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Rashi Chart reader

MB Astrology Rashi Chart provides users with a quick glance at their North Indian Style astrological outlook. With some complicated hurdles for newcomers, this program is best left to those with experience or those willing to learn.

This program's interface is equally simple and confusing, thanks to its strange requirements. Users should have no trouble knowing where information needs to be placed, but will most likely have a hard time filling it in. Requiring some online digging, notably with inputting the longitude and latitude of your birth, this was a frustrating gap in design. The program provides a Help … Read more

Vedic astrology helper

MB Astrology Rashi Chart (South Indian Style) offers to help users learn more about their star signs through Vedic astrology. While getting the information is not hard, users must be willing to translate the meaning for themselves.

The program's interface will not win any awards, but it does perform its function fairly well. While most information pertaining to one's sign is fairly easy to input, attaining the latitude and longitude of your birthplace requires users to click a link that takes them online, which some may not like. In addition, the Help file defined the various fields, but … Read more

Seeing beyond the recession: The sun also rises

Reading through an excellent essay in Saturday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Will this Crisis Produce a 'Gatsby'?", left me remembering the title of a book I once read, Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises.

We've spent the last decade spending like prodigals. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, then, that so many of us now strain to simply get by. In many ways, as the article points out, we just relived the 1920s and American idealism is now being harshly battered by 1930s style depression, which simply illustrates just how uneven the promise of American mobility … Read more

Indecent Exposure 4: Inadvertent exclusions

We reminisce about the ones that got away--photographs, that is--and chat about the Four Thirds standard.

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EPISODE 4

Ten worst tech catastrophes of 2007

Over at CNET News.com sister site TechRepublic, Jason Hiner lists the "Top 10 biggest technology belly flops of 2007." From huge security breaches to questionable feature sets, Vista, the iPhone, and the Pentagon... Fans of tech snark will appreciate the way Hiner weds careful analysis and scathing critique.

Read the full story at TechRepublic.