Saturday, January 24, 2004

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Prompts for Saving Streets & Trips When I do a route plan with MS Streets & Trips, 98% of the time, I print it and have no need to save it. But of course, every time I plot a route then quit the program, it has to ask me if I want to save. It would be neat if it could have a configuration setting not to prompt the user to save, but to auto-save the last three maps. So if you do quit and did want to save, you could recover. Hmmm, seems like this functionality might be generally useful, sort of like the autosaved recover versions of files you get in the MS Office products. 11:21:39 PM    comment []

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AP: "Best Western hotels to install free high-speed Internet chainwide". Excellent! 10:51:22 PM    comment []

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U.S. News has an article about new car models that discusses the trend toward greater seating/hauling flexibility in minivans and other vehicles, such as the 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan, which will have fold-flat-into-the-floor second and third seats (the Honda Odyssey has had that for, I think just, the third seat for some years). The article goes on to characterize such flexibility as a "cool but not necessary" feature, just like ruggedness in SUVs. Got to disagree there. When we bought our 2002 Grand Caravan, we specifically searched out one that had the split rear bench, just for greater hauling and seating flexibility. And in the 8 months we've had it, I have had various of the seats out plenty of times. I'm guessing the author of the article is childless and lives in an urban apartment or co-op--the only explanation I can come up with for being so out of touch with how these vehicles are used. 10:43:57 PM    comment []

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More Paid-Content Archives More and more content is disappearing behind paid walls. U.S. News is charging $2.95 per article older than two weeks (they also offer volume plans). I understand they need to make some money on their content, but I'm not going to pay $2.95 for an article, especially since I already am a subscriber (did I mention that? no deal for dead-tree subscribers). I would be very interested to see some stats on how much money pubs are making by charging for their archives. I would be surprised if many were making much. Still waiting for a good subscription aggregation plan. 10:35:23 PM    comment []

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A first in the Neu household: the three children, each using a computer at the same time (my laptop pressed into service for #3). All designing rooms on the postopia site. 9:26:30 PM    comment []