Column 8

"LAST Friday, Bev Peters asked how dipthongs (or joined vowels) could be created on today's computer keyboards," writes Greg Williams, of Tweed Heads. "As an aside, few dipthongs are written with joined vowels - eg, the ou in out is a dipthong but the vowels are not joined. However, for what it is worth, joined vowels such as the oe in foetus can be created in most word processor programs by the contortion of holding down the three Ctrl-Shift-& keys and tapping the O key. Likewise the ae in ...

Keyboards Are For Wimps

How we interact with computers is ripe for change. But not just yet.

Computer World

COMPUTERS are part of our life. How would we manage without them? Every school-age child is becoming computer literate and information technology is an everyday item. But what is new in the computer world? * Being able to tell the computer what you want it to do instead of using the keyboa

Key To New-age Computer Jargon

From a recent e-mail comes a list of Computer Terms: BIT: A word used to describe computers, as in ``Our son's computer cost quite a bit." BOOT: What your friends give you because you spend too much time bragging about your computer skills. BUG: What your eyes do after you stare at th

Focus Firmly On Computer Literacy

IT'S fingers on the keyboards rather than noses to the grindstone for NSW school students this year. As part of their preparation to enter the workforce in a new millennium, they will receive strong and ongoing support in the area of computer literacy. The recent merger of the former Departme

Keyboards Strike A Rich Note

Michael Putzel writes about a program that ensures no one need ever sing out of tune. LIKE Professor Harold Hill, the super-salesman of band instruments and uniforms in the hit musical, The Music Man, Roger McRea has a gimmick: a computer program that can listen to students' voices, tell them whe

Software Robots Herald A New Age

John Moran delves into the booming world of agents and charts the demise of Sir Galahad. CAMELOT just isn't the same since Sir Galahad was laid to rest.Like any good knight, Galahad was vigilant, helpful to his friends and ready to protect them. But now he's gone, buried in a computer hard drive.

More Microsoft Fingers In Hardware Pie

San Francisco. MAKING its second foray into the computer hardware business, Microsoft Corp. will begin shipping a keyboard this week with a suggested retail price of $US99. Microsoft said the keyboard would be broadly available through computer retailers in the United States in early October.

Going Down The Superhighway For Pizza

AT 11am Monday, Americans lost their last reason to leave their computer keyboards, ever. In Santa Cruz, California, Pizza Hut logged on the first outlet accepting orders over the information highway. That's right, PizzaNet was born. Car culture officially caved in to computer culture with thi

Woodstock, Wired For The World

UNLIKE the original, Woodstock '94 was on-line and wired. In addition to the 350,000 people at the show in Saugerties, NY, over the weekend, thousands more from as far away as Finland, Turkey and Mexico attended virtually, talking to Woodstockers live on the global web of computer networks known

Is Monitor Placement Putting Us At Risk?

New evidence emerging in the United States suggests that an entire generation of computer users could be at risk of suffering carpal tunnel syndrome due to the way they look down at monitors. THE IMPROPER placement of computer monitors causes the debilitating hand-and-arm injury that affects thou

Companies Face Litigation

Hundreds of injured keyboard users have filed law suits against big computer companies, claiming that the companies sold unsafe equipment. Kylie Pope reports. ONE of the biggest batches of product-liability lawsuits since asbestos is threatening to smudge the squeaky-clean image of the computer

Buddhanet Aids Quest For A Computer Nirvana

MOST of us have pretty well overlooked the computer as an instrument for spiritual enlightenment. This is probably because we have been ensnared by our egos. Once you get stuck like that with your ego, you fail to appreciate the profound message that your PC delivers on those all-too-frequent occ