An Icon Wasteland

You know it's bad when your entire desktop is covered in icons. Entire. Desktop. I can tell they're even going off the screen. Some magical application needs to come out that takes care of this kind of stuff. I end up with all these links for "later", but I never seem to get back to them. I end up with a billion* tabs and countless** icons on my desktop and no way to sort them. So let's take a look at a few.

All you need for a "Web 2.0" website!

Fileplanet is offering Ground Control for free - a classic RTS.

This looks like a cool class that's part of MIT's OpenCourseWare - free classes for everyone with access. You don't get credits, but it's free education (if you can understand it on your own).

Got a bunch of spare time and car batteries lying around? Make your own UPS!

If you're thinking about switching to VOIP (Voice Over IP), try out this site to check out how well your connection will handle it.

Microsoft's repackaged the idea of Tablet PC in a new form factor that they code-named Origami. It's still running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, but it's smaller. Origami just sounds better than "Ultra-Mobile PC". I think this could be the start of a new PC market, but that's just what Microsoft is hoping for. There will have to be a large move forward with battery life in these devices for them to be feasible at all, though. 2-3 hours will not cut it, especially if we're still going to have to wait for these machines to boot like a regular laptop. People are used to carrying around their cell phones all day and having them work - these machines will have to step up to that level of battery life for them to be accepted. I could see them becoming like the core piece of a system though. Imagine, all my links could move with me in one of these core pc's, and follow me to each workstation.

Here's a huge Lost - related website, with lots of spoilers, screencaps, and rabid theorizing.

Television Without Pity has some pretty hilarious recaps of episodes of 24, along with lots of other shows. Highlights include calling Computer-guy Edgar "Lispy-Skip". Poor Edgar.

*Exaggeration.
**188 as of this writing.