Question: Paula asks, "In Gmail, if I want to read a message, but still keep it new, how can I do that?"
Answer: Great question, Paula. In all the email programs I'm familiar with and Gmail is no exception, your unread messages are shown in bold. Once you read the message, of course, its bold formatting goes away. Sometimes, though, you start reading a message, but don't get to finish it. The thing that happens still, is that the message is marked as though you’ve read it. In many programs, you can right-click on a message and choose to mark it as unread again, but Gmail is web based, so right-clicking won't do any good. Instead, click the check box next to the message you've started reading, but not finished. Click More Actions…, which will pull down a list. Choose "Mark as unread" from that list, and Voila! The message shows as unread again.
Cool Site: ConstitutionDay.com: Today is Constitution Day, the 223rd anniversary of the signing of our current Constitution. So I thought it only fitting that our cool site of the week would revolve around our Constitution. It's constitutionday.com. From the main page of the site, you can get at the free webcasts Hillsdale College is doing/has done for today. You'll find the full text of the Constitution there, as you might expect. Also the text of the amendments is available there. Additionally, the site contains articles on each of the Constitution’s signers. So, go there today and check it out. The site isn't large. What I've mentioned is all that's there, but that's great if you want to then slide over to the Hillsdale site because the speeches take a while to watch.
Cool Gadget: Toshiba 3D TV System: As promised last week, we've got another 3D gadget for you. At the CEDEC 2010 conference, Toshiba showed a digital display that does 3D without the need for special glasses. Now, I've seen 3D displays that didn't need glasses before, but it had a kind of grid on it and the effect wasn't all that great. This display is awesome! It has a technology that Toshiba calls "integral imaging" that allows you to see the 3D content from up to 9 different angles. The display uses lenses to project a slightly different image in each of those 9 angles, allowing your eyes to create the 3D effect in a way that mimics what happens naturally. They'll be used for advertising and games first, but later as TVs and PC monitors.
It's All "Geek" To Me: Core: This week’s term is Core. When you're looking at computer specifications, you see terms like dual core, triple, quad core, and now six-core, and maybe you've wondered just what a core is. Well, from the time computers started until just a few years ago, a CPU chip, a processor, only had one processor core. That core does all the computing that happens inside the processor. It's made up of two parts, the ALU (arithmetic logic unit), and the control unit. The ALU performs math and comparisons, and the control unit moves data around and keeps the ALU busy. If two numbers have to be added, for instance, the control unit gets the numbers to add, then tells the ALU to add them, then it puts the answer wherever it belongs. A single core can only run one program at a time. It can switch very quickly from one program to another, but at any instant in time, only one program is actually being worked on. When you see terms like dual core, it means that there are two ALUs and two Control Units in that processor. That lets the processor truly work on two programs simultaneously, so it can get almost twice as much work done. So, the core does all the processing work, and more cores means more processing.
