Welcome to BenWoods.com

You made it! Thanks for visiting.

Pick the best musicians, win a prize

Leading off, Green Day. Batting second, Snoop Dogg. Batting third, Tim McGraw. And the cleanup hitter, Britney Spears.

If you think this is a weird baseball lineup, you're right. On the other hand, if I were playing in the Fantasy Music League, I'd probably be in the World Series.

This is not a joke. The object of the FML, according to the website, is to create a label that generates the most revenue, based on the world music charts. Apparently the winners share in $25,000 cash and prizes.

Living in cardboard maybe isn't so bad

Building a playhouse/fort out of a cardboard box used to be a chore enough. Now, Australian researchers and architects have created something that goes beyond that: a fully sized and usable cardboard house that can be completed in six hours by just two people.

Time to get a handle on your spam

It's difficult for me sometimes to understand why spammers do what they do. Do they really expect that the millions and millions of emails sent will provide income from the products they are selling? Do they enjoy intentionally slowing down the Internet to a relative crawl for email users? Do they have any idea why even non-watchers of Country Music Television have noticed that Shania Twain seems to be on an endless loop infomercial on that station?

Help out the survivors of the tsunami

Google has set up a simple page to allow Internet users the ability to get involved with the cleanup and rebuilding of the areas affected by the recent tsunami. There are also links to information resources, including the Tsunami help blog.

It's never too late to purchase Christmas gifts

Even though it might be after Dec. 25 by the time you read this, it is still not too late to make that last shopping run. This year, especially if you live in the Midwest, your excuse will work even better:

"I ordered your present online, and it hasn't arrived yet."

That simple sentence should give you at least an additional week to make purchases. And with the 236 inches of snow some areas have received, there's no telling when a present, even ordered after Lincoln's birthday, will appear.

From the Archive

Zzzzzz ... uh? Yes, I'm at work!

Sitting in front of a computer all day (not to be confused with Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay") isn't that glamorous. In fact, it's pretty easy to relax, lose focus on what you are typing slightly, hIT teh wrogn keys, and ... er, what was I saying?

Oh yes, the issue of people falling asleep at their cubes. Wouldn't it be nice to have nap time? At least in New Jersey, bosses aren't enamored with the notion of providing beds for employees.

Berners-Lee on the good and the bad of the World Wide Web

While it's easy to find numerous things wrong while surfing the Web today (popup ads, no consistency between how browsers work, a lack of sites devoted to applesauce), there's one man who has a right to throw in his qualms.

This man is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web (trumpets should sound now, so turn up your speakers). From the Wikipedia, he is also the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees its continued development.

Book review: 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' by Jared Diamond

Is civilization, as we know it today, invincible? Considering human existence since the beginning, it's a tough call to say how long we'll survive. On the other hand, it is feasible to review past societies to compare and contrast them to today's world.

To classify Jared Diamond's latest work, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," as just a book about the changing environment would be short-sighted. Diamond's focus is planet destruction, which ranges from damage to land and damage to life in general.

Get answers, or at least find Mr. T

Sometimes I have a hard time getting my work finished because I have different questions popping into my head. I try to ignore those questions to move on with my life and wash all of my electrical appliances, but it's just no use.

Now, whenever I have a really tough question, I just hang out at Ask Jeeves. Even if I don't always get my questions answered, the service is great and the buffet is amazing. OK, so there isn't a buffet, but if there were, I'd probably never leave the site.

Signing (and free books!) on Friday in Elizabethtown

I will be at the Elizabethtown, Ky., Waldenbooks in Towne Mall 5-7 p.m. Aug. 4 to discuss and sign my latest book, The Developers. The humor-fiction novel mixes the insane and obscene with technology, romance and pop culture. But while the book's web development group tries to make its mark on the virtual world, it encounters pre-eminent issues that will soon be shaping the Internet of the future: Are individuals losing their remaining privacy due to the World Wide Web? Will online social interaction eventually replace in-person gatherings as a necessary means?

Powered by Drupal