Past Meetings

May 30, 2006

On a hot sweltering 90+ day, six people enjoyed the coolness of the St. James' Church undercroft to share Macintosh ideas and unusual webites. Attending were Tom B, John R, Ed K, Bob S, Bill N and Bob G.

'ODD' was the focus of the meeting (excluding us, of course) -interesting websites that were unique, unusual or downright weird (but helpful).

Several unique sites visited were:

Terra Server (see a black & white satellite photo of your house)
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/

Babel Fish (have fun translating into other languages and back again)
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Cyber Camera (turns your computer monitor into a camera - be sure to comb your hair before trying this)
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/3072/camera1.html

Wayback Machine (screenshot archive of 55 billion web pages from 1996 to present)
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Ask Numbers (Conversion Calculators of all kinds)
http://www.asknumbers.com/

SunBelt Eye (just plain weird VR - not for the paranoid)
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/stu/eye.htm

iPod Shuffle mod-DIY (humorous parody of hacking)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhusson/3253841/

iFixit - fantastic detailed tutorials show how-to fix or upgrade your mac
http://www.ifixit.com/cart/customer/home.php

RefDesk (source for every reference under the sun)
http://www.refdesk.com/

Bob S shared two of his favorite sites : 20 Questions (where a computer tries to guess your thoughts) and myboatclub (where you can create your own blank calendar to print out).

Bill N shared one of his favorite computer pastimes: open the browser to Google, close your eyes and click 5 random keys. Then do a search of whatever you typed. Bill claims he has found unbelieveable sites doing this. Some of us thought Bill should stop reading by the glow of the lava lamp.

As a final thought, keep in mind that most odd, weird or unique websites exist for a single purpose: collecting marketing data (on you).

Next meeting: Tuesday June 20 ... Topic: Demo of MacBook running OSX Tiger and Windows XP

To view more highlights of Past Meetings, link to H'PORTMUG homepage .

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