There is a new online computer magazine that recently launched. The magazine is in PDF format that you can download and read when you wish. Great to take on your old laptop or if you are lucky enough to have one, your Tablet PC.

Here is part of their table of contents for issue 2:

• Hardware reviews: Fujifilm E500 Zoom, Epson PictureMate, nVidia Geforce 6600GT, Microsoft Optical Desktop with fingerprint reader, Netgear DG834G, Pinnacle ShowCentre, Avermedia AverTV DVB-T771, Creative Zen Micro, HP iPaq RC3715, Logitech Mediaplay Mouse, HP PSC 2500 Photosmart, iPod Photo, Saitek force Feedback R440
• Software reviews: Microsoft Encarta 2005, Microsoft Autoroute 2005, McAfee Internet Security Suite 2005, Spy Sweeper 3, Pinnacle Studio 9
• Games reviews: Rome: Total War, Sid Meier's Pirates
• Tutorials: Windows XP System Properties, Web hosting: registering a domain name, Microsoft Word: inserting pictures, Getting started with broadband, Q&A
• Features: Antivirus software, Last minute Christmas shopping

And they now have an RSS feed to notifiy you when new issues become available. Try it out at:

www.HomeComputerMagazine.com

A little history:

I have designed software for several decades now, starting back in 1981 with my Commodore VIC-20 computer which came with 3.5 K (yes, K, not megs) of RAM and a data cassete that stored your programs on audio cassette tapes. Had a lot of fun learning BASIC and machine code programming on that system.

Just down the road a little bit, Commodore release their new C-64 model that came with 64K of ram and these great graphics objects known as "sprites". That was my primary machine for a few years and I built several software packages for that machine which only sold a handful of copies.

I still have the Commodore C-64 Executive that was a luggable computer, It has a keyboard that folds up on the front, has a 4" (if I recall correctly) color monitor and one 5 1/4 160K floppy drive. This was their answer for a "portable" computer back in the 80's.

It's Back:

Well, all that to say the Commodore 64 is back in production some what. Jeri Ellsworth, a high school drop out (such as myself) self-taught computer chip designer has built a functional Commodore 64 on a single chip. This is crammed into a joystick and is being sold on QVC. They have sold over 70K units so far.

What a cool gift for us old geeks out there!!

http://www.techzonez.com/comments.php?shownews=11533

For the timeline history of the Commodore personal computers:

http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/chronology_portcommodore.htm

Ever snowflake is unique, so they say.  Here it appears to be true.  At the time of this writing there are over 268,380 of them.

Okay, I will get to the point.  Someone sent my wife a link to this site, where you create snowflakes.  It is more than just that though.  When you go to the link below, you will see a winter scene with snowflakes falling.  Mouse over one of them and it will open a window showing the snowflake someone made and a simple holiday greeting.  You can reply to the person's greeting and others can view your replies, IF they catch the same star with your mouse.  If you wish, you can be emailed people's responses.

Very simple and cool (no pun intended)!  Each snowflake is a chance to communicate with people you would never normally meet.

Try it out and create some flakes.  You never know who may catch your flake ;)

Shopping for Christmas gifts is always a pain for me. You go out there and most stores are repeats of the others. I like to get things that are a bit special but usually those are hard to find.

Today I found:

http://dunecraft.com/products/index.html 

Snow should make a good gift for those that do not get any, now you can give them a kit to make their own.

How about a Dinosaur plant that grows in one day? You can always let it go to sleep for up to 50 years if you are tired of it :)

Maybe you want to give them "space sand" that never gets wet and can be used to make shapes in under water, but when you scoop it out of the water, it is dry sand again..

If the person you are buying for has room around their house, you can get a Cabbage Palm that grows 65 feet.

All these fun things are at DuneCraft.com

Another site is:

http://thingsyouneverknewexisted.com 

They have a host of gifts that are not your typical find in stores. Try "Shocking Roulette" or a cute stuffed bear breaks wind by a remote control. All kinds of fun and unusual gifts!

If you are into Gag gifts, you might take a look at:

http://www.gagsplus.com 

They have all kinds of rude stuffed animals and dolls, clocks moving backwards, Bobble Head picture frames, lots and naughty Santa stuff and many other products.

Happy gift shopping!

Mozilla released Thunderbird V1.0, which is now available at their web site:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

This is a great open source free email program which now includes RSS feed client.  It is a good replacement for Microsoft Outlook Express, and for many of us, a good replacement for Microsoft Outlook that comes with Microsoft Office.

It has many features but there are still some lacking.  Even as an RSS client, it should have a few more features added to allow you to specify the frequency of refreshing a feed along with a form of aggregation, so that when you click on a folder, it will display a list of all the entries for all feeds in the folder or nested under the folder.  Currently, it appears, you would have to click on each feed to read them.

When you have multiple email accounts, it builds an entry for each with an inbox, drafts, templates, sent and trash folders.  You can combind them into one folder, but it would be hard to track which message came from which account.  My main grip is that you have to leave these groups expanded so that all the sub-folders show to know when new mail arrives in the folder.  It does not have the count of unread emails shown on accounts that are collapsed, so you would have to expand the group to know if there is any mail.  For many this will probably not matter much, but if you are like me and have many accounts (I have over 30 to watch over), this makes for a lot of scrolling to see find the new mail.

Overall though, it is a quality program which I recommed for the email functionality.  The RSS still needs to be improved before I will get rid of ShaperReader.

Also note, if you already use a prior version of Thunderbird, most of your extentions will probably not work.