If this isn’t hilarious, then I don’t know what is… “What the heck is Electronic Mail?” Then in the side column it says “Simply put, it means high-speed information transportation.” This obviously an ad to promote how advanced they were back then - Honeywell boasts, “Tomorrow’s automated office will clearly include Electronic Mail. But like the rest of the Office of the Future, it’s available at Honeywell today.”

A site called ShinyLetter tried this concept a while back, but there was one problem - it cost you $2 for up to 4 pages. An ok deal, except you can send a regular size letter yourself internationally through the U.S. Postal Service for under $2. Their model didn’t work (their site is up but isn’t functional).

Now, the newly launched eSnailer will print, envelope, stamp, and send your letter completely free of charge. eSnailer is using an ad based model to compensate for cost. People don’t wanna pay for something they can just do themselves for the same price. But if it’s free, like eSnailer, and takes out the hassle of finding an envelope, stamps, etc. then I see this as a valuable and just plain fun service.

There’s been a development in the Wikipedia case we mentioned yesterday, about the case of a murder appearing on Wikipedia before police even found the body. An anonymous poster, with an IP address matching that of the original poster, left this message.

Hey everyone. I am here to talk about the wikipedia comment that was left by myself. I just want to say that it was an incredible coincidence. I posted my speculation on the situation at the time and I am deeply sorry about this, and I was just as shocked as everyone when I heard that this actually would happen in real life. It is one of those things that just turned into a huge coincidence.

Ok, so maybe this is the truth, but that still doesn’t explain how rumours appeared online before the bodies were found. ::WikiNews

Active Inc. has developed an LCD monitor that is transparent. According to Engadget the company is hoping to market the screens for activities such as watching your family while watching a movie or watching a movie while another movie plays in the distance.

I think that there are more interesting applications in augmented reality. For example, you could view your desk through the display and have additional information overlaid onto real objects. Eye tracking technology could easily work out the right angles for the display. You need a subscription to read the original story, so here’s a link to Engadget’s coverage.

If you’re sick of hearing about the iPhone, then this could be for you. Incidentally, if you are sick of hearing about the iPhone, then what are you doing reading a tech blog?

The iSmudginator allows you to scratch and smudge the screen of a shiny new virtual iPhone. That huge glass screen may be part of the appeal of the handset, but you just now it’s going to be a magnet for smudgy marks and scratches.

The Wisdom of Crowds is an interesting phenomenon, but it has taken a very unusual turn - Wikipedia has started to predict the future.

An anonymous user in Stamford, Connecticut (home of World Wrestling Entertainment) wrote on the entry for pro wrestler, Chris Benoit, that his wife had been killed. This was at 12:01 AM. The thing is, police didn’t even find her body until 2:30 PM.

The edit included the text, “Chris Benoit was replaced by [[Johnny Nitro]] for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.” Moderators removed the edit an hour later, citing the lack of evidence.

I’m going to keep a very close eye on the big tech companies entries, and buy stock if I see any profit reports from the future.

Google Maps is a great product, but it really only caters to drivers. I used to use it to plan routes in London where I rode my bike everywhere, and it would always miss the places that I could cut through a park or something else like that. This new feature should help fix that. Get directions from A to B, and then click and drag the route line to move it to another road.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it will give people a lot more flexibility over routes and really be useful when there are roadworks in the area.

This set of iPod speakers is different to the 1,029,345,234 other products out there. It’s the same size as a bike water bottle, so you can drop it in the holder on your frame. It has a small remote control that fits on your handlebar, so you don’t crash looking for the skip button when embarassing tracks come on.

There used to be this guy in Cambridge who used to bike around playing heavy metal. Me and a friend used to sit in the park, watching him go round and round, looking like a roadie for Iron Maiden. If you want to be that guy, bring it up to date, and play decent music.

According to a study by Sega and iShare, over 40% of Japanese women in their 20s or 30s have regular conversation with their computers. “I chat incessantly to my computer when I’m working,” said one woman.

Some of these girls even give names to their personal computers. Ok, wait a second. My girlfriend did this, her MacBook is named ‘Pearl’ apparently. So is my girlfriend secretly Japanese, OR do young American women do the same? Someone should do a study here.

More [MSN-Mainichi Daily News] via TokyoMango

“Longhorn Reloaded” is a project to revive an earlier beta of Windows Vista from before the company’s reset of the Vista project on August 27, 2004. And Longhorn was ‘alive and kicking’ until Microsoft recently sent them a friendly cease & desist letter. The “Longhorn Reloaded” team took the pre-release Build 6.0.4074 of Longhorn, which still has features like WinFS, to “finish off what Microsoft started” and release new versions of it. Obviously we can see why Microsoft would not be thrilled about this, but they should at least acknowledge the programmers interest in preserving some cool Windows functionalities left out of the current Windows Vista.