The Pensieve

Been there, done that. That's what you would hear if you are talking about SPAM filters for your e-mail. The other new area that I am constantly getting irritated about is the mobile SMS SPAM that make their way into my cell phone. One way or the others, we inadvertently give away our mobile phone nos to the various dealers who pass on the same to bulk SMS generators. They in turn make it a point to enlighten you of the various offers that you should be thankful to spend your money on! Thank God I am not charged for incoming messages! I know most providers like banks or the telecos provide a Do Not Call registry usually hidden away in the small-print. They abide by your request, but it is the other sources where you are forced to give away our number from where the main problem arises. One thing that I noticed that most mobile phone lack is an active SPAM filter for your mobile phones that can scan your incoming SMSes and over a course of time, learn from you, on what you regard as...

With the advent of e-books, software readers, hand-held devices and the Project Gutenberg , you literally have access to more than a book shelf. A good e-book reader for your mobile when you are standard at some place with nothing to do is Mobipocket reader . It comes along with a good PC based e-book creator that can take simple HTML or .txt files and convert into a format usable from a mobile device. With the text files combined with Emacs and a few regexps, I was able to convert most of the files to readable html files in a few minutes and feed them back to the e-book format converter for hours of readable entertainment. So, my current bookshelf contains: Arabian Nights Robinson Crusoe by Defoe Daniel The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce Dracula by Bram Stoker With these books with me, who would mind waiting on a long queue?

ScummVM Been always for the lookout for good games to play on my cellphone on those days where you do not have anything else to do, but had always ended up with sub-par free games or those that require you to cough up dough out of your wallet. The other day, when I was checking out my long used collection of games, I stumbled upon a few LucasArts DOS based games. Looking up the internet, I found ScummVM, a virtual machine capable of playing LucasArts games which has been ported to almost all different types of OSes like Linux, Windows, Symbian OS etc. So, I had been able to download and install ScummVM and a couple of free games. You eventually get a mouse pointer which you can control using the directional keys to perform various in-game actions. Though a little cumbersome, if you have time to wile away, ScummVM is work a try. Free games to try are: Beneath the Steel Sky The flight of the Amazon Queen