, creating Mind maps and taking notes. It allows you to put your ideas on paper visually as graphic objects (circles, boxes, graphics) and show relationships with lines between objects. Each object or idea can have further information hidden from view. The neat thing is that you can have 500 layers (screens) of objects and objects can be interconnected between levels. Axon also provides hints and checklists to help trigger thinking.

LOTUS AGENDA is a free form DOS database program with some unique features. Data is entered as items. Each item can have a hidden note attached to it. Items can be sorted into categories. Views can be created which include items from multiple categories. Some AI is built into the software; if you type in 'next Tuesday', Agenda will automatically assign the item to the category for that date. Categories can be set up that are mutually exclusive and categories can have 'siblings' at a lower level.
Agenda is no longer supported by Lotus, but you may still be able to find copies out there. It is a great product.
Agenda full screen

Ruby

Ruby is a new object oriented scripting language that runs on multiple platforms. It is easy to learn and makes programming easier. Find out more info at http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/index.html

Python

Python http://www.python.org/, is a free, portable, powerful, easy to use, object-oriented programming language. It is available in unix, Windoze and Mac implementations. Its modular structure and useful data structures result in smaller, easier to write programs. Give it a try!

Logo

Logo is a powerful programming language developed by Seymour Papert at MIT to teach computer programming to children.

Logo is powerful since it is based on the artificial intelligence programming language LISP. George Mills has developed MSW Logo http://www.softronix.com/logo.html and distributes it for free as shareware for Windoze. Logo's modular coding, list processing and control structures allow complex problems to be solved. Since it is an interpreted language, its main drawback is that it is slower than a compiled language. With the increasing speed of CPUs this is no longer a big problem.

Micro Worlds logo is a commercial version of logo that runs on both the PC and Macintosh. I am currently using Micro Worlds Pro which is available from http://www.microworlds.com/. This is the version of logo which I have used with my children.

Terrapin Logo http://www.terrapinlogo.com/ is a commercial version of logo which includes multitasking turtles, jpeg graphics, user defined buttons and sliders and an excellent tutorial.

Elica Logo
Logo book for OLPC

Logo in Python
http://pylogo.org/LogoLanguage.html
http://pylogo.org/PyLogo.html