A Glimpse of Our Lives 31 Years From Now

The future is now.  No kidding.   Based upon technologies that are being perfected now and forces that are measurable now, futurists have a pretty good idea of the kind of world we’ll be occupying in 2050.   We can see about 30 years into the future pretty well without the bother of inventing a time-travel machine. … Read more

COOL TIP: Where Is Your Google Data Backed Up?

You’ve accumulated years and terabytes of Gmail correspondence, calendared events, contacts and photos.  So where are they backed up?  “Google’s servers,” you answer.   Think about it — all of this data relies upon Google having no outages or corruptions.   You have no Plan B.   That’s right, you’ve violated one of the Computer Age’s Prime Directives:  … Read more

COOL TIP: Perfecting the Elusive Poached Egg

Why is cooking nature’s most perfect food so perfectly puzzling?  It’s not you, it’s the egg.  Alas, the healthiest way to prepare an egg turns out to be the most challenging.   We’ve spent the better part of one year coming up with the most foolproof poached egg recipe and have boiled it down to three … Read more

U.S. Post Office’s Best New Secret Service

It’s a great new USPS service that remains one of maildom’s biggest secrets.   It’s USPS’ Informed Delivery and it is great!  (Just think about how many times you see the words USPS and great used in the same sentence).  Right now, this is sort of a secret service because not many residential customers know about it.  … Read more

How is China Hurting America?

There have been numerous efforts to persuade U.S. consumers to “Buy American” and some even to boycott all products produced in China.    The boycott proponents often cite unsafe foods, melamine-tainted plates,  toxic toothpaste and other examples of shoddily-made consumer items.    Yet, China continues to be able to produce many, if not most, household goods at … Read more