I host my own mail server at home, and I use my Web Hosting provider's SMTP as an outbound relay for mail. To connect to my server from the outside to send mail, I use the ssl port to connect, which my ISP does not block.

For incoming messages, I set up a catch-all address on my Web Host's email server, and fetch-mail it over IMAP. Then, I let fetchmail deliver it to my mail server, and process the mail delivery to local addresses in LDAP on my server, but it depends what your host provider does to the headers when the mail goes to the catch-all. If this is a problem, you may need to set up separate accounts on your host provider's server, or if they will let you, set the outbound to your domain to relay to your sever over a non-standard port (which, if they will let you do the relay, they can usually encrypt the connection too).

I went through an Econ MA program with the same problem, and even bought a tablet pc and tried to use OneNote to do it. In the end, I found the fastest thing was OpenOffice's formula entry system, Math. The commands are very intuitive, ie. x over y for x/y, and once I learned them, I could type faster than I wrote anyway. It does have the disadvantage of not holding alot of equations at once (at least 2.0 did), and integrating your Write documents is a pain, but it was still the best solution for me. I would usually switch between Write and Math, and just make a note in writer to insert the equation here... or, if it was something short, type the math commands right into writer and then convert it later. The big plus is that, once it is in, it is in a computer-readable form, so there is no "going back" later.

I agree. I want to be paid for my work, but it is not the most important motivation for me to write. Good writing is done for the writer first, and everyone else second. I think DRM is crap, and it hurts customers (whoever they are). The fact is, DRM doesn't stop the people that won't pay for your work, and it hurts the people that want to pay for your work, so why bother? Sure, there are people at the margin who will decide to steal rather than to purchase, but if that group is really large enough to make a significant difference, then the price of your work is too high and your publisher is censoring information with high pricing. If that's the case, you deserve to be ripped-off you jerk. Paying for books is the same as paying for any other good - there is a price that is somewhere between the highest price a customer is willing to pay and the lowest price you are willing to sell it for. If you aren't being a greedy jerk, that price should be somewhere in the middle. Be willing to split the surplus with your reader, and the DRM issue becomes a non-issue. Be like the RIAA, trying to make people pay $20 for one good song (and nine crappy ones), and you deserve to get ripped-off (and you will be).

I use Subversion through Apache for the documents, and webdav for the "stuff I want to stay on the server" such as my music. I like it because I can access my data from anywhere, and I can secure it with client ssl certificates.

For my email, I use IMAP; for calendars, I use CalDAV; and for contacts, I use OpenLDAP, but that was a pain to set up. I keep my bookmarks synced through Delicious.

If you want to make it easy, use GoogleDocs, GoogleCalendar, Google blah blah blah. Most email clients and calendar clients can interact with Google, and it makes life oh so much easier.

I didn't buy an earlier version of the Kindle because it lacked a pdf viewer. I read a lot of books in pdf form from Google Books. The ability to read pdf's on the new Kindle moves it from "that's neat" to "WOW! Gotta Have It!" for me.

This is a good decision by Konami - its responsibility is to its stockholders, and an established distributer like Konami shouldn't take the risk that backlash will hurt other game sales.

What's more, this decision is in the best interest off all the other developers that publish games with Konami - the sale of unrelated games from unrelated game developers might be hurt by the anti-Konami backlash, but they would see no real benefit from the risk.

Put it this way - think how badly the other two Dixie Chicks were financially affected when Natalie Maines opened her trap in London.

This is the perfect project for an independent publishing company - one which doesn't have a bunch of other projects that could burn with this one.

Increased "religiousness" may be correlated with increased "fighting death", but this does not imply causation. It is likely the case that an increased fear of death cause both an increased "religiousness" and an increased "fighting death". ---- The number of bars for a city is also positively correlated with the number of churches a city has - more bars imply more churches. Why? Because larger cities have more of each.

The most important thing about any documentation solution is that people use it, otherwise it is useless. To minimize the costs of using it, I suggest you find a solution that is similar to something people at your organization are used to using.

I had the same problem land on my desk a month ago. All of our policies and procedures were stored in a big notebook that was horribly out of date and that no one read. Since we use Trac for our dev department, people were used to the wiki formatting on it. I installed MoinMoin as a corporate wiki, which uses the same format.

MoinMoin is great because it uses basic authentication from apache, so you can authenticate it against whatever you have (like Active Directory), and people don't need another set of passowrds. It is simple to use and also easy to backup. Also, if you have a corporate intranet already, it is not difficult to integrate.

The wiki is great because anyone can modify it without alot of fanfare. However, if you choose a solution that is yet another thing to learn how to use, no one will take the time to use it. Again, the most important thing in my opinion is to lower the cost to the end user so that it is easier to post the information on the wiki than answer the same question again and again.