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Andrea Faulds has  developed a method for running Windows 95 in a web browser.  The Windows 95 operating system for personal computers was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and it ended support for it on December 31, 2001. If you're feeling nostalgic or want to experience a piece of software history, especially if you never used Windows 95, visit the online site to take it for spin.

Google Doodle celebrate the 90th anniversary of the first demonstration of television with it a Google doodle.  It was a mechanical television invented by John Logie Baird. Visit Google to check out the doodle or learn more about John Logie Baird.

The largest prime number has been discovered with over 20 million digits. It has been given name of M74207281. Prime numbers are used in public-key encryption, however, The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, also known as GIMPS, says it is too large to be of practical use.

Help GIMPS make math history by visiting their site and joining their effort to discover more prime numbers.

NPR recently had a report on a computer that cost U.S. $9 for a CPU from Next.Thing.Co.  and the possibilities it opens up for new innovation is very exciting.  It will allow access to an open-source platform of hardware and software in education and creative individuals that were once held back by high costs and rigid frameworks.

I once joked about a future where computers would be so inexpensive that we would purchase them as we would incandescent light bulbs.   Now, that future is fast approaching as the C.H.I.P. will ship out in June of 2016.

Let’s us all wish Wikipedia a happy birthday as it turns 15 years old this week. It has come a long way from its early days when I was in my undergraduate studies. It continued to mature and improve through my graduate studies and beyond. It’s great to see it is still around and wish it success on its platform for free information supported by the community. Thank you!

Read more here.

The world's first website debuted on December 20th,  1990.  Read more at the Huffington Post for more details, and remember to thank Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the world wide web.

Have you seen the latest Star Wars movie? Google has yet another Easter egg in its search engine results that you can activate by entering, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" in the search box and clicking the search icon (spyglass) in your Chrome browser:

You will receive the following results:

There are many other surprises related to Star Wars and other themes that you can get review of some at the Independent.

Have a great day!

Do you have a website that you would like to know when it is down? Do you have more than one website? Or, are you looking for a thrift solution to monitor your websites? I located many commercial services that offer free versions of website monitoring services, but I wanted something that was simple to use and open source. One such method was developed by Amit Agarwal lagnol.org which uses Google Scripts on your Google Spreadsheets account. It checks a website every five minutes and alerts you when its down via e-mail.

Here are the steps I used to install it to track my websites :

• Sign-in to your Google account using your Gmail or Google Apps login.
• Click here to copy this Google sheet into your Google Drive.

• Type your website URL's in cell B2, separate each URL with a comma if you are entering more than one site (I added "-test" to one domain name to test it out), and your email address in cell B3.
• I did not wish to receive alerts by text message, so I left cell B4 as "No".

• Click on Website Monitor menu in your Google Sheets toolbar.
• Click Initialize and you’ll get a pop-up asking for authorization.
• Grant the necessary access.

• Go to the Website Monitor menu again and choose “Start Website Monitor” to begin the monitoring process.
• Close the Google Sheet.
• You will receive an email when the site is "down" every 5 minutes until it is restored. Each "down" result will be logged in your spreadsheet with the date.

Google notified me of the of following error after a few days of running the script:

Service using too much computer time for one day

My solution was to increase the amount of time between checks to my websites from 5 to 30 minutes. You can access the script by clicking on the link (Copy of Website Monitor v4.0)  in the email you received from Google, or simple clicking on Tools>Script Editor if you have it opened in your Google Drive account:

I opened the script labnol.gs and updated the following code by changing the 5 to 30:

  // Setup trigger that runs every 5 minutes
  
  ScriptApp.newTrigger("websiteMonitor")
  .timeBased()
  .everyMinutes(30) // Updated from 5 to 30 minutes to reduce computer time
  .create();
  
  sheet.toast("Google Docs will now monitor your website(s). "
              + "You can exit this sheet!", "Initialized", -1);
}

This is the maximum number of time for it to run. Then, saved the update and restarted the script.

I'll keep you all posted if any new messages are received.

Do you search the web and visit a page only to find it is either loading slowly because it has too many adds? Or, do you find it has more adds than content? App helpful app or browser plugin I use and recommend is,  Adblock Plus.  It is an open source project which has improved my experience on the web by removing the adds that are too abundant on some websites. Furthermore, it blocks tracking,  banners, pop-ups and video ads making your online experience more pleasant.

Most of all it's free and very reliable!

Have a great day!