Traffic Circle 2.0

My latest book, Easy Windows 8, is now available on special promotion at Costco, Sams Club, and Barnes & Noble.

My new A+ Cert exam guide has been a big hit so far. You can learn more about the new exams and how to prepare for them by joining my free webcast on Friday, December 13th. Hope you can join us.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my readers!

and find the right Windows 7 learning product for your user level and working needs. And, while you’re at it, how about saving 30% on a wide variety of titles? See the deal at Que Publishing’s Windows 7 Resource Center.

Windows 7, CompTIA A+ Certification, and Windows Live?

Check out my Books page

Want a better laptop? Upgrade to a bigger hard disk or more RAM. Let me show you how:

• Upgrade your laptop’s hard disk
• Upgrade your laptop’s memory

Learn more about my latest books and video projects by visiting my page at Que Publishing’s website.

Please join me Thursday evening from 6:00PM to 7:30PM, September 17, at McCollough Branch Library, Evansville, Indiana, for the first of two presentations on digital photography. 

I’ll be discussing how to shoot better photos of school events and sports, based on my latest book The Shot Doctor: the Amateur’s Guide to Taking Great Digital Photos.  This book and others will be available for sale, and I’ll be happy to sign and inscribe them for you.  See a sample chapter here: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1347408

Learn more about the program here: http://evpl.org/events/search/event.aspx?id=18983.

Need a map?  Go here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107016838176065254607.00043feb8844aa3119721&ll=37.99481,-87.563095&spn=0.142856,0.275688&z=12&om=1&iwloc=00043feb94b7a95143145

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Microsoft has just introduced a public beta of Windows Live Suite, a set of communications and social networking tools and web services. I’m using the Windows Live Writer component to write this blog entry.

It’s easy to add pictures (you can edit your photos with the new Windows Live Photo Gallery),add a table (this one’s in honor of an old Sci-Fi book series I enjoyed)…

insert a map…

I can insert tags from Technorati, 43 Things, and other services, and videos too…

I’m going to like this service!

To learn more about Windows Live Suite, see my Maximum PC blog.

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Discover the best new and improved features in Windows Vista (and a few that need work): get my new book Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed: an Insider’s Guide to Supercharging Windows Vista. It’s available from Amazon.com and other fine bookstores.

By an amazing twist of fate, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on February 12, 1809. Some celebrate this day as “Darwin Day” (and some churches got in on the act a day early by hosting “Evolution Sunday” services). I prefer to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, instead.

Whatever the merits of Darwin’s theory of evolution as a scientific theory, its application (some would say misapplication) to human relations as “Social Darwinism” have been highly toxic, leading to eugenics, abortion and sterilization (as a means of removing “harmful genes” from humanity), and even the Holocaust.

Lincoln’s battle against a nation “half slave and half free” (June 16, 1858 “House Divided” campaign speech), on the other hand, was an early blow in the long battle to recognize all peoples of any color as truly human. Even before becoming president and signing the Emancipation Proclamation, he defended the Declaration of Independence’s statement “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” vigorously (July 10, 1858 speech at Chicago).

Who has inspired more good actions and a better humanity? Darwin or Lincoln? In my mind, it isn’t even close.

(H/T to PowerLine)

Jack Bauer’s back (on Fox’s 24), and by an amazing coincidence, so am I! I don’t have an excuse as good as Jack’s for my long absence from blogdom: saying “I was being held hostage by Windows Vista betas and release candidates” doesn’t have nearly the cachet of a Jack Bauer involuntary ”vacation,” but no matter: the long wait (for both 24 and Windows Vista) is almost over.

I’ve written for my favorite hard-core mod-happy technology magazine, Maximum PC, several times over the last few years, and I’m happy to announce that they’ve tapped me again to write a piece called The Vista Starter’s Guide for an upcoming issue (could it have anything to do with my forthcoming book Maximum PC Guide to Windows Vista Exposed?).

Keep an eye out for a special edition of the mag with two chapters from the book.

If the only blog tools you’re using are your favorite web browser and your blogging host’s default editor, you’re working a lot harder than you need to.

Ian Soper (The Nameless Church and iansoper.com just introduced me to a new browser, Flock, which is the first web browser optimized for blogging, photo sharing, and other social networking tasks.

Flock makes it this easy to blog about a web page:

1. Open the web page in Flock
2. Right-click on the page
3. Select Blog This
4. Flock opens its integrated blog editor and adds a hyperlink.

Flock can do much, much more: check it out.

Blogged with Flock