The first installment in a series of short (2-3 minute) how-to videos from PC Magazine and PCMagCast, starring yours truly. In this video, I show you how to get rid of that animated puppy that pops up when you’re searching for files on a Windows XP machine. PCMagCast Tech Tips Video: Search Smarter

“News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” —Lord Northcliffe By that measure, there are mighty few true news reporters in tech publishing right now. Declan McCullough, certainly; Kim Zetter‘s coverage of e-voting machines also qualifies. Who else is uncovering new

First thing in the morning, even before checking email, spend an hour getting your most important task done. 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world » Brazen Careerist

Groups of people are uncannily accurate at guessing the number of beans in a jar, the weight of a steer, and the like. In fact, the bigger the group, the more accurate its collective guess — a principle known as the Condorcet Jury Theorem. There’s a significant limitation, though: This only works if

This interactive Google Maps mashup shows how much different parts of the world will get flooded by a 1-7 1-14 meter rise in sea level. Navigate to the part you’re interested in and tell the app how much to raise the ocean, and a blue overlay covers up the parts that will get inundated. Scary. […]

Most shocking thing I learned last weekend: A huge Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated over a 35-day period in 2002, much to the surprise of the scientists tracking it. This shelf, designated Larsen B, was about 700 feet thick and covered 3,500 square km — about the area of Rhode Island. The scientist

“It’s not theism that we should object to, it’s gnosticism.” My letter to Wired regarding their recent “New Atheism” feature: Letters – From Dylan Tweney

Advice for someone who wants to be an artist: “Fear is not very useful. … Just take the leap and avoid wrapping the whole thing up with your identity and sense of self worth. Be as positive and outgoing and productive as possible. ” By Danny Gregory

Elliott Malkin makes high-tech religious art — like a crucifix made of circuit boards that broadcasts the Lord’s Prayer, using your body as its antenna. Intriguing intersection of religion and tech: Interview with Elliott Malkin

What I think of as the Microsoft approach to product development is to cram as many features as possible into each product. Interface is an afterthought: All those features exist primarily for the benefit of the feature list, not the user, so who cares if the feature is buried three menu levels deep

What does your computer do when it’s asleep? Well, if you’re the giving type, it might be searching for intelligent life in the universe, helping find a cure for schizophrenia, or perhaps trying to fold some proteins. Scott Draves has a different idea. His collaborative computing project, Electric S

Making’s the new thinking: russell davies: how to be interesting