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Microsoft Math was one of the components of a bigger suite marketed as Microsoft Student, introduced in 2006. At that time the main attraction was Microsoft Encarta, the rich multimedia encyclopedia that ended the reign of bound encyclopedias and flourished for more than a decade. When Encarta was discontinued two years ago, slain by the Wikipedia juggernaut, most of the pieces of Microsoft Student died with it.

Surprise! Microsoft Mathematics survived. In fact, an updated version was released last month, able to solve equations, draw graphs, do calculus, and more. This could be used by students doing mathematics or science in high school or college, and frankly looks like a useful tool for anyone doing math as part of their job. […] continued

Microsoft announced today that it is discontinuing its Encarta encyclopedia in all of its various incarnations. The DVDs will be off the market by June, existing subscriptions will stop getting updates later this year, and the MSN Encarta web sites will be turned off on October 31.

For the last few years, Microsoft has been marketing Encarta with Microsoft Student, templates and learning guides aimed at middle and high school students. Microsoft Student never really got much traction and will also be withdrawn from the market.

I always liked Encarta. The articles weren’t very deep but the multimedia presentation was pretty compelling – it had music from around the world, thousands of photos and videos, and inventive timelines and graphs. […] continued

I’ve been using my PayPal account more frequently to buy things online. It’s connected to my checking account, so a payment made with PayPal is withdrawn directly from the bank account. Typically the payment requires a transfer to a different browser window for the PayPal authentication, then back to the merchant’s web site, which in the past had sometimes been a tricky dance for Internet Explorer to handle. Lately all the transactions have gone smoothly. The merchant gets all the name and address information from PayPal so it’s frequently faster to finish a transaction.

It’s a little harder to use Quicken to reconcile payments from the checking account that go through PayPal. […] continued

Cory Doctorow is one of the most interesting science fiction authors working today, as well as an editor and frequent contributor to Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs in the world.

His new book, Little Brother, is a young adult novel about a high school student caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco.

“In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they�re mercilessly interrogated for days.

“When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist.

[…] continued

Costco doesn’t always have great deals on software any more, but occasionally something turns up. If for some reason you haven’t bought your copy of Windows Live OneCare yet, you can buy it at Costco through Sunday for $4.99. No rebate – that’s the price at the register.

While you’re at Costco, parents might want to take a look at Microsoft Student 2008, which includes the entire content of Encarta Premium plus homework tools, report templates, research aids, strong math and foreign language tools, and more. (Here’s some comments I wrote about the 2006 version of Student; with luck the current version has fewer bugs.)

Encarta is a bit less relevant when the rich online world is a click away, but it’s still quite helpful to get started on a homework assignment. […] continued

Vista has built-in parental controls that do certain chores very well. Parents can filter web sites, monitor web surfing and other computer activity, and limit what programs and games can be run. Vista also makes it easy to limit a child’s use of the computer to certain times of the day; the computer will only allow the child to log in between noon and 8pm, say, and locks up for the night at the end of the assigned time.

It’s surprisingly difficult to add the feature that I would expect to find at the top of a parent’s list: the ability to limit a child’s use of the computer to a certain number of hours per day. […] continued

Vista has many new features – so many that it will be difficult to decide which ones to call attention to. For home users and families, the built-in parental controls will be a key selling point. Here’s a good summary of those features – there’s easy to use tools to monitor Internet usage and handle web filtering, to control time spent on the computer, to limit games or applications, and more. If parents use those controls and keep their kids on limited user accounts, there’s a chance that computers will be able to survive being used by kids and teenagers.

I’m still looking for the right filter for parents who want some control over their children’s Internet activities. I wanted to like Safe Eyes – it has a nice interface, the right features (control over Internet surfing, time online, and access to programs without being overly complicated), and many people apparently use it successfully. But it apparently conflicted with something on our computers, because it caused 3-4 minute delays just logging on to the computer and unacceptably slowed down the Internet connection. I don’t see other people complaining about that online, so I’d encourage you to download the free trial if you’re interested – and remove it if it appears to be troublesome. […] continued

Windows Vista will include deeply integrated parental controls to assist parents in monitoring kids’ time online and preventing access to inappropriate web sites.

A more limited service for Windows XP is now available under the name Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. This is a beta release without all the features planned for the final product; at some point it will be more or less integrated into the Windows Live OneCare security service. Here’s an article with more details about the beta version, and here’s more info from Microsoft.

The Windows XP service prevents access to inappropriate sites but doesn’t do anything else. […] continued

Over the years various programs have promised to filter Internet browsing to prevent access to inappropriate content. Net Nanny, for example, was reputed to be one of the leaders a couple of years ago, but I found it wildly confusing and abandoned it almost immediately. Norton’s filter in the Internet Security suite is poorly designed and difficult to figure out. Comcast offered a security program for a while – it was just awful and Comcast eventually dropped it. I became pessimistic about the whole idea.

PC Magazine reviewed a number of new releases recently and gave high marks to Safe Eyes. […] continued