Chris O.

Finnish software house Rovio is the developer of Angry Birds, currently the top-selling paid app on every mobile device in every country on every planet in the known universe. At the time of writing, sales figures run into the hundreds of millions and the game is being ported to just about any device, mobile or not, that can handle it. And that of course includes all smartphones, either Apple or Android or Nokia or Palm, Windows, Mac, all games consoles and even the color Nook e-book reader.

For anyone away in some not-entirely-parallel universe this last year, Angry Birds is a video puzzle game which involves stylized cartoon birds being launched by slingshot at stylized cartoon pigs. There are five different types of birds, each with their own special characteristics, and the pigs are protected in a variety of clever and frustrating ways by an assortment of materials of different degrees of destructibility. To progress through the levels, and there are hundreds of them, requires skill and practice; luck might play a part but it's skill that moves you along.

The description doesn't begin to explain why this is the single most addictive video game ever, leaping from mobiles to all devices and topping the charts all over the world. Nothing can explain that easily, you have to play it to understand. But if I had to pick a few characteristics, I'd say it appeals to everyone who needs to break things now and then - all of us, in other words; it appeals to anyone who loves beating puzzles set specifically to defeat them, and it's pitched at a skill level that keeps players having one more go, and progressing at exactly the right rate to sustain interest and tempt them to the next level. It's also funny and charming and silly enough to appeal to kids and adults alike. Like any good game of skill, you can learn how to play within minutes and then spend hours and hours learning that just knowing the rules is nowhere nearly enough.

And like any media phenomenon, we are now beginning to see the spin-offs: more games, cuddly toys, clothing and more cuddly toys. The movie, the TV series and the sponsored racing team are no doubt being lined up right now.

For this year at least, this is the "killer app" that almost every device is going to offer. It's not on the Blackberry yet, but that's close, so expect the level of attention at your next executive meetings to be less than perfect and don't believe anyone who says they have to answer an urgent call. Also coming soon is the ability to port your scores across devices, so you can carry on the same game on your iPhone, Nook, and PC depending on where you are. Just be careful not to keep Real Life on hold for too long, OK?

Note that this is the developer's website. To buy the app or the port, you'll need to go to the app store appropriate to your device or computer. For Windows, that's Intel AppUpp, and at the time of writing the price is $4.99, which is outstanding value for a game likely to occupy you for hundreds of hours.

Newsbiscuit (I guess that translates as "news cookie" for the US audience) is the UK's answer to The Onion, spoofing the top events of the day with a distinctly English bias. The rest of the world is represented, of course, or at least the civilized bits and the USA, but it will enhance your experience enormously if you have some grasp of British politics and politicians, TV celebs and other media personalities.

It has the very cool feature of allowing anyone to contribute, offering up whole articles, one-liners and headlines which are then considered for reproduction on the front page of the main site. Or as the writers' guidelines explain,

"NewsBiscuit is founded on the traditional capitalist values of getting others to do all the work and then not paying them for it."

Founded by comedy scriptwriter and author John O'Farrell, who wrote for such British institutions as Spitting Image and Have I Got News For You along with colleague Mark Burton, another contributor here, the site is now largely driven by reader contributions and is a great way to try out your English humor and see who throws the rotten tomatoes. It's free to register and post, it's free to vote on other writers' work, and there's even the challenge of a prestigious Writer Of The Month award if you're prepared to bribe the site owners enough.

All your work remains in your copyright, which is getting less enforceable these days but is still a welcome and appreciated touch. At least you can threaten to sue anyone who uses your work, on the remote offchance that it might be good enough to be worth plagiarising.

If you just want to read, you'll find there's a wide range of talent here and being a wide range, it does have a bottom, no-votes end as well as occasionally reaching into the realms of comedic greatness. As with all user-driven ideas, you'll understand the challenges and appreciate the successes that much more if you register and try it out for yourself, so don't be too dismissive of the failed attempts to entertain until you've had a go, yourself. It's fun and free, what more do you need?

You'd think Caitlin had everything going for her: beauty, youth, skill, an obvious love of performance and even a fashionably celtic name. And despite her propensity to playing her music while airborne on a trapeze or under water, and despite the odd gimmick of a bow with built-in lasers with which to play her custom electric violin while dressed as a pirate or standing in a fountain, she really, really can play.

So why have you never heard of her? She's in Zambia, which she describes as being about as far as you can get from anywhere. So, no US tours and no opening for Blue Man Group, for which, incidentally, she'd be perfect. We can only check out her site and visit her YouTube channel for now, and hope she will get the attention as a performer that will allow her to refine an act which is frankly not showcasing her talents as well as it might. Pity. She's actually good at what she does, lasers or not.

Every venomous snake in the USA lives in Texas, apparently, alongside more than a hundred non-venomous and non-aggressive species. So for Texans it may be more important to know the difference than for the rest of us, whose experiences of poisonous reptiles are generally limited to court cases and tax inspections. Oh, and elections, obviously.

This site is a solid educational source of serpentine information, run by "Clint the Snake Man", who spends his time teaching the folks of Texas that snakes are people, too, and may be invited to parties. No, really, he takes the snakes in his collection out to kids parties almost every day of the year, and will even cater for adult snake parties, though I should say immediately that these aren't *those* kinds of adult parties, in case you were thinking what I was thinking.

The site asks, "what's more fun than getting your picture taken with a beautiful snake around your shoulders?", which is a good question even if not one you may be prepared to answer immediately. For the many people who are scared of snakes or find them very uncomfortable even to look at or think about, this helpful site might be a starting point to overcoming those fears.

It couldn't have been done in a more friendly, accessible way and leaves you almost itching to get that snake round your neck at your next office party. It'll be an improvement on the office manager you had to deal with last year and you won't have to cope with it looking smug at the coffee machine the following morning.

I'm surprised this one got overlooked so let's catch up: This Chinese site sold more goods in 2010 than Ebay, which had already turned tail and fled from China when Taobao's parent company, Alibaba, acquired Yahoo! China in return for Yahoo getting a 40% stake in the business. That was back in 2005 and since then, there have been ongoing rumors that Yahoo and Alibaba weren't getting along, and there were alleged negotiations involving a break between the companies as Yahoo's investment in it wasn't working out. Rumors as late as the end of last year forecast doom for the "unhappy marriage".

So, in the inverted nature of such things, it should have come as no surprise when, just a couple of days ago at the time of writing, Yahoo USA received a huge boost from a big investment from a famous American hedge fund. The reason? The fund managers had done their sums and figured that Yahoo's share in Asia, and especially Alibaba, and especially Taobao, is going to be worth more than the entire company's declared public value today. Yahoo shares immediately shot up, something that probably doesn't happen as often as it might these days, and the fund made some money, naturally, and the owner of Alibaba declared that Taobao would be the next Walmart. Which it may well be, since everything at Walmart is probably already made in China anyway.

The site is in Chinese, naturally, but still worth a look for its, well, Chinese-ness, and for the joys of running it through Google Translate, which does a truly awful job. I found my way to the adult section at once, just at random of course, where I discovered that unlike Ebay, the site offers such delights as "Inflatable doll half shake entity male vocal apparatus", and "Semi-solid high explosive section 2011 inflatable doll real voice chiling special spike Japan". The Chinese appear to have overcome their long enmity with Japan when it comes to cutting-edge inflatables, and I'm not too surprised that there are none of the female tractor drivers and construction workers that you might expect from a purely Chinese range.

Spurred on by the prospect of another 99 pages in this category alone, I mused over "Japan semi-solid inflatable doll - gentle voice of female", which looks scarily like Ozzy Osbourn, was thoroughly turned off by "2011 latest buy a real shot to send ten feet high with" (don't ask), and amused that the site uses little images of steaming cups of tea to cover up the naughty bits. "100% genuine lovers doomed to be thrown swing male" was a puzzle even with the photo, but after much deliberation I settled on "2011 latest models have finger toes burst halfling entity" as my choice of imaginary evening entertainment. Although I declined the invitation to "cument the recent turnover" I did find many previous "cuments" and according to the translation, they were all good, Ebay-style, with plenty of "fast delivery", "great service", and so on, plus one "quick recharge" which may not have been correctly translated at all.

Anyway, there you are, the next Walmart and likely to be a tad more interesting than the current one, by the looks of it.

स्वादिष्ट
(yummy)

Indian cookery - what's not to like?

Don't be put off by the SNAKES, it's supposed to read "SNACKS". Whew. Maybe those guys with the baskets and ropes were actually "snack charmers"? That would make a lot more sense. Or not. I don't know, I wish I hadn't started this paragraph now.

Keyscrambler lives here. It's an application that tackles the problem of malware using a so-called 'keylogging' application to send all your keystrokes - typing, in other words, including passwords and personal data - through a backdoor and on directly to a hacker somewhere. Allegedly most types of malicious wares include a keylogging facility and most antivirus apps can't catch it reliably.

Keyscrambler deals with this in a unique way, by encrypting everything you type as you type it, and keeping it that way until the data reaches the application you are using, where it is decrypted again. The process is transparent to you, and protected deep within the Windows operating system. If you wish, though, you can watch the app at work and see the encrypted version of your text as you type. There is no appreciable decrease in processing speed.

The app comes in three flavors, including a free browser plug-in which works in Firefox and Internet Explorer and encrypts data entered into these apps only. The "Pro" version is, name notwithstanding, the one to get for the average user who types a lot of offline mail and correspondence in general, or who uses a different browser, as it protects a far greater range of applications. Lastly there is the Business version with some more bells and whistles. Prices are currently $25 and $45 respectively for the Pro and Business versions, the browser plug-in being free.

Nothing much to fault here, as long as the claims made for the app are as good as they seem, and there's no reason to doubt that. If you are concerned that you're typing sensitive information on a regular basis, in word processors and other offline applications, this is worth a look. Otherwise try out the free browser plug-in and keep your online secrets secret. What happens in Firefox should stay in Firefox.

Not invented by Starbucks after all, chai is the word for tea across India and most of Asia. A deceptively simple concoction of milk, black tea, spices and sugar, it has a character quite unlike any other beverage and lends itself readily to experimentation. If you're a fan, you make your own chai masala, which is the spice mix you add to the tea. This will most likely include cinnamon and ginger and coriander and other sweet and especially aromatic spices of your choice.

Otherwise, aside from Tazo (owned by Starbucks) there are many versions of chai readily available in tea bags, including Twinings, a common English one available in supermarkets at a reasonable price.

Ideally though, you make your own and this site includes recipes along with a wealth of chai knowledge and experience, including people's happy memories of their first chai, which are on a par with other first-time experiences that last forever.

MMmmmmmm...

Once upon a time, the worldwide web was a creation of and for scientists, eventually escaping the labs and universities and stumbling out into the daylight, looking for something useful to do. Whether that goal has yet been achieved continues to be the subject of debate, but one thing that evolved early on was this site, which in one form or another, dates back to those glorious days in the mid-1990s when people still read books. If only while they were waiting for their dial-up connection and Netscape Navigator to load.

Introducing readers to writers is the goal here, in a blog by Ron Hogan and a vast archive of interviews with literary luminaries across the last fifteen years, names such as Douglas Adams, James Ellroy and Lisa See amongst many less immediately recognizable authors who have been introduced to readers here.

Still running and active, this is a heavily textual site as befits the subject matter, and also befitting the Wordpress blog that powers it, for once not re-imagined as a content-management system and adhering to the traditional left-hand blog, right-hand sidebar format. Easy to read and navigate.

I'm not saying this is the best possible venue for readers looking for new works and new authors, but it has to be up there amongst the best blogs. It's a bookmark for the book-minded and a source of some interesting early interviews that add to its authority and usefulness.

However, having said all that, I came here for Ron Hogan's translation of the Tao Te Ching. Not exactly shiny and new, it's from 2004 but it's the latest of the best attempts to translate this into English and it's far and away the most daring.

I'll spare you the tale and the theories about the origins and authorship of the Tao Te Ching itself, because as one of the pillars of Chinese philosophy there are many sites devoted to it already. Suffice it to say that it's more than 2000 years old, written to be relevant to the times, regardless of the passage of time, and it carries just as powerful a message today as it did whenever it was written. As such, it's vital that any translation is sensitive to zeitgeist, and that's a challenge to any translator. Ron Hogan is such a sensitive, and he's somehow managed to get away with a radical rewrite in modern idioms, without the almost inevitable outcome of the establishment guarding the original and hating him for messing around with it. For once, someone has made a classic work more readable and been accepted.

Here's a sample of one of the earlier translations of the book:

REASON'S REALIZATION.

1. The Reason that can be reasoned is not the eternal Reason. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The Unnamable is of heaven and earth the beginning. The Namable becomes of the ten thousand things the mother.

Therefore it is said:

2. "He who desireless is found
The spiritual of the world will sound.
But he who by desire is bound
Sees the mere shell of things around."

3. These two things are the same in source but different in name. Their sameness is called a mystery. Indeed, it is the mystery of mysteries. Of all spirituality it is the door.

And here's Ron Hogan:

If you can talk about it,
It ain't Tao.

If it has a name,
It's just another thing.
Tao doesn't have a name.
Names are for ordinary things.

Stop wanting stuff;
It keeps you from seeing what's real.
When you want stuff,
All you see are things.

Those two sentences
Mean the same thing.
Figure them out,
And you've got it made.

http://www.beatrice.com/wordpress/tao-te-ching
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Right-Tao-Contemporary-Ching/dp/*******982

I came here from across the pond as an excuse to review Pink Floyd's Greatest Hits Covered, a budget double album released on this label at the end of last year (and on Redline in the USA). This is not a big, shiny American record company, it's the oldest and most revered English independent with a hugely diverse range of labels encompassing an equally eclectic range of material. So go check them all out for yourself, because I don't have the space here.

But a budget Christmas tribute album, by Various Artists, was surely bound to fail for at least the reasons that nobody would approve of the track selection, regardless, and every track that was chosen would be panned for being too close or too far from the originals. What were they thinking?

Well, I was right about the selection. There's room for 30 tracks here, but given the source material, no way is that enough. So whole albums, notably Animals and The Division Bell, have been ignored. But the big surprise is that instead of DSOTM getting the pig's share of the space, as you'd expect with a double album compilation, instead we get The Wall.

Now I know it's a famous album, movie and T-shirt range, but no way is every track here a Greatest Hit. This is, however, probably what Pulse would have been in the hands of Roger Waters, and it would have been less memorable for that. No offense, but The Wall needs space around it whereas DSOTM, though also a concept album, plays well with others.

The redeeming feature, and why, aside from the bargain price, I think you should add it to your collection, is that some impressive players have turned out for this one. You'll find Steve Lukather, Keith Emerson, Dweezil Zappa, most of Yes, and King Crimson, and Toto, Asia and more. By and large, the material is in safe hands and where it's presented with respect, as a tribute, it generally comes off well.

I have to say, though, that some of these bricks don't fit too well and where interpretation and experiment take over from tribute, the result is less memorable.

No Floyd cover album is going to rise above being a tribute, because the originals were perfect the first time around, and continue to be revered by a huge fan base. This album attempts to tread a line just far enough away from the originals to keep the faith and still be different, but not too far to become painfully experimental. In all but a very few embarrassing diversions, it succeeds pretty well.

I've listened to other Floyd tributes, and less uneven and more pleasing overall, but despite its faults, I'd say that the unusual track selection, personnel and budget price of this one make it a keeper unless you really, really can't cope with the despairing atmosphere introduced by the presence of The Wall.

Official UK page:
http://www.cherryred.co.uk/remix/artists/variouspinkfloyd.php

From Amazon independent dealers for under $10:
http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Floyd-Greatest-Hits-Covered/dp/B0045U3AJ4

This is the place to see the latest demos of new web developments. As these are all cutting-edge uses of the latest tech, you'll get the most out of this with a fast PC, a big screen and the latest web browser. A netbook simply isn't going to cut it, though there are videos of each demo for the hardware-compromised.

Since these demos are going to vary, I can't predict exactly what you can expect other than that it's going to be some of the best in interactivity, animation and movie work along with special effects that once required third-party applications but can now be done entirely by and in your web browser.

Behind the scenes, the new kids on the block browser-wise are HTML5 and CSS3, even though the latter has been there for a couple of years, waiting for HTML and browser technology to catch up. HTML is the coding language used to create the structure and define the content of web pages, whilst CSS is a language largely focused on defining how those pages will look. Well, more or less. It's a tad more complicated than that, but you don't need to know even that much to appreciate this site.

Naturally, these demos are going to look great in Firefox 4, since Mozilla develops that browser, and I can't guarantee that everything will work in your version of Internet Explorer, which always trails behind. And because of the nature of the project, I can't predict exactly what will be there when you visit. What you can be sure of is that everything will run in the latest version of Firefox and with a modern desktop computer or well-specified laptop.

There are likely to be three main audiences for this. Web developers who know what's going on behind the scenes will get the most from it, since they'll appreciate the absence of third-party applications that used to be needed for this stuff. The average viewing audience, aside from being impressed by the overall coolness, should notice that the outstanding effects work a lot faster and smoother than they used to, if they were even possible before, and newcomers to the web might even be inspired to say "I want to do that" and take their first steps into web coding and design.

A multiple award winner, the American print magazine, Foreign Policy, has a distinguished history of bringing world news to our decision-makers, and occasionally even our politicians. Though surviving as a print edition still, the magazine made the transition to the web in 2009 with this website, opening up the magazine to a far wider and more casual audience.

While the site focuses on matters related to and resulting from American foreign policies, it's not merely a campaigner for or against the US stance in world politics, attempting to take a broadly unbiased view. It demonstrates, lest you had any doubts, that rumors of America's lack of understanding of the world affairs it so frequently interferes in may be somewhat exaggerated.

It's deep enough to inform and educate and opinionated enough to be challenging, without being so stuffy and highbrow as to engage only policy professionals and students of politics. Well worth a bookmark.

So what do you do when you're an ex-Google senior employee, a CEO, an industry-recognized programming expert, have a doctorate and two degrees in computer engineering and a couple of minutes to spare? This guy used the time well, and came up with Mailinator, the simplest email service you're ever likely to see. And the idea seems to have caught on, with 12 million mails arriving every day. Not a huge amount by internet standards, but still a big step in keeping people's real personal mailboxes free of unwanted spam and clutter.

One thing you can't do with it: send email. Sorry, spammers, but I reckon he figured that one out straight away.

Another thing you can't do: receive anything other than text - images and fancy html are stripped out on arrival.

Apart from that, it's just about perfect. In completing online forms and registrations, simply invent any address you like, off the top of your head, and use mailinator.com or one of a range of alternate domains. Mail for that address goes to that address. And after a few hours, or a day, it all gets deleted.

The address is permanent, since anyone can have any address. And yes, that means anyone can read any email at anyone's address too - there's zero security. But what a great way to deal with spam and irritating site registrations.

No registration is needed (pointless really, since you'd just give a false email address anyway), and you don't ever even have to visit the site to see if you've got mail as it's all deleted by the next day, anyway. In fact as you might have already figured, you don't have to visit the site at all, ever. There are no prearranged names to choose, you just make up anything you *******@mailinator.com, whenever you need it.

If you want to use a different domain, the site uses several alternates and you can find them there. There's always one on the front page, and refreshing the page will give you another.

Lastly, each name you invent will generate a coded alternate which you can also use, and email to either address will go to the same place. So if you want to get really complex with it, you can. Just remember, anyone who chances on the same address as you just invented can also read your mail, and vice versa.

It's ingeniously simple. What happens if three people pick the same address? Who cares? There's no security, anyway. All possible addresses are already there. In fact, there must be close to an infinite number of possible email addresses, making this both the most and least secure concept ever, depending on how you look at it. It's an idea probably only conceivable by a top computing industry guy with a doctorate, two degrees, and a day job as a silicon valley CEO, who had a few minutes to spare. I would never have thought of it, would you?

The man who discovered and defined Asperger's Syndrome also described children with the condition as "little professors", a primary diagnostic behavior being their overwhelming enthusiasm to talk at great length about things that interested them. Not that this in itself is unusual in children, but an "Aspie" child will often not be able to tell when to stop, or when her audience has lost interest, and she will have learned the subject in far greater depth than anyone would normally need or be capable of.

Hence the title of this site, "your little professor", is a sympathetic way of welcoming parents to this excellent resource on the subject of Aspergers in children, and it's one that is very much suited to anyone new to the subject. Plain talking, easy navigation through a wide choice of topics and a good set of references marks this one out as an unusually welcoming and accessible resource.

The web isn't short of references to Asperger's Syndrome and it's hard to know which to visit first or trust most. I'd recommend this one as being genuinely helpful and readable, and a good stepping-off point for further research.

APC is one of the oldest of the internet do-gooders, still campaigning to bring the benefits of the internet to the millions currently unconnected due to, amongst other things, poverty, politics, commercial greed, and the availability of cheap and reliable technology. In order to do so, they must tackle the many problems which accompany the growth of any new medium, and yes, it is a new medium for many even though white, English-speaking Americans may regard it as old hat.

I recall reading, many years ago now, some western sources referring to the online world as if there were no other, an observation that may have coincided with the last homeowners on their particular blocks of suburbia getting their modems. The lack of concern over bringing the internet to what was once called "the third world" and then "the developing world" and now "emerging markets" goes back a long, long time. And it's this issue which is the primary concern of the APC, which has also become involved in minority rights and gender politics and others of the broader issues involved in making sure that connectivity brings equality to all.

So, this is not merely some internet regulatory body focused on the spread of technology; it is unavoidably enmeshed in the politics of freedom, monitoring and exposing the misuses of emerging technology as well as seeking to bring that technology to all. Yep, another bunch of left-wing liberal loonies. But wait, isn't that what we need, more than ever now that conservative commercial and political interests continually seek to restrict our rights? Fortunately I'm writing this so I don't have to answer that one, myself. You decide.

There's a great deal of information here, and it covers worldwide issues, many of which are likely to be new to you. If you have any serious interest in learning about the way that internet communications is developing, or taking part in helping to steer it, this is well worth a bookmark.

Bringing the web to the unconnected and making sure they don't suffer as a result sounds simple enough, but let's be honest, it's likely to result in thousands of African tribesmen wearing Chinese knock-off Ugg boots and Rolex watches, not to mention the emerging market in the Australian outback for tooth-whitening colon-cleansing acai drinks. As with the development of the railways, the medium itself is neither good nor bad, but it's capable of bringing both.

An utterly pointless time-waster, for those moments (possibly hours) when the relative solidity of your cubicle isn't enough to relieve your existential angst. When you need to orient yourself to the real world beyond the coffee maker, to determine once and for all just how much of a nerd you really are, and whether or not your cat is really trying to kill you. These and more than 10,000 other tests of your personality and mental stability can be found at nerdtests.com, which will also leave you in no doubt of how well you could withstand a zombie apocalypse, how awesome you really are, and how much you know or care about Justin Bieber. Armed with this knowledge, you can go out into the world a more confident, well-rounded person. Or boldly go, depending on how well you scored on the Trekkies quiz.

For the rest of us, it's just a place to mess around for a bit over a coffee, or to find something new to post to our Facebook pages, or even make up a quiz of our own for other visitors to try out. I wouldn't take it seriously if I were you. But then, according to the personality test, I'm a crackpot. Who knew?

If you ever have a need for secure email, which can only ever be read by the intended recipient, this is for you. It encrypts your mail using PGP, which converts your text to a mass of unintelligible characters for anyone who doesn't have the correct key and can't answer a question you choose.

As the mail is web-based, too, you never download it in an unencrypted form except through your web browser, using a secure server. Unless you're a government department, that should be secure enough. Come to think of it, if you're a government department you're probably not bothering to encrypt your mail in the first place, but that's another story.

Unencrypted email is notoriously insecure, and though the chances that the FBI are reading yours may be slim, you might still want to pass personal information that really is personal. A credit card or social security number, perhaps, or some juicy office gossip. Hushmail does this quickly and simply, and if you're just sending text, the free 2mb account should be sufficient. For under $1 a week you can get 10Gb of space, and there are business options too.

Hushmail has been around for many years and has no complaints as far as I know; it just does what it does, well.

I didn't review this one for the concept: events which occurred on this day in years past. Even though the information is really very comprehensive, and there are ways to filter the data and combine filters to drill down to the type of event you're seeking. It's an old, old idea in itself, and these days, there's Google.

I didn't review this one for the design, which is pedestrian, though it fits the concept, and it's fast. It also doesn't fit on a 1024 x 768 screen, which I have, so boo.

No, I reviewed it because it has absolutely the greatest domain name I've seen for ages.

But I liked it, anyway, and I can see it being a very useful resource for general school and educational research, drawing as it does from Freebase and Wikipedia and collating data in one place at high speed. The filtering options are a bonus for the casual surfer, just for the fun of playing with the results, and a must for anyone drilling down through all this information.

It's all licensed under Creative Commons, too, so you can share and adapt the information as long as you give a credit for it. Hopefully at least a few users will remember that last part.

Good for serious research, and as time-killers go, a better way to waste your coffee break than most.

Oh, now this is really *. No * about it.

Remember those good old days when we made up sentences and left words out, opening up endless opportunities for double-entendres? My, the long winter nights just flew by.

No?

OK, this is what I mean. Complete this sentence:

Mary had a little *, its * was * as *, and everywhere that Mary *, her * was sure to go.

Yep. Well. It was a lot more fun at the time, really.

So, here's a site that will fill the gaps automatically, if you're in the middle or writing, say, a review on SiteJabber and suddenly hit a writer's block. Not something that Chris seems to have a problem with, I hear you say. Sorry about that, I really am trying to make them shorter, honestly.

And it works. For example, the first sentence I tried was

"This startup has absolutely no * of succeeding"

And the engine responded with "chance" on the second attempt, along with a very sensible range of alternative choices. I could definitely see this one going into my bookmarks list, allowing me to write even longer and more erudite reviews. And that, I hear you say, will be *.

Up until now, people who have lost or never had the ability to speak have needed to utilize a hefty portable electronic device with keyboard to do their speaking for them. And because of the clumsiness of some of these units, they've sometimes needed a second person to use the unit for them. Whilst technology has developed to provide something better for fixed use in wheelchairs, it's still slow and clumsy and all of these are very expensive. Until now, apparently.

The Verbally app is a FREE iPad application that fully simulates a dedicated device, including not only three different virtual keyboard layouts and a preselected set of more than fifty words to save keystrokes, but predictive text and a learning facility too. Male or female voices are provided, no network connection is required, and did I mention it's free?

You'll know if you have a need for this, and I imagine anyone with that need and who can lay hands on an iPad for the purpose is going to be grabbing one just as fast as they can.