The Microsoft trial is back in full swing and just in case you’re feeling sorry for William Gates III, just stop by the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock, .
Philip Greenspun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology runs a little programme on his site which updates the Spectacled One’s fortune based on the daily price fluctuations of the Microsoft boss’s M$ share holdings.
Usually it floats somewhere between $88- billion and $100-billion.
There, don’t you feel less anxious for Bill already?
Robot time
Fancy your own R2D2 (that cutie from Star Wars) unit? Nasa is offering a live, online course on the use of robots in space.
The eight-week short course begins on June 30 and each lesson will involve a live robotics expert working on a Nasa project.
There will also be a webcast, chat sessions, video clips, web slides and a follow-up question and answer session.
Classes will be taught by Nasa robotics experts who were or are involved with such projects as the Sojourner mission to Mars and the Mars Surveyor 2001 mission. The enrolment fee is $275. Get more info at .
On the tiles
We know you would really rather be surfing, but if you have to do those pesky do-it- yourself (DIY) tasks over the weekend, why not use the Internet to find out exactly how to do the job?
Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, , has detailed, illustrated instructions for more than 150 DIY projects from tiling a floor to installing a ceiling fan.
They also have a paint problem solver for dozens of indoor and outdoor painting tribulations.
Bitching
Bernadette Taylor has just launched “the cutest Internet watchdog”, , to fight the Australian government’s attempt to censor the Net.
Down under, however, the English-born protester is better known for her amateur porn site at , where she acts as a “virtual girlfriend”.
Taylor says 4 316 individuals used government-provided Internet access to visit her porn site during working hours, and her server logs and credit card details reveal visits by politicians or their staff, and others in “interesting positions”.
Of course, they may have just been looking for The Song of Bernadette …
Hush hush
Want to keep your e-mail secret? HushMail is offering a free Web-based service that uses uncrackable 1 024-bit encryption.
Messages sent to external mailboxes arrive as plain text. Users can even sign up anonymously at .
Friends
Sony has finally launched Friend Factory after months of testing. But will net users flock to to build their home pages (15 megabytes of free space), get an e-mail address, swap eNotes, and open chat rooms and discussion groups?
Or will the direct marketing bods rule?