Who ever said that mousing shouldn't be comfortable? This company makes MouseRug - woven "mouse pads" that look like classic Persian, Navajo, and other style rugs. They use a specially treated micro fibre. A friend claims he hasn't had to clean the ball and rollers in his mouse since he started using a MouseRug. Of course I haven't had to clean a mouse ball or rollers either since switching to a Microsoft IntelliEye mouse. It doesn't have a ball or rollers. I may still get a MouseRug, they look interesting.

I Spy With My Super Eye Now, if you only could fly, your comic book fantasies would be complete: The University of Rochester has introduced a shortcut to superhuman vision. Using technology developed by astronomers who wanted a better look at the stars, researcher David Williams has developed an optical system that dramatically improves the vision of people with even 20/20 eyesight.

NASA 'Robonaut' prepares for spacewalking duties The next generation of spacewalkers could fix faulty satellites and space stations without breaking a sweat, needing a meal or expecting a paycheck. Already the first one, a metal humanoid known as Robonaut, has developed an impressive level of dexterity.

The baby eagle story Once upon a time There was a baby eagle living in a nest perched on a cliff overlooking a beautiful valley with waterfalls and streams, trees and lots of little animals, scurrying about enjoying their lives.

Earth and Sky "Each day's segment is designed to guide your eye to something you can see that night, or the next morning before dawn. It might be a constellation, a star, or a planet. Or it might be a celestial event, such as an eclipse. Or, just for fun, on some days Deborah might take you (in your imagination) on a trip to another planet, to give you the view from there. And the best thing is, you don't need any special equipment to enjoy Tonight's Sky. You just need to look up..."

How Stuff Works! Have you ever wondered how the engine in your car works or what makes the inside of your refrigerator cold? Then How Stuff Works is the place for you! Click on the categories below to see hundreds of cool articles!

The best article yet on the Microsfot breakup - a well deserved satire . January 2001--U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who made the ruling last June that the Microsoft Corp. be split into separate companies, has created further controversy by ordering Kleenex, Jell-O and Scotch tape to make everybody stop asking for a Kleenex, some Jell-O and a roll of Scotch tape "and start asking for a tissue, some gelatin or a roll of that clear sticky tape," to keep things fair. Industry analysts expressed concern as Kleenex stock blew sky-high, Jell-O wavered and Scotch tape held firm.

Feds Urged to Beef Up Spying Congress must give federal police more eavesdropping abilities and increase the budgets of spy agencies, members of a federal commission are recommending. The Justice Department is "overly cautious" when forwarding requests for wiretaps and electronic surveillance to a secret court established in 1978 for that purpose, Paul Bremer, the National Commission on Terrorism chairman, said Thursday.

Company to Fly First Web Server in Space A startup satellite company announced Saturday it is partnering with one of the world's leading computer companies to put what it claims to be the first Web server in orbit.

Top Ten Algorithms "Great algorithms are the poetry of computation," says Francis Sullivan of the Institute for Defense Analyses' Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie, Maryland. He and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have put together a sampling that might have made Robert Frost beam with pride--had the poet been a computer jock. Their list of 10 algorithms having "the greatest influence on the development and practice of science and engineering in the 20th century" appears in the January/February issue of Computing in Science & Engineering. If you use a computer, some of these algorithms are no doubt crunching your data as you read this.

Water found in meteorite The space rock was recovered by a group of boys in a small Texas town who saw it fall out of the sky in 1998.

Pet Paintings! Here's how it works: You send a photo of your pet, and get a cartoonie painting back! Two sizes are available, 3"x5" on a 2" thick block of pine, OR a 9"x12" canvas board. They cost $75 each, but YOU DON'T PAY The ARTIST! You make a $70 check out to your choice of registered non-profit animal shelter, and a $5 check out to the artist (to cover materials and postage).

Embedded Linux Imsys (Sweden) used the occasion of JavaOne 2000 in San Francisco to unveil an unusual new system-on-chip microprocessor that supports native on-chip Java bytecode execution -- but also runs embedded Linux. The device, called the Cjip, achieves a high degree of on-chip functionality via an unusual approach: dynamically alterable microcode.

CRN BREAKING NEWS IBM Corp., looking to spread its arms ever wider to embrace Linux across its entire server line, is preparing to move the operating system to the supercomputer realm via superclusters of Netfinity servers.

Missouri Foxtrotter Megan just read about these in Horses USA. Of course she wants one.

AWS WeatherBugThe ONLY SOURCE for LIVE neighborhood weather on your PC desktop direct from AWS Worldwide School WeatherNet™, part of the world's largest automated real-time weather network.

A New Computer Virus? Scientists have discovered that tiny protein-like strands on the surface of common viruses--the sort of molecules that enable germs to identify and grasp their target cells--also bind tightly and very selectively to materials widely used in high-tech electronics, such as silicon and gallium arsenide.

My Children Don't Eat Dogfood A remarkable book of healing and life extending recipes and herbs for dogs and cats. A down to earth, to the point, easy to follow dialog for the average dog and cat lover. It suggests life saving foods to replace bagged and canned commercial dog food. Many wonderful natural recipes. Eye opening information about unnecessary vaccines, toxic flea killing chemicals, how to use natural remedies to kill fleas. Airline snafoos which can kill your pets. How to cure yeast infections. Mold & mildew cures. Much, much more.

Identity swapping makes privacy relative Think privacy is a battle waged only in the courts? Think again. It's guerrilla warfare, consumers against the companies, and the consumers hold more cards than they know.

Lawyers Volunteer to Help Consumers Challenge Their Health Insurers When Alice Elliot, a homemaker from Danielson, Conn., discovered she had breast cancer three years ago, her doctor said she needed a bone marrow transplant to combat the disease, but her insurance company, Central States Health and Life of Omaha, refused to pay for the treatment, calling it "experimental." However, the Elliots did not sit back and take the financial hit. They took action in the same way other Americans are beginning to fight Goliath-sized health care organizations. They turned to a public interest law firm with a specialty in health care that provides free legal counsel.

SpaceViews Scientists have found that a particular class of meteorite is not made of the same material from which the Earth and Moon formed.

Welcome to HavenCo.com HavenCo Limited is exploiting a unique opportunity to set up the world's first real data haven. The initial showcase datacenter is the Principality of Sealand, the world's smallest sovereign territory. It was founded over thirty years ago and has obtained a unique legal status as the only sovereign man-made island. Its claim to sovereignty has been tested and supported in several legal challenges.

Rebel Outpost on the Fringes of Cyberspace In the annals of Internet history, June 5, 2000, may be remembered as the date that a hardy band of true believers tried to establish the first independent colony in cyberspace. A small international group of computer rebels plans to introduce what they are calling a data haven, perched precariously on a World War II military fortress six miles off England's coast.

The Carmel Pine Cone THE DETERIORATING lantern room of the Pt. Sur Lighthouse needs a $340,000 restoration job, and to help raise the money the Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers is offering its big donors a unique incentive....The Lighthouse Keepers decided to build replacement prisms for the lantern room floor as part of the restoration project -- and offer one to any donor who ponies up $1000. They will also take home the replica prism on a small redwood stand salvaged from Pt. Sur buildings and carved by volunteers.

IBM "Solutions" conference focuses on XML Hands-on tutorial sessions include those on XML & Java, XSLT and VoiceXML. Eighteen other sessions feature XML, including diverse subjects from "AS/400 Application Integration" to "The Role of XSL Transformations in e-business Solutions".

The Good E-Book Literature's next big revolution will be digitized. What's so scary about that? By JACOB WEISBERG (free subscription to nytimes required)

John Perry Barlow: Napster.com and the Death of the Music Industry An editorial by Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow.

XHTML: A Bridge To The Future Hypertext Markup Language, an aging, inflexible formatting standard, has fueled the phenomenal growth of the Web. Now a new technology, a flexible data-markup standard called Extensible Markup Language, promises nearly complete flexibility.