New scam We're back Gmail Windows 7 Lismore broadband Friday Fun More on .... Fix it Friday Fun Pakistan Friday fun Net neutrality Scam calls Friday Fun Google image search Friday Fun Zeus Friday Fun Firefox Phone scam Friday Fun Tea XP SP2 Hoax email More Friday Fun Friday fun Reset Broadband explanation of...BT email Friday Fun Firefox Budget Friday Fun Free game EA News Friday Fun EA News MS Updates Friday Fun Dr Who, DuckDuckGo Friday Fun WWII Friday Fun Chip risk Real Streaming Ash Friday Fun Facebook .

(07.09.10) A new variant on the security alert scam has appeared. Previous incarnations impersonated warnings by Microsoft Security Essentials, Norton and other antivirus/firewall programs, this one impersonates the warnings generated by Firefox or Internet Explorer when a user lands on a page known to carry malware.

Which is very clever, the website that carries the malware displays it's own warning splash screen and the only difference between it and the real warnings (apart from spelling mistakes) is that clicking on the escape buttons take you to a page that offers to check your computer for threats which once found require a paid for update to solve. The threats are bogus but the bill is real.

I've already heard of people being caught out by this and my advice is to close the tab or webpage rather than clicking on any button on the splash screen. Read more, with screenshots, here. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(06.09.10) We're back after a brief hiatus caused entirely by my own incompetence, I'd forgotten to update the hosting fee payment details when a new card was issued and of course it happened at the end of the week with the billing department closing for the weekend, so it couldn't be sorted out until this morning. Sorry, I must try harder :¬( Thanks to everyone who got in touch about it being down, it was nice to be missed!

Gmail users will have noticed a priority inbox option appearing at the top of their inboxes, I suggest they turn it on because it takes no setting up and puts the most important messages at the top of the page, very useful if you get a lot of newsletters, alerts etc, like I do. I don't know how it ranks the messages, perhaps by those replied to but I haven't found it necessary to add anyone to the list. Another nice thing is that it doesn't load automatically, you have to click a button to sort the mail, so you don't miss anything. Read more here. 

(01.09.10) I've added a Windows 7 section to the forum in the vague hope that it will inspire someone to post a question. W7 is very popular and anyone who's bought a computer in the last year will have it, so lets hope it inspires some posts. Click here.

(31.08.10) Great news for Lismore! - It looks like the exchange upgrade has finally started, just shy of one year after it was scheduled. A new, taller, mast has been erected and now they're waiting for the new equipment to be installed in the building. Lismore, like all EA exchanges, only has 30 broadband lines available and like many other EA exchanges, now has a queue of people waiting for broadband. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(27.08.10) Friday Fun: Let's start with something big, impressive and pretty clever, the Sistine Chapel. This takes a while to load, even on a 512k connection but once it does it's as if you're standing in the middle on the chapel, able to turn round, look up, down and zoom in on the detail. Click here.

Kulula Airlines, a low budget carrier from South Africa, hasn't achieved quite the same level of artistry with it livery but it is quite funny. Click here.

The Paranormal Database is just that, a paranormal database with a calendar of repeating events, reports categorised in all sorts of ways all leavened with a dash of humour. Click here.

DIY Deity on the other hand is intriguing rather than amusing. It's a sort of quiz on a philosophical website that asks you to create your idea of a deity and then tests it for consistency and explains the reasoning behind it's conclusions. Click on the "Are you smarter than a goat" and you'll go to a lot more moral and philosophical questions, some of which really make you think. Click here.

Two games this week, one that requires commitment, the other, just a few minutes. Submachine: 32 chambers is another installment in the long running series and is just as infuriating as all the others. I've never completed one without recourse to a walkthrough. Thankfully one is available, click here. Waywords on the other hand is pretty straight forward, you just have to make words on a grid from the available letters, the twist is you don't get all the letters at once, so you have to place what you have in what you think is the most likely to produce a word in the future. Click here. 

(25.08.10) Update to the Microsoft Update problem story posted below: To clarify, the problem effects systems, mostly those with less than 1Gb of memory, that have enabled Microsoft Updates, If you have installed components of Microsoft Office, (Word, Excel etc), Silverlight amongst other things, you probably have. The easiest way to check is to open Internet Explorer, click on tools and then "Windows Updates." If the page you are taken to has Microsoft Updates at the top, you've enabled them.

To solve the problem, on the Microsoft Updates webpage, click on "Change settings" on the left and at the bottom the main page click on "Disable Microsoft Updates". This won't disable Windows Updates and the basic security updates needed to keep your computer running safely but it will stop the process that's causing the problem.

The problem appears to have been caused (you might want to skip this bit)  by a recent MU update that checked whether updates were compatible with each other. That meant that there were potentially a lot checks going on every time a new update was downloaded, to make things worse some updates are dependent with other updates and to make things even worse, sometimes update A is dependent on update B which depends on update C which in turn depends on update A, which creates the kind of feed back loop normally only seen in Star Trek. Anyway, to sum up, it's all a big terrible mess.

Another big thanks to sgegreen for explaining this in term I think I understand.

(23.08.10) This has been edited since first posting Has your computer been running unusually slowly recently? If so we might have a solution. Symptoms include the system seeming to take a very long time to properly start, programs taking ages to get going and once they do "hanging" as they perform tasks. If you delve into the task manager by pressing Ctrl, Alt and Del at the same time, click on the "Processes" tab, then at the top of the "Mem Usage" column and you see svchost.exe and WUAUCLT.EXE featured prominently, the culprit is Windows Updates.

The problem particularly effects XP computers with less than 1Gb of memory, so if you're using one of the ones the council gave away it could be worth thinking about and the cause is the system that automatically downloads updates, Microsoft (not Windows) Updates. Over time the components become corrupt so it starts using up more and more resources and denying them to programs.

If your computer is behaving like this I recommend downloading the FixIt released by Microsoft here. Once downloaded, run it, which takes a while and choose the "aggressive" option even though it's flagged as not recommended because the normal application doesn't seem to work as well (or you could try the recommended option and if it doesn't work, run it again). Once the computer restarts you should see a real difference.

On the computer I saw svchost.exe was using up 168, 000k of memory, after applying the Fixit it dropped to 10,000k or so and things started running a lot more smoothly. A big thanks to sgegreen for letting me know about this!

(20.08.10) Friday Fun: Shuffler is another free source of streaming music but unlike things like Spotify, Deezer and the like, it isn't doesn't actually broadcast music, rather it's an aggregation of lots of blogs. Click on one it's many genres, which range from the usual blues, jazz, disco and the like to the esoteric "noise", "shoe gazing" and even, "mistagged" artist and you're taken to a blog with the Shuffler player at the top and the blogs music playing. When the song or album ends, another blog in the same genre opens. Click here to explore.

If you don't fancy that much choice try this, Justin Beiber's "U Smile" slowed down to one eighth of it's original speed turning it into a haunting Brian Eno track, click here.

 A couple of YouTube videos next, starting with a surprising guest on classic US panel game, "What's my line?" Slightly more up to date is this headcam video of cyclist going down some sort of course and is what they mean by extreme sports, really extreme sports. Click here.

Here's the solution to that massive new chain of electricity pylons they're planning to built in Scotland.

Futoshiki is a Sudoku style game but played in one square as opposed to nine but the square gets bigger each round. It could be a section in a brain training program, click here to play.

(18.08.10) 20% of Pakistan is currently underwater and aid workers estimate they are getting less than half the supplies they need and that's just to the areas they've managed to reach. If you have been touched by the images on television and wish to help the Disasters Emergency Committee is the easiest way to do so. An umbrella group for the UK's major charities it collects the money and then distributes to the charities where ever they are. Click here for details. 

(13.08.10) Friday Fun: Let's start with something a little high brow because, trust me, things are going to go downhill fast. Five Books has a very simple concept, ask experts in a subject recommend five books you should read, click here. ManyBooks is the opposite, it's just a vast repository of free digital books. I've linked here to the Conan Doyle page because of the popularity of the new TV series but there's a lot more to explore. If that isn't enough, here's a link to 100 useful links for ebook readers, including lots more archives, ebook readers and much more. 

Here's a picture of some dogs on a motorcycle, possibly the best picture of dogs on a motorcycle ever.

On the other hand Disney's poster for the new Yogi Bear movie is somewhat unfortunate (this is real).

"Words" from RadioLab is a short video about how we think and feel, just watch it and let the word that springs to mind, spring to mind. Click here.

For the first time JayIsGames has posted one of my recommendations. The trouble is Satanorium isn't that good, it's atmospheric and creepy but a bit frustrating, I should have played it right to end before suggesting it really. It's still worth a look though, to do so, click here. Fog Fall 3 in contrast is excellent. The third installment of a post-apocalypse saga, it's more interactive fiction than game and doesn't take that long to play through. Click here.

(11.08.10) Net neutrality sounds like one of those geeky tech terms that's not of much interest to anyone but, well. geeks. In fact it refers to one of the fundamental principles of the Internet and should be of interest to everyone. Basically it means that all content, be it your blog or BBC iPlayer content, travels across the net at the same speed, it means that everyone has a fair crack of the whip and it isn't possible for big players to dominate merely by slowing down content they don't favour or doesn't demand a premium payment.

A deal between two of the biggest players, Google and Verizon ( a vast US telecom) threatens the principle of net neutrality and if the US regulator, the FCC, doesn't stand up to them and their immense political clout, then content from the US could be running at varying speeds depending on whether it's been paid for or not. Where the US goes, the UK tends to follow, especially in these economically straightened times with a government that is looking at fresh sources of income. So it might sound esoteric but the net neutrality story is worth following. The Huffington Post has good coverage, click here for a summary article. 

(10.08.10) Phone calls purporting to come from Microsoft and informing you that your Internet service provider has informed them that your computer is infected with a virus have started up again. The scam was closed down after the Indian company hosting the call centre was informed of the problem but unsurprisingly they've found a new home.

The calls follow a basic pattern, the intro; "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer," followed by them asking you to look at the event viewer. The event viewer records every error that occurs while the computer goes about it's business and there are always lots of errors, no matter how well the computer is running but to someone to unfamiliar with it, it will look worrying. Having been scared, the victim is directed to a website where they are charged £185 for a subscription to service that will protect them.

The reader who reported this had received several calls of this nature and, even though they'd always put the phone down, was worried by them. Don't be, it's a scam and if you receive one tell them that you're reporting the call to the police, hopefully that will stop them calling again. The place you should report the call is Consumer Direct on 08454 04 05 06 (website here). Read more on this scam here.

(06.08.10) Friday Fun: Axe Cop is an online comic that's more intriguing than it sounds. Illustrated by a 29 year old but written by his 5 year old brother, it can't exactly be called a pastiche or homage but it is a lot of fun. I particularly liked the "Ask Axe Cop" episodes. Click here.

Boris Johnstone was so excited when he announced the new Routemaster, imagine how he would have felt if London's new buses were going to look like this?

Britain's largest wasps' nest has been found in a pub loft, click here a photo that doesn't really do it justice.

What happens if you put a brick in a washing machine? This.

Glenn Beck, the crazy persons' crazy person, has started his own university. It kicks off with three courses, Hope 101, Faith 101 and Charity 101, available online on Wednesday nights. Click here to enroll.

This weeks game is Deep Diver, a submarine exploration game, click here to get wet.

(03.08.10) Google has made the new style image search permenant and some people, including me don't like it. It loads the first page very quickly and sometimes the next couple but then it seems to freeze. If you scroll down you'll see that the old "next page" link has been done away with and instead a total of 21 pages of image place holders have loaded and it seems to be the filling in of the place holders that is taking the time. Sometimes groups of them will appear scattered around but it's awfully slow. Right at the bottom is a link to use the old version but there's an even simpler way of getting back to old version if you're a Firefox user, find out how here.

(30.07.10) Friday Fun: Crop circles started as a mysterious phenomena that no one could explain. Well that's not quite true, lots of people had explanations but no one knew for sure. Then to men came forward and admitted creating the first examples but by then things had taken on a life of their own and circles were popping up all the time and with ever more sophisticated designs. Believe it or not, there are still people who believe that they're created by aliens or some other strange force. Perhaps this website dedicated to their creation will persuade them otherwise.

It's weird what catches the imagination of the Internet and little did Allen Rout think that simple picture of his baby son smiling would, ten years later, be Japanese meme and be resent millions of times. Click here for a cute baby.

Gallery of satellite photos of Earth from NASA here.

This is completely pointless, just type some text in, click "Flip" and it will turn the text upside down. Ideal for annoying Australians and other silly jokes when you paste it into message boxes. Click here.

Today's game is simple and very elegant sound toy. Click somewhere in the blank space to make a circle appear, click somewhere else to make another. When the circles collide a note will sound and the circles will contract again. Try clicking once in the centre, once in the corner and then lots of times in the middle. Click here.

(28.07.10) A vulnerability in the way XP handles shortcuts (the things all over your desktop) which was highlighted last week on the Software Updates page, is already being exploited by criminals using the Zeus toolkit. The Zeus toolkit is an off-the-peg system that's primarily used to steal bank and login details, so if it's been used once more exploits will appear soon.

The immediate threat spreads via email posing as security alerts from Microsoft and containing an infected ZIP attachment, so be careful what you open. Microsoft has issued a FixIt which disables some shortcut properties and turns them all into the same plain white icon, which makes life a bit a bit more difficult but might be the best choice if your computer is used by several people. Find the link to the FixIt here and read more about it here.

(23.07.10) Friday Fun: Let's start with something from...me! The Huffington Post has got one of it's photoshop contests going, this time the topic is BP's own photoshopping of one of it's own publicity photos. They asked readers if they could do better, here's my effort. (At time of writing it's the second most popular - hooray for me)

I don't usually post things with swearing but here are a couple of exceptions because I really liked them. The first is a rant in defence of the much maligned Comic Sans font, clear here and the second is a series of honest game reviews, ZeroPunctuation click here.

To make up for the swearing here is a far more uplifting site, one of the best things I've ever found I think. It's simply a page of links to the month's best articles. Called "Give me something to read" it has great articles from all over the net and there really is lots worth reading. Click here. 

Bubble Town is a straight forward bubble burster style game sponsored by Herbal Essences shampoo, a bit cutesy but compulsive. Click here.

(21.07.10) Firefox 3.5.7 is available (you'll probably get it automatically) and it has a couple of interesting new features. The first is crash protection that means that if something on a webpage causes a freeze, it only effects the tab that it's on and you only have to close or reload it to solve the problem rather than everything coming to a grinding halt. The second is a bit more esoteric but could make a big difference; it's called TraceMonkey JavaScript and it promises to run Java based web content much faster than previous versions. Read more here.

(19.07.10) A couple of weeks ago a ran an item about a Mull reader receiving a phone call purporting to come from Microsoft and offering to help with the "virtual memory low" problem. Thankfully they just put the phone and I haven't heard of any other people in the community getting the calls. Today the Guardian reports a similar scam with the call opening with "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer." and it goes onto ask the user to look at the computer's Event Viewer.

Most people are unfamiliar with the Event Viewer (it's in the Control Panel > Admin Tools if you're curious) and are worried when they see how many errors it reports even though that's perfectly normal. The caller takes advantage of the worry caused and takes the user through an elaborate ends up with them paying for help they don't need, the handing over payment details and in some cases the remote access of the system.

Replies to the article and some other online conversations I've had bring up several variations on the theme but all claim to come from Microsoft and offer to fix a non-existant problem. Microsoft never makes unsolicited calls and these calls have actually been coming from India via a call centre that uses the Internet to cut the cost of calls and hide their origin. It's now been closed down but the company still exists and will no doubt find a new centre to work from, so it's well worth warning people to watch out for rogue calls. Read more here. 

(16.07.10) Friday Fun: What's the first thing in Friday Fun? The first thing in Friday Fun is Ferris Bueller's Fight Club and what's the first rule of Ferris Beuller's Fight Club? There is no such thing as Ferris Beuller's Fight Club - that's what. Except there is. It's a classic Internet meme, as far as I can tell the first person to suggest that the character that gave their name to Ferris Beuller's day off was just a figment of one of the other characters imagine first appeared in November of '08 here, then it popped up on metatalk here and it's this version that has spread to the point where there's a YouTube video on the Huffington Post here. and it's quoted everywhere, including here. This will mean nothing to people who haven't seen Ferris Beuller's Day Off or Fight Club, sorry about that.

Things you didn't know #20342 - Ship trails: Just like 'planes, ships leave cloud trails in their wake, the Daily Telegraph explains how with a nice big picture here.

I like this website by artist Roland Olbeter.

Eskil Ronningsbakken is incredible, he balances over vast drops seemingly without a care in the world and today almost every paper has a feature on him doing his stuff in Norway. What none of them seem to have noticed is that in one of the pictures, him balancing on top of a pile of chairs sitting on a rock lodged at the top of deep rock crevice, is that someone is holding the bottom chair. He's well camouflaged but definitely there. It seems churlish to point it out really, it's still a very dangerous stunt and perhaps it just goes to prove that Eskil is very brave but he's not stupid. Click here. Credit to Bonus for spotting this.

Two toys for you this week. The first is a never ending piece of art that you just keep zooming into called Zoom Quilt and the second is a music creation thing made by human beat box and musicion Paul Marblet and his friends. The choices are a little limited but the outcomes are nice. Click here.

(14.07.10) Radio 4's consumer programme You and Yours ran an item on a fake BBC website being used to promote a slimming tea called Cho Yung. The very convincing fake site has been taken down but the product continues to be promoted and people continue to sign up for what is the heart of matter (I was going to say scam but apparently it's legal), a two week trial. Signing up for a two week trial requires you two part with your credit card details and if you fail to cancel in time, as specified in the T&Cs, you will be charged quite a lot of money until you do.

30000 people a day visit the site and people have been complaining about it for some time but not successfully. Basically tea won't make you slim and people who tell you it does are probably not to be trusted. Read and hear more on R4 here (programme segment is chapter one), here for a typical complaint from last year and here for a blog promoting the tea. 

(12.07.10) Support for users of XP Service Pack 2 ends tomorrow. Their computers will no longer recieve updates for the operating system or Internet Explorer. 15% of Windows computers are still running SP2 and if you know any of them tell them to update to service pack 3 now. Click Start then right click on "My Computer" and then left click on "Properties", the General tab will show which service pack is installed. If it's SP2 download SP3 here.

(09.07.10) A variation of the Olympic Torch hoax email is doing the rounds, this time warns of an attachment called "Black in the Whitehouse" but then morphs into the old message (really they're hardly trying these days). It even claims to be listed as genuine by Snopes. Except it's not, click here for what Snopes actually thinks. Thanks to Jan for the tip.

Friday Fun: I came across this Big Lebowski quote generator today while searching for something else. I'm not a huge fan but I know a lot of people are, so here it is.

The Guardian has lovely slideshow of pictures from an expedition to the depths of the North Atlantic Ridge. They've developed new tools so they can capture more delicate creatures and the resulting images are wonderful. Click here. 

This weeks viral video is of a guy getting a tad over emotional at the appearance of a double rainbow. At first I thought he was camping but he's actually at home, the thing that looks like a tent is some sort of greenhouse (I wonder what he grows in it). Click here and if you want, explore his YouTube channel, which oddly contains a cage fight. It only took a few days for someone to spoof the original, see how here.

This weeks game is Electric Box, a sort of progression of Heath Robinson inventions that make it harder and harder to get electricity from one place to another. Very well done and quite taxing, click here. 

(02.07.10) Friday Fun: Before we get started, that "best of three" joke I posted last week was used on Mock the Week last night, I'm not saying he nicked it off Twitter but it was exactly the same joke.

Sumo Paint is the best online image editor/creator I've ever used I think. It loads fairly quickly on basic broadband so it's probably practical to try it on dialup too. As the name suggests its a paint program rather than a photo editor and there's lots of brushes and effects to try, I particularly liked the fills and shapes which were very easy to create and manipulate. Click here.

World cup stuff: Nottingham University explain why some players are having trouble with the new football and demonstrate a nifty little flying toy made out of paper cups in the process here. ZonalMarking explain where it all went wrong for England here. Avant Garde artists recreate the last fifteen minutes of the 1982 match between France and Germany across the streets and parks of Villeurbanne in France here.

If you strapped a couple of cheap vacuum cleaners to your back and put some sort of grip on the nozzles could you climb walls? There's only one way to find out, click here.

Todays game is Bloxorz which requires you flip a two cube block across a landscape of squares and drop it down a hole, starts easy (once you figure out you need to have it lying with it's base next to the hole and flip it up) and then gets much harder. Click here. 

(01.07.10) Lots of people found themselves having to reset their modems/routers yesterday following BT Broadband outage. I found the easiest way was just to pull the power cable out of the back, wait 30 seconds (too quick and you can damage it) and then plug it in again and it seems to have worked for a few other people too. If you phone up for advise it's the last of three things they suggest trying after rentering your login details and pressing the hidden reset button, probably because there is a chance of damage. But it's a lot easier to explain when someone calls up, just be careful.

(30.06.10) Broadband was unavailable across large parts of the UK today due to an unspecified problem effecting anyone with a connection dependent on a BT exchange, which is most of us. It started sometime over night, with BT listing about a dozen area codes but by 8am this general message was released. Happily things were back to normal by mid-afternoon, I only had to reset the the router (I took the power cord,waited 30 seconds and plugged it back in again) and now the message is marked resolved. I was able to use a neighbours dialup to find out what was going on, so, thanks to them! 

My friend with the BT email problem was told by BT that "the whole Yahoo system" was down, which sounds unlikely as I know lots of other people with BTYahoo email who have experienced no problems at all but that's what he was told. Very odd.

(28.06.10) BT email: I came across an odd problem with BT email this week, a user who uses the online email service to access messages hasn't had any new email since January. There's nothing wrong with the account and test messages sent to the address seem to go OK, no error message comes back but nothing shows up in the inbox. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has encountered this.

(25.06.10) Friday Fun: April Fool jokes are such a staple of life they have to really good to fool anyone these. You wouldn't think that an ad for canned Unicorn wouldn't be one that got much of a second look but US National Pork Board took exception to the slogan "the new white meat" and sent a 12 page cease and desist order explaining why it was to similar to their own "the other white meat." Read more here. 

Homemade Rollercoaster - what could possibly go wrong? Thankfully nothing, click here.

Real time map of all the trains in the UK, choose your station and see what's coming and going. Click here.

Steve Martin's website has "leaked" his tour demands, highlights include "Wardrobe; Nothing constricting of scratchy except for Steve's thong" and "Sound check: Instruments must be tuned by wiry, sarcastic guy called Shorty, Lou or Lightnin". Click here.

No game this week, instead here's my take on that tennis match.

(24.06.10) The latest version of Firefox is available. Version 3.6.4 promises to addresses problems caused by various game and video pluggins that can result in the browser freezing or crashing by separating them from the core functions. Having tried it, it seems to work very well and it may even solve the issues that effected performance in Windows 7. As far as I know, the only popular add-on that doesn't work is I.E. tab but that will probably be updated soon. Read more here and get the update directly via the Anorak News > Software Updates page.

(22.06.10) The Budget: No increase on booze and fags, VAT up to 20% in the new year but what else? FInd the key points and effects from the BBC, The Telegraph and the Guardian.

(18.06.10) A reader reports being cold called by someone telling her that her computer was "low on virtual memory". She quickly ended the call and didn't get any details about the company or what they were offering, rightly assuming that they couldn't possibly know the state of her computer. I frequently get asked about the pop-up warning virtual memory and it would be worrying if a lot of people in the community were getting similar calls. If anyone else hears anything about this let me know. Thanks to Sue for the tip. 

Friday Fun: Laibach are an Slovenian avant garde music collective that specialise in subverting authoritarian symbols, mostly by making martial cover versions of seemingly innocent songs, such as Opus's "Life is Life." However, they have made one truly beautiful track, a sublime version of All Across the Universe, click here to hear it

World cup sillyness: What happened when ITV covered the 1966 World Cup final here and the truth about the 1970 Brazil side here.

Scouting New York is a blog by a location finder based in, erm, New York. He finds some great stuff and his enthusiasm if infectious. Click here.

Cute Animal news: A tortoise rescues an overturned friend here and a deer nuzzles a cat here.

This weeks game is a nice version of the US favourite Jepordy in which you play an IBM answer computer that searches it's database for answers. Click here.

(15.06.10) Free game: This probably belongs on Friday Fun but these offers don't last long so here it is. Big Fish is giving away one of their best hidden object/puzzle games, Ravenhearst, a very atmospheric exploration of an old house which is full of mysteries and general creepiness. To get the game just click here, click "Buy it" and in the shopping cart page enter the code FREERAVEN . You'll probably have to sign up for an account, just be careful not to select the option to join the club or if you have to, unsign straight away, it takes $2.99 a month out of your PayPal account.

(14.06.10) EA News: We can add Pennyghael to the list of exchanges which have no lines available for new broadband connections. Many people are now living in communities in which getting even the most basic broadband is dependent on someone else giving up their connection, essentially when a house is sold. It was the shortage of lines that spurred the Scottish Executive to prioritise exchanges that were considered to expensive to upgrade to a full Bb service in, when was it - 07?

As I reported last week there has been a pull back from the original target of 80 exchanges and I've written to the minister responsible asking which are the remaining 29 exchanges and what is the reason for the change in policy. To give him credit he immediately replied with a promise to look into the matter. But for the time being we're stuck in the mere 4% that can only get a 512k connection.

(11.06.10) America's Got Talent is a lot like our version except the audience is just a little less supportive, click here to see how one comedian handled it.

And click here for a tech support guy helping an elderly lady who doesn't like Google's Pacman logo.

In comedy villain news Danny Dyer has been making a fool of himself by threatening loud but nice film critic Mark Kermode, Viz gives him what he deserves here. When he isn't playing Eastend tough guys, Dyer presents programmes on Eastend tough guys and football hooligans, here's an excellent parody.

The World Cup has produced some nice web applications, such as this one from the Guardian that replays matches by Twitter traffic and the BBC's team tracker and match predictor.

This weeks game is Submachine - Network Exploration Experience, the seventh or eighth incarnation of complex escape puzzle. If you haven't played it before you're in for a treat and a real brain teaser. Thankfully there's a walkthrough if you get stuck. Click here.

(10.06.10) Exchange activate news: Shetland News reports that four local exchanges to normal ASDL capable of up to 8mb/s downloads, sixteen times the 512k they had with the exchange activate system. The story (click here) also reports that "a total" of 29 small exchanges are to be upgraded, which is odd because back in February the enterprise minister Jim Mather and Brendan Dick, head of BT Scotland, were proudly announcing that 80 would be (click here). The fall explains why the upgrade dates have disappeared from the SamKnows exchange pages but doesn't explain why it's happened or where the surviving upgrades are going to happen. Perhaps it's money, they're getting it by ending the subsidy to STV local news apparently, which isn't a good thing either.

(08.06.10) Microsoft released a long list (see Anorak Page > Software Updates > Link for details) of updates today, so it might be a good idea to let your computer running for a while rather than putting it into standby or switching it off for a while, especially if you're on dialup. Don't be surprised if you get asked to restart the computer or if it restarts automatically.

(04.05.10) Friday Fun: Sex and The City 2 is possibly the worst film ever made and I know that thanks to this review.

A Big index of ancient battlefields, what more could a man want? Click here.

George W. Bush has found a way of occupying his time and making friends, he's got a Facebook page here.

Surprise Me God isn't a spoof, it's a real attempt to find out if God influences an individuals life. Taking part is pretty low maintenance, you just start a month by asking God to surprise you and then record when he does. Click here to take part.

Whether or not you're interested in the World Cup you'll be impressed with this calendar.

This weeks game is another from PopCap and is a simple test of reaction speed, click here to practice clicking.

(03.06.10) The downloadable Dr Who game is now available for download - Hooray! Or perhaps not as it seems you need quite a powerful computer to play it. The one I'm using at the moment which has a dual core Athlon will run it veeerrry slooowly, so before you download the 300mb+ file use the system checker to make sure your computer has enough power. Click here (It's a pity it's so power hungry, it looks a good game)

DuckDuckGo is a really stupid name for a very good search engine which for once isn't a repackaged version of Google. Instead it's a mashup, I think that's what the young folks say, of various search sources and it's own webcrawler. I liked the simple priority options of general, info, shopping and lucky (or Ducky as they call it). It's quicker than Google but isn't available as an addon for the search bar yet, so you'll have to add it to the favourites bar instead. Click here. 

(28.05.10) Friday Fun: Before we get started, good news for iPlayer+ users. The rather good desktop radio stopped working recently because the BBC has stopped using the Real Player stream but thankfully it's fairly easy to reconfigure it so it works again. Click here (last post) to find out how. Thanks to it's maker Ray S for the instructions.

Ozzy Osborne has new album (are they still called albums?) out called "Scream" and to promote it he's been scaring people at Madam Tussauds, click here for the video.

Ghost knocks over glass in a haunted pub here.

The Work Club marketing company commisions artists to decorate it's offices every six months, the latest has chosen to write every blackboard message written by Bart Simpson, click here for the work and here for the video.

This story is just sweet, click here to go ahhh.

Insaniquarium is a virtual fish tank with fish you have to feed and protect, pointless but strangely compulsive. Click here.

(24.05.10) The National Archive has started twittering WWII event by event. It sounds trite but has a compelling element to it and makes you absorb both detail and the sense of dread in the early days. Well worth a look, click here. You don't have to sign up to view and the latest post is at the top.

(21.05.10) Friday Fun: Summer is here and there's lots of butterflies about, so here's a website that will help you identify them. There aren't actually that many so there's a good chance of actually remembering their names, so take a photo of everything you see and then identify them at home. Tip:- if you spend a little time in one place you'll notice that they return to the same spots fairly regularly, so just wait with your camera set up and you'll get a decent picture.

This World of Warcraft is something of a classic, it features a group of online friends planning a raid only for one of them to...well see for yourself here.

Sean Stiegemeir is a musician and amateur film maker and he's made a really good timelapse video of the Iceland volcano set to his own music. Click here. It's actually 30 years ago to the week that Mt St Helens went up and the Boston Globe has an excellent slideshow on it here. 

Click here for a slideshow of examples of terrible parenting.

This weeks game is the arcade classic Asteroids, rendered in HTML5, which will one day change the way we use the web. A little. Click here.

(20.05.10) The risk of finding a virus when a cheap peice of electronics is connected to a computer is something I've written about in the past. In my case it was a touch screen mp3 player that caused my anti-virus program to spring into action but it could have been, say, a phone that might never get checked by a PC and would therefore be free to do whatever it wanted once I starte using it.

That's bad enough but if you can connect something to a PC then at least you can scan it for threats but what if even that won't detect them? That's the case when the processor itself is the carrier of the virus, it's trusted by all programs because they all use it. Scientists have developed a design that can ensure a chip can't be compromised but they'll only be used by respectable companies, those who are trying to cut costs will by the cheapest and like the people who sell compromised electronics, they won't be too concerned with your security. So be careful when buying something that seems very cheap, it may not be the bargain it appears. Read more here. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(18.05.10) If you're using a streaming radio player on your computer you're probably hearing a message along the lines of "the Real radio stream you are listening to is coming an end..." It was supposed to end at the end of March but has been extended until the end of this month, after that we're going to have find another way of getting radio without opening our browsers. I've posted a message on the iPlayer Plus page asking if it will upgraded to cope with the change because it's the best desktop radio I've used and I've tried a lot but if it isn't I'm going to be using WinAmp.

WinAmp is a general media player which can play streams from internet addresses which can be saved as bookmarks for repeated use. It also has very nice visualisations for listening to music. Read more about the BBC dropping Real streaming here, get the WinAmp here and the addresses for BBC radio streams here.

Volcanic ash has been in the news again today with lots of airline chiefs asking for restrictions to be lifted and the government to be less cautious. The BBC has a video explaining why this might not be a good idea here.

(15.05.10) Friday Fun: Atlas Obscura is a wonderful website cataloguing interesting and odd places around the world. Every day somewhere new is featured and the archives a stuffed full of wonderful things. Click here.

So much pun is a website as useless as Atlas Obscura is useful, dedicated to visual puns, mainly sent in by readers, it illicits groans and guffaws in turn. Click here.

You can't trust dictionaries; A physicist finds 99 year old error in nearly all of them, click here to find out what it is.

Nature by numbers is a lovely animated film about the mathematics of the natural world, click here.

Mummy Maze is an escape game that requires the sort of logical thinking used in Sokoban box pushing games. You just have to find the exit before the mummy catches you. Click here.

(10.05.10) Facebook users are being warned to be careful when when filling in surveys on the site. They're a surprisingly popular activity, especially at a time when there are a lot of political instability but some contain a Java script that will expose the users contacts and friends to spam. Normally I'd recommend Firefox and NoScript at this point but Facebook users will be trusting the site and so the script will probably be enabled, so the best option is to ignore surveys for the time being. Read more here.

Apple has released the pricing structure for the iPad when it's launched later this year and for a change it isn't that different from those charged in the US. They seem a little higher but include taxes etc and given the instability of the Euro, are fairly reasonable. Read more here.

(06.05.10) Friday Fun (and I need it after those results): I'm really enjoying the maps themed programmes on BBC4 and have had a look at the British Library's maps website, where I found this map of London by artist Stephen Walter. It combines history, mythology and his own experiences to create a fascinating picture of the capital.

The sender of the Eye of the Shatner merely commented that "Cyriak is mad," I couldn't put it better, click here.

Adam Buxton, of Adam and Joe fame, has made a protest video about the closure of Radio 6 featuring a spot on impersonation of David Bowie singing Changes, all done in Lego. Click here.

A man has beaten Bejeweled, scoring, wait for it, 2,147,482,575, blowing up 4.8 million gems in proccess. It took him 2000 hours, presumably he used pause a lot. Click here. 

So there can be only one game this week - Bejeweled 2! Click here.

(05.05.10) McAfee users have a new icon in the notification tray following an update earlier this week. Gone is the old square one, replaced by white edged red shield with an M in the middle. The program's interface has changed too, it now has a much cleaner look which is easier to navigate, with all the information available from drop down lists or links. So if you notice the change, don't worry, it was supposed to happen. If you haven't got the update yet, click here to see what to expect.

(03.05.10) A tourist has photographed a wildcat on the Glengorm estate, getting a clear picture and was lucky enough to observe the cat for 10 minutes, which is very unusual for what is a very shy animal. The Scottish Wildcat Association think that it's a single example that swam over from the mainland (they aren't scared of water) as there isn't thought to be a breeding population on the island. Click here for more.

(30.04.10) Friday fun: Working out to vote is complicated so why not use this handy flow chart to work out which is party is right for you. For some reason it doesn't include The Scottish Jacobite Party, which is standing Argyll & Bute, here's their website.  

The Queen has had her portrait painted again, it's must be the equivalent of the family snap for her, by Rupert Alexander. His paintings hark back to an earlier time, displaying remarkable technique and talent, click here for his gallery. 

I'm not a huge fan of spoof news sites but this is funny, New Age Terrorists develop a homoeopathic bomb, click here.

Why I believe Printers were Sent from Hell is...well the title says it all really, click here.

This weeks game is a simple typing speed test, type the words, gain seconds every so often and end up with a score. Click here.

(28.04.10) Exchange upgrades - Interim report: I'm working my way through a list of the 147 Scottish exchanges that have the exchange activate technology and so far about a third of them have been upgraded to a higher speed. I haven't worked out what the pattern is yet but I assume that they are being done in groups connected to an exchange higher up the chain, a local example would be the exchanges connected through Oban. Two things I have noticed; SamKnows, the broadband information site, no longer lists the date when an exchange should be upgraded by and many of the upgraded exchange still mention BT Wholesale as the main provider, that could just be a feature of an exchange that doesn't have any other ISPs equipment in it though. More to come but going through the exchanges takes quite a bit of time. 

(27.04.10) Google maps: If you have the latest version of Google Earth you'll find a new button available when you open a Google map in your browser, if you don't have the latest version you'll be asked to install a pluggin to enable it. Marked "Earth" effectively it run Earth from within the window which is handy as it save opening another resource hungry application but it does use a lot of resources itself and it doesn't stop running when you switch back to another view, which slows down the browser. Also, it's completely unusable on dialup and not much better on basic broadband. So if you don't have Google Earth it might be worth installing the pluggin but it's probably best to stick with the dedicated program. Read more here (includes video demo).

Spotify is issuing an update today that just stops short of allowing users to file share their music from their own computers. Apparently the ability is there but hasn't been turned on (yet) but the new version is still a pretty big step forward. It will now index whatever music you have and add it to the Spotify library, intergrating it with the tracks that are available from Spotifys servers. You will also be able to share your playlist via facebook, view other peoples libraries where they allow it and even watch a real time chart of what's being listened to around the world. Read more here and here.

(26.04.10) Papers released by the National Archive of Scotland reveal that in 1938 the Inverness police were firmly convinced that the Loch Ness Monster existed and were concerned about attempts to catch it. More on the story here and see the archive here. 

(23.04.10) Friday Fun: Who's David Cameron been talking to today? Find out here (I wonder if he regrets that poster).

Boston.com has a great gallery of pictures of Iceland and it's volcano. I think they're the first I've seen of the effects it's had there. Click here. (Thanks to Jan)

Axis of Awesome are a three piece band that have figured out that you can play any pop song using the the same four chords, click here.

Laughter Lab is (was?) a year long project to find the world's funniest joke. I'm sure I've covered something similar in the past but the most popular joke wasn't the same and this ones just as funny, click here. (Thanks Douglas)

If you missed the BBC's Brian Training programme the best bit featured a game which involved numbers being flashed up on a screen and then the player having to click the place holder in the correct order. It was really difficult and the players managed around 30%, well below the "world champions" 88%. The surprise was that the world champion was a chimp. See if you can do better and watch the chimp in action here.

It wouldn't be fair to have virtually impossible games two weeks in a row, so here's a relatively easy brain teaser that entails moving a little space craft threw the shadows, collecting stars and avoiding gun turrets. Short and nicely done, click here for the Shadow Game.

(22.04.10) You've probably noticed there hasn't been much local news lately but there should be, we should be celebrating the upgrade of one rural exchange after another but despite announcements from ministers, roll out plans from BT and even hints from local engineers, the upgrades just don't arrive. Why not? This website is sustained by this sort of stuff, first the arrival of the free computers, then the extension of support, the arrival of broadband and all the problems in between. Lots of local exchanges were due to be upgraded from Exchange Activate status not last quarter but the quarter before that, in other words before the new decade. Over the next fortnight I'm going to be investigating which, if any, exchanges have been upgraded and what happened to all those promises. Stay tuned.

(16.04.10) The vulnerability in Java that I report earlier in the week has been patched ahead of schedule, you can the link to download at the top of Anorak page in the Software updates section. Get it as soon as possible, it's a serious problem.

Friday Fun: Everyone loves a model railway, well most boys anyway, if you do you'll like this website from a professional layout maker, full of astonishing detail and clever little touches. 

Formula One is less exciting but this clip of a car losing its wheels is amazing.

If you weren't already a UK citizen do you think you could pass the test required to become one? Find out by taking the official mock test here.

I'm a bit of a fan of the xkcd cartoon, the other week it published this little gem and only a day later someone had turned it into a game, click here.
 
(15.04.10) You can follow the progress of the Icelandic volcanic cloud (they haven't had a good year have they?) online. The shut down of airports is prompted by maps issued by the Met Office you can see them here (blue = heavy cloud, green = light, red = danger to aircraft), the BBC news page is here and if you want to see what things look like under the crowd click here, here and here for webcams on the northern isles (probably best during the day).  

The Vote Now Show is a live show from the makers of Radio 4's Now Show about the days election events or lack of them, it's on pretty late so most of us will miss it unless we click here and get it on iPlayer. Not always brilliant but worth a listen, tomorrows post live debate show should be good.  

(14.04.10) Java virtual machine is one of those things that you don't notice but is virtually everywhere on the Internet, very few websites have no Java content at all and many festooned with it. It runs everything from forms to video and games and it's flexibility makes it ripe for exploitation. Recently the popular website songlyrics(dot)com was found to be carrying such an exploit completely without its owners knowledge. The particular exploit was identified last week but the makers of Java decided not to issue a patch until the next scheduled update in July.

It's an example of how even perfectly respectable websites can unwittingly harbour a threat that can effect visitors even if they do nothing to trigger it and my advice is to download the latest version of Firefox and then install NoScript which stops Java components running automatically. Click here for more on the songlyrics problem and here for a guide to staying safe online with links to Firefox. 

(12.04.10)  John Wilkes, a retired architect, has spent the last year modelling his village for Google Earth's "model your town" competition and has made it through to the last five. Having tried to make models with Sketchup I know just how much work he's put into this and some of the detail is amazing, for instance if you get down to street level you see the underside of awnings and the like.

The winner is decided by public vote and get £6500 for their local school but the dastardly Mayor of Miami is publicly campaigning for their entry, so vote Dursley! Click here for more on the story and here to vote.

(12.04.10) Another problem has been found with .pdf files. Essentially code can embedded in a document and the warning message that pops up when it's opened to manipulated. Not only that but once opened the code could spread to previously clean .pdfs. The problem effects all readers, including Foxit and Adobe, so people should be very careful opening or downloading anything even vagually suspicous until a fix is found. Read more here.

(09.04.10) Friday Fun: File under "well I liked it" because it's really a bit dull but this feature about the now defunct Martins Drive-in Bank is full of period charm and the optimism that fuelled much of the '60s, click here.

Pixels is a short animated movie that could be taken as lesson on why we should recycle old monitors responsibly, if we don't, who knows what might escape? Click here.

A Taiwanese boy is set to be the next Susan Boyle (do we need another?), click here.

The Scale of the Universe is a brilliant animation that takes you from the smallest known thing to the largest, click here.

Hetherdale is a point and click 3D story/adventure set amongst the ruins of a South American civilisation, basically if you click everywhere and collect everything you'll have what you need to progress but you'll probably need help from the walkthrough, click here.

(08.04.10) Election fun: it's five years since the last election and the main media outlets have put a lot more effort into their online content this time round. Here are some sites worth checking out:

• Snowcloud: Channel 4 News' analysis of speeches, picking out the most frequently used words and phrases and presenting them in a pleasing graphic.
• Factcheck: Channel 4 checks the facts behind the figures.
• Poll of Polls: The Guardian agregates eight of the main polling organisations.
• The Times interactive election guide: Lots of interesting stuff.
• Vote match: The Telegraph helps you decide who to vote for.

(06.04.10) I'm back online at last after a bizarre and labyrinthine encounter with Pipex support services. It's to tedious to go into detail but suffice to say that at one point they reset my password without telling me. I wasn't the only one having problems since the power cut last week, many BT customers had problems getting back online despite resetting the routers but as I was offline there wasn't much I could find out. Thankfully things seem back to normal.

A customer on Lismore has been told that their new BT broadband connection won't happen until the 12th due to delays with a third party contractor. As Lismore has a shortage of lines it thought and they've been promised a 2mb speed, it's thought that their connection may coincide with the exchange being upgraded to a normal broadband service. Regular readers will know that it's an Exchange Activate exchange at present and was scheduled for upgrade last year.

Software Updates: Don't forget to check out the software updates link at the top of Anorak News, there's been several important ones in the time I've been off-line. 

(31.03.10) A fire and flood in a BT building in London has effected the broadband availability for customers of third party ISPs across the UK. I thought my broadband router was playing up and it was only when I was driven to call my service provider, Pipex, and was held in a very long queue that I realised that the problem might lay elsewhere. All Pipex webpages were unavailable but I found this story on the BBC site that explained things. Companies effected include all those that are now part of the TalkTalk empire and to get some idea of the number of exchanges click here and they're only list exchanges here they have customers. I'm posting this via dialup, I really hope the broadband comes back soon.

(30.03.10) BT business broadband customers are finding their browsers redirected to a website urging them to download BT's new desktop help service. It appears to be happening sporadicly but it is annoying and spooking the people it happens to as there's no warning and no obvious explanation. Users naturally think their browsers have been hijacked, which of course they have, just not by criminals. There are a significant number of local BT business customers and if you know of one warn them! Read more here.

(25.03.10) Friday Fun: Not sure if this exactly fun but these statistics about online dating are certainly interesting; they're what led to some newspapers carrying headlines to the effect that Facebook can kill. Not sure they'd quite grasped what online dating is but lets not let that get in the way of a good scare story. Click here.

Online magic usually relies on people not really paying attention, remember that one that involved looking at a row of cards, picking one and then being shown a line of similar but entirely different cards? Well Barry and Stuart are a bit more sophisticated, click here to see how.

This is more useful than fun but I know at least one person who will appreciate the grocery generator add-on for Firefox. Click here.

Young me/New me is one of those user generated websites that relies on people sending in contributions, it's just a slideshow of pairs of photos showing how someone has grown up and usually they're recreating the old picture. Sounds daft but its oddly compelling. Click here.

This weeks game is from the same site, one of many good games and toys they host, it's a simple pair matching memory game and one of the original brain trainers. Click here.

(24.03.10) Firefox Personas evolved from Ff Themes and are a way of making the toolbar that surround the browser more attractive. Unlike Themes the buttons aren't changed but there's a lot more styles to choose from, over 8000 in fact and generally speaking the images are more beautiful and have a cleaner look. A nice touch is being able to test them before installation and because you don't have to restart the browser to use a new one, they're very easy to switch between. On top of that it's easy to make your own either from a photo or a custom made image, just as long as it's very wide (3000 pixels) and very thin (200 pixels). Click here to go to the Personas page (the first time you install one you'll be asked to install an add-on, which only takes a moment or two).

(23.03.10) Earth Hour: I got forwarded an email today alerting me to something called the World Wildlife Fund's "Earth Hour." It's genuine and worth passing on. It's promoting a passive international action to highlight, perhaps low light, energy conservation by turning off all lights for an hour on the 27th at 8.30pm. You can register to add your support here. Thanks to forum member Doggo for passing on the email.
 
(22.03.10) Yahoo Widgets are another way of getting small single use gadgets on to your desktop. Similar but better executed than the Windows Sidebar I posted, they let you do things like listen to online radio stations without having a browser open, provide a simple but useful calendar and monitor system resources while not using up much of those resources. I've written a guide to installing the starter software, adding new widgets and tried out several to find ones that work well. Click here to read it. I've abandoned the Windows Sidebar, it was to complex to install and turned out to be not as reliable as it could have been; that said thousands of people love it. 

(18.03.10) Friday Fun: This compelation of tree felling disasters is why I never lend anyone my chainsaw, thankfully no one was seriously hurt but several cars and houses were. Click here (top frame with a play button is just an image, the videos start just below)

Honest Movie Posters is funny even if you haven't seen the movie or the poster come to that, click here.

Chatroulette hugely popular website started by a 17yr old Russian that randomly pairs up people on webcam (it has obvious problems) and it's spawned a YouTube phenomena, a guy who simply plays the piano while singing a song about the people he sees. Click here. 

Bored Panda is very nice art/creativity/oddity blog full of stuff worth looking at. Click here.

Todays game is a sort of gem matching thing in which you play against a series of virtual opponents. The aim is to create the longest chains of tiles and as the game progresses you gain special powers and bonuses appear. Click here.

(17.03.10) Google maps has some new features. Click on the "New" link above the search box row and you'll find a number of things to enable, my favourite so far is "Drag "n" Zoom" (well. apart from the "n" in the name) which is handy for focusing the map on the part you're interested in. There's also "what's around here?" which covers the map in rather unattractive dots, longitude and latitude tools and a rotate function.

(13.03.10) BT/Yahoo email is suffering from a problem with logging customers into their email service and also online email, which results in a box popping reporting error codes 0x800ccc90 or ccc92. According to forum member Peabody, the BT Service Status page has a message reading:

"We are aware of a temporary problem that is causing some users difficulties using their Email service. We are sorry if you have been affected. Our engineers are now working to fix the problem, and we expect to have the service back to normal as soon as possible."

I can't get the service status page load at the moment though. I suggest anyone experiencing problems should go to either the BT/Yahoo login page (here) or the online email service until things improve. Thanks to Peabody for the report 

(12.03.10) Friday Fun: About time too, YouTube closes down for the night.

We haven't had an art toy for a whilem so here are two. Both let you sketch using the mouse and have options for the pen and have elements of those mouse trails that used to be very popular. Flame is more colourful (click here), while Harmony (click here) is like sketching with weird charcoal.

What's to be done about all the damaged walls that litter our towns? I know, let's fill the cracks with lego! Click here.

An open letter to Richard Branson was a huge hit at the Edinburgh festival and actually got Virgin trains to change their ticket pricing and it's very funny. Click here (only a few days left to hear it).

Toyota simulater.

This weeks game is a box pushing puzzle, as usual it's simple to start with and then gets fiendish. Click here for Siversphere.

(11.03.10) Google Street View: It was spring last year that reports of the Google SV car started to come in, it was seen in Tobermory and then travelling towards Fionnphort but nothing seemed to happen on the maps, so it was pretty much forgotten. Now, in one go, just about every street has been added.

To check your area do a search of a place name or postcode in Google and one of the top results should be a thumbnail map of the area, click on it and you'll go to a page one. In the top left of the map above the zoom tool is a little yellow figure. Drag it over the map and the available routes will turn blue, hover it over a road and a thumbnail of one side of view will appear. Drop it and the map will turn black and then fill with a picture.

Once it's loaded, which takes a moment or two even on a 512k connection, you'll get a 360° image that you can rotate by dragging the mouse around it and move along the route by clicking on the white arrows on the yellow line. Each click opens another view. In the corner there's a little map that can be expanded by clicking in it's top left corner and you can jump to new locations by dragging and dropping the figure.

Often this seems to result in the image freezing, if it does the best thing to do is close the image by clicking on the cross in it's top right corner. I've found that Street View works more quickly in Google's Chrome browser which can be downloaded here but there are privacy concerns with it but these can be alleviated by installing Chrome Privacy Guard, which when clicked opens the browser with all the tracking elements stripped out, it can be downloaded here.

(10.03.10) At last I've got round to deleting the old news which can now be found in the 2009 archive, haven't got round to sifting and archiving the Friday fun stuff yet thought.

I've written a guide to installing the sidebar, it hasn't been tried out by anyone yet so I hope it works. Click here to read it. 

(09.03.10) XP SIdebar: It's been pointed out to me that installing the sidebar I recommended yesterday isn't as easy as it should be. To start with you need something to extract the files and then you need to know which of the extracted files to use to install the program. People, well at least one of them, who've managed to install it, like it but a clear set of instructions for the less confident computer user is definitely needed, so I'll try and write one in the next couple of days. Thanks to everyone who complained!

(08.03.10) Desktop radio: A while ago I was looking for an XP equivalent of Windows 7s & Vista desktop radio and I've finally found one. The great advantage of it is that you don't need to go online with your browser to access Internet radio stations (Radio 4 and 5 for me), which is quicker and if you have an oldish computer, it uses a lot less resources too, so other programs will run faster. It's small too, the picture left is actual size. 

It's works with a rejigging of the Vista/7 sidebar that lets you download all the gadgets that work with those operating systems onto an XP computer. Installing adds a clock to the right hand side of the screen, which you can get rid of if you don't want it and if you click on the little plus sign above you can add other gadgers from the online gallery. The BBC radio is ready to add, just drag and drop it onto the sidebar which now runs down the side of the screen but I recommend clicking "get more gadgets online" and searching for "Quick Radio." It lets you change station with a single click and volume with the mouse wheel.

Apart from the radio and clock there are a lot of other gadgets to download, games, eBay watcher, mail alerts to mention just a few. Click here to see what's available from the online gallery and here to download the sidebar.

(05.03.10) Friday Fun: Let's start with a music video from a band called OK Go. Unlike most of the genre it doesn't involve the confused artistic vision of a director, instead it appears to be the work of the band themselves who constructed a vast mouse trap style contraption that takes the exact length of the song to finally press the button that...well, click here to find out. 

Didn't like that? Then use this button to express your annoyance.

I think this is an advert from a Scandanavian public broadcaster aimed at encouraging people to pay their license. Anyway, at the beginning you have to upload a picture of someone or something that will be encorporated into the film that eventually plays. Don't do what I did, which was upload the first image I came across in My Pictures, having John McCain star really spoilt the experience. Click here.

Issuu, which I've featured in the past, is worth keeping tabs on. This week I found this story of pointless teenage angst.

This week's game predates the personal computer. The Game of Life was invented in 1970 by British mathematician John Conway and involves a grid of squares on which some turn on and off depending on how many neighbours are "on." The rules that control the state of the squares are simple and the results are complex. Click here to learn more and here to play.

(03.03.10) A new vulnerability has been found in Internet Explorer that appears to be very serious. It effects users of XP and older versions of windows, i.e. most people who read this and is very clever in the way it works. A malicious website will generate a pop-up that asks the user to press the F1 key, if the pop-up is closed it just reappears and eventually the user will press the key. Doing so allows the attacker to load files onto the computer, so don't, instead close the web page or Interent Explorer if it doesn't close and if that won't close press the Ctrl, Alt and Delete keys at the same time. That brings up a dialoge box that lets you close the program manually. Read more here. Thanks again to Steve for the tip.

McAfee has released a survey of domain names (.com, .co.uk, etc) which gives you some idea of just how many risky websites are out there. Cameroon's .cm domain was the riskiest, which doesn't seem too bad (how often to you visit a Cameroon website?) but second on the list is .com with more than one in twenty posing some sort of risk. Risks range from generating spam to hosting malware and results are drawn from McAfee's Site Advisor reports. Read more here.

(01.03.10) Browser Choice is the title of window that will be appearing over the next week when people start their computer, not doubt confusing and worrying many. It doesn't look much like a normal Microsoft window but it it is and clicking OK eventually results (it's a bit slow) in new window appearing which offers the choice of a dozen alternative browsers along with a brief summary and download and tell me more links. People who have only ever used Internet Explorer should be encouraged to give the others a try, remind them that they can have as many as they want, virually all of them are faster and most are more secure. Click here for more details and screenshots of the windows that appear.

(28.02.10) Lismore has been reconnected to the world following the arrival of engineers by helicopter. The special service was organised because the emergency services were effected by the unavailability of 999.

The phone engineer told Steve, who took the picture on his camera phone, that the failure was due a build up of ice on the dishes and they'd also had to go up the mast at Torosay to clear it.

It's reassuring to know that they'll come out in these circumstances and that the 999 landline service is still priority. Thanks to Steve for the info and picture.

(26.02.10) Lismore is still without a phone service and will until Monday, which is much more serious than just the loss of the Internet as there is no medical cover on the island over the weekend and many people don't have mobile phones. With a third of the population over 65 this is a real worry. The BT service status page on the subject is the same as it was yesterday, reporting the problem will be resolved within two hours. The same page reports two other exchanges down, both in the Highland and Island region, possibly due to the power fluctuations that led to the problems on Lismore. Thanks again to Steve and his mobile.

Friday Fun: This month is the five year anniversary of YouTube, click here to see "Me at the Zoo", the first video ever posted.

Stuffmydadsays is a twitter feed by a man reporting comments by his father and it's so successful that the film rights have been solved. Actually it isn't called stuffmydadsays, it's a lot more rude, it is very funny though but be warned, there's a lot of swearing. Click here.

Who or what is the King of Time? Click here to find out.

You might not have heard of The Rapture but it's a big deal in the States. It's refers to the belief that before the "end of times" the righteous will be taken up to heaven, leaving the rest of us to survive the torments of the apocalypse. More importantly it will also leave behind the pets of the saved, fortunately a pet care service has stepped in to solve this problem. Sounds like a scam but the website seems sincere. Click here.

Logorama is an Oscar nominated animated short film featuring characters and art work drawn from product logos. Features Ronald MacDonald as a gun toting robber on the run from Michelin Men cops. Click here.

Fenticore is physics puzzle in which you help a lost spacecraft get from the top of a building to the bottom. Requires timing as well as thought and at times seems utterly impossible but there's always a solution. Click here.

(25.02.10) Lismore lost first it's broadband and then all phone connections this afternoon following fluctuations in the power supply to the island. The first sign of problems was the need for several broadband routers needing to be reset, which is common after power failures with some models, then all broadband was lost when the board at the exchange failed. Finally the exchange stopped working altogether, presumably because the generator failed. The BT service status page here says there is a temporary problem and the estimated time if 2hrs, so hopefully they'll be able to read this sometime this evening. Thanks to Steve who contacted me via mobile phone for this.

(23.02.10) A critical vulnerability has been found in all recent versions of Firefox and it's openly on sale to the "security community" as an add-on to another program. Absurdly neither Firefox nor any of the anti-virus firms knows much about it other than it can enable code on a website to attack Firefox with the result that the victims system can remotely accessed.

Because so little is known, it's impossible to tell if my usual recommendations (click here) will work, so the best advise is to stay away from untrusted websites and links because they are the most likely to carry a threat. It has to be said that there haven't been any reports of the problem actually being exploited yet.

This is one of the few times that Firefox has been a victim of a "zero day" threat (one that is known after it goes public) and they normally fix things quickly. Read more here (one of the links at the bottom of the article, it goes a forum that uses the software). Thanks to Steve for the tip

(22.02.10) McAfee Virus Scan Plus: I was contacted today by someone who kept getting pop-up messages from this program saying the computer was at risk because more than one security program was installed. The "Fix it" button only led to a McAfee site selling it. Both turned out to be genuine and the message was in a sense honest because McAfee Security Suite was also running.

The problem was solved via the Add/Remove programs dialogue box which also revealed that Virus Scan Plus was only 8mb in size. This suggests that it arrived tagged onto something else, many free programs will install things like this unless you uncheck the option and this is just another reason to make sure you do!

Apologies for the lack of updates over the weekend, I've been wrestling with persistent crashes, restores, missing files etc on my computer. I suspect new operating system blues is the culprit.

(15.02.10) Adobe Flash Player - Please check the Software Updates page here for instructions on how to install the new version of Adobe Flash which old versions to be uninstalled. It's quite important because it's a security update and Flash is so common across the Internet that most of us are unaware of it running. 

(13.02.10) Friday Fun: What time is it? Click here to find out on the Human Clock website. Made up of pictures of numbers sent in by the public it's sychronised to your local time and if you get bored waiting for the next image there's a list of more underneath.

US newspaper websites make a better job of their slideshows than ours do in my opinion. click here for a very good one from the New York Times of the recent snow storm that engulfed the east coast.

MarineTraffic is a website which aims at tracking in real time all the world's commercial shipping traffic. Zoom in on any area and you see markers highlighting a vessels position, click on one and you'll get its picture and details. What's really remarkable is that much of the information comes from amateurs who have installed an FM receiver and data box which, connected to the Interent, relays data to the website. Sadly no one is covering our area, perhaps someone will read this and take up the challenge. Click here.

Today's game is Cheese or Font, just read the word and pick which one you think it is. Click here.

(06.02.10) A note on the Software Updates page (here) warns of problem with one of Tuesday's updates that is causing some XP computers to crash. Not just freeze but crash to a blue screen. If this is happening to a computer you know of please contact your nearest computer expert, possibly one of the people who used to be digital champions. 

(05.02.10) Friday Fun: I like the Guardian newspaper's new idea Zeitgeist and wonder if it presages a new look to the website in general. Like most newspaper websites, the traditional front page looks like a digital version of the newspaper, a bit like the way that the first cars looked a bit like the horse drawn carriages they were replacing but Zeitgeist looks like a purely digital product. It's not perfect but is worth a look. Click here.

In case you missed it, there was a nice story this week of about a man rescued from the frozen sea by a woman 300 miles looking at a live webcam and spotting his torch flashes. Click here.

It's been in the news so much that I feel I've already seen Avatar but even so I found this review on YouTube worth watching, in fact it's worth seeing even if you have no intention of seeing the film, click here.

I love this version of the Foundation's classic Build Me Up Buttercup played on the ukulele.

Two box pushing games this, the first is straight forward but a real brain teaser, you have to push the boxes onto the darker squares with little diamonds in them, there's not time limit and there's a reset button. Click here for the generically named "Box Push." Crypt Raider on the other hand is an evolved pushing game and a classic of it's type. Move the blue orb to the door, removing sand as needed and filling in holes with rock, levels are timed, so you have to think out what needs to be done and move quickly. Click here. 

(04.02.10) Microsoft has released a security advisory that is of particular significance to people still NAIDC computers. That's because the problem it addresses effects any XP computer that doesn't have a user account name specified (i.e. it boots up to "all users") and isn't running Internet Explorer 8 in protected mode. The flaw allows access to files in known locations, turning the computer into, as The Register puts it, into a "public file server." Read more on the problem here and get the fix via the Software Updates page here. 

Also on the page is an update for Sun Java Runtime Environment, a program that almost everyone has because so many web applications rely on it. It highlights a problem with something called Java Quick Starter which can hog and slow down a computer dramatically by perpetually checking that components needed to launch Java applications are in memory. Updating and disabling Quick Start is straight forward and could be well worth it if you think the computer has been running slowly for a while.

(03.02.10) The hoax email I highlighted yesterday is actually one of the most common currently circulated according to Snopes, occupying the 7 and 8 positions in their top 25. Not sure why they list it as seperate messages though. It's remarkable how these old hoaxes keep going, taking in even experienced computer users. Read the full list here. 

I've found a great desktop radio player but it only works on Vista and Windows 7. For those who haven't used them, desktop gadgets just sit on your screen doing nothing until you click them and you don't need to open your browser to get to them as you do with the normal BBC radio player. There is actually an official BBC one but this one is much better because you can change stations with a single click, volume can be adjusted with the mouse wheel and as well as the six main stations, there are 400 other UK stations available through it. I'm looking for one that works with XP, the only one I've tried so far required Google desktop and I'm not sure I trust it for privacy reasons, hopefully I'll find one by Friday (suggestions welcome!). Click here if you have Vista or Windows 7. 

(02.02.10) A hoax email is doing the rounds that doubles up the worry by containing two supposed virus threats, perhaps that's why the subject line is "VERY VERY URGENT PLEASE READ AND FORWARD. The first threat, of an email about email containing pictures of Osama Bin Laden hanged but harbouring a virus has a grain of truth, way back in 2005 such email were circulating but they contained an easily detected Trojan and are no longer considered a threat.

The second part, which is about email titled "Invitation" containing an image of an Olympic torch which "burns" through the hard drive of your computer if opened, is a pure hoax. Normally only appears in Olympic years, I don't know what has prompted this re-emergence but expect to see it again in 2012. Read more detail on Snopes here and here.

(01.02.10) Privacy or the right to browse the web and use your own software without being checked up is something we should be able to take for granted yet we know we can't but we should be able to choose whether what information we give out and when. A couple of things this week have highlighted just how little control or choice we really have.

Google's toolbar, always a source of privacy concerns, has been proved to still collect and transmit data back to Google even if you ask it not to and even if you disable it. The company claims it is a "bug" and only effects Internet Explorer 8 which have switched on the toolbars enhanced features but most websites don't mention this, so it may effect more browsers. Click here and here for more (thanks to Steve for the tip).   

Google collects an extraordinary amount of information about it's users, sign into your account (you have one if you've used Google Docs etc, gMail or YouTube) to check and virtually everything you click if you use the Chrome browser. My advise is to never install the toolbar, uninstall it if you have done (not the same thing as the general search bar) and if you use Chrome, which is the fastest browser for many things, use Chrome Privacy Guard, a small program that strips out the reporting bit out of Chrome before it loads, click here to get it. 

Game publisher Ubisoft (Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil etc etc), which already uses the extremely annoying Steam application is going to require future customers to stay online when they play, even if no online content is required. It's another move in the war on game pirates but means that your game won't work if not online or have a poor connection. I can understand why they want to stop piracy, games cost as much as Hollywood movies to create but surely you should be free to play a game you've bought whenever you want? Read more here. 

(28.01.10) Friday Fun: I've been going on about the iPad most of the week and why stop now? Don't answer that. The Daily Mail had a fine roundup of responses to the device, my favourite is comedian Peter Serafinowicz's, who compares to a... oh, see for yourself here.

This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post is the title of a blog post that brilliantly deconstructs the ingredients of, well, a typical incendiary blog post and the whole thing is topped off by the responses which perfectly capture the spirit of the idea. Click here.

Looking into the Past is a Flickr entirely made up of people holding up old photos of places so the blend seamlessly with how the place is now, a simple and very effective idea, click here.

Coming across a phenomena that was born and disappeared during your lifetime but somehow completely passed you by is odd, especially when it involves music but Scopitone did and I'm really sorry I missed it. A precursor to video, it played a film of the act along with the song on jukeboxes across Europe and the USA, only disappearing in the late '70s. Click here for an official archive and here for YouTube's list of films.

NoBrainer is one of the maddest games I've ever come across. All you have to do is answer a series of quick fire questions on subjects like "things that have necks" by flicking your mouse up for yes and sideways for no. See how many you can get right here.

(25.01.10) Firefox 3.6, as mentioned on the Software Updates page on Friday, is avialable but unlike most updates, it won't arrive automatically. Instead a dialogue box may appear, asking if you want to install it but if it hasn't done so then you'll have to download it manually from here.

As well as the security and stability upgrades, they've made it possible to change the browser "theme" (the background colour/image of its frame), now called "personas", without restarting. You can even preview themes just by mousing over them on the download page here (wait a moment for it to take effect)(only works once you've installed v3.6 but can be previewed on the previous link)(too many brackets).

Very few of my favourite addons have been disabled by the update, some, such as the excellent all in one sidebar need a newer version and those that don't work like "split pannel" (not my spelling) have good alternatives. I've updated the favourite addon page accordingly here.

(22.01.10) Friday Fun: Every so often I post something here that you might actually want to bookmark and keep, this is one of those Fridays. I found RadioBeta while looking for French chanteuse music now that Deezer has gone all commercial and it's just wonderful. It searches the net for radio stations based on language, genre, band, tag (any search term) and geography and makes very easy to quickly track down what you're looking for. Very simple to use, click here to try it. 

HiRise is a high resolution image experiment from the University of Arizona, I'm not entirely sure how the experiment works but there are lots of very good images of Mars in .pdf format. Click here.

Famous for 15 megapixels is a great name for a blog and reason enough for being posted here and the article title, "stay in the pink with ciggies and drink" just enhancing it's selection but I've chosen for this photo, click here for the blog.

An art installation commissioned by the Barbican art centre resulted in improbably named French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot placing electric guitars on stands so that birds could play them just by alighting on them, click here.

Rotato is a little brain teaser which just asks you to rotate a box so that coloured squares fall into groups of three and disappear, simple to start with but gets harder, click here.

(21.01.10) Virgin Media has started monitoring it's users Internet traffic to see if it contains illegally downloaded copyrighted material. As yet it the system doesn't record the individual IP address but it can only be time before it does and just running the trial will make copyright holders de here mand that ISPs monitor user activity. Which will in turn lead to file encryption becoming common place but the principle of monitoring will have been established. Which is not a good thing. Read slightly less here.

Todays Software Updates page (see Anorak News) has three emergency updates from Microsoft addressing the flaws that have emerged and been exploited over the last month. Coming outside the usual "first Tuesday in the month" cycle, its a demonstration of how worried Microsoft is by the latest vulnerabilities and the recommendations by governments that people should abandon Internet Explorer for more secure browsers. It won't be long before they abandon the first Tuesday idea, which was brought in to make easier for system admins, and just release updates as soon as possible but it won't be enough to sort out what is and always has been an inherently insecure browser.

(20.01.10) Both the German & French governments are advising people to give up Internet Explorer due to the persistent security risks. In addition to the one linked to below, it turns out that I.E. is also implicated in the Chinese attack on Google, with the infected .pdf documents arriving via the browser and it wouldn't have got anywhere if they'd been using Firefox and Foxit reader. Click here and here.

The Chinese attack exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat reader, which has become a popular route for attack over the last couple of years. It's probably even more ubiquitous than I.E. but again there are alternatives, the most popular of which is Foxit reader. Like Firefox it is both quicker and more secure than it's more successfull rival, that's not to say it's entirely risk free but the risks are fewer and tend to be addressed more quickly. You can get Foxit here.

(19.01.10) More vulnerabilities have been found in Internet Explorer, nothing new there I hear you see but when several come at the same time and the only advise is to turn your security settings to maximum, I think it's time to say enough enough is enough and it's time to change browser. For those who haven't done so yet, which is understandable, if you haven't it seems as if Internet Explorer is the Internet, it's simple and you'll have a browser that's faster, simpler and more secure. Click here for "Stay safe on the Internet" for links to download and improve Firefox and here and here for one of the most recent security alerts. Thanks to Steve for the links

(15.01.10) Friday Fun: Now the snow has almost gone lets start with something which appeared just before Christmas when it was still fresh and inspiring, Simon's Cat. 

Or if you'd prefer a little sun, here's a great gallery of the Paris to Dakar rally (Boston.com gets it galleries just right, no fancy slide shows, nothing to "plug in", just good sized, excellent, pictures).

This is possibly the strangest thing I've ever posted, it's an old bloke miming to Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman but so much more than that. Click here (check the controls in the bottom left) and click here to make your own.

Cameron is coming and you can wave him on his way to power by creating your own version of a Conservative campaign poster here.

Freefall is simple little brain teaser or booster as I think they're called now, just put one colour on top of another to make them disappear. Click here.

(14.01.10) The Haiti earthquake will have moved a lot of you to want to donate but knowing who to donate through is a difficult choice. The Disasters Emergency Committee is a association of the leading UK and international charities which takes donations and distributes it to the most appropriate organisation. They accept all major credit/debit cards and have a phoneline and address for those who don't like using their cc online (they don't take PayPal unfortunately). Click here to donate. 

(08.01.10) Friday Fun: A couple of annual roundups to get us going, starting with the 50 best protest signs of the year (careful with some of the links though). On a slightly higher plain, The New York Times's Year in Pictures is in turn, moving, inspiring and impressive. Nicely presented too.

Klaus Kinski is one of cinema's great, erm, character. Here he is going a bit crazy while being interviewed about going a bit crazy by a man desperate not to drive him crazy.

Worry about losing your camera? Me too - I'm going to try this idea.

Find the Star is a simple and beautiful game from Japan, easy to play but still intriguing, click here.

(05.01.10) (This is really a news item - more just a bit of a moan) Weather - well the lack of it really, what we appear to have for the time being is climate, Scandinavian climate. Accuweather's (enter your postcode) long range forecast predicts much the same for the next 15 days, which doesn't auger well for places that are already trying to catch up with gritting that should have been done before Christmas. The short consequences on Mull at least have been dramatic, numerous car accidents - including gritting lorries, have resulted in many injuries, not least to doctors and posties. Long term things could get very expensive for the council, tarmac is splitting as a result of the freeze/melt cycle and culverts old and new are collapsing. In the meantime, I came across an interesting project tracking the weather via twitter called #uksnow. Zoom into an area and then click to see people's comments and photographs. Not that many from the west so far but I wonder where the one from the Ross of Mull was taken.  

(01.01.10) Happy New Year everyone - it looks like computer code written like that doesn't it? For the few of you checking in today (thanks for all the emails btw) here are a few bits and pieces to celebrate the new decade (ok, I know it isn't technically the new decade but still...).

The News at Bedtime arrived in the last week of the year and it immediately became one my favourite BBC comedies. A pitch perfect spoof of Radio 4's Today programme, it turns the world of nursery rhymes and stories into hard hitting news brought to you grumpily by Jim Tweedledee and John Tweedledum, click here for the last five episodes.

I wish I'd seen this Bill Clinton corkscrew before Christmas, it's the perfect companion to the Hilary Clinton nutcrackers.

Next year I hope I get one of these, I won't get one but I can always hope - it's only £4000 afterall.

Of course a screen like that would need specialist cleaning, fortunately I've got the very thing.

Click here for the Guardian newspaper's year in review with the main headline of the day as a clickable thumbnail.

As this week is a bit special, I think we deserve more than just one YouTube videos, we deserve 20 and they should be playable at the same time so they produce a huge YouTube musical extravagancer. Click here.