New toys.

Well, I am playing with some new toys, but they are free downloads. So I don't know if that counts toward my geek education equivalency credits (GEEC).

After several long minutes of deliberation, I downloaded and installed Trillian. It is a really neat little program that can combine Multiple IM programs (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) to one interface. But that withstanding, I think I like another feature even more. While typing or receiving an IM, the program highlights keywords that have "significance" and you can mouseover or double-click to find the Wikipedia entry on that word. Pretty interesting, that and a bunch of emoticons, one of which actually plays a little laughing .wav.

The other one for my GEEC points is Mozilla Foundation's Foxfire browser. This has several neat attractions that I am just getting really accustomed too. First, and foremost, it is NOT Internet Explorer. Second, you can open Multiple websites "in tabs", as opposed to have 5 different Internet Explorer windows open. One aspect of that is that you can right click on an entire folder in your bookmarks and open all of the sites contained within, in one click. Lastly, I am into the skins. There are a bunch of amateur skins, which are stupefying easy to download and install. And since PCWorld Magazine rated Foxfire the most stable and well-designed alternative to Internet Explorer and Netscape, I think it is a small matter of time till a flood of geeks (notice that they are small geeks, not big GEECs) make a vast array of skin choices. I can't wait for some of my fellow GEECs to show all the amateurs up and make some skins that are patterned after some of the games that I play regularly. That will be a fun day.

Well, whoever gave me the free subscription to PCWorld magazine, I do thank you. Between the free utilities and the current and upcoming technologies, it is a wonderful item to receive in the mail every month. Thanks.