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December

(24.12.07) Well, Happy Christmas everybody and may all your parcels arrive in time!

Track Santa! NORAD is again tracking Santa and you can follow his progress by clicking here.

And because

there's

a lot of space

down the side

of the card

an entirely

gratuitous game.

Click here.


(21.12.07) Google Ad-Words, those highlighted, underlined words that appear in website articles that, when hovered over, display a pop-up and link to another site, are being hi-jacked and used to redirect people to malicious websites. Google say they are tackling the issue but don't appear to have found a complete solution yet, so be careful if you click on one of them and make sure the website you're taken to is what it says it is. Read more here. 

Friday Fun: The latest version of Google Earth (click here to get it) not only incorporates Google Sky but has it's own flight simulator! Simply click Ctrl and A at the same time and a dialogue box will appear with options for plane type and starting point, then you'll find yourself on an airfield ready to take off. Once in the air, the plane is controlled with the arrow keys, which I found really difficult but fun none the less. Click here for a preview. Thanks to Charles for the tip and to sgegreen who mentioned it on the Software Update page last week!

Snow Day is a pointless game that just involves kicking a piece of paper into the air to make it snow but the music is really lovely, especially once the game has finished and it's not being spoilt by the effects. It just loops seamlessly and remind me a bit of Erik Satie, click here.

Click here for the latest in medical slang and know your Hasselhoff from your Father Jack.

Lastly and just for Radio 4 PM listeners, here's a map of your fellow listeners.

(19.12.07) Lots of problems to report today I'm afraid but it's that time of year, Christmas seems to be the time that hackers etc. see an opportunity to exploit increased activity. Let's start with something that is nothing to do with them.

Last Tuesday's Microsoft update for Internet Explorer is causing problems for many people, they're finding it impossible to connect to the Internet via Internet Explorer. The problem has been reported on numerous message board and Microsoft are taking it "very seriously" and are "looking into it." Read more here.

Google Toolbar is open to spoofing due to the way it allows users to add new buttons of their own. It doesn't check them adequately apparently and this allows malicious websites to add their own buttons. Click here for more.

1 in 5 computers are infected by rootkits, they're really sneaky hacking programs that are really hard to detect and allow hackers to take control of computers without the user noticing. That's according to a security company, so you have to wonder if it's true but it's been widely reported in the computer press, so yes, we should take it seriously.  What's more you can check your own computer for infection but be sure to uncheck the option to check your computer daily. Click here for more.

(17.12.07) Tomorrow is the last day that Amazon guarantees delivery before Christmas unless you choose one of the premium delivery methods, which aren't really an option for the islands anyway. If you miss out and are desperate, why not by an Amazon voucher, which can be sent by email, instead?

I had a bit of a scare updating my computer via Microsoft Update today. I have a D-Link ADSL modem, popular with many ISPs and there was an optional update in the hardware list, which while installing first lost my connection and then crashed my computer. Happily after the automatic restart everything was well but it was a bit worrying at the time, so be warned.

The BBC have redesigned their homepage and you can get a preview of what is to come by clicking here. It's still in testing mode, so don't use the "Reset homepage" option or try to customise it. I think it's rather nice, I like the retro clock and having items of interest, such of the weather and main news stories, right up front. The current homepage is here.

(15.12.07) Big changes are coming to the forum and I think you're going to like them! We're moving over to a more interactive service that will allow us to do things like create photo albums to share andmake it much easier to insert pictures into posts. Chat facilities will be added, creating signatures will be easier (and we'll be able to have up to five), there'll be avatars (virtual representations of ourselves) and private messaging. Our profile pages will be more expressive if we want them to and we'll be able to send private messages to other members via a sort of internal email service. At least that's what's promised and I'm very hopeful that it will all work because it's been on offer for about six months but I thought I'd wait until all the glitches had been ironed out before taking the plunge. The change will happen over the next week to ten days, you can get some idea of what will be on offer by lookingat the help pages here. Don't worry, your old login and other details will be preserved.

(14.12.07) The release of Vista SP1 doesn't sound the most exciting piece of news, it's not even the real thing, it's just a release candidate but - BUT! - it means that XP Service Pack 3 is closer to our hard drives than previously thought. It's commonly thought that Microsoft won't release XP SP3 before Vista XP1 and so it's availability is very good news. I wonder if Vista will come to look like Windows Millenium, which was much hyped, useless, hardly anyone bought and is now the relative that everyone tries to ignore at Christmas (and the rest of the year). Read more here. 

Friday Fun: Not much fun but The Scotsman has relaunched it's website, click here (I preferred the old one but the new has videos, so it must be better).

Best tribute to Robert de Niro since Bananarama's here.

A game, time for a game and it's another from Nitrome, I think I like their graphics - that and they're easy. Snow Drift is a slidy platform game that pits your wits against nothing whatsoever, click here for mindless fun!

And last and defintely least, this offer from an ebay alert of what "my favourite sellers" have to offer.

Flickr (that's a link btw) have introduced free photo editing to the services available to members. All you have to do is click a link above one of your images and you get a basic set of image commands such as contrast, exposure, saturation and treatments like monochrome, sepia etc, well, pretty much what Picasa offers actually. If you're not addicted to Flickr, you can feel the thrill by going to the picnik website here and uploading a picture. Like Flickr, it makes it's money by offering advanced features for $25 but worth having a go at the free stuff.

(13.12.07) Broadband Reach is an initiative by the Scottish Executive that could bring broadband to the areas who were to far from an exchange to benefit from previous schemes. Unlike previous schemes there is no minimum number of people and can benefit individuals, so if you know someone who is just out of reach, it would be worth letting them know. Interest must be registered by January 18th, 2008, click here to do so and click here to read more news on the project. This has story has also been pinned to the top of the Broadband News page.

(12.12.07) What's been the most successful games console of 2007? The Nintendo Wii? Not by a long way. Out selling by 2:1 is it's stable mate, the Nintendo DS, that little dual screen handheld with games like Brain Trainer. People seem to absolutely love it, there's a huge variety of games and activites for all ages and it's far cheaper than the Wii. Best of all there's lots of them available (£100 on ebay), so if you're looking for a present, it might be worth considering. Read more here.

(11.12.07) Gmail account holders, particularly new ones, are finding that their accounts are being suspended following a campaign to weed out spammers. Usually the problem can be resolved via the Gmail Help Centre but it may take sometime. The possibility of this happening is very worrying for people like me who filter all our mail through the system but I can see the need for action against spammers because the amount coming from Gmail accunts increases everyday. Ironically, it could be fellow users who are partly to blame because they make reporting spam so simple, you just have to click a button. Read more here.

Channel 5's "The Gadget Show" has joined the campaign to make ISPs advertise real speeds rather than using the weasel words like "up to 8mbs." On their website there's a simple test and form to fill in and once they've got a big enough, they'll take their finding to OfCom, the industry and Government. Click here to test your speed, it only takes a moment and there's nothing to download.

(09.12.07) PayPal has revamped it's website, so if you follow a link from, say, ebay, and it looks unusual don't be surprised. On the other hand, beware of email hoaxers taking advantage of the change. The proper website looks like this (paypal.com) and this (paypal uk), note the padlock at the end of the address and/or, depending on which browser you use, at the bottom of the browser when you click on the login button. Personally I think, givene problems they have with fake sites, it would be a good idea if the sites looked identical.

(07.12.07) Christmas Shopping and the Nintendo Wii: It's hard to believe that for the second year running the Wii is the must have present in short supply but it is, there is a genuine shortage and they're hard to come by. It's estimated that it makes up 40% of all games consoles sold in the last ten years and they would have built an entire new factory at the outset to meet demand. They are still available though if you're quick, this morning I had an email from an online seller with them in stock at normal retail price but by the time I came home they'd sold out, so keep an eye on the big online stores. They can also be found on ebay at slightly inflated prices but be careful of the sellers with low positive feedback scores, their will be people taking advantage of the season to rip people off.

If you're looking for something else, the next few days are probably the last you can guarantee pre-Christmas delivery and there are some real bargains out there. Happy shopping!

Friday Fun: Fans of the Science News page may enjoy this list of product safety warnings.

Microsoft's Robosanta seems to have been hacked.

Speaking off robots, this roboviolinist is note perfect.

Tipping Point is an unusual point and click puzzle that is quick to play but intriguing none the less, only the very last puzzle has the kind of frustration common in p&p games. Click here to give it a go (may take time to load on dialup but not that long).

(05.12.07) Hot on the heels of the last one, another update from Firefox is out. It's quite important because of new security vulnerability, for details see the Software Updates page (link at the top of Anorak News). As usual it will download automatically but if it hasn't already, you might want to check for yourself (link of Software Updates).

(02.12.07) XP SP3: Seems hard to remember now but our XP computers didn't really work properly until the release of XP Service Pack 2 back in 2004. Since then there have been a series of security issues and bug fixes but by and large the operating system has run pretty well (in my opinion), so the prospect of Service Pack 3 hasn't seemed that much to look forward. However, tests on the beta version have found that systems run around 10% faster, which implies that they're running much more efficiently and therefore will less prone to crashes and program freezes. Not only that but they run far far faster than Vista does on exactly the same machine. Read more here. XP SP3 is due out in the first half of next year, which probably means September.

November

(30.11.07) Friday Fun: Check out this art installation that makes it appear that a crowd of people are standing around underwater. It's very simply done but so effective that even those under feel the need to check the surface. (Also click the "Chris Angel walks on water at the bottom of the page, it's just a magic trick but effective none the less.)

Ever get fed up with other people's mobile phone conversations? The get one of these phone jammers.

Thin Ice is a silly game based on the classic Bomb Boy, all you have to do is skate around to cut holes in the ice and drown the monsters. Quick loading and fun, click here.  

(28.11.07) Craignure is to be upgraded to full ADSL in early 2008! One of the more surprising victims of Exchange Activate scheme, it's always been a bit of a mystery why a place with so many businesses and only a microwave signal away from Oban was given it in the first place, it hardly fitted the standard excuse that it was to expensive to implement a full upgrade. Now people on Lismore are wondering how it will effect them, I guess it depends on whether they connect through Craignure or have their own connection to Oban. A list of all the exchanges due for upgrade can be found here. Thanks again to Steve for the tip.


(27.11.07) A Firefox update has been released, version 2.0.0.10, fixing three security issues. It will download automatically sometime over the next few days but if you want to get it straight away, click on "Help" at the top of the browser and then on "Check for Updates." It's a 475kb file so shouldn't take to long even on dialup.


(25.11.07) 21st century network upgrade dates announced! The dates our exchanges will become part of BT's 21st century network have been announced and most are way ahead of the 2012 deadline. In brief, very brief, the network is a complete overall BT's infrastructure and systems from it's main hubs right out to the smallest exchanges and in some places, the "green box" in the street. In theory it will make all exchanges capable of providing 24mb downloads and 2.4 uploads, making things like full screen TV over the Internet a real option. Whether or not an individual household will get these kinds of speeds will still depend on line quality and distance from the exchange though. Here are the dates:

Exchange Quarter     Year         
Lismore 3 2008
Balvicar 3 2009
Craignure 3 2009
Dervaig 3 2009
Kinlochspelve 3 2009
Ulva Ferry 3 2009
Aros 4 2009
Fionnphort 4 2009
Luing 4 2009
Pennyghael 4 2009
Scarinish 4 2009
Tiroran 4 2009
Tobermory 4 2009
Oban 1 2011
Colonsay 2 2011

I've included Oban partly because we have a lot of readers there but also because it's later than most of the other exchanges. Which raises an interesting question. At the moment all the others connect through it, so does this mean that the infrastructure will be in place but the speeds won't actually be available until the work in Oban is done? Thanks to Steve for alerting me to these announcements.


(23.11.07) The Bangladesh Cyclone has got a bit lost in a week with so much domestic news but it's a real emergency that needs urgent help. The simplest way to give is to go to the Disasters Emergency Committee, an alliance of leading charities, website and donate online. Click here to do so.

Friday Fun: The Stop-IDFraud website isn't usually a barrel of laughs but guess what "week" this HMRC sponsored is promoting at the moment? Wonder if includes any advise about the handling and transportation of data...click here. 

Railz is a wonderful logic game which is simple and surprisingly addictive. All you have to do is create loops of railway track from the tiles provided, sounds easy but teases the brain, click here.

Annika's Odyssey is a Samorost style game in which our hero has to progress through a landscape by solving point and click puzzles, in this case to rescue a toy rabbit. At 3.5mb it takes a while to load but it's charming and worth the effort (I think, Ihaven't actually managed to finish it yet), click here.

I heard a learned professor talking about the effect of music on the brain and pondering on whether animals had a sense of rythm on the radion yesterday. If only he'd gone to YouTube and watched this dancing cockatoo, all his questions would have been answered.

(22.11.07) The curse of Exchange Activate (EA) has struck again on Lismore - a new customer has been told by BT that there aren't any broadband connections available and been advised to try again in a month. As you will recall, EA is the reduced form of broadband installed in the small exchanges considered to small and uneconomic to convert to a full broadband service. The effected exchanges only offer 512kb connection speed (even when they are capable of more) and very limited choice of ISP (a totally unnecessary legacy from the early days of EA).

Now, this is a little technical but bare with me. EA installs mini Dslam units (the equipment needed to enable a broadband connection) each of which has 30 connections, Lismore has two units and a maximum of 60 connections.

Does Lismore have 60 broadband customers? No - so where have the lines gone? The answer is in how the lines are allocated under the EA system. Each ISP is allocated a block of five connections and when they sign up a sixth customer they're allocated another block of five lines. So there could be several spare connections at the exchange, it's just that there aren't anymore blocks of five available. So Disappointed of Lismore needn't wait for someone to give up their BT line, they probably just need to apply to one of the other ISPs.

They may still be somewhat disappointed to discover that they don't have the choice of services and price deals they expected though. The problem of choice, already poor on EAs, as each provider uses up it's last block, until eventually someone is left with a choice of one, presumably offering the least popular service.

(21.11.07) Although there is no evidence that the discs lost by government have fallen into the wrong hands, the potential risk is a timely reminder that we should all be careful with our data security and the passwords that access it. When it comes to passwords, any that are used to access financial accounts should not be based on a real word or easily acquired information such as relatives name or birth date, that is exactly the kind of thing that could be gleaned from the lost discs.

Ideally your bank password should be made up of at least six random numbers and letters and the same applies to your Amazon, PayPal and similar accounts, they're harder to remember but very difficult to crack. The same goes for the "security question" or "password reminder" you have to give on some websites, don't pick something like your mother's maiden name which is very easy to find out. Instead use another set of random numbers and letters, it won't make any difference to the computer but again it will be harder to crack. You can store difficult to remember passwords and answers on your computer in a password protected Word document by clicking on "Tools" at the top of Word and then on "Protect document."

The crisis (or is it a "fiasco"?) will undoubtedly inspire a new wave of email scams purporting to come from a bank and asking for you to confirm or change your login and account details, don't be taken in!

(20.11.07) The Scottish Islands Federation, an organisation born from the Scottish Islands Network which used to send out those great newsletters, held it's first conference on Mull last week. Sadly Lisa Stephens, who was the driving force behind it no longer seems to be a part of the organisation but it's aims appear to be much the same, to represent the common interests of islanders, bridge the artificial divisions created by local autorities and to make common cause with islands across the EU. Visit their website here and read abut the conference here.

(16.11.07) Before you finally make up your mind on the iPhone you might like to read this handy guide that compares it with two its main rivals.

Friday Fun: Let's start with a fun web application from MiniClip called Putty Face. You load up a picture from your computer or find a suitable protrait on the web and paste in the link, then distort the face to your heart's content. Very quick on broadband, so it's probably suitable for dialup too, click here.

Excite is spreadsheet game that actually takes place on a spreadsheet. It's one of those puzzles where you use the arrow keys to move a marker to the exit by negotiating a maze of blocks. Easy at first but soon gets difficult. Click here.

Quick Time Virtual Reality is a display space for photographers specialising in panoramas and has some wonderful 360 degree vistas of interesting and beautiful places, as well as tutorials for beginners. Will probably take a while to load the images on dialup though. Click here.

(14.11.07) BT Vault, their online backup service which was announced with some fanfare earlier this year, is off-line due to maintenance going on for longer than expected. Given that a lot of people are using the system to regularly backup documents on a daily basis, there will much frustration followed by even more when it starts to work again and they all try to access it at the same time. Read more here.

(13.11.07) Marvel Comics has launched an online archive of it's comics. I was pondering whether to mention this until I discovered that it was so popular that the site appears to have crashed under the demand, so I thought you might be interested to. Subscription is a very reasonable $4.99 per month, for which you get full access to the 2500 titles already onling and the 250 that will added each month. You'll be able to search by edition, title, super hero and artist, and everything has been remastered for digital download. Click here and eventually you might get through.

Sgegreen informs me of an odd twist to the system clock story, the original servers still work if you use Vista. It's almost as if Microsoft was shutting down core services to XP.

(12.11.07) The system clock that sits in the bottom right hand corner is one of those things that we all just take for granted and just assume that it's correct but it may not be. Some time this year the website it uses to check the time stopped working for the UK and so it may not be set to exactly right time anymore, something that can be quite crucial if you're a last minute ebay bidder for example. Thankfully there's a solution and sgegreen, who alerted me to the problem in the first place, has written a brief guide to how to get it working again. It's very simple to follow and will get your clock working again in no time. Click here.

(09.11.07) The iPhone is finally launching in the UK and people have been camping out in the hope of being head of the queue when it's finally released. It a tribute to marketing and the hold that Apple has over some types of hardware because like the iPod, it's far from being the best of its type. For instance, it only works with one phone company unless you hack it, it can't send photos but can't take photos and other phones have had touch screen interfaces and full internet access for some time. On the other hand, it is a very high spec iPod with added phone and internet facilities and viewied from that point of view, is quite good. Read more here.

Friday Fun: Let's start with a racing game, I love racing games. Crazy Karts is new take on a familiar racing template with great 3D graphics, a series of "lands" to progress through and simple controls. It's easy to get started and hard to finish, click here to start!

lolinator is a, erm, application that rewrites websites so they're absurd, or more absurd in the case of something like Conservapedia. Click here and enter your website of choice.

One of the few things I miss living on an island is squirrels. Why? Because of stuff like this.

And finally, now that you've had time to think about it, here's the Guardian Archive and it's free 24 hour pass.

(06.11.07) Weather, as I'm sure you've noticed, there's a lot of it about these days, so geting an accurate forecast is really important. Firefox users have long had ForecastFox available to them, it runs at the bottom of the browser, letting you know the current situation, what's going to happen tomorrow and even has a pop up radar picture. Now it and much more, is available for Internet Explorer and Opera too. What's good about the system is that it works just as well on a dialup connection because once the small program is installed it only needs a small file to be downloaded every so often. In addition to the browser forecast there's a very nice desktop weather station available and the best thing about all these things is that they are truly local, for example, Mull is divided into three regions, each with it's own forecast. Click here to get them.

(05.11.07) The Guardian Newspaper has launched an online archive of the entire library of it and the Observer, all searchable and with pages devided up into stories and adverts. They do charge though and it's not cheap, a months access costs £50, one day, £8. There's a 50% discount til the end of the month and a free 24 hr pass available, so think about what you want to look up and I'll post this link again on Friday (link works best in Internet Explorer).

Meanwhile, pop elf Kylie Minogue has launched her own social networking site, allowing fans to get together in the same way as people do on facebook etc. She'll "drop by from time to time" apparently. So, if you want your five year old daughter to have the chance to make friends with a forty something gay man, click here.

(03.11.07) New Guide - Error Codes: I've made up a list of the commonest error codes generated when you're disconnected from or fail to connect to, the Internet using broadband. It's by no means exhaustive, there are literally hundreds of codes but they are the ones you are most likely to encounter. As well a specific information on each code, there's a list of the things you should always check beofre you phone your ISP. Click here to read it and it might be worth saving a copy, afterall, when you need it, you're not going to able to connect to the Internet and read it online are you?! It's still in "beta" stage, so if you spot any problems or know of another code that should be covered, email me.

(02.11.07) Firefox 2.0.0.9 has been released and as usual it should arrive automatically in the next few days, you'll just notice the browser running a little slowly and then a message will pop-up asking you if you want to restart to complete the installation process. If this hasn't happened yet and you want to get the the update immediately, click here. N.B. I keep installing the English version of the spellcheck dictionary and it still keeps trying make me spell in Americaneze!

For the second time this year I've been unable to connect to the Internet due to "error 721." It seems churlish to complain, broadband is so reliable comparred to the old dialup connections but when it happens it's really annoying. Error 721 is one of the most common errors and it's either due to problems with your ISP or your connection but there are lots of these codes and I think it's time I wrote a guide to them, not least for me because I'm fed up with looking them up.

Friday Fun: Just two today but they're really good. First is possibly the best advert I've ever seen on the net, from a French online TV company. It takes a while to load and stutters a bit, so you think it's stopped when it hasn't, so let run for a while. Click here.

3D Tetris is exactly what it says on the tin, a 3D version of the classic packing game. Viewed from top down you can rotate the pieces in any direction while you attempt to fit them into the blocks below and it works far better than you'd expect. Click here.

October

(31.10.07) When I was a lad we'd never heard of Halloween, this time of year was dedicated to waiting for bonfire night, making Guys and blagging fireworks but now it seems all over the place, personally I blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you've ever wondered what it's all about, you can find out here and if you fancy scarring yourself silly try playing Exmortis and if you can stand it, Exmortis 2 but be warned, when I say scarred, I mean terrified. I should have called this Fun Week as there isn't much real news around, tomorrow I'm doing something on butterflies.

(30.10.07) BBC News Online is ten years old and it's hard to imagine life without it now, well for me at last. The BBC websites are a bit like the Government's, a vast, sprawling mess, some of which is great and some frankly awful. BBC News though has always known what it was about and has become more accessible as the years has gone by. They aren't doing much to celebrate, there's a rather sorry gallery of pictures today but the important is there, the news. Click here.

Google Books has been upgraded since I last looked. It's search service that allows you to search for books, often entire books, available online. You can search for a quote or subject matter and turn up tons of results and reading them is easier than you'd imagine, even on dialup. The main page now displays a number of works in various catergories, interesting, classic, highly cited and just random, which changes each time you load it. Check out a book here.

(28.10.07) A digital version of the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci has been put online and it's a whopping 16 billion pixels. Fortunately it doesn't load all at the same time, instead you're presented with relatively small version of the picture which you can then zoom in on, in and in and in, well, you get the idea. The detail is astonishing, similar to looking at the real life image with a magnifying glass, with every crack and flake visible. Click here to see for yourself.

(26.10.07) Nothing to do with computing but of Mull is talking about the impending changes to mail deliveries. In future, rather than the post arriving in Craignure, being sorted and sent onto the offices, it will arrive later and be sorted at Torosay by the postmen and women. This has many knock on effects making it harder to get such things as groceries and newspapers delivered. According to the Royal Mail it's due to EU regulations that have cut the top speed of delivery lorries, which means it will arrive later in Oban. However, as they have only cut it from 60 to 56 mph, which would only add about six and half minutes to the journey time from Glasgow, this appears to nonsense. According to the PO workers union, it's part of a move to cut working hours and change start time. Read more in an oldish story from the Scotsman here.

Friday Fun: FF goes artistic this week, starting with a clever interactive website that explains the basics of photography. It's really aimed at the SLR user but the lessons can be applied to digital too and will help you understand some of the more advanced functions of your camera. Click here for Virtual Camera.

The Wooster Collective is a New York based blog that celebrates street art from around world. There's a lot of graffiti but a lot more besides. Click here.

The Secrets of Digital Photography is a podcast (downloadable radio programme) that discusses the finer points of, well, digital photography. It's just concluded the third part of it's series on selling, something a lot of us would like to figure out how to do. Click here to download.

(24.10.07) Gmail has introduced a new feature that sounds almost to good to be true. Called IMAP, it synchonises your Gmail webmail with all the other accounts you run through it and all the devices that share them. In other words, if you read something in Gmail and then run send and recieve on your desktop email program, that something will arrive marked as read. And it works the other way round too, read something on Outlook Express for instance, go to Gmail and it will be marked as read. It sort of behaves like a hub, so if you access email on the web, on your desktop and your mobile phone, they will all be marked in the same way, meaning that you don't have to resort everything on each device. Best of all it appears to be just a matter of clicking a link in Gmail and turning it on! Read more here and if you're unfamilier with the joys of Gmail read more here.

(22.10.07) The iPlayer problem I reported sometime ago has been solved, not by a BBC technician but by a poster on their message board. The problem you will recall was that a lot of people were finding it impossible to loggin to the beta program and download the player and the solution is surprisingly simple as long as you're able to navigate through the program files on your computer. Here's what you do (> = click on):

Click on Start > My Computer > Drive C > Windows > System32 > Macromed > Flash, then double click on FlashUtil9d.exe. It will check to see if you need any updates and the program is installed properly, just follow the instructions if need be.

Once that's done, go back to the iPlayer site (here) and follow the instructions here. Basically once you're logged in, you choose a programme to download and you'll be prompted to install the player.

So what's the experience like? Well it works OK but it takes ages. A half hour programme is a 300mb download, it does produce a very good picture but I can't help feeling that it could be compressed more. Also, iPlayer is a "peer 2 peer" system, meaning that they want people to allow it to be redownloaded from their computer once they've downloaded it for themselves. This means that iPlayer is set to start when you start your computer and people can be using up your bandwidth whenever you are online. I'm not sure how much this slows your connection but felt my connection was suffering and I turned of both options via the preferences menu. It's definitely worth having for those programmes you missed but really want to see.

(20.10.07) Opera is getting slightly lost in the shadows of giants Firefox and Internet Explorer but it's still worth thinking about it. It doesn't have the "customisability" of Firefox, Greasemonkey doesn't work with it for a start but it does have some nice little extras called "widgets" and there's tabbed browsing, a search bar and the ability to import favourites from other browsers, which are probably the most important things. It's great strength is speed, it's noticably faster than Firefox and I.E. and many pages seem to open instantly. So if you want a straight forward and very fast browser click here to download the new version, it's only 5.5mb and completely free.

(19.10.07) Firefox has launched the latest version of it's browser, 2.0.0.8, which includes various security fixes. It should download automatically without you doing anything but with more and more people using it, automatic updates are taking longer and longer to come through. So, if you want to get now, go to the Anorak News page and follow the link to the Software Updates page at the top.

If you do, when you restart Firefox, you'll get the added bonus of adding a British English dictionary that will mean you won't keep getting prompted to use US English when you post on message boards, Flickr, etc. Also, there's an Ebay version of Firefox, which I haven't tried yet but will do so over the weekend and let you know the results.

Friday Fun: Let's start with something simple, a spot the difference game. Sounds a bit boring but it's not. Each pair of images is animated, beautifully rendered and some of the differences are really hard to spot. Good news is that there are only 12 levels, otherwise you might keep playing for ever. Click here.

Are you predominantly left or right brained? Does the question even make sense? I don't know and to be honest I don't really get this little test. People are supposed to see the image revolving one way or the other but I can't imagine how it's possible to see it revolving any differently to the way I do. But I've shown it to others and some of the do! How is it possible?! Confuse yourself here. 

Game Give Away of the Day is the sister site of the software site I mentioned earlier this week and every day it give away a different game. Now, I'm slightly suspicious of this and suspect they're time limited demos or something but the person who sent me the link (thanks RB), assures me they're not. Even if they are, at worst you'll just have to uninstall them after a while. Click here to see for yourself, today they're giving away "Jets'n'Guns' which is probably just like it sounds but there'll be different one tomorrow that may be more to your taste.

(16.10.07) iPlayer is to be made available to computer users following a ruling by the corporations regulator, the BBC Trust. Which is great news for our Mac and Linux user readership )of which we have a suprising number), although not much help for those of us who should already be able to use it but can't. Read more here. Incidentaly, I'm investigating a new fix for the login problem.

(15.10.07) Free Stuff: This is almost a Friday Fun item but it's too good to wait til then. Giveaway of the Day does just what it says on tin, as they say. Every day it has new computer program available as a free download, today for instance it has Asterix Password Viewer, a utility that will retrieve those passwords you've been using for so long that you've forgotten them. How does it pay for itself? Simple phsychology, you'll look at today's offering and you'll not be able to stop yourself from checking out yesterday's and the day's before, which now cost money. See for yourself here.

(12.10.07) Friday Fun The first one one I have for you this week is actually quite useful and could be a boon if you get fed up with long Google searches. The Good Web Guide is advertising funded, so it's neither entirely unbiased nor really comprehensive but it's still quite good. Click here for their main gardening page, it's as good a place as any.

Roll on, on the other hand, is just pointless fun. It's a version of the classic rolling ball game in which you tilt the track using your arrow keys in order to guide a ball to it's destination. The difference is that it is really beautifully rendered, with the tracks floating in highly detailed domestic environment, making it a pleasure to actually fall off. Click here to get tilting. 

The Cloud Appreciation Society is just that, a society devoted to enjoying clouds and they've just published a very well received book. Happily they've also got website which has all the photos in the book and you can visit it here. Check out the "clouds that look like something" section. 

(10.10.07) I'm still astonished by how much the Internet has changed our lives, how much is available at just a few clicks. Not so long ago, what? Five years? We'd have had to rely on sensationalist reports in the tabloids, dry analysis in the breoadsheets and brief clips on the TV, to keep up with something like the inquest of Princess Diana. Now everything presented to the court is available to us online, and I do mean everything, to the point of tedium. You can see all the CCTV footage from the hotel, see clips taken on tourist phones and much more. And it's not from some conspiracy theory site, it's all official. See for yourself here.

(09.10.07) BT Home Hub is vulnerable to a simple hack that bypasses admin passwords and enables the hacker to take control of it on a very basic level, eavesdropping on conversations or redirecting people to websites. It effects all versions of the hub, even those with the latest firmware (program that runs the device). As yet there has been no response from BT and it should be noted that this is a theoretical security risk, there aren't any reports of it's exploitation yet but it's so simple that it's bound to happen soon. Until it is addressed you should ensure that you're using the latest version of your browser, preferably Firefox, which will warn you of dodgy Google links, your antivirus and firewall is up to date and you are careful with links that arrive in email or are found on message boards. Read more here and, if the link within the article doesn't work here. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(05.10.07) Nigerian scams, you know the ones, they arrive in your inbox offering you inheritances from relatives you never knew you had or asking for help moving funds out of a country, how much do you think they and similar scams take out of the UK every year? Go on - have a guess. 3 million? 30 million? 300 million? No, not even close. It's estimated that these schemes take up £3 billion out of the economy evey year and there are people who fall for them not once but several times. It seems unbelievable but it's true.

And they've expanded from the poorly worded email into more sophisticated scams, such as classics like sending cheques for auction items which appear to be over payments and then requesting the over payment to be reimbursed. It seems amazing that so many people are falling for what seem transparent frauds but they do. Isn't time that computers, especially those aimed at the first time buyer, came with guides to potential frauds, afterall, they come with anti-virus software? Read more here.

Friday Fun: Jay's Games is one of my favourite game sites and it's running a competition for new game writers at the moment. Today it has long list of entries and some of them are a lot of fun. What's nice is that they're all a bit quirky and none of the ones I've tried take long to load, so they're dial up friendly. Have a go yourself here, my favourite is "The Tall Stump." 

Hotrods takes a bit longer to load, even on a 512k connection but it's worth it if you like racing games. It's a series of hotrod duals along a stretch of highway in which you have weave your way through traffic going in both directions, the graphics are superb for an online game and the sensation of speed compelling. Belt up and go here. 

September

(30.09.07) BBC iPlayer: The iPlayer, no relation to any Apple product, which though expensive, mostly work, became available to the public a couple of months ago but seems beset with problems. Admittedly it is still in it's final testing stage, which would explain the glitches due to conflicts with other programs and why it only works with Internet Explorer but not why many people are having problems just logging in so they can download. It's reminiscent of the BBC weather project which seemed to make relatively simple things complicated and then couldn't really offer support to it's users. So if you're having problems, I wouldn't worry to much, you're not alone and if you're not, count yourself amongst the lucky ones!

(28.09.07) Apple has issued a security update for it's iPhone that "to fix bugs and plug some serious security holes", the most important of which appears to be the ability to hack the phone so it will connect to any phone network. So if you buy one, at £269, you'll be stuck with the O2 network and total bill of £900 for the first 18 months of use. Not that I want to put you off or anything, they are getting great reviews in the IT press afterall. Read more here and here. 

The British Library is putting 100 000 old books online, mainly from the 19th century and out of print for decades. The text will be fully searchable and it's expected to take two years to get the 25 million pages online. Read more here on the BBC, coincidentally the British Library has a story about the BBC here.

Friday Fun: Just one item this week but it's a good one and if you enjoyed ArtPad you'll love it. iSketch is another online drawing/painting program, so it will take time to load if you're on dialup, with similar intuitive controls as ArtPad but with some extra features and more precision. My favourite function is found in the two buttons above the work area which enable you create images reminiscent of the old Spirograph. Have a go yourself here. There's a community and a very brief login process but you only have to enter a username and you can "practice" without having to join any of the groups.

(25.09.07) I've been using, let's call it "testing", it sounds more technical, two programs for about six months and have found them both indispensable and trouble free. One defragments your computer whenever it's not doing anything else, saving the hassle of setting aside time to do it once a week or so and it really works, the other is a suite of four programs that tidy up the registry, get rid of unwanted files, control startup programs and uninstall the unwanted. Read more and download them here.

(24.09.07) Bluetongue is the latest disease to strike our already farmers already struggling to recover from foot and mouth. It effects ruminant animals, cows, sheep and deer, and is carried by the Culicoides imicola midge. It has been widespread in Africa for some time, enterin Europe via Turkey nd Morocco as temperatures increased but there are mysteries in it's spread. For instance, the strain found here is not the same as is found in southern Europe. But whether or not it becomes establised in Britain and how far north it spreads depends on the weather, just as it did to the south. Defra has a useful page here, the BBC has stories here and here, and you can find lots of interesting studies through a Googl search here (look for ".pdf"). I would have linked to the Wiki page on Bluetongue but it has been vandalised. 

(23.09.07) New guide: Optimise Firefox for broadband: It's a little known fact that Firefox is set up for dialup connections but if you have a broadband you can, with a bit of effort, change it so it works better for a faster connection. Find out how here but be sure to follow the instruction to back up the Firefox registry first as this guide is still in testing mode. Information drawn from PC Advisor.

(21.09.07) I've solved my McAfee network problem, approximately 12 hours before their support unit sent me a solution that I'd already tried and found wanting. It's bit complicated but you can read the details here. I still think it's a bargain at £10.90 and if you've got enough experience to create a network in the first place, you've certainly got enough to sort it out.

Friday Fun: I loved this video  of life in Iran, it maybe a bit political for some but it will surprise everyone.

Find yourself lost for something to say when commenting on a Flickr picture or when you've been sent an album of holiday pics? Well try Surreal Compliment generator, everytime you refresh the page it produces a new one! Click here.

I couldn't find a stand out game this week, so instead here's a list of hundreds of them, of every genre there is.

(20.09.07) The latest version of Firefox is out, version 2.0.0.7 and it should have downloaded automatically over the last couple of days. The new version has various security and reliability fixes, so if you haven't received it yet or you are using a really old version (check which version you have by clicking on Help and then "About Firefox") you can download it manually here.

Incidentally; I've solved my McAfee problem and will be posting details tomorrow.

(18.09.07) O2 has won the iPhone UK contract, which means if you buy one and do nothing to it, you'll have to become an O2 customer. However, it didn't take long for hackers to figure out how to hack the phone so you could sign up with however you like, which is just how it should be in my opinion. Read more here and here.

McAfee update: After a 24 hiatus in which no part of the support site was available, McAfee has relaunched it's forum but there's still no reply to my query, so I've emailed a technician directly.  

(17.09.07) The Northern Rock crisis is concerning a lot of people and easily understandable advice is hard to come by. The most reliable and independent website I've ever come across is "Moneysavingexpert", it's run by a financial journalist, it's bread and butter is finding the best credit card and mortgage deals and it's been instrumental in the bank charges campaign. This morning the guy behind it was fielding questions on a BBC phone in and you can find a summary of his advice here. (May not have been updated to take consideration of latest Gov. announcement at time of posting).

The UK's biggest fake drug ring has been busted, bringing to an end the distribution of literally millions of fake drugs, mostly viagra and slimming drugs. All to often they would have been sold through dodgy websites and promoted via spam email. I doubt it will slow down the flood of spam but it will hopefully alert more people to the danger of buying drugs over the Internet and to what exactly is being offered to them via the email. Read more here.

(15.09.07) Nothing's a straight forward as it should be, well, most things computerish aren't anyway and so it's proved with my new version of McAfee. I can't can't get my LAN (local area network) to work properly, which means that the other computer on it can't connect to the Internet, very frustrating! If your computer isn't part of a network this is nothing to worry about and you can upgrade without fear but if it is, you might want to hang on until I work out what the problem is. It might take sometime because I can't find any mention of other people being effected in exactly the same way.

(14.09.07) My new copy of McAfee Internet Security 2007 arrived 48hrs after I ordered it from an eBay shop and after a little phaffing about with updating and restarts is running perfectly. It even has some extra features such as "site advisor" which helps you judge if a website is legit or not. It cost £10.90 inc delivery for the full version with a years worth of updates (not just an upgrade disc), a considerable saving on renewing the old program's subscription or upgrading via the McAfee website at £39.95. You can find the shop here, eBay shops are much like the auctions except they a generally more reliable and offer full consumer protection. Remember I was installing over a previous version of the program, if you are changing from another security provider you will have more work to do.

Friday Fun: Following Scotland's triumph lets take another oppurtunity to feel superior to our French friends, this time in quiz arena, with this poor chap on their version of "who wants to be a millionaire."
Here he is trying to figure which of the following orbit the earth, is the Moon, the Sun, Mars or Venus? I think his wife might know.

Staying with YouTube, click here to watch Robert De Niro give an acting masterclass to Sesame Street's Elmo.

Clix is a "fit shapes into a box" game, looks simple but it's not. Click here to try for yourself, just hold the shapes over the flip and turn buttons to, erm, flip and turn them.

If you fancy something less taxing, try this cute version of the classic game Mah Jong. You my want to turn your speakers off if you find the music a bit hypnotic.

(11.09.07) Some people are still using the original Norton Internet Security (NIS) that came with their NAIDC computer, years after it was first installed. The latest I've seen has renewed itself to September 2008, just as the user had become resigned to changing to AVG. I'm not sure how effective such an old system is but they're still getting antivirus updates and the firewall seems to be working as well as ever.

Other people haven't been so lucky and we're always on the look out for cheap or free alternatives to NIS, especially as the more recent versions of the program have a reputation for slowing systems down. To this end, around this time last year I recommended McAfee Internet Security 8, which was available from 7dayShop (I think it was) for only £8. Now that license is about to run out I've been searching around for resonably priced upgrades and have eventually decided to go for MIS 2007 from an ebay shop for £10. It's OEM, which means you only get the disk but if the shop proves reliable I'll post a link. 

(10.09.07) Apple has launched new versions of the i-Pod shuffle and the main product, now called "touch." The latter gives the familiar i-Pod, which, whatever you think of it, has become an icon of design, a new look, one more akin to a pda than it's forerunner. Gone is the navi circle and the text screen, replaced by a screen that covers most of the player with icons to control the music. It's like the new i-Phone basically. The shuffle has been given some colour is chunkier and less bookmark like. Oh and there's a new Nano too, whatever that is. Read more here and here.

Before you rush out and buy one, you might want to consider this; mp3 players are causing there users to suffer hearing loss. The Royal National Institute for the Deaf has published a study that shows that two thirds of regular users are listening at volumes high enough to cause dammage. Basically, if other people can hear the song, it's too loud and is an idication that the playing at of 85dbs. I wonder if the quality of mp3s, which is pretty poor, is partly to blame and that just like when you get poor radio reception, you turn them up in order to hear the thing you want. Read more here.

(07.09.07) The Balvicar exchange, that serves the Seil-Luing area and numbers with the 01852 prefix, was down for a while today for reason unknown but appears to be up and running again now, read the somewhat uninformative BT page here. Meanwhile the Pipex network will have a 2 hour downtime sometime tonight (probably in the early hours of Saturday morning) for essential maintenance - doesn't explain why my connection hasn't been working for the last 36 hours though! All other local services seem to be working properly.

Friday Fun: Bruce Spingsteen, a popular musical artist, has released the mp3 version of the first single from his new album as a free download and you can get it in all it's compressed glory here, along with videos of other tracks.

In tribute to Michael Jackson, also known as "the beer hunter", who died this week after a lifetime chronicaling the beveridges of the world, here's a website dedicated to the pubs of Newcastle. Warning: Contains language that wouldn't be out of place in Viz and will put you off ever going to the Toon for a pint.

I've been messing about with photo manipulation for years (see here and here) but I've a long way to go before I'll enter the competitions on this website with any degree of confidence, check out the "edible architecture" and "knots" galleries!

Karma is an odd little game that looks simple but isn't. In order to reach enlightenment you have to drag the cursor from the edge, through a lamp, to the center of the screen. Each turn represents a life and you can't release the mouse or cross any of the paths already there. Sometimes it looks impossible but that just means you have to visit the center first and start a new "life." Hint leave as big a space as possible between the lines at the center. Click here.

(04.09.07) The big 5 mobile firms have launched a payment by text system enabling people to buy things of up to £10 in value via their phones. Called PayForIt, it is intended for buying travel, parking and such like, with payments made via the handset being added to the users phone bill. Could be the next big thing - read more here and here. 

(03.09.07) Photography, particularly for the "well equipped", was once a very male domain - witness the endless parade of attractive young women that adorned the cover of photography magazines but no longer. Women buy far more digital cameras than men, by a ratio of almost 2:1 and even in the somewhat geeky (I'm just jealous) DSLR market, where cameras start at about £300, they buy 51% of the cameras. The survey writers think this is because they like to take pictures of babies but if my experience of Flickr is anything to go by, this is far from the truth. There, there is a roughly 50/50 split and women are no more likely to take pictures of children than the men. They do take more pictures of food though. Read slightly less here.  

(01.09.07) Grease Monkey Pt.2: Most of my favourite GM scripts are for Flickr but there are lots for other sites and I'll start with a really wonderful one for another image hosting site, Deviant Art (click on the bold text).

Shoehorn forces those huge images that people load up onto DeviantArt to fit into the browser window and if you really want to see the full size version you can always download it.

Yahoo groups ad-skipper cuts out the ads that appear as you move from page to page in Yahoo groups, which can't be bad.

BBC radio player buttons adds extra skip buttons to the radio player for skipping forwards and back, the radio 5 player already has them and they're very useful if you're looking for a short item in a long programme.

Ebay hacks is a selection of ebay customisations, my favourite is "show only negative feedback", which is the one I'm usually looking for with sellers I haven't used before.

And now some Flickr hacks ("customisations" would be a better word)

FlickrPM adds a set of icons next to user icon that let you access most of the things that you get when you click on it's little down arrow. The best ones are the email, which opens the send message page in a little pop-up and a fantastic thing that displays about 50 of their pictures in small icons, really good if you're looking for something to comment on.

Background colour picker isn't the best name for this, it only allows you to pick shades between black and white but that works well enough, letting you blank out everything but the picture with whatever shade you like.

Photopage Enhancer adds direct links to all sizes of the picture and to the codes for small, thumbnail and square amongst other things.

Group Organiser is a great help once you've joined a lot of them. You can add tags to group and then display your group page with the tagged groups all together, show the most recent images and mcuh more.

August

(31.08.07) Friday Fun: I was going to start with a story from Tibet about the Chinese passing a law banning Lamas from reincarnating without permission but when you think about it, it isn't that funny, so instead I'm going to start with one that is, especially if you're aware of the Ninja vs Pirate web wars (google if not). It seems that a single forum user from who knows where has upset the esteemed and venerable Shaolin Temple, famed for it's role in the Kung Fu TV series, by claiming that a Ninja visited it and defeated all the best fighters. They're not happy, read more here. 

Who hasn't fancied being turned into a Simpsons character and wandering the streets of Springfield? Well, probably most of you but seeing what you would look like as one is fun and you can have yourself "Simponised" here.

Art forms I'd never heard of #342 - Egg Carving. Not complicated, you take an egg, empty it and then carve the shell. Without breaking it. Click here for some fine examples (translation of page in French)

Can't have a Friday without some games, so here is a whole site of them. All are "brain training", testing memory, deduction and eye/mouse co-ordination, type games and are pretty straight forward to get started with. Click here.

Grease Monkey is an extension for Firefox that enables you to install scripts (small programs) that change the way websites work. It can really make some websites work so much better, particularly those whose make their code public, such as Flickr. First you need to be using Firefox, if you're not, get it here. Then you need to install Grease Monkey, get it here. Tomorrow I'll post some examples of what it can let you do.

(29.08.07) AVG seems to be causing some concern amongst users because of the number of updates that keep appearing. As reported last week there has been a new version of the program released which people will have downloaded automatically which may require you to enable an AVG permission in the Zone Alarm firewall if you use it and more to the point there have been several updates recently. They seem to be coming in batches, three or four on one day, then a break of a few days and then another batch (see Nortons list of updates here). There isn't anything to worry about unless you are having problems, in which case you might find the threads here and here helpful. Not being able to download email while the program updates is normal behaviour and is protecting you from viruses that it might not have the definition for. 

(28.08.07) Microsoft is advising customers who bought their Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel not to connect it to the mains and to be very careful when using them on batteries following 50 reports of smoke appearing from them. It is also offering to replace them free of charge. Read more here.

AllofMP3 is to relaunch after an appeal to a higher court found that it had been operating within Russian law. The site was closed following pressure from western record companies who objected to it selling music at very low prices and only offering them very small sums in royalties. Read more here.

(26.08.07) DABS, the online technology store, has a free delivery on orders over £100 inc. vat until tomorrow midnight. There is a surcharge for the islands but it's only £4, so if you've been thinking of buying something a bit heavy, this could save you a few quid. I've always found DABS a reliable company to deal with and their prices are pretty good to begin with. See if there's anything you fancy here. Thanks to forum member Dazedandconfused for the tip, who suggests that this laptopmight be worth looking at.. 

(25.08.07) Belkin Cubes. This is another call to check yours because I've seen two this week that were still in use after the surge protection had been blown. Don't be fooled into thinking your's is working because you can still connect to the Internet and the orange light is still glowing, that's just the earth protector and both lights, the orange and the green have to be fully lit for the thing to be working. They are very cheap to replace, several local stores sell them and it's lot better to get one now rather than pay for an engineer to fix your computer or replace your modem!

(24.08.07) Friday Fun: Lets start with the new version of Google Earth (click here

Friday Fun: To celebrate the arrival of the peacock butterflies, something I always look forward to, here's a picture I took of one yesterday. The amazing thing about them is, apart from the way they seem willing to pose for the camera, is how sharp they look without anything being done to the picture. Click on the image for it's Flickr page.

Remember that game you used to play at Fares which involved moving a ring along a bendy piece of wire, well now you can play it online! Click here to try your luck. You can't win a teddy though.

Did you see story about the commuting bunny this week? It got into the habit of climbing into car engines and hitching a lift until someone eventually scarred it off. If you did, click here.

We're all familiar with Hot or Not and the "Rate my body part" type website, now get ready for the real thing, just how cute is your kitten? It's just an excuse to look a kittens really, I should be ashamed. Click here.

(04.08.07) Foot &Mouth has struck again and we can only hope that it doesn't cause the problems it did last time. No doubt all of you are following it on the news but it's handy to be able to get the official press releases, so here is a link to the DEFRA website and for good measure this is the Wikipedia page on the disease.

Connection Problems: I've had odd problems connecting to PIPEX this week, with the connection taking longer to make and dropping out unexpectedly, something that's never happened before. I've also noticed that the Orange (formerly Freeserve, Wanadoo) online email service is very slow and glitchy, with it taking several attempts to complete simple tasks. I can't find any reports of this online, so as all the computers effected connect through the same chain of exchanges it could be a local phenomena. If anyone else has had similar experiences please get in touch.

Friday Fun (a day late...) This is very silly, it's just a repeating video called "Dramatic Chipmunk", clipped from a slightly longer video of Japanese children looking at a chipmunk but for some reason it's very funny, maybe it's the music. There's a link to the full video to it's right. Click here.

If you rather indulge in some quick harmless fun, try Bin Ball Wizard in which the aim is to kick a ball into an office waste bin, use the mouse to aim and the left mouse button for power. Click here.

Remaze is an odd little game that appears very simple at first but soon becomes intriguing. You just have to use the arrow keys to manouvre a white square to a target through a maze you can't get lost in. The twist is that the number of mazes and squares to be moved increases and each press of a key moves all the squares at the same time - fiendish! Click here.

July

(31.07.07) Apologies for the lack of updates, I've been having a torrid time with my Firefox browser and nothing I did seemed to solve the problem until a created a brand new "profile". This was so effective that I'm going to write a guide to it and include the intermidiate steps that didn't prove successful but work for most problems.

Ironically, fixing the problem came mere hours before the latest version of Firefox, 2.0.0.6, was released, probably in response to the number of us having problems with version '0.5. Most people won't have experienced them because they seemed to centre around the way the update scrambled some addons, so if you didn't have the addons, you won't have had the problems. Unless you are running a really ancient version of Ff it should update automatically soon or you can get it yourself either by clicking on "Help" at the top of the browser, then "Check for Updates" or by clicking here. 

(27.07.07) Friday Fun! Let's start with a wonderful video of a Dudley Moore parody of Beethoven, will make you think of the great composer in an entirely different way - click here.

Or why not create something for yourself? Notessimo allows you to compose tunes from scratch by dropping instruments from a menu of 150 and then save or share them. It's dead easy to use, not so easy to create music though :¬( Click here.

The iPhone has had one of the most successful launches ever and some people are getting fed up with it in the same way as some resent Harry Potter but it's unusual to see a rant as passionate as this. Warning - contains swearing.

(26.07.07) The BBC launches its iplayer tomorrow, enabling people to download and view later a wide range of its programme output. But it's not as simple as the old "listen again" service for BBC radio, the technology is totally different. Rather than download directly from the BBC, you'll be downloading from other people's computers, in other words it works in the same way as music fans' peer to peer networks.

There are good and bad elements to this. The good is that no matter how popular a program is, it will just as easy to download it because the more people who download it, the more sources to download it from there will be. The bad side is that it creates a large environment for hackers to exploit and, as a petition points out, it requires people to use a Windows computer to use the service. Read lots more here and about the petition here. Having said all that, I have to say that after downloading various players from a variety of broadcasters, I've never used any of them. I've got a video recorder and they repeat everything anyway - so why bother?

(25.07.07) Mobile Phone masts are not responsible for the ill effects many attribute to them a re-examination of research has found. As reported in these pages before, sufferers are no more likely to be able to tell whether a mast is switched on or off than a control group and the chances that either group can tell at all is no higher than could be expected from chance. Why is this of interest to a computing website? Well, similar claims of harm are being made about wi-fi networks and the experiences of people who think they suffer from a high sensitivity to mobile phone radiation is being cited by people campaigning to have networks removed from schools. Read more here.

(21.07.07) The latest version of Firefox is out, version 2.0.0.5, as you will know if you keep an eye on the Software Updates page. There aren't any major changes to the browser, they've just fixed some security issues, so all your add-ons should still be working after it's installed or after a couple of restarts as it seems to me. It came out on the 17th, so you might have it already through the automatic update system but so many people use Firefox these days that you might not, if that's the case (find out by clicking on "Help" at the top of the browser and then on "About") click here to download it yourself.

Photo stuff: I've come across a couple of things that might be of interest for the photographers amongst you over the last couple of days. The first is a competition/charity website run by Canon, for every image you upload they'll donate €50 cents (about 30p?) to Oxfam and you'll entered into a competition to win a camera! Click here to be both virtuous and avaricious.

Secondly for those who like to know the details of the pictures they take, the exposure, shutter speed, focal length and more, this .exif reader/editor from Microsoft will be very useful. Exif data is a small file hidden inside every .jpg taken with a digital camera and this program makes it appear when the cursor is hovered over an image file and makes an editor available via a right click. Click here to get it (the link, half way down the review page, should be opened in Internet Explorer).

(20.07.07) Friday Fun and let's start with something that almost qualifies as news, except it's a bit old for news. Did you know the Argyll & Bute website has a photo gallery that anyone can contribute to? Well they do and it's here, so get snapping and put your island or area on the web!

Who hasn't felt like this?

Like a cross between the Golden Hare and Th Million Dollar webpage, the Golden Jigsaw launched this week. Players have to solve a thousand piece jigsaw in the hope that they'll be the first and the winner of the $1 million prize. Sounds complicated enough but there's more; pieces are only available in small batches and are scattered across the Internet to befound via clues posted on the companies website. The whole thing pays for itself through advertising, the companies hosting the pieces paying for the privieledge. If you fancy having a go click here. 

(18.07.07) Argyll & Bute council are to use VoiP (Voice over Internet Protocol) in it's new call centers, a first for a Scottish council. The new technology is enabling them not only to save a great deal of money on phone calls but to more easily intergrate a caller council records into the call centers systems cutting down on the need for "double entry" work. The call centers will distributed throughout the area and the first service to avail itself of the new system is the council tax enquiery line. Good fr them I say. Read more here.

(16.07.07) There's a new version of Google Earth out and it seems to run a bit quicker than the previous incarnations. I've found that I've been able to turn up the quality settings quite a bit without sacrifising load time, resulting in greatly improved image quality. Not that it's improved much for the west coast of Scotland mind, that still looks like poorly rendered rug print. Perhaps we should lobby them to provide higher resolution images of Scotland? Click here for Google Earth (you'll need to uninstall your old version but don't worry, all your saved places etc are retained).

(14.07.07) Sony has confirmed that it won't be dropping the price of the Playstation3 in Europe, instead offering customers a "free" game. Meanwhile it's turned out that the cut in the US is actually an end of season sale as they attempt to dump this model in preparation for the next one coming out, which will be cheaper to produce. So, when that one arrives they'll be ripping us off even more if they don't drop the price of it. Read more here and here.

(13.07.07) Did you know that you can buy your car tax disc online? If you've had to renew recently you probably do but if you let the prospect of another set of long online forms to fill out and a slow website to negotiate, put you off trying, you were mistaken. Of all the websites of this type I've used the DVLA's is without doubt the easiest and most efficient. All you have to do is to fill the reference number on the renewal notice or give them your numberplate and the website does the rest, even checking whether you have current insurance and MOT in just a few seconds. Then you fill in your card details (£2.50 cheaper if you use a debit rather than credit card) and they send you the disc. Click here to bookmark the site for when you need it.

Friday Fun: Flashxed is an imaginative variation on the familiar box pushing game, introducing an element of physics and explosions to liven things up. The idea is simple, get rid of all the coloured balls by making the ones of the same colour colide, sounds easy and the early levels are but things rapidly get more complex and it turns into a bit of a brain teaser. Click here to start dragging.

Wayfaring is mapping website that allows you to construct maps to share with others, they could be as simple as a place to meet or a route for a walk. If you live in a difficult place to find it could be ideal way of showing visitors how to reach you and save you sending them instructions or badly drawn maps. Click here to try it.

(10.07.07) Geograph Britain is dedicted to photography every ten kilometre square of the British Isles and in the eighteen months or so that it's been running it's got pretty close to achieving its goal. There's still plenty of blank spaces on the map though and plenty of other that could do with more pictures. Anyone can contribute and if they find the square the want to cover already taken, can add more images. Emphasis is on geographical relevance rather than photographic brilliance and there's a vibrant and friendly (as far as I could see) community to take part in. Click here to see for yourself.

Shoot Nations is another photographic project but one of much shorter duration. It's running until the 20th of July and open to people between the ages of 11 and 24. They're asked to contribute images and tell the world about their passions and frustrations. There's prizes on offer too! Click here for more.

(09.07.07) Microsoft is going to release patches for three critical vulnerabilities tomorrow, one of which will affect nearly all of us. So be prepared for the computer to switch itself off and on unexpectedly as it completes the installation process.

As trailed yesterday in Anorak News, Sony is going to drop the price of the Playstation 3 (PS3) by $100 in the US following disappointing sales comparred to the Nintendo Wii and criticism of a high price when comparred to Microsoft's Xbox 360. But there's no sign that the price will drop in the UK where they are already being sold at a premium comparred to elsewhere, I think it's about time we boycotted products sold by companies intent in ripping us off. Read more here. 

Flickr is in my experience a very friendly community, free from many of the ills that plague much of the Internet communities but today things seem to have changed a bit. People have been falling out with each other and worst of all nasty spam has been appearing in the user groups. It could be just one of those passing things but it could also due to the strains created by amalgamating it with Yahoo Photo's, that certainly could be the cause of the spam because as reported in Anorak news, spammers have found a way round Yahoo's security systems. Let's hope it's a storm in a tea cup.

(07.07.07) I've written many times about the risks of visiting dodgy websites and finding to late that just opening a webpage can trigger an attack on your computer but I've never actually come across on an otherwise legitimate website. Now I've found one in the most surprising of a places, a website hosting an addon for Firefox. FirefoxMenuButtons is a very useful extension that lets you choose from a wide array of buttons and add them to the browser's toolbar. The old version is hosted on the official Firefox website and is problem free but the one you need for the newer version of Firefox is hosted on an external, it was fine up until a few days ago when I visited it following a question on the forum.

This time I found the page wouldn't load at all in Firefox, searching for it in Google produced a warning message and opening it in Internet Explorer 7 shook my firewall/antivirus program into action, informing me that a trojan called JS/Downloader-AUD had been detected. It just goes to show how vital it is to keep your security systems in order and that once again, Firefox proves more secure than Internet Explorer. You can read more about the trojan here and find an alternative to FirefoxMenuButtons here. Thanks to Meg for posting the question that brought this to my attention.

(06.07.07) Visits to the forum have passed the half million mark! I don't check the statistics so often these days, so I was quite surprised to discover that they had whizzed passed the half million milestone and reached 516564. Popular pages include the Software Updates page and the How 2 guides in general, while anything on email and broadband draws a crowd. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the regular posters who keep the place ticking over, particularly sgegreen for his invaluable help and the software updates page in particular. Also thanks to everyone who has contributed financially, it's a great help!

Friday Fun: Lets start with a brain game and one that will run well over any connection. The object is simple, look at the top right corner, remember the pattern of dots and then replicate them on the board. You can make a few mistakes and clicking on "hint" briefly displays the dot layout for a brief moment. Click here to test yourself with Zyrx.

OK, this is just a stupid story and I'm only including because it contained a line that made me laugh out loud, click here and discover the power of cheese.

This video site isn't just fun, it's actually useful, possibly a first for our little trips around the web (oh no, I forgot the shoelace site). It's sort of like Youtube but instead of teenagers confessing their angst, skateboarding dogs and episodes of Family Guy, people upload videos of them doing practical things. You can learn how to plant, erm, plants, hang a door or baby proof your house in just a few clicks. Click here for Video Jug.

(03.07.07) A study by Brunel University has found that online gaming may bring benefits to it's teenage players, primarily social skills. Researchers found that players had a greater understanding of different races and social backgrounds as result of meeting people from all over the world in virtual environments. So, they may not be talking to you but they are talking to someone. Read more here.

AllofMP3, the free, then very cheap, music download site based in Russia has finally shut up shop after the Russian authorities finally took note of the pressure being brought to bear by the western music industry. What a pity and it can only result in download prices remaining high. Read more here.

The European Union has launched, well it's been running for a while but today they really started to push it, a YouTube channel dedicated to the commissions work and promoting the interests and culture of Europe. The item that garnered most interest from the press, a short compilation of the raunchiest parts from recent European films, doesn't actually feature that prominently on the site, when I visited the main item was on airport security and the next was on a smoke free Europe. See for yourself here.

(01.07.07) Watch out, or more to the point, warn your children about an email doing the rounds that claims to contain the latest installment of the final Harry Potter novel, which isn't due to be published until July 21st. Instead of the text of the book, the attachment contains a worm (type of virus) that vandalises the user's computer in various annoying ways, such as installing a host of new users with names of novels' characters and redirecting browsers' homepages to a Harry Potter site. As the publishing date draws nearer and publicity increase the temptation to open such messages will grow, so watch out for it. Read more here.

June

One in three US children who use the Internet say they have been bullied online and there's no reason to believe the UK is any different. It may be even harder to spot if your child is victim than it is if they're being picked on at school, so it might not be a bad idea to ask them. If they are or if you just want some advice, this is quite a helpful website. Read more on the report here. 

(29.06.07) Friday Fun! Let's start with something desirable but completely unaffordable without a remortgage, this year's Hasselblad digital SLR camera. The company has always been known for it's high quality products, particularly in larger formats and so they're not going to build something that let's the brand down, even so what they've come up with is something of a surprise. A 39 megapixel with a 48mm sensor that produces images so big that there's portable hard drive to go with it. Read more here and check out the samples page here. 

Life on Mars and the popular return of Dr Who proves that we're a country that just want's to return to the heady days of the '60's and '70's, so why not relive the thrill off vinyl with a trip to Frank's Vinyl Museum? They just don't make stuff like this any more, except for, possibly, Germany. 

Roger Ebert, one of the US's most popular film critics and one half of the duo that virtually patented the the "thumbs up/thumbs down" review, has compiled a handy list of movie cliches or rules, which will come in handy next time your sat in front of a DVD and get the feeling you've seen it all before. Click here to read and possibly bookmark it, as it's quite long.

Bubble wrap popping, we've done before and we'll do it again because it's addictive. Click here to get popping!

(28.06.07) A recent Microsoft update may confuse your AVG antivirus program and you into the process and issue a message warning "File Result/infection Path kernel32.dll Change CWINDOWSsystem32kernel32.dll." When you investigate this AVG may stop responding. Happily there's nothing to worry, it's the result of the MS update and the problem should go away after you restart the computer, although it may seem a bit sluggish when it first starts. Read more here, including a link to the relevant Microsoft page. Thanks to Peabody for posting the question and sgegreen for answering!

The BBC iMP (Internet Media Player) will launch on the 27th of July enabling users to access almost all of the BBC's domestic output "online" for seven days after it's broadcast and some shows will be able to be stored for up to thirty days. Unlike other broadcasters who charge for their most popular output, everything will be free and only licensing issues restrict availability. Read more here. 

(22.06.07) Don't be alarmed if you receive an email warning of a virus which arrives with the subject line "Invitation", it's a hoax and won't do any of the things it claims because the virus doesn't exist. The pertinent part of the email reads:

"Do not open any message with an attached file called "Invitation"
regardless of who sent it, It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which "burns" the whole hard disc C of your computer."

It's the latest in a long line of similar hoaxes and there soul purpose is to get you to pass them on. You can read more on the forum here, including a link to an article about it on a hoax busting site. Thanks to Bearsarus for drawing it to our attention!

Friday Fun: First up is a game, it's very simple, you just have to move a ball around a circle and choose the best point to fire it into the middle and make all the stars burst. There aren't any "lives", there's no time limit and there's even some soothing incidental music to help you on your way, which you can turn off if you don't like it. Click here, should work fairly well even on dialup.

I'm pretty happy with my 10 megapixel compact camera and in my wildest dreams I only aspire to a Nikon, so what on earth would I be wanting with a camera capable of capturing a 9.9 Gigabyte image? I mean really? None the less there is one and you can explore a few of the pictures that have been taken with it here and zoom in and in and in and in...etc. The question is, for all their resolution, are the images any good? Don't they look a little flat?

(19.06.07) Google has been rated the worst out of 23 major Internet websites for the lack of respect it pays to users privacy in a study by Privacy International. It does substantially worse than Microsoft which provides a very similar range of services and is way behind organisations such as Ebay, which is rated one of the best. The basic reason is the way it treats the data it collects from users, both retaining it for a long time and attaching it a unique individual, as opposed to using for accumulating aggregates. Google Toolbar, which I've long been suspicious of, is named as a major tool in this data mining. Read more here.

(16.06.07) Word 2002-3 problem: A recent Microsoft update has caused a open Word documents to prevent computers running on XP, so that's just about all of us, from going into either standby or hibernation. What's more, at present they appear to have no intention of doing anything about it and instead advise people to upgrade to Office 2007 or to ensure that there are no Word documents open when the computer is left unattended for any length of time. Which is what I suggest everyone should do, leaving the computer on all the time can be quite expensive and it's certainly cheaper than upgrading to Office 2007. Read the official Microsoft notice here. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

Computer restarts: Some recent Microsoft updates require the computer to restart, which it will often do automatically, so if you're in the habit of starting up and going off to make a cup of tea, don't be surprised if you hear the shut down/startup music while you're out of the room!

(15.06.07) Friday Fun! Let's start with a bit of Elvis, or rather an Elvis impersonator, singing Nirvana. Not the most obvious combination but trust me, it works! Click here (if you're on dialup you might want to click on pause while the video loads).

Ever noticed how often news programmes describe something as being twice the size of Wales or the half the height of Nelson's column? Well now there's a handy online convertor that lets you work out the size of any known area, height or weight in terms of well known things, click here to try it yourself.

Urban legends are forever turning up in conversations and even on the news, so it's handy to have a website where you can check out whether that "friend of a friend" story is quite what it seems. Click here and be surprised at how many things you thought were true aren't or perhaps more surprisingly, are. :::

(14.06.07) Apologies for the lack of updates this week, I bought a lens adaptor and a couple of filters for my Canon A640 digital camera and have been spending far to much time experimenting with them and generaly chasing about trying to get decent pictures of various summery things. I got a UV and a Polarizing filter and if you click on the image on the left you'll be able to get some idea of the difference they can make. To be honest I'm still getting the hang of them but I'm very happy with the £20 investment I made on ebay!

(10.06.07) The recent Firefox update has made an odd change to the way links open in the browser and now a left clicked link will open in a new in a new tab, rather than in a new window or the original tab. What's more the option to open in the same tab doesn't appear to be in Options menu (click here for a screenshot), which is even more annoying if it's affecting you. I use an addon called "Tabbrowser Preferences" which does offer the option, as well as the ability to open links in new tabs by middle clicking on the mouse wheel ("middle clicking"). If the problem affects I recommend downloading the addon from here, it's a very small download and once installed can be accessed via the "Tools" menu at the top of the browser and then clicking on "Options" and "Tabbed browsing". Thanks to Bearsarus for alerting us to this.

You've probably heard about the row between Sony and the Diosis of Manchester concerning the use of Manchester Cathedral in a extremely violent video game, in which humans battle aliens in a distopian vision of Britain in the 1950's. I don't think it's just the association of the church with such violent game or even the unathorised use of the cathedral as a setting that has upset the church, it could be sight of the building in a state of reminiscent of a scene from the Blitz that is so disturbing. You can see for yourself in the screenshots at this website.

(08.06.07) Friday Fun! A few days ago we had Microsoft's idea of the "future of computing"™, which was some sort of table top computer thing and it looked very nice but did it really make you go "wow"? Well this might; Photosynth (click here for a Youtube presentation) is another application from Microsoft, or rather acquired by Microsoft, which processes images to an astonishing depth and flexibility. You'll watch the video thinking you've seen so much of this stuff before and then it'll do something like zoom in on what looks like an image of some columns of text and it will turn into an entire, readable, novel. The link may work better in Internet Explorer, I had some trouble with the sound in Firefox. Probably very slow on dialup.

Maps have fascinated me ever since I got my first big atlas and so I was very pleased to come across this

May

(31.05.07) Microsoft are show casing the next big thing in computing and it's called "Surface". Basically it's a keyboard and mouseless computer that works by touch and is housed in a table. It interfaces with wireless devices such as mobile phones and PDAs when they're put down on it and there's an enormous amount of dragging and dropping. It also interacts with wireless paint brushes (well, all paint brushes are wireless but you know what I mean). It's going to launch in November and needs to seen to be really appreciated, which you can do by clicking here. Unfortunately it's a Flash site and it doesn't run smoothly even with a 512kb connection, so if you've only got dialup you'll have to make do with reading more here.

You've probably heard or seen Tul Bahadur Pun's story on the news today. He's the Gurka veteran who won the VC for an act of astonishing bravery and has been refused entry to the UK by the Home Office because he has "insufficient ties" with the country. At present he's gravely ill, living up a mountain and has to be carried by relatives to the nearest hospital for treatment. You can sign a petition and send an email in support of him by clicking here.

(30.05.07) Tiscali has been having problems with outgoing email for the last few days, caused they say by spammers targeting them which resulted in other ISPs blocking email coming from their servers. It isn't effecting all destinations but enough for it to be very noticeable. There isn't any real information on why this has happened but it suggests that there is a problem with Tiscali's security software because it's standard practice for ISPs to check email for viruses these days and for so many people to be effected there must be a pretty big flaw in the system. They say that they've identified the cause but that it could continue for another 7 - 10 days, which is a long time to be effectively without email. Read more here on the Tiscali service status page and a big thanks to forum member baldeagle for alerting us to the problem.

Microsoft has released the second part of the fix for the problem that was causing computers to slow down for no apparent reason, go to the Anorak News page for the link, it should arrive via automatic update but if you're on a dialup connection it would be a good idea to get it manually.

Last.fm has been on the news all day, having been bought for £150 million or so by CBS but what is it? Well it's a sort of online radio station but one that you build yourself as it learns from the choices you make and then suggests things you might also like. It's sort of a cross between Blogmusik (see below) and Amazon I suppose. It's completely free and funded by advertising but you do need to create a free account to take advantage of it's learning functions. Click here to see or rather, hear, for yourself. The ".fm" bit of the name comes from the rather fortunate domain of the Federated States of Micronesia

(29.05.07) Ebay have introduced a new tool called "Bidding Assistant" and it looks very useful even to the occasional bidder. Say you're looking for a camera but you can't decide which auction to bid on because there are several examples up for auction, bid assistant will bid on your behalf on all the ones you are interested in, to your maximum price and should you win an auction will withdraw the redundant bids. This is similar to what is known as multiple "sniping" except that whereas those tools come in at the very last seconds of an auction, ebays tool bids in the normal way. It's free and looks simple to use and you can read more here.  

(27.05.07) Ebay has been accused of ignoring an on going scam which is depriving sellers of a fair price and legitimate customers of a fair chance. Called "Bid Shielding", it involves the withdrawel of bids in the closing minutes of an auction and the holder or holders of at least two accounts working together. One account will put in an absurdly high bid for an item while the other makes sure they are the second highest bid, at the last moment the high bid will be withdrawn and the auction will be won by the second highest (I hope I've got that right!).

The scam works particularly well with things like event tickets which can then be sold on a t a much higher price and it takes advantage of ebay's new policy of hiding bidders identities, making it harder for people to recognise bidders with dodgy reputations. At the moment the company is refusing to acknowledge there is a problem which will mean that sellers will start to take things into their own hands and will probably refuse to accept bids from people without a certain amount of positive feedback. Read more here in a Guardian article and here on ebay's message board where a spokesman for ebay and the Guardian writer discuss the matter.

(25.05.07) Microsoft has finally acknowledged that it caused a widespread problem with it's update system with a previous patch and released the fix that I've been going on about for the last week or so. The patch has been added to the automatic update system which will mean that most of you won't have to download it manually. However I suggest that those on dialup do get it manually because otherwise your computer will slowdown while you get previously released ones, you can find the link below. Read more here. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

Friday Fun: Let's start with just a simple toy, the Pattern Game (click here) a bit like one of web effects that makes a trail appear behind your cursor but instead of just one you can have between one and sixteen (I think). Once the page has loaded, which shouldn't take to long even on dialup, just move your mouse about and watch what happens, click on the circles in bottom left to increase/decrease the number of trails and click to change what the they do.

I love the way the Internet has allowed people with slightly odd obsessions find an audience and I can't think of a better example than Ian's Shoelace Site (click here). Check out the "Tying Shoelaces" section and try Ian's Knot, it is actually a better way to tie a shoelace and it only takes about six months before you can do it without thinking.

I've got a bit obsessed with Flickr over the last couple of days and having fun with some of its extra features, mapping. If you click here you'll get a map of the world which displays images as they are being uploaded and from where (probably requires a broadband connection). While if you click here you get a static map which you can zoom in on and find images taken in the area. Start off on the west coast of Scotland and you might find a few that I've posted of the Isle of Mull!

(23.05.07) Flickr: After a lot of humming and harring, I've created a Flickr album and having created them on several other websites including Kodak and ImageShack, I have to say it's by far the easiest I've used so far. I'm going to write a brief guide to using it in the forum's Graphics and Photography section but in the meantime you have a look at it here. Amongst other things I like the way it loads the images in a reasonable size and then lets you see them at higher resolutions if you want to, also you can find out all the details about the camera that was used and its settings (link on the right of the page). I didn't upload the details, they must be contained in the images somehow. Technology eh!

(21.05.07) This is probably a Friday Fun item but the alternative was an item about security issues I haven't researched properly (never stopped you before I here you cry but none the less), so today I bring you the oppurtunity to buy a pop band on Ebay. For only $1.5 million (about £750k) you can have Rednex, the band that brought us the foot stomping Cotton Eye Joe (click here) and have sold over ten million records, lock stock and smokin' barrel. I'm not sure how this works, what if they all decide to leave the group? Anyway, click here to buy them and don't forget to send me a message to say that you heard about the auction here, they'll send me $25000 if you do. Not that's a motivation for this story or anything. Perish the thought.

(20.05.07) Firefox has released an update that fixes various performance issues, including is complete incompatibility with some websites. Which is good. It should all happen automatically and you'll just get a pop-up message asking you to restart Firefox in order to complete the process. After restarting it's a good idea to go to "Tools" (at the top of the browser), then "Add-ons" and "Check for updates." This will ensure that any add-ons are compatible with the new version. In my experience they all needed updating and all (and I have a lot) worked afterwards, which is unusual. You can find a complete list of all the things the new version fixes here.

(18.05.07) Friday Fun: For anyone who's wondered how a 60 year old Pete Townshend (honestly, that's how you speel it) feels singing a song he wrote over forty years ago should listen to The Zimmers singing "My Generation". The lead singer is 75 and the oldest member of the chorus is 100. Click here.

Sticking to the hip, down with kids, modern music theme, The Infinite Wheel is an online mixer that allows you to create your own track from a huge selection of musical sample. Click here.

People using home banking services are to be given chip and pin devices to plug into their computers for logging into their bank accounts. All the big banks, apart from HSBC, are going to be sending out the devices, for free, over the next six months and I think this is the start of something big. If they're going to want you to use them to access your bank account directly, how long will it be before services, such as PayPal and Amazon, require you to use them when you access it indirectly? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just asking. Read more here.

(17.05.07) Time to Update! Having been contacted by or in one case just bumped into, people who's computers are suffering from sluggish performance at start up, running programs or connecting and surfing the net, I'm convinced that many of the problems are caused by the lack of one or two Microsoft Updates. This is because unlike many problems there are no error messages, just a general slow down and there is no other common factors such as anti-virus program or Internet provider.

So if you haven't you should install this to update, which is not available via automatic updates. KB927891 fixes a problem caused by an earlier update that cause the computer to use up all it's processor power while updating or (I think) installing updates. When the new page opens click on "Continue" and if you haven't done so before you'll have to install an ActiveX control that allows Microsoft to check that you have a genuine version of XP. To do so click on the pale yellow bar at the top of the webpage and then on "Install", follow the instructions and you'll be able to download. Pass this on to anyone you come across suffering from a slow computer!

(16.05.07) Mull Eagles: Just a note to say to alert everyone to a wee ten minute item at 9.50 tonight on Mull's sea eagles on BBC 2. "Mull - Eagle Paradise: The story of the White Tailed Sea Eagle is one of the great successes of British conservation. When wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan grew up on Mull there were no Sea Eagles at all, but now they are back and thriving. A third of all Britain's Sea Eagles now live on the island. Gordon returns to Mull to find out what makes this place such a paradise for the magnificent birds," it says here. I'm afraid there's no BBC page on the programme, so no chance to watch it if you're out or don't have a telly.

Incidentally, the BBC has announced that it's to go ahead with it's TV on demand service and nearly all programmes will be available for up to a week after transmission. They're going to use a torrent type service which means that people will be downloading programmes mostly from other peoples home computers, which I'm not sure I'm very kean on. More on this in the near future.

(15.05.07) Microsoft Update problems pt II: Following high level discussions at 2000friends HQ it's been determined that bearsarus's problems have probably been caused by problems caused by Microsoft updates that are addressed by one of two further updates from the company. For reasons best known to themselves, anyone would think they were trying to make XP less stable, at least one of them isn't available via automatic update and they have to be downloaded manually. They're numbered KB914906 and KB927891 and can be found on the forum's Software Updates page. Speaking of which:

The Software Updates page not only posts direct links to the MS Updates that you would receive through the automatic updates system but to those that, for one reason or another, aren't. As can be seen from bearsarus's problems, these can be essential and so it's wise to keep an eye on what's being added to the page. Not only that but you'll find links to updates for many popular programs, which means that you can stop them checking for themselves every time you connect to the Internet, so saving bandwidth and computer resources. Find the link at the top of the Anorak page. For reasons I don't quite understand, some sort of browser glitch maybe, I missed most of last weeks MS Updates, there weren't just three, there lots. Sorry about that.

(13.05.07) Microsoft Update problems: When forum member bearsarus posted a request for help with a Microsoft update that had crippled their computer, I thought a brief search would reveal the likely culprit but how wrong I was. Virtually every one of the recent batch of updates has had problems associated with it and it seems more and more people are reporting them. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has been having problems shutting down their computer, connecting to the Internet, using email or has been having odd error messages popping up, if you have, please email me!

(11.05.07) Friday Fun: The first item this week is for kids but it will provide a moments nostalgia for a lot of adults. PeterRabbit.com (click here) has lots of pages of games and activities based around the books charming illustrations, if your children are young and have read the books, they'll love it.

Rockstar games, makers of Grand Theft Auto amongst others, have made some of their older releases available for free and you can download them here. There's the first two incarnations of GTA, which back then was a top down, 2D, adventure but the best of the bunch is Wildfire, a shootemup involving vehicles battling in a 3D landscape. Click here.

I often advise people taking up digital photography to buy a cheap camera to learn the basics on before committing to spending a lot on a good one. The same could be said for photo editing software, although that's a lot cheaper (I bought the latest version of Ulead PhotoImpact for £19 this week), it's not a bad idea to get a feel for things with a free program. Virtually all, both the paid and the free, have the same basic set of tools and commands and for learning on a free program will help you understand what it is you want when you buy one. Photofiltre (click here) is a French program with lots of pluggins and online tutorials, Image Forge (click here) does much the same, while "The Gimp" (click here) has almost as advanced as the best of the paid for programs. It's an "open source" project, meaning lots of people are contributing to its development but it is quirky. The main difference is that everything, toolbars, pallette, etc, floats free on the screen, there no overall window containing it all. However, if you can get used to that, it's as straight forward to use as any other editor (i.e. not very).

(09.05.07) Scotnet suffered a mysterious outage yesterday morning when its website became unavailable and it's customers unable to connect. Things got back to normal in the afternoon but there's no explanation on their website, so the cause is unknown.

Trying to find what might have happened led me to discover that BT will be carrying out maintenace work on dozens of exchanges between today and the 22nd. They're upgrading the DSLAM firmware (devices that connect us to the broadband network) and all the work will be carried out between 1 and 6 am. Nightowls may find that they can't connect during this period. The exchanges are in towns and cities but as ours eventually connect through them, it will probably affect us at some point.

Software Updates There were three and not two, new ones added yesterday. Click the link at the top of the Anorak page for details.

(08.05.07) Downing Street has responded to the petition asking the Prime Minister to bring pressure to bear on Microsoft over the high price paid in the UK. Rather than respond in any way to the specific issue or the principle it represents, Microsoft is one of many companies that hike their prices for the UK, the response only talks about how the UK believes in competition and not price regulation. Read the full text here.

Microsoft has launched "Hotmail Live", a revamp of Hotmail which makes it work more like Outlook Express, with similar capabilities such as being able to drag and drop messages into folders, set up message rules etc. It's possibly a reaction to the new look Yahoo mail and the success of Gmail, which has already overtaken Hotmail in user numbers. I haven't used it yet, I always found the old hotmail a bit annoying but it does look better than the old version and not nearly as cluttered with adverts etc as Yahoo and Gmail. However, it does require a fast connection. Read more here and sign up here.

(05.05.07) Hewlett Packard is to revamp its ink cartridge lines, introducing a two tier system with low capcity, cheaper, cartridges for casual users and high capacity ones for those that use their printers a lot. HP has come in for criticism for the cost of replacements and its hoped that the new ranges will give people, particularly the serious user, a better deal but it's unlikely that the basic problem of the high price of "official" ink will be solved. The industry as a whole has come under pressure from the EU to reduce costs, make it easier for third party manufacturers to operate and has been ordered to introduce standardised benchmarks so that ink consumption of different brands can be accurately comparred. Read more on HP's plans here and the EU report on the issues here (.pdf document).

The Argyll-Bute website is up and running again, having been down most of the morning and now you can find out who your new local councillors are by clicking here.

(04.05.07) Following the month of attacks on Apple software, it has emerged that hackers are going to target ActiveX throughout May. ActiveX is a key component in Windows and is extensively used by websites to bring you interactive content and high quality, low bandwidth graphics. I don't know of anyone who suffered as a result of the attacks on Apple but we were all affected by the number of updates from i-Tunes and the Apple Quicktime media player (there's a new one out now, see the Anorak page for details). So, the best we can hope for over the next month is a stream of updates from Microsoft.

Friday Fun: This image (click here) is impossibly cute but I don't think it's a fake, or if it is, it's worth seeing anyway.

There's lots of online cartoons but very few are as engaging or as well written as Scott McCloud's tale of modern romance "The Right Number". Each frame contains the next one in the story, just press the space bar or click on the arrow to zoom in on it. If you have a slow connection, right click on the image and hover on "Quality" to select a lower one. Click here.

(01.05.07) Wi-Fi: I warned last week of the risks of Wifi (connecting computers without wires), so I was grateful when Steve sent me this excellent BBC article explaining the whole problem in plain(ish) English. If you have a wireless network created with BT equipment you should definately read it. Click here.

Google has been caught out again, placing adverts that led to malware sites (websites that install or distribute software that's bad for your computer) on it's pages next to search results. You'll recall that I discovered last year that several of their search results and adverts for "spyware" led to websites distributing spyware and just as before they have removed the offending links after being informed what was going on. Still, it's a timely warning that Google is just a very sophisticated search engine and it doesn't check links or adverts that appear on their pages. Be careful what you click! Read more here.

This isn't computer related at all but I know so many people who own pets with odd alergies, skin and medical conditions, that I thought it worth mentioning. The US Food and Drug Administration has found melamine, the stuff used to cover kitchen work surfaces amongst other things, along with other substances in pet food originating in China. The practice of bulking up pet food in this way is common there apparently due to the lack of regulation stipulating that it shouldn't happen. While every pet owner probably buys the best they can afford, can the same be siad for people who breed dogs commercially? They're probably looking for the best price and the ingestion of strange chemicals as puppies could result in problems later on, read more here.

April

(29.04.07) Thanks to everyone who clicked on the Donate button at the top of the forum and send in a contribution! It's been up there for about a week now and I only realised how much it had raised when I went to my PayPal account, then I checked my messages on Gmail and discovered that it had been putting the notifications in the spam folder, so apologies for not getting back to all of you sooner. Expect a thank you email in the next couple of days. Thanks again, it's much appreciated!

(27.04.07) Friday Fun: First up is a silly website that allows you to create faces from a combination of parts, a bit like a photofit but one that produces a realistic face. So realistic that the one I created, pasted into a background has done quite well on a rating website. Click here to create one (probably requires broadband) and here to rate the one I made earlier (works on any computer).

Not requiring a broadband connection but needing a sense of spacial awareness to complete, is an odd little web game called Building Houses 2. You're given a plan of a 3D object and you have to construct it on a grid of squares which you can rotate at will. The early stages are pretty simple but the latter definitely not! Click here to try. Tip to get you started - cubes don't have to be supported from underneath!

theJazz is a free online radio station that plays mostly modern jazz tracks, interspersed with the occasional word from a djay. It probably works best on broadband but you can also pick it up on Sky telly. Click here to listen.

(26.04.07) The FBI are asking people to report email death threats after the number of being received jumped and changed in nature. The messages purport to come from a hitman hired to kill the recipient but after watching them for a while has decided they should be spared, as long as they pay something to cover the lost fee. The down payment is about $20000.

These stories have been around for a long time, CNET was reporting them back in 1998 (click here) but the new ones seem more sophisticated and if the user responds they may receive another threat, this time with details of their personal life including family members names. Which is very disturbing. So far they've been sent to high earning individuals, suggesting a degree of targeting but they're bound to spread in the near future, so it's wise to know what to expect. Click here to read an example of one of the emails and here to read more on the story.

Ebay spoof email continue to arrive in the community but thankfully most people are so aware of the problem that while worried by them, they forward them to me rather than respond or click on the links they contian. The latest I've been sent has the subject line "Account temporarily limited!" and asked the recipient to login into their account to rectify the problem. As usual it isn't sent to a specific name, a sure sign that its a fake and in any case, ebay never communicate to it's members in this way. Be careful out there.

(23.04.07) Wi-Fi scare: Both the Independent and the Times have reported that there are fears over the safety of Wi-Fi networks, which connect computers without wires, in schools and the damage they may do to children's health. Indeed several authorities and schools, from Sweden to California have removed systems as a result and sometimes after complaints from staff. An Internet search for "Wi-Fi health" produces pages of articles but very little in the way of evidence and almost an equal number of pages reporting and debunking the concerns.

It all looks a lot like the concerns about mobile phone masts and use and could turn out to be a non-story but one that gets a lot of media coverage until the government is finally goaded into commissioning a study. One thing to remember is that Wi-Fi uses very low powered outputs, users aren't exposed to anything like the levels of emissions they would be by living next to a mast or by clamping a phone to their ear. You can read the recent newspaper reports here and here. For a sense of perspective there's a British medical Journal report into people who claim to suffer when in proximity to electro magnetic field, here and an article about it here. To sum up it found that almost exactly the same number reported symptoms when within one as when they weren't but thought they were.

(21.04.07) Microsoft has released a compatibility pack that enables users of XP and/or Office 2003 to view documents created with Office 2007. Although Vista hasn't been the huge success envisaged by Microsoft, Office 2007 is being used a lot and so this will become essential for those of us who haven't upgraded yet. See Software Updates at the top the Anorak News page for the link. 

(20.04.07) Thunderbird 2, the makers of Firefox free email program, is available and it promises new features, such as an interface more like a web browser, improved spam detection, security and organisation features. Like Firefox it is highly customisable and there's lots of add-ons to download. Those I know who use it swear by it and I'd probably switch if I didn't get asked so many questions about Outlook. If you're interested you read more here and download it here. I'm even more impressed with Gmail than I was a fortnight ago, it's filtering out all spam that used to make email such a pain and I'm now only downloading real messages to my computer, read more about it hereFriday Fun: Remember that radio panel game Twenty Questions? Well now you can hold it in the palm of your hand! The 20Q is about the size of a tennis and by asking a series of questions will guess just about anything you are thinking off. Test out the online version .

here and buy the toy here.

I love photo panoramas and I've never seen any better than Robin Wilson's. They're mostly of Scotland and give a real sense of scale, a lot of them are "cubic", meaning that you can look up from the horizon, turn and then down the other side. You can even zoom in and out! See for yourself here. I'm afraid it will be a bit slow on dial up but will be worth it if your patient..

(18.04.07) Ebuyer is running a £10 discount to customers using Google Checkout (see below) on orders over £30, which is a considerable saving if you're spending small item. It also uses the Royal Mail on small orders, so postage costs should be reasonable to the islands (if they add a premium, give them a ring and I'm sure they'll remove it). See for yourself here. Get more online shopping tips at our Buyers Club here. Email me if you spot any bargains out there!

(17.04.07) Two people have been arrested and cautioned for accessing the Internet through someone else's wireless home network. A BBC science spokesman described this as the first cases of their kind. Well, it might the first time it's resulted in an arrest but it's hardly the first time it's happened. For years now big cities have adorned with cryptic graffiti which inform those in the know that a local network is insecure and ripe for exploiting.

It was only last Friday that I reported that experts were calling one of the most common network systems totally insecure (see below). While it is probably true that no system of encryption is uncrackable, people looking to hack in will look for the more vulnerable networks, either the unencrypted (which is very common) or on using WEP, so if you fall into one of these two groups consider upgrading WPA2. Read more on the two who got caught here, go here to download WPA2 and read Microsoft's overview on wireless protection here, see below for details of the problems with WEP. Edited to correct WPA2 link so it goes to the latest version, thanks Steve!

Panic over! The problem reported yesterday regarding the forum's login page turns out to be due to people missing the "No thanks" links, which skips the need to click on any of the advert options. Admittedly is really, really tiny. It's located just below and to the right of the submit button. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out! 

(16.04.07) A PayPal Donations button has been added to the links at the top of the forum in response to the many kind enquiries from people asking how they can help out. No one should feel they're obliged to do so, I enjoy running the site and the message board but every little bit helps! All money received will go towards the the cost incurred by the website and and forum but, once again, don't feel you have to. Click here to visit the forum.

The page of adverts that confront you every so often when you loggin to the forum have long been an annoyance but recently they have started demanding that you select one product before proceeding. Happily, there's a simple work around that  avoids the issue. If you get to the page of adverts, simply hit the "back" button on your browser or Backspace on your keyboard and loggin again, this time you'll go straight to the forum. Apologies for the inconvenience.

(15.04.07) Google Checkout has been launched in the UK following its success in the USA. Bascially it's an online payment system similar to PayPal but where as PP is mostly used by small websites which lack credit card facilities and of course on Ebay, Google Checkout is going to be turning up in search results and therefore on online shops of all sizes. Retailers are going to be encouraged to use it as part of the adwords system and you'll be seeing a button like logo appearing in the column of paid for adverts that appears down the right hand side of Google searches. Read more here and visit the Checkout site here. 

Microsoft is alerting people to a very old scam called the "Microsoft lottery", presumably because they've seen an upsurge in instances recently. Basically there's no such thing and so if you receive any email about it, bin them. That might include the warning form Microsoft, which confusingly has "have you won the Microsoft Lottery" in the subject line.

Meanwhile, Symantec is warning of a Trojan (a type of virus) known as the "Trojan.Peacomm!zip". It arrives as an attachment to an email which has variations of "Worm detected" and "Virus detected - [WARNING - ENCRYPTED ATTACHMENT NOT VIRUS SCANNED]", which seems an odd way to try and catch people out but apparently it is doing so in large numbers. 

(14.04.07) Saturday Fun: It's a day late (sorry about that) but it's worth the wait because Blogmusik is back! Hooray! If you recall in it's first incarnation it looked like an i-Pod and all had to do was type in the name of the song or artist, click search and it would come up with a list of songs. Then you played them, for free. Understandably the music companies weren't to kean on this and so they disappeared for a while to have a rethink. No the service has re-emerged and is now paid for by advertising but it's still absolutely free to the user, you don't even have to register if you don't want to and the advertising is fairly discrete once you've done your first search. All genre's are well covered but there are big gaps in artist repetoires, still, it's early days. Click here to try it yourself, one tip, if you click play on a track it will play right the way through the list until you click on something else.

(13.04.07) Google Earth, in partnership with the US Holocaust Museum, has produced a sort of interactive 3d map of the massacres in Darfur. A combination of very high resolution imaging and information pop-ups bring to life the scale of the suffering of the people there and explain why so many have been displaced. The images are so sharp that you can make out the remains of individual huts, in some cases the picture was taken when they were still ablaze. A little frustratingly Google Earth's US-centricity still results in a search for Darfur taking you to a small town somewhere in the Mid-West, so search for "Sudan" instead and then focus in. Read more here and if you have broadband and haven't already got Google Earth, do so here. 

Local Area Networks using WEP (Wireless Equivalent Protocol), commonly used to create BT broadband networks within homes and small businesses is totally insecure and should be dumped according to researchers at Darmstadt Polytechnic. There probably isn't that much risk if you're sitting in your west coast home but you might want to think twice about connecting your laptop to a hotel wi-fi hotspot when you're away. Read more here and here, thanks to Steve for the tip.

(11.04.07) Have you been WILFing today? Two thirds of UK Internet users admit to wasting two days a month in aimless webserving, an activity known as "what was I looking for?" or WILF for short. Frankly I'm surprised it's only two days a month as, lets be honest, we all start off with the best intentions but end up clicking on page after page of links because "they look interesting". I blame the Wikipedia. Read more here.

The Keep Our NHS Public website seems to be working properly now, so if you wish to join and make a donation, you should be able to. Let me know if you have any problems because I'm not sure what's changed and whether it was merely browser related or not. Thanks to forum member doggo for the update.

The Cuin Ferry Stakeholders' meeting is tonight at the Toberonochy Hall and not Thursday. Sorry for the late correction. 

(10.04.07) The report into the viability of the proposed Cuin Bridge between Seal and Luing has been published and it likes good news for its supporters. You can download it from the Argyll and Bute website here (the top of the two .pdf links). Perhaps the most important paragraph can be found in the conclusions, section 8.21  We recommend therefore that Argyll & Bute Council use the funds already allocated by the Scottish Executive to pursue the planning and design work necessary for a high level bridge crossing of the Cuan Sound. This by no means the end of the matter, more will known of what the future holds after the stakeholders meeting this Thursday. Thanks to Phil for sending this in.

My doctor drew my attention to this website campaigning against government proposals to privatise various parts of the NHS. If you are concerned about it to visit the website to learn more and offer support but don't expect to be able to join or donate immediately, there seems to be a fault on their donations/sign up page.

(08.04.07) The problem reported yesterday was probably caused by the use of RAMdisk (descriptionhere) and specifically to the Zone Alarm update itself (Thanks to sgegreen for pointing this out). None the less, I found so many reports of difficulties experienced either in the installation or with the update itself, that I'm still advising people not to update to version 7.0.355. I'm sure they'll address the issues in the near future and there'll be an update that works properly in the near future. 

(07.04.07) The latest version of ZoneAlarm, the popular fee firewall, is another program whose update is causing problems. If you are having trouble installing version 7.0.355 or have been receiving a lot of error messages since doing so, the best thing seems to be either to give up trying to install it or if you've already done so, to uninstall it a and reinstall version 6.5.737. You've probably still got a copy of that somewhere but in case you don't, you can download it here. Thanks to forum member baldeagle for alerting us to the problem.

(06.04.07) If you are receiving a message when you start your computer starting "Rthdcpl.exe - Illegal System DLL Relocation" it is due to the recent Microsoft security update that fixed the animated cursor problem which has affected a Realtek audio component. To read the full message and download the fix for the problem click here. Thanks to forum member Yorkie for posting the question.

Friday Fun: For otters, holding hands (you may want to turn the sound down), click here.

For proof that new technolgy has always caused confusion click here.

(03.04.07) Users of animated cursors should be extra careful when clicking on email links and visiting unfamilier websites Microsoft warns. All versions of Windows operating systems make insufficient checks before rendering the cursors and associated icons, enabling hackers to install software on users computers. Read more here and the official advisory here. There is an update avialable and it will be included in the automatic update schedule but if you have installed an animated cursor, you should either disable it or get the update via the link at the top of the Anorak News page. It's what is called a "zero day" vulnerability, meaning there is potentionally no gap between it's discovery and it's exploitation by hackers. 

(02.04.07) EMI to offer DRM free music downloads via iTunes, all be it at a 20p per track premium, which will take the cost up to 99p. It means that purchasers will be able to copy their musics onto any device they like and in addition the tracks will be of higher quality. Personally I think the fact that you're restricted in what you can do with something you've paid for is rediculous and charging extra seems a bit of a cheek. The quality improvement is welcome, as anyone who's comparred a downloaded track with a CD will tell you. Read more here. Even better news for music lovers, Blog Music, the online jukebox is due to return this week. It allows you search a vast library of tracks and play them for free. Obviously it got into trouble the first time round, this time it's being supported by advertising. More when it relaunches.

People who get their news online have been rather looked down upon by traditional newspaper readers but it seems we're actually more likely to read an entire article than our paper reading collegues. A study has found that on average they only read 62% of any article they start, only 45% if it's a tabloid (why? There's so few words!), whereas people reading online get through 77%. Read more here (go on, it's quite short). Here's a trick, if find a long article but you don't have time to read the whole thing, copy and paste into to word, click on Tools, then Summarise and it will be cut down to size for you.

(01.03.07) The Gmail "guide", is finally posted. I discovered that very few accounts couldn't use the fetch and forward options and they are available to even the newest users, so there seemed no reason not to post it. I've put guide in quotations because most of the actual instructions are on the Gmail website, all I'm doing is explaining what the service does and highlighting a couple of things worth looking out for. It's a really excellent service and even if you don't need to have an email account filtered for spam, it's worth having a Gmail account because it's so easy to use. Click here for the guide, it hasn't been put in the proper guide section because I'd like to hear how people get on first.

There's been plenty of April Fool's Day jokes on the Internet today, the best of which can be found on newspaper websites, such as the Observer's story about Tony Blair joining the theatre after he steps down as PM. The Register, a favourite website for us anoraks, ran with Google and Apple joining forces to produce a phone but perhaps the best effort was made by Google with their free wireless broadband service (click on the "getting started" button).

March

(30.03.07)  April Fools Day has always been a trigger for hacker attacks and people should be extra careful when opening and acting on email targeting the event. Try to make sure that messages come from people you'd expect to send you messages and even then, that they lead to genuine and not hacker websites. If in doubt don't open any attachments and check the address of e-cards on Google by entering the websites name and the word "problem".

Hackers have stolen the credit card details of 45000 customers of the clothing retailer TJ Max, giving the impression that this is an Internet problem but it's not. The details were taken in the form of two computer files from the company's computers, not by stealing the details from individual customers. The theft may have been committed over the Internet but it's far more likely to involve someone in the company, deliberately or inadvertently passing the information on. People are at far less risk using their credit cards on the Internet, providing they ensure their anti-virus software etc is up to date and they only use reputable website, than they are giving them over the phone.

Friday Fun: Google maps is a wonderful service and very handy for getting directions from A to B but perhaps a tad impractical when attempting to cross oceans, click here for directions from New York to London, instruction 23 may take a little effort.

Second Life is one of the largest online communities with millions of users and now boosts an economy of it's own, with people buying and selling virtual versions of everything you can find in the real world (and more) but now it has a rival with a bigger environment and more potential players. Click here for First Life.

This will be depressing or inspiring if you fancy yourself as something of a computer artist, it's a speeded up video of someone doing a "painting" of one the "Lost" characters using just their computer. It's quite a big file, so go and make a cup of tea if you're on dialup. Click here.

(28.03.07) Firefox has revamped its add-on website, possibly in responce to Microsoft promotion of the add-ons for IE7. The new website makes it easier to find the little programs that make Firefox so much fun to use and to change the appearance to almost anything you want (I use the very classy "Metal Lion"). If you're not using any of the add-ons, which are quick to download even on a dial-up connection, you're really missing out on the best Firefox has to offer. Click here for the add-ons website, here for more detail on what it's all about and here for my favourites because the new website is still a bit of a maze IMO.

Over 10% of UK Internet users have fallen prey to some form of online fraud according to a survey by the Goverment backed "Get Safe Online" website. The reason could be that 52% of users don't feal they are responsible for their own security, which is just madness to be blunt. Perhaps it's because of the way computers are sold, coming with free security software and online services are sold but the truth is that we are all responsible for our own security and by protecting ourselves we help protect others. Read more here and visit Get Safe Online here, try their online test, it's quite illuminating.

(26.03.07) I've had to delay the Gmail guide because some people aren't seeing the option to fetch mail from another account on their Gmail settings page. So far I can't find an explanation for this nor whether its a feature of newer accounts but as soon as I can work it out I'll post the guide.

(25.03.07) Gmail vs Spam: Spam is the curse of email and anyone who's been online for a while will start receiving it eventually. My oldest address, which I've had for about nine years, gets so much that I'd considering getting rid of it all together. It's got so bad that I only check it every few days when there's time to download it all. I've tried spam filters and found that they either slowed everything down to much or were inefficient, catching legitimate email while letting quite a bit of spam through.

So, I was very pleased to discover that I could use the Google email service to collect it from the server, filter it and configure Outlook to collect it from Gmail. I hadn't collected email from the address for a fortnight and there were about 1200 messages waiting, only about twenty of which were genuine. Gmail let all legitimate ones through and caught all but 7 of the spam, which is a remarkable ratio.

Setting the system up is fairly straight forward as long as you have your email account details handy and want to collect all your email through Gmail. It's a little more complicated if you have more than one address and only want to use Gmail to collect one of them and I'll post a guide to setting everything up tomorrow. In the meantime go over to Gmail by clicking here and set up an account if you don't already have one, even if you don't want to filter spam, it's really handy having an online email account.

(23.03.07) The winners of the competition to create add-ons for Internet Explorer 7 have been announced and some of them look quite good. Just like IE itself they are something of a tribute to Firefox and it's vast library of add-ons, in fact some of them have been made by the same people and one is actually called FoxyTunes (it lets you listen to your music collection from within the browser). There's a spellchecker, an "inline" search tool for finding stuff on webpages, again replicting Firefox utilities. Still, they're worth having and only take a moment or to download (except free picture search, which I can't get to work, perhaps you have to register it or something). See the winners for yourself here, get more add-ons (try "Tools and Utilities", Internet Explorer Pro looks good) here and see my favourite Firefox add-ons here.

Friday Fun: If this doesn't bring a smile to your face nothing will, click here to see a man sing "Mule train" while using a tea tray to provide percussion (may take a while on dialup, click "pause" and go and make a cuppa while it loads).

If you want something a bit more cerebal, click here for "Games for the Brain". They're more like the kind of things you find in puzzler magazines rather than they web games I usually choose and range from the pretty easy to the quite challenging. Enjoy! 

(22.03.07) Google has started posting warnings under links that have been found to lead to websites offering "badware", that's programs that could do damage to your computer or compromise your security. They read "This site may harm your computer" and the message is itself a link to thiswebpage explaining the problem. They've been working with stopbadware.org an organisation that investigates reports from Internet users and has so far found over 36000 examples of badware. The programmes can be almost anything from free games such as scrabble to things claiming to be pop-up stoppers.

Unfortunately the Google is far from 100% effective and searches for things flagged up by stopbadware  as a risk will produce pages of results with no warnings, this is partly because lots of websites don't carry the software themselves but just link to it and so they slip through the net. My advice is to check out any free program you're thinking of installing by doing a search for it's name and the words "badware", "malware", "risk" and "problem".

PS3 is about to go on sale but as it costs £425, which is about £75 more than it does in the US, I'm not going to say anything else.

(19.03.07) Tomorrow is World Story Telling Day and Radio 5 is asking people to send in accounts, videos and pictures of what they are doing at midday. At least that's what their radio promotions are asking for, the website is a little more vague but it's a follow up to a previous project asking people to send in photos of what they were doing at five o'clock. If you want to take part click here.

(17.03.07) There's still lot's of people using old versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer if the people I'm contact with are anything to go by. The trouble with the older versions is that they aren't necessarily self updating or if the user has a dialup connection, may still be someway down the queue of Microsoft updates. This exposing them to considerably more danger on the Internet, not just because their browsers have unpatched vulnerabilities but because they aren't detecting and protecting the user from spoof websites. So if you can, try to get your friends to check which version they're using by clicking on "Help" at the top of the browser and then "About", Firefox should be at least version 2.0 and Internet Explorer version 7.0.

Friday Fun: It's wonderful how the Internet has given people so many ways of expressing themselves, whether by having their own blogs, posting pictures on Flickr or videos on YouTube and now there's somewhere for people who play with their food, or their condiments at least. Ketchup Art is doing its best to bring out their creative side.

Slightly less serious is a list of 59 things discovered under the Freedom of Information Act, click here if you want to know who proposed using trained dolphins to search for Nessie. 

(15.03.07) Books: Once upon a time it was said that the Internet would kill off the book, I even did a cartoon about it, it's in the cartoon archive but somehow it survived. Open Book on Radion 4 had an item on the best online websites and one of them struck me as absolutely wonderful, as long as you don't mind reading things on a computer screen. The Gutenburg Library has 20000 books online that are completely free to download, the top 100 (click here) includes Ulysses,  The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci and Illustrated History of Furniture, to name but three. See all the site recommended here (link will last one week).

(14.03.07) Microsoft has launched an alternative to .jpeg which it claims to offer higher compression ratios and a lower loss of data. This sounds like something that should be on the software updates page but so many of us store and work on digital pictures that it's of interest to almost everyone. Called HD Photo, it can also be used for lossless data retention, which preserves every scrap of information and even retains data changed by the user, all of which makes it sound very useful. At the very least it will mean we can store more pictures in the same space. Read more here. The article mentions a "Device Porting Kit" that enables applications to use the new format, I haven't investigated it yet but when I do I'll post an item.

(12.03.07) There's a virus on the loose locally and anyone who has had contact with the local council, the HIE or similar organisation should make sure that their anti-virus program is up to date. This isn't to say that any of those bodies is responsible for sending it out, just that whoever is has a lot of related addresses. I spotted the problem when my inbox started to fill up with virus warnings either for messages I hadn't sent or from people who had no reason to write to me, at least not all at the same time. This is because modern viruses don't use the real culprit's email address in the from box but take one they find on the computer they've infected, normally the inbox or web browser history. So lots of innocent people appear to be sending viruses and the real senderis impossible to track down. Anyway, be careful!

(10.03.07) I've updated the TV guide, there's now more websites and channels, plus I found out where ITV has been hiding away it's online TV, which, although it's not really up and running yet, promises to be one of the better offerings eventually.

(09.03.07) TV Guide Well it's taken a while but here it is, my guide to what's actually available once you've got past all the hype and it is, mostly hype. The truth is that online TV is still in it's infancy and some channels haven't even started to crawl yet. My favourite website was the free but low resolution FreeTube because it had lots to offer, literaly dozens of channels and you don't have to sign up for anything, of the established providers Channel 5 had the best technology but sadly, the highest prices and the smallest choice. Read the guide here, which is still something of a work in progress due to the rapid changes occuring in the market and if you have anything to add I'd love to hear from you.

Friday Fun: Last weeks eclipse (wasn't it good?!) inspired me to look for images on the Internet and I stumbled across Atopics, a website that specialises in images of earths atmosphere. It doesn't actually have any of eclipses but what it does have are well worth looking seeing. On a completely different search I happened upon something that should be filed under "what I'll by if I win a small lottery", it's a DIY hovercraft that can fly at about six feet , making it a ground effect aircraft but because it doesn't go to high, requires no license. Click here. Meanwhile, a slightly more prosaic form of transport is up for auction on Ebay.

(07.03.07) One of the great things about Firefox is the way you can customise it to work like you want and get it to do things that other browsers just can't, even when they're called Internet Explorer 7. For instance if I was to select a word or phrase on this page I could right click on it and from choose from over a hundred search engines and services to process it, very handy if you want to translate a phrase, find a biography or shop for a product. I get a weather forecast running in the thin bar at the bottom of the screen and I can choose which websites I want to run advertising or online programs, just by downloading a few very small programs, called Add-ons, that intergrate with Firefox. Now I've put together a list of my favourites so that people can try them out themselves, click here to try them out.

As we add more and more programs to our computers they often seem to take longer and longer to get going when we switch them on and this is because that so many of them insist on starting along with the everything else, even though we don't need them to. Stopping them doing so is relatively straight forward but can seem a bit daunting if you've never done it before, so I wasn't surprised when forum member Bearsarus asked for help about which were safe to turn off. Click here to read the thread and see the list of what can and what shouldn't be stopped from starting and feel free to post messages about items that aren't mentioned.

(06.03.07) Microsoft Wow competiton entrants are receiving rather tart rejection emails when their submissions are filtered out in the judging process. Rather than a variation on "thanks but sorry" the message reads; "Thank you for your interest in Show Us Your Wow. Unfortunately, your submission has not been accepted for this web site. Your submission will not be published, nor will it be shared by Microsoft with any other parties." A visit to the old link where it was displayed just results in a Wow page without a picture, not even a message saying it's been removed. You'd think a publicity campaign would find a way to let people down gently.

Apple Quicktime has an update available (see software updates page for link) and if you have a fairly recent version of the video and audio player, you'll see a big popup message appearing when you go online. It makes downloading the right version easier than going to the website but be carefull not to download i-Tunes at the same time unless you really want it. i-Tunes is music download and management software that goes with the i-pod music player and is a very big download. The pop-up message has selected both it and the player for download, so if you just click on the Accept button with out deselecting it, you will get both. Just click on the little box next to the i-Tunes option to deselect. 

(04.03.07) Vista, as we all know is very expensive this side of the Atlantic but you can save around half the cost by getting an "upgrade" version rather than the "full" version. Upgrade versions are designed for people who already have a computer running either Windows 2000 or XP and allow you install the new operating system on top of the old one, they cost around half of the full version.

Now it appears that you can install an upgrade version on a totally empty hard drive without proof that you've ever had a previous Microsoft operating system, merely by installing an upgrade version twice. This works because the upgrade is programmed to look for any previous MS operating system, including Vista, so all you have to do is install the upgrade without letting it register online or entering it's validation code and then repeat the process entering the code and allowing it to register itself.

Apparently this is quite deliberate and is a simple way of getting around the problem of people who bought computers from companies who didn't provide an operating disc amongst other things. Read more here. Basically it means that, rather than paying upwards of £180 for a full version of Vista Home Premium on Amazon, you could get the Upgrade instead for £123 or even less if you're willing to brave ebay.

(03.03.07) A lunar eclipse will occur tonight between 10.45 and midnight and it's been the best for a long time. Unfortunately it's a bit cloudy at the moment (half six) but the moon can still be seen clearly and unless the cloud thickens it will be well worth stepping outside to see it. Read more here.

(02.03.07) Security Alert: All antivirus companies are carrying warnings about a Trojan (a type of virus) called "Storm". It's been around for a while but recently a new variant has appeared and from what I can gather it's mutating, spawning variants that aren't necessarily being picked up by our security programs. It arrives in various guises but mostly by email and with lots of subject lines, mostly offers of sensational video footage or news stories. The advice is, as usual, to be very careful of unsolicited email and to make sure your AV program has had a chance to update before you open Outlook. You can read more details here (Symantec) and here (McAffee).

Firefox 3 is available for consumer testing and it offers a glimpse of what it will offer when it's officially released later this year and what Internet Explorer will offer next. Basically they're trying to intergrate all those programs that you can access online, such as Google's text editor, into the browser so that you don't actually be online to use them. You'll go online, access the program, go off, do your work and then go back to finish off if necessary. This will become increasingly important as more and more companies put their wares on the web, for instance Adobe, who will be making Photoshop available online later this year. Read more here.

Febuary

(28.02.07) Vista Petition People fed up with the price differential between the US and the UK's version of Vista have started a petition at the No 10 website asking the PM to speak out about it. If he can hold forth on football ticket prices why shouldn't he express an opinion on an issue that's symbolic of so many other rip offs? Sign the petition here.  After signing you'll be sent an email with a link which you have to click to complete the process, you have to give your details but nothing but your name is published and you may receive an email from the Prime Minister if he chooses to respond to the petition.

(25.02.07) Paypal Scam: You'll have noticed that many of the threats reported here require the victim to click on a link, this is particularly true of banking and ebay scams, the sort where a message is sent asking you to check your details or confirm a transaction.

The accepted way of spotting the hoaxes is to ignore any message which isn't addressed to you specifically but with a generic "Dear Customer" but I think there's a pretty simple way of finding out an account name. All a hoaxer has got to do is to enter into an exchange with, say, a PayPal user, perhaps to make payment for holiday accommodation and they could get a pretty good idea of someone's likely a account name.

Of course if the victim has the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox, the hoax website that the hoaxer tries to get someone to visit would be flagged up as not the real thing but many people don't have the latest version and the hoaxers are almost certain to figure out how to fool even the newest browsers. I think the only way round this is to have a feature in your account name, a middle letter for instance, that you don't share with others. That would work with PayPal but if you had an online bank account and gave your details to someone who had your email address, they could send you a hoax email addressed correctly. So my advice is to never respond to email purporting to come from PayPal or banks but instead visit their website to read any messages. 

(23.02.07) The National Archives are one of the gems of the Internet, unglamorous but well organised and easy to use, it is a treasure trove of Britain's history. It's just added the British Army's service and pension record and Cabinet documents from 1976. Click here to visit.

Friday Fun: In a change from the trend of recent weeks, this weeks dose of Friday Fun works just as well on dialup as it does on broadband. Ledix is fiendish brainteaser, the aim is simple, to push three boxes onto three stars within a small arena but finding a solution can drive you mad. If you get frustrated you can always post a question on the forum in the Off Topic section or try one of the equally quick to load games listed to the right of Ledix. Fry your brains here.

(21.02.07) Google has issued an updated version of its desktop search utility which patches a serious security vulnerability, so if you have it you should get it here. They've also enhnaced the widgety sidebar thing.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Google empire, Gmail has gone public and you no longer need an invitation to join. Given the absolutely zero amount of interest there was in my offer of invitations, I expect this to be met with complete apathy. It is, none the less, a very good online email program. Click here to be underwhelmed.

(20.02.07) The Xbox 360 may be about to drop in price at last if the latest from Makro is any indication. They're selling the console boxed with games for £200, the same price as the basic console has been going for up until now. Makro is a supermarket of some sort and doesn't have an online catalogue but if you're thinking of buying one I'd wait to see if other retailers follow suit.

(19.02.07) Beware of e-valentines cards coming from "AmericanGreetings" (all one word) they may very well contain a nasty virus. It may seem a little late for this warning but three of them turned up in my inbox today and sadly none were from mystery lovers. You can see one version of the email here.

As predicted Vista isn't recieving the warmest of welcomes around the net and typical of the responses is here on the Register website. They complain about the price, the price differential between here and the States, and the general "bugginess" of the operating system. No surprise there then! Thanks to Steve for the tip!

You've probably heard that Brittany Spears has shaved her head by now, it is after all the most important event since, oh I don't know, say her divorce. According to most news outlets the hair she didn't want is available on ebay with bids starting at $1 million. Well it was, I saw it but for reason that aren't clear it's been withdrawn (click here) but that's not stopping people using the shearing to flog what they claim are discarded locks as you can see here.

(15.02.07) The yet to be released Playstation 3 is the latest gadget to be priced significantly higher in the UK than in the US. The US Amazon site advertises it at $599 or £307 but the best pre-order price over here is a whopping £424! Why do we put up with this and why are people surprised that there's a black market in imported hacked consoles?

Friday Fun: Both of these probably work best on a broadband connection but are worth waiting for on dialup. The first is a page of the most amazing pavement art, it seems a pity that it's going to last such a short time. Click here for that. Even more ephemeral is the Flickr stream. Flickr is probably the most popular photo hosting site and this page displays large thumbnails of images as they're being loaded. The result is a strangely hypnotic view of the world as it puts itself on display, click here.

(14.02.07) Downing St. is to send all the people who signed the recent petition protesting the introduction of road pricing emails explaining the virutes of the scheme or "explaining the pricing plans in greater detail" as they put it. Given that sources are quoted as saying "We cannot be seen to bend, but we have to listen," it appears that they are using the petition system as little more than a way of generating a mailing list. In my opinion if they go through with this it will put people of signing them in the first place and if the mailing list is not made available to at least parliamentry groups opposing the scheme, it will be abuse of democracy. Read more here (dismounts high horse).

Computer Shopper has just published a test of twelve of the most popular antivirus programs and although it doesn't come out top, AVG does considerably better than Symantec, Trend and McAfee. The top places were taken Kaspersky, Steganos and Eset, who I've never heard of before. These tests are really a snapshot of how a program does against a bank of the days top threats and doesn't necessarily reflect long term effectiveness but none the less it sobering to think that the freebie we've been recommending to people who can't afford or don't want to pay for protection is often more affective than those we've been paying for. The test isn't online yet but can be read in issue 230 of Computer Shopper. 

(13.02.07) The BBC's Watchdog programme has just done a piece on the Xbox 360 and its propensity to fail just outside the twelve month warranty period. Apparently Microsoft is charging between £85 and £135 for repairs and replacements and claiming these are isolated incidents, not indicative of a manufacturing fault. However even a cursory search of the Internet reveals this is not the case and large numbers of people have been experiencing problems since the consoles release.

What Watchdog didn't mention and I'm surprised at this, is that a manufacturers warranty is only a starting point and its end is no reason not to return something  and expect a replacement. Under the Sale of Goods Act the purchaser has the right to expect that "goods are of satisfactory quality if they reach the standard that a reasonable person would regard as satisfactory, taking into account the price and any description". It's generally held that we can expect electrical to last two years and although the Xbox is a relatively new product games consoles have been around for a long time, long enough to establish that they can be expected to last at least two years by a reasonable person.

So if you have a problem with your's after twelve months, contact the retailer and point this out to them. If they quibble, suggest that the matter could be settled in the small claims court, which will cost you nothing but them a lot, I don't think they will argue for long. Watchdog piece here, Sale of Goods act, key facts, here.

(12.02.07) E-Petitions have hit the news for the first time since they were introduced for the UK parliament with the news that the anti-road pricing petition has reached a million "signatures". Actually it's now reached far more than that but the website has had so many hits that it's unable to process new ones. The UK version is still in the testing phase and anyway the government doesn't have a great record for taking any notice as the submission of a more than 2 million paper petition against the closure of rural post offices proves.

Things are different in Scotland, our parliament has petitions at it's heart and a committee that oversees them. Whether they be by the well tested e-petition or traditional methods, if they meet certain standards and have enough names they will be considered for debate on the floor. Read more about the road pricing petition here and compare the UK and Scottish systems here and here.

Mobile phones, the newer 3G rather than the older call/text types, are under increasing attack from viruses and depending on how your's is set up it could be vulnerable, particularly when you're in built up areas. Antivirus companies are highlighting the number of viruses out there, around 200, while commentators are pointing out there isn't that much evidence of a wide spread problem and suspect that the companies are hyping the issue in order to sell their products. Mobile phone viruses work in a slightly different way to computer viruses, while the latter is spread mainly over the internet by email, mobile viruses often spread by infecting nearby phones, so the you're more likely to pick on up in a Glasgow pub than travelling across Mull for example. That said, if I had a 3G phone, I'd get an antivirus program. Read more here.

(09.02.07) Friday fun: Chairs have inspired many artist designers in the last hundred years and you'd have thought there was little left to surprise us, let alone look new, simple and desireable but this is. Click here . I don't have any details about the manufacturer or any precursors to this design, if anyone does email me!

(07.02.07) Like a cross between Pooh, a Tamagotchi and Sim city, the Webkinz teddy is about to appear in the life of your nearest under ten girl (well, maybe boy but probaby not). By day, in fact all the time, it's an ordinary stuffed toy but online it leads a life of its own, living in a virtual world that requires rest, excercise, food and probably most importantly to the manufacturers, toys which cost money. It's one of those ideas we should have seen coming and it's already arrived in the States, so it will probably be next years most desireable Christmas present. You might as well buy one now, to avoid the rush and price hike. Read more here, the video is worth watching too and visit the company website here.

(05.02.07) Microsoft Live Search has launched a 3d map application that looks very similar to Google Earth. The main difference between the two is that MS's version works within Internet Explorer rather than as a seperate program and so is a lot quicker to download. The MS controls are a bit easier to do but the images don't look as realistic as Google Earth's and the resolution isn't as good, on the other hand Google's often include cloud which in 3d makes things appear snow covered. Here are the two images of the Ross of Mull, reduced to fit, side by side, Google is on the left. Microsofts 3d can be downloaded here, while Google Earth is here.

Microsoft Vista has been getting a bit of a pasting since its luanch last week. Apple is warning that it's not compatible with i-Tunes (click here), which seems an astonishing faux pas, while security companies are finding that it not as secure as it claims (click here). It also has a rather obvious flaw in it's voice recognition (vr) software, a website with an imbedded sound file could take control of a computer. Microsoft counters that VR needs to be switched on for such a scam to work but one assumes that they want people to switch it on, otherwise they wouldn't have spent so much money making it work. They would have been better off saing VR never really works because it doesn't. Read more here. 

(01.02.07) Adobe Photo Elements has been one of the most popular programs in the community ever since people started sharing, I think that's the word, a copy of PE2. Since then keen photographers have been upgrading through versions 3&4, especially 4, which is available very cheaply on ebay and very wonderful program it is too. Sadly version 5 is beyond the scope of most NAIDC computers because the minimum system requirements now demand that you have at least a 1.3Ghz processor, which only a few of the community computers have.

It's a sign of how computing is moving on but also that the council made a pretty good choice when they chose the Compaq Evo. Although it was cheap and needed some extra memory and a graphics cards to get the best out of it, it was a very good basic computer, afterall it's taken all these years for our favourite programs to out grow it!

Two - yes two - Friday funs for you today! The first is an alarm clock, I'm not entirely sure it's for real but I hope it is. WHo wouldn't like to woken in the morning by Jeeves, especially as voiced by Steven Fry? Well now you can be, I think, with the Voco Clock, which after a beep alarm, runs through one of fifty of Jeeves's morning greetings. Click here to hear for yourself.

The second is more for broadband or patient dialup users because it's quite a long Youtube film but it's worth it if you've seen that exploding paint advert on the telly, with paint bursting out of a tower block and wondered how it was done. I'd thought it was all done a computer before I saw this.

January

(31.01.07) Local Organic gardeners may be concerned by an email that appears to come from a popular supplier, Chase. It doesn't, in fact it isn't even aimed at gardeners but at users of the Chase Manhattan Bank but the senders name is apparently "Chase online", similar the seed suppliers own. It is of course a "phishing" scam, intended to entice the unwarey into parting with their banking details. If you have the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox you'll be presented with a warning should you click the link in the email but some people will be worried about it none the less. See the email at the bottom of the forum thread on email scams here.

The BBC's "Listen Again" feature has long been a favourite amongst internet users and now "watch again" will soon be with us. It won't be quite as comprehensive as the radio archive, programmes will only be kept for thirty days and they're still deciding precisely what content will be availalbe but it will be free and a lot more comprehensive than Channel4's TV on demand facility, which charges for most its content. Obviously it will only be practical for broadband users and even then those on a 512 connection will struggle a bit but it is going to be really useful for those with satellite tv who don't want to cough up for Sky+. Read more here.

(29.01.07) With Vista & Office 2007 only a matter of hours away serious doubts are being expressed about some of the details in the terms and conditions of use in the Vista user contract, some of which seem to be similar gripes to those people had with XP licensing, while others do seem a bit disturbing.

At the heart of the new concerns is the way Microsoft reserves the right to remove software it regards as undesirable form your computer without informing you, which could be perfectly benign if it is just removing spyware but what if it's looking for programs that can get round its Digital Rights Management (DRM) system? DRM is the other concern critics have because it appears to degrade the quality of dvds viewed on most monitors, which is an odd thing for an operating system to do. It also uses up a huge amount of system resources because it checks that the media isn't being tampered with, by which it means copied, 30 times a second. Read more here.

That's not to say that I won't be getting a copy, I'm looking into installing it on my current computer in a seperate partition so that I can start the computer in either XP or Vista, which will allow me to offer help to users of both systems without having to buy a second computer. Hopefully I'll win a copy via the Microsoft "Show us your WOW" (a somewhat unfortunate name I feel) competition that invites people to send in photos of things that made them go, erm, wow. Click here to see (and vote for!) my "wow".

Office 2007, on the other hand looks like a real step forward, far easier to use and more flexible than its predeccesors and as I reported before, you can get a very good idea of what it's like by test driving it online (click here).

(28.01.07) New guide: Not before time I've written a guide to Internet Explorer 7, the latest version of Microsoft's browser that looks uncannily like FIrefox. I've written because I've realised that very few people are taking advantage of the new features like tabbed browsing or the ability to use several search engines directly from the toolbar. It's still not as good as Firefox in my opinion but it is the most popular browser around and I hope the guide will help people get the most from it. Click here for the guide.

(26.01.07) Vista, Microsoft's succesor to XP, will soon be upon us and no doubt many people will be tempted by the avalanche of ads heralding this wonderous event. I think people should hold off for a while and let the others find the problems that plague every new operating system but if you are desperate to try it you should shop around because Vista is just the latest example of something being sold for a lot more in the UK than the US.

It's not by a small amount either, Amazon, which sells stuff for pretty close to RRP is pricing the full "Home Premium" version at $229 or £116 in the USA (click here) but  £206 in the UK (click here). You can find OEM, "disc only", versions for under £100 if search hard but be careful that it's a reputable retailer because the price difference is encouraging counterfieters to flood the market with fakes and some of those are carrying malware (click here). So, be careful!

Have a bit of silly fun watching animated cats listening to various types of music here.

(23.01.07) Don't panic if you receive an email from Symantec about the Peacomm trogan (a sort of virus) and can't get the webpage it links to to work properly. Norton Antivirus automatic update system has already got the definition and so long as your program is up to date you'll be OK. Even if it's not you'll only have a problem if you open an attachment about a serial killer that you weren't expecting to receive. Read more details here and thanks to forum member Peabody for the tip!

(22.01.07) For those of us who missed yesterday's programme on Radio 4 about the Scottish Executive's plans for a marine park we can download and listen to it here. Several local people are interviewed and a wide variety of views expressed. I'd love to know what it's all about, a friend of mine who works for Scottish National Heritage hadn't a clue when I asked them. 

(20.01.07) Microsoft's new automatic update service has been around for a while now, in fact I've written about it before but what I hadn't realised was that people had to actively install it, it doesn't just arrive with the other automatic updates. The new service updates more than just the operating system, it looks at all the Microsoft products on a computer, Word, Office, etc and makes sure they're up to date. To get it click on "Tools" at the top of Internet Explorer (if you can't see it, right click on a blank area near the address bar and click on "Menu bar") and then on "Windows Update".

If the new update software hasn't been installed there'll be a very obvious link to it on the page that opens, just follow the instructions to install it, the only thing you need to watch out for is the pale yellow "active X" blocking bar that appears at the top of the window, click on it to install the active X control you need to install the software.

Emails with "Notification" in the subject line purporting to come from a Spanish Lottery have arrived in the community and they are of course cons but they appear innocent enough because they don't ask for money up front but the senders will eventually. Even if you bought a lottery ticket in Spain ignore them, afterall, you didn't give anyone your email address when you got them did you?! Thanks to Peabody for posting about them on the forum!

There are also hoax emails about the recent storms about, with subject lines like "230 killed across Europe". Every major event is exploited by scammers in this way, again ignore them!

(19.01.07) The 2000friends email service has experienced a slowdown over the last three days and those using it may have been getting error messages or noticing that it was taking longer than usual to send and receive. This has been due to providors of the service upgrading the hardware used to host the service, the change over has now been completed and things should be back to normal tomorrow. Apologies for any inconvenience. A 2000friends email address is available to anyone who joins the forum.

(17.01.07) The Forum has gone public! Up until now it's been what is known as a "local" forum, which meant that people had to apply for membership before being able to post. That was because in the early days it thought a good idea to restrict membership to those benefitting from the North Argyll Islands Digital Community but that no longer seems necessary now that's its a mature entity.

The change means that anyone who is a member of the wider ezboard community, the network that hosts the forum, can join and post messages without prior approval. Hopefully this will mean more people joining, a greater number regular posters and won't change the friendly nature of our little community. If it does change things I will make it local again. So, spread the word, the doors are now open!

(16.01.07) Online Credit card security is an understandable concernfor many people but the truth of the matter is, provided your antivirus and firewall software is up to date and you ensure that you're on a secure site, it's really very safe. On the other hand I hardly ever meet anyone concerned about giving their details to a complete stranger in a call center, even though that person is earning so little they might be subject to temptation. This week has seen the latest example of information gleaned from a call center being used to defraud people, this time to the tune of £400 000. Read more here.

(15.01.07) The inflation figures that we here on the news seldom seem to reflect our own experiences, that's because they represent the spending of a notional average family and how many of us come from one of them? Also that family will live in an average place, not a ferry ride from a large supermarket. The Office of National Statistics has addressed this problem by launching a personal inflation calculator which allows people to work out the rate for things they actually spend money. Read more here and try the calculator here.

(14.01.07) Things to watch out for in 2007 (click on the bold text for links): Some things won't require looking out for, avoiding them will be harder, such as the Play Station 3 which will launch with more publicity than the World Cup. It'll be up against the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii but as the games market expanded to over 412 billion in 2006, their should enough for all of them to do OK. The first thing to cause a stir in 2007 is frankly a bit silly, surrounded with the latest gizmos from the biggest companies in the world, the star of CES '07 (a big trade show) was a home entertainment that looks like R2D2 . Licensed by Lucas Arts, creators of Star Wars, it can move, play music, project DVDs onto walls and ceilings and looks a complete waste of money.

Possibly even sillier was a nine foot flat screen TV from Sharp. It's a huge version of their Aquos range, which at present only goes up to a puny 52". Something I'd actually like is the Epos digital flash drive and pen, lets you write and draw on ordinary paper and download the results to your computer. I suspect others will be more attracted to the LG BH100, a high definition player that can handle both of the competing formats, meaning there's no chance of ending up with the equivalent of a 21st century betamax video player.

Our lives, or at least those living in the right areas, are most likely to be changed by the emergence of the Wi-Fi mobile phone, which will take advantage of the ever growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots to make very cheap mobile calls over the Internet. But perhaps the most significant project is the One Laptop per Child scheme, which is working to build laptops for $100 to provide opportunities for third world children and one can only wish them the best of luck.

Mind mapping is hardly new, they've been around for years. Basically they're a way of organising a set of related ideas into a diagram and they make them easier to think things out. A question on the forum set me off to find out if there was any free programs available that would enable them to be made on the computer and I was so impressed with the one I found I thought it worth recommending to a wider audience.

FreeMind lets you create and customise diagrams quickly and to link to files on your own computer on the Internet. You'll need to install Java if it isn't already on your computer (it probably is) but getting started is pretty straight forward. Find out more, with tips for creating maps, here.

(12.01.07) Adobe has issued a reminder to people to upgrade to the latest version of Acrobat Reader, which is less prone to security vulnerabilities than previous ones. You'll find the link at the top of the Anorak page but it's over 20mb and people might consider downloading Foxit Reader, which is only 1.5mb, mentioned below, an attractive alternative.

(11.01.07) Another vulnerability has been found in Adobe Acrobat Reader just as they announced a fix for the last one. The details of the new threat are complex and no doubt they'll be fixed soon but it seems that the spate of attacks predicted earlier this month is coming to pass, so I think it might be a good idea to follow the suggestion in this article and use something else to read .pdf documents. The program it recommends, called Foxit Reader, is a I.5mb download and works a lot better than Adobe AR. It launches far faster, looks exactly the same and actually allows you to type in your own comments on documents, Download it from here.

Once downloaded and installed, find a .pdf document, right click on it, left click on "Open with", click "Browse", find the Foxit program, click "Open" and click on the box next to "Always use this program" and click "OK".

(08.01.07) Argyll & Bute Council has put its housing design guide up on it's website in .pdf format so the documents are easy to print out. It covers all sizes of development, from the self builder to developers of estates. What's most interesting is that they've drawn guidance from all over Scotland and there are examples of all sorts of buildings. See for yourself here (don't use "open in a new tab" on the document links, it messes things up).

(07.01.02) I'm quite kean on digital photography and so spend a fair amount time looking at online galleries for tips and inspiration, so it's not often that I come across something so remarkable that I want to share it. A set of pictures of a fawn and a rabbit could just too cute but this one really quite touching and I hope you like it as much as I did, click here.

(06.01.07) BT broadband users have been receiving a message when they start the computers titled "Smartbridge Alert" and followed by a long message about an "image process file" which couldn't located. The warning refers to a piece of software installed along with the BT broadband program which monitors the connection for faults and supposedly enables BT to diagnose problems.

It seems that there's a conflict with Internet Explorer 7 which prevents the program starting properly and there are various work arounds that will stop the message appearing but won't actually solve the problem. No doubt BT will become aware of the issue eventually, get onto the manufacturers, Motive software and they'll issue an update. It updates automatically, so I recommend waiting for the update announcement to pop up in due course and installing it, until then just close to warning message when it appears and forget about it.

(04.01.07) Oh dear, another day, another warning. This one is just for Firefox users and only affects those that open .pdf documents in the browser, that is, open in Firefox. For those unfamiliar with the name, they're the ones that look a bit like a book page and are often used for help manuals. Symantec, makers of Norton, has found a flaw in the way .pdf documents handle Java Script (a code widely used on the Internet) which could give a hacker access to a wide range of methods for attacking a computer. They'd just need to get people to click on a link to a compromised file, via a link in Google for instance, to gain control of a system and given the number of times I click on links without noticing they're to .pdfs, that shouldn't be to hard.

They advise people to make the browser open them with Adobe Reader, like a help file would and so I've written some instructions for how to do this, they're a bit long but it's fairly straight forward really. Read a summary of the problem here, the details from Symantec here and my instructions here.

(03.01.07) Two significant threats have appeared over the last few days, one an email born virus and the other a vulnerability to the Apple Quicktime player. The virus comes in an attachment called "postcard.exe" with the subject line reading "Happy New year", hopefully everyone is so suspicious of this type of thing that it won't be opened but remember it could come from someone you trust and might expect to send a new year message. No doubt the problem will be addressed by the anti-virus companies but in the meantime be careful.

The vulnerability to Quicktime is potentially worse, especially if you're in the habit of following video links to unusual websites, of which there are a lot these days. If exploited it could lead to a computer being hijacked. It's the first in what is being called "the month of Apply bugs, which will see new flaws revealed throughout January. Read more here.


(02.01.07) Happy New Year and welcome back after the festive break! Things are a bit quite on the local news front, although their maybe more to report after I dig my way through the mountain of email in my inbox but over the next week there'll be the annual roundup of the past year and predictions for the coming one. In the meantime check out the Anorak page for the latest software updates and yet another reason to avoid Vista, while Science News has a printing machine that I hope local buys soon!