When you first got it, you had delusions of grandeur; get yourself in front of a camera, and you’d be a star! But things didn’t quite work out; that freebie webcam that came with your PC became just another piece of cluttering junk, and it wasn’t long before it moved off the desktop and into the drawer – way, way in the back.
Now, though, might be a good time to dig out and dust off your webcam; we’ve got a couple of tricks that might not make you a star, …

The pundits tell us that the future of computing is bright and sunny – but in reality, the weather isn’t as clear as they would have you believe. In fact, it’s downright cloudy – and that’s a good thing!? Nowadays, the internet buzz is all about the clouds. There’s “cloud computing,” which will put all your favorite applications and/or services on the internet, while you log in and access them on a remote server from your home or office. And there’s the “tag cloud,” a visual representation of the “weight” …

In this age of e-mail, SMSing, and who knows what other communication wonder they’ll come up with next, there are still people who use the “regular” – also known as “snail” – mail. Are these people Luddites, or what? And we’re not talking about an insignificant tribe. Judging by the traffic on my local e-mail community list, “can anyone take a letter to the States for me” ranks just behind “Looking for a lift to X” on the hit parade of favors people are always seeking. Maybe it’s …

You know what they say about summer – it’s the most expensive time of the year! Our kids’ “free” school is expensive enough, but there’s no free summer camp! There’s no free lunch either, and now the kids are home for that meal – and that tuna sandwich that kept them going the rest of the year can’t compete with the mall, with its pizza and burgers – not to mention the movies, pool, and vacations we have to shell out for. Peering down into the pit of …

If you’ve got a couple of days off for chol hamo’ed, someone in your clan may have broached the idea of taking a road trip to an outdoor site – a national park up north or an out of the way beach, say. Sounds like a good idea – and an opportunity to get one more tiyul in before the onset of winter.
But the idea of taking the family out for a long drive raises some provocative questions: how to keep the kids quiet, what face to make at the …