Stickies - Fabulous Freeware by Tom Revell

Tom Revell at Zhorn Software is a friend I've never met.

His Stickies freeware is a fabulous find as well as an award-winning bit of software. It gets Five Stars from users and reviewers alike.

The image shown above is directly from the Zhorn site -- it shows how you can alter the colors and fonts as you prefer. The actual stickies can be sized to fit your screen preferences, of course -- and they can be stacked, or hidden, unlike the example shown above. No, your screen need not be covered with stickies - these things are a help, not a hindrance!

Not only does Stickies 6.0 allow me to place virtual stickies on my computer screen, but it gives me an alarm function as well. I can share stickies with friends. I can hide them, make them opaque, attach them to specific files, and schedule them to open only when I need them.

Tom Revell describes his product this way:

"Stickies is a PC utility I wrote to try to cut down on the number of Post-It notes I was leaving stuck to my monitor. It is a computerised version of those notes.

"The design goal behind Stickies is that the program is small and simple. Stickies will not mess with your system files, or write to the registry. Stickies stores all information in a single text-based ini file.

"Stickies will never support animated dancing figures, or play "Greensleeves". They are instead yellow rectangular windows onto which you can put some text notes. Once created, they will stay on screen until you take them away. Just like a real sticky piece of paper."

I can't recommend this program enough - it's a Must Have, to quote one of the User Reviews at Snapfiles.

For reviews (all Five Star), see: FreewareGenius, Snapfiles, Softsea, CNetDownload.com, VersionTracker.

Perez Hilton v Lindsay Lohan's Friend: Defamation Concerns for a Blogger

All the media coverage today surrounding Perez Hilton being sued by Lindsay Lohan's friend for defamation may give many a blogger pause.

Here's the skinny: bloggers can be sued for defamation not only for their own posts - anonymous or otherwise - but also for the comments left on their blog. Comments, too? Yep.

And, in today's legal arena, remember that while they may not win, they may well be able to pursue a lawsuit against you. In this murky, new area of the law, there's lots of leeway to argue that a cause of action has been established and the suit's not frivolous (even if it's not winable).

While the law is still evolving, here's what is leading the pack:

1. John Doe 1 v. John Cahill. In October 2005, the Delaware Supreme Court held that anonymous bloggers are not immune from being sued, but the standard of proof to reveal their identity is the highest possible burden.

2.The US Communications Decency Act holds that a blogger who repeats someone else's statements is legally responsible for the defamatory content of those statements, just as if the blogger was the original speaker, if the blogger knew, or had reason to know, that the statements were defamatory. The Act protects against liability for online "intermediaries" who merely provide or republish speech by others.

For a nice discussion of this evolving area of the law, check out TCS Daily's 2003 article, The Next Litigation Background; the British blog Internet Defamation which has been posting exclusively on this topic from a world-wide perspective since 2005; the articles at Law.Com, including Charles Toutant's on cult bloggers and the October 2007 Law.Com's online report of the National Law Journal's Roundtable discussion on this issue.

Test Your Grammar & Punctuation

Great, fun, and free: the Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation's collection of free online quizzes. It's addictive. (They also offer a free reference guide to many grammar rules - it's worth bookmarking.)

Another great free site, with lots and lots of quizzes: About.Com's Learning English as a Second Language Quiz Collection.

Finally, if you really love this stuff, check out: UsingEnglish.Com's selection of over 250 free quizzes; and the SAT preparation quizzes for Basic Grammar, Intermediate Grammar, and Advanced Grammar.