Sorry to hear on your wife's condition.

A year ago, a co-worker was given his last diagnosis after a year of chemo that just didnt work. His insides were just torn by cancer and he was given a few weeks left to live. A friend of his organized a campaign for anyone who worked with him, who knew him to make a video directed at him and at the 2 young daughters (2 and 4 year olds) and wife he was leaving behind. We all got together, had a private place to record and recorded some thoughts on him. The resulting video was given to him and his family. I dont know if he watched it but for my part I tried to give an impression of who this man I knew was and his influence on me.

It's not easy to ask people to sit down and do this but knowing the kind of people your wife had an influence on and capturing those memories may be another good way to preserve the essence of who she is.

I don't think this would be something implemented system wide, more than likely it could be iAds framework that developers could use when releasing free Mac Apps. Apple spends considerable time looking into user experience so something that would drive people away in droves is not likely to make it into OS X. Could also be a misleading patent that's really for iOS for Apple TV (which makes more sense to me). Something like free Movie/Music/Otherwise Paid content delivered via iTunes on Apple TV with need to watch the ads in order to keep viewing it, or pay up to download and have full access to that content. The same concept could apply to iTunes Store on Mac OS X.

You obviously never played World of Warcraft 6-7 hours a week is what is called "casual" play. Excessive amount of online game time in a game like WoW is 30-40+ hours a week. Serious raiding starts at 10 hours per week with a highly organized group (which is rare), 20+ with a poorly to mid organized one. And that's not even counting off-raiding time which Blizzard makes sure you put in unless you are really good at playing the Auction House or pay gold farmers for gold.

Put in the right tag, and ! the wrong one. I'm so confused on how the tag system operates I rarely use it, and yeah sometimes I can't tag stuff either. Maybe it's a Karma thing?

I called them ... Things went badly when ...they found out I was a guy.

I'm amused that they didn't pick up on that until you actually had to tell them you were a guy. ;-)

Not to mention that there are studies supporting that doodling can actually help you focus and concentrate. I don't see any equivalent means in a laptop.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/27/doodling-doodles-boring-meetings-concentration

Several years ago I misused my hands to the point that it was painful to type for any period of time. I switched to dvorak to ease things on me. And although it was a relief, it was mostly due to slowing down and being careful in my movements. It became specially a problem when having to move back to someone else's computer to help. So dvorak helped a bit but it was clear there were other issues.

So still with my problem, I spent time researching and found the very good Cornell Ergonomics site http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/

The two biggest problems I had were my pinky and thumb hurting from trying to use them. In the end, instead of stretching them out like some typists recommend (they seem to forget that stressing weak muscles regularly can cause issues), I adjusted and moved my arm (big strong mucles there) with my hand so my finger would hit the key, avoided twisting my wrist, or used another finger while those two fingers recuperated. Checked my posture frequently and looked at hand strengthening exercises.

This book was actually also a great resource: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1572240393/qid=1055745052/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-9180898-5704857?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I know this is probably no quite what you asked but if you feel awkward about your typing technique it's definitely worth identifying potential problems and solving them before they become a bigger problem.

In any case if you are at the point of discomfort you should definitely see a doctor.

Also slow down, there's rarely any reason to type so fast that you strain your hands to the point of discomfort/pain/awkwardness. And listen to your body, with the need for deadlines, busy life, etc, we often ignore the little signs of warnings of "don't keep doing that". If you can learn to listen to the signs early you can make adjustments sooner.

According to http://www.southwest.com/travel_center/cos_qa.html

It sounds like the determination is made if you can not fit within the confines of a standard seat with the arm rests down on both sides. I wonder if they don't have a test airplane seat you can sit in before hand at the terminal before trying to board or set of measurements you can take at home before buying your ticket/boarding to reduce the potential for embarrassment of being forced off the plane once you try to seat onboard.

From the link above:
"I am a large person and use a seatbelt extension, but I fit in one aircraft seat. Do I have to purchase two seats? Our policy does not focus on weight, and the seatbelt extension is not the determining factor. We use the ability to lower the armrests as the gauge, as the armrests are truly the definitive boundary between each seat."

Another interesting tidibt from the link:
Are all overweight people subject to the policy?
Many Americans are "overweight" or "clinically obese." A number of overweight or obese people occupy only one seat. In fact, many Customers may use a seatbelt extension but occupy only one seat, and these Customers would not be asked to reserve a second seat. If a Customer cannot lower the armrest (and is unable to comfortably travel with it in the down position), he/she is required to pay for the additional seat occupied. Again, we will offer a refund if the flight does not oversell.

I've been out of a college class for a few years, but I simply would and still prefer paper/pen. It's not about being old school, but I am extremely picky about what I want technology doing for me. I tend to be uncompromising and really think out what some input device will do for me. I want technology that works the way I do, not me having to compromise heavily in order to use it. I have yet to see something that fits the flexibility of pen/paper while giving me the advantage of a digital device thought those electronic note taking pens are probably close.

I can tell you me typing for an hour on a netbook would lead to uncomfortable typing, as netbooks have too small a size. I could probably swing a regular sized laptop like my 15" Macbook Pro, or other similar full size key laptop.

I also have my own short hand method of note taking, coupled with identifying things that I don't need to memorize and things that have to be written down. Also I tend to circle important bits of information and tie them together with arrows pointing to what they relate to creating a type of cluster diagram meshed in with regular note taking. I don't see how any laptop software out there can compare there.

I am hopeful that a well thought out, well implemented tablet PC comes along that gives me good flexibility.

That said I can imagine taking my ipod touch or other such small form tablet device and scribble or look up some info on it while I take notes with pen/paper. As I was thinking about this I considered an iPhone or other similar device being indispensable, since you can take a photo of the board if there is a complex diagram, and simply drop a note on paper (see iPhone pict for blah diagram). ;-)

Qualifications:

Rejected by Google.

Also the beauty of mathematics, at least for me, was the part where you learn how to drag those beautiful mark notations with your own hand. As another poster mentioned, doing it by hand also helps memory.

I wholeheartedly support this. It's been a few years since I taken a math course, but I don't believe there's a more flexible tool for note taking in a math class than pen & paper. I remember taking notes, and adding little side notes of my own to help remember something.

When you're trying to do something like this, high tech isn't always the answer, K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, silly! ;) )

Also the trick to any good math course is write down only the things that are more complicated. Paying attention to the teacher and following through the nuances of mathematics and writing down what the Professor/Teacher says that's not in your textbook is what's important :)

Many a year ago, during my 10th grade year at one of the big urban high schools in Los Angeles, I was part of a program called Humanitas.

We had a Creative Writing program + regular English class with one teacher, tied in with a Biology class. In addition to the regular English class curriculum, we also delved into a few Sci Fi books. We read Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. We went beyond simply reading it, the English teacher Charles DiPuccio teamed up with our Biology teacher and reading through the book and working on it, coincided with us studying about genetics. It really piqued my interest and that of others in the class. It was such an immersive experience, we learned something about science, genetics & DNA sequencing. We even wrote letters "home" as survivors talking about what our experiences on the island may have been like. We of course also watched the movie.

It gave me a very different perspective on writing, science, and movie watching :)

It may be something to consider. I added as much info as I could in case perhaps you try to get ahold of the teacher involved :)

As much as this may be on Apple, any good software developer should be asking the user for authority to share/access that information to begin with, specially if it's going to lead to sales calls down the line. Since it looks like mogoRoad didn't (at least there's no mention of this anywhere) it's telling that they really don't care about user privacy.

Apple could probably solve this by encapsulating any data on the iPhone with a framework that forces UI authorization before any app on the iPhone is allowed to access information.