Stories by: Ian Lamont

A senior Linden Lab executive has indicated that Second Life's client software is being developed to take advantage of more powerful computers, but did not rule out future efforts involving low-end systems.

The Boston Police Department has demonstrated its Web 2.0 savvy by using blogging software and online video to highlight the case of alleged kidnap victim Reigh Rockefeller. While the department's blog has only basic features and does not permit discussion of the case, updates relating to the kidnapping have been posted within hours of new developments and information on the blog has been reposted by local and national media organizations.

Like many people, I "own" a few personal domains for my blogs and a few old business ideas that never got off the ground. And, like many people, they have been parked at Yahoo Small Business, partially because I already had a Yahoo account when I registered them a few years ago, and partially because I was lured by the US$1.99/year offers for new domains that they had running at the time. The rate increased to $9.95 after the first year, but I was OK with that. I was able to reserve the domains and set up redirects to my blogs, and have the option of building real sites if I ever get too frustrated with Google's Blogger service.

The following slideshow contains capsule reviews of all 20 products and services.

Blender is a popular open-source software package used for modeling and rendering 3-D images. Computerworld recently spoke via e-mail with Tom Musgrove, one of the 35 active core developers on the Blender project. Besides explaining how the tool is used by 3-D artists, Musgrove also addressed complaints about the Blender user interface and discussed directions for future development.

Computerworld's list of 10 dead or dying computer skills prompted some readers to submit their own technologies that they felt deserved to be mentioned on the list.