I don’t really remember how this happened, but suddenly I wanted to play Chip’s Challenge. What a great game. It came with my first PC (first computer was a Macintosh LCIII), a Pentium II Packard Bell with around 5 GB of hard drive space. This was back in the day when not all the Microsoft software bundled with Windows was trial software. The games came with the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack. Those were great games, and needless to say I had to relive part of my childhood. Plus, I never beat Chip’s Challenge.

But anyway, I’ve compiled all of these awesome games from the Microsoft Entertainment Pack and they are free for download from my SkyDrive. I’m assuming this stuff is all abandonware by now so, here are these great games in all their retro glory.

Chip’s Challenge

I never beat it, but now that I’m older, hopefully I can beat it this time around.

Download Chip’s Challenge

Link 1 – Link 2 – Link 3

SkiFree

What a weird game. No matter how fast you skiied, a little grey monster would always come down and make you its dinner.

Download SkiFree

Link 1 – Link 2

PipeDream

Okay game. Never really got into it, and it was kind of repetitive. Unfortunately, I could not find the correct version to download.

Link 1

Rodent’s Revenge

A rather interesting game about a super strength mouse squishing cats into catcakes with blocks.

Download Rodent’s Revenge

Link 1

The other games were pretty boring – just card games, so I didn’t include those. Here are links to the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack and an archive of old games.

Search engines are outdated. All other web based services have improved and developed over time. Webapps have become more like desktop applications with fancy animations, drag and drop and all sorts of great features, but search engines still retain the basic format they had when they first appeared.

All search engines are pretty much the same in terms of how the results are delivered. They are static pages with a list of text results, a search box on top and additional pages on the bottom. Obviously there’s a great deal that can be improved. Some search engines are much more innovative in the way information is presented, such as ask.com and the much hyped cuil.com.

ask.com has many notable features. It’s the only search engine (that I know of) that actually detects your screen resolution and takes advantage of wasted space. All other search engines simply leave swaths of wasted space if you are one of the many who have higher resolution monitors. It also displays helpful suggestions to narrow and expand your search on the left, and, if you’ve got enough pixels, widget like blocks with news, images, dictionary, synonyms, and encyclopedia terms related to a search term. In addition, instead of scrolling the engine page, search box and all, the navigation acts like a toolbar, allowing easy access when at the bottom of the page. The only thing that could be improved is if they extended this concept to the search pages. It also has a very useful preview feature that allows you to scope out a page before clicking. It’s also got a useful search history, which is useful, for lack of better ways to expand upon the idea.

cuil.com is that much hyped new browser created by former Googlers. The search is pretty bad, but I’m only focusing on user interface for now. Cuil has a refreshing user interface and is much more fun to use than boring text results like the other search engines. Its design seems rather forward thinking in that it takes advantage of horizontal screen real estate more than Google, Yahoo and Windows Live. After all, if you can set options to show results as text or icons on your computer, why not on the web? It functions much more like Windows Explorer in the way the results can be displayed, as results can be sorted into columns. However, it does not allow the option to change into text results, which can be a problem.

There’s a few other sites such as Yahoo Alpha and Searchmash that implement a customizable sidebar, but the customization options could be much improved.

But really what these search engines have done is just the tip of the iceberg. So much more can be done to improve search. Here are just some ideas for improving the feature set of search engines.

1. Stationary navigation and search box. When you search on the computer and scroll through the results, does the navigation disappear? It stays on top so you can easily modify your search. Cuil gets this right.
2. Modifiable sidebar. Ask gets this right. Windows Live tries, but the implementation isn’t nearly as good as Ask’s. But a sidebar could do so so much more. Essentially you could add custom search widgets. For example, if you want a glance of images along with your results, add an image widget. Users can also submit custom widgets for their sites or for well known sites like Wikipedia. Some other widgets could be definition, antonym and synonym, encyclopedia, or news.
3. Easily accessible advanced search . All search engines create a huge disconnect when users want to select advanced search. Most lead to another page, and Ask creates an irritating popup which disappears. The problem is that for all of these advanced search features, the advanced search box just disappears after searching, leaving less skilled users with custom tags like -,”", +, site:, link: etc. Few are familiar with all of the modifiers to fully take advantage of the features. Advanced search options should slide down from under the search box, much like Vista’s advanced search, and it should remain until the user chooses to close it.
4. Search suggestions. Every search engine needs them.
5. Search other sites. Suppose you search many different sites, you can add options to search other sites from within the search engine.
6. Results view option. The ability to switch between thumbnails and list view would be great. I’m tired of text.
7. Some sort of self improving cloud thing – Like Apple’s Genius feature, but with search. Basically instead of improving a music selection algorithm (lame), it would improve search. I’m not quite sure how this could work, but it’s possible.
8. Stationary advertisements on the left. It would improve visibility and clicks, so everyone benefits. Results would stay in the middle.
9. Change results per page. Use a slider like the magnification on in Office 2007.
10. Notepad. Windows Live, Google and Tafiti have one, but each only works for a particular search, such as images or web. This feature should be available for all kinds of search, and could be stored along with a web history.

If I had the skill I would definitely try to throw something together. These are great (I think) ideas that would really improve web search.

The new iPod Nano has been revealed, and I can’t help but feel that the designers were completely out of ideas. This new generation iPod Nano was marked by, aside from much needed storage and value improvements, more superficial modifications. Genius music suggestions (sells more songs), “nanochromatic” colors (seems like a last resort to get people to buy one), accelerometer (only useful on the Touch and iPhone) and touts regarding its environmental friendliness (which isn’t a bad thing). All of these seem like nothing more than gimmicks.

Take the accelerometer. It’s key function is to allow for the Cover Flow feature to work when the iPod is flipped horizontally. Both the last generation Nano and new one have the same screen resolution, and the only difference is that the new one has been reoriented to be vertical. If they had left the more squarish design, the accelerometer wouldn’t even be necessary. But then they slapped on a frivolous “shake to shuffle” feature to make it seem useful. If the screen was larger at all, the accelerometer might make sense, but it’s not.

In terms of value the new Nano is catching up with its competitors, but I’m still not ready to buy it yet. I’ve been spoiled by the fantastic voice recorder and FM radio on my Sandisk Sansa. Until then, the value proposition just isn’t there. I’d still readily buy a Sandisk View or Zune. I will admit that the color gimmick is working great, because that two tone orange looks incredible.

The web is buzzing about Google’s foray into the browser arena with Google Chrome. With all the development of web applications and such, Chrome has potential to gain some significant market share since it is apparently designed with those in mind.

Yes, a browser, which many people – incorrectly by the way – consider a substitute operating system is definitely a better move than the once-rumored “Google OS.” – PC Mag

With all this talk about cloud computing and speculation that computers will become nothing more than portals to the web, this response seems way off the mark. Google’s browser could essentially become the operating system, since a browser would be the only software needed to run web apps in this future of computing. In addition, the way Chrome is described in the comic creates the impression that it is almost like an operating system of some sort since it handles each task separately and has its own task manager. If Chrome is successful, every other browser will start to take on OS qualities.