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Review of the year

2004 was the last complete year of the digital community, which will finally wind up in March, 2005. It was the year that saw local people being employed to maintain the community’s computers as Argyll & Bute extended the warranty, a great improvement in service and a small boost to the local economy, particularly mine. 

It was the last year of the free and heavily subsidised Argyll College courses, an opportunity that many people benefited from. The college still has a lot courses available at surprisingly low cost to the student though. It was also the year that Argyllcom tried but failed to shine, hopefully it will see a renaissance in the future.

The big local story of the year was broadband. Huge efforts went into signing people up as the criteria for a local exchange being upgraded changed almost by the day. Some were lucky like Colonsay and were picked as pilot projects by Hi-Wide, the HIE broadband company, others, like Lismore had their hopes cruelly dashed. They, like Bunessan and Tobermory, put a huge effort into meeting the trigger points set by Hi-Wide or BT, only to have the rug pulled out at the last moment.

Roughly what happened was that the HIE set up a company called Hi-Wide to get broadband to small communities. They then set trigger points for exchanges, trigger points that were separate from those set by BT. However before the work upgrading could start BT set trigger points for the larger local communities, this meant that, as a government subsidised company, Hi-Wide couldn’t compete with a commercial rival.

Then the communities with trigger points pulled out all the stops to meet the trigger points and met them, I think much to BTs surprise.

Meanwhile Hi-Wide’s plans were put on hold while everyone waited for the Scottish Executive to make an announcement. 

And waited.

And waited.

This was a very frustrating period because what the announcement was was an open secret, but everyone in the know was sworn to secrecy but eventually, in June, Jim Wallace announced that every exchange and every household in Scotland would be able to get broadband by the end of 2005.

This meant that all the previous plans became moot and only Colonsay, which became a pilot for the Hi-Wide “final mile” plans, got broadband that autumn. Lismore must have been the most frustrated as they were given a presentation by Hi-Wide about the benefits of broadband and expected it to arrive at any moment, despite the best efforts of Hi-Wide, it never did.

A side effect of this, and of the connections campaign that this website ran which resulted in Off-com guidelines being changed (see news 2003) was the removal of DACS boxes and the adding of new lines to exchanges, which has benefited everyone. Those that reported the worst connection speeds saw them improve exponentially, probably a more significant change than the arrival of broadband would have been.

Other themes of the year were security and the drift away from Internet Explorer. Viruses have always been an issue and increasingly so in the year that saw most peoples anti-virus subscriptions run out. This inspired the idea of tracking the addresses contained in infected email, a tactic which has proved very successful. I’ve never had an acknowledgement from a guilty sender but they’ve usually stopped sending them out within a few days of being mentioned on the website.

It was in June that an obscure threat, known as .ject resulted in people, including me, deciding to give up on Internet Explorer. Like millions of others we moved over to Mozilla Firefox, the browser of choice for around a quarter of visitors to the website. If you haven’t, you should try it; it’s so much fasted and safer.

Memory prices rose in the early part of the years, hitting £56 at one point before eventually falling back to £36 at the end of the year. Community members became increasingly adventurous in the upgrading of their computers as parts became cheaper and many also changed ISP as their free year with Freeserve, which was taken over by Wanadoo, came to an end. I think Tesco did best out of this, with NTL making picking up some of the keener users.

Membership of the forum was opened up to the wider world and although I didn’t publicise that, membership rose to 150.

And that’s about it, bar the small print. Thanks to everyone who contributed with tips, corrections, criticisms and encouragement!

Oh, almost forgot, AOL new spam filter cut off lots of legitimate email addresses, which didn't do much for their reputation but even so they are now trumpting the claim that they have cut spam by 50%.

Archive

December

(30.12.04) Did you get an unwanted present at Christmas? Maybe you got two copies of Schotts Miscellenary or a jumper that you would only wear for a bet. If so you might have thought of selling them on ebay but if you're a kid you can't really do that, happily there's an alternative. Swapitshop (click here) lets people swap items and acts as an intermidiery so no one is exposed to Internet stalkers. Members can offer items for swap or sale in return for the websites currency, swappits, via a very friendly website which reminds me of the old Noel Edmunds show (don't let that put you off).

A new member joined the forum yesterday and actually posted a message! See - it does work! Welcome to meg, thanks for joining!

(29.12.04) We've all been moved by the tragic scenes of devastion wrought by the tsunami and its ever rising death toll but perhaps, like me, you were confused about just who you should send a donation too, such is the scale of the disaster. The major UK charities have anticipated this and have got together with a coordinated appeal under the umbrella name of DEC, the Disaster Coordination Committee. It accepts donations online and over the phone and you can find them by clicking here or, if you don't like using your credit card online, you can call them on 0870 60 60 900. More details can be found on the forum thread here.

(28.12.04) Hello everyone and welcome back! I hope you all had as nice a Christmas as I did!

Sadly the first new story is a bit negative and it's not even that new. You and Your's on Radio 4 did a piece on Phishing today and some people may think this is a new phenomena but it's not. "Phishing" is the generic term for all the email scams that try to make you visit a website because you think that your bank, ebay, amazon or whoever, has sent you an email asking you to re-enter your account details. I've written about this dozens of times over the last few years and the rule is always the same - legitimate websites never contact you in this way and all these emails should just be deleted without a second thought. Click here for the banking industry's website on phishing and other scams.

(24.12.04) Happy Christmas to all 2000friends readers and forum members wherever you are, thanks for all the links, tips, corrections, questions and encouragement that you've sent in over the year. I hope you have a great Christmas and I'll see you again sometime between now and the new year!

The latest Scottish Islands Network newsletter is out and as full of info as ever. This issue will be of particular interest to anyone concerned about ferries and renewable energy proposals. So just about everyone should click here and read it!

(23.12.04) E-Cards are dropping into our email inboxes on a regular basis at the moment and 90% of them are exactly what they seem, a touching, amusing yet slightly irritating message from a loved one. However a few are not what they seem, I've recieved a number that claim to come from relatives I don't have and I wouldn't touch with a barge poll. It would be easy to be taken in if, rather than "Aunt Edna", they came from name I recognised though and so if I don't recognise the e-card company I'm going to email any relative that appears to have sent me a card to check that they really have and I suggest you do the same!

Sorry about the link to the United Devices website not working the other day, click here to help fight cancer. Thanks to forum member dazedandconfused for alerting me.

(22.12.04) Well there's two days left to get that last minute present, you can't face another traipse round Oban and it's too late to get anything delivered. Why not give someone a 2000friends forum membership? Fill in the form on the "Register Here" page with a username you think they'll like and I'll do the rest, I'll even make them a forum signature for good measure and send them a welcome email on Christmas day complete with an illustrated guide to posting messages! Forum membership - the gift that just keeps on giving!

(21.12.04) A new search engine that will of interest to the visually impaired members of the community. Edinburgh based Speegle looks a bit like google but sounds like a friendly speak your weight machine when it reads out the results of a search because that's what it does. Rather than just present you with a list, each result is read out with a number and you can go to the link by pressing the number keys on your keyboard. There's even a choice of voices, from an anodyne American woman to a rather friendly sounding Scottish bloke. It's only just started and so it takes a while for the voice to kick in but it's still well worth a visit. Click here to hear for yourself. 

Screensavers: The season of self-indulgence seems a good time to once again promote my favourite screensaver, United Devices. It works just like any other saver, kicking in when the computer has been idle for a specified time but unlike the ones that come with the computer it actually does something useful. The program that you download and install to run it is part of a worldwide network of computers that crunch numbers for cancer research projects, every so often it uploads the work done on your computer and downloads another task. In this way it save the researchers from investing in expensive computers and harnesses the vast amount of unused computer equipment sitting in our homes. It's really easy to install and gives you a nice warm feeling inside. Click here to download it.

Another screensaver worth a look is the complete opposite, just pure indulgence but you can use it at the same time as the United Devices program because it works as desktop wallpaper as well as a screensaver. Digifish (love that name) is a virtual 3D fishtank with very realistic fish swimming around at random and responding when you "touch" them. You can even feed them! The full program cost about £11 but the limited free version is, er, free and a relatively small download. I suggest people try the free version first anyway, just incase the computer isn't fast enough to run it properly. Click here to see for yourself (I downloaded AquaReal, no idea what the other ones are like).

(20.12.04) Local News: There hasn't been an update to the Local News section of the forum since it started (I'm somewhat disappointed about this) but today a couple of emails sent in has prompted me to start a new thread on the subject of ferries. It covers the local with news of proposals for the Lismore ferry and the general, with the Scottish Executive consulatation paper on the future of the services as a whole. Click here to read it and hopefully contribute! Thanks to everyone who sent in emails! (

(18.12.04) Christmas tip #8: Robosapian, the top selling Christmas toy is available from most retailers for around £70, and that's if they have it but it can be had from ebuyer for £42.54! Even if they stiff you for island postage (I advise you phone up if they do) you'll still be ahead and they have over 450 instock as I write this and they promise same day dispatch. Click here to see for yourself. 

I've done a bit more to the News archive and put 2002 and 2003 on seperate pages, they take a while to load but it does make it possible to search them easily. See the News Archive link on the left.

(17.12.04) The forum was down for over three hours today and with such a peculier error message I thought it might be gone forever, thankfully the problem was sorted out. Ours was just one of dozens of message boards that disappeared after an unexplained failure at the the server they are hosted on.

Outlook users should beware of using the "Repair & Detect" feature in Word or other Office applications, it might reinstall Outlook and result in the lose of files and settings, including accounts, address book and email. This happened to me today and I'm still trying to reconstruct my folders and retrieve email. I searched the net for solutions but haven't found anything that works, which suggests it isn't a common problem. Nevertheless, if you have installed Office and have changed to Outlook, backup Outlook before using repair and detect. This problem doesn't affect users of Outlook Express.

(15.12.04) Delivery dates: I was thinking of recommending a graphic card from Amazon to everyone until sgegreen pointed out (we were chatting on Messenger) that they couldn't recommend delivery by Christmas. It is still possible to get things in time but everyone has to be careful to check the details of the item. First of all make sure it's in stock, lots of website advertise things they don't actually have, and then check there delivery schedule. This is particularly true of sites like Dabs and Amazon. Even on Ebay it's worth asking when the item will be shipped before bidding. Happy shopping! 

(14.12.04) Forum registration: I've made the process easier by cutting out the "confirmation email" part of it, which I think was putting a lot of people off. This was an email that the forum host sent out to ensure that the email address worked, from now on people who use the "Easy Form" link on the website or the "Register here" link on the left, won't recieve this and I'll handle it myself. New members will also recieve a guide to posting for the first time iluustrated with screenshots, which should also ease the process.

Website reorganisation continues with Anorak News getting its own archives divided by year. This has made me realise that all the archives should be organised by year because although the pages will take longer to load, they will be much easier to search. Which is annoying as it means I'll have to redo the News archives, which are organised by month.

(13.12.04) Software Piracy: I haven't written about this before but as a NAIDC engineer observed to me recently, there is a surprising amount of illegal software floating around the community. People who wouldn't dream of shoplifting a computer program from Smiths or Woolies, will quite happily install the copied program they got from a friend on their PC. This isn't unusual, our little community just reflects the wider world, where, as a recent YouGov survey found, a quarter of computer users own illegal copies of software.

My personal view is that if you use a program a lot, you should buy a legal copy of it and that illegal versions should only be used to find out if you like a particular program. There are a lot of advantages to owning a legal copy but genuine software is really expensive, Photoshop Elements for instance, is around £60 - £70. Companies are in a catch 22, the software prices are high partly because of the number of people who use illegal copies and if prices dropped, so would the amount of piracy, just as it has with music downloads. Read more here.

(12.12.04) Christmas ideas: Here's a couple websites that have free downloads to brighten up your Christmas email and cards. 

Click here to download what you want from Microsoft's seasonal collection of clipart. There are thousands of images to choose from and up to a point, they can be resized without loosing quality, which means they can be used as icons or as a Christmas card. When you visit the site, browse the pages, click on the ones you want and then download them all at the same time. There is a very small program that you have to install in order to view them once they've been downloaded, just agree when the dialogue box appears.

Click here to visit "xmasfonts", a page of festive fonts that can be used in Word, email and just about any other program that edits text. They're entirely free to download and once installed will just appear along with all the others in the font list.

If you've never installed a font before you can find a new guide to the subject by clicking here.

(10.12.04) I've written a short guide to typing special characters like €, é, ½, etc. It doesn't cover all of them by any means, just the most common and couple I just like. ¿ for instance, no idea what it's for but who doesn't need an upside down question mark no and again. It's in guide testing at the moment, in case people have things they would like added to the list. Click here for the guide.

I've been doing some more work on the website and forum today. I've added October's news to the archive and moved November's to the correct month and lost the funny quote from the top off the forum. I did that while trying to add a search facility to the forum but it didn't work. At one point I lost the entire background, so just losing the quote is a bonus really. It might return if I can't get the search to work over the weekend.

(09.12.04) Reorganising the website. The most obvious change is in this page which has had all the news up to December removed and archived. Rather than add it to the existing archive, I've created a new one for 2004 and given each month its own page, accessible via the main link on the left.

I've also grouped more pages together, for instance advise for forum users is now on sub-pages to the main "Register Here" page, while other help is grouped with "Ask a question". There'll be more changes in the coming days as I try to rationalise things and hopefully make the website quicker to load. I've also fixed the link to "Local News" (see below) and the email link above, thanks to everyone who pointed out the problems.

Memory prices have fallen to its lowest price for a year and 256mb now costs £34.06p, £18 for 128mb, inc. VAT and delivery. There's also a new way of choosing memory that cuts out the series of selection boxes you had to navigate in order to get the right type for the computer. More details of the "memory chooser" and how it works can be found in the first post of the tracker thread here.

(08.12.04) No news, I'm just having a tidy up so, hopefully the News page will load a bit quicker. It means that the website might be off line occasionaly throughout the evening, sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks to dazedandconfused for tipping me off about the bold text problem!

(07.12.04) Access Statistics: I haven't written about these for a while, on the face of things nothings much changed. Despite my best efforts, the website still lags behind anything that promises pictures of Brittany by some way but things are holding up nicely all the same. There is a consistent 1000 or so unique visitors a week but their locations has changed. The webite used to be almost the soul preserve of the NAIDC community, now at least a third come from outside it. I know this because users of Internet Explorer and Firefox only make up 65% of visitors, so even if a third of you have heeded my call and changed to firefox, a third are using something else and so must be from outside the community.

Where from? Well, people from 77 countries have visited the website over the last year. The vast majority come from the UK or unidentifiable ISPs (including a lot of academic institutions - I hope they're not disappointed, maybe they're anthropologists) but it's nice to know that we have regular visitors from places as far afield as Israel, New Zealand and Japan. There's even the odd person from places like the Togolese Republic popping in!

Login adverts on the forum: My fellow forum hosts and I have had some success getting rid of the adverts that appear when people login to the forum. Rather than seeing them everytime, visitors only encounter them every three weeks. It's a small improvement but we still hope to get rid of them altogether. Of course, if you don't log out of the forum you won't see them at all and you can always click the "no thanks" link at the bottom of the page. They're definately putting people off though :¬(

(06.12.04) New forum section: Following problems accessing Arrghyllcom.net I've started a a section on the forum for local news. The idea is that anyone can post any non-computer related item of local interest, the rest of us can talk about it and if Argyhllcom gets going again it can be used as a message board for stories posted there. I've started it off with the latest Scottish Islands Newsletter and this time I've posted it in seperate items, rather than one long post as I did in the past. Hopefully this will make it easier to read and reply to. There are 35 stories in this issue, including news of jobs on Tiree and Easdale harbour. Click here to read it.

(05.12.04) Thanks to Peabody taking their life, well the computer's life, in their hands, I've edited the guide to stopping your computer from restarting automatically after a power cut. You wouldn't think that something as basic as Bios would vary across the community but it does and there is a slight variation in what appears on the advanced menu. Some are as described in the red Compaq Users manual and some aren't, so now both menus are included. I've also emphasised the fact that neither a power surge strip nor Belkin cube will protect you from the problem. Click here for the guide and thanks to Peabody and sgegreen for their help with it.

(03.12.04) I've heard a few stories about this over the last couple of weeks, of seldom used computers that harbour a surprising number of problems. I've had some experience of them myself, when helping someone to reconnect to the Internet, I found I was working on a computer that hadn't had it's antivirus subscription renewed for over a year! Fortunately the user had been online so little that they hadn't had much chance to spread the viruses they'd picked up and the computer was quickly innoculated.

Other people have told me similar stories and also of looking at systems with hundreds of examples of spyware on them. Even people who don't go on the Internet very often are going to pick up a fair amount of nasties after a few years. And then there's all the updates they haven't been online long enough to get. The list of problems just goes on really.

This could be a growing problem in the community. Infrequent Internet users, and by that I mean people who might only check their email when someone tells them that they've sent them pictures of the grandchildren or whatever, are quite likely to think that they don't use the Internet enough to be at risk and the expense of renewing their AV subscription will seem a waste of money.

Of course it's not but I don't really blame them, I blame the ISPs and the manufacturers. We could stop viruses dead if computers that didn't have an up to date antivirus subscription were prevented from sending email. Why should we expect people with little knowledge or interest in the Internet to know the problems and to understand their responsibilities?

But until the "powers that be" do something, I'm afraid it's up to us to nag our friends. In the nicest possible way of course.

(02.12.04) Signing up with an ISP can produce some unwanted changes to Internet Explorer. Some of them are cosmetic, the logo in the top right corner changing for example but others are more significant. You will probably find your home page changes to the ISPs own and perhaps when you click on "Help" and then "Online Support" you will go to their website rather than Microsoft's. Changing back to the normal Internet Explorer settings and your desired home page is easy, find out how here.

(01.12.04) Email infected with the W32.Sober.I virus is still appearing in the community and it is becoming ever clearer that the sender (assuming there is just one) has something to do with IT security in some way. It’s impossible to tell if it’s a casual interest or something more serious but the number of emails that contain security related website names is striking. It beggars belief that someone who is visiting websites offering services hasn’t bothered to keep their own computer secure but they have. Click here to see the list of websites that they’ve visited and probably contacted, if any spark a thought and you think you know who the sender is, email me and I’ll send them a tactful email.

An old exploit has made the news this week, I’m not sure what has renewed interest, perhaps their have been more websites abusing it. The exploit involves the way Windows displays file extensions when people right click on a web image and then click to save it. Because XP hides file extensions by default, what appears to be a .jpeg in the “Save As” window might actually be a malicious script.

There is an old Microsoft page on this but the workaround they describe isn’t as good as it could be. In my opinion the best solution is to allow known file extensions to be shown, this would mean that when you saw the file name displayed in the “Save as” dialogue box you would see that it wasn’t actually a .jpeg and the real extension would appear in the name. In other words a malicious file called “brittainyspears.jpeg” would be revealed to be “brittainyspears.jpeg.realextension”. Click here for a guide to changing the default setting and avoiding the problem, click here for a recent article on the subject (the article refers to a new exploit but as you'll see from the MS page it links to, it's not).

November

(30.11.04) There's been a problem updating the websites that has meant some updates not appearing and some appearing in a pertial form. Sorry about this, there was an update yesterday that has completely disappeared and I'm not sure what the problem is or if you'll even read this. Anyway - here goes, finger crossed...

Following reports from Lismore that the rapid switching on and off of the main electricity supply has been causing problems to computers, I've written a guide to stopping a NAIDC computer restarting automatically when power is restored. This restarting is only annoying if it happens once but if the power goes on and off in rapid succession it can cause serious problems. If your computer restarts automatically in this way click here for the guide, it's written with the more advanced user in mind but contains more details of the problem and might be worth reading even if you don't feel confident enough to follow it yourself. Thanks to my friends on Lismore for alerting me to the problem.

A new hoax email is circulating the community, like all it is a forwarded alert send on by well meaning people with a responsible attitude to computing and as ever it is quite convincing. This one is unusual because it warns of a problem with mobile phones and also contains an unconnected virus warning. This combination is new and is a good example of how these things replicate. Someone, somewhere has recieved both hoax warnings and has decided to put them together in one email and this is now circulating the world. Read details about the email here and if you recieve anything similar please forward them to me. Thanks to everyone who sent me this one!

People living far from a large newsagent will have problems obtaining the magazines mentioned in the thread on the forum (click here) and might like to know that WH Smith's in Oban will put one aside or even post them to you if you phone them up and ask. You can pay by switch and they're really nice about it. Thanks to Yorkie for asking the question!

Well here goes, couldn't check the spelling but I think I managed to save the changes...

(28.11.04) Tidy up time! Partly inspired by a free utility I found on a cover disc, I've rewritten the guide to tidying up a computer. It's a list of basic maintenance proceedures that should be performed on a regular basis and will help prevent crashes and generally keep the system running smoothly. As well as rewritting it I've added a couple of new things to do and hopefully everyone should find it pretty straight forward. Basically it explains how to delete the junk that accumulates over time and then how to tidy up what's left. Click here to read it. 

(26.11.04) W32.Sober.I@mm isn't arriving in the same quantities as it was, although a forum member has reported that they have also been getting it in the post, so whoever the culprit was may have sorted out the problem. Which is good news.

The bad news is that, in my opinion, this could be the first example of a new trend in viruses.  As I reported on Thursday, this version of sobig "corrupts" itself when resending itself from an infected computer. Symantec has updated its page to say that these corrupted versions don't actually do any harm, even though that the corrupted version can still cause an infected computer to display symtoms of a compromise. This is reassuring because Norton Antivirus can't detect the corrupted virus.

What if this is not an accident? What if it's occurred to the writer that a virus that mutates in the wild can't be detected by an antivirus program? This attempt may have failed but future versions inevitably will not and even if this wasn't the first attempt the same thing that has occurred to me is bound to occur to a virus writer somewhere. The lesson is that you should always be very careful how you treat unexpected attachments, especially ones with "come hither" text.

(25.11.04) Computer Wanted! Following the successful placing of a NAIDC computer last a regular reader has contacted me asking if there any more available. They just missed out on the free ones and their current one is showing signs of age. I don't know of any at the moment but there must be plenty of unused NAIDC computers languishing in cupboards just waiting for someone to fire them up. If you know of anyone who has one that they would like to get rid of please email me useing the blue button above. Perhaps it's time that we started a campaign to get unused computers back in circulation.

(24.11.04) Virus Alert! This is an unusual one in so far as that Norton has been able to detect it since the 19th but even so it could cause people problems. And there is a fair chance that you could receive a copy as it's very agressive and I think that it is possible that someone within the community has already been infected, I've received 10 copies of it today.

The unusual aspect of W32.Sober.I@mm is that it sometimes corrupts itself in sending and these corrupted versions can't be detected by Norton nor removed with their removal tool. It is unclear what damage the corrupt version can do, the computer may display some symptoms of infection but not be seriously compromised at all. If this happens you have to remove the virus manually.

The best advice is to be very careful with unexpected emails with attachments and not to open them without checking with the sender first. I've added the virus to the forum thread on the subject and you'll find more details there. Click here for the forum thread.

(23.11.04) Christmas Gift ideas part 7: The season to spend money like there's no tomorrow is almost upon us so I was glad that forum members have posted relavent items to me in one form or another. Yorkie has a full set of golf clubs for sale at a very reasonable price, click here to see for yourself, email me if you're interested and I'll put you in touch. Meanwhile Dr. Zog has be successfully running the new Half-Life 2 game on his NAIDC computer, it might not run quite as well as on a faster computer but it's unusual for a very modern game of this type to run on ours at all. Go to the Anorak News page more details. I've found a website that sells those life size cutout figures that you see in cinema foyers. They have everyone from Elvis to Einstien and they cost around £25 exc. p&p, click here to see for yourself. 

(20.11.04) I've got two freebies for you this weekend. The first is "Photo Story 3", a compact and easy to use photo editor that allows you to perform basic tasks such as adjusting the lighting, resizing and cropping much more easily than Picture-It does and also has the ability to create slide shows and e-cards with audio messages or music. It's only a 5mb download so most people will be able to get within a reasonable time but it does require Windows Media Player 10. If you open WMP from the start menu and allow it to connect to the Internet, just say yes when the security alert pops up, it will advise you if you need to upgrade. This is a larger download, so if you have a slow connection look out for it on magazine cover discs. Once you've done that click here to download Photo Story. Microsoft's largesse is part of it's strategy to encourage people to buy official MS software rather than illegal copies by offering them free programs like Photo Story, which used to be quite expensive.  

The second is something of a suprise. I reported sometime ago that support for Win'98 had been extended to June 2006 but I hadn't realised that the support was proactive (I think that's the word) but it is. A lot of people are still useing the older version of Windows and MS has created a support CD with tips and general help which they'll send you for nothing, click here to order it.

(18.11.04) The great NAIDC project finally comes to an end on March 5th 2005. At least that's the day that all official support ceases and its various employees see their contracts terminate. What the future holds is really up to us, the benificeries of the Scottish Executive largesse. Do we want Argyllcom to wither and die, it's unaccessible at the moment but it is potentially a valuable resource, a hub that all our island websites and services could benefit from.

More practically, we won't be able to get our computers repaired for free anymore, so it would be good time to get any niggles sorted out. If you have any views on this please email in or post on the forum thread (which also has the repair line number), it's time to asses the achievements and short comings of the project as a whole. Click here for the forum thread. 

(17.11.04) A home has been found for the unneeded NAIDC computer thanks to James (Seumas) Westland, north Mull's favourite computer repairman. He's been looking for one for someone on the island for sometime so was very pleased when one turned up. He reckons, and I agree, that there must be a lot of similarly unused systems lurking in lofts and cupboards which could also be found homes. The odd thing is that they aren't turning up for sale very often, some have probably been taken off to university and the like but there must still be a lot just gathering dust. If you know of one, gently drop a hint that they could be passed on, I'm sure we could find a place for them. Thanks to James for helping out, I hope the computer will be installed over the weekend.

(16.11.04) Secret Questions are major part of Internet security, used by websites as a convenient way for us to access things when we've forgotten our passwords but have you ever wondered how secure they really are? Not very in my opinion, they're not very secret and therefore not very secure. Basically they ask questions that are too easy to find out the answer to if you are not the legitimate password holder. Find out why by clicking here.

(15.11.04) Another kind reader has contacted me hoping I can find a home for their unwanted NAIDC computer. As before it's the complete kit, with the printer webcam etc and in full working order and I'll make sure that it has all the necessary updates for it to run trouble free (well it's a computer, so "trouble free" is a relative term). The computer is on Mull so it would be easier if it's new owner was too, so if you know anyone who missed out when they were given away email me and I'll sort things out.

Sorry, once again, for the lack of updates. I seem to be able to get online OK during the day with NTL but not in the evenings when I do the updates and I'm having to post this useing my Freeserve connection. I'll be updating earlier for a while because this costs a small fortune when you by the minute!

(12.11.04) Christmas present ideas #6 Rome Total War is just out, the game that was featured on the BBC2 series "Commanders" and is the sequel to the phenomenally successful "Medieval TW". Even though it retails at £39 it is already available on Amazon for £25 and Ebay for around £22. It will run on its lower settings on a NAIDC computer if it's got a graphic card and extra memory, as, even though the graphics are better, the basic specs are more or less the same. If you're looking for a game that appeals to someone who likes a challenge rather than a straight shootem-up this is the one to go for. Read a review here.

(10.11.04) Firefox 1 has been released, the first fully tested and certified version of the browser that is giving Internet Explorer a run for it's money. This means that it could be bundled with new computers like I.E. is at present which will lead it to being even more popular. I've been useing it since July and now only use I.E. for the odd website that doesn't work well on it. It's much quicker to download pages and easier to use than I.E., if you change you'll probably wonder why it took you so long, I certainly did! Try it for yourself by clicking here and read the forum thread on the subject by clicking here (the forum page has further information for people upgrading from earlier version). 

(09.11.04) Virus Attack! I've received so many emails infected with the Beagle.AV virus from John McLuckie at ArgyllCollege that I actually thought they must be coming from his computer but of course they weren't. Beagle.AV is another of those viruses that puts a spoof address in the from line, so people blame the wrong person like I did. It makes tracking down the actual sender much more difficult but not impossible. The fact I've had so many from his address suggests that the real sender is within the digital community and probably doesn't have that many email addresses on their computer.

They must have visited this website, have possibly emailed me and has probably taken an Argyll College course or had cause to email John. I wonder if the date of the virus is significant, Norton has been able to protect against it since the 28th of October, which suggests that their antivirus subscription ran out soon before this date, so we might be looking for someone who had there computer installed around that time. If you get sent an email infected by the virus please email me or post a message on the forum thread here.

(08.11.04) Sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend, I had problems contacting the website hosts for long enough to add anything. This affected other sites as well and it might have been connected to the NTL maintenance. Thankfully this seems to have been resolved.

For the first time I've had to delete a guide because it doesn't work anymore. I say anymore because I'm sure it worked when I first posted it! It was a short and simple guide to adding handwritten signature to emails but it just doesn't work with Outlook Express (works fine with Outlook). Now I'm trying to rewrite it so it does but there doesn't seem an easy way to do it and if anyone has sure fire method I'd like to hear from them. Apologies to anyone who has struggled and failed with the old guide and thanks to forum member Penny for alerting me to the problem.

Every so often I get emails from around the world, sometimes they ask me to renew their anti-virus subscriptions (sorry - I can't) or about some very obscure piece of software and sometimes, like today, they're just a note of thanks. The guide to WMI has proved extremely popular and I've had emails about it from as far afield as Florida and Auckland, I only wrote about it because someone on the forum asked a question about it, it's amazing how far the ripples a single message can spread. So keep the questions coming, you never know how many people you might help!

(05.11.04) NTL email is suffering from periodic problems which is also affecting Tesco customers. They are currently trying to fix it but if your's doesn't work and you get an error message mentioning "lack of disc space", don't worry and just ry again later. You can check the status of NTL by clicking here and then on the "Dial Up" link.

(04.11.04) Norton WMI: People performing Live Updates for Norton Antivirus or Internet Security maybe confronted with a new item, "Norton WMI". This is short for "Windows Management Instrumentation" and intergrates Norton with the new Windows Security Center that is one of the features of Windows XP Service Pack 2. It allows the Security Center to monitor the status of your Norton programs, without it you are just asked to check the programs themselves to know if they are up to date. As most of us use automatic update and never look at the new security center it a completely unnecessary feature but what can you do?

When the update downloads successfully you are presented with a dialogue box and should follow the recommended actions and if it doesn't there's an error message with a link to a Symantec page that explains what to do in case of failure. This isn't as straight forward as it should be and so I've written a guide that explains more about WMI, has links to the Symantec pages and explains what to do if they don't work either. Click here for the guide.

There haven't been any reports of the WMI update appearing via automatic update, if you spot it please email in. A big thanks to Bearsarus who posted a question on the forum and drew the issue to my attention.

(02.11.04) The forum has reached 150 members! Our new member hasn't posted a message yet and so hasn't qualified for their hand crafted, personalized free gift (it a mouse mat)(a very nice one) but I'm very happy that we've past this milestone. The next is 200, which seems a world away, perhaps it's time for a publicity drive. Anyway - a big hello to our newest member - whoever you are!

ITV3: Yesterday I reported the arrival of ITV3 on the Anorak News page but said that it was only available on terrestrial digital TV. Then later that night I found it was on Sky, not only that but they've put it next to ITV2 and both have been moved down the channel numbers to 118 & 9 respectively, just past BBC3 & 4. The new offering does look like a repeat channel though with a sprinkling of movies. Incidentally for those of you losing track of all thats on offer, even on free view, there's an excellent downloadable TV guide that allows you to choose your own channels and has listings for two weeks in advance. It's called Digiguide, costs £8.99 a year and lets you try it for free before you buy. Click here to try it for yourself. 

October

(31.10.04) Those pesky ebay conmen are at it again. The scam takes advantage of the legitimate ebay "second chance" system that emails unsuccessful bidders and encourages them to bid on similar items. The emails look just like the real ones and even have some genuine links on them but the crucial one leads to a ebay look-a-like site that attempts to get people to give over personal details. The fakes are very convincing and I advise everyone to ignore them and use ebay in the normal way if they get outbid. Read more here. Ebay tips here.

(30.10.04) As promised I've done a bit of research and come up with some free alternatives to renewing Norton Internet Security for £25. I still think that if you can afford to renew your subscription that that is by far the best choice. There's no big program to download and I'm sure everyone remembers what a hassle it was to get the Norton programs to stop bothering us with pop-up boxes, if you change to another program you'll have to got through all that again! :¬(

But there are some very good programs out there that can keep your computer safe and the hassle is well worth not getting infected by a virus. Click here to the new guide on the alternatives, as ever I welcome comments, criticisms and ideas!

Last year I wrote a brief guide to Christmas presents you could make on the computer and one of the sugestions was a calendar. The only real problem with it was that it's hard to bind one yourself so it's easy to turn the pages over. Now, thanks to a tip from forum member doggo, I learn that this is solved! The Print Shop (they've changed their name but are still opposite Tescos) will bind them for you and put a clear plastic cover back and front for £2.87, which I think a bargain. It's far cheaper than buying a calendar kit or sending your pictures off for some to print one for you. Click here for the Christmas gift guide and thanks to doggo for the tip.

(28.10.04) Correction: In yesterday's piece on renewing Norton Antivirus I said the cost of renewal was only £13. Sadly I was wrong, that was last years price but it's gone up to £17 for the antivirus and £25 to renew both the antivirus and the firewall, Norton Internet Security. This is a significant sum to find in one go especially if you are on a fixed income as many of our digital community is and I'm going to have to look into free alternatives so that no one is left unprotected. There are some very good free products out there, I use a free firewall instead of the Norton one and there some very well thought of antivirus programs. I'll post something over the weekend. A big thanks to forum member Yorkie for pointing out the error!

(27.10.04) Norton: I've had a few enquires about renewing Norton Antivirus this week, sadly not everyone finds that their subscription has been renewed automatically (new record - June 2006!). People have been asking about free anti-virus programs as an alternative to paying for another year with Norton. In my opinion the £13 it costs is well worth it, no other company has such a good long term record of protecting it's users and changing is a bit of a hassle. I recommend renewing but if you don't have the spare cash this week AVG is a very popular alternative. Find links to it in forum thread on Norton Antivirus by clicking here.

(25.10.04) Firefox, the increasingly popular alternative to Internet Explorer, which has many users amongst the visitors to this site and the forum, is set to release it's first "full" product on the 9th of November. In anticipation the final "testing" version is now available for free download. I use Firefox and find it far quicker and easier to use than Internet Explorer, as well as being a lot less prone to being hacked by virus writers. You can read the forum topic on the subject here and download the latest version here. You don't have to get rid of Internet Explorer if you do, they work quite happily side by side, I've got both running as I write this.

Robo Rip-off: I was going to post this story as Christmas present idea but after searching out the prices I've changed mind. It sounds a great, a humanoid robot which does all sorts of things (including belching!) and costs less than a hundred dollars or euros. How much does it cost in the UK? £80! Do they think that just because we live on an island (I mean Britain as a whole) we won't notice it's 25% cheaper elsewhere in the world? I recommend people wait for it to appear on the continental ebay sites before giving there money UK profiteers. Read about the robot here.

(22.10.04) The next person to register for the forum and post a message will get a free, custom made, mouse mat featuring images of their choice. Everyone I've made them for has been very pleased with them and they've got a much better surface than the ones that come with the computer. When I sell them they cost £10 and they're all hand knitted. So get someone to register today via the link on the left and they could be running their mouse over the face of a loved one within days!

(21.10.04) Forum News: I've added a "funny quote of the day" to the top of the forum to encourage people to come back more often. Visitor numbers are holding up nicely but every click helps, so I hope this will attract a few more. Be warned the first one, which comes from Alfred Hitchcock contains the word "bladder".

I'd also like to see our 150th member join sometime soon and so whoever it is will get a free gift of some sort. They'll have to post a message to get it though, so the race is to sign up and post a message and you to could have a pesonalised item of small financial but great sentimental value. Click here for the forum.

I've just installed XP Service Pack 2 from a cover disc that came with ComputerActive (a great magazine) and it didn't go quite as I expected. I've rewritten the FAQs (frequently asked questions) on the subject with the changes that have occurred since it was first released and with my personal experience of the process. Click here for the FAQs, the changes are to the second and last posts.

(20.10.04) I've updated the Norton Antivirus guide in the light of a problem that was sent in via email and what I've learnt since first writing it it. Basically it describes the commonest solution to a variety of download problems and how to configure the download process so you have more control over it. Click here for the guide and thanks to new member Busy Lizzie for sending in the question.

To make up for the lack of updates over the last couple of days here's a bit of fun. We've all enjoyed George Bush's sometimes, erm, interesting, relationship with the English language and one can only wonder how his speech writers must feel. This website lets you become that writer by draging and dropping snippets into a window and then hearing them played back. It's really easy to use, click here.

(17.10.04) Thanks to everyone who emailed in and posted on the forum about Windows Update and XP SP2. Everyone reports that the updates have started again and also that Service Pack 2 has been installed without problem. I say without problem, there has been the odd question but no apparent difficulties resulting from the update. Read more about XP SP2 here and post or email if you have any questions. Thanks again!

(16.10.04) Dazedandconfused just posted on the forum that Windows Update had automatically downloaded some updates for the first time in weeks today and another someone else emailed with the same information. There has been a problem with automatic updates for people who have installed Service Pack 2, so this suggests the problem has been solved. I'd like to here from other people of their experiences, let me know if you're being notified of downloads via the little box that pops up at the bottom of the screen and if Service Pack 2 has been installed yet. You can check by right clicking on "My Computer" and it will on the General tab. Thanks

(14.10.04) Supporters of the RNLI can speed up their Internet and contribute to the RNLI if they sign to the service via the link in the forum thread. For those who aren't familiar with the OnSpeed it improves download speeds by compressing the data before redirecting it to your computer. It has a dramatic affect on websites that contain a lot of graphics, although it does degrade the images slightly. You can try it for a month before you sign up, which costs £24 a year. The RNLI benefits through the generosity of Pat Morris of Ardle Lodge, Mull, who is donating the £5 affiliate fee he gets for each new sign up and it doesn't cost you anything. Click here for the forum thread. Thanks to Pat for the link and the opportunity to help.

(12.10.04) With the first Christmas adverts starting to  appear, Google has chosen a good moment to launch the latest addition to it's UK service. Froogle is product search which produces links to actual products rather than to just another search engine. It is very much like pricerunner, which I link to at the top of the forum, in that it takes you directly to the relavent page and on my tests often produced more results than pricerunner. However in all but one search pricerunner found the cheapest deal and of course it provides detailed descriptions, whereas Froogle just has the raw link. See Froogle by clicking here and PriceRunner here.

(11.10.04) A new forum member shouldn't be worthy of a news item but it's ages since anyone joined and Busy Lizzie is our 149th member. One more and we'll hit a 150, too more and I'll be able to say "over 150 members", which sounds a lot better than over one hundred. So get someone to join or join yourself and take part in the most active and visited forum on the west coast of Scotland!

(08.10.04) CHEAP INK! A few weeks ago I reported that Tiny Computers had announced that they were going to sell branded ink at 40% below the recommended retail price but I couldn't find anywhere to actually buy it. I searched Tiny Computer's website to no avail, goggled 'til my fingers bled but nothing, not a hint of where it could be bought. And then today by chance I discovered that Tiny have a retail arm called "The Computer Shop" and that's where they're selling the ink.

Indeed they're selling some branded cartridges at the same price as other people's compatible cartridges! To save you time, they don't seem to be selling ink for Epson C40 (the standard NAIDC printer) but they are for many other popular models. For instance Epson ink for the excellent C64 is available at £6.64 per cartridge compared to up to £17 elsewhere.

If you've upgraded your printer it's well worth buying the right ink for it, it makes a big difference to the quality of the print and how long they will last. See what's on offer by clicking here.

(07.10.04)Members logging into the forum are being confronted with a page of adverts before they get to the forum proper. This is nothing to do with me and I really don't like it, all I can do is apologise. Worse I wasn't sent any warning of the change and I thought the fact that a fee was paid to the hosts prevented the ads, in fact I thought that was the point of the subscription! I've written to the forums hosts (the people who provide the webspace and technology) for an explanation but until it's sorted out members should just scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "no thankyou" link". Sorry for the inconvenience, at least the ads are for fairly respectable companies this time!

(05.10.04) I couldn't update Argyllcom again today and I have a great story about a new local phone providor for it too. It's so frustrating and I just can't figure out what the problem is, I'm beginning to think they close access to it after 5 o'clock.

(03.10.04) Argyllcom has been updated after a not so brief hiatus with the latest Scottish Islands Newsletter. The latest edition has news from up and down the west coast and beyond, including items about the petrified forest discovered off Orkney, the campaign to save rural telephone boxes and much more. Check it out by clicking here, especially the bit about the future of the Scottish Islands Network itself. Apologies to Lisa for missing last month's installment.

(02.10.04) It may surprise some readers but it is actually possible to waste quite a lot of time on the Internet. The new BBC website celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is prime example of a website that can just take up hours of your time when all you intended to do was have a quick look at it. It's not the archive of shows or the news of the new episodes (hooray!) that are to blame, it's the game thats the culprit. Older computer users will recall the old text based games which involved solving infuriating puzzles while wondering around in the dark, well the BBC has reproduced the experience with the addition of a few basic graphics. Click here to have a quick look (make sure there's nothing on the stove first though).

Inkjet prices are something of a bugbear of mine and I found a classic example of the absurd way that printers and the ink they run on are priced today. Aktiv Direct (click here) are offering a free Epson C66 printer if you buy four packs of their ink cartridges to go in it and they're not even the genuine Epson ones. They say that the printer retails for £70, although you can find it for between £50 and £60 if you search pricerunner (see link at top of the forum) and the pack of cartridges costs £84. Is this a good deal? I've no idea but it either shows how cheap printers are these days or how overpriced the ink is.

(01.10.04) It appears that automatic update may not be working after XP SP2 has been installed. There are only two reports of this on the forum so far but they're both from experienced users and their NAIDC computers were installed months apart - so it's unlikely that they're isolated incidences.

Automatic Update has been a boon to a community of inexperienced users, we rarely had to raise a warning flag to make people update their computers with the latest patches from Microsoft, it was something that the majority could just forget about. It maybe a problem restricted to the NAIDC computers, like the system restore issue, in which case we'll have to wait for HP (owners of Compaq) to release a fix, if it's more widespread Microsoft will do something about it. In the meantime people are advised to click on "Tools" at the top of Internet Explore, then on "Windows Update" and follow the instructions. This and other information on XP Service Pack 2 can be found by clicking here. Thanks to peabody and sgegreen for the info on auto update.

September

(28.09.04) Gaelic Bill: The Scottish Executive has published the white paper (final version) of the bill that should ensure the long term survival of Scotlands ancient native language. The key changes from the earlier green paper is a dramatically increased role for Gaelic Development Agency, which will now have far greater powers to monitor the bills' implementation and influence education. The education minister, Peter Peacock, said " Today is an historic day for Gaelic as we move to secure the status of the language in Scotland, ensuring that - rather than dying out as some have gloomily predicted - it has a long-term future". Read more here complete with links to the bill itself and the Gaelic Development Agency. This story should have been on Argyllcom but it kept freezing up.

In my continuing series of Christmas tips I thought you might like to know that there's a shortage of i-Pods and that if you're planning to get one as a gift you should order them now. Particularly the mini-pod because they've had problems with the supplier. There's also the possibility that they'll buy the Beatles catalogue (see Anorak News) which will boost sales.

(26.09.04) Spam would seem to be on the decline, at least I hope it is. I've been charting the amount coming in my email for the last three months and it appears to have finally leveled out. As you can see below, by July it had reached a peak of anything up to 190 a day, this was a reflection of the international trend that had seen spam account for around 70% of all email. There was another short and lower surge in August but for the last six weeks it has been much, much lower than before. It's quite a relief.

This decline hasn't been reported in the computer press yet but there are stories about revenue for spammers are falling and that only 7% of spam is actually being opened.

As I've said before opening a spam email should be avoided no matter how tempting it might be, all it does is generate more messages. If you need to check an email you're not sure about right click on it and click on "Properties", then "message source", you'll be able to read it without it actually being opened.

Incidentally while creating the above chart I found that the spammers have come up with a new trick. Some of them are asking for "Read receipts" before the message can be read, don't click yes or they'll send you a lot more. I also came across a few legitimate emails accidently caught by my spam filter and reply to them as soon as possible.

(23.09.04) The Scottish Executive has launched a website aimed at school children that aims at educating them in the workings of democracy in general and the Scottish Parliament in particular. Hosted by an animated woman called Seonaid, it doesn't seem to be entirely functioning just yet, th music didn't play and she didn't do much more than put her glasses on but there's some interesting stuff none-the-less. Click here to see for yourself.

I highly recommend the "Instant Expert Guide to XP Service Pack 2" from ComputerActive. It comes with a copy of the service pack on the cover and like the magazine explains everything in very straight forward language. You'll find it in most newsagents and if you can't ask yours to order it.

(22.09.04) Visitors to this website are changing their browsers at an ever increasing rate. Up until this year the vast majority used Internet Explorer, understandable as most were local and it was installed on the computer. Since last year approximately 22% have changed over to Mozilla or Firefox, higher than the industry average so it can't be because of the slightly higher number of visitors from outside the community.

The change is due to the problems that Internet Explorer suffered earlier in the year which XP Service Pack 2 only partially addresses. I now use Firefox for most of my browsing, it's just much easier and pages load noticeably quicker, you can read a thread about it on the forum and find links to download it yourself by clicking here.

Virus News: A virus called Amus.A is making the news so it's worth mentioning because Norton users have nothing to worry about, it was dealt with last month. The reason that it's making waves is that the writers seem to have sense of humour and have included a sound file in the infected attachment. The virus isn't funny though, click here and be grateful you have Norton installed.

One of the first pieces of advice I posted was about the "click here to unsubscribe" link at the bottom of spam emails, the link would tell the sender you had an active email address and you'd just get sent more. The US "canspam" act made the placing of an unsubscribe link compulsory and I said it would be abused and it has. A spammer has used it to activate a java appellate (small program) that will install a virus on your computer which will make it their slave ( it the the only way to put it). There's no need to link to this story, the message is the same - never click the unsubscribe button or link"!

(20.09.04) XP2 (don't worry it's good news) doesn't appear to be causing many problems within the community. Very few questions have appeared on the forum and only one or two people have emailed in questions. Of those the only one that caused any problems turned out to be easy to resolve.

Yorkie posted a question relating to Word documents that wouldn't open and generated the error message "program to big to fit in memory". This message has popped up on the internet in regard with many other applications, typically CAD (a design package) or a game, no one had come up with a universal cure but a trawl of anti-virus websites revealed that it was a symptom of a recent virus but that had been addressed by Norton.

The solution turned out to be repairing the Word program itself, which involves going to the control panel, then Add/Remove Programs and finally clicking on "Repair" next to Microsoft Word". So if it happens to you and it probably won't, you'll know what to do! Thanks to Yorkie for posting the question.

By the way I'm still being sent emails infected by the My.Doom virus but I can't tell who from, if anyone else in the community is I'd like to hear from you. 

(16.09.04) The first post XP SP2 patch has been released by Microsoft to address a vulnerability in jpegs which can be altered to carry malicious code. People who have already installed XP SP2 are not so badly affected but should still update Microsoft Office programs, such as Word, to secure them. Click here to check for updates, the link is near the top of the page. 

Amazon, the online books and everything else shop, has entered the web search market and launched a new website called A9. Although it turns up much the same results as Google it seem easier to use to me. A nice feature are the buttons down the side of the page that allow you choose what type of search you want to conduct. This allows you to search for images and websites for instance at the same and the results will be displayed side by side. You can register or if you are already have an Amazon account, login and access more advanced features. Click here to try it for yourself.

(15.09.04) New Guide: A number of people have asked me how I add a handwritten signature to my personal emails so I thought I'd write a guide to how. It's pretty straight forward if you have a scanner or digital camera. Click here to read it.

Not really to do with anything but the report into the Scottish Parliament scandal has finally been released and surprise surprise, no politicians are to blame. Click here for the Scottish Executive page on the subject and a link to the document in full. If you don't have time to read all 300 pages basically everyone who had an oppurtunity to make a choice made the wrong one, every estimate was an underestimate, every prediction was wildly optomistic and they've ended up with an ugly building (based on the shape of up turned boats because there's a lot of them in Edinburgh) that the MSPs don't like. Apart from that everythings fine.

(14.09.04) Apologies for the lack of updates over the last couple of days, I've found it impossible to stay online long enough to do much or publish it when I've done it. So today I've worked on the website during the day just in case the problem reoccurs. I've no idea what the cause has been and I've had no reports of other people in the same difficulties. Also my old .fsnet (freeserve) address hasn't been working, I've now reinstalled it so if you emailed me and not received a reply, apologies and please write in again.

I've rewritten the upgrade guide (three times - see above) to reflect the knowledge we've accummalted on the forum and the current choices and prices. I hope people find it useful and will write in if they have any comments. Click on the link on the left for the guide.

My XP SP2 arrived yesterday three weeks after ordering and quicker than MS said it would. I haven't installed it yet, I've had enough trouble updating without it. Click here to order for yourself (when the "Website Certificate by unknown authority" message pops up just click "Next"), the form is very straight forward to fill in and it only takes a moment.

(10.09.04) DACS boxes, which our long running connections campaign revealed to be the curse of the digital community, are now fast receding, in some areas at least. This week saw an historic removal when the line serving forum member "themackeral" had both its boxes removed, which means that two or three other households have benefitted as well. Themackeral reports that, combined with OnSpeed, the new line is producing excellent speeds. This has happened as a result of the Bunessan exchange being upgraded, is the same thing happening on Seil yet?

(08.09.04) Ebay: A couple of people have asked me about auctions that rather than offering an item, offer a link to a website where it's possible to buy the item at a vastly reduced price. These auctions have always been a feature of ebay and they breach their listing rules but still appear all the time. The current incarnations typically offer a "Sony laptop for £20" or some other high value item and they do indeed send you a link that offer a laptop at that price.

Except they don't, it's a con and how could it be anything else? I've added a post explaining how it works and a link to an auction which probably won't last long. Click here to read it while the link still works.

(07.09.04) XP SP2 is available on cover disc (free discs given away by magazines) with the latest edition of Microsoft Windows XP magazine, the official Microsoft magazine. Worth having because it will explain what the update is all about and you'll have a disc handy if you ever have to reinstall the operating system. Click here for more information which includes some good pages on what XP SP2 is all about (I know a lot of people are still a bit confused about it).

(06.09.04) Our broadband campaigns have faded somewhat since the announcement that the Scottish Executives plans to upgrade every exchange in Scotland by the end of 2005 but should we be so complacent? Afterall they could well not meet the ambitious target and even if they do there is bound to be a list of priorities and those of us in outlying areas are bound to be way down it.

So it makes sense that we should do all we can to draw attention to the exchanges within the community and their merits. A good example of this is the Salen exchange on Mull, which for some reason this has escaped the attentions of HIE and Hi-Wide, maybe because there's another of the same name further north. It's a medium village sized but it has a school, a surgery, numerous small businesses, a high rate of self employment and is home to the islands cottage hospital, you'd think it would be high on the list of priorities but somehow it got passed over in the last wave of broadband installations.

Now Pat Morris of Arle Lodge has sent a letter that highlights one of the best reasons why the exchange should be upgraded now, if more of us did the same we might encourage "the powers that be" to at least upgrade our exchanges soon. In fact Pat's letter makes it clear that the upgrading of the Salen exchange is in the interests of everyone on the island, click here to read it and have your say, I hope it inspires you to put something in the post too!

I don't pass on many web jokes because mostof them lack that essential element of humour but I thought you might appreciate this updating of the old favourite "if my computer was a car", click here to read it and thanks to Jane for sending it in!

(04.09.04) BT has extended the range of its 1mb broadband service from 4 to 6 kilometers from the exchange and has dropped the distance restriction for the 512 service completely. This follows tests in Milton Keynes that found that the drop in signal quality was far less than expected over the longer lines. This means that rather than being refused out of hand, those living well away from their exchange will have a feasibility test (and then be rejected - no, just kidding) but in all likelihood will be able to get some sort of service. This makes a huge difference within the digital community, bringing almost everyone within range, so all going well the vast majority of us will be able to get broadband by the end of 2005.

I haven't bothered to trail it as a story because its hardly news but Half-life 2 has failed to appear yet again. It was supposed to be officially released yesterday but it's still only possible to pre-order (£24.99 on Amazon). This marks the first anniversary of the first scheduled release. HL fans should count themselves lucky, Black and White players gave up complaining about delays a year ago. 

(03.09.04) Argyllcom has been updated at last (turning off my firewall momentarily seems to have solved the problem). There's two stories added to the Mull news pages, one a report on an open day held in aid of the Pennyghael Community Association, the other is on the latest developments in the Kilfinichen Bay saga. The events page has been updated with details of the Ross of Mull Produce and Crafts Market. Click here for a day out, here for the bay and here for the market. Thanks to Jane for updating and suggesting I turned of the firewall. If you would like a story to appear on the Argyllcom pages just sent it in!

German police are warning of a Spanish based websites that is using a new trick to install dialers on unsuspecting users computers. Dialers reprogram your internet connection so that instead of connecting via Freeserve or whoever, you connect through a premium rate number, in this case one costing £17 per hour. Up until now dialers were installed by people clicking on the "OK" button on a seemingly innocent plugin, the new trick is to install it automatically when people agree to the terms and conditions of the website and click on "Ja" to enter the website. A small Java program then installs the dialer without the user knowing what's happening. It goes without saying that the website concerned deals in porn but the same trick is bound to appear elsewhere, so take care.

A couple issues ago ComputerActive carried a story about Tiny Computers and their intention to sell branded ink for 40% less than the RRP. Since then I've been looking for a link to pass on to you all but I can't find anything about it anywhere on the web, if anyone else does please email me, with more and more people buying better and better printers, the cost of branded ink becomes more of an issue. 

(02.09.04) Parents looking for Christmas ideas (look, it's September and it's never to early) will interested to know that the cost of the Gameboy Advance S2 is due to fall by around 20% in the near future. They're about £85 at the moment and are by far the most popular portable player, so it might be worth keeping an eye on the local price for when the US price drops reaches us. Read more here.

I still can't update Argyllcom pages and I would be grateful if other contributors could have a go and then let me know how they get on. If it's a common problem I 'll get in touch with the IT center. Thanks

(01.09.04) Mess & Mict , Mulls waste recyling and redevelopment organisations have got together and are holding a "Grand Jumble and Furniture clearance" on Sunday 12th September from 2pm - 4pm, in Craignure Village Hall and at the new MICT premises (former Craignure Royal Mail Depot). Pop along and pick up a bargain, they've got loads of good stuff between them and if you have a hour to spare to help on a stall please contact Mairi by clicking here. This would normally have appeared on Arghcom but I haven't managed to update it yet :( Thanks to Mairi for the email.

Small businesses are most likely to experience problems after installing XP SP2 with up to 10% finding applications failing to work properly. This is because they are likely to using older machines and less common, unupdated, programs. Windows has already published a list of sixty programs that have compatibility problems and users are advised to contact a program vendor to check that it is XP SP2 compatible before installing the MS update. Read more here.

August

(30.08.04) I couldn't get Argyllcom to update again tonight, I've been trying over the weekend and this is the 3rd week in a row I've failed to add new content. Last week I couldn't log in and before that I think it had a conflict with SP2. This time the "create new page" process just wouldn't work which is very frustrating as the website is quite well read and it should be a tremendous asset to the community.

Had I been able to update I would have told you about the set back for the group opposing the Foresty Commission's plans to extract timber via Kilfinichen Bay (click here for the last instalment) and the Scottish Executive's announcement of changes to the grant system for rural petrol stations (it doesn't matter if a near competitor is receiving a grant anymore), click here for more on that.

(28.08.04) Is Satellite Broadband all it's cracked up to be? Not according to a post on the forum from a knew user who is so annoyed by the slowness of the service that they want to "return" it. This contradicts the opinion of a near neighbour who is more than happy with it and the reaction may reflect the different ways that the Internet can be used. If you are downloading large files, satelite will give you a huge improvement in speed but if you up and downloading relatively small files the latency (the time it takes to the satelite to send and receive) would seem to make a big difference.

I only know two people who have taken advantage of the new satellite services, given the grants of up to £1000 available to businesses, I would really like to hear from more even if they are not members of the local digital communtiy. Read the forum thread on the subject here and email me if you can't post on it yourself (join, join!).

(26.08.04) XP SP2 is available on disc from Microsoft at absolutely no cost, not even for postage. They say you'll have to wait 4-6 weeks for delivery (that's 6 then) but it's well worth ordering anyway as it will be useful to have if something terrible happens and you need to reinstall the operating system. Click here to order (when the "Website Certificate by unknown authority" message pops up just click "Next"), the form is very straight forward to fill in and it only takes a moment.

(25.08.04) Microsoft appears to be staggering the release of XP Service Pack 2, presumably not to clog up its servers and this is being welcomed by major players on the Internet as it gives them longer to sort out any glitches. Some, such as IBM are so worried about problems that it is delaying installation on its networks.

So if you haven't noticed anything downloading yet this is probably why, so far I've only come across one person whose received via automatic update.

The delay will be good news to users of person to person (P2P) networks like Kazaar because the update is said to cause problems with P2P software, if you use file sharing services it would be a good idea to see if their any updates availble.

The forum thread on XP SP2 is here.

(24.08.04) Increasing numbers of community members are joining ebay as they gain confidence on the web and in purchasing online. Which means the current spate of spoof ebay emails all the more worrying. When you aren't a member and you recieve one you just don't take any notice but if you have first joined they can look a bit worrying.

Ebay never sends emails requesting members to log in, renew their details or confirm their credit card details and they devote a page in their help section to telling us so. You can read it by clicking here. By the way, the sender has no idea that you are a member, they, along with the senders of bank scam email, just send millions out in the hope that a few will find their way to people who are members. Just delete them! You can read more ebay tips on the forum by clicking here.

Calling all photographers! Ilford, the makers of premium film and photo paper, has called in the administrators and is expected to cease UK production soon. This is not only of significance to traditional photographers but to anyone who prints out high quality inkjet pictures as they make some of the best inkjet paper there around, especially for black and white, their Gallerie paper is makes gorgeous prints. The paper is about a third the price of other premium papers too. They didn't react fast enough to the change over to digital apparently. Read more here. It's rather sad I think...

(23.08.04) Access statistics: I haven't reported these for a while and you'll be pleased to know that they're holding up nicely. We're approaching a quarter of million page reads and six thousand messages on the message board, while the website continues a to reach hundreds of people a week.

There's a pattern to visits that implies that the two sites are being used in different ways, the forum has a peak on Saturdays and Sundays suggesting recreational use, while the website has its biggest day on Monday when people return to work. People mostly come from the digital community but a significant number come from elsewhere, mostly the English speaking world obviously but from every corner of it, which is a nice thought.

There was a huge blip on the 26th and 27th of July when visits to the forum used seven and ten times the bandwidth respectively, indicating that an enormous amount of material was being accessed. It was the weekend that the MyDoom appeared but I don't know if this explains it.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed with messages on the forum, news tips, stories and questions, every bit helps and it would all be pointless without you - keep it coming!

(22.08.04) Not much of an update today I'm afraid, I've been trying to add a story to Arghylcom but I kept losing my connection and after banging my head on the desk one time to many decided to give. I'll try again tomorrow, when the pictures will remind you of what a nice day actually looks like.

I did come across a snippet on ComputerActive which I thought of interest. Apparently the government intends to get rid of paper birth certificates within five years and everything will done electronically. I don't know why but I don't really like the idea, see for yourself by clicking here.

(21.08.04) NTL & Tesco email systems have been reporting problems on and off this week but they haven't been affecting everyone. This seems to happen a lot and rather than me keeping up a running commentary on the state of the service click here for the NTL (who run Tesco email) status page and see for yourself if an email problem is at their end (you'll have to click on the "dial up" link in the top left). Add the page to your list of favourites for future reference.

Thanks to Steve for pointing out the problem with the Scanner and Camera wizard (see below) only affects Xerox.

(20.08.04) First indications from around the net is that people are finding XP SP2 OK but the new "Security Panel" a bit intrusive. It can probably be configured to be less annoying but certainly at first some are finding it intrusive. Not only does it sit on the screen when you first start the computer but if you download something from MS and decide not to reboot your computer immedietly, it pops up up every few minutes and tells you that you should. Thanks to Stewart

No one has complained that their camera wizard (that automatically starts the download process when you plug the camera in) doesn't work properly but I'm sure it's going to be an issue. (Not true - see above).

I've had a report of the MyDoom virus appearing in the community and I've received a few more in the last couple of days. Hopefully it's just a case of someone not updating there antivirus program after coming back from holiday and it will sort itself out. If it doesn't and you start to receive emails that mention it email me with the details and we'll try to figure out who's got the infected computer. Click here for more details. Thanks to Jan for the email

(19.08.04) If you have automatic update switched on (its the thing that generates the little "there are new updates to install" message every no and then) XP Service Pack 2 could be downloading as you read this.

XP Service Pack 2 is a accumalation of all the little updates you've been getting up until now plus some extra ones that will change the security settings of your computer and hopefully keep you safer. Actually if everyone behaved like most of the readers of these pages there would be no need for it but they don't, so we are stuck with this huge download.

In fact automatic update is the only way you can get it at the moment, it's not yet available from the "Windows Update" page or on disc. It should be appearing on cover discs somtime next month though.

Incidently they've changed the Windows Update page and you now have the choice of scanning for just critical updates or for everything available.

Read more about XP SP2 here and post or email any questions.

(17.08.04) The Register reports some interesting facts about spam today. Porn spam has increased by 350% over the summer but still only makes up 5% of the total, the really big senders are "financial" services and medicines with roughly 30% each. By medicine it means either viagra or slimming tablets, apparently viagra dominates the summer and slimming the winter, which they put down to market forces.

If my experience is typical, and after six years online I get spam of every type, the tide seems to be receding somewhat which leads me to wonder if some big players have been stopped in their tracks. There is also a destinct rythm to the fluctuations, with surges every 8 days or so, I've no idea why. (I must post my chart!),

The register also reports perhaps the most outrageous scam ever from a German who sends out invoices for lincences to use the @ sign for which he claims patent. Read more here. 

(16.08.04) Police are warning of an email scam they describe as "vicious". Purporting to be confirmation details of an order for web-hosting or goods, they contain a link to "view the order details" but actually lead to a website that will download a trogan onto a PC enabling the email senders to gain access to the computer. UK police and banking organistion APACS is working together to warn people of the threat so it must be serious. I've received several of these emails but have just deleted them without investigating, I suggest that you do the same. Read more here.

I hope you're not all bored with XP SP2 because here's some more news! Microsoft has released a list of programs it knows have problems after the patch is installed, fortunately it doesn't contain any that will affect people who just use their computer to word process, edit pictures or send email. If you create websites, use unusual editing programs etc you might want to click here.

(14.08.04) As many as 15 people on Colonsay have already signed up to broadband, quite remarkable considering the population and the time of year. The reach from the exchange is greater than many expected and those that thought they would need an additional radio connection are finding they get online through the phoneline. Tara, who was the first to get connected, is very happy with the service and says that apart from the speed that webpages load, the fact that its "always on" (you don't have to wait to connect), the freeing up of the phone is a blessing. Thanks to Tara and Angela for writing in.

In other broadband news:- The Scottish Executive has extended the scheme that gives businesses a grant of £1000 to pay for the installation of satelite broadband. 3000 people took advantage of the first scheme which works out at only £10 per month more expensive than ISDN once the set up costs are paid. Read more here. They've also announced the tender terms for the upgrading of all the remaining telephone exchanges, read slightly more here.

My XP SP2 experience wasn't as smooth as it could have been but that shouldn't put everyone else off. The only real problem I had was that the 1&1 website creator wouldn't load, as that's what I use to update this site it's a major problem to me but not to most people. I also had a slight problem with ZoneAlarm's firewall but again that won't affect most of you. So I've uninstalled it for the time being - oh well, nothings as simple as it should be in the world of computers...

(12.08.04) Hi-Wide and BT are in the process of hooking Colonsay up to broadband and some people are already enjoying the faster service. Others are seeing there old, slow, DACS line removed and replaced with a proper one, resulting in a significant boost to connection speed even before they get broadband.

They're the lucky community that got their scheme approved as a market test before BT rewrote the rules and are the first part of the community to get broadband since the business initiative in Tobermory. The rest of us can only look on enviously and look forward to 2005.

I've started an FAQ on XP Service Pack 2, even though there haven't been many questions and I don't know all the answers yet. I thought I might as well start now as there are bound to be issues that come up as people start to download it next week. Click here to read it and post questions should you have any (or email me).

(10.08.04) Having sorted out my password again I've been able to update Argyllcom.net again! The main news page has the latest spiffing Scottish Island Network newsletter, full of interesting stuff as ever and the Mull news page has an item on the sale of the Pennyghael Post Office. Click here for SIN and here for PO.

AOL Messenger has a critical flaw which could allow a users computer to be hi-jacked. It revolves around the status command "away" and basically users should not use the command until the flaw has been fixed. Read more here.

(09.08.04) XP SP2 is finally available for automatic download, which according to Microsoft is the easiest way to get it at the moment. Recent updates downloaded by users included one that makes the automatic update service use spare bandwidth to download MS updates while the internet connection isn't being used fully, while you're reading a webpage for instance. It also downloads things in small chunks rather than all in one go and then puts it all together when a the chunks have arrived, which means that you can download a very large update such as XPSP2 over several sessions on the Internet.

Unlike the first service pack the system won't eventually crash if you don't install it but the new service pack does have make several changes which will make our computers more secure. I suspsect that some of these will cause as yet foreseen problems which we'll have to deal with and a thread will be started on the forum to report and deal with them. Read more about what is included in Service Pack 2 here.

MyDoom.m, the virus that caused all those problems a couple of weeks ago, has some really clever tricks to fool people into installing it. Fortunately everyone who has kept their antivirus program up to date has nothing to worry about but the email that MyDoom.m arrives in might fool you into thinking otherwise, read why here.

(08.08.04) Ebay users should keep an eye for a very convincing ebay spoof email. Unlike previous examples it doesn't immediatly ask for login details, instead it purports to be from "safe harbour", one of ebays security arms. It contains a link that takes you to a fake website which attempts to extract personal details, don't be taken in, ebay never send this kind of message out to its members. Find out more about spoof ebay emails here.

XP SP2 has been made available to beta (last version before release) testers, so possibly it will be seen in the wild fairly soon. Hopefully in a slightlymore compact download that at present, a whopping 260mb which would take over 15 hours on a very consistent 50k connection. I think we should all wait until it's available on disc don't you? Read details about changes and issues here. Thanks to Steve for the info. When it finally gets released for real I'll post some details on the changes the service pack makes so we know what to expect.

(07.08.04) Remember those friendly folk who used to to phone us up and ask how we were getting on with our lovely new computers, not to mention how happy we were? Well they've finally published the results of the survey (minus the happiness bits) and very interesting reading they make too. Far more people have been using their computers than most people thought and not just for sending email either. This website and our forum came out quite well, with people accessing it almost as much as the official helpline when they got into difficulties. Click here to read the results and here to post on the forum thread, I'd be very interested in peoples thoughts on the survey. If you're not a member (why?) just email me. Many thanks to James Weston for sending in the tip.

(06.08.04) The MS SP2 saga continues and even big net news sites are getting caught out. The usually reliable Register reports that the Service Pack is available and even provides a link but the link goes nowhere (click here), MS's own homepage links to a download page (click here) that just asks you to check back (click here). Maybe it will be available this month as promised but I doubt anyone ordering discs from MS will receive them before November. Something to look forward to for the winter monthes then... Thanks to Steve for the links.

(05.08.04) MS Service Pack 2 has been delayed again without explanation. it was suppossed to ship to manufacturers yesterday but didn't and Microsoft hasn't issued an explanation yet. The obvious explanation is that they've noticed that it doesn't work as it should. Read more here.

Totaly off-topic but I thought it would be of interest to many of you, the Scottish Executive has published its latest household survey which gives a facsinating picture of Scotland today, click here to read it.

Steve wrote in to say that there's a very good guide to digital camera sensors here which has the vitue of being much shorter than the one I linked to yesterday. 

(04.08.04) No real news today so just a couple of links you might enjoy. The first is to an article on the excellent TomsHardware site that explains how the censor in a digital camera works and what the difference is between the various types on offer, a must read if you are thinking of buying a camera, click here to do so.

The second link is just to an animated cat that you can play with, it even purrs if hit the right spot, click here - you know you want to.

(03.08.04) Another email and newsgroup message is enticing people into downloading a Trojan that allows hackers to take control of computers, this time they are promising a video file that shows Nick Berg alive and well. Playing on the paranoia and conspiracy theories that infest the debate on Iraq, the message is succeeding in taking many people who don't believe the official story about the unfortunate American who was beheaded in Iraq some weeks ago. Read more here.

Ofcom, undoubtedly prompted by the item below, is looking at ways of tackling dialer scams and other premium rate phone rip-offs. You can read more here on the Register which has a well written article but some of the information being put out news services is not so good. The BBC seem to think that the greatest threat from dialers comes from pop-ups and emails when in fact it is from people agreeing to install them but being unaware of their true nature. This presents a big problem for legislators as that small dialogue box asking you if you want to install a plugin is a key part of the Internet and it would take a changes to thousands of legitimate websites to get round it.

Boots digital printing kiosk, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago has intrigued a few of you, I tried it out last week and was quite impressed. I was going to write a piece on it but the Register has a reader's letter that puts it all very well, the only thing he doesn't mention is the annoying recorded voice that repeats as long as the machine is being used. It's driving the women at the dispensery counter up the wall! Read more here , I thought the pictures were about as good as you would get from a mid-priced printer using decent paper. 

July

(31.07.04) Dialer scams are one of the nastier aspects of the Internet, catching the unwary and giving them huge phone bills not to mention red faces. Basically they're innocent looking bits of software that (generally) pornographic websites use to get people to pay for apparently free premium content. There have been a number of cases of them causing problems in the community and a contact at BT tells me that they have actually resulted in divorce on a few occasions. As reported (somewhere) on these pages, BT has been embarrassed by the small cut they get from the scams and has started to take measures against them. This mostly consists of a revamping of existing services, such as premium number blocking and a new webpage offering advice but it's still a welcome move as they will now block the numbers used by the dialers when they find them. I've written a guide that includes the BT advice and some thoughts of my own, best of all it includes a tip on how to avoid the endless "press 3" options and get straight through to a human. Worth reading just for that in my opinion, click here to judge for yourself.

(30.07.04) The first MyDoom.m (the virus that brought down google and hates Microsoft) infected email arrived today, happily it was the only one. Norton Antivirus caught it so there was no problem and the only interesting thing about it was the return address. I've used return addresses to give a clue to who the real sender was but MyDoom.m, if my example is typical, just puts "noreply" in place of the username in the address its been sent to. E.g. if it was sent to richard@ms.com the return address would be noreply@ms.com.

The recent flood of spam seems to be easing a little, down from an average of over 100 a day to a more reasonable 40 - 50. I'd be interested if other people are seeing the same thing, so if you are please email me.

I'm basking in the glow of my spiffing new 19" monitor as I write this, who said size made no difference? Having used a 15" monitor ever since I bought my first computer from Time (no need to comment - I know) I wish I'd bought one years ago, a big display is so much easier to use, I can display two documents side by side with out having to scroll across them and webpages never disappear out of the screen. I've written a brief(ish) guide to monitors and you can read it here (it's still something of a work in progress and I'd welcome comments!).

(28.07.04) We'll soon be able to deal with the planning department online after the Scottish Executive removed the legal barriers to sending planning infoormation electronically. People will be access applications and lodge objections, a big improvement over having to go to a sometimes distant office. Also it will enable the whole process to work more efficiently without the need to convert computer data into hard copy before an application can be sent in. Argyll & Bute usually react to this sort of thing quite quickly so look out for a local announcement soon. Read more here.

The Government has got rather hot under the collar over a students spoof version of its "preparing for emergencies" website, the online version of the leaflet it sent out this week (I haven't got mine yet). A student noticed that they had only registered the .gov version of the site's name and set one up using the .co.uk domain. He's since been contacted by the Home Office and asked to take it down but has so far refused. He just said on the news that he probably would if he got a threatening letter from them so read it while you can. Click here for the real one and here for the spoof.

(27.07.04) Virus Alert! The MyDoom worm has reappeared, labeled mydoom.m and caused the Google website, amongst others, to crash for several hours yesterday. Norton Antivirus has added the virus to its lists and if your updates are dated 26.07.04 or later you should be OK. As usual it will be people who haven't been online for a while and then check their email before Norton has had a chance to update, who will be caught out. The distribution of this virus is already rated as high and so this is bound to affect a lot of us in some way.

Open Norton Antivirus from the Start Menu to check the definitions date and if it is older than the 26th click "Live Update" at the top of the window. Norton has more details on MyDoom.m here and a removal tool should you have a problem. More details of the Google crash can be found here.

(26.07.04) Finally I've had enough of peering at the www through the my 15" letterbox and bought a new 19" monitor from ebay for £139 inc p&p. It struck me that there must a be a lot of other people fed up with only being able to have one Word document open at a time or looking at pictures at 30% of their true size and so I've started a new thread in the forum's Buyers Club on the subject. The idea is to give some basic advice and allow people to post questions about particular models they're thinking of buying. You can read more and post a question, should you feel inclined, here.

Definately happy with OnSpeed (see below), it makes a huge difference to download time at the acceptable cost of image quality. It's very easy to disable temporarily when viewing websites where image quality is important, so a big thank you to Jan who introduced it to me.

(24.07.04) Having changed browsers from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox, I'm now testing OnSpeed, an Internet acceleration program that claims to dramatically improve download speeds. It doesn't quite do what it claims but initial impressions are favourable. I think it might be particualarly good for people on slow conections who find that pages full of images slow to download. Read more and get links to the program here.

Emails which promise a look at the body of Osama Bin Laden should be deleted immedietly, tempting though they may be. The link takes you to a webpage which automatically dinstalls a trogan on your computer, apparently it's a varient of the one that caused so much trouble a couple of weeks ago. As reported last week the patch released by Microsoft fixed most but not all the problem.

(22.07.04) In response to the interest generated by my purchase of the processor that I used to upgrade the computer I've written a few tips to using bidding on ebay. It's very much a personal view but I hope it will help people avoid some of the common pitfalls and that other experienced ebayers will contribute their thoughts. Click here to read it.

My spam killer rule is still working, with only a very few rogue emails getting through, of 80 spam emails received today it caught all but three. These were ones that had not yet been listed by the anti-spam services but they will be by the end of the day and won't get through again. All in all I'm very happy with the results. Check below for the link to the instructions, if you use Outlook you won't regret it.

(20.07.04) Outlook users (the version that comes with Microsoft Office) can kill virtually all spam with on simple rule that tells Outlook to check the email header for just a few words. It takes only a minute to create and it will catch everything except marketing emails from legitimate sources. Since figuring it out I have been able to get rid of all my other rules, which were catching many emails I actually wanted to read and disable the Symantec spam filter.

Unfortunately it's not possible to write rules based on message headers for Outlook Express but if you use Outlook you must try this. I've only been using it for a day but I'm very happy with it, click here to read how to create the rule in the second message of the thread.

Two houses got satellite Bb, one on Mull and the other on Ulva, today. The BT is a two way link to the Internet via a dish slightly larger than a Sky TV's, giving a guaranteed 512kbs  down and a variable, lower up link. Developments in compression software have more or less solved the latency (the time lag linking to the satellite) and the line cost is only £10 higher than business ISDN. The installation cost of £1000 can be covered by a grant from HIE if you have a business. One of the new users has promised me a test drive the weekend after next and I'll let you know how I get on. The engineer told me that he was installing them everyday all across Scotland for BT.

(18.07.04) I've posted the detailed information on the CPU upgrade on the forum, I've included a rough outline of technical details, pictures of the installation and some test results showing the difference between the onld and the new one. I've tried to write it so everyone can understand it and include some information to satisfy the more expert among you. As far as I know I'm the first to do this with one of the NAIDC computers and you can see how I got on by clicking here.

(17.07.04) My new cpu (central processing unit - the bit small silicon chip that does all the calculations) finally arrived yesterday and after much cursing I've installed it. As you can see I managed not to break the computer in the process. Even better news the overall performance has by 16% according to test program included in Norton System Works. The improvement was even better in some areas such as 3 and 2D graphics, important for games and image editing.

The only real problem I had was getting the clip of the heatsink (which keeps the cpu cool) but once that came away it was very straight forward. The new chip cost £36 + £4 for insured postage from ebay and I'll post more details in the forum tomorrow.

(16.07.04) A cautionary tale from one the engineers retained by NAIDC to look after our computers. He has come across two computers that lost the capacity to display web pages because the owner had allowed their Norton Internet Security subscription to lapse.

Before I go any further I should say that this probably doesn't affect most of you but you might hear people complain about the problem and this might help. 

The problem doesn't occur immedietly the subscription lapses but a series a niggling problems eventually lead to the complete break down of the connection. Speaking from personal experience, having not renewed mine (I use another firewall), the first signs are Internet Explorer freezing up after a period of use, the egg timer appears, nothing is clickable and it has to be closed using Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Users can either renew their subscriptions or uninstall the program (just Norton Internet Security not the Anti-virus). If you choose to uninstall you should replace it with something else, I use the freeversion of ZoneAlarm, which is very simple to use and can be found here.

Double click on the Norton Internet Security globe in the bottom right of the screen, the subscription status will be displayed on the first page you see.

(14.07.04) The latest batch of MS Updates amount to a pretty large download and people on poor connections may have trouble getting them via automatic download. Even if they don't they will find that the web pages take a while to load as the updates are downloaded.

If you are experiencing these problems you can get the updates manually by clicking on "Tools" at the top of Internet Explorer and then on "Windows Update". Once the page opens follow the instructions in the main window and a list of available patches will appear if any are needed. Next to each item is a "Remove" button, click on all the ones below the first item and click on the download/install button.

When the process has completed click on "cancel" on the box that asks you if want to restart the computer and repeat the process until all of them have been downloaded and then restart the computer. This will break up the large download into managable chunks but most people won't have to do this .

NTL say they have resolved the recent problems but planned maintenance may result in the temporary lose of messages, these will be delivered when the work is complete. Meanwhile some recipients of email from NTL users are saying that they have received multiple copies of messages sent when people were receiving error messages. Not much we can do about it now but very annoying none the less.

(13.07.04) NTL users have been experiencing intermitant problems sending and recieving email since Sunday (it wasn't just me). These include repeated requests for the password to entered and "System error 452". NTL know about the problems and are currently addressing them, until then people will have to keep trying as the email system is working more often than not. For more details click here, thanks to everyone who emailed in about this.

A vulnerability has been found in Mozilla, the web browser I've recommended as an alternative to Internet Explorer. That's the bad news, the good news is that they fixed it within 24hrs and the patch is very easy to download and install. More details and links can be found here, thanks to Marel for spotting and posting the information.

(12.07.04) 2 new members have joined the forum, the first for a while, bringing our numbers up to 147. The latest is Arclite who has joined prior to moving to the island but the other is a bit of a mystery, they've joined but I can't figure out from the membership list who they are. Hopefully they'll post a message and reveal themselves! Whatever - welcome to both!

Hooray - someone has posted an item on Argghyllcom or rather they tried but in the end sent it to me to post because their password wasn't working. This seems to be a periodic problem and can only be resolved by phoning Argyll & Bute and getting them to reset it, if anyone else is haveing the same trouble logging in email me and I'll send you the number. In the meantime you can read the news of the Mull & Iona Pipe Bands annual ceilidh by clicking here. Thanks to Jane for sending it in.

We can all relax a bit, Microsoft have put off the release of the next XP service pack (heralded below) for a month and it is now scheduled to come out in August, read about the possible reasons here.

My new cpu hasn't arrived yet but that's par for the course for parcels in my opinion, if you wonder what happens to yours you might like to click here and see the tortured path a camera took on its journey to Mull.

(10.07.04) I've reported on virus threats specific to Kazaa and other file sharing program users in the past but I always thought the threat minimal because relatively few people in the local community use them (good explanation of file sharing here). Now the  first occurence of a computer being infected via file sharing has been reported and apparently it required the virus to be removed manually, which is a long and tedious process. I'll post more details when I have them and I'll keep an eye on news of emerging threats.

My email has been misbehaving today, with three accounts not working, so apologies to anyone who hasn't recieved a response yet. Meanwhile the problems with the forum has been resolved, it turns out they were upgrading the service in some way - I wish they stop doing that, I can hardly ever see any difference.

The processor hasn't arrived yet btw. 

(09.07.04) I've decided to upgrade the processor (aka cpu or chip) in my NAIDC computer from the Celeron to a Pentium III (PIII). The upgrade should make the computer run a lot faster, maybe by as much as 20% and handle graphics programs a lot better. I've been trying to buy cpus on Ebay for the past month and it's surprisingly difficult to find one at a reasonable price. This is because they're no longer making the PIII and they're actually more expensive that much faster chips. I don't think it's worth paying over £50 for any upgrade but I did have a go at buying a PIII 1.4, the fasted Pentium III available, for £70 but after three attempts I gave up. Eventually I settled for a 1.2Ghz (this is the measure of the cpu's speed), secondhand from a seller with a good Ebay reputation, for £40 inc insured p&p.

I won the item on Thursday and I'll keep you updated with progress, along with pictures of the installation and benchmarks (speed tests) to demonstrate any improvement. The purchase has had one interesting side affect, I had to get some thermal grease to put between the processor and the heatsink which keeps the chip cool. When I tried to buy a tube for £2.95 from Microdirect the price leapt to £23 once they'd added postage. I phoned them up and they rechecked the cost. It turned out to be a programming mistake on the website and they charged me £5.25 inc VAT and postage. It just goes to show that if you come across an outrageous "island surcharge" it's well worth phoning up, they're going to reprogram the postal charges!

Much to my surprise someone has responded to my post about road testing Mozilla (link below) and they've gone a step further and are trying out the email program too. Keep track of our progress by checking the thread on the forum, maybe you'll be converted too!

(08.07.04) Problems with the update system for this website has meant no updates for the past two days and now that's fixed the forum is unavailable for some unknown reasons. Apologies for the inconvenience, I thought all this was behind us :¬(

Mozilla, one of the most popular alternatives to Internet Explorer has seen a surge in people downloading it following the security problems IE experienced last week and the recommendation from the US State Dept. Downloads doubled from 100 to 200 000 over the last few days for the various versions of the browser.

I've been trying out the full version of Mozilla, which includes a browser and email client (an alternative to Outlook Express) amongst other things and the slimmed down, browser only, version "Firefox". I was impressed with the full version but it was a hefty 11mb to download and like Firefox even more. It's much smaller at only 4.5mb or so and much, much, faster. I get the impression that pages are loading twice as fast and I would definately recommend it for someone on a slow connection. I'll write more extensively about it on the forum as soon as I can, until then you can read more and download it if you're brave enough by clicking here. It's free by the way and doesn't harbour any nasty spyware or the like.

(05.07.04) XP SP2 RC2 (that's XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 2 and is the successor to XP Service Pack 1) is has been released and recieving mixed reviews. Woody's Windows Watch, a newletter distributed by the author Windows for Dummies etc, is certain that people will find that many of their programs won't run once it's installed and recommends that it should be installed for testing on another PC first if possible. However sgegreen, of Software Updates fame, has been testing today it with few problems. And those seem to just involve a little tweaking of network settings, something that won't affect most of us. Best news is that it doesn't seem conflict with existing security programs, although he hasn't been able to test it on the 2002 version of Norton that most of the community use. This item will be updated as new information comes in.

The new service pack is being released because of the obvious security problems with XP, it is basically a compilation of MS patches and security checks that ensure a computer has basic protection. It will be far to big for us to download at over 260mb and we'll have to wait for it to be available on disc, which MS has distributed for free in the past. This will happen soon, as it is generally felt that XP SP2 RC2 is virtualy the finished article.

Memory Prices dropped again on Friday to £37 for 256mb (inc p&p), the lowest price for over seven months. Could be a good time to buy.

A Microsoft "security" spokesman has been doing the rounds of the news programs trying to put the best face on the recent security problems. I told you they were serious problems! 

(03.07.04) Spammers seem to have adopted a new tactic based around their misspelling of words to avoid spam filters. By coming up with new varients and useing them for multiple emails they are flooding mail boxes with numerous messages. I've added an item to the existing guide on useing Outlook Express spam filters specifically on how to select all the words in a subject line rather than the entire thing, this catches the next lot of messages that use the same words in a different configuration. You can read it by clicking here, I'm not sure if it works in Outlook Express as well and would be grateful to know if it does.

(02.07.04) The US Dept of Homeland Security (computer readiness section) is advising people to stop useing Internet Explorer and try other browsers because of the recent vulnerabilities. I suggested the same thing a few days ago but on reflection I think only those who surf the Internet widely should consider it. Most people stick to fairly well known websites hosted on secure servers which are highly unlikely to affected by the new found vulnerabilities.

I've decided to have a second browser, called Mozilla and if I see reports of a new security problem with Internet Explorer I'll use it until the problem is resolved. Having a second browser is very simple, they work just like Explorer (with some improvements) and they don't cause any conflicts if you don't use them at the same time. Mozilla can be downloaded here but it is a hefty 11mb and as I say, unless you surf widely I don't think you really need it, just be careful not to follow links that you don't trust.

Microsoft has released updates to patch many of the problems that led to the recent panic which most of you will pick up through automatic update, if you don't have it turned on check today's Software Updates page (see Anorak News). 

June

(30.06.04) I may be making 2 + 2 = 5 but I think the Bunessan exchange might be getting broadband earlier than expected. A number of businesses have been called by BT and asked how many phones they use, apparently this is because BT is planning work on the exchange in September and want to know how much disruption it will cause. This goes some way to confirming something an engineer let slip to the affect that the exchange would be enabled in January or February of 2005, four months earlier than scheduled. Any reports from people connected to other exchanges gratefully received!

(29.06.04) Argyllcom has been updated with the latest Scottish Islands Newsletter, jam packed with news as ever and this month with a difference. They're asking readers to take part in the making of the future for the Scottish Islands Network, you sign up and have your say in the course this uniquely useful resource will take in the coming years. Click here to read the latest addition, which has the links to sign up.

Some of you may recall how a few members of the community had been taken in by the so called "dialer scam". This is where visitors to a website (usually pornographic) are asked to install a program in order to access it, the software actually resets the computer to connect via a premium rate phone number rather than its normal ISP. This can cost a small fortune, some of these connections can cost as much as £3.50 per minute. At long last BT has decided to block access to numbers carrying out this scam, I suspect because they have become embarrassed at profitting indirectly from it. There will still be some risk to the unwary as the numbers won't be identifies immediately but it will make a huge difference. Read more here.

(28.06.04) The server that turned out to be the host of the Internet Explorer security breach reported below has been closed down. Source of the "download.ject", websites were innocently sending surfers to sites hosted by the Russian server leaving them open to the Trojan (type of virus) that could give hackers control over infected computers. MS posted instructions on what to do if you suspected that your PC was infected, along with the advice that java script should be turned off even though it admitted that this would mean that webpages didn't display properly. So, panic over for now but how long can it be before the next exploit comes along? Microsoft advises people to turn on automatic update, which is indeed a good idea but it wouldn't have solved this problem for which they never released a patch. Read more here. 

(26.06.04) On reflection, and thanks to some new links from Angela, it appears that the threat reported yesterday is not as bad as first thought. Symantec has an advisory page (click here) on it and a note saying that virus defintions since June 15th should detect the problem (although its not clear if this just aplies to servers) and Microsoft also has a page on it (click here), complete with how to detect the virus if you think you might be infected.

Having said that, this is the latest in a series of threats that has struck at the heart of Internet explorer and I don't think that so many respected publications would get carried away for no reason. I think it's time to start trying out alternatives to Internet Explorer because the risks are starting to out weigh the benefits.  

(25.06.04) A huge security flaw has been found in Internet Explorer for which there is no patch nor antivirus update as yet. From the numerous stories about it on the web it appears that the flaw is being exploited and the some people suspect that spammers are useing it to create "dummy" computers to spread their junk emails. The flaw is in a hosting program used by a lot of websites, so far it is corporate sites that appear to have been infected and just visiting them will leave your computer open to infection.

At this point I normally say that people reading this website have nothing to worry about because they keep subscriptions and patches up to date but in this case I can't. It is to early to say how widespread the problem is but at the very least I think we should avoid visiting large coporate websites, such as banks, for a while. The flaw seems to be specific to Internet Explorer, so downloading and useing a different browser would solve the problem. There is a list of them here, I haven't had a chance to test any of them but a casual look at the list would suggest that picking one that isn't based on Internet Explorer, such as Mozilla, would be a good place to start. More information will posted on the forum over the weekend. Thanks to Angela for the tip. More information can be found here, here andhere.

(24.06.04) The Mull wind farm article has finally been written for Argyllcom, I think it's the most complicated issue I've had to summarise for the website so far. Everyday brought in a new point of view or link to consider and I've tried to cover as much as possible in a short item. Click here read the article. Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts and sent in link, if you would like to have your say on the controversial plans either email me or post message on the forum by clicking here.

The above item should have appeared last night but for some reason the page didn't publish, sorry.

(21.06.04) I've created a new page for general science news so I don't keep posting completely irrelavent stuff on the Anorak page which is suppossed to be about computing. My favourite topics are space orientated but if there's something that interests you email in and I'll items about it. I'll also post some of the odder things that turn up on the Net and believe me, some really odd things turn up from time to time!

Still waiting for some positive views on the wind farm by the way. I'll write a piece and then people will email me complaining of bias, I just know it. 

(20.06.04) Anyone who defragments their computer regularly will be aware of how much junk surfing the Internet can generate, even if they aren't aware of the cause. A new guide has been added which explains how a small and easy to use program download will solve this problem by allocating a small amount of RAM to the task of storing Internet files. Click here for the guide. Thanks to sgegreen for writing it.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in links and information on the Mull wind farm plans, I would be grateful if those in favour of the proposal would write in as well.

(18.06.04) The Mull windfarm proposal has become a big issue on the island and I would like to write an article about it for Argyllcom. So far I've only found explanations and websites broadly in favour of the plans but I know there is some opposition to it too. In order to write a balanced piece I'd like to hear from both side of the argument, so if you have a point of view please email me by clicking on the blue email link above. Thanks.

(16.06.04) NTL & Tesco email was down again today, the latest in an unexplained series of failures that has affected everyone who uses them for their main email. It doesn't, as I've said before, affect people useing them as an ISP and accessing other email services through them. Forum members are reminded that they can have a free 2000friends email address on request and this will work even when the rest of NTL/Tesco is having problems (at least mine does!). Just write in if you want one.

The Isle of Mull ferry broke down yesterday and I've added a story about it to Argyllcom, it got pictures too, click here to read it.

(15.06.04) I'm very happy to say that the memory on offer yesterday has been claimed by a frequent contributor from Tobermory. Nice to know it's gone to a good home but sorry to everyone who emailed in just to late. Thanks for trying though!

An item about the Tiroran Hse RNLI day has been added to the Mull news on Argyllcom, complete with some terrible pictures by your truely, which really don't do the event justice. You can judge for yourself by clicking here.

(14.06.04) I've just added another 256mb of memory to my NAIDC computer (taking advantage of the relatively low price) and so I've got a spare 128mb strip to give away to the first forum member to email in and ask for it. Most people reading this will have added more memory so won't need it for their own computer but you probably know someone who hasn't done so and even though an extra 128 doesn't do as much as a 256mb strip, it will still be a huge boost for someone still struggling along on the original 128mb. So just click the blue news link above and get £21 worth of memory!

I've been banging on about the need to let your anti-virus program to upgrade before downloading email if you've been away for a while and I'm happy to say that Computer Shopper have published a letter on the subject in their August issue! Sadly it wasn't deemed worthy of letter of month and I only won a computershopper mug rather than a surround sound system :¬(  Still it's nice to win something...

(12.06.04) NTL & Tesco email is down again, this only affects there own addresses, if you access other email services through NTL or Tesco you won't notice any problem. I'd advise anyone to maintain email addresses at more than one ISP because this sort of problem can happen to any server at anytime. Forum members can have their own 2000friends address on request.

"Congratulations - You've won a Lottery!"  would usually be good news but not if arrives by unsolicited email, in which case its a scam. I've had three reports of various incarnations of these emails appearing in the community over the last couple of days, they concern either the "Euro" or "International" lotteries and are basically the Nigerian bank email scam revisited. As usual there's an enormous amount of money in some bank account just waiting to be collected and all you've got to do is pay a small fee to free it up. You'd think no one would fall for this but thousands of people part with large sums every year. Don't be one of them!

Just to clarify yesterday's story, if you have kept up your anti-virus and Windows patches up to date there is very little chance of falling victim to the spam trojans mentioned yesterday. Just be very careful what you agree to install from the Internet and get a spyware detector to check your computer, you can get an excellent one by clicking here.

(11.06.04) A study has concluded that up to 80% of spam (junk email) now eminates from home computers infected with undetected trojans (a type of virus). The computers are either infected via email or through an inadequate firewall, a result of not keeping up with the antivirus subscriptions and Windows updates. The victim would have no idea what was happening, they wouldn't receive any emails warning them that they were sending out viruses (because they're not) and the only affect they would notice would a slowdown in their Internet connection. It's been known for sometime that spammers were useing this technique but the extent of the problem is a surprise. I doubt this affects anyone who reads this website but its worth passing on to those who don't. Read more here. 

(10.06.04) Spyware is a subject I've written about in the past but a new application of it raises the threat to a new level. Surfers are invited to install a search toolbar, similar to altavista's or the google toolbar, which looks innocent enough but in fact tracks Internet use and reports back to a website that targets them with advertising. The toolbar exploits a newly discovered and as yet unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer and readers are advised to be very careful about agreeing to install toolbars unless they are very confident of the company supplying it. More on this can be found here. Thanks to Steve for sending in the link.

Meanwhile Yahoo has added a spyware detection facility to it's search toolbar which will scan your computer for spyware and remove it as necessary, click here for more.

(09.06.04) NTL & Tesco customers experienced a failure in their email service yesterday that lasted just over five hours. Thankfully it's now been fixed and it didn't affect people connecting via NTL or Tesco to access other email servers. I don't know the cause of the failure but I thought that if you suffered you'd like to know that it was nothing to do with your own computer.

Shareyouropinion.com keep sending me alerts informing me that someone has posted information about me on the their website. No one actually has, the website enables people to exchange information on people via email, so when I went to check all I found was an item that someone "had information" on me, which frankly I find a bit creepy. Its free to register for the website but in order to find out what is being said it necessary to upgrade to a fee based account. I would be interested to know if anyone else has had similar emails, please use the link above if you have.

(08.06.04) The Clydesdale Bank is the latest to be targeted by fraudesters hoping to con victims with scam emails. The bank has put a warning on its website, which all online customers see after logging in but as so many more people have accounts locally it's worth reiterating that people should never respond to requests to confirm banking or any other details through an email link. The fake websites that the links lead to are so convincing that they can even fool the more experienced Internet user and everyone is advised to just delete the emails.

(06.06.04) I don't know about you about you but my favourites list got so full it was quicker to find websites with google than trying to search through all ones I'd added over the years. Then I found an easy way to sort them into the ones I used a lot and those that I only visited occassionaly. It's dead easy and you can find out how by clicking here (click here for the complete guide to the favourites menu).

Astrologers and astronomers are united in anticipation of Venus's transit of the sun on Tuesday morning, the first time this has happened for over a hundred years (I think). It's far to bright to watch directly but we can follow the event over the Internet whatever the weather. Click here for the NASA website which has all the details you could want.

(04.06.04) New Viruses are spreading havoc but I'm happy to say that if you have kept your antivirus program and Windows updates up to date you are OK. The Plexar, a MyDoom varient, virus hasn't been listed by Symantec (Norton) yet but it only affects computers that haven't been patched for some time (click here for details). Meanwhile the extremely aggresive Korgo attacks on two fronts, email attachments, file sharing but has been listed by Symantec and exploits the same vulnerability as sasser. It steals credit card details and so is bound to feature on the news, such as the BBC item here.

(03.06.04) Argyllcom has been updated with the latest edition of the Scottish Islands newsletter and as ever it's full of the news from up and down the coast. What's so good about the newletter is that reports the kind of story that doesn't make it onto the national news agenda and is otherwise only reported in a local paper even if it has relevance to other islands, which is the whole point of it I suppose, click here to read it.

Thanks to Tommy Beavitt of Hi-Wide for confirming that the Bb roll out date is definately the end of 2005 and that they are looking at all means of bringing broadband to communties, ADSL, wireless, etc. He also points out that what constitutes a "community" hasn't been defined but doesn't think that this will affect availabilty. I hope that Hi-Wide's expertese has place in the new environment, they have shown themselves to be very flexible and it would be a pity if their experience went to waste.

(02.06.04) More on yesterdays announcement: The HIE broadband webpages (click here) make it explicit that as a result of Jim Wallace's statement all of Argyll's 50 small exchanges are in line to be upgraded to broadband.

This is a good but it doesn't mean that everyone will get ADSL (broadband down the phone line) though. Even if all the exchanges are upgraded it wouldn't reach the 100% of the population and so the contract for the work cover all forms of broadband technology.

At present the contract for the work is out to tender under the terms of the Office of the Journal of the European Union process (click here for an explanation of this) in which both HIE and Scottish enterprise will be consulted. This will take four to six months and the successful bidder will have until the end of 2005 to complete the work.

This is great news after month of uncertainty; I've been critical of the Scottish Executive for delaying the announcement but it has to said that they deserve a lot of praise for being so proactive in this matter. Last year access to broadband in Scotland was well below the UK average and they have addressed this problem with great determination.  Thanks to HIE's Paul O'Brien for the additional information in this item.

(01.06.04) Jim Wallace has announced the long heralded plans to extend access to broadband to all of Scotland. Speaking yesterday during a visit to an Aberdeenshire firm that has just installed Bb he said that bringing the technology to even the most remote areas by the end of 2005 was "a top priority" for the Scottish Executive and vital to its drive for economic growth.

The news hasn't had time to filter through the various actors on the Scottish broadband stage but expect more to come in the coming weeks as the details of how the target of 100% coverage will be achieved. Read more here.

May

(31.05.04) Argyllcom has been updated with a story on the Mull news pages about a new website for the Mull and Iona Piping Society, click here to read it and if you would like to contribute a story for Argyllcom email me!

Apologies to everyone who has written to me recently useing my fsnet address, I let the account lapse (I'm now with NTL) and so wasn't recieving anything. It's up and running again but I'd be grateful if people could change to useing my richardAT2000friends.co.uk one instead because eventually I will let the freeserve account lapse for good. Thanks

(28.05.04) Broadband became available for 13 000 residents of Stornoway, Lerwick and Kirkwall as the result of an HIE supported scheme this week. Thus, the local communications company leased the spare capacity of the BT wireless link to 3 exchanges, an idea that could be replicated on other islands. The three exchanges involved serve 31 per cent of telephone lines in the Western Isles, 39 per cent in Orkney and 33 per cent in Shetland. HIE hopes to brought Bb to 48% of the regions households in the near future. However SNP MSP Rob Gibson pointed out that Nepalese yak farmers had better access to broadband than most of the Highland region. Read more here.

(27.05.04) Memory prices fell dramatically from over £45 to £38.76 256mb (inc VAT and del). This is the lowest its been for over six months, I've no idea if it will fal lower but I've bought myself an extra 256mb just in case it rises again. Click here to go to forum then click the banner at the top to buy some yourself.

(24.05.04) A new email scam caught a out a lot of people last week with the claim that £1500 had been deducted "from your account" and containing a link to a webpage so the order could be confirmed or amended. The webpage then installs a worm (virus) on the unsuspecting users PC exploiting an as yet unpatched Windows vulnerability. What's particularly worrying about this scam is that it can catch out a lot of people, not just the unwary. A lot of people like me follow these links just to find out exactly what the scam is, confident that we won't be taken in but in this case we would. This email will not doubt be the first of many to exploit the security flaw so don't follow any links in spam emails until it's fixed! Read more here.

April

(29.04.04) A new scam email has appeared in the community, this one informs you that you are a winner in the Spanish Lottery, known as El Gordo or "the fat one" in Spain. The email tells you that you of several level two winners and are in line to receive over £2 million. All you have to do is contact your "agent" via email to start the claim process. It sounds to good to be true and it is, the agent will ask for everything from credit card details to your passport and then will just disappear. The email is more convincing than the "Nigerian" scams but the con is basically the same. Thanks to Sue for forwarding the email.

The forum is up and running again but is a little slow. Apparently the hosts are having unexpected problems following the change of server. I could have told them to expect unexpected problems...


(28.04.04) I'm sorry but not surprised that the forum is still not up and running again, these server changes never seem to go smoothly. The latest announcement on the host's website apologises for the delay and asks people to check back at 6pm, which was 30 minutes ago. I can only apologise too and ask everyone to keep checking back every so often.

I'm happy to say that our efforts to track down the sender of the Netsky.P virus seem to have been successful, with no reports of it since the pitcairn.org address was published. I don't know exactly who was responsible for sending out but I'm glad that it's stopped (finger crossed - they might just be on holiday). Now I'm looking for the sender of Netsky.B & C. The sender has a lot of Holiday Mull email addresses on their computer, this doesn't mean that they're a member of the circle, it could just mean that they're in contact with a lot of members or visit the website frequently. I would like to hear from Holiday Mull members who are being sent emails infected with Netsky.B or C or emails warning them they are sending out the virus and hopefully we'll stop this one too. Thanks to everyone who helped in the Netsky.P tracking.

People might be confused by the "Wannado" emails arriving today and think they are just junk email. They're not, Wannado is the new name for Freeserve and the emails are like the old "chairman's statements" that they used to send out. The email contains some interesting information if you follow the links, top of the list being that they are offering 1mb broadband for £35 p.m. - twice the speed of normal ADSL and worth bearing in mind for summer 2005 when BT upgrades all our exchanges (HA!).


(27.04.04) BT has made two dramatic announcements regarding ADSL broadband, the first is that intends to make ADSL (broadband down the phoneline) available to 99.6% of the UK by the summer of 2005. This means they will be upgrading every exchange and the remaining .4% are people living to far from the exchange (you'd think there would be more people than that). Personally I find it hard to believe that this is possible unless they recruite a lot more engineers, even the upgrade dates for areas already in the pipeline are for late summer 2005 but we now know that whatever happens broadband will be available in the foreseeable future. Read more here.

They also announced the end of the pre-registration system which will be replaced by pre-ordering. I'm not sure how this will work, how the old setup will affect the priority they give to exchanges or if there is any point in pre-ordering if they are going to upgrade your exchange anyway. Read more here, thanks to Jane for the link.

The forum will be unavailable sometime tomorrow between 4am and 2pm, sorry for the inconvenience, the hosting company is moving it to a bigger, better, faster computer or so they tell me.

Windows Messenger suffered a system wide fault this afternoon, so if you were trying to loggon and couldn't that's why. Thanks to Steve for the info. 


(26.04.04) HIE grants to businesses for the set up cost of broadband are to come to an end this Friday. Applicants can get up to £300 towards ADSL costs and more importantly for most of us, £1200 towards a satellite connection. I only know of one or two people who are looking into the satellite option, they tell me that the service has greatly improved over the last year and the ongoing costs are only £10 per month more than IDSN. You can find out more by clicking here. Thanks to Douglas G of RING for the information


(25.04.04) CD-R discs: An article in the Independent has reported a very worrying flaw in the CD-R discs that so many of us use to archive valuable data. In a nutshell the data is recorded by a laser burning into a layer of dye and the dye maybe prone to fading in as little as two years. Rather than post a long news item that would get lost over time I've written it up in more detail on the forum so people can refer back to it and send the link to people who might be interested. Click here for the forum article. Thanks to Steve for the tip.


(24.04.04) Despite the number of visits to the virus tracker Netsky.P is still appearing in email. Today's stand out address is donations(at)pitcairners.org which is used by the Pitcairn Island's website to take contributions. I don't think this would be on a computer unless its owner had actually given money so if you know of anyone with an interest there please tell them to check their antivirus program! I get the impression that the sender doesn't much more than use the their computer for email because the virus notices arrive regularly but in small numbers. The address has been added to the others (link in yesterday's story).

Also on the subject of computer security, the BBC reports that fake websites are cost the banks over a million pounds last year. As reported before people are led to them via very convincing emails and the fake sites are very well done - just remember that no legitimate company asks you for information in this way. If in doubt phone your bank to confirm that they have sent you an email. Click here for more

A new guide is in the making and I want your contributions! If there is a free program that you would like to recommend to others either email me or post details on the forum and it will be added to the list. It should be free (or very cheap), small enough to be downloaded easily and free of spyware. So far the list contains utilities that will speed up your computer, clean it of bugs amongst other things. Click here to read it and make a contribution. 


(23.04.04) The first list of email addresses I've culled from infected emails and false returns (see below) has been posted on the forum (click here). All of them relate to the sending of the Netsky.P virus and they date back to April 8th. I've changed the @ symbol to # prevent them being harvested by spammers but you'll still be able to see if they match similar emails that you are receiving. So far no one has contacted with matches but their is someone else who is connected in someway to the local tourist industry (that could be just a frequent tourist though) and sending out a Netsky variant too.

I hope that publishing the list of email addresses, which makes surprisingly interesting reading, will spark someone into sorting out their anti-virus program.


(21.04.04) I've relaunched the forum's Virus Tracker thread and I'm going to post the email addresses found in emails related to a virus outbreak. This won't embarrass people by identifying them individually but it might help other people in the community who are being sent the same virus and maybe even by the sender. That might prompt them to do something about the problem. The more addresses that are posted the better so everyone is invited to contribute, email me if you aren't a member (or preferably join!). At the moment I'm trying to find out who is sending out the Netsky.P virus and I'll post all the email addresses I have so far tomorrow. (The email addresses are taken from the infected computer and help narrow down who the sender is by showing their most frequent contacts and website visited) Click here for the thread and contribute if you can.


(20.04.04) As reported before we've had some success tracking down community computers that are infected with viruses and sending out warning emails. By looking at the all the addresses contained in the emails sent its possible to build up a profile of a sender and to narrow it down to a few likely senders, so far we haven't managed to identify an individual but the warnings have always resulted in the emails stopping.

Somehow, the wonders of Google I presume, our efforts have attracted attention from outside the community and I recently helped a business that was being bombarded with viruses and with false returns to workout who they were coming from. The sender had a very interesting Internet live and was a member of a fair number of services, Yahoo groups and websites that I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted to become well known.

But because he'd allowed his computer to be infected by a virus that took email addresses from it and put them in the "from" line, his private life got an unexpected public airing. It's so easy to imagine that you're completely anonymous online and usually you are but letting your anti-virus subscription lapse or checking your emails before it updates can have unexpected consequences. Just thought you should know... 


(19.04.04) Two examples of what a digital community is all about were posted on the forum in the last couple of days. The first concerned an email and attachement returned by NTL because it was suspected that it might contain a virus ( it didn't) The same email was successfully sent without the attachement and the attachement was sent later in a different email. A search found that there were many reports of this problem but that no one had a definitive explanation yet. Without a forum to ask a question, doggo who reported the problem, might have been really worried by this and thought the computer was infected with a virus.

The second example concerns a problem with the shortcut to Epson Smart Panel (which is installed with the popular scanners) failing. We couldn't find a solution on the forum, I searched the Internet but unlike with the previous problem, there were no results. Yorkie, who posted the problem, posted again and reported that the Epson helpline had advised going to a website and downloading a patch, which solved the problem. The fact that there's a patch for the problem (which will be added to the software updates page shortly) indicates that a lot of people have come across the same thing and yet there's no reports of it on the Interent. Without the a forum Yorkie would have solved this but no one else would have benefited.

So a big thanks to Yorkie and Doggo for posting the questions and to everyone else who sends in questions and little snippets of news and information. These things can seem baffling, insignificant or just plain dull taken on their own but when put together with other reports, add up to something worth talking about. Keep the emails, messages and forum posts coming everyone! The posts from Doggo and Yorkie can be read in the Internet and the Graphics sections of the forum by clicking here.


(18.04.04) Hi-Wide are still interested in hearing from people living in areas to far from telephone exchanges to be able to get ADSL even after it has been upgraded. The system costs as little as £100 per month to run only 5 households or businesses are needed to create a viable scheme. Hi-Wide cover the initial set costs and the first years connection fews and helps the community to set up a Co-Op to run what is in affect its own ISP. After the first year the Co-Op takes over the running costs, having built up a funds from the first years subscriptions. A local person will be trained to service the Satelite and wireless connections with support from Hi-Wide.

Hi-Wide have carried out their own survey based to identify potential areas based on BT maps but they still need local input to establish demand. If you think you and a few neighbours could benefit contact Tommy Brevitt through the Hi-Wide website by clicking here.


(16.04.04) Clarification: Yesterday's item about broadband and the delay on Lismore caused some ripples from the island and beyond but thankfully no corrections or protests from official sources. That is not to say that it was 100% correct and it shouldn't be considered an official announcement of any sort but we can assume that the conclusions are basically correct.

Spyware is the poor but far more widespread brother of the computer virus. It doesn't damage your computer or (usually) spread from machine to machine but it does, as the name suggests, spy on you. Spyware can come from anywhere from innocent looking cookies on websites to very sophisticated trackers installed along with freeware programs. Some cookies will operate across a huge range of websites and allow the writer to build a detailed profile of a surfer, and therefore target them with spam. Some programs can track every keystroke on the infected computer (this is rare). The average computer has 28 instances of spyware on it but fortunately you can get rid of it easily. Read this article on the Register  and download one of the cleaning programs mentioned (most of the forum users recommend Ad-Aware).


(15.04.04) Whatever to Lismore Broadband? You may recall that it was first scheduled for a HiWide wireless scheme and then, after BT's new trigger point announcement and Hi-Wide's rethink, for exchange activation + wireless broadband for those out of range.

But while Colonsay's scheme has got the go ahead, nothing has been announced for Lismore, other than islanders being told that there is hiatus of some sort.

This is where it gets complicated. You may also recall me saying that we should expect good news from the Scottish Exec in March concerning broadband. It never came, there was a rather arcane statement from London on the 16th which was apparently good news (I didn't really understand it frankly) but not what we were expecting.

What people in the broadband community were expecting was an announcement from Jack McConnell about a nation wide scheme to upgrade every exchange in the land. This would involve putting the work out to commercial tender and we are now hoping the announcement will be made on May 4th (fingers crossed).

All this puts Hi-Wide in an awkward position. As a publicly funded organisation they can't compete where there is a commercial alternative and by going after exchange activation schemes they would be competing with any companies that might tender for the Scot Exec scheme, if and when the announcement is made. As I understand it the Colonsay was passed on the basis of it being some sort of "commercial test" along with four other schemes outside the digital community.

So Lismore has just been very unlucky,  Hi-Wide wanted to do it but circumstances have gone against them. On the bright side Lismore will get a complete exchange upgrade along with everyone else's. Hi-Wide is now in a sort of limbo, having come up with a great scheme in wireless broadband and then adapting to the new BT triggers, it is now waiting for the Scot Exec announcement. It still has funding though and will no doubt adapt to the changing broadband landscape as well as it has in the past.

I hope I've got this right, its my conclusion from information drawn from various sources. More over the weekend, including another take on Hi-Wide's ideas for the very remote areas. Thanks to everyone who contributed and apologies to those that didn't want to but did anyway.  


(14.04.04) Emails with Colonsay in the subject line are being filtered out by the Supanet (a big ISP) antivirus filter. According to a message on the forum (click here) a number of people have had problems sending emails until they took "Colonsay" out of the subject line, at which point they go through without difficulty. If you have any similar stories I'd love to hear them, so email them in! Thanks to Peabody for the tip - I've never come across anything lie this before.


(12.04.04) It's not just the Ross of Mull that is feeling disappointment at how long they are going to have to wait for broadband, it's also individuals in remote areas who want to take advantage of the new BT satellite services that are chomping at the bit. Even after signing up and knowing it possible to install a system they are getting frustrated at how long it is taking for BT to find an engineer to do the work. So far I've only had one story like this but there aren't that many people installing it and I'm sure its not an isolated case - if you are having the same experience let me know. You can get an HIE grant for the equipment and it only works out at £10 a month more than ISDN apparently.


(11.04.04) I'm pretty sure we've narrowed down the sender of the Netsky.P virus to a small number of local addresses. From the sending pattern it looks to me as if they hadn't used their computer for a while and checked their email as soon as they went online again.

This is very risky, even though they have a current antivirus program it did not have time to update before the infected email arrived and propagated itself. You should always give you antivirus program a chance to update before checking your email, even if its only been a few days since you last checked it.

There were a couple of email addresses that stood out in the spoofed from addresses, local people who I know have a very small circle of personal contacts. The only way that there address could have ended up on the infected computer is by someone including it on a "round robin" email. For security you should never put multiple addresses in the "To" or "Cc" (carbon copy) boxes, instead the Blind Carbon Copy box should be used - click here for a simple to how.


(10.04.04) Someone local (or closely connected to the digital community) is sending out the Netsky.P virus. I was sent 6 infected emails yesterday and all but one of the (false) "from" addresses was from a community computer. If you've been sent a similar email please let me know as it will help track down the sender (email address above). Thanks


(09.04.04) As reported yesterday the Fionnphort exchange has got its RFS date and it's in late 2005. I've added an article about this to Argyllcom complete with contact details for people who think that the date is to far in the future and wish to lodge a protest. It can't do any harm and it may bring the date forward as both BT and Ofcom are sensitive to public feeling. Click here for the article.


(08.04.04) Fionnphort has got its RFS (ready for service) date, which is good news - the bad news is that it's August 2005! After all the hard work everyone put in getting just about everyone to sign up for it and they aren't going to get it installed much quicker than communities that haven't even got a trigger point if the Scottish Executive is to believed (and I'm sure they can be). Surely we can do something about this? Write to people etc and make them get things moving a bit quicker? Check back over the weekend for some addresses. Thanks to dazedandconfused for the tip.

Scam emails requesting the confirmation of details for everything from banks to ebay are ever more common and they've just added another trick to fool us. Microsoft fixed the security hole that allowed the display a false website address and the scammers have responded by creating websites that display a fake address bar over the top of the real one, giving the impression you are at the real one. The basic rule still pertains - no legitimate website asks you to confirm your details in this way so ignore all the emails no matter how convincing. Read more here.


(07.04.04) The "Buffalo" spammer, who has send 800 million spam emails in his career, is facing goal after being found guilty of various offences in the USA. His family is pleading ignorance and innocence in his place, portraying him and themselves as hicks who have never seen a computer in their lives. It's hoped that the prosecution will cause other spammers to take more care in their activities but thats unlikely in my opinion but I'm glad he's caught, it was he who hijacked the earthlink email addresses, many of which were sent to me. Read more here.

As you may have noticed there seems to be a shortage of local news, hence the story above (or below come to that). If you have anything that might interest the rest of the community please send it in via the link above. Even if it seems trivial to you, an odd email or connection problem for instance, it may turn out to be an issue affecting a lot of us and worth mentioning. Thanks in advance.


(06.04.04) Glastonbury tickets sold out within 24hrs of them being available despite the difficulties caused by the new 2 per person booking system which was supposed to cut down on touting. However if you go to ebay (click here) and type "Glastonbury ticket" into search you'll find dozens for sale. If you know anyone from the area looking for them (quite a few go down every year) warn them to be careful when bidding, even if they find a genuine one for sale it will set them back at least £300!


(05.04.04) Google email, which I mentioned the other day, maybe a very sophisticated form of spyware according to privacy watchdogs. The software you will have to install to use the service records your google searches and then targets you with adverts embedded in the emails, in short, you spam yourself. Read more here and think twice before signing up to it.


(03.04.04) Freeserve is to be rebranded as Wanadoo, the irritating name of its French parent company. The old name was the result of it being one of the first ISPs not to charge a subscription to its services, something revolutionary in its day but a bit of an anachronism now and a hinderance according to Wanadoo. Existing customers won't see much change in the service and will retain their old email addresses but the website will change eventually.

Symantec makers of Norton Internet Security and antivirus, has won an unprecedented 17 100% ratings from the widely respected Virus Bulletin website which tests all the common security programs. I only mention this because people are installing other products which frankly aren't as good. Read more here.


(02.04.03) Colonsay's broadband community has chosen Zetnet as it's providor for the Hi-Wide sponsored ADSL/wireless scheme. They voted for Zetnet after examing several ISPs from a Hi-Wide shortlist. Now they're just waiting for the BT line survey to be completed and an installation date. No news of similar progress on other islands as yet.


The latest Scottish Islands Newsletter is out, jam packed as ever and can be read by clicking here. 


(01.04.04) Freeserve is to introduce virus and spam scanning of email before it reaches your Outlook inbox on April 5th. They are careful to emphasis that it won't protect your computer from viruses that come from other sources such a webpages and I would advice people to keep up their anti-virus subscriptions anyway - better safe than sorry! It will cut down on viruses in the digital community though where most people still have a freeserve address but some haven't kept their subscriptions up.

Spam will still arrive in the mail but it will marked as such and therefore will be pretty easy to put into a folder automatically (there's a guide in the How to section of the forum on on how). Users will be able to go the website and change the spam filter if they find that to many legitimate emails are being caught to the system. It can't be to long before other ISPs adopt similar policies.

Google has enhanced it search categories, adding several new ones such as University, Linux and product comparison, which you can access by clicking "more" on their main page. The most interesting is personalised search option, this allows you to prefilter results so they suit you by creating your own profile. For instance if you are a musician a search for "bass" will result in instruments rather than fish. Click here to see for yourself. They're also introducing an email service similar to hotmail, click here for more.

 

March

(31.03.04) Competition time! It's ages since we've had a competition and I thought Easter would be a good time to have another. In the past the winners have been a bit embarrassed when they won (they're a lovely lot the forum members) and so this time there's a twist. To enter you have to sign up a new member, get them to post a message and then they'll be entered into a draw for a fabulous Easter egg from Thortons which will be delivered right to their door. Click here for details.

(30.03.04) Virus Alert: The latest incarnation of the Beagle virus, Beagle.U, is spreading fast according to various security websites. It arrives with a blank header and no message but with an attachment marked "game.exe". Once clicked the virus works in much the same way as its predessors, looking for addresses to send itself to send to and to put in the "from" box. Symantec are promising that autoupdate will have the definition sometime tomorrow, so be extra careful with attachments until Friday. More information here.

(29.03.04) Spoof emails that appear to come from ebay or from a variety of banks are arriving in the community. All are of the "confirm your details" type and the one from ebay is particularly well worded. The ones that purport to come from banks are all in the form of pictures that look like forms with a link. In neither the bank nor ebay emails do the links actually work however but they could still cause concern to people. Reputable websites and companies never ask for details in this way and all such emails should be deleted without a second thought. Thanks to all who wrote in about this.

Memory prices seem to have stabilised at around £50 for 256mb from Crucial. The price has been £49.39 for a fortnight hasn't dropped below that for some time. This is very high historically but it's still a good investment if you are still struggling along on the original 128.

(28.03.04) Did you know that you can use your mouse to put handwriting or drawings directly into a word document and that you already have the software to do it? It's on the Word 2002 disk that came with the Microsoft Works Suite and I've written guide to installing and useing it here.


(27.03.04) New Guide: It's ages since I've written one but a question from Yorkie (thanks Yorkie!) on the forum spurred me to write one about that annoying component of Word - the normal.doc. It's the template that is used everytime a blank document is created and problems with it can cause errors in the program in general. If you have had Word close down unexpectedly then deleting the existing template might be the answer. I've added the new guide to the end of the existing one on Word problems, click here to read it. Check back tomorrow for a guide on how to draw directly into a word document.


(26.03.04) The tax break that gave small businesses a 100% write off against IT purchases comes to an end on the 31st of March. I should have noticed this when it was announced in the budget, thankfully Microsoft issued a press release before it was to late. So if your business needs anything new in the computer department you'd better order it now before the rate goes back down to 25%. Read more here.

The BBC reports that the spat between the creators of the Netsky and Bagle (or beagle) viruses seems to be coming to an end. The rivalry between the writing teams was revealed in the text of infected emails. The viruses now have variations up to the letter U but fortunately Symantec (Norton) seems to be keeping up with them. There is still someone in the digital community sending them out though, I'm receiving increasing numbers of emails infected with Netsky, many of which appear to come from local addresses. Any other reports welcomed and maybe we'll track down the sender again.


(24.03.04) Norton Internet Security: Remember how some people were finding that their NIS subscriptions were mysteriously being renewed without any payment changing hand? Well it seems to be still happening! It's so long since anyone reported this that I thought that the problem (from Norton's point of view) had been sorted out but I've just been emailed that someone who had let their subscription lapse over a month ago found when they went to renew that the expirey date had been changed to September '04. This phenomena has still not appeared anywhere else on the Internet, maybe everyone benefiting is keeping quiet. Thanks to Mark for the email.


(23.03.04) Argyllcom has an update to the Coll news pages in the shape of an item on the island's popular half marathon - click here to read it.

Organisations have put their proposals to ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for new domain names, additions to the exisiting .com, .co.uk etc extensions. The new ones are aimed at making it more obvious what a website does, in the same that .biz or .org do. It will be a while before these come into affect and only mention it because every new domain name generates scam emails offering web masters the opportunity to pre-register them, I've lost count of the number of times I could have pre-registered 2000friends.eu. Read more here.


(22.03.04) Argyllcom: The Mull news page has been updated with news of a new website dedicated to the Bunessan Show, a perfect example of how the wide spread access to computers can enhance a traditional community event, click here to read more.

Also, contributors to the Argyllcom website will be interested to know that I discovered that it was possible to copy and paste text with pictures into the body of the text when creating pages. I haven't had a chance to test this fully but it could save a lot of time and make formatting a lot easier.

In another stroke of serendipity today I mistyped a search word into google and found that it could work like a calculator. I typed in "1 in", clicked search and "1 inch = 2.54 centimeters" came back as the answer. It will do lots of other calculations too, even tell you how many spoon full make half a cup apparently, read more about the search terms here or just try for yourself here. 


(21.03.04) Broadband at the Post Office: BT engineers called in at my local Post Office last week to install broadband equipment, the company has been contracted to put it into all the P.O.s in the country apparently. The one slight draw back in the case of Pennyghael and most other small villages is that there is no system to connect to, so they've just got the equipement sitting there.

At the same time a notice went up in the window saying "Broadband available here" but rather being another tease, it is advertising a new initiative to make satelite broadband available to businesses at affordable prices. Actually anyone can get it but only businesses can write the running costs off against tax and get grants to cover the equipement. There are various packages available starting at £59 per month and supplying up to 2mb connection speeds. Click here for details (this isn't the same as the Hi-Wide community scheme).


(20.03.04) My MS Security Update CD arrived today after three weeks. Unlike previous MS CDs it comes in a colourful wallet rather than a cardboard box and is accompanied with an anti-virus and firewall program from eTrust. The MS disc has to parts, one that gives you advice about Internet security, turning on your MS firewall (don't) and turning on automatic update, the other part is the updates themselves. These include Service Pack 1, a roll-up of the updates since then, updates for Media Player 9 and DirectX 9. If you have kept up to date you won't find anything new on it.

The Antivirus/Firewall CD from eTrust includes a years subscription so it might be of interest to people who haven't kept their Norton sub up to date (and there are a few). The program gets good reviews in the magazine is available as free, if rather large download. Click here to order the CDs, here read a review of the eTrust AV (and download link) and here for the eTrust website.


(19.03.04) The 100th topic has been posted in the How2 section and appropriatly it's the Software Updates page which sgegreen had to repost because of a coding problem (thankfully he has it backed up). Thanks to sge for all his hard work on the page, which I know having done it myself, is something of a nightmare and like the rest of the How2 section is accessed by net users far beyond the our little digital community.

Pesky NetSky: I've had a few reports of the NetSky virus coming in via the forum and email and indications are that it is someone local that has the infected machine. The problem isn't as wide spread as it was with the blaster or MSPatch but it would be nice to get rid of it if we can. If you're being sent the virus or if you are getting emails accusing you of sending it out please let me know any details that you can.

A couple of people have been disturbed by the emails that arrive telling them that they have sent the virus to someone who they have had no contact with. These are automatically generated by computers when a virus comes in but as most viruses put a false email address in the from line they get sent to completely innocent people, I receive 2 or 3 a week. The only thing they prove is that some with your email address has been sending out infected messages, their only use is that they can help you guess who has the infected machine. Otherwise don't worry about them! Thanks to everyone who has sent in information and questions so far - keep them coming!


(17.03.04) FSMail, the Freeserve service that allows you to access your email online, has had a big upgrade according to Freeserve. As far as i can see the site is a bit more colouful but that's about it, the big difference is that you can't logon via the Freeserve homepage but have to go to the fsmail website to logon (click here). I don't know whether this has anything to do with the slowdown with their email service I don't know but if it's not, it's a big coincidence.

If you had as much difficulty understanding yesterday's broadband announcement as I did then you might find this website helpful, click here for computershopper's view.

The Beagle (or bagle) worm has some new tricks to full us, versions O & N are out and about and causing trouble by encouraging people to open dangerous attachments by devious means. Symantec has heard of version O but not N yet, so don't open any suspicious attachments. Read more here.

Thanks to Jane for sending me this link - you can't go wrong with a dancing hippo!


(16.03.04) Freeserve Email is suffering from a major slowdown due to the volume of traffic and people can expect delays of up to 40 minutes downloading new messages! Freeserve describe this as an "amber" server status situation - red must be complete shut down. Thanks to J for sending in the question via the help page, Freeserve say that the situation will be resolved as soon as possible - which is good news I suppose.

The (UK) Government announced the 17 bidders for the broadband aggregation scheme and this is very good news for people connected to small exchanges I'm told. I say "I'm told" because I don't really understand the scheme, it's supposed to be a way of bringing ADSL broadband to very small exchanges but it looks to me as if the smallest will still be left out. Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick, it wouldn't be the first time, make your own mind up by clicking here.

Sorry for the lack of updates Sunday and Monday, Sunday there was no news because as everyone knows, the Internet closes on Sunday and on Monday I got home late due to a ferry delay.



(13.03.04) It's hard to believe but people are still having their modems and sometimes motherboards (or mobos) replaced under guarantee after they have been damaged by surges down the phoneline. This is fantastically generous on the part of the digital community considering they have spent quite a lot of money distributing free modem surge protectors. All people have to do is pick them up from their nearest study center and plug them in. I'm sure everyone who reads this page has got there's but if they come across a friend who hasn't, please point them in the right direction!

(12.03.04) Remember the "Messenger Alert!" Pop-Up that caused so much anxiety last year? It looked like a genuine message but was actually a advert that led you to a download site. There's a new one about that works in the same way, this time it's titled "System Performance Wizard from M.S." and it informs you that you have a memory leak and to click to run wizard. It's another complete fake and although there has only been one question about it so far I thought it worth mentioning so we don't go thought the same worry as we did last time as more and more people encounter it.

Replying to a question about it on the forum sgegreen came up with this very useful tip. Some pop-ups have a fake "close" button, clicking it can actually install a program without your permission. To close it properly RIGHT click on the Internet Explorer button at the bottom of the screen, then RIGHT click on the pop-up's name and then left click on "Close".


(11.03.04) Argyll College: There are three days left to get your pink forms in! Those are the ones for the courses that digital community members can get 100% discount on but the application has to be in by the 15th. There's a great variety of courses, something for everyone who wants to get more out of their computer - don't miss this oppurtunity! Note to self - must send in form...

Microsoft has released this month's updates and while none of them are marked critical, two relate to programs in common use, Outlook 2000 (the MS Office version of Outlook Express) and Messenger. If you don't use automatic update click on the "Help" menu and then on "Windows Update" to, er, update. This would normally appear on the Software Updates page but sge is away on a course, hopefully he'll be back soon!

The Netsky virus has turned up in the community, one forum member reports having recieved three infected emails in as many days. As they don't have that many email contacts the sender maybe someone in the area, if you get sent one let me know and we might be able to track them down.


(08.03.04) Hard Drives: I've been hearing reports of a lot of hard drives (drive C, the one that holds all the data and programs) are failing. It would be unusual for one to fail after such a short space of time as they usually last for years. However I can't tell if there is an unusual rate of failure compared to the industry average because although I've heard a lot of reports, there are over 2000 computers for them to fail in. So if anyone has any more information I would be grateful if they could send it in and we'll see if there any common factors. Please use the link above to email.

Sober.D, the latest variant of the "successfull" virus has just appeared and is causing some concern. It arrives with the subject line "Microsoft Alert: Please Read!" and a zipped attachment containing the virus that it asks you to open. Norton has a page on the virus (click here) explaining the details and how to remove it but automatic update won't have the definition until the 10th (intelligent updater has it now though). Just remember, Microsoft never send out fixes in this way!


(06.03.04) Argyllcom: Updated with an article on the state of play for broadband activation across the community, complete with a map and you may be surprised how far it has spread in a very space of time. Clickhere.


(04.03.04) Argyllcom: Updated with good news for the elderly and infirm living in remote areas - click here to read it.


(03.03.04) I spoke to Hi-Wide today and my item yesterday on their plans for small communities wasn't quite correct. The Satellite/wireless scheme is aimed at places beyond the range of ADSL, not very small exchanges. That's the bad news. The good news is that as few as 5 households need to participate to create a viable scheme and the monthly cost will only be £20 per subscriber. At present they are using mapping software and will be working with local communities to identify possible locations. On Mull, Calgary springs to mind as a potential candidate.

Once an area is identified a Co-Op will be set up and create an ISP useing software purchased by Hi-Wide from the Co-Operative Society. As stated before they will meet all the first years costs and then pass the running costs onto the new ISP which will have built up a cash reserve from the first years subscriptions. A local person will be trained in the maintanance of the equipment and be in overall charge of their scheme.

I understand that plans for the very small exchanges are still being worked on.

Clara.net: Anyone with an email account with Clara will have noticed that their messages haven't been downloading as they should over the last 36 hours. I called the helpline, which took ages to get through to, indicating how widespread this is, and they told me that their server has been overwhelmed by the amount of emails generated by viruses and spam. They also blamed people who had set their email programs to check for mail once a minute for exacerbating the problem. It must be an extraordinary amount of viruses to affect this very reliable ISP in this way and I wonder if they are under some sort of attack. Whatever the case they tell me that new machines are being installed and things should improve over the next month and in the meantime just to keep trying. If you have sent me an email via my helloworld address this is why I haven't replied!


(02.03.04) Hi-Wide (the HIE not-for-profit broadband company) are working on plans to bring broadband to the very small communities that will never even meet the requirements of exchange activation (30 subscribers) or any other form of ADSL. The plan, that is similar to their original ideas before BT announced the new trigger points, involves local communities taking control of much of the process, specifically the subscription collection. Hi-Wide will meet the up front costs of the satellite equipment and the first years connection hire. The community will be expected to build up a reserve of cash in the first year and to take on the financial burden after year one.

While satelite is not the same as ADSL, it is better for some things like large file transfer, worse for others such as gaming, this great news for small communities that cover large areas. For instance it could help those at the head of Loch Scridain on Mull, where well under a 100 people connect via two exchanges or those round Loch na Keal just to the north who have no exchange within ADSL range. Thanks to Tommy Beavitt of Hi-Wide (click here) for the news, more details and probably corrections, soon.

Symantec has issued an alert regarding the Netsky.D virus due to it's rapid spread. Fortunately they have already added the detection capability to the automatic update, so if yours are dated 01.03.04 you are protected. They have a page with a removal tool should you be unlucky enough to get it here, as ever I advise people who haven't been online for a while to allow their anti-virus program to update before they check their email the next time they go online. Better still, if you haven't been online for a while come here and read the news you've missed before you check your email!

(01.03.04) Seil & Easdale found the final name needed for the Balvicar exchange to pass it's BT trigger point at 1pm today! The news is so fresh that it hasn't made the front page of their brand spanking new website. To be fair the site is still in developement but there is already a lot of good things on it. Click here for the review of it that I wrote yesterday and a link to the website. Well done to everyone on Seil and Easdale for reaching 100 registrations and thanks to Mary for sending in the good news.

Island Blogging: All bloggers will have recieved the newsletter from Mike and Richard which contained a timely warning that some of us would have our blogs deleted if we didn't update them soon, which is fair enough! More exciting was the news that they've added a gallery option and done some editing to the features available. As is the new weekly competition for the best contributions and the promotional roadshow that will get under way in the nearish future. Click here to visit the blog site and see if you would like to get your voice heard on the net.

February

(28.02.04) Seil & Easdale only need one more person to register to hit the trigger point for their exchange at Balvicar! So if you know anyone over there who might not have registered with BT already, get hold of them and get them to sign up! Registering commits you to nothing, it just tells BT that you might be interested in getting broadband at sometime. There must be someone out there with a computer who hasn't done it yet! More on the source of this story tomorrow!

The latest Scottish Islands Network newsletter is out and this time I've posted it on the Argyllcom website in the hope that it will find a wider audience. Click here to read it.

Argyllcom: As well as the SIN newsletter I've edited the article about the proposals for Fionnphort pier or rather the headline which gave the impression that they were planning to build a bridge to Iona, which they're not. Click here to read the article (which needed no editing).

(27.02.04) D'oh! On Wednesday I asked all forum members who had abandoned their old email addresses which they used to register with the forum to change them to the new one. Unfortunately I gave the wrong instructions, here are the correct ones:- Go to the forum, click on the "My Control Panel" link just above the moving text, then click on "Edit Profile" (not preferences!) and scroll down to "Change email address". Sorry about the confusion and thanks to Bearsarus for pointing it out.

AOL: One of the side issues of the AOL saga is how spam filters confuse the already dodgy AOL system. I came across a list of spam filters that are incompatible with AOL email and it might be worth passing on to friends who are having problems with theirs. Click here to read it.

Meanwhile Symantec has a very good article on the present state play in the fight against spam and the effect it is having on businesses, it's quite short for this type of analysis, click here to read it.

(26.02.04) Getting called out to fix a virus is always a bit daunting, you know you'll probably be able to fix the problem but don't know how long it's going to take or if you have the right virus removal tool on with you. Well McAfee has a great all-in-one virus/worm removal tool that's free to download and will scan for and remove more than 35 of the most common recent viruses and worms. It's a free 707kb download that takes about an hour to run on NAIDC PC, perfect for everyone who gets asked to help with PC's. Clickhereto download it from a page complete with instructions. Big thanks to Steve for the tip.

(25.02.04) Calling all forum members! Since so many of you have left freeserve and signed up for new ISPs a lot of your forum email addresses no longer work. In a recent test 1/2 the emails failed to get through and if you have abandoned your old email address recently you won't be getting the very rare messages I send out. You can update it by going to the forum and clicking on "Control Panel" (just above the moving text on the left) and clicking on "preferences". Thanks

(24.02.04) When MESS launched their new website (see below) recently they did so through a scheme that provides free webhosting for community groups etc. The scheme is run by a partnership between ik.com and BT and not only does it provide the hosting but a online web creator that makes it easy for anyone with a little experience of computers to create a website without knowing any of the usual technicalities. Basically you choose from a range of templates, colours and letter faces to create the look of your website and then type in the content. According to Mairi, who created the MESS site, the email support is good and the system easy to use once you get the hang of it. See for yourself here and see Mairi's work by clicking here.

(23.02.04) Argyll College courses: Just a note to say that you need to get your applications in by March the 15th if you want to qualify for the free ones. A lot of people reading this won't be interested in the free modules but will know people who should be, so it would be a good idea if you reminded them! Also I've only just noticed that in addition to the free/greatly reduced MS Office, you can also get a copy of XP Pro upgrade for only £65, a huge reduction on the normal retail price. It's very useful for businesses and people with networked computers apparently.

NAIDC Radio & TV: Not organised by Argyll & Bute but aimed at the island in the community, scottishislandsradio has relaunched itself with the addition of a real time TV function. Now all they need is for us to provide the content! Anyone, schools, charities, events or local campaigns can send in their video and see them up on the net. Once content starts to appear it's sure to get quite a bit of attention as there is very little of this type of thing out there and it's sure to feature highly on the search engines. To visit the website click here and to email for information click here.

Virus writers: Whenever the subject of viruses comes up in conversation I always get asked what their motivation is. The Observer newspaper had a great article on Sunday from a journalist who had spent time with a dedicated writer and you can read it by clicking here. If you would like to read a rather techy version click here (warning, may induce headaches). Incidently the things the virus writer discusses in the Observer article are disturbingly easy to find and download and one wonders why something isn't done about the websites hosting the material.

Memory Prices fell back a little to £51 or so over the weekend but they are still pretty high, follow them daily in the Buyers Club on the forum.

(21.02.04) By now you should have all received the latest prospectus from Argyll College outlining the course available in the new "semester". Apart from the excellence of the courses themselves and the price they are charging (if there's a charge at all), signing up for a course is an opportunity to get a full version of MS Office either for free or at a hugely discounted price. I'll be writing about this on Argyllcom website to explain the differences in licenses but in the meantime have a look at what's available and consider joining the many that have benefited from Argyll College so far.

(20.02.04) Microsoft is releasing its update patches on CD! Following the popular releases of the service packs for Word and XP, they're making a compilation of patches available in the same way. If the past releases is anything to go by they will take a while to arrive and will be missing the most recent additions but will be completely free. I recommend that everyone should order one, you never know if when you will need to reinstall your operating system and having the disc will save you a lot of time downloading from Windows Update! Click here for the MS page, this item first appeared on the Software Updates page, news of which is posted along with a link on the Anorak News page, big thanks to sgegreen for keeping us up to date!

(19.02.04) To celebrate my neighbours across the loch and down a bit success in passing the BT trigger level I've written a piece for Arggghyllcom setting out the state of play regarding local broadband. It's got a map, which took me ages, showing all the communities that have already been listed to get it and the registration levles in those that don't. Click here to read it.

Symantec (who make Norton Anti-virus) are sending out warnings about a virus called Netsky.B which are classifying as level 4 which is very high. Make sure your virus definitions are dated the 18th of febuary or later and you'll be OK.

Note: People keep contacting me via the help page with very cryptic messages, sometimes a single word with an attachment or a question with no reply address. So sillyman8, janeyb, et al, I'd like to help but please give more details!

(18.02.04) The Bunessan exchange, which serves all of the Ross of Mull excepte Pennyghael, has hit its BT trigger level and is only awaiting for BT to announce when the exchange will actually be upgraded before breaking out the champagne! The trigger level (the number of people expressing interest in having broadband) was considered to be very high at 100 for a community of only 500 but thanks to the hard work of Ruth Martin in Bunessan, the Bruntons in Fionnphort and Hilary Young on Iona, amongst others, the target has been more than met. Paper forms in the Post Offices and taken door to door have persuaded 114 households to register interest in broadband, if they all actually got it the area would have the highest take up in the world. Well done to everyone involved and thanks to everyone who emailed me!

Iona get as many tourists as Hawaii, well almost (really) but where the Pacific island has an international airport Iona has a slipway. A local committee has been foremd to address the problem and the issue of a fixed link between Mull and Iona and amongst other things they have created a website with explains the issues and has some great pictures. To read more and for a link to the site click here.

(16.02.04) MESS, Mull's environmental group that specialising in finding sustainable solutions to waste problems has finally got its own website with lots of news and information on its various projects. Click here to read about it on Argyllcom.

Klez.E is an old virus, dating back to mid 2002 and yet it still keeps appearing in the community and still features in the virus top ten lists. I got sent another infected email today, find out why it survives while other viruses have disappeared by clicking here.

(14.02.04) Sources (great word, makes me feel like a real journalist ;¬) in Fionnphort tell me that they think they have reached their trigger point for the exchange. They say that they have found the required signatures and the delay is down to the processing of the paper forms, not as I suggested people from the same household filling them in. HIE count the new registrations once a fortnight and hopefully the new ones will show in the next total, so fingers crossed, another local exchange will be upgraded. I thought Tobermory had done well getting 150 people from a population of about 1500 to sign but there are far fewer connected to the Bunessan exchange, so this must be one of the highest ratios ever recorded!

Memory prices hit a new high this week, leaping from £50 to over £54! I've no idea where they are headed but the guy from Crucial (the memory manufacturers) who told that they were going to rise has eventually been proved right. Although when I first passed the information on the prices promptly fell. Which was embarrassing. Memory prices are tracked in the Buyers Club on the forum and in the mouse over text on the banner at the top of the forum's pages.

(13.02.04) Tobermory has reached its trigger point of 150 and is now only waiting for BT to announce when it will upgrade the exchange for ADSL. This is great achievement for everyone involved as the number required to register interest was relatively considering the towns population. Meanwhile Bunessan/Fionnphort/Iona is doing well, the recent drive raised the number of registrations from 23 to 62, 38 short of the trigger level. This is slightly lower than hoped and probably due to people from the same household filling in the paper form.

There are still areas, particularly on Mull, that appear at all on the broadband radar. The small communities at the head of Loch Scridain and around Mull's west coast are understandable omissions but Craignure/Loch Don, Salen and Dervaig must be deserving of consideration. All of us living in these places should a do as much as they can to raise awareness of broadband and get things moving! Thanks to Paul O'Brien of AIE for the latest registration information.(12.02.04) The visitscotland website is the latest woe to be faced by AOL users who are can only access the website via a very convoluted route. The problem appears to lie with the website itself rather than the ISP for a change and those running it have come in for criticism for not sorting it out sooner and losing a potential 25 million customers. Meanwhile it appears that AOL hasn't sorted out the central problem with Freeserve email and are only doing so on case to case basis, if you don't complain nothing gets done. On top of that they are finding that if they install another anti-spam program it conflicts with the inbuilt AOL one causing yet more headaches. Read more on visitscotland here and keep up with the AOL email saga of the forum by clicking here.

One in five people living in Scotland suffer bouts of "Internet rage" brought on by slow connections amongst other things and find the net more stressfull than noisy neighbours. Read more here and if you are member post your thoughts and votes in our latest poll on the forum here.

The MyDoom/NoVrag virus closes itself down today for reasons best known to its writters but one suspects that it is only because they have something worse up their virtual sleeves. It's been the most successful virus of all time, read details of its rampage and demise here.

(11.02.04) Microsoft Word causes a lot of headaches when it starts misbehaving. It's usually something to do with a corruption to the basic template used to create document, known as normal.dot. The problems can often be solved by deleting or renaming it which forces Word to create a new that works but this can be daunting to the average user like me. Well there's actually a Microsoft tool that will do this and other common repair jobs automatically, download it by clicking here (scroll down the page for the download link). This was found as a result of a thread on the forum here .

An MS Patch has been making the news, partly because Microsoft itself calls it the most important for ages. The first thing to say about it is for most people in the digital community there computers will download it automatically and they shouldn't worry about it, just install it when the little pop up message. If you are one of the more experienced users who install updates manually you should check the Software Updates page for a link to the download, there's a link at the top of the Anorak page. Click here for the BBC version of the story.

(09.02.04) Receiving a carbon copied email and seeing your address alongside dozens of others is annoying and may encourage the spread of viruses as it spread across the Internet to hundreds of people you've never even heard of. Sending an email to multiple addresses but hiding them from the other recipients is easy but so many people don't know how to do it, so I written a guide on how. Now if someone sends you an email like this and you want to explain to them how to blind carbon copy and paste this link into an email and send it to them! (click here to read the guide).

(07.02.04) Ian Gillies, the councillor who instigated the push to create our digital community, has been appointed a director to the Hi-Wide board. It's always good to have a local representative on these things and he brings experience of not only setting up a digital community but also comes from a community that was amongst the first to reach the new BT trigger point. You can read more on this and his views on the importance broadband to the island by clicking here. Thanks to Phil for the tip. 

Even though the world seems to be turning to broadband on mass it's worth remembering that for many if not most, a dial-up connection is all they want or need. So it's good that the speeds are still being sent for the connections campaign map. The new one is an oddly low 38kbps for Tobermory - odd because it must be an un-DACSed line but is for some reason slow. Click here to check the connections map and see how your speed matches up with your neighbours. Thanks (to another) Phil for sending the speed in.  

(06.02.04) Argyll College is planning to provide new courses for the digital community aimed at helping us to make a living online amongst other things and it wants our contributions before finalising their plans. John McLuckie, the college director, has written an article for Argyllcom outlining the current position and all it needs is our input to get things going. Click here for the article and an email link for your suggestions, forum members can have their say by clicking here. Please make the effort to follow this up, it's a great opportunity to show how a digital community can work!

More info on the Ross's DACS boxes; apparently a new main line has been laid from the exchange near Bunessan to Iona and it's unused capacity has been used to provide new lines to households. Unfortunately Bunessan itself is in the opposite direction and DACS boxes are still being installed to provide new connections.

A HUGE leap in broadband registrations has been achieved on the Ross of Mull simply by providing paper registration forms. People fill them in with all the details needed to register online and they are then passed on to Paul O'Brien who does the actual registering online. Forms have been available in the Ferry Shop in Fionnphort and people have taking them door to door on Iona and Bunessan. It seems odd to use a paper form to enable an Internet breakthrough but it works and they might have already got enough people to hit the trigger point. Well done to everyone involved, I'll have to get on to Paul for a copy of the form for my Post Office.

(05.02.04) Hooray - BT are removing DACS boxes on the Ross of Mull! The Ross saw a big increase in population in the eighties and nineties and the Bunessan exchange didn't have the capacity to cope with the demand. Many people found that their Internet connection speed was halved because they were sharing the line because BT had installed a DACS box as cheap alternative to a full line. In fairness to BT this didn't matter to much until the digital communtiy came along and we all had computers.

Now, new Oftel guidelines, which our "Connections Campaign" contributed to, encourage BT to remove the boxes wherever possible. Despite the doubts of some (me) that this would ever happen, it appears that engineers are coming down whenever they don't have more urgent work to do. I'm told that they have even attended a conference where they were told that "the DACS is a thing of the past". Thanks to forum member the mackeral for the info from Fionnphort, any other reports of boxes being removed gratefully received!

(04.02.04) The HIE/Hi-Wide Broadband Roadshow is in Tobermory tonight, in fact its already started! Visitors will be able to learn of the benefits of the technology and the affect it could have on their lives and the wider community. Tobermory has succeeded in getting 123 people to register their interest in broadband, only 27 more people are needed to get the exchange upgraded, so if you can get down to McGochan’s Loft and lend your support! My apologies for not publicising this earlier, problems with the website made it impossible over the weekend but I should have let you all know over the weekend.

Memory Prices have hit an all time high for the time I've been tracking them, reaching £50 for a 256mb strip (inc. VAT & del.). If you are still struggling along on the original 128mb you will still find it a worthwhile investment however. 

Correction: Yesterday I said one of Argyll College's students had been named "Learn Direct Student of the Year", when actually they had been designated a "Champion learner", which still sounds pretty impressive to me but isn't quite the same thing. Thanks to Paul for putting me right, you can read more on the achievement here. I've also updated the story on the Argyllcom website (click here) with new links.

(03.02.04) Argyll College is celebrating the first year of providing basic computing courses for our little digital community. Despite a tight time schedule and having to adapt one operating system to imitate another they seem to have done rather well. One of their students even won "Learn Direct Student of the Year", which can't be bad and hundreds of others have benefited from their classes. Click here to read more.

Microsoft has fixed the flaw in Internet Explorer that led to all those scam emails that pretended to come from a bank, credit card or online retailer and asked you to confirm your details. The scam email would have a link that appeared genuine but actually took you to a fake website. The fix stops the fraudster making the link look like something it isn't. You will still have to pay attention to where the link is really taking you but it will be evident if you do. Most "new" computer users will still have the computer set up to download Microsoft updates automatically and as long as they are online long enough to download the fairly large 2.8mb download they will be OK but if you do them manually do so today. These updates are usually restricted to the Anorak page but this one is very important so it's in the main news, read a further explanation by clicking here.

January

(01.02.04) Argyllcom has a been updated with a Mull news item covering the latest developments in the Kilfinichen Bay story (soon to become "saga"), click here to visit it.

The latest Scottish Islands Newsletter is out as jam packed with news and views as ever, to read the version on the forum (for your sins) click here.

The MyDoom/Novrag virus has been the fastest spreading ever and yet it doesn't have any unique programming ideas, rather it spread is down to a few clever tweaks. FInd out what they are by clicking here (scroll down to the 6th post in the thread).

(30.01.04) "How do I know if I've been sent a virus?" is something I've been asked three times this week and it's surpisingly hard to answer but I've had a go anyway. Click here for a rough guide to what viruses do, how to tell if you've been sent one and what to do if you think you have.

(29.01.04) Broadband: I’ve created a new page for useful links regarding broadband, these include how to register but most importantly who your “broadband champion” is. They are the people charged with co-ordinating efforts in local areas. There are still one or two places that don’t have a champion yet and Hi-Wide would like to hear from anyone interested becoming one Click here for the new page.

AOL: Nothing new locally, except I’m having difficulty sending to some AOL accounts but there is a possible explanation for the problems. Info world reports that the giant ISP is testing a new anti-spam program across all its 33 million customers and that they had to stop the previous test because of complaints from other ISPs. Click here for more.

(28.01.04) The Novrag (aka MyDoom) worm is proving to be the fastest spreading ever, that's the bad news, the good news is that Symantec has developed a removal tool which will save us a lot of work getting rid of it. I've only received 5 infected emails today plus some claiming that I've been sending it out, the result of the way that the worm "spoofs" the senders address. Read more on its spread by clicking here and get the removal tool here.

Meanwhile a varient of the original Novrag has been detected but it appears to only infect computers already compromised by the original. The new one uses the infected computer to remotely attack websites. Read more here. Plus a new vulnerability has been found in Internet Explorer that allows the true nature of downloadable files to be disguised, fortunately simply saving the spoof file to disc rather than opening it directly reveals its true nature. Read more here.

(27.01.04) Virus Alert! I've received three copies of the Novarg mass mailing worm this morning, which is a lot as it was only discovered yesterday. It arrives as an zipped attachment which when opened establishes a backdoor in the computer to access the Internet.

Norton automatic update already has the definition for this but there is no removal tool available yet, so make sure that your definitions are dated the 26th before opening similar attachments. Symantec has details on the virus here, a guide to Norton can be found by clicking here. 

Since posting this item at midday I've recieved a further 11 infected emails, so this virus is in the community and is spreading fast. The BBC has added an item to their website (click here) calling it "MyDoom" and predicting it will be the biggest virus for months.

(24.01.04) AOL update; the good news is that AOL got in touch with FickleJade, sorted out the problems and the emails are now flowing again. The bad news is that the problem isn't restricted to Freeserve but is affecting lineone users too. Click here for all the latest details.

(23.01.04) AOL: You may recall the item below about AOL stopping people sending emails from some Freeserve addresses, it was a result of the peculier way that the anti-spam program works on their server. This was first reported by forum member FickleJade and subsequently proved to affect several people in the community. FickleJade has been in contact with someone quite high up in AOL Europe and they report that the issue has been known for about two months, affects several ranges of Freeserve IP addresses and that so far they have unable to resolve it.

FickleJade has been reporting the progress of this saga on the forum and you can follow it in detail by clicking here, the story hasn't appeared anywhere else in the Internet news and is something of an exclusive. Big thanks to FickleJade for keeping us informed.

Norton Antivirus: First of all yesterday's virus is called "Bagle" not "Beagle", thanks to all those that emailed to point out the error. Secondly Symatec, makers of Norton, are warning that if you don't restart your computer immedietly after downloading new version of the updater it will be disabled. Click here for more details.

(22.01.04) Lismore has been told that the exchange will not be activated for broadband before the April but will be as soon as possible in the new financial year. Which is slightly later than hoped but still good news.

A new virus, the beagle worm, is spreading fast but has been included in Norton virus definitions since the 18th of January and the Symantec website already has a removal tool. Although spreading fast it only works until the 28th so is only going to affect very unlucky people who haven't updated their subscriptions. If you know anyone who fits this description this webpage will help.

By the way, since changing the details that Norton uses to look for updates my definitions have been updating automatically. If you have changed ISP you should adjust yours too and also use "Live Update" to downloader the latest updater.

(21.01.04) Broadband week: Colonsay is to get ADSL through the "exchange activate" route which will be funded initially by Hi-Wide. This will give up to 30 people access to ADSL broadband with the initial set up costs met by Hi-Wide and the users charged a monthly subscription.

This is great news for Colonsay and an example of how Hi-Wide has adapted swiftly to changing circumstances, it's not so long ago that I was reporting on their plans for a wireless network on the island.

The Scottish Executive is looking into the possibility of inviting tenders for the upgrading of the 406 exchanges nationwide that do not have trigger levels and may even include those exchanges that would take over a year to reach their existing trigger levels. The downside to this is that small exchanges might not be upgraded for sometime, the upside is that they will be upgraded one day, the SE atticiapate by the end of 2005. As someone who is connected to a very small but beautifully formed exchange, this is great news. Thanks to my very helpful friends for both the above stories.

(20.01.04) Broadband week: HIE is to launch new a nationwide campaign in mid-February called "Broadband for Scotland" to encourage registrations and to raise awareness of the technology and its potential. The campaign will encompass newspapers and TV and all the local broadband champions will be provided with promotional materials to distribute locally.

The last campaign didn't use the central Scotland TV region so the new campaign should have a lot more impact. We didn't do badly last time getting people register, this time round we should do even better.

An email that came in via the help page has highlighted a problem with the drivers for some CD-RWs on computers that have the Intel Application Accelerator installed. Fortunately it's fairly easy to get round but it could affect quite a few people given the popularity of both IAA and the number of CD-RWs that have installed recently. Click here to read more.

(19. 01.04) Broadband Week Due to problems with server I couldn't update over the weekend so I'm going to carry the broadband promotion through the week. 

The change in the way exchanges or communities are enabled for broadband, either for wireless or ADSL has had a dramatic affect on the significance of number of people registering with HIE for broadband (click HERE to register). The revamped page on the HIE website demonstrates this nicely (click here) with new columns for the exchanges that have been given trigger points by BT and the percentage reached.

These percentages starkly show the work we need to do to get enough people registering to reach the trigger point. As mentioned below, some communities are doing really well, with up to 70% of households signing up but there are some notable exceptions. Bunessan & Fionnphort are only at 28% (but there are moves to start a new campaign), while Salen and Craignure are both stuck on 23. These are interesting areas because they all have lot of businesses and self employed workers, groups which significant financial incentives to invest in the technology.

The grants for broadband and organisations like Hi-Wide aren't going to last forever - we must act now and take advantage of the current climate. Otherwise we are going to fall behind the rest of the nation.

Yesterday was "Personal Firewall Day", fortunately the website is still available today! If you have ever wondered what it really does and would like an explanation in plain English click here. There is also information on viruses and Internet security in general. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(16.01.04) Broadband Weekend: This weekend will be dedicated to promoting local broadband, things moving very quickly and it's time for another push to get our friends and neighbours to register with BT (see the top of the Broadband news page for the link).

This is because despite the fears of the sceptical, me for one, that the trigger levels (the number of registrations at which BT installs broadband in an exchange)  were unrealistically high some exchanges are already very close to the trigger level.

In the previous round of Broadband registration campaigns Tobermory, for instance, had about 44 registrations. The trigger level has been set at 150 and it has already reached 105, 70% of the target. Meanwhile Scarinish has leapt from 18 to 47 and outside of the community, Port Ellen is up to 87, the highest percentage in the HIE (Highlands & Islands Enterprise) area.

There are 29 exchanges in the HIE area with trigger levels set and HIE will help local campaigns to get the registration levels up to the required level. To this end they have appointed "broadband champions" for each area/exchange, who will be supplied with promotion materials to help the cause. A round of applause is due to HIE, AIE and the local champions for their efforts so far, I don't think any of the enabled exchanges, UK wide, have achieved this number of registrations.

More on this tomorrow and a details on who your local champion is as soon as I have a complete list. Thanks to Paul O'Brien of AIE for the information.

(15.01.04) Norton: People manually downloading Norton Antivirus will have noticed a 4mb addition to the usual list marked LiveReg. LiveReg is the mechanism within the Norton program that checks for and then downloads the updates as they become available. Symantec, the program makers, had discovered that in rare circumstances LiveReg could be exploited by hackers to hi-jack a computer. Read more here, thanks to forum members baldeagle and sgegreen for spotting and resolving the issue.

On a couple of computers I've seen Noton has "hung" while refreshing the definition date and this has only been cured by running live update and downloading the new LiveReg module. I don't know if this is a common phenomena though.

Meanwhile Symantec has identified a worm that can infect computers via MSN Messenger, as 99% of us use Windows Messenger this isn't of much concern. If you do use it you might want to read this though.

(13.01.04) Good news for people with old computers, Microsoft has changed its mind about ending support for Windows '98 and ME and will continue to provide it until until June 30th 2006. It still intends to hold the operating systems to the principle of limited support that XP has though and eventually users will be own their own. Read more here.

(12.01.04) James Westland, Mull's favourite PC repair man, has sent in a great tip for checking your emails online, particularly useful for people with multiple email addresses. Click here to visit mail2web, a site so simple that it needs no explaination, it's as simple as the Google mainpage. It is a little slow in checking but it's quicker than visiting each website in turn and checking them individually (if you see what I mean).

(10.01.04) Email: A few people have been contacting me with difficulties getting their emails. There are a variety of reasons for this, a change of ISP, slow connection or, most popular, a large email attachment. Some of them require things to be done and some just go away, if there is a problem at the server for instance.

All of them can be got around if you can connect to the Internet by checking your email online. This is particularly useful if you have a slow connection or someone has sent you an email with a large attachment (usually pictures that you have no interest in). For instance Freeserve (click here) has a link in the top right of the page marked email while others have call them "check email online" or something. Loggin, go to your inbox and see access the email without having to download it useing Outlook Express. If someone has sent a large attachment delete the email online and next time you use Outlook Express it should work!

(09.01.04) Spam; the bane of our lives! There are all sorts of spam filters around, I use the one that comes with Norton Internet Security 2003 and it catches about 50% of it, which means a lot is still getting through. Pat of sitemaker1 (click here) has recommended the filter available to users of Office which has its own email program confusingly called Outlook rather than Outlook Express. Sitemaker1 has been online for a long time and must attract a lot of spam but the filter has caught all but one or two a day, quiet a result! Click here for instructions on how two switch on the filter.

Oops - Yesterday's printer item had the wrong link, click here for the forum topic on printers which includes a further link to the reviews. 

(08.01.04) Cameras are a very popular purchase in the January sales but beware, some are not the bargain they appear. The thing that most people look for when choosing a camera is the maximum resolution and "bargains" play on this by stating the interpolated maximum rather than actual number of pixels the camera is actually detecting. Interpolation (never can say that word) is a process for expanding an image by guessing what colour should appear next to a known pixel. This can produce maximum resolutions of up 450% of the original size and make a pretty poor camera look good. Interpolation is also used in good cameras too but they won't emphasize it in the same way.

Before buying a camera I suggest you check it out on dpreview (click here) and stevesdigicams (click here) which have reviews, price guides and customer comments on nearly every reputable model, the second one is probably best for sub 2mp models. Thanks to (another) Steve for the links.

Printers are another top buy because once you've got the camera you want something decent to print out the pictures out on. PC World has just done one their labs test on 15 of the latest low (£60) to medium (£130) priced models, click here to read the results. Sorry about the bad link yesterday which led to a facsinating story about Linux, so good in fact that I've put it on the Anorak page.

Big thanks to Pat of Sitemaker (click here) for pointing out that their was an error in the email address at the top of this page, it might explain the slowdown in emails! it's fixed, sorry to anyone who was frustrated by it!

(07.01.04) Passwords: One day late but here it is; Is your computer really password protected? We've all done this if we're responsible, created an admin account, given it a password and assumed that no one could access files, change the settings, install programs etc, etc without our permission. How wrong we were! A simple "trick" will give anyone the free run of our computers and as far as I can tell the only solution is the setting of a boot password. This would mean a password is demanded everytime the computer is started or restarted.

This is real worry and I'm not going to exacerbate it by posting the trick, a simpler solution would be to check what people are doing with your computer on a regular basis. Which we should all do anyway!

AOL: Another member has posted their woes with the "popular" ISP on the forum, really it's amazing that they can behave like this and continue trading! I've not seen anything about this in the IT press - a case of the power of advertising? Read the thread here.

(05.01.04) Warnings: Most people are familier with the dialer scam, up until know they have been the preserve of the porn site, just click to install a piece of software and you can access the site(s). What really happens is that you allow your internet connection to be reconfigured so it dials a premium number. This has cost some people a small fortune.

Now the scam seems to have spread to MP3 (music) download sites, the promise is exactly the same and so is the software. Music downloading is very popular with teenagers so make sure any useing your computers understand the problem.

More worryingly for those who surf widely, there is also a hole in Internet Explorer which may be still be leaking even though MS has patched it. It allows a website to put a trojan (a program that is disguised as something else) on its webpages that reconfigures modems to dial a different number. This will only be found on "dodgy" sites but it's hard to tell what new website is dodgy, so be careful. Read more here.

Tomorrow:- Password protected computers?

(03.01.04) Arghyllcom: I've rewritten the item on exchange activation (see below) and posted it on Arghyllcom - this version comes complete with a price breakdown. Click here to read it. Thanks to Steve for the info and links.

(02.01.04) Exchange Activation: As you will recall there was much excitement about BT announcements regarding trigger points for exchanges and the lowering of prices for exchange activation. The new triggers included many local exchanges that had been selected by HIE for wireless broadband, while the drop in exchange activation seemed to bring the prospect of ADSL closer.

However, BT have now released their new price structure for exchange activation and rather than the big drop from £45 to £25 thousand to get 30 people ADSL, the drop is actually only 10%! This is because although the equipment now only costs £25K, each of the 30 subscribers will have to fork out £13 pm for three years, which all adds up to about £40 000.

It looks to me that BT has seen the rise of the various local companies raising money for wireless broadband and realised that they can't get money from enterprise companies like HIE if there is a commercial alternative. If they had dropped the price to £25 000 as originally announced their move would have been good news, as things are now it's not. More on this here.

Happy New Year everyone and all the best for 2004! Thanks for all the emails messages, they're much appreciated. Most people seem to have had a quite new year due to the weather and in some cases power cuts although they still went ahead with their firework display in Pennyghael. They're made of tough stuff over there!

In case you didn't have a quite night and are now feeling the consequences you might find hangover.com useful ( clickhere ) ( I assume that if you have one that you are old and dumb enough to enjoy the site). If it was your Christmas outgoings rather than your new year intake that are causing your headache you might find the moneysavingexpert website help, it's full of very useful tips and info, click here.