Question: Marvin asks, "On my email website, it sometimes tells me something about my 'session' and then I have to log in again. Why does it do that?"
Answer: Good question, Marvin. A little explanation is in order here first. When the web was invented, web servers didn't need to know anything about which computers were asking them for web pages. Visitors can come and go at any time. The problem with that approach was that there was no context for a site visitor's clicks. Over time, the concept of a session was created. It allows for context so we can have web-based applications that require context like email and games without forcing people to log into and out of every website they visit. With the session concept, the web server looks at your computer's address and for 20 minutes say, maintains whatever context information the site designer wishes. As long as you continue to interact with the website, the timer stays near zero. But when 20 minutes elapses without any clicks from you, the web server expires the session and forgets whatever context it used to know about your computer. I've been saying 20 minutes because that's Microsoft's default, but website designers can set different times. Suppose you open an email message, read it and then without closing the message, go to a movie. When you return, your session will have expired. Clicking "back to inbox" won't have any meaning to the web server anymore, so you'll have to log in again.
Cool Site: LiteBrite.com: Do you remember the Hasbro toy, Lite-Brite(r)? I had one, but I could never make it work right without putting the patterns over it, and the problem with that was that once you've punched all the holes in the paper, you don't have a guide to re-create the picture again. But now you can create pictures on a virtual Lite-Brite(r). Just go to litebrite dot com. That address takes you to a page on Hasbro's website where you can choose from one of eight colors with a ninth one that will remove the peg. You can choose to insert a single peg at a time, or you can choose "Power Peg" which places three pegs of the same color in a row. You can print out your creation, or share it by e-mail. The only drawback to this site is that there aren't any patterns to overlay onto the board.
Cool Gadget: Star Wars Mimobots: Mimoco is a company that makes designer USB Flash drives. They've got several lines of drives based on Star Wars. They come in capacities from 2-16GB and start at $29.00. Their newest line includes "Stormtrooper unmasked": the stormtrooper’s helmet is the drive's cap. When you take the cap off the drive, you can find out whether you got Luke or Han Solo. You can choose R2-D2, a Jawa, or Obi-Wan Kenobi. They also have some other characters, like Darth Vader and Darth Maul, the Ewok, and some others. But they're out of C3PO. The drives come pre-loaded with desktop wallpapers, avatars, icons, and screensavers.
It's All "Geek" To Me: OCR: This week's term is one you might have seen if you have a scanner - OCR. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. When you scan a document, the scanner produces a picture of the document, like taking a photograph. You can read a photo of a document, you can fax a photo of a document, but what you can't do is edit a photo of a document like you can a word processing document. For that, you have to use OCR software. OCR software looks at the picture of the document and figures out where the text is. It then takes that picture of the text and examines it closely to figure out which letters are in the picture. Once this is done, a word processing document is created containing the recognized text so it may be edited. But I have to caution you that the process is dependent on which fonts are used, and how straight the document is fed into the scanner. Even then, you want to compare the recognized document against the original to uncover any irregularities in the recognition.
