Quicksilver, The Tipping Point

I have somewhat recently read “Quicksilver” by Neal Stephenson and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

Quicksilver changed my impression of Neal Stephenson; his talents are much broader than I thought. Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are both very easy to relate to for a computer nerd such as myself. Quicksilver demonstrated that Stephenson not only understands a lot about technology but that he has also studied a lot of history. Cool.

The Tipping Point is an easy to read book about difficult-to-explain phenomena, such as sudden changes in crime rates. It is full of very detailed examples that make it a lot of fun to read. I definitely recommend this one.

Decent and Free Series 60 Applications

My current cell phone is a Nokia N70. While this phone comes with a lot of useful applications, it is lacking in what I consider to be some important ways. Here is a list of some applications (freeware) that I deem worthy of use.

FExplorer - a very powerful filesystem explorer. It includes features like sending files via Bluetooth and capturing screenshots.

EggClock - beautifully simple countdown timer. Giant font and several beep options.

PocketCounter - a more sophisticated stopwatch that can count up, down, in sync with time-of-day, and supports things like lap times.

Triz - Tetris!

FreeMines - a Minesweeper clone. Use google to find its .sis file; I couldn’t find a permanent link.

Some more applications are listed at 3-Lib Series 60 Freeware and All About Symbian.