Several Macintosh generations ago, there was a nifty little telephone application called Megaphone. It was intended principally for small businesses, but it offered enough gadgetry and data about calls to geeky home users like me to justify its $50 cost. Read more »

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Most of the 200 or so athletes competing at the eighth annual Adidas Boston Indoor Games tonight traverse the track circuit seeking fame and a good living. But a handful, including about a dozen contestants in the Masters Mile - whose contestants are all 40 or older - race purely for the competition. Here's a bit more on five local Masters entrants.

PAUL HAMMOND, 43
INSURANCE UNIT CLAIM MANAGER, LEXINGTON Read more »

REHOBOTH - Amid the completed, semicompleted, and never-to-be- completed works in the Rehoboth studio of Dennis Congdon sits a small Royal typewriter. At first it seems out of place, but talk a few moments with Congdon, whose large-format oil and acrylic paintings are brush strokes sandwiched between layers of pigment sprayed through hand-cut stencils, and you begin to understand why it fits right in. Congdon, 48 and a professor of painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, begins his explanation, and process, with what he calls "the grand tradition" of great painters: Read more »

Do-it-yourself home designers used to have only graph paper and a ruler for tools, but you can find better tools these days on the Internet. The bad sites aren't that bad, and the best ones are getting better. jordansfurniture.com

A new software package by Hookumu Inc., a Salem, N.H., developer, could turn out to be one of the very best. It is due to debut by the end of this month on the Jordan's Furniture website. I got to test the package last week at home, and found it to be pretty snazzy: easy, efficient, and eminently customizable. Read more »

Eric Nisenson, 56, of Malden, was an editor of college textbooks until 1980, when he began writing books of his own. He now is at work on his sixth, about the tropicalia music movement (also known as tropicalismo) in '60s Brazil. Previous titles include "Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest" and " 'Round About Midnight," a portrait of Miles Davis. Nisenson is a 2002 Guggenheim fellow; the stipend is allowing him to proceed with the book without having a publisher.

"I always wanted to write, since I was a kid, but like all writers, I was afraid I wouldn't get published. Read more »

CAMBRIDGE - It's difficult to take in Carol Cohen's creations fully from any one place. Her painted panes of glass set in wood, such as "The Vineyard," which is on display on the second floor of the Museum of Fine Arts' west wing, are best viewed by walking in a small, slow circle around their perimeter. That's how the sea scenes, garments, human forms, and other objects depicted in them come into full view. Read more »

RANDOLPH, Vt. — Eric Truran and Diana Salyer's unconventional method of doing business is working so well, success has become their biggest problem.

You're not likely to find the Courierware course for success in any business textbook, but if you did, it would prescribe something like this: Read more »

He's a hard-throwing right-hander with great control. He's got a rubber arm and is in the lineup practically every day. He's a local kid, not even 30 yet, but still a 17-year veteran. Rookies copy his style and dream of achieving what he has.

And he can claim a Fenway feat that no one else can. It sure doesn't sound like anyone on this year's struggling squad, and it isn't. We're talking about Rob Barry, the peanut vendor with the golden arm. Read more »

NAIROBI, Kenya — One of Yogi Berra's famous malaprops is, "No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

Kenya is like that these days, only different. No one goes there anymore, so it's a lot less crowded.

There are plenty of reasons not to go, of course: political violence, tourism crime, washed-out roads, fears of Rift Valley Fever and other exotic diseases, and even the weather. Even some tour operators in Kenya, whose livelihood depends on attracting people to the central African nation, say they have difficulty advising people to come. Read more »