Matt Drake writes a great board game review blog that I read regularly, and seems like a genuinely cool guy.

He posted today asking for help in locating a wedding dress and other clothing that went missing from a dry cleaners after a house fire.  If you know anyone in the Dallas & Fort Worth metropolitan area, please pass along the request to be on the lookout for Matt's lost items.

http://drakesflames....e-find-my-dress.html

From zdnet writer:

I’ve been following Windows 8 closely over the past few months, spending a lot of time not only with the official releases but also with a number of leaked builds, and I’ve had the chance to install the operating system on a variety of hardware platforms, both old and new. However, since my primary working platform is a desktop system, this is where I’ve had the chance to spend the most time with Microsoft’s new operating system.

I’m now ready to sum up my Windows 8 experience with a single word: awful.

He later sums up with a thought that strikes as true to me:

Windows 8 wasn’t born out of a need or demand; it was born out of a desire on Microsoft’s part to exert its will on the PC industry and decide to shape it in a direction — touch and tablets — that allows it to compete against, and remain relevant in the face of Apple’s iPad..

I just can’t shake the feeling that Windows 8 would be better off as two separate operating systems. A ‘classic’ Windows 8 for regular desktop and notebook systems - which would feel more like a service pack for Windows 7 than a full release — and a separate ‘Metro’ version for touch-enabled hardware.

Two interesting essays on how to properly store and handle user passwords for a site -- not quite as simple as you thought -- it's not good enough just to salt and use a hash function.

• https://krebsonsecur...Krebs+on+Security%29
• http://throwingfire....-passwords-securely/

Also of related interest:

• http://www.nytimes.c..._r=2&pagewanted=2&hp
• http://queue.acm.org...etail.cfm?id=2254400

FreewareGenius has a big comprehensive article on free online academic courses:

Online education is ubiquitous, it seems, and has a lot to recommend it, such as the convenience of learning when and where you want, and the fact that there are so many free courses out there. However, many online schools seem like they suddenly came out of nowhere, as if created yesterday by a committee of MBA types. The good news is that most brick and mortar schools now have online programs, including most of the best universities in America, and many offer online courses that are 100% free to take.

This post will list the top 40 US universities and present you with the free-for-all online education resources that each college (and/or members of it’s faculty) has on offer. This article aims to be the most comprehensive list of online education resources for the top colleges in America.

Source: http://www.freewareg...-colleges-in-the-us/

The excellent CybernetNews blog has been running a long series of detailed guides to XBMC, a cross-platform software suite for powering a home theater PC.

It looks like a really useful series for anyone considering making the jump to using a HTPC (Home Theater PC).

Now that I’ve gotten to the cable-cutting point I started looking to see if there was a solution that would fit my needs better, and that’s when I decided to go with the newly released XBMC 11. ..So here I sit, fully converted to an XBMC household. I have documented various aspects of my journey and will be sharing them here on the site starting tomorrow. We have about a month worth of guides that range from building an HTPC all the way to troubleshooting issues you might have with your own setup.

http://cybernetnews....m/xbmc-intro-guides/

Neat roundup on FreewareGenius today about some world news reading applications that use different interfaces.

With the explosion of information and news sources that is the hallmark of the internet, application developers are coming up with creative ways to browse and read the News, adding customization, Geo-mapping, and social sharing and discovery functionality to your reading experience. If you subscribe to RSS feeds to get your articles delivered then you should check out some of these services, as some are similar though not the same.

This article will present four free apps that offer novel approaches to perusing and consuming the news. These apps are: Newsmap, News360, Hubii, and Comunitee.