One of the most beautiful things about the internet is that anyone can develop a program, post it on a web site and charge for it. And if the program is good at whatever it does, people will readily pay for it.

"But I know very little about programming", you may say.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. All you need is a decent text editor that recognizes typical programming code (like Notepad++, which is free), and then choose whether to use an SDK or API for whatever it is you want to program.

SDK: Software Developer Kit. An example is the Microsoft Office Developer Center. Lots of stuff with plenty of how-tos. SDKs are available for almost any popular application out there. Just do a Google search for "[program name] SDK" and it probably exists.

API: Application Programming Interface. For most people this is easier than using an SDK. And the best part is that you can use your web site (via PHP, Perl, MySQL and so on) as the testing grounds.

APIs are what make new and interesting things happen with a lot of different web sites.

Two examples: YouTube API, Twitter API.

Using YouTube as an example, be examining the Getting Started page there are things just about anyone can do even with the most basic of programming knowledge. And once you get familiarized with that you can move on to bigger and better things.

Another example: World of Warcraft API.

If you play WoW, you’ll learn things about the game by studying the API that you never knew before. And you may be able to put together the "ultimate" add-on that players would be willing to pay for. You never know unless you try.

SDKs and APIs are by nature openly available because software makers want you to program stuff for their products. When you do, this increases sales/popularity of their software and can also make you some money in the process. It’s a win-win situation.

The only thing you truly have to spend is time. Programming, especially for the beginner, is a slow learning process. But once familiarized you’ll be able to do some amazing stuff.

You wanted "hands-on" learning without spending anything? Well, it doesn’t get any more hand-on than this concerning making your own programs/applications.

Yes, this is a retro article, but with a modern twist.

The Commodore 64 is to date the best-selling computer of all time and hasn’t been topped. An all too common item to be seen next to the C64 was the 1541 floppy disk drive. This actually was in fact more than just a disk drive. It was a computer because it did contain a microprocessor (this one, in fact).

Everybody knows what USB is. Everything connects to it. Keyboards, mice, printers, digital cameras, network devices (wired or wireless), lights, humping dogs, you name it..

However the one thing that has never existed is a 5¼-inch USB floppy drive. Oh sure, you can get the 3½-inch USB version easily, but no 5¼ is to be found; it doesn’t exist.

Being that there are mountains of old C64 software out there that people are looking to archive, a USB solution was needed for the old 1541 5¼-inch drive. And wouldn’t you know it, someone built one.

The xum1541 is an actual home-brew solution for the Commodore 1541 that will allow it to interface to a PC via USB.

Here it is in action:

This, dear friends, is true computer hacking. If it doesn’t exist, build it. Hopefully this will be made into a for-sale product later on as I’m sure there are many C64 owners who would love to be able to back up their piles and piles of disks with a simple adapter like the xum.

Hey, if they could make an Apple II Ethernet Module, anything is possible, right?

There’s a reason I used the odd-cased HoTMaiL in the title because that’s the way it was originally written out. You’ll notice the capital letters are HTML. Hotmail was spelled that way many moons ago to really drive home the fact it was HTML (meaning web) based mail.

Microsoft this week decided to roll out the new-and-improved interface across the rest (if not all) of Windows Live Mail accounts, and this obviously includes Hotmail.

Some people like it while others don’t like or outright hate it. You can put me in the camp of people that genuinely do like it because it goes back to the way Hotmail used to be – simple and fast.

The single largest complaint I’ve seen about the new Windows Live Mail interface is that people say it’s "boring" and that the previous interface was "just fine".

Not true.

The previous interface was no less "boring" than the new one and was so chock full of bloat that it made it a chore to use. While it’s true there are some things I miss (the "check mail" button and several icons are gone), the speed more than makes up for it. I don’t remember Hotmail being this fast since the early 2000s.

E-Mail is not supposed to be "exciting" to use. You want exciting and a super-cool animated in-your-face interface? Go play a video game; stay out of my e-mail.

Microsoft is now the first of the big three (Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail) to roll out a single interface and stick to it. Yahoo! Mail allows for a "Classic Mode" and Gmail an "Older version" option. The reason? Because the current-generation interfaces are too bloated. Microsoft was doing the same thing with their own "classic mode" as well – but with the new interface that is no longer the case.

Since using the new interface with Hotmail I can honestly that yes, this is truly new and improved. You can read things easier, it loads faster, the learning curve is minimal and most of all – it acts like a cloud-based app is supposed to act like.

Google and Yahoo! are officially going to have to start playing catch-up at this point.

Some of you out there who use Hotmail might have seen this today:

(click image for full size)

The reason I say some is because this is a gradual roll-out of the updated Windows Live Hotmail service. If you use this e-mail, you will see this upgrade possibly today, tomorrow, next week, etc. But it will eventually happen.

The bad sense of humor comes from the ² at the bottom of the above splash page, which states:

We’ve designed Windows Live Hotmail storage to grow with you, but at a reasonable pace. That means you should have plenty of storage unless you suddenly want to store the planet Jupiter on Hotmail, in which case we’ll send you a nice e-mail asking you to please not try to store planets on Windows Live Hotmail (although gradual storage of moons and asteroids is ok).

"..gradual storage of moons and asteroids"?

Um.. yeah. Thanks, Microsoft.

Anyway, the new interface is notably better. All of it can be seen in this screen shot:

(click image for full size)

Here’s what has changed:

1. Easier management of recipients

Each recipient in To, Cc or Bcc is now surrounded by a border with a small X so it’s easy to add/remove people from a mail. Very nice.

2. Ability to change from Rich Text/HTML/Plain Text at whim.

I am VERY happy this is now here, particularly with the plain text option. In addition, plain text now looks like plain text with the use of a monospaced font.

3. Less icons

Icons were removed to speed up the interface. I don’t like this because they were nice to have.

4. Arrows removed from Junk/Deleted, "Empty" link now present

There used to be a small "swish" arrow next to Junk and Deleted to empty those folders but those are gone now. Instead, when you click on those folders there’s an "Empty" button above the e-mail list. I’m not sure if I like this or not.

5. Ability to set priority on e-mail when composing

The red exclamation point icon means "high", the blue down arrow means "low".

And we’ve still got no way to filter by priority when searching/listing mail.

You can set it and send it, but can’t filter/sort by it.

Ugh.

6. Ability to select themes

This is a crappy feature because there are less color options. I use the Silver theme in the old Hotmail. In the new Hotmail you’ve got 8 crappy theme choices. No customization whatsoever other than what MS gives you.

Bleah.

~ ~ ~

This is about all I could spot for the time being unless there were other things I missed.

Overall, yes – it is faster and better. Even though the themes suck, the plain text option with monospaced font more than makes up for it because that’s a function I’ve been wanting in Hotmail for a really long time.