Tech.It.To.Me->{By.Anton.Perez}

Just sign up with your Windows Live/Passport account and you can download all three e-books by Microsoft Press.  It includes the following:

Enjoy!

Just thought I’d share this with you…it’s a new kind of e-card that you can send to your loved ones.

Funny flash videos, cartoon animations, and pictures. Post, share and store favorite jokes…

Enjoy!

This snippet grays out the screen and allows you to create a modal environment. A gray out is useful for creating a DHTML dialog box, or showing off a picture or video. While a gray out is active, most interactive elements on the page (links, etc.) are inactive - you’ve probably seen this on the new My Yahoo! page.

function grayOut(vis, options) {
  // Pass true to gray out screen, false to ungray
  // options are optional.  This is a JSON object with the following (optional) properties
  // opacity:0-100         // Lower number = less grayout higher = more of a blackout
  // zindex: #             // HTML elements with a higher zindex appear on top of the gray out
  // bgcolor: (#xxxxxx)    // Standard RGB Hex color code
  // grayOut(true, {'zindex':'50', 'bgcolor':'#0000FF', 'opacity':'70'});
  // Because options is JSON opacity/zindex/bgcolor are all optional and can appear
  // in any order.  Pass only the properties you need to set.
  var options = options || {};
  var zindex = options.zindex || 50;
  var opacity = options.opacity || 70;
  var opaque = (opacity / 100);
  var bgcolor = options.bgcolor || '#000000';
  var dark=document.getElementById('darkenScreenObject');
  if (!dark) {
    // The dark layer doesn't exist, it's never been created.  So we'll
    // create it here and apply some basic styles.
    // If you are getting errors in IE see: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/927917
    var tbody = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
    var tnode = document.createElement('div');           // Create the layer.
        tnode.style.position='absolute';                 // Position absolutely
        tnode.style.top='0px';                           // In the top
        tnode.style.left='0px';                          // Left corner of the page
        tnode.style.overflow='hidden';                   // Try to avoid making scroll bars
        tnode.style.display='none';                      // Start out Hidden
        tnode.id='darkenScreenObject';                   // Name it so we can find it later
    tbody.appendChild(tnode);                            // Add it to the web page
    dark=document.getElementById('darkenScreenObject');  // Get the object.
  }
  if (vis) {
    // Calculate the page width and height
    if( document.body && ( document.body.scrollWidth || document.body.scrollHeight ) ) {
        var pageWidth = document.body.scrollWidth+'px';
        var pageHeight = document.body.scrollHeight+'px';
    } else if( document.body.offsetWidth ) {
      var pageWidth = document.body.offsetWidth+'px';
      var pageHeight = document.body.offsetHeight+'px';
    } else {
       var pageWidth='100%';
       var pageHeight='100%';
    }
    //set the shader to cover the entire page and make it visible.
    dark.style.opacity=opaque;
    dark.style.MozOpacity=opaque;
    dark.style.filter='alpha(opacity='+opacity+')';
    dark.style.zIndex=zindex;
    dark.style.backgroundColor=bgcolor;
    dark.style.width= pageWidth;
    dark.style.height= pageHeight;
    dark.style.display='block';
  } else {
     dark.style.display='none';
  }
}

Thanks to Peter Hunlock for sharing this.

Here’s an interesting article that Bill Gates wrote for the BBC News web site, that talks about the skills one needs to succeed in any career.

For $300, you can get a humanoid toy robot that can recognize spoken words and be controlled remotely.  It has 17 motors that allows it to walk, somersault, and do karate chops.

The Guinness World Records recognizes it as smallest humanoid robot in commercial production; i-Sobot went on sale in Japan, in white, and the U.S., in black, this fall and is set to arrive in Europe next year.

Read more via Yahoo! News.