December

(28.12.09) VAT goes back to 17.5% on January the first, so the few days before New Year could be the best time to pick up a bargain. However it should be noted that retailers have their slackest period between January and February, which account for only 5% of their annual sales, so the VAT increase could be absorbed as they get desperate to shift stock. Whatever happens, this seems a good time to repost the hotukdeals link.

Here's a few goodies to get you through holidays:

The Poetry Foundation has great collection of poems searchable by author, genre, date or subject, click here for the Christmas page.

Datamancer makes suitably Dickensian versions of modern technology, here's a laptop fit for the Queen.

Christmas songs don't have to be cheesy, for instance, here's Tim Minchin's White Wine in the Sun.

Finally, a game of snow balls and clouds accompanied by hypnotic music, click here.

(21.12.09) You probably read the news in the Oban Times last week that Pennyghael and other small Argyll exchanges cursed with the exchange activate system, restricted to 512k connections etc, are to be upgraded to a full broadband service soon. Which is great, except it isn't technically news, the same announcement was made sometime ago and a check on SamKnows reveals that the upgrade dates of many exchanges have been brought forward by a year or more, in the case of Pennyghael and its neighbour Tiroran, to the last quarter of 2009, a target that has been missed unless they're going to be doing a lot overtime between now and the new year. Check your exchange on SamKnows here.

Meanwhile on Lismore more connections have become available recently, so presumably another rack has been added to the exchange but there's still no sign of the exchange being upgraded, despite it having one of the earliest original dates. So more good news/bad news. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(19.12.07) Weekend Fun: Another entry that could be on the science pages, this time a huge, zoomable image of the Milky Way which is just breath taking, click here.

In case you missed it on Have I got News for You etc, click here for the video of an octopus making use of disgarded coconut shells. 

Click here for a video of actor Brian Cox (Manhunter, The Bourne Supremacy etc) teaching a toddler to recite Shakespeare.

Infographics are the little symbols that indicate everything from facilities available at a motorway stop to what a lorry is carrying. Some people think they have greater possibilities, such as Tomas Nilsson who has used the style to retell Little Red Riding Hood, click here. 

Which brings us neatly to this weeks game, Twisted Fairytales - Goldilocks, which retells the well known story in the form of a spot the difference puzzle. Click here.

(16.12.07) Windows 7 has been well received by it's early adopters (as we're called apparently) according to tech blog Technologizer. Of the 550 or so readers and Twitter followers who responded most were extremely satisfied, which is unusually high for users of a new operating system. From what I can tell, and it's difficult judging when you've built your own computer and it has very new graphics card, W7 is much more stable the XP was when it first appeared and it handles problems that appear much more smoothly. It will be even better after the first service pack arrives and component manufacturers release better drivers but if you're thinking of getting a new computer, I'd say get it. Read more here. 

(15.12.09) I've reported several vulnerabilities to modified iPhones (hacking them so they're free of their standard contracts) over last couple of months, so it's nice to be able to post instructions on how to secure them. Click here for PC Advisor's five ways to protect your phone. 

(11.12.09) Friday Fun: Lets start with something that could just have well gone on the science page; XMM-Newton observatory is the largest satellite built by Europe and it's been in orbit for a decade now taking X-Rays of the universe. To celebrate the first ten years here's an audio slideshow with two astronomers talking about it's work.

Click here for ten great places to relax (I'm really only posting this for the first three).

Lego car racing in stop frame animation, what more could you want? Click here.

Not many items this week but here's a great game to make up for it, Peggle is based on the traditional childrens game is quite addictive. Not sure how many levels there are, I got to 12. There's a pluggin to download but it only takes a moment and a few adverts in the game for the paid for version but they are easily ignored. Click here.

(10.12.09) Google, home I think of Virgin email, has been taking new steps to improve your surfing experience by finding new ways of tracking what you look at on line. And if you don't like it, it's because you've something to hide. It's all a bit bonkers, the same mentality infuses Microsoft, they assume there commercial interests are exactly the same as your personal ones and can't see why anyone would object to them knowing everything about what you get up to online. Rather like New Labours vision of Britain, the concept of privacy is a radical idea that is only promoted by the paranoid  and the criminal. Their latest wheezes include "personalising" searches and running their own Internet address service, all of which looks innocent enough but has implications for everyone that isn't totally happy with a large organisation keeping tabs on them. Read more here, here and here. The solution is to use Firefox and NoScript which enables you to select which Google service run on your computer (see forum for more). Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(09.12..09) Facebook has revamped its privacy setting tools and members visiting the site will be confronted with a page recommending that they consider what they share with whom. Oddly the recommended settings suggest that people make their phone number public, which seems a bit odd but the extra options and new interface are an improvement. It's a welcome move from a social networking site because it forces members to consider what they share and hopefully realise that they are potentially giving identity thieves and the like a starting point for scams that can result in a lot of trouble. Read more here. 

(08.12.09) Christmas Bargains: We all know there are bargains, special offers and vouchers out there but if you don't actually live in a big town they're hard to come by. Thankfully there's a couple of websites to help us out. The first, hotukdeals, covers all retail outlets, including online, highlighting everything from cheap champagne in Tescos to to free music downloads. A lot of the offers have a short life span so it's worth checking the website regularly. The second site seems to be purely dedicated to online offers and vouchers but there are a lot of them and you're almost bound to find something worth looking into to. Click here and here. 

(04.12.09) Avast: For the first time since first recommending it two years ago I'm having to report a glitch with Avast anti-virus. Thankfully it's going to effect very few people. If your Avast updated between 3 and 6pm on Thursday it may have false positives that mean that some perfectly legitimate programs like Adobe, Realtek, media players etc stop working properly. The problem was fixed very quickly but if you find some things aren't working as they should, read this.

Friday Fun: Normally only annoying people inherit large amounts of money (hello Paris Hilton) but sometimes it goes to people living in a cave just outside Budapest. Click here.

Here's a YouTube video of 24 hours of the worlds air traffic.

And here's a picture someone sent me that I love for the simplicity of the idea and the amazing result. Thanks to someone for the pic.

Talking, not Talking is one of the best Radio 4's best current comedy shows. It's based around the surreal ramblings of Edinburgh Festival winner Laura Solon and and the only thing that could improve it is some cheap animation, like this.

Private Eye videos, what more needs to be said? Click here. 

Paradoxion is a game with a logic that I don't entirely understand but is worth having a go at: click here.

(03.12.09) As you may have heard, Google has agreed with news media companies to restrict the number of their stories it carries but it's not going to have much of an effect on most of us. That's because it won't change news searches that just list links to websites, rather it only stops Google from keeping text only versions of every story. There's another thing that hasn't been mentioned much in all the reports about this, it's very easy for any website to mark pages so that they can't be cached by Google in that way, it's really hard to see what all this kuffufle is has been all about. Read/see more here.

Meanwhile, they've struck a deal with Channel 5 to show complete shows on YouTube (Google own YT), they'll be free in the UK while in the US they'll pay $1.99 a show, which might be that popular as 90% of 5 content is reruns of US TV. I hope that other UK broadcasters come to similar arrangements as YouTube is generally more watchable on a 512k connection tha the various "iPlayers" they have on their own websites. Read more here.

(02.12.09) Last month, after spending the autumn buying parts, I built a new computer to run Windows 7. I'd originally intended just to upgrade my old one but once I'd realised I needed I new hard drive it seemed only a small step to go the whole hog. Prices were lower due to the global down turn and I think it's the first time it's possible to put a system together for less than you'd pay a major manufacturer.

But saving money isn't the real reason for doing it. Building a computer isn't that complex, it's just a matter of deciding a budget and making sure the parts a compatible and it's very rewarding. Click here to see what I ended up with. 

November

(30.11.09) eBay has been fined €1.7million by the French Commercial Court for violating an injunction preventing them from allowing the sale of luxury brand perfumes on it's French site. The sale of goods on such sites should be a matter of European law and it is but the French which has a lot of such brands in it's economy interpret the law in their own way. However, if the businesses effected could persuade a European court that their view was correct it could effect all of us and not just for luxury goods, it could prevent the resale of CDs, games etc etc. eBay have started a petition in responce this and similar rulings and to date 250000 people in the UK alone have signed up. Read more here and here. 

Meanwhile a pub has been fined £8000 after it was found that it's wi-fi had been used to illegally download files. How a venue can be thought responsible for what wi-fi users download is beyond me, would they be put on the sex offenders register if someone had downloaded illegal pornography? Read more here. 

(27.11.09) Friday Fun: You'll either think this is the cutest thing ever or, if you're sane, it will make you reach for the sick bag. Cornify.

Robert Popper rarely fails to amuse but this video does, but it's supposed to, so it succeeds.

The Muppets sing Bohemien Rapsody, what more needs to be said?

Liverpool got knocked out of Europe this week and they're well off in the league, so they're having their end of season party a bit early, click here.

King Kong's skeleton went on sale this week, it made £120,000.

I posted the Hema front page last Christmas, they've done a new animation for this and here it is.

Games: Return to Ravenhurst is one of the best games I've ever played, atmospheric, complex and involving, it was a new level in hidden object/puzzle adventures and now there's a sequal, click here. If you want something a bit quicker and free click here for Full Moon, a neat puzzle game which requires a bit of thought and quick fingers.

(26.11.09) Microsoft has issued a security advisory for all users of Internet Explorer 7 (and 6 if you're still using it) which requires them to download and install a fix that prevents that exploitation of a bug found and published online. It only takes a couple of minutes and if you haven't updated to I.E. 8 you should get it as soon as possible. Click here for the fix and here for more on the threat.

(23.11.09) The first virus to turn iPhones into virus spreading zombies has been found in the wild. It only attacks cracked phones, that's the ones that have been freed from their normal contracts but that still amounts to four million phones. Once infected a phone will redirected to fake bank websites when users are trying to access their accounts. Like previous attacks it appears to rely on people not changing the password when they install the software that enables them to break free of the official contracts. Read more here.  

(20.11.09) Friday Fun: Looking for the ideal Christmas present for a busy person on the move? How about a table that attaches to the steering wheel. It's probably not meant to be used while the car is actually moving but that's not what it's 208 Amazon reviewers think, clickhere.  

Can Painting is more interesting than it sounds, mainly because it involves painting on cat's rather of them. Perhaps disturbing would be a better word than interesting. Click here.

Art or perhaps it's mathematics, on a slightly higher plain is the quest for the perfect 3D fractal. Fractals are repeating patterns found in nature and can be expressed mathematically, normally as flat images. Click here for some extraordinary pictures. A link on that page led to another site which not only had fractals but images of things called minimal surface which almost as beautiful, click here. 

I'm not suggesting that anyone attempts to play Dungeon, an old style running jumping escape game because while it is a real, it's really an elaborate joke played by an amateur game writter on the users of the site that host's his games. Hidden in the game are a variety of bugs triggered by reaching certain levels, the clever bit is that the bugs are random, so players find different reasons for hating the game and then start arguing amongst themselves about what's wrong with it. Possibly only geeks will find this as funny as I did.

Instead play Ball, a game that involves a ball on a piece of string, manage to click on the ball and it will change colour. Click here. Rumour has it that Ball 2 will include a cup!

(18.11.09) The Queen's speech had a number of items about the future of digital Britain, the switch over from analogue to digital radio by 2015 is mapped out, Ofcom will have the power to fund independent news, for instance but the big item for Internet users is the measures that will be taken against illegal file sharers. The ultimate sanction they face is having their connection cut off, a real sledge hammer to crack a nut if ever there was one in my opinion and not the answer to the problem, rather it is more likely to encourage a phenomena which is partly fuelled by a desire for rebellion. It's also unfair to disconnect a whole household because one them won't stop sharing. Read more here. 

(17.11.09) VistaPrint is a company that comes in for criticism for it's marketing techniques but even though I've never had that problem with them (ticking the contact options correctly helps), I wasn't expecting much sympathy when I phoned them because half the calendars I'd ordered came back with the wrong cover. That's because as far as I could see, it was entirely my own fault but on the of chance it wasn't, I called them and I was right, it was my fault. Imagine my surprise when the woman said she'd see what could be done about reordering and when asked how much it would cost, said "nothing." I couldn't quite believe it but when I checked the order status there it was, a new batch of ten calendars free, I haven't even paid for the postage! VistaPrint can be found here.  

(12.11.09) Friday Fun: Kindle is Amazon's electronic book reader that lets you store books and read them on the move, so it's only logical that they should produce a version that works on a PC. It does a way with the most tempting aspects of the real thing, the matt screen and the simplicity of a dedicated device but it is free and will give an idea what the real thing is like. Get it here and get some free books here. 

Birds Swarming is a short video of birds swarming, I read on another site that they're starlings and there's 300 000 in the swarm but this is the best version of the video.

Two galleries from the Boston Globe's website, click here for Martian Landscapes and here for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Two games this week, Wake Up Box is a physics game that doesn't quite work in the same way as most gravity games do, while Small Worlds is odd little game that involves wandering around in the dark trying to figure out what to do. That doesn't make it sound very appealing but trust me, it's good. Both will load quickly on dialup. 

(11.11.09) A new computer aimed at the six million over 65s who have never used the internet. Called SimplicITy (not a good start) it's uses the open source and free Linus Mint to keep costs down and the desktop has been cleared of all but the basic functions. New users will taken through the early stages of computer use with videos featuring Valerie Singleton demonstrating how to use the mouse and keyboard etc. Prices start at £299 for just the tower, going up to £525 for a complete system (actually that sounds quite pricey for a simple Linux system). Read more here and here. Thanks again to Angela for the tip.

(10.11.09) Upgrading to Windows 7 is a very popular way of getting the new operating system, more so than with previous OSs because of the number of Vista systems sold with free upgrades. Sadly upgrading is proving problematic for many and there are an ever growing threads on message boards complaning about a cycle of endless restarts. Microsoft's own support site is full of them but their engineers seem to be blaming the consumers, which seems unfair to me, it should be a near foolproof process but evidently isn't and if it isn't, it's MS's fault. Read more here. (I found a clean install very easy and the operating is a joy to use, far less problematic than XP was when it first came out.)

(09.11.09) Reminiscent of our government's confusion with how ID cards work, Google seems a bit hazy on just how identifiable it's users are when logged into their various accounts. Basically they think they aren't and even if they are they can stop being identifiable if they want. What's more, according to the improbably named Vince Cirf, Google doesn't care who you are, just what you do. I'd find his protestations more believable if my real name, date of birth and postcode weren't visible on my Dashboard. Read more here and thanks once again to Angela for the tip. 

(07.11.09) Google have launched something called "Dashboard" which lets anyone that has an account with them or YouTube (they own YouTube) to see and control what information Google holds on them. Even though I knew they held a lot I was shocked just how much there was, all my searches going back months, documents that I'd received through Gmail, everything I'd looked at on YouTube and more. Fortunately it's possible to delete the histories and if you wish, stop them being saved in the future (although they can be useful, especially the way searches are presented). Read more and find the link to your Dashboard here. Thanks to Angela for the tip and thoughts.

(06.11.09) Friday FunL For those of you who haven't seen it, this week's most popular video is of a forklift driver causing $150000 worth of damage in a warehouse, click here.

Here's a gallery of the earth from space, or near space at least, while here is a gallery of space from earth or Hubble. The latter is amazing because the images are so big that they've made them zoomable.

Raindrop Melody Maker is very simple music making program with an element of randomness, so it sounds a bit like wind chimes, click here.

Two games this week: Cat got lost is an odd little game that involves getting to your cat through a series of locked doors. Rolley on the other hand asks you to roll a ball across squares to light them up while avoiding things that are trying to stop you. Both load quickly and the latter is quite difficult.  

(04.10.09) Google has added an fictional village to Google maps. Argleton is in Lancashire, just off the M54 and sits in what would otherwise be arable fields. Search Google and you can find the local weather, numbers for local tradesman and even property to buy (there isn't any). They've even done a satellite view to a fairly high detail, in fact annoyingly high detail, it's in better resolution than where I live. Read more here or go to Google maps and search for it.

October

(30.10.09) Friday Fun: Since upgrading to Windows 7 the old shoebox I keep the Firday Fun items in has been upgraded to a shiney attaché case that goes ba-ling when I press the catch. Lovely. To celebrate let's start with something vagally musical; Raindrops is sort of musical pattern maker but it seems to be random rather than working to a beat. Anyway it's fun and soothing. Or irritating depending on your point view. Click here.

Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic artist who can draws highly detailed pictures of buildings and landscapes that he's only looked at briefly. Click here to watch him draw New York.

A nice response to those right wing evangelicals who are rewriting the Bible because it's too liberal can be found in Supply Side Jesus here.

Upside Internet is a clever and extremely geeky answer to the theft of wireless internet connections. Click here.

Two 3d games today; for those on a slower connection, Monster Golf, a golf game set in a simple 3d world populated by friendly monsters, click here. For those on a faster connection, Lego Star Wars: The Search for R2D2, a highly detailed game that a few years ago would only have available on disc, click here (there's a small plugin to install but it only takes a moment).

(29.10.09) A Virgin.net customer on Lismore has had an email from them warning that the service may be briefly interrupted between 3rd and 30th of November and be a little unstable for the following week. Hopefully this means that the exchange is being upgraded from it's current Exchange Activate status, with only 512k connections available, to a fully functioning exchange, open to nearly all providers and supplying up 8mb connections. If so it means that either the 21stCentury project (which will all Scotland's exchanges upgraded) is nearly on schedule or that the Executives recent pledge to upgrade the Exchange Activate exchanges is bearing fruit. Which ever it is it's good news. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

(28.10.09) Learning and Teaching Scotland has opened a new web portal for Scotlands history that brings together a wide range of sources and information. From the earliest settlers to the creation of our modern world, there's information on whatever subject and period that interests you. Bookmark it for your childrens homework and your curiosity. Click here.

(26.10.09) Beep! If you've never build a computer you'll have no idea the sense of relief that little sound brings when you first boot up your new system. There's so many opportunities to mess things up as you one together that it almost seems a miracle when it all starts without problem. I've built it because my old one is about three years old, Windows 7 was coming out and parts are relatively cheap. In fact I think this is the first time I've actually saved money building one rather than buying from a reputable manufacturer.

I'm enjoying getting to know Windows 7 too, it seems very stable with some good new features and although slightly different in some respects to XP, all the changes seem sensible and intuitive. I'm also pleased that I waited to buy a graphics card as the system scores (Win7 has it own testing program) 4.9 out of 7.9 on the "Windows Experience Index", an awful name but lets you know how well your computer will handle the operating system's graphical demands. I'll post on the forum details of the system in case anyone feels inspired to have a go themselves.

(25.10.09) AVG has released an update, presumably to address the problems caused by the last one. If you've had difficulties getting it because your AVG program is refusing to update, as sometimes happens in these circumstances download it manually from the link on the Software Updates page here.

(23.10.09) Friday fun: I don't know what mysterygoogle is other than a random search result generator but it's oddly fun for a few minutes, click here.

Heard about religion but uncertain just which of the many to choose from? Well, this flowchart will help you decide.

Emily Howell is a remarkable composer and pianist, especially for one so young but the critics don't like her, describing her work as soulless and even mechanical. Which isn't surprising as she's actually a learning computer program. Click here to hear her or it.

Bored with political speeches, think you could do better? Click here to construct your own using snippets from leaders addresses to their party conferences.

Copy Cat is a game that asks you to recreate a picture using stencils, starts off easily but difficult very quickly. A real brain teaser, click here (loads fairly quickly).

Finally and just by the by, the post strike is having an odd effect on deliveries, round here one of the building suppliers is delivering packages from Amazon!

(22.10.09) The mail strike is going ahead and it looks as if there could be more to come in the next few weeks. The current action effects sorting offices and so there'll still be deliveries but items coming from outside your area could be delayed. The Royal Mail has a page on it's website that details when and where industrial action is being taken and you can find it here.

The strike seems to be inspiring a spat of fake of shipping email from DHL with the subject line "your item could not be delivered," at least it is if my inbox is anything to go by. Quite a cunning ploy given how many of us buy on the Internet from sellers who use couriers to deliver to the islands, so be careful what you open, the ones I've received had zipped folders attached containing some sort of virus.

(21.10.09) Google Chrome is the browser created by the search giant and based on the same code as Firefox. It's thought to be very secure because it runs in what is called "sandbox mode", which means that it isn't wired into the rest of the computer in the same way as other browsers, particularly Internet Explorer are, the thinking is if something nasty gets into the browser it will be harder for it to migrate into other parts of the system.

The downside for those who don't like the browser is Google's desire to build profiles of it's users so advertising can be better targeted at them and Chrome contains a component that does just that, builds a profile based on your browsing habits and labelled with a tag specific to your installation of the browser. However it's possible to strip it out by installing a simple application that puts a new shortcut on the desktop and removes the component before launching the Chrome.

Click here to download it and here to download Chrome if you haven't tried it, it's very good for some things and noticeably quicker when using things like Google Streetview, mail etc. 

(19.10.09) Windows 7 starts shipping this week and so it seems a good time to have a look at what it has to offer. In basic terms it's a reworking of Vista, the hugely unpopular successor to XP which failed on so many levels that it never really replaced it. W7 has got rid of the things people didn't like, has ensured that it can work with common devices and programs, doesn't slow down over time and has been tested by a very long period in beta. Industry and testers reaction has been generally positive and so it's likely that it will become as popular, if that's the right word as XP has been. Issu, the online magazine website has lots of free guides to the new operating system, I recommend the Pocket Guide for short but comprehensive look at what to expect. Click here.

Symantec, makers of Norton anti-virus, claim more than 40 million people have been fooled into installing fake security software over the last year. The commonest way they get caught is via a booby trapped website which then installs a program that convinces them their computer is infected with something, often by mimicing a real anti-virus program. The latest versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox warn if someone is about to enter a site known to be infected with malware but they can't protect against new threats. My advise is to use Firefox and install NoScript. Read more here and find out how to protect yourself online here.


(18.10.09) Another AVG update seems to be causing problems, not with retrieving subsequent updates this time, rather a feature designed to speed things up is having the opposite effect on some systems. Fortunately the solution is relatively simple, click here if you've experienced problems and thanks to sgegreen for the tip and the fix.

(16.10.09) Power went out unexpectedly on Mull at half six  last night, a bit of a surprise because the it was clear and calm night. The helpline estimated it it would be back on at 9 but it actually returned about twenty minutes later. For about half an hour and then it went off again, and then on again. Then there were a couple of, literally, flashes and then nothing. So at ten I called up again and the very helpful woman told me the problem was a large flock of geese that kept flying into the lines and that was why it kept going on and off.

Which made me think three things; geese flocks are getting bigger and this is going to happen more often, the Hydro has a very good helpline and it's really important that you have a surge protector (available all over place) and that computer isn't set to restart automatically after a power cut. Doing so isn't usually dangerous but it is when, as frequently happens, it comes back on briefly and the computer doesn't restart properly, it can be. For instructions on how to prevent a computer doing so click here. 

Friday Fun (Saturday special)!: The Front Fell Off was for a while a popular email joke until people realised it was actually from an Australian comedy show and not really an interview with a particularly dim minister. It's still very funny, more so for the fact that a lot of people took it seriously, click here.

WOWIO is an online book/magazine publishing website similar to Issu, the main difference is that while the content is free to view on the website, you can download stuff for a small payment. I've picked "500 Digital SLR hints, tips and techniques" as an example but explore the rest of the site because there really is a lot to view in all sorts of genres. Click here.

Xtranormal is an online animated movie maker, very simple to use and loads in a reasonable time on a 512k. Some features are unavailable in the free version but there's still enough to have fun. Click here.

Webaim's History of the Browser is fun in a geeky way, click here.

Patty Smith sang an acapella version of her big hit "Because the night" outside a London gallery opening the other day, click here to here it.

No game this week but word of a new one from the makers of an old favourite. The good news is that it's from the makers of Samorost and looks great, the bad is that it costs $17. Click here for more. 

(15.10.09) Radio 4's You and Yours had two items of interest for the west coast, a quite long piece on the future of fish farms and the plans Ocean Harvest have to move their farms further out to sea and the new licensing laws. The new laws cover every outlet that sells alcohol and minimum pricing (it's going to be 40p a unit, so if you drink strong cider life's going to get more expensive). Click here to listen.

(14.10.09) Yesterday saw the largest ever number of security updates from Microsoft, there's nineteen of them addressing 34 vulnerabilites and on top of them there's an update for Adobe Reader of 42mb. If you're have broadband with an "always on" connection you'll get them without problem provided your computer is on for an hour or so. However if you're on dialup it might be a good idea to leave the computer connected for as long as possible because it only downloads when the internet connection is otherwise idle. See the Software Updates page here for the list of fixes along with direct links to them and the Adobe Reader update. Click here for more on the overall story.

(12.10.09) It's National Identity Fraud Week, possibly not the most fun of weeks but hopefully it will be useful in raising awareness. There's a website of course with helpful information on how to protect yourself and what to do if you're a victim. Which is good thing when you consider that last week's news of a huge dumping of email login information on a website was just the tip of a very big iceburg. Click here and here. 

(08.10.09) Another vulnerability has been found in Adobe Reader, once again targeting it's Javascript capabilities. Although the article doesn't say so, it probably means that all .pdf readers are a risk. So be careful clicking .pdf links, especially in web searches. There's an update addressing the problem coming out next week. Read more here, thanks to Steve for the tip.

Friday Fun: Let's start with headline, not because it's atop a great article, just because it's a wonderful headline, click here.

I featured this Japanese robot a while ago but now she can sing using voice synthesis software, so here she is again.

I can't get this to work but I suspect that's because of all the security things I have running and it looks a really interesting experiment. It's run by the BBC and aims to test whether so called "brain training" exercises actually work. You have to register to take part and then spend 10 minutes, 3 days a week, doing the exercises. Click here to take part.

Derren Brown, who's somewhat disappointing tv series concluded last week, has a blog and on that blog is this excellent little video of the old three cups and a ball game. Watch it right up to the end, click pause and wait for it to load if it keeps pausing. 

Legend of the Golden Mask is an online Big Fish style hidden object game and it's free. The only difference is that you can't play full screen which makes finding some of the things quite difficult but it's very well done and a great introduction to the genre. Click here (will load slowly on dialup)

(07.10.09) Maps released as part of a report from the Highlands & Islands Enterprise outlining the need and cost of providing broadband fibre connections to the Highlands and islands show a clear relationship between broadband take up and people being connected to restrictive Exchange Activate exchanges. In some places, one of which is on the Isle of Mull, less than 30% of the population is on ADSL, while most of the others are below 40%. Some are right next to places with over 80% take up, so the only explanation is the exchange and the unwillingness of BT to add more capacity when the 30 lines have been allocated. See Science News for the report and maps.  

(06.10.09) I'm happy to report that the chap on Lismore who lost his broadband connection has been reconnected after several frustrating weeks. It appears that the original problem was caused by a wire being plugged into the wrong socket but there's no word about the part that was going to take such a long time to arrive from Germany. I think the fact that he was a business customer helped and the story on the front of last week's Oban Times can't have hurt either.

Thousands of login details for online email accounts, including Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, have been published on a website. The details were stolen through an as yet unidentified phishing scam (phishing = fooling someone into providing information) and around 30 000 people are thought to be effected. Why they've been published on freely available website is a bit of a mystery, it as if the poster(s) were trying to warn people of the risk of not being alert online rather than profit. Read more here and here.

(05.10.09) A week after the Ross of Mull lost it's microwave connection to the outside world people are still finding that their BT home Hubs aren't accessing the Internet. Yes, that's right, some people don't visit the Internet every day, amazing but true. I helped someone to reconnect today and found the process not as straight forward as expected, neither pressing the restart nor the hidden restore button worked and only disconnecting the power line got it going again. Although we're unlikely to see such a massive disconnection again, the same thing could happen to individuals or even whole exchanges, so I think the forum needs a guide to reconnecting.

People wishing to contribute to charities aiding the recent earthquake and tsunami disasters in the Pacific etc can do so via the Disasters Emergency Committee. It's an umbrella organisation that raises and distributes funds for all the major charities and makes giving much simpler. Click here for the forum thread and link.

(02.10.09) Wednesday's phone outage just effected the Ross of Mull and was due to a problem with the microwave connection to Tiree. It was reported on the BT service status page but obviously none of us could access it at the time. Most people have had a full suervice restored but last night some were still waiting for their broadband restored, while others had to reconfigure the router (no idea why).

Friday Fun: More info has surfaced of Microsoft's Courier project, the voice over is a bit annoying but the computer looks great, click here.

China celebrates the 60th anniversary of communist rule here.

Huge archive of old PC games, some quite recent here.

Lily Allen was one of the first artists to exploit the then new phenomenon of social networking to market an image of a grass roots rise to fame, in fact she had a very famous father and record company that co-ordinated the campaign. Now she's retired from the music business in protest of file sharing, which in part was what made her famous. A fan has written her a letter and sung it on YouTube.

Now that Lily Allan has departed the scene we'll just have to make up our own music but what are the tone deaf hordes to do? Well fear not, iNudge is a cute online synthesiser that require no musical ability whatsoever, just click on the squares to create the tune and rhythm. Click here to compose and share your work if you want. Tip, start at the bottom of the column on the right, that's where the drum and bass sounds are (seems to download quickly too so will work on dialup.)

Magnets is a nice little physics game that exploits the attraction/repulsion properties of magnets, it's not easy but the failures are fun.Click here.

(01.10.09) After the tales from Lismore that have been fascinating me for the last week, yesterday everyone in Tiroran, Pennyghael and possibly beyond were hit by a lose of telephone connections. We could call people connected to our own exchange, even then it was like talking to someone down a long pipe filled with cotton wool but anything beyond resulted in an engaged tone. That included internet dial-up and broadband connections and the BT helpline. It took a while to figure out what was going on and then even longer to find someone round here with a mobile phone who could report the problem.

Happily it was sorted out by about 10.30pm but I'm intrigued how far the problems extended. I've heard rumours that it was all of Mull and even that Oban was cut off but have no idea if this is the case or not. Any tips gratefully received!

By the by, I spoke to a telephone engineer who told me that the problem of phone lines getting switched over when fibre cable is being installed isn't that uncommon, especially on islands where the engineer might be on a tight schedule with a ferry to catch. It usually occurs because the normal connections have been altered by a previous repair, so the tiny wires with their tiny colour codes don't match up in the normal way. So that's why you can come home from holiday and find your phone rings in someone else's house.

September

(29.09.09) Phishing, the fake email that entice people into clicking dodgy links or downloading malware, hit an all time high this year, dispelling the impression that maybethe phenomenon was on the wane. 80% of the attacks are targeting financial institutions, trying to get users to divulge login details, while emails going after social networking website details rose by 168%. I think this is down to the cheapness of sending out the attacks and the spread of infected home computers sending out the messages, rather than their effectiveness, as the vast majority will be caught by spam filters. At least mine are, but then I use Gmail. Read more here.  

This is more worrying; hackers have succeeded in getting a rogue banner ad past some very big companies including Google, doubleclick and Fastclick. This meant that just visiting a perfectly legitimate website could result in your computer being attacked. Symptoms were a very brief flash of a booby-trapped .pdf file. This is what is known as a "drive-by" attack, meaning that just looking at a website can infect your computer. It's getting really scarey out there, make sure that your anti-virus and firewall program(s) are up to date and use Firefox in conjunction with NoScript is my advise. Read more here and get more securityhere.

(28.09.09) More tales from Lismore: Here's another odd story from Lismore, an island where BT seems to specialise in finding new ways to frustrate it's confused customers. They're laying new cable across the island, one presumes in preperation for the 21CN upgrade and the reconnection of the individual lines via the new cable resulted in one poor chap arriving home from holiday to find his line wasn't working. He reported it from a public phone but BT didn't believe him because when they called the number it rang. That was because it had been connected to someone elses house, so it worked, just in the wrong building. As you can imagine it took ages sort out and when the engineer finally came out he seemed under the impression that the problem in his internal wiring.

Meanwhile the chap who lost his broadband still hasn't got it back even though other people on the island are successfully getting new broadband connections. Once again, thanks to Steve for the tip. 

(25.09.09) Friday Fun: Ever wondered what news readers do during the ad breaks? Well wonder no more, just click here.

Windows 7 arrives next month and to celebrate the momentous event Microsoft are encouraging the many people who've been testing it, IT professionals and the like to hold parties to mark the launch. When I was first sent this I thought it was a spoof but it's not, click here. (Thanks to Steve for the tip) 

A better idea from Microsoft is this notebook that looks just like a book, consisting of two screens that fold out with the hinge area serving as a holding area for things being moved between the them. Operated by a pen instead of a mouse it looks great. Click here for geeky joy.

I think I've posted about upside down houses before but none have been anything like as obsessively detailed as this one.

Something useful now, at least if you're a crossworder and have ever been stuck with a few letters and an unsolvable last clue. Just enter the known letters, full stops for the unknowns and this website will do the rest. 

Stick Cricket was a favourite amongst some school boys but it was never as addictive as this online game, even if, like me, you're not a fan of the real thing this is worth a go. Click here and then on link on the left (there's also a tennis game).

(24.09.09) Great news for the many highland and islanders connected to "Exchange Activate" exchanges! SE Finance Secretary John Swinney has announced they will all be upgraded to a normal service as soon as possible. This will mean that speeds will rise from 512k to as high as 8mb and there will no restrictions regarding which ISP you choose, rather than the 5 or 6 available now. Upgrades will start with the exchanges at or near capacity (good news for Lismore) but eventually all 140 will be upgraded. Hooray! Read more here.

(23.09.09) There have been developments in the Lismore broadband and it's not good news for the customer who lost their connection nor the rest of us. He's been told that the technical problem, which just involves replacing a wire can't be fixed until the exchange is upgraded to 21CN next April.

Firstly, this is very odd. It can't possibly take over six months to replace a wire, even if it does have to come all the way from Germany, you could walk there and back quicker. It's as if Lismore has lost a broadband connection and only talking to an engineer working on the exchange and someone high up in BT Scotland could sort it out IMO. The separation of BT the supplier of connections and BT, supplier of broadband, has been a good thing generally but in cases like this it causes problems because no one you get to talk to really understands what's going on.

Secondly, the upgrade to 21CN is already over six months behind schedule as Lismore was supposed to upgraded in the third quarter this year. That means that the rest of us are going to have wait at least another six months, it will probably be more as the project is still in it's early stages and more delays are going to develop as things go on. Check when your exchange will be upgraded by clicking here and adding at least six months.

(22.09.09) Strange goings on on Lismore: A couple of weeks ago strong winds took out a BT business customer's incoming calls, strangely he could still make outgoing calls and his broadband connection was unaffected. Because he was a business customer BT sent out an engineer to fix the fault, which he duly did but in doing so broadband was lost. After many hours talking to various customer service people he was eventually told that the problem was with his "tie pair" (a wire the connects broadband racks) at the exchange and it needed to be replaced. Unfortunately it was supplied by Fujitsu Siemens in Germany (can't BT use eBay like everyone else?) which would take sometime. Service was supposed to be restored by last Friday but it hasn't happened.

Meanwhile a neighbour who had just signed up to BT Home received their Home Hub but the expected activation never happened. There is a known capacity problem at the Lismore exchange, so one wonders if the neighbour managed to sign up while the business customer was unable to get broadband. An engineer was due yesterday but I haven't heard that it's been fixed and fear that nothing will happen until the whole exchange is upgraded to 21CN (see Broadband News) which is supposed to happen by the end of the month. (Thanks for the tip, whoever sent it in) 

Microsoft is offering Windows 7 to students with a the .edu email domain used by educational establishments the oppurtuntiy to buy the new operating system for only £30, a huge discount on the normal price for W7 Professional. The offer starts on September 1st and will run until stocks run out. So if you know anyone at University let them know because if previous offers are anything to go buy, they'll run out fast. Click here for details. 

(21.09.09) A new threat called the Clampi Virus has being making the news today because it's spreading fast and is very specific in it's activities. Technically a Trojan (something nasty that arrives pretending to be something nice) it is carried in downloads from links posted on social networking sites and those unknowingly infected with it. Once on your computer it just sits there waiting for you to visit any of the 4000+ addresses it monitors, at which point it records your bank, PayPal or whatever login details which it then sends of to it's masters.

It is known to the major antivirus program makers, although they may call it by another name but it well to be wary in any case, visiting any site can be risky these days, even the New York TImes has been known to host malware. Read more here and here.

(18.09.09) Friday Fun: I felt pretty chuffed this week when I got a good photograph of woodwasp that lays eggs on the eggs of another species of woodwasp, I can only imagine how the photographer who got these images of bats drinking from a suburban pond which even impressed the experts from the Bat Conservation Trust.

For those who haven't heard it, here's Susan Boyle's new singal, a version of the Rolling Stones "Wild Horses". I really like it but every so often as she sings I keep thinking she's going to break into "the Power of Love."

Digital Britain, the Quango charged with bringing broadband to the dispossessed, has itself been dispossessed of it's laptops. Let's hope they didn't contain to many personal details. Click here and thanks to Steve for the link.

Click here for a montage of video dating videos from the 80's, at least I assume it's the 80's, if not they're worse than I thought.

Make it Good is an interactive detective mystery which goes way beyond the usual point and click story. Very detailed and immersive, it might take a while to load on dialup but it's well worth it. Click here.

(17.09.09) Google Chrome has released version 3, claiming it's 25% faster at handling JavaScript, which must be a good thing. I haven't noticed much difference but it's not a bad browser and is a handy alterative to FIrefox when you need one. If you've already got it just click on the spanner at top right, then "About" and finally "Check for updates." If you don't have it, click here.

The Scottish Executive has won an award for it's website from the Web Marketing Association, which they've done before but this one is better than the last. Well done them. Click here for more. 

(15.09.09) Security News: Two events, the annivesary of 9/11 (or 11/9 to us) and the death of Patrick Swayse, have sparked a flurry of email, message board and search engine links that lead to websites hosting malware. Gone, well almost gone, is the tempting email attachment, the weapon of choice for the modern hacker is the infected website. They might be especially constructed for the task or they might legitimate websites hijacked for the purpose, whatever the case you need to be wary following links wherever you find them. Read more here, here and here.

(14.09.09) Google maps has upped the resolution of it's satellite view across a huge swathe of the Scottish Highlands. Sadly for me the improvement only covers the top bit of the Isle of Mull but hopefully the rest of it will get the upgrade soon. The improvement is huge, from an image that was fuzzy at all levels to one that can be zoomed to the point that you can make out the seperate roof pitches on Glengorm Castle.

(11.09.09) Friday Fun: Hailed as the best TV blooper, well it might not be but it's only seven seconds long, contains no swearing and is very fun, click here. That inspired me to search out my favourite radio blooper, a report on a fire at the Firestone tyre factory and I found it here.

The Cat Piano is a stylish video of a poem narrated by Nick Cave, it might take a while to load on dial-up but it's well worth it, click here. (View fullscreen)

Here's a potpourri of stories that caught my eye this week: The worlds fastest cheetah is a sight to see as is it's owner, who although American gives the impression of being posh and English. Some people should make the Darwin awards but don't, like the 15yr old who put his gun down his sweat pants and shot himself in the... Man fires canon, hits neighbour's house, that's all you need to know really. And finally, a really good alien found in Mexico story. (The Darwin AwardsThe Circle of the Cat is the best game I've come across in ages, quick to load, easy to play but fiendishly difficult to beat, click )

here.

(07.09.09) Research by PC Tools has found that 46% of us use just one password to access all websites that require login be they message boards or banks. If that's true it's also probable that they use something fairly straight forward and use the any password reminder system in a straight forward way, i.e. the answer to the secret question really is the name of their first school or whatever. Given how many people belong to sites on which asking where someone went to school is out of the odinary, this is very risky.

I recommend that people have one easy to remember password for social websites but use several more complex passwords for banks, Amazon, eBay etc. It's easy to create one using letters and numbers that are easy for you to remember but are very hard to crack, which you never share with anyone. You don't have to answer the secret question honestly, the website doesn't care if your mother's maiden name was Smith or Tr1angle. Or elephant for that matter. Read more here and read out guide to staying safe online here.    

(04.09.09) Apology for the lack of updates this week, I've been working late every night and been to tired. Plus nothing of any note has happened anywhere, at all.

Friday Fun: I was trying to identify a plant this week and happened upon two useful sites worth bookmarking; Flora Search takes you through a series of questions and then presents you with possible candidates, the more questions you can answer, the more precis the answer is. Coming from the other end, the Postcode Planets Database tells you all the plants native to your postcode.  

X-Ray photography is taken to new levels by Nick Veasey, who gone to great lengths, some a bit creepy and enormous expense to create this gallery.

It had to happen, someone has made a "Downfall" video of Hitler discovering that he's the subject of numerous YouTube spoofs, click here. This didn't really need to happen but it did, a man nearly breaks the world record (and himself) for pogo stick back flips, click here (he actually succeeds in another video but I preferred this one).

Couldn't find a really good new game so lets play Bubble Spinner again. 

August

(31.08.09) Lismore: In a months time we'll know if BT's 21st Century Network project is on track. If it is Lismore will have it's exchange upgraded to all digital and the island's residents will enjoy up to 12mb broadband and the full range of ISPs to choose from. If not then it's behind schedule and we'll all have to put the date our exchange will upgrade back. To find out when yours should upgrade click here, enter its name and look for "21CN PSTN switchover target".

Apple has denied that the problem with exploding iPhones and iPlayers (see below) is due to batteries, instead it claims that screens have been broken by external pressure and overheating incidents are isolated incidents. Read more here.

(28.08.09) Friday Fun: I used to live in East Anglia and I might have appreciated it more if I'd realised what was lurking off the coast, click here.

Ever fancied getting paid to fix computer problems? OK, this is how it's done.

Big trucks crashing isn't most tempting subject for a blog but it's surprsingly good, click here.

Click here for a great gallery of long exposure images.

Dream Racer is an old style racing game, easy to play and quite hypnotic. Click here.

(26.08.09) If your iPod or iPhone seems to be unusually hot perhaps you should return it to the retailer and ask for a replacement. Following reports of exploding mp3 players, the phones are now said to be just as dangerous and are being investigated by French consumer groups. Read more here. 

Internet Explorer's SmartScreen Filter black listed all website using the uk.com domain for a while today. Designed to protect users from sites hosting malware, the filter generates a red browser tab with a message reading "this website has been reported unsafe" and offering a link to the browser's home page. Although the issue seems to have been resolved there are concerns that users may have been put off revisiting the effected sites. Read more here. 

(25.08.09) Peter Mandelson bumped into music mogul David Geffen while on holiday and has decided that we need to disconnect persistant file sharers. In a coincidence reminiscent of his holiday with a Russian gas mogul that just happened to come just before he made, as EU commissioner, a ruling in favour of Russian gas moguls, he's done what some in the industry wanted and ignored independent advise. 

In this case he's chosen to reverse the policy adopted after the Digital Britain came out in June which gave Ofcom two years to consider the various options for dealing with file sharers. The report had already resulted in agreements between ISPs and media companies allowing unlimited downloads on subscription and near free internet music services. Instead persistent offenders will be have their internet connection cut-off, even though this has already resulted in people being wrongly cut-off, it seeming unjust cutting off a whole family when only one of them file shares and the methods of tracking are fairly easy to get round. Read more here.

(24.08.09) Hotmail has suspended the attach photo facility following security issues they discovered caused by an incompatibility between the mail service and Internet Explorer. The withdrawal was unannounced but I think there's now an explanation following complaints from users. Read more here.

World of Warcraft players are being targeted by a new phishing scam that tries to part them from their login details by purporting to come from WOW accounts administration. Links take the victim to a realistic but fake site, so if you're a player be careful what you respond to and only access your account through the website, not through links in email. Read more here.

(21.08.09) Friday Fun: David Mitchell seems to have taken up all the available space on TV but happily he's found a little more on the Guardian website where in addition to his weekly column he has a vodcast in which he sets the world to rights in five minute chunks. Click here. (Also added to our list of pod and vodcasts here)  

Radio Spiritworld is podcast from the creators of the spoof 70s technology show "Look Around You," Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz. It's funny and slightly weird. Click here.

Norton Antivirus expirey notices pop-up at the most ackward moments, such as in the middle of a weather forecast, click here (no sound on this unfortunatley).

eHow is part of YouTube's Expert Village teaching the world vital skills such as how Americans can speak English with a British accent. Click here.

Demolition City is a simple physics game that involves placing dynamite to bring buildings down. There's only 20 levels but some of them are really tricky. Click here.

By the way, Big Fish Games has reduced prices on all it's titles from up to £19.99 to £6.99. Every day there's one on special offer for £2.99 but they're mostly the older and less popular ones, so check the forums for peoples opinions before buying, click here.

(20.08.09) I'm in the process of choosing parts for a new computer and have come across a motherboard with an intriguing component. A plug in module called "Winki" allows the user to surf the web, use an internet phone without having to boot up the hard drive by pressing F5 as the computer starts up. Because it's plugged straight into the motherboard it works much faster than normal operating systems and programmes, launching as soon as the key is pressed. It will be very handy if something stops the computer working and I need to search for a solution online! Read more here (the motherboard is here). 

(19.08.09) After we've been using it for while most of us find that Firefox takes longer to load, that's because when it starts up it checks for updates for our add-ons and loads a history file that stores ninety days of browsing. Speeding it up can be just a matter of changing the number of days it keeps and manually checking for updates, find out how here.

(17.08.09) Flash cookies - Oh no, not another thing to worry about: Flash cookies are embedded within the Adobe flash player and consequently aren't effected by your browser cookie settings nor whatever blocker you use, even one as comprehensive as NoScript nor can they be viewed or deleted in the usual way. They can take up far more room than a conventional cookies, up to a 100kb as opposed to 4kb and as well as tracking your activities across multiple sites they can even give the cookie generator access to your microphone and webcam.

Lot's of legitimate websites use them, YouTube for instance stores your preferences on one but because of their "super powers" they do present a security risk. You can't easily access them on your computer, you have to go to the Macromedia website to view them and tweak the settings. Click here to do so and you'll be surprised how many you have. Firefox users can install a pluggin that deletes them after every web session and lets you allow or disallow them from specific websites, click here to get it. Click here to read more about them.   

(14.08.09) Friday Fun: Bing is Microsoft's answer to Google but it's going to have a hard supplanting the #1 search engine unless it can find a new way of doing things. Perhaps it has with it's video search which runs a preview when you mouse over a video. Try it with this page of videos from one of my Favourite bands, Talking Heads, here.

Why does your English let you down? Or mine for that matter. I don't know but I do know that's its one of the many headlines that has run across the top of the longest running advert in history. Find out the story behind it's success and just who that somewhat gormless bloke is here.

Virtual Globetrotting is a website and forum dedicated to exploring the world via Google maps, Street View, Earth View etc. The front page isn't very promising but delve into the website and there's a lot of great stuff. I liked the thumbnailed favourite Street View that when clicked take you to the actual Street View. Click here. 

Could 360° video be the future of Street View? It works in the same way but rather than movement jumping 20 metres to the next static all round image, it flows as if you were floating along. It's quite remarkable, the footage from a live gig gives you a real sense of being there. Click here.

Silent Conversation is a simple game that involves reading classic text while taping the arrow keys, it's fun but sometimes you feel as if the game is getting in the way of your reading, which in turn makes you want to seek out the original text. maybe that's the idea. Click here.

(13.08.09) I've found a couple of Addons that makes text easier to read. You can of course enlarge everything on a page bigger by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing plus (+) but these go a step further by removing everything except the main text from the page, which makes it much easier read and print out. Both only work on pages with articles, neither do anything to, say, the front page of BBC News. 

Readability, which works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer, isn't exactly an add-on, it's a link it's a button you drag onto the bookmarks toolbar (click "View" at the top of the browser and then "Bookmarks toolbar" if you can't see it) that when clicked removes everything but the main article from a webpage. If you have NoScript installed you will have to click on "Options", then "Allow Arc90" and "Temporarily allow all this page" before you drag the link to the toolbar but after you've done you can disable the temporary permissions. Once it's installed it's very easy to use, just go to a page and click on the link toolbar link button. Click here.

TidyRead only works with Firefox and is a bit more complicated to use than Readability. To resize a page first you right click to switch it on but after that it works on all article pages unless you ask it not to and some may find this annoying. It is more flexible though, giving you options at the top of each page rather than just when you first set it up. Click here.

Both have been added to the Favourite Firefox add-ons page here along with a new text box resizer (handy if you post on message boards like the Gaurdian or those tiny "contact us" boxes) which replces the one that didn't work with Firefox 3.5.

(12.08.09) Scams targeting PayPal users can be very convincing and lead to the loss of money or at the very least a lot of inconvenience as things are cleared up. The latest email that I've come across to take someone in was entitled "you have been randomly selected for a security check" and contained a link to replica website asking for login details. Fortunately the victim doesn't appear to have lost any money because PayPal's suspicious activity seems to have kicked in and put a hold on the account. Reactivating is proving a long winded process and still sometime later they can't make payments through the system. The moral is never click a link in an email purporting to come from PayPal, even if you are convinced it's genuine.

Paypal is addressing this with something called Iconix Email Identification, which puts a marker next to genuine messages when the arrive in your inbox. It works with all major email programs, including online services and you can get it by going to PayPal and then clicking on the Safety Advice link at the top. From there look for "Security Tools" and follow the links. 

(10.08.09) More on scareware: Although I've only come across a few instances of it, scareware of the type I highlighted last week is an astonishingly successful method of making money for those distributing it. According to a study by Panda Security fraudsters are infecting around 35 million computers every month and making a around $34 million, from the amounts of money I've seen taken (£50 a system), that means about 3% of people are taken in. There are around 200 different types of attacks and they even extend to fake "security calls" over the phone. Victims are typically people who don't use there computers that much and have out of date security software but it can take in the experienced too. Read more here. 

(07.08.09) Friday Fun: The Daily Mail Ontological Ontology Project (cancer and metaphysics) aims to catalogue the world in two categories, things that will give you cancer and things that will cure it via the medium of the Daily Mail headlines. It's important work and someone's got to do it. Find the results here.

Fora.tv is a constantly updating collection of vodcasts (videos) on all sorts of subjects. Topical and often thought provoking, click here. (Also added to our list of pod and vodcasts here).

Dogs on swings - what more could you want? Click here to be moved.

Not enough movement?  Click here to watch a building roll over. I'm not kidding, it really rolls over.

Solitude is a point and click game set on an island with intriguing but logical puzzles that take you from one level to the next. Click here (hooray - I found a game).

(06.08.09) A new scareware threat is on the loose, mimicking the tricks used by its predecessors that masqueraded as realistic security or anti-virus alerts. This time it generates a "blue screen of death" image overlaid with a security alert and once again it's purpose is to get people to pay for unnecessary software that will in turn generate more false warnings. If you've never encountered this type of attack before it's easy to imagine that you wouldn't be fooled by it but when I was called out to fix an infected computer it took me a while to work out what was going on.

The current means of infection is via phoney video codecs which in turn are spread by links to videos that don't play but demand the installation of the codec. They could be sent by email but are more likely to be found on sharing websites and networks. Always be wary of codecs, my advise is to download VLC Player (click here), if it won't play on that just forget about it. Read more about the threat here and about similar threats here (this isn't an endorsement for the software they advertise). 

(05.08.09) BT is offering it's broadband customers a free device that can boost their broadband connection quite dramatically. It's for people who have an extension line coming off the main socket and works by cutting out interference caused by the extra line and things like flourescent lights. You only have to pay for the P&P (£1.20 I think) and have a contract with BT. Click here to see if you need one.

(04.08.09) Garry Beach on the Isle of Lewis is one of the featured themes of Windows 7. The operating system's themes are an extended version of the familiar wallpaper choice that appeared with Windows '98 and XP but effects the sounds the computer makes and the way folders look. Choose the theme and the desktop will be show a classic view of the beach and sure many will, which means literally millions of people are going to be looking at every day. See for yourself here (I don't know what happens if you download it, I think you need W7 to use it) and here for other views of the beach. 

(02.08.09) Happy News! The forum is once again visible and there don't seem to be any adverts appearing in odd places but there are traces of a "place holder" where there might be one. So if anyone is seeing them please let me know. Sorry about the problems and thanks for all the emails sympathising!

July

(31.07.09) Forum problems: I'm afraid that the forum appears to be off-line, it is possible to get bits of it to display but eventually it just turns into a white page with "Done" frustatingly appearing in the status bar. Yuku, who host the forum, is aware and will hopefully sort it out soon. If that wasn't enough, adverts are appearing on pages where there should be none. Sorry about this, it's beyond my control!

Friday fun: There isn't much around this week, what with the forum problems and everything but lets start with something that reflects my current mood - a drunken man attempting to start a car that actually on fire: Click here. 

Almost as mad but slightly more uplifting, here's a man breaking the "kayaking off a high waterfall" world record: Click here.

Even more uplifting and actually quite wonderful here's a choir creating rain and thunder. Thanks to Jan for the link.

Handwriting analysis is often ridiculed, find out why here.

On the other hand The World Digital Library, launched by the UN this week, is potentially excellent and is already pretty good, click here.

No game this week. There is shortage of good new games IMO.

(30.07.09) Firefox 3.5.1 has been out for about a week now and from what I can tell is very stable, faster than previous versions with most add-ons working without problem. Crucially it is the only browser that protects against an exploitation of the SSL protocol, that's the security system that banks, PayPal, eBay and the like rely on and generate the padlock symbol in the address bar. If aren't using Firefox 3.5 it's possible that you could be fooled into thinking that you're on a secure site when you're not leaving your system open to hijacking.

So I'm now advising Firefox users still using version 3.1 to upgrade to 3.5 (just click on Help at the top of the browser and then "Check for updates") and if you haven't done so already, it would be a very good idea to install the NoScript add-on. It makes surfing a bit more of a hassle but it's worth it for the extra protection.

If you are using another browser this would be a very good time to change, Internet Explorer offers some protection against the new exploit but it's still vulnerable. No doubt they will fix the problem eventually, at which point you can go back to using it (you can have as many browsers as you want) but in the mean time, you'll be safer using Firefox. Click here for more on the vulnerability (a bit technical I'm afraid), here to download Firefox, here for a guide to Firefox 3.5, here for some of the things you can download to make it even better and here for some tips to staying safe online.

(29.07.09) A classic email hoax has reappeared in the guise of a tip passed on by a computer maintenance bloke. It recommends that people create an aaaa@aaaaa email address so that when a virus harvests the address database it will send one to the address and when it fails you will be sent a delivery failure message. Unfortunately viruses don't just look at your address book and they don't start at "a." Please don't pass the message on, it's doesn't work and at best it's giving people a false sense of security. It's been added to our email hoaxes list here. Thanks to Jan for sending this in.

(28.07.09) WIndows 7 has gone live and is being made available to computer manufacturers. It's a big step in computing, designating old systems, like the NAIDC computers, as past it and the more recent Vista offerings as, well, just a waste of money. W7, if the reviews are to be believed, offers a smooth running system and the advantages of more RAM and 64 bit processing, without the clunky inteface of Vista. - I can't wait. Read slightly more here.

(27.07.09) Another problem with Adobe products has emerged with hackers targeting Flash player, a common component on web pages and capable of being played in .pdf documents. The biggest threat is content embedded in web pages and the best thing to do is to change to the Firefox browser and install the NoScript, which prevents it running automatically. It's possible to disable it in Internet Explorer but that will stop sites like YouTube from working. For .pdf documents go to File > Preferences > Java and uncheck the option. Read more on the threat here and find out more about Firefox and NoScript here.

An AVG update over the weekend has led to iTunes being disabled as the scanner mistakenly labels two of the programs files as being infected with a virus, a fix was released almost immediately but if you're having problems with iTunes try updating AVG manually.

(24.07.09) Breathe/Zetnet update: Things at Breathe, who now own Zetnet, are more complex than previously thought. The company has been put into administration and subsequently sold to the company's CEO Steve Kaye in a management buy out. The loss of email access appears to have been caused by Breathe moving to a new email supplier after failing to pay its bills to Spider Networks. I think this saga has some way to go yet. Read more here, here and here. Thanks to Angela for the update.  

Friday Fun: Steven Gerrard has only been a free man for a few hours and already this scullerous little .gif is doing the rounds (it's entirely fake in case you're wondering).

Kemp Folds is one of the oddest ideas I've ever seen turned into a website. It publishes folded pictures of Ross Kemp, ex-Eastender and current wannabe soldier. It's surprisingly amusing, if pointless. Click here.

WatchKnow is a library of informative videos on all sorts of subjects, easily navigated via the tree style folder system. Click here to browse. (Link added to the list of podcasts etc on the forum here)

Soma Radio is a free radio station with no adverts or DJs and the music is only interrupted by the occassional station jingle. There are 15 streams to choose from so there's something for everyone. Click here.

Finally (there's no game this week) here is the Times list of the top ten revenge videos on YouTube.

(23.07.09) The Swine flu helpline launched today but it's just for England, worried people in Scotland have to go the NHS 24 website, call their helpline or call their GP. The English site does have a symtom guide that's accessible to everyone but it's been crashing due to demand and not that user friendly. You can find NHS 24 here (they have a self help guide), call them on 0845 4 24 24 24 and the English site is here. 

(22.07.09) There's an update for Firefox 3.0.1 which addresses various security issues and improves performance. As I'm using version 3.5.1, I don't know if it arrives automatically so it's probably a good idea for you to click on "help" at the top of the browser and then on "Check for updates."

Microsoft is giving away online versions of its Office programs, Word, Excel, etc, until November according to the Register, it could be very helpful for people upgrading to Windows 7 and don't want to splash out on the Pro edition or buy the latest version of Office. Read more here. 

(20.07.09) Firefox version 3.5.1 may have a vulnerability to very long strings of code. Mozilla, it's makers, deny it's a real problem but others disagree. So if you haven't upgraded to version 3.5 yet, don't but if have then it's probably best to upgrade to 3.5.1 as it might still be vulnerable but it's not as vulnerable as 3.5. If you see what I mean. Read more here.

By the way, I got my discounted Windows 7, reasoning that it was at least an investment! It's still selling well, I got my copy of W7 from Curries, Tesco had sold out and Staples was adding on delivery charges that made it quite expensive.

(18.07.09) Windows 7 is flying off the shelves or it would be if it was actually on shelves. It's not, it's only available for pre-order and Amazon has already sold old of the heavily discounted version, pushing their price up from £45/£90 to £75/£179 for the Home Premium and Professional editions - and that's still cheaper than the RRP will be when it's finally available in October. They say they've sold in a couple of days than they did for the whole Vista pre-order phase. It's still available at the cheaper price at places like Tesco and PCWorld but they're running out to by the looks of things. There's a list of stores selling it at discount here.  Look at the minimum specifications, the 64 bit version requires 20Gb of disc space, an entire NAIDC computer hard drive.

(17.07.09) Firefox 3.5.1 has been released (links to the details and download can be found on the Software Updates page, see Anorak News) and if you've upgraded to version 3.5 I strongly advise you get it as soon as possible by clicking "Help" at the top of the browser and then "check for updates." It loads a lot quicker and there are various fixes including one for a serious flaw in JavaScript. If you haven't already upgraded to 3.5 I'd wait to see what the Firefox community thinks of it.

Friday Fun: TvTropes is a website dedicated to revealing all the themes, cliches and plot devices of all TV and film genres. You can contribute too! Click here.  

I'm not entirely sure why I liked tapedeck.org so much, it must be just nostalgia but I found looking at images of every blank tape I'd ever used strangely beguiling. Click here.

Not quite nostalgia but I also liked this Gizmondo user gallery of devices retrofitted for the 1970s, click here.

I'd never heard of David Garrett but he looks to be set to be a slightly cooler version of Nigel Kennedy. Apart from playing both the classics and modern pieces beautifully, he also holds the world record for being the fastest player. Click here to hear him play Flight of the Bumblebee amongst other things.

Covert Front - Night in Zurich is a point and click spy adventure, well executed but quite demanding. Click here to play. 

(16.07.09) Zetnet - A couple of clarifications, the messages displayed on the service status boxes of Breathe and Zetnet have been there for weeks and the requests from Breathe for people to send in the username and password details is the result of them losing a lot of user data. Not everyone is being migrated on the 14th, rather it's being done in batches, with some people yet to receive their transfer dates. If that wasn't enough, there are also reports of an increase in spam email. FInally, I posted the wrong support number the other day (it was Zetnets), the correct on is 0871 424 0102.  Thanks again to Angela for the help. 

(15.07.09) Windows 7 is available for "pre-ordering" as predicted last month. It won't be released until October but you can order it now at a considerable discount, for example the Home Premium version can be had for £50 when the RRP is £105. Normally I think it's best to wait for an operating system to "bed in" and get to the point of the first  service pack before buying it but  savings are so great I'm wondering whether to take the plunge now. Afterall, the service is free and I can always just hang on until it's released before installing.

There are three versions available, Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate, the choice most of us will make will make is down to whether we want the Backup and Restore Centre, Media Centre and XP Mode or not. The Amazon pages can be found here and because Amazons versions guide wasn't working for me, the Wiki versions page is here. 

Today's Microsoft updates (see the software updates page) includes fixes for the problems addressed by the advisories highlighted last week, hopefully this will protect those who were unaware of the advisories but there is still concerns for those on slow connections or only occassionally online. See Software Updates for details. 

(14.07.09) Zetnet customers are reporting problems with email and worried what the near future will bring. The popular Shetland ISP, one of the last of the small independents, has been taken over by Breathe and the migration to the new company appears plagued with difficulties. The email service has been down since the beginning of the month as result of moving server and to compound things Breathe has chosen this moment to move it's services to new "network backbone."

Both the Breathe and Zetnet report problems, Zetnet suffering "packet lose due to circumstances beyond our control", while Breathe says  "we are still experiencing a number of issues related to a fault with the server hosting our customer database." On top of this Zetnet customers have got to make changes to their ADSL connection settings today in order to get online with the new service. People experiencing problems should contact Breathe on 0871 424 0102 between 8am and 7pm (national rate number). Thanks to Angela for the tip! 

(10.07.09) Microsoft has released another security advisory for an unpatched vulnerability, this time for something called "direct show" and it stops Quicktime running in the normal way on webpages. Again the risk comes from users visiting pages containing an exploit of the vulnerability but these will spring up quickly as code becomes freely available across the net. 

The risk of visiting infected pages is going hand in hand with the rise of twitter and similar messaging systems as users become familier with following abbreviated links that give no clue where they go. If use Twitter and the like be careful what you click on. The advisory, which requires you to click a "turn off button", can be found on the Software Updates page, the link to which is at the top of Anorak News.  

Friday Fun: Garfield minus Garfield sounds daft but it's so good that it's been endorsed by the creator of the original cartoon. Click here to see why.

My Life is Average is blog of the mundane, the details that even Charles Pooter wouldn't thought recording, it makes strangely fascinating reading. Click here. 

The Internet Archive, that repository the not unambitous aim of recording the entire Interent for posterity, making it easier to find images, music, audio etc. It's worth bookmarking, click here.

Two Sokoban style games this week, Zigmond III (here) involves pushing boxes and mirrors to divert lasers, while Storage (here) has a nice 3D interface and an animated character.

(09.07.09) The more I read the more I'm worried about the vunerability to ActiveX in I.E. 8. I think it's really important for I.E.8 users to turn off the ActiveX element and for people who know about it to tell people who don't. The process is fairly straight forward but isn't just a matter of clicking a button. Doing so brings up the Run/Save dialoge box and after the download users will be asked for permission to install, so some inexperienced users might need help. The workaround is here.
 
(08.07.09 Clarification: The vulnerability to ActiveX reported yesterday effects a specific ActiveX video control in Internet Explorer, using the "turn off" option in the workaround link just turns off that component, not all ActiveX controls and will not effect other applications such as Office and Media Player at all. It's still important and thousands of websites are hosting code that exploits the vulnerability to install a variety of malware on visitors computers. Read more here.

(07.07.09) Microsoft has taken the unusual step of releasing an advisory for an unpatched security vulnerability, suggesting the problem is so serious that it can't wait for a patch to be created and distributed via automatic updates. It concerns ActiveX, an application that forms some of the basic building blocks of Internet Explorer, Office and Media Player and the workaround disables it. The advisory page also has an "enable" button, so presumably they expect people to disable it when they're online using Internet Explorer and re-enable it when they're off-line and using, say, Word. Click here for the workaround and here for a technical explanation. Thanks to sgegreen for the alert, which is also on the Software Updates page.  

(06.07.09) The Oldest Christian Bible has been scanned and made available online. The edition dates from the 4th century but is stored in four cities, so this is the first time it's been seen in one place for a long time. The pages reveal corrections, edits and the disputes that led lines and words to changed over time. Read more here and view the archive here. 

(05.07.09) Firefox 3.5: Mozilla, makers of Firefox, has announced that there will be an update released "mid to late July" to address the problems mentioned below. Read more here and don't update until it's been released.

(04.07.09) Firefox 3.5: Many users are reporting problems since upgrading to Firefox 3.5, despite the test versions being extremely stable. They range from bookmarks disappearing, extremely slow startup times and problems accessing websites. The only that's effected me is Fast Dial (an add-on that creates a page of your favourite bookmarks) displaying a blank page. Restoring them via Organise > Import and backup solved the problem but resulted in the loss of other bookmarks. My advice is if you haven't moved to version 3.5 don't until they've fixed the problems.

(03.07.09) Tamiflu, the anti-swine flu drug, is now a more popular spam subject than Viagra. While messages about latter will probably get picked up by spam filters, the newness of Tamiflu spam mean that some may get through and a worry may cause people to open them. There is also a plethora of websites selling what at best could be weak doses of the drug and at  worst something poisonous. Everyone is advised to ignore the email, avoid online pharmecies and speak to their doctor if they are worried about swine flu. More here.

Friday Fun: This is more uplifting than just fun. I don't know if you remember Edwyn Collins, he had a big indie hit with Orange Juice in the 80s with Rip it Up  and as a solo artist got to #1 with "A GIrl Like You." Then in 2005 he suffered two brain hemorrhages which left him in need of constant care and permenant weakness down the right hand side of his body. As part of his neurological therapy he took up drawing again, having been an accomplished artist in his younger days but this time he had to learn to draw with his left hand. Starting by drawing simple figures he has progressed to the point where his work is exhibited in London galleries. Click here for a short slideshow and here for his story.. 

Click here for some excellent virtual tours of the Palace of Westminster. And it really is a palace.

And here for an optical illusion. It's not just the illusion I like but the comments that follow it.

Puzzle-Pup is aimed at kids but it has many of the elements of adult puzzle games and so serves as a good introduction to the genre if you haven't yet had a go. You have to guide a dog from one scene to another by clicking on the elements to solve the riddle. Click here (you don't have to register to play, just click the buttons until the game starts, if you get stuck there's a guide to help.

The Heart Attack Grill of Chandler, Arizona is aptly named, with a menu that makes your arteries harden just reading it. The waitresses are dressed as nurses and anyone finishing the quadruple bypass burger gets a wheel chair rid back to their car. They need it. Click here to see why. 

(02.07.09) "Roaming charges" for mobile phones, the extra cost of connecting via another network, have been standardised by the EU, slashing prices for consumers. Sending a text will drop from 28ec (Euro cent) to 11ec, calls a maximum of 37p per minute, while receiving will cost 17p, making it a lot cheaper to phone home when you arrive at your holiday hotel. Read more here.

Michael Jackson's death and the news that there are hundreds of unreleased pieces of music has led to slew of spam messages promising that they contain or link to the music but in reality are just carrying malware or viruses of one sort or another. Be careful of any unexpected messages and following links on message boards or arriving via Twitter. Read more here.

The list of Favourite Firefox Add-ons has been updated for Firefox 3.5, those that don't work with it are marked with a sad face (there's only a couple) and all the links have been checked. Click here.

June

(30.06.09) Firefox 3.5 is available for download today, you can get it by clicking on Help at the top of the browser and then "Check for Updates." The download box that appears is a little unusual:

The link under "Time for an Upgrade" just leads to a download page and can be ignored but click the "show list" button to see if any important add-ons will be disabled by the new version.

If you're going to loose something very important click "Not now" at the bottom of the box and hope the add-on maker gets round to updating it soon. Sometimes they never do though, I'd give them a month.

Click "get the new version" to download Ff 3.5 now. Having used the test version for a while I've found the increase in speed worth the loss of some add-ons and most of my favourite ones are still working. I'm not sure if it's "twice as fast" though.

There's a list of the main changes here.

(29.06.09) Microsoft has announced the price structure for Windows 7 for customers that pre-order before the official release in October. For those with Vista upgrades with available for Home and Professional for £50 and £100 respectively, comparred to $50 and $100 in the USA. The reason for the disparity is that Europe is needs a customised version because of the EU order that requires Internet Explorer to be stripped out, so we pay more but get less. I think they're trying to get money they paid in fines back.

The discounted upgrades will be avialable for about a month from July 15th or until supplies run out after which the price will rise to £79, £189 and £299 for the Ultimate version. From then until the end of the year full versions will be available at the same price as an upgrade. Are you following this? I'm not entirely sure I am. More on the pricing here.

Unlike XP, which came in two versions (if you exclude the special ones), there are six flavours of Window 7. Ignoring "Starter" which is aimed at developing markets, consumers will choosing between Basic, Home Premium and Professional. All include a big rise in the amount of memory they will recognise, up from XP Homes 3GB to 8, 16 and 192GB respectively and can work with 64bit processors, all of which promises a big boost in performance. Both Premium and Pro have the full version of the Aero interface and the media centre (which makes it easier to intergrate with your TV amongst other things) but only Pro will have Virtual XP mode. XP mode will make it easy to run old programs on the new operating system and perhaps the extra cost will be saved by not having to upgrade a lot of programs at the same time. Read more about the different versions here.

Just by the by, it might be worth checking your change for undated 20p pieces. Apparently the Royal Mint released 100 000 of them this year, the first undated coins for 372 years and a coin collector company is offering £50 each for the first 10000 registered with them. Click here for more.  

(26.06.09) Friday Fun: Ten weird things lost in the post - click here.

Earth Calendar is a compendium of holidays from around the world which you can browse by date, country, religion etc. I shouldn't be posting it really, I'm using it to make up a Christmas gift. Click here.

Joy of Six: Broadcasting under the influence is the title of a Guardian blog article which says it all really and it contains six notable examples of people breoadcasting when they were drunk, click here. 

I was going to plunder Robert Popper's blog for individual items, it could have kept me going for weeks but instead I'm going to just post the link to it. Full of off the wall ideas, jokes and observations, it's well worth bookmarking for revisits, click here.

Reactor is a game that requires nimble fingers and quick reactions, click here to test yours.

(23.06.09) Gmail: A couple of months ago I recommended that people who were finding Gmail slow, in some cases it could crash the browser, should go back to using an old version of the webmail service. No the position appears to have reversed and it's now the old version that is running slowly while the latest is working quickly. You can actually switch between versions via a link in the top right hand corner, so if you find one a bit sluggish, try the other.

I've also found that there's handy list of keyboard shortcuts in the help section, my favourites are "enter" which opens an email and # to delete it, they make getting through the newsletters a lot quicker. Click here for the list, instructions for enabling them are just above the list. 

(22.06.09) Moths, like virtually every insect it seems apart from the midge, is in decline across the British Isles and the Biological Records Centre is asking people to take part in a survey to get a picture of what's still out there. It runs until the 28th and unlike those for butterflies and birds, involves collection rather than a period of observation. Click here for more on the decline and here for details of how to take part. 

(19.06.09) Good news, updates to the Software Updates page are now showing up on the forum front page. I've no idea why they stopped doing so, nor did the forum host technicians and I've no idea why they are again, I'm just glad they are. Now you won't have to search them out, just visiting the forum will tell if anything new has appeared! Once again, thanks to sgegreen to for keeping the page going - it's one of the most popular on the board.

Friday Fun: Alaska, there's more to the most northerly US state than Sarah Palin and large bears, this year Anchorage hosted the World Beard and Moustache Championships, click here for a gallery of the magnificant winners.

Phrase of Week is a website that came to my attention via forum member doggo who was sent it by Bearsarus. It's a great little website that gives the etymology of everyday phrases that we all use and tend to take for granted. Click here. 

Poor old Newcastle fans, their Sunderland neighbours just won't let them endure their football club's relegation in piece. First signwriting Sunderland fan created an Alan Shearer £1 shop (here), now they've gone so far as to change the road signs here. 

Digital Photography School has great tips for the budding and the more advanced photographer, click here.

Panda's BIG Adventure is a point and click adventure with puzzles, a Porta Loo Tardis and a Panda, loads quickly and is difficult enough to be interesting but not so difficult that its frustrating. Click here.

(18.06.09) The official version of MPs expenses has been published online, heavily censored but worth checking none the less, if only to see the difference between what they thought we should know and what the Telegraph has already published. The BBC has a search facility that lets you jump straight to your own MP's expenses, while the Guardian is asking readers to check individual pages, so far about a quarter of the 77252 have been checked. Click here for the BBC and here to do your bit for the Guardian.

Sky Satellite viewers are getting calls from Sky offering to insure their receiver box for around £70 per year. Even ex-subscribers are getting the call, even if it years since they gave up the premium channels. Some people will like the peace of mind of knowing they're getting new box brought round and installed for them but in my view it's a lot cheaper to invest in surge protectors for the mains plug and the phone line (if it's still connected) to protect the box from shocks and if you don't mind being without telly for a few days, buying a reconditioned box on eBay for about £30.

(16.06.09) Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, delivered the digital Britain report today and it contains a number of big ideas:

   A £6 pound a year on every landline to pay for improving broadband access in rural areas by replacing the copper network with fibre optic and upgrading wireless connections.

  Ofcom will reduce illegal file sharing by 70% in a twelve month period, which they'll do by farming the work out to ISPs who will be sanctioned for failure. The system will work by rights holders (the music industry) will contacting the ISP who will then worn persistant file sharers, in some cases offering them the option to join subscription services and if they don't comply they will have there bandwidth throttled. There won't be anybody completely cut-off. 70% seems impossibly ambitious to me.

   AM and FM radio to disappear by 2015 to be replaced DAB (unavailable in most of the Highlands and Islands) and low power local broadcasters.

More detail can be found here.

(15.06.09) Ever wondered how our council matches up with others in Scotland? How are they are at recycling, fixing the roads or training care workers? Find out here.

(14.06.09) Flickr has teamed up with Getty Images, the largest picture archive in the world, to give users the oppurtunity of making a bit of money from their work. So far they've trawled through 100000 of Flickr's estimated 3 billion images and have launched a website where prospective buyers can view them, some are really wonderful, if a little commercial, while others are just interesting snaps. Click here for more on the story and here to browse the catologue (click the "home" link for "cloud" search mode). 

(12.06.09) Number 10 has responded to the petition on excessive postal charges to the Highlands and Islands and it's no surprise that there will no change, in fact there's hardly an acknowledgement that there's a problem. Rather there's a tedious reiteration of the current situation and the suggestion that people should complain directly to companies. Read it for yourself here.

Friday Fun: More4, one of Channel 4's high number satellite channels, has an online pub quiz. It's quite fun, with ten questions in each round and if you register you play competitively. Click here to play.

Faces in Places is blog about faces found in the environment and they're everywhere! Click here.

Click here for 13 very weird computer mice.

Miniature City 2 is another tilt-shift movie, not as good as the one of Sydney Harbour but the music is good and there's a lot of others by the same guy. Click here.

Turnz is a simple rotate the box to get the thing to the exit game, starts easy, gets hard quickly, click here.

(09.06.09) You have probably seen on the news that a mobile phone directory has launched, allowing people to look up numbers in the same way as they can landlines. The numbers are gathered from companies that collect phone numbers in the course of their business, on a service agreement or web form for instance. At the bottom of all these forms are a series of opt in/opt out questions and most people choose to opt out but often they're missed altogether or they run in the sequence, I do not, I do not, I do, that trick people into checking the last box and allowing their information to be shared. You only have to be caught out once for your details to go on sale and end up in, in this case, a mobile phone directory.

The owners of the service are very insistant that it's very easy to opt-out but first you'd need to know that's how someone got your number, track down the website and find out how to do so. The opt out instructions are found on the FAQ (frequently asked questions) > Privacy page, which you can find here and more on this story here.

(08.06.09) US retailer Best Buy has accidently revealed the release date of Windows 7 in a leaked email. Pre-sales (ordering) will start on the 26 of June and the operating system will arrive proper in mid-October. Upgrade versions will cost $49 (Home Premium) and $99 (Pro) but as reported before, people buying Vista from the larger manufacturers/retailers will get free upgrades from the Por and Server versions of Vista anyway. Not that I'd advize upgrading, new operating systems are problematic enough without burdening them with the upgrade process. More here.

Adobe are releasing patches for the newer versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat (I thought they were the same thing) tomorrow to coincide with Microsoft's patch Tuesday, apparently this makes things easier for people running large numbers of computers but to my mind it just means that those on relatively slow connections have a big queue of downloads to get through. Anyway, don't be surorised if you open a .pdf file and you get asked to install some updates

(05.06.09) Vista Service Pack 2 is available for download, you can get it by clicking here but I presume it arrives automatically eventually. Also, in the near future some PC manufacturers will be offering free upgrades to Windows 7 if you buy a PC with Vista Pro or Server editions, which if you'e willing to put up with Vista until late autumn, is worth thinking about.

Friday Fun: You can win a part in the next Harry Potter film with Sky Movies, all you have to do is watch a clip, answer a question, win a ticket, go to a roadshow, I got a bit lost after that. Anyway, if you fancy a shot at stardom, click here.

Gap Minder is the website of a man who has animated graphs and apparently influenced world leaders with them. You can customise them by selecting stats and countries, then watch the world change over time. There are some surprising results and it's fairly easy to use, click here.

The Ida fossil came from a shale pit in Germany and the Daily Mail has a nice gallery and article of other finds, click here.

Someone had to and McSweeney has turned the ten commandments into text speak, see if you can remember what they are, click here.

Blackout is an on/off tile game, you have to turn all the lights off by clicking on a tile which of course results in the surrounding lights changing status. Quite difficult, click here.

(04.06.09) I clicked on a message board link only to find my browser taken over by a fake virus scan. Unlike most of these which run as a pop-up, this one transformed the browser into a Windows folder complete with tasks pane and only Task Manager would close it. Because I was using Firefox and NoScript it couldn't takeover my homepage or bombard me with ads but users of other browsers won't be so lucky. Message boards are notorious for hosting this sort of link but I was on a fairly well established one which I would have expected to detect and delete such a risk, so be careful. I haven't found anything in the mainstream press about this, just very techy stuff in the security, so for more information and screenshot click here for the forum post (Post topic number 1600!). 

(03.06.09) Canon have an official outlet on eBay and from my experience, I highly recommend it. I bought a refurbished multifunction printer/scanner which would have cost £42 on Amazon new for £15 including delivery - no surcharge for the Highlands and Islands! It arrived promptly, works perfectly and has a one year guarantee, what more could you want? Click here for further details and the shop link.

(02.06.09) Microsoft has launched, a reworking of Live Search that it hopes will rival Google (they all hope that don't they?). At the moment it pretty much like Live Search but click on "United Kingdom" at the top of the page, select the USA and lot's more options appear. Well, pretty much the same options but more attractively presented and the background image is now dynamic with clickable areas of information. Apart from that it works pretty much like any other search engine, the only real differences I've noticed is that images are displayed on one never ending page with pop-up previews and layout choices and the maps uses OS maps which I liked. Click here for Bing UK but try the US version.

(01.06.09) Beware of phone calls purporting to come either Microsoft support and telling you that your computer has been infected by a virus. First spotted in Australia, it has now spread to the UK and it could result with a lot of people losing a lot of money, if the email scam is anything to go by. The caller has an Indian accent, so typical of a call centre worker and begins the conversation by announcing they're from Microsoft and goes straight into the warning. Read more here and thanks to Charles for the tip.

May

(30.05.09) Weekend Fun (this is going to brief because I keep losing my connection) Google has a new toy, just do a search as normal and then click "show options" at the top of the page. Down the left will appear a panel with various, erm, options, the bes tof which is "Wonder wheel." It's cross between the Firefox add-on "Cloudlet" and a mind map, give it a go.

Click here for Amanda Holden making a complete fool herself on BGT.

Awkward Family Photos is compulsive and is just what it says in the title, click here.

Rockboom is an excellent techy news site, featuring a YouTube star who's name escapes me, click hereFinally (no game this week, couldn't find a new one worth playing), a previously unheard interview with Noel Coward, click here.

(29.05.09) Mull roads: If you've been driving around Mull recently you may have noticed little A4 notices hanging from various traffic sign posts and if you've bothered to stop to read one, you know it refers to: "THE ARGYLL AND BUTE COUNCIL (VARIOUS ROADS, ISLE OF MULL) (WEIGHT AND LENGTH RESTRICTIONS)(AMENDMENT)ORDER 200" and it goes on to list most of the islands roads. You can find out what's allowed on your road by clicking h and downloading the "Various Roads, Isle of Mull," once you've done that skip to the end where there's a handy colour coded map that explains everything. On the same page are the parking plans for Tobermory.

Beavers are back in Argyll and have happilly settled in Knapdale..Not everyone is happy, some think it will lead to a reduction in salmon spawning. Only time will tell. Click here for more.

(26.05.09) The Performing Rights Society has announced new prices for streaming music in an attempt to mend the rift with sites like YouTube. YouTube removed all premium music following the PRS demand for 0.22p every time a video is viewed, whether the new rate of 0.085p is low enough is yet to be seen as it means that YouTube would owe 85p for every thousand views and the likes of Sarah Boyle would have cost them a small fortune. Read more here.

Spotify is perhaps a more realistic model for streaming music. Supported by some of the largest record labels it offers either free music with occasional advertising (about 30 seconds every 15 minutes) or no advertising at all for £9.99 a month. Users download a player that sits on their desktop and can then browse or search for favourite artists. Sound quality isn't that brilliant (on the free version at least) but it's acceptable and a great way to get an idea if you want to buy an album or not. Get it here.

(25.05.09) False positives: Spotify, a streaming music application that I'll be writing about later this week, is the latest victim of an anti-virus "false positive." These occur when an anti-virus program mistakenly identify a threat where there is none, thereby throwing up lots of worrying alerts and often disabling the innocent program. In this case an update to McAfee has disabled Spotify.

They happen a lot with programs that access the Internet because they have many of the characteristics of a virus or Trojan and there isn't much you can do apart from wait for an update from the anti-virus vendor that fixes the problem. If you think something perfectly innocent has been falsely identified the best thing to do is do a web search for "(anti-virus program)(program identified) false positive" or go to the anti-virus vendors support site and see if anyone else has the problem. Read more about the McAfee/Spotify issue here.

(22.05.09) Friday Fun: Let's start with a video of a man saving ducklings as they hurl themselves from the ledge their mother has hatched them out on. It's very sweet but it's not the first time he's done it and the mother obviously thinks that it's a perfectly sensible place to raise a brood as a result. And so will her progeny, it's all going to come to a horrible end. Click here. 

Best Visual Illusion of the Year has announced it's winner, click here for the results and browse the previous years entries here. 

As the creator of many less than satisfactory photographic panoramas I'm very envious of the examples in this gallery.

LOLFATCATS is childish gallery of people involved in the expenses and banking scandals with stupid captions written in message board talk, click here.

This weeks game is The Blue Beanie, a Samorost style point and click puzzle/adventure game, very cute and intriguing, click here.

(18.05.09) WolframAlpha is billed as a search engine but is more of a cross between a calculator and an encyclopedia. Ask it a factual question or ask it to perform calculation and within a few seconds it will do so, it can even play a musical scale if you type in the key. It doesn't produce pages of results, just the answer to your question. A slight disappointment is that it doesn't understand plain English, enter "how much does the moon weigh" and it will be confused but "moon weight" gets an instant response. Click here to try it.

(15.05.09) Friday Fun: The Daily Telegraph has a gallery of photos from The Census of Marine Life, a network of researchers from 80 countries, who some wonderfully vague statistics. They think there "about" 230000 known marine species and that there are between half and ten million species down there. Click here for the galery. 

Rajahmundry Netizens is blog dedicated to Indian life. There's lots of gossip about Bollywood but what caught my eye were the entrance exams for various official positions, such as a Punjab Bank Agriculture Officer. Click here and scroll about ten percent of the page.

Last week I posted a link to a guide to making tilt-shift images, this is one better, simply upload a picture, play around with the contols and save. Takes about a minute to load on standard broadband, click here.

Death Star Destroys the Enterprise is a great video mash up, a bit hard to describe but the maker deserves funding IMO. Click here.

Big Fish has extended it's free games offer to the end of this month. There's four to choose from, the best of which is Azada, a series of puzzles in an intriguing setting. Fairway Solitaire is good too if you like card games. Click here and follow the instructions. 

(13.05.09) One of the recent updates from Microsoft doesn't install as easily as they usually do. On mine and a neighbour's computer when the systems were shut down they got stuck on the alternating messages "Installing update 1 of 3" and "Do not turn off the computer, it will shutdown automatically." The first time I saw this the messages were there for 20 minutes until I manually turned off by holding the button on the tower in for 10 seconds, after booting up again I restarted via the Start menu and everything went normally. The second time I just left the computer alone and when I came back an hour later it had restarted. So if this happens to you I suggest just leaving it alone unless it takes over an hour. It could be that the update requires an additional download and that's what takes time. 

(11.05.09) Jarvis Cocker's second solo album is available free for the next seven days via a streaming (plays like a radio) page on Guardian Music. It's worth a listen, some of it's quite good, some spectacularly awful and it's free. It's hosted by free streaming music website We7, which has lots of other albums available. Click here for Jarvis and here for We7.

(08.05.09) Friday Fun: Click here for a brief video of some captive bred pygmy pigs which a doing well on their return to their natural habitat. Very cute.

The Landover Baptist Church is spoof US evangelical website that has confused several people, not least a Radio 5 presenter this week who wasn't entirely sure whether it was satirical or not. Click here.

Click here for a small gallery of beautiful cave views.

The Internet Archive is building a virtual library of old books, one of my favourites is US House & Garden, full of advise and old adverts for gardners and home makers. Click here for an example.

Meeblings is a silly game that involves moving the lemming like meeblings to an exit, quick loading and quite fun, click here. 

Adelbert Ames (what a wonderful name) was an American psychologist and artist, specialising in optical illusions. He created sculptures that fooled the eye with perspective and shading, making the viewer question what they were actually seeing. Click here for a window he created and check the links on the right for other examples of his work. 

(07.05.09) Windows 7, the next operating system from Microsoft, comes a step closer today with the it's Release Candidate becoming downloadable. It's a big download, about a gigabyte if I recall correctly and you need a pretty powerful computer computer, especially if you run it on Virtual PC but you can get an idea of what's in store by looking at the promotional video. Basically it looks like a more efficient version of Vista. Click here to download and here for the video (which has good size options). 

(01.04.09) Friday Fun: Here's another video from the chap who did the one of the coast around Sidney that was featured last week. It uses the same time-lapse and what I've learnt is called shift-tilt photography, which can read all about here. The technique, which gives real life the look of a model village started out in still photography and done properly requires quite expensive equipment but it's possible to fake the effect with most photo-editors, click here for instructions for how to achieve the effect with Photo-elements and click here for the video.

Has a humanoid skull been found on Mars? No but I love the websites that catalogue this stuff and take their research so seriously. Click here to be amazed and amused.

A bloke, it could only be a man, has just finished a project that saw him paint his face every day for a year, click here to see some of his amazing transformations and be surprised at who he is.

This week we have four games from the Independent, covering maths, words and spatial awareness. They're real brain teasers but load very quickly, so are ideal for people on dialup. Click here.

April

(30.04.09) Big Fish Games, makers of the "Mystery Files" hidden object games are giving away four games. You have to sign up and download their game manager if you haven't already but that's pretty straight forward and they don't send you any spam unless you sign up for the newsletter. Once you've joined you just need to follow the instructions in the link to get the games, there really aren't any catches and the biggest download is 74mb, so it's practical even if you're on dialup. The pick of the bunch is the Everest Expedition, which was runner-up for the 2007 hidden object game award (no idea who's award though). Click here before the May!

(27.04.09) The Google Streetview car has been seen on Mull heading down towards Iona but returning to soon to actually have got there. It takes months for the images to be processed but when they do appear, the fact that they've done Mull means that Oban is probably going to be "walkable" soon too. I think Streetview is a great thing and it can only help somewhere as reliant on tourism as the west coast of Scotland is but some people do object to it. They can write to Google to have images obscured but now the Information Commissioner has ruled that it isn't an invasion of privacy the only other action for objectors is to block the roads as the residents of Broughton did. 

(24.04.09) Friday Fun: Here's a lovely video of the coast around Sydney, it's shot as time lapse and with a very narrow focal range, which makes it appear as if you're looking at tiny animated model landscapes. Click here. The music is by the Headless Heroes, a psychedelic band from New York, their MySpace page, with four more songs, is here.

Someone's spent an enormous amount of time finding the alphabet on Google Maps satellite view. There's buildings, fields woodlands and bridges forming every letter from A to Z, only Z isn't that convincing, perhaps he (only a man would waste his time like this) was running out of patience. Click here and applaud the endeavour.

Nightjack is blog by a "bobby on the beat" and it's just won the George Orwell blogging prize for it's anonymous author. Click here to read it, some of it it very interesting and at times, a bit disturbing.

The Internet Archive has a blog that records recent highlights of recent additions and I was struck by this collection of vintage cookbooks. They work like real books, letting you flick through the scanned pages at your leisure, clickhere. Another highlight is this book of cats.

Germz is clone of Jewels, the classic line up three or more things to make them disappear from the grid. The difference is that on the left of the window is a list of germs to remove. I can't get past level 5, click here to do better.

(23.04.09) Radon: Remember that survey they did years ago on when they installed detectors for Radon gas in homes across Scotland? It seems like ages ago and I think it was ages ago but the results are in and they've published maps showing where, well, you don't want to buy a house. Here they are.

The Rural Gateway is an excellent website reporting and debating west coast news and issues and its had an update. Now it looks more like a website and less like a blog, I like it, so click here.

(22.04.09) XP Support: Last week in Anorak News I reported that "mainstream" support for XP had ended and I wasn't sure what it meant for the average, i.e. us. Now I'm happy to report that it doesn't mean that patches and bug fixes are going to disappear anytime soon, in fact they're going to carry on releasing them until April 2014, by which time we will all have shiney new computers with completely different operating systems. Hooray!

Big Fish Games, makers of the wonderful Ravenhurst hidden object detective games amopngst other things, have an older game on sale for 99 cents for a limited time. The Count of Monte Cristo is loosley based on the Dumas novel and it has to said, not up to the standards of Ravenhurst. None the less it will provide hours of object searching and puzzles, and you can try it for an hour before you by. Click here to do so. This would normally be in Friday Fun but I don't know when the offer runs out. I'm a big fan of Big Fish, the games are great and they never send you email unless you ask them to "keep you up to date."

(21.04.09) SpokenWord, the popular library of speeches, lectures, recitals etcs, has had a makeover. It's still got the nice cloud of search terms but it's easier to find catergories and popular recent editions, see for yourself here. The forum's introduction to podcasts and more here.

Spring is here and the bees are buzzing but not as many as there used to according environmental experts. Perhaps the west coast hasn't been affected by the decline in the same way as the rest of the country, in which case our bee sightings might be worth reporting. Gardner's World and the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust is running a survey for people to record bees in their  neighbourhood, click here to take part.   

(17.04.09) Pirate Bay has been all over the news today, basically the clue is in the name, they're a website that helps people share music via torrenting which allows people share files between individual computers. To the surprise of no one the owners of the site got found guilty and were sentenced to a year in prison and multi-million fine. It won't make any difference, another site will become popular and most people are downloading via file hosts anyway because it's much quicker. The real problem is that music is to expensive, 79p per track for new releases on average. Amy Winehouse's Back in Black album is available for £3 on Amazon at the moment, if it went on sale at that price hardly anyone would have bothered with an over compressed pirate mp3. (IMO)

Friday Fun: I'm a huge X-Files fan but have always been confused about exactly what the story was, I know the basics but the details are very confusing. So I was happy to find this obsessive website which has set out the timeline going back to the big bang. Click here for a lot of reading.

There's been a big pillow fight in New York involving thousands of people, click here for the highlights.

This isn't really fun but I think it might turn into an Internet phenomena. It's a video from a twelve year old (?) kid from a US Christian fundamentalist family entitled Gay marriage - Is it right or wrong? His ernested manner if amusing but funnier are the subsequent videos in which he complains about the responses. I say "amusing" but it a bit worrying because he's so young. Click here.

Man has fir tree removed from lung, not for the faint hearted, click here.

Fast food - the pictures above the counter comparred with what arrives on the plate, click here.

I don't know what to say about today's game, it's very weird, click here and ask yourself, why?

(14.04.09) Conficker is now easily detected by anti-virus programs, which means that we only have those people who don't bother to keep their's up to date to worry about. Read more here.

(13.04.09) The XP operating system has been given another reprieve and manufacturers (well HP so far) have been told they can keep selling XP systems until the end of the first quarter of 2010. This means that support, that's updates etc, may continue until at least 2012, which is great news for all of us. Read more here.

The network of Conficker infected computers is stirring. Some, but by no means all, have downloaded instructions from a variety of sources and are now busy with various tasks. They aren't all doing the same thing, which must be a surprise to the IT press which was a expecting a massive attack of some sort. Some have downloaded fake anti-virus programs that try to get people to puchase more useless software and others are being used to send out spam. Read more here and here. 

(12.04.09) Sometimes I feel a bit mean exposing the round robin email that gets sent in as fake but I'm afraid that the one entitled (or should that be "ensubjected"?) "the barn" is indeed a hoax. It tells the tale of retired New Yorker who sank his savings into a farm in Portugal and found inside the barn that no one had thought to or had the resources to, open, a stash of classic cars worth $35 million. it comes with lot of photos, all of which are real but the story isn't. Read the real story here and thanks to forum member doggo for sending it in - it's one of the most popular threads, so keep sending them!

And thanks to everyone who wrote in about the Gmail story below - much appreciated!

(10.04.09) There have been reports of problems with the latest update for the ZoneAlarm firewall (and security suite), auto-update either keeps generating various error messages or just keeps asking to update. As far as I can tell the best solution is to download the whole program rather than just update, which you can find here.  

Friday Fun: There's an Obama vs Sarah Palin comic book on the horizon, it's called "Barack the Barbarian", click here to pre-order.

The Guardian has accessed the relative strengths of the pirates and the US Navy forces and come up with this handy guide. 

Ben Goldacre has won another victory over the forces of nonsense, click here.

Two games this week: The Scruffs is another point and click hidden object game, this is just the preview apparently, there's a game to buy but I haven't managed to get through it yet, try for yourself here. MateMaster is a chess game with a level of difficulty to suit all but the grandest of grandmasters, quick to download and easy to play, click here.

(08.04.09) BT is raising line rental charges by £1 per month to £11.27 (plus £1.50 if you don't pay by direct debit). Vulnerable customers will still pay £4.40. Read more here. 

The Foreign Office is warning of a scam email purporting to come from David Miliband and offering financial help caught by the credit crunch. The subject line reads "Global economic crisis relief fund", if you get a copy just bin it.

(07.04.09) Music: Amazon has a special offer today, £3 for (some) albums and 29p for selected tracks but there's some good stuff so it's worth checking out, click here to do so.

Meanwhile iTunes is raising the price per track from 79p to 99p - are they insane? I know that iPod and Apple devotees are a, well, devoted lot but surely the price of music should be coming down, this is only going to encourage file sharing.

(05.04.09) Gmail has been running very slow recently, particularly when composing/sending messages, to point that browsers crash. It's due the upgrade to the interface which happened about a month ago and until they sort it out, a simple workaround is to use the old one which you can do simply by using this address: https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1 

SEPA has extended the free (£1 if you do it online) registration of septic tanks etc. Click here to register then apply online or print out the form for posting.

(03.04.09) Friday Fun: Fontpicker is small program that allows you to preview what text will look like in all your fonts simply by typing a phrase in. It's free, quick to download and one of the most useful little applications I've ever found, click here. 

I love things made out of Lego and in the past have featured Star Wars and the Bible in this section. Click here for the Lego version of Escher's Ascending and Descending.

For reasons that completely escape me Isabella Rossellini has made a series of what is described as "green porno" but is actually descriptions of the mating habits of various animals done in a sort of Magic Roundabout world. Click here for Bees.

Get your free foreign language lessons here.

The Great Attic Escape is a nice take on a familiar genré (apart from the music which can't be turned off), chaotic and hand drawn, relying on humour rather than cool detachment to create the environment. But the reason I'm featuring it is that there's a "walkthrough" video explaining exactly what to do if you get stuck, which makes it a great introduction to room escape for those yet to have their brains teased by them. Click here for the game and here for the video (link also on the game). 
 
(01.04.09) April Fools Day roundup: The Guardian went with an elaborate tale of its total conversion to twitter which doesn't really get going until the bit about Steven Fry. The Sun was funnier and briefer. iWantOneofThose has several and it's hard to spot some until you click on the buy now button, while YouTube reworked the way login page videos displayedand had this explanation for why. Strangely both Alan Shearer's appointment to manager of Newcastle and this story about Miss Universe's trip to Guantanamo Bay turned out to be real. And there's no sign of Conficker so far, which is good news.

March

(31.03.09) April Fools Day is once again upon us and as usual, along with jolly spoofs propogated by the media, it's big stay for spammers and hackers. So be carefull of opening messages from people you don't know and following links aren't familiar with because these days just visiting a compromised website is enough to infect your computer.

It's also the day that the Conficker worm, which we've been following on the Anorak page, is set to wake up. The worm, which is thought to have infected millions of computers, including systems belonging to government departments, has until now been dormant but researchers have determined that on April 1st it's set to look for instructions on any of thousands of websites and start to do whatever it's creators want.

It's thought the most likely actions are either it's going to become the worlds largest botnet, sending out tens of millions of spam messages or it will launch denial of service attacks (just sending millions of connection requests) on websites and computer systems.

Happy April Fools!

(30.03.09) There's an email doing the rounds that starts "THIS IS NO JOKE - IF A PERSON CALLED SIMON ASHTON...CONTACTS YOU" and warns of dire consequences if you so much open the message from him. It's a hoax, there is no such email, it's just one of those creations that has the soul purpose of worrying people. Read the full text here in the Internet sections most popular thread.

You may have read in last weeks Oban Times that you have until the end of the month to register your septic tank with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. Some people have had problems finding the form on the website, probably because it isn't there until you register with them. Click here to do so, register, then login via the same page to access the form, it costs a pound to fill in. One might wonder why this is necessary at all, the council already knows who has a septic tank and the vast majority will have been checked by them when they were installed.    

(29.03.09) Last week the government published an anti-terrorism strategy and buried down on page 113 is the announcement that the police will have the power to demand collect advanced passenger data on some domestic air and sea journeys. This means that travellers will be asked to prove their identity with photo ID when booking and/or embarking on a journey. The use of the word "some" implies that there is some discretion as to which routes are targeted, so if we make a big enough fuss perhaps they won't pick on us. Read more here.

Both AVG and Firefox have released updates over the weekend. AVGs will hopefully address the update problems experienced by some users recently (see below) but if you were one of those that did presumably you will need to download and install it manually. You'll find the link at the top of the Anorak Page in the Software Updates.

Firefox's update addresses the security problem mentioned last week and should appear automatically. Some people are reporting that it causes problems with some websites not appearing properly and in the worst cases, crashing Firefox all together. However I have found it's OK and as I have a lot of add-ons installed, wonder if there are compatibilty issues with some themes, if you have problems I suggest restarting in Safe Mode via the Start > All Programs menu and reset things to default. (I'll write in more detail about safe mode next week). 

(27.03.09) Friday Fun: Charlie Brooker's Newswipe programme started this week and it inspried me to revisit my favourite YouTube song, Charlie Brooker is right about everything. Which in turn led me to the bands MySpace page with five more songs, click here.

Here are two galleries from the Daily Telegraph, animal morphs and high speed impacts.

Two new search engines: searchme presents page previews as if they were posters on a carousel, while Tag Galaxy presents results as if they were planetry systems and when you double click on a planet pictures rush in from flickr creating a globe of images that you can spin around.

Laurel and Hardy dance to Sugar Sugar by the Archies here.

Two games this week; Party Mansion is a hidden object search, a bit like the Mystery Case Files except it's advertising the Xbox. Open Doors is a box pushing game but with doors to negotiate rather than boxes to push. 

(26.03.09) Firefox has a vulnerabilty that potentialy enables hackers to hijack a users computer and they only have to visit a comprised website. An update is expected shortly but happily there's an add-on that will prevent infecting anyone. The problem effects the .xml  parts of a page and NoScript prevents it running unless allowed by the user. So until it's fixed I suggest every Forefox user installs it, it can be found here. You still need to be careful but it helps because the dangerous files won't run unless you allow them.

(25.03.09) AVG users are reporting problems updating the program, automatic and manual downloads generate the message "invalid update control CTF file." It hasn't been resolved yet but in the meantime a work around has been posted on the AVG support site and I've copied it to the AVG thread on the forum, read it here. AVG's ongoing update problems is why I now recommend Avast, another free anti-virus program, if you wish to switch you can find a link to it here 

Speaking of Avast, it's started making audible announcements whenever it does something. Well. I say whenever but have only actually heard it when it updates and a calm, slightly American, voice informed of the fact. Hopefully John Laurie shouts "we're all doomed" if it finds a virus. 

(24.03.09) New Guide: If you're fed up with looking at lots of plain yellow folder icons this might be for you. Changing the icon is simple, your computer already has lots available and it only takes a few clicks to give, say, a folder for scanned images a scanner for icon. What's more there's lots you can download to add a bit of variety. Click .here to read how.

(23.03.09) Internet Explorer 8 was released into the wild last week and I've downloaded it onto a machine that previously used version 7. From that experience I've been able to write a guide to downloading and installing it, as well as an introduction to the new features, click here to read it and decide whether it's worth having yet. I think it is, it isn't as good as Firefox but it is faster than version 7 and has several new things that make it easier to use.

(20.03.09) Friday Fun: You may have seen a rather clever advert for, erm, actually I can't remember what it's for but it involves animated street grafitti spreading around buildings and walls and I've found the website of its creator. Called Blu, his website consists of a video of another animation and sketch book full of his other work. Click here. 

Slightly Warped a series of galleries of extraordinary images culled from around the web, I especially liked 3D floating art and The right angle III. Click here.  

A meme is something that travels around the world via "word of mouth" or in the case of the Internet, by people sending or posting links. Here's timeline of the biggest ones (caution; some are quite rude).

Issu is a free online library of magazines that display just like real ones, letting you turn pages and flick back and forth. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of publications to choose, ranging from complete versions of things you'd find at the newsagent, samples of novels, comics and semi-professional work. It works best for things with a lot of pictures, so it's a good thing that it's particularly strong when it comes to art, archictecture, photography and graphic novels. Possibly one of the best things I've ever found for Friday Fun, it requires a broadband connection unless you're quite patient though. Click here. 

This weeks video is chorographed sheep herding, click here. 

This weeks game is more of a musical web toy, click here.

(19.03.09) Internet Explorer 8 was released this afternoon, it's not available via the Tools > Windows Update menu item yet but it can be downloaded via the link on the Software Updates page which you can find at the top of Anorak News. I've been using it in pre-release form for some time now and it's certainly faster than version 7. It also has new features like "accelerators" which offer options when you select text, coloured tabs and is more secure than before. I'll write in more depth about over the coming week.

Google Streetview UK went live today too. It allows you to go for virtual walks around 20 major British cities, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, in the same as you have been able to "visit" New York etc for some time now. I spotted quite a few places where the images hadn't been stitched together as well as those used for the USA but it's fun. To access go to Google maps, the quickest way is to open a Google search for a city, zoom in to the centre and drag the little yellow icon of a man onto the street you want to land on. Not every street has been covered but all the main areas seem to have been. 

(17.03.09) The guide to Firefox add-ons has been updated so it now has detailed instructions for installing, updating and uninstalling or disabling them. I hope it makes things clearer for new users, click here to read it (second post).

(16.03.09) Adobe have released an update for Adobe Acrobat Reader which patches a vulnerability already exploited by hackers, so it's very important that everyone updates. See Anorak News - Software Updates for links. Users of Foxit Reader should also update which can be done by opening FR, clicking on Help and then "Check for Updates." 

(13.03.09) Friday Fun: This is the entire truth about what 99% of people are doing on the internet. Click here.

File this under "I wish I'd thought of that, I might have done something about it had I the talent." A chap called Kutiman has taken some of the many musical videos on YouTube and created a sort of virtual orchestra. It's really quite amazing, so click here.

GraphJam is site dedicated to people making graphs, pie charts, Ven diagrams, etc and sharing them. Learn important things here.

50 Comedies is just a big picture full of visual movie puns and your task is to figure out as many as you can. It might help if you have the spoiler list open in another tab, well it did me. Click here.

(12.03.09) Michael Jackson's announcement that he would be playing his last ever UK concerts has led to a feeding frenzy in the online ticket sales with prizes of up to £20 000 being quoted. Anyone planning on taking a party down to London should be aware that there are only two official outlets selling them online, Ticketmaster (click here) and Viagogo (click here), plus the O² Arena for purchasing in person. Ticketmaster is the primary seller selling on behalf of the promoter, AEG Live, while Viagogo is an official secondary market that has been licensed to resell tickets. If you buy from anyone else you risk paying over the odds or being ripped off completely.

The number of concerts has been increased from 30 to 50 in response to demand, so there are going to be around a million tickets available and so there's no reason to pay an infalted price for one. Also the promoters are taking a close interest in the unofficial resale of "suites" (groups of tickets, often including hospitality) and if they're detected, they won't be honoured. Click here, then on "listen to latest programme" (if it's Thursday, otherwise click on the Thursday link) and fast forward to the 45 minute mark to hear the You and Yours' item on the subject.

(11.03.09) If you use Gmail you've probably got fed up with website email links opening Outlook or Outlook Express, meaning you have to copy the address, go to Gmail and paste it in. Well, it's actually dead easy to make them open the Gmail new message page, click here to find out how (scroll down)(also works for Yahoo Mail). 

(10.03.09) Grufts, The Guardian's alternative to Crufts that featured in last weeks Friday Fun, has announced the winner of Best in Show, click here to see the winner, it's a rather touching story.

(09.03.09) YouTube are blocking access to music videos in the UK - or at least that's what news outlets are saying. It follows a failure to come an agreement with the Performing Rights Society who were seeking a lot more money in royalties than previously.However from what I can tell most music is still available, obviously the amataur creations are but so are videos of big act uploaded by users. So perhaps it's just the promotional videos from music companies that's been lost. Read more here.

(06.03.09) Friday Fun: Crufts isn't on TV this year following the revelations that Kennel Club breeding guidelines could be contributing to health problems amongst several breeds and to fill the gap The Guardian newspaper has launched Grufts. Send in your your images and videos in the following categories: most stylish, most talented, most loveable, most heroic, best lookalike and best travelled. It's all very casual, you can photoshop your entries if you want. There's a Flickr group to give you an idea of what you're up against and entries should be in by Monday. Click here. 

Hundreds of fans created a terracotta army of Morphs at the Tate Modern to mark the passing of Tony Hart, click here to see the tirbute. 

Huzzah for robots! Click here for a gallery for lots of amazing examples.

The Wire is probably the best programme that practically no one watched, possibly because it was stuck out on a high number satellite channel. Happily FX is now on freeview (channel 164) and re-running it from series one and even better the Guardian has a blog commentating on each episode as it's shown. Click here.

Speechification, the BBC Radio blog, has featured before in Friday Fun before but I thought it worth a mention because top of today's page is a dramatisation of Ian M. Banks's The State of the Art which I really enjoyed. Click here.

This weeks game is Globetrotter XL, a simple quiz that asks you to locate countries on an unlabelled map, click here.

(05,03.09) Firefox has released an update that addresses various security flaws and stability issues. None of the flaws have actually been exploited yet as far as anyone knows but it's as well to update as soon as possible. Ff will update automatically (if you're using version 3) but it might take a couple of days, so if you want to update now click Hep on the menu bar and then "Check for Updates." As far as I can tell all add-ons mentioned on the guide page are working with the new version but some themes might be affected. Read more about the update here.

(02.03.09) Users of Facebook and other social networking sites are being targeted by criminals who are taking advantage of the sense of trust members have in contacts they make through the network. The criminal tries to get contacts to download add-ons or visit malicious websites that harbour  malware which can take personal details or hijack the victims computer. Facebook has discovered five serious threats this week alone and members are being told to be more careful and basically less trusting of others they come in contact with. Read more here.

Booze News: The Scottish Parliament's plan to get us all to sober up has been making the headlines today, click here to read all about it on the SP website. Perhaps they've decided that cross channel booze cruises are to far away for most Scots, so they've decided to make the north of England the place to go to stock up.

February

(27.02.09) Friday Fun: Let's start with a post on the forum about podcasts. Podcasts are sort free floating radio programmes that you can listen to at anytime and there are literally thousands of them to choose from. The post includes a few recommendations such as shows from Steven Fry and Harry Shearer and links to podcast indexes. If that wasn't enough, there are also Vodcasts, podcasts with pictures and there are links to archives of lectures on all sorts of subjects. Click here.

Street Painting is an ever evolving art form, every time I come across examples of it it seems to have got better. This website has galleries of not only the end product but the process of creation.

Video of the week is cats on a treadmill - click here.

Two games this week: The Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate is one of a long series of hidden object games, beautifully rendered and normally costing $20. Until the 1st of March it's available free with no time limits or game restrictions. Click here to find links and instructions (which also work for Bejellewed 3 apparently), be aware that you need to download a 10mb game browser and the game itself is about 100mb. Apart from that, I recommend it.

For those with slower connections Anika's Odyssey might be a better choice. It's a short Samarost style game, with nice art work and few simple puzzles to solve. Click here. 

(25.02.09) Google Earth has added lots of new features to the new seabed feature, including to the water around Mull, Lismore and Luing. There are several marine protection areas, some of which are tiny, the locations of shipwrecks and areas too dead to support life (?). Click here for a screenshot and a link to download the latest version (don't be put off by it being called "beta," it's working perfectly as far as I can tell).

Users of Google Talk, which is closely associated with Gmail, are being warned that a link sent to thousands of users of the messenger service was a phishing attack aimed at getting people to reveal their Gmail login details. People that were taken in by the website ViddyHo are advised to change their passwords immediately. Click here to read more.

(24.02.09) The Adobe Reader vulnerability I reported last week continues with several types of attack that exploit already discovered. What's more it has been found that turning off Java does not protect against all of them. The Register internet newspaper has posted an item on an unofficial patch which replaces the file that is causing the problem but I was unable to download/install it when I tried, possibly because of heavier than expected demand.

You can read the article and get the link here or you can switch to Foxit Reader which also opens .pdf files but doesn't suffer from the same vulnerability as far as I know, click here.

(23.02.09) eBay is recommending that its users change from Internet Explorer to Firefox following the discovery that the Activa auction tools website (they make and host the slideshows etc favoured by the larger sellers) was hosting a Trojan, malware masquerading an innocent looking program.

This is becoming an increasingly important method of attack now that most people (sadly not all) are aware of the need for antivirus protection and are wary of unsolicited messages. Also people tend to believe that websites with good reputations, like Activa, are unlikely to be a risk when in fact they may be unknowingly harbouring something nasty.

Internet Explorer is by far the most vulnerable to this kind of attack, basically because of the way it intergrates into the rest of the Windows system and although one still has to be alert, Firefox is a much safer browser. Read more on the eBay story here and read out guide to staying safe online here (includes links to Firefox).  

(20.02,09) A vulnerability has been found in Adobe Acrobat Reader which is already being exploited by virus writers. Thankfully there's a simple work-around because Adobe won't be patching the program until March 9th: Open Adobe Acrobat Reader from the Start - All Programs menu, click on "Edit," then  "Preferences," then "JavaScript" in the left hand column and click on the box next to "Enable Acrobat JavaScript" to remove the tick. Read more here. Thanks to Steve for the tip.

Friday Fun: News junkies will like the BBC's News Radar page which constantly updates with the latest articles added to the news pages. Click here but be careful, it updates as often as once a minute and is quite addictive.

That's where I found this great story of the Irish police and their hunt for the notorious driver Prawo Jazdy from Poland. 

I've become a fan the The Bugle - the audio newspaper for a visual world (or something), a satirical take on the weeks news from John (The Daily Show) Oliver and Andy (writer/standup comedian) Zaltzman. Very funny and the great thing is if you like it there's an archive of 63 episodes to enjoy. Click here. 

The Simpsons have a new intro! It's all in the name of high defintion TV (Bart is writing "HDTV is worth ecery penny on the blackboard), click here.

This weeks game is The Sentences, a fairly straight forward series of word and typing brain teasers which start simple and...well you can guess the rest. Click here.

(19.02.09) Gmail appears to marketing it's off-line/on-line add-on partly on the basis that it has settings that come in handy when you're "borrowing" (their quotation marks) your neighbour's wi-fi. The remark only appears in a blog but it's been picked up by lots of websites that follow Google applications but unlike this one, they seem to find nothing remarkable about it. IApart from anything else it says something about how insecure many wi-fi networks are. Read the blog here.

The BT email problem is still ongoing. The Uig difficulty seems to have been resolved though.

(18.02.09) BTYahoo email is suffering problems and users may have problems sending and receiving messages. The situation is described as "ongoing" and there's no estimate of when things might be resolved. Still, they're better off than the folk from Uig and Staffin who seem to have lost their internet connection altogether. Click here for the BT service status page. 

(16.02.09) The Mull Forum is a new message board for all things Mull with sections for just about anything you can think of from current affairs to selling properties. I like the simple uncluttered lay out and can only wish it all the best, keeping a board going can be tough at times. Community based forums can be particularly difficult because feelings can run high over local issues and they can descend into slanging matches, hopefully this one won't! Click here to take a look and be one of the first to register.

(13.02.09) Friday Fun: Michael Bosanko has taken the simple delight of waving a torch around, combined it with time lapse photography and created a whole new art form. Click here for his website and wonder why you can't see his blurry shape in the images.

Remember all those Roadrunner cartoons and the products the cayote received from the ACME Supply company? No? Well someone does and cared enough to create a complete catalogue of everything they sent from their first appearance in 1935 onwards. Click here (my favourite "The ACME Corrospondence School of Boxing").

Talking of cartoons, Marvel comics have unveiled content for the iPhone and iPod, a hybrid of traditonal framed pages and the sound and movement of the animation. Click here for a sample.

How Autumn works (Tree Power) is a charming and funny little video from Sheepfilms, of which there are dozens on YouTube. Click here to watch it and on the link on the right for more. Most are less than a minute long so work well on dialup too.

Two games - both hosted by the same website today. Milpa is a shape matching game with nice graphics and is simple to play. Scared on the other hand is a classic Doom style maze 3d shooter, both load very quickly and are well worth a try, click here.

(12.02.09) The Queen has relaunched the royal website, it's now supposed to be easier to navigate and has lots of new content, including a YouTube channel and lots of new images. I found it a bit difficult to get round, possibly because there is so much stuff on it now and it took ages to find my favourite page, a 360° panorama of state rooms. You can find the homepage here (might to take a while to load, presumably because of heavy traffic) and the panoramas are here.

(11.02.09) Windows SkyDrive is one of the online services launched by Microsoft to counter Google's family of web based applications such as Google Docs. It's a basically a file storing and sharing facility which offers a whopping two gigabytes of free storage, accessed via a Windows Live account. You probably already have one if you've signed up for Windows Messenger or Hotmail. It has very simple to set up sharing options and you can keep files private, make them public or just available to your Messenger contacts or a subset of them. What's more you can allow to edit documents if you want, making it a good system for collaborative work. I'm going to use it for storing files for forum users to download, which hopefully be a incentive to join! Read more about SkyDrive here and sign up/in here.

(10.02.09) More on the Valentines day warning: I hadn't read this article when I posted yesterday but it adds a bit of detail to my general warning. The commonest threat this year is something called the Waledac Trojan (Trojan = something pretending to be something else) and it arrives in email with subject lines such as "Deeply in love with you" and "I knew I loved you." In the body of the email is a heart shaped graphic asking you click to go to website promising the to complete the message but actually contains malware. Remember this is only the most common threat, it isn't the only one, so be suspicious of everything.

"PayPal has been bitten by yet another cross-site scripting bug" reads the first line of another worrying story on the Register (click here). Thankfully it appears that the exploit, that could lead to people clicking on a payment link on an infected website and having the details stolen (I think), hasn't been exploited yet and PayPal are expected to fix the problem very quickly. The thing that jumped out at me was that if you use Firefox and have the free security add-on NoScript installed the exploit wouldn't work, just one more reason that people should be doing just that. It's one of the main recommendations in the forum's guide to staying safe online which you can find here.  

(09.02.09) Valentines day is approaching and everyone should watch out for phoney messages and e-cards masquerading as love letters. E-cards are particularly risky on Valentines day because we expect (or hope) to get anonymous messages and e-cards used to require us to install some little application to view them. I say used to because they don't these days and if you get one that does ignore. In fact I advise binning anything that doesn't link to a card maker you recognise but then I'm a bit of a kill joy. 

(06.02.09) AVG seems to be having update problems again, this time effecting the latest version, 8.0.233. AVG say its particularly systems infected by malware but the question posted by forum member baldeagle suggests this isn't always the case and uninfected computers can have problems too. Uninstalling and reinstalling is the suggested course of action, which in itself can be problematic because AVG is difficult to uninstall. It's best to use the removal program and, in my opinion, install Avast anti-virus instead. Click here and scroll down for links. Thanks to baldeagle for bringing this to our attention.

Friday Fun: This week is dominated by things culled from the Guardian website which seems to have upped its game recently. For instance last Saturday's magazine featured celebrities being interviewed by children and it was promoted with this charming audio slideshow.

They're good on picking up on YouTube videos too, click here for Osama Bin Laden applying for a job as the caretaker of a tropical island.

And here's one American getting hysterical in the face of mild irritation, while another stays calm when faced with imminent death (courtesy of the BBC).

Also on the BBC a tiger and her cubs enjoy their first sight of snow. Click here.

I can't remember if I've featured the game Doom before, it was a break through in gaming when it first appeared, the first 3d RPG to feature variable lighting, heights and several weapons that became standard in its followers. It was the first that caused controversy because of the level of violence (it seems tame now) and the first to offer online multiplayer modes. Now it can be played online in your browser and only takes a minute to load on basic broadband. Click here.

It won't be to many peoples tastes so here is a sketching come memory game for those who enjoy something more cerebral.

(03.02.09) Ink prices are on the rise again having been fairly level for the first half of 2008. That followed a steep increase around Christmas of '07 that has contributed to a page costing up to 3p more to print eighteen months ago. If you by a mid-range printer for around £50 -£100, replacing the ink will out strip its cost after between 2 and 4 refills, which is ridiculous. Surely there's a market for a relatively expensive printer that is cheap to replenish? Read more here.

Parental controls have been around a long time but they have involved both creating user accounts and installing programs which usually have to be paid for, something many people seem unwilling or unable to do. However there is an alternative, browser based controls which require only a small add-on to be installed and the user to spend a few minutes setting them up.

It's important to note that very little will deter a determined teenager with a little computer knowledge from circumventing controls (put the computer in the living room is my advice) but they will lessen the chances of a child accidentally stumbling across something unsuitable. There are add-ons available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, all free and simple to download and install, click here for links (4th post down).

(02.02.09) Google Earth has a new feature, Oceans. It adds the contours of the sea bed to the globe and lets you dive beneath the waves to explore. Detail varies from area to area and predictably isn't particularly high around Scotland. Perhaps the Sottish Executive could add some content as part of the national park project. I couldn't get the new feature via Google Earth itself, searching for new content, updates and layers just returned error pages but it can be got here. If you've already got GE it will just update you to version five, which includes the sea bed and it's just a 10mb download. See a preview of it here.

Security alert:- And not such good news for Google, hackers have found a way of spoofing the results of video searches and fooling people into visiting websites hosting malicious software. There's around 400 000 search queries that will lead to a myriad of websites that can infect unprotected machines. By unprotected I presume they mean those without up to date firewall and anti-virus programs but everyone should be careful until the vulnerability is fixed. Read morehere.

January

(30.01.09) Friday Fun: If FF is about anything, and its not, it's about finding those odd websites created by people who have an obsession and feel the need to share. Just imagine, without the Internet Clay (no idea what his surname is) would reduced to pulling people in off the street to listen to his complete collection of songs from the Simpsons but thanks to it, we can all enjoy them. Click here, I recommend "Mr Burns: See My Vest."

It's not often that a letter of complaint gets a mention on the PM programme but this one to Richard Branson about the quality of his airline's food and with good reason. Click here.

In Chicago a fourteen year old boy has been charged with impersonating a police officer. He didn't just impersonate one, he got sent out on patrol by the local force. Read more here. I'm only sorry it wasn't in New Zealand and it wasn't him that caught these two escaping prisoners.

Wordle isn't a game its an online text creation tool that generates "word clouds" from the text you enter. I've noticed examples popping up all over the place in the media recently and it's really worth having a go at, click here for an article and here for the creator.

(28.01.09) Internet Explorer 8 is now at the "release candidate" stage, which means that Microsoft thinks it's pretty much ready to let loose on the general public. It's a definite improvement on the beta version, for a start it isn't messing up McAfee programmes any more and they no longer have a blank control panel. Also it seems to be working more smoothly and blank tabs open quicker, which makes it easier to enjoy the new features.

Microsoft claim it's more secure than previous versions and the "smart screen filter" as it's called does work well, it's a bit like the one Web of Trust (see below) uses. Click here for the Microsoft download page and here for the forum post on the subject.

(26.01.09) The link buttons at the top of the forum are back! It's taken a while getting round to do this mostly because I was nervous about messing the whole thing up, which is surprisingly easy to do. So now it's easy to send in an email, join, find the help index and get to the (this) website again, which was the only complaint I got after the change from ezboard to Yuku. I've also redesigned the buttons and hope you like them, click here to see for yourself.

(25.01.09) McAfee Site Advisor: I've done some more checking into the results generated by McAfee Site Advisor (MSA) for Google searches and it appears things are worse than I thought. Last week I found that MSA was marking a few results safe even though their own report had found malware was present on a website, now I've found that sponsored links (the ones that appear on the right of Google's results page) are also being mistakenly marked safe.

This was true of three of the first four I checked and they seem to be spoofing the MSA into thinking that they are a different website. It's a bit difficult explain in a short item here, so please here for a detailed explanation. I'm hoping to draw attention to this because if I'm right it's really quite serious.

(24.01.09) The Disaster Emergencies Committee has been in the news today as a result of the BBC's decision not to carry it's appeal for the Gazza relief fund, having previously carried similar appeals for Darfur, The Congo and Asian Tsunami amongst others. The DEC co-ordinates fund raising for several of the largest charities including Oxfam, The Red Cross, Christian Aid and Save the Children. You can donate via the website, over the phone, by post or in any Post Office. Click here to go to the website.  

(23.01.09) It's the RSPBs big garden watch weekend, the UKs big survey of birds and all you have to do to take part is keep an eye on the birds in your garden for an hour. Click here to download the counting sheet, which comes complete with pictures to help you identify what you're seeing.

Friday Fun: Let's start with a music video but not an ordinary music video, it's animated and you watch the maker create the characters and then put them to work. There's a charming relationship as between maker and character as they come to life and lots of humour in the final product, click here.

Click here for a slideshow of snowflakes, it's beautiful and you get to see how they were taken.

It's really obvious but I'd never thought of it, old calendars can be reused. As long as January 1st falls on the right day of the week and leap years are taken into consideration they'll work apart from the year at the top. They can be found everywhere from eBay to car boot sales and a classic calendar could make a great gift for the right person. Click here for more and a list of dates that match 2009.

This weeks game is a Police Chase, a superbly rendered driving game in which you chase down criminals in a large city similar to San Francisco. Takes about a minute to load on basic broadband. Click here.

(21.01.09) Ad-Aware, the popular spy/malware detection program, is celebrating it's tenth anniversary with a new version that is a significant revamp on the old one. During scans it uses 74% less memory, 60% less CPU resources and scans at 34mbs (it says here - surely that depends on your system?), faster than it's main rivals and four times faster than AVG. Click here for more and here to download. Ad-Aware is one of our recommended free programs, click here for the full list. 

(20.01.09) The Conficker virus, which was first found in the autumn of last year, has still to be triggered by it's creators say experts. That means that while it's infected machines, it hasn't actually done anything yet. Over 9 million computers are thought to be infected and are effectively controlled by hackers but don't worry if you have an up to date anti-virus program, you're protected. Sadly that leaves roughly 30% of users at risk. Read more here, here and if you know someone who needs an anti-virus program click here.

There's an email doing the rounds with the subject line "Obama quits" and looks like a message from the Obama website (I subscribe to it, they send out loads) which contains links to a fake Obama website. At first glance it's convincing but closer inspection reveals spelling mistakes etc (these people really should try harder). Clicking links on it will infect the visitors computer with malicious code. So if you receive one just dump it without opening.

(18.01.09) McAfee users should not install Internet Explorer 8 - It makes the McAfee control panel appear as a blank window. It's fault with IE8, which still in testing and the only thing to do if you have installed it is to uninstall it via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel.

The Favourite Firefox Add-ons list has been updated and reorganised so it's easier to find what you're looking for. Click here for the new list and if there's an add-on that you like but isn't listed or one you'd like, post it on the discussion thread (link at the bottom of the list).

(16.01.09) Can McAfee Site Advisor be trusted? What started out as test of whether the Cloudlet Firefox add-on was compatible with MSA (it's not) has turned into whether the popular security application can be trusted at all.

When I discovered that there was a problem with Cloudlet and MSA I mentioned the problem on the Guardian message board and another poster recommended that I try the Web of Trust (WoT) add-on in its place. Which I did and found it worked fine with Cloudlet and performed basically the same function.

Out of curiosity I decided to compare results for the two add-ons (I still MSA installed in Internet Explorer) and searched for "free screensaver" as it's notorious for being finding dodgy websites. The results where more or less the same but one, right at the top of the list, was marked dangerous by WoT but safe by MSA. So I went to the full report pages and found that despite actually listing numerous examples of serious malware, McAfee was giving the site the thumbs up, which I find baffling. Click here and here to compare the reports.

Being reassured that a website is safe when it isn't is worse than having no information at all about it and so I'm no longer recommending MSA and suggest that people uninstall it and replace it with WoT instead, it can be downloaded here.

Friday Fun: Star Wars has been a great inspiration for YouTubers and this is one of my favourites, a retelling of the story by someone who's never seen the film.

The Library of Congress has got a Flickr photostream, click hereto view. I really liked the photochrome images, which reminded me of modern day HDR. 

We all love BBC 2's Qi, so you may like their website too, complete with forum and blog to quibble with the facts, click here.

27b/6 is an odd little blog about everyday life, click here for what happened when an invitation to an house warming arrived.

Jayisgames has a list of the all time best games featured on the site here, I'm pretty sure most of you will agree with at least the number one choice! You can also vote for the best of 2008 here.

(15.01.09) Delivery surcharges for the highlands and especially islands have long been a bugbear so I was glad to get a round robin about a petition on the issue. Click here to sign it. I wonder if it would have been better to have created it on the Scottish Parliament website but think it's worth signing none the less. Thanks to Jan for passing it on.

Plasma screens could disappear from our high streets if the EU passes it's new energy performance standards. Apparently they use four times the energy as a TFT of the same size. Click here for more.

(14.01.09) If you fancy a look at the next Windows operating system, Windows 7, the Guardian has a nice slide show of what to expect here. Right at the beginning it recommends installing it on a virtual machine, which allows you run it inside your existing operating system without the trouble of creating a dual boot computer. The program that you need is Virtual PC and its freely downloadable here. The whole process is described here and in video form here. However, as Windows 7 beta is a 2.7Gb download, you prefer to make do with the slideshow.

(13.01.09) As promised I've written a brief review of the installation process and features of Internet Explorer 8 beta, even if you don't intend installing it just yet yourself it's worth reading because eventually you'll have to when they finish testing it and make it the default version. Click here. 

(12.01.09) An invitation to install Internet Explorer 8 beta may appear when you open Internet Explorer, at least it did when I was helping someone with there computer today. You can just ignore it if you wish but be warned, it will upgrade your existing Internet Explorer, rather than as a seperate program unless you install it in another folder.

That said, the only problem that I've had with it so far is accessing the McAfee site advisor options menu. It seems to be a faster the version 7, loading and displaying tabs quicker and most of the changes are cosmetic as far as I can see (there are changes to things like "feeds" but I don't use them). You can read more about it here. I'll post something about the installation process and new features tomorrow.

(11.01.09) As promised a game for the weekend, even if there isn't much of it left to play it. Ice Breaker is another goodie from Nitrome with comic graphics and increasingly difficult puzzles based on simple ideas. In this case you're rescueing Vikings from the ice with only the ability to slice of bits of it to help you. Click here. 

I've been tidying up and editing the How 2 section. Links in the index (click here) have been fixed, new items added and its section index rewritten. New suggestions have been added to the list of recommended free programs (click here) and very handy add-on has been added to Favourite Firefox add-ons (click here) that frees up memory when you have a lot of tabs open, very useful if you only have 500mb of RAM installed.

(09.01.09) If you have a fast computer and plenty of free space on your hard drive, it's possible to test out the beta version of Windows 7 without the need of a second computer or uninstalling XP. It's called "dual boot" which means that the computer has a choice of which operating system it loads at start-up. It's probably not of much interest to the average user but those who fancy a peak at what's to come it worth a try. Click here for a guide from the Lifehacker website.

Friday Fun: Let's start with a celebration of the outgoing US president. It looks like a spoof text generator but it's just a random list of real statements from George Bush and what's really amazing is that in most cases he wasn't speaking off the cuff, he had prepared notes. Click here.

Games controlled by mind power alone are something I've written about before but they've always been on the PC, this game from Mattel is real world and enables the player to control a ball suspended in a column of air. It looks very basic but suggests many possibilities. Click here.

Click here for over 150 official Microsoft free programmes that add either extra functions to existing things like the calculator, improve simple things (taskbar magnifier) or are completely new (turn handwriting into a font). They might all be useful but being official, at least they'll work.

The Washinton Post's Style section has been running competitions on various eccentric subjects for years and the most enduring is one that asks you to substitute or change a single letter from a word to produce a new and useful addition to the vocabulary. Click here for a list of the best entries, my favourite is "reintarnation - coming back to life as a hill billy." Click here for the Style Invitational itself.

How safe is your password? Usually that would be the start of a post nagging about security but this time it's a list of the 500 most common passwords in the English speaking world. Are you using one of them? I have (letmein). Click here.

I haven't got a game this week - I must find one for the weekend!

(08.01.09) Windows 7, Microsoft's next operating system, will be available for public testing in beta form tomorrow and could be released as early as the summer of 2009. Basically it's a heavily tweaked version of Vista, with the things that annoyed people taken out and should be lighter on system resources. Apparently Vista users are to be offered free upgrades. Read more here.

(07.01,09) Watch out for email offering tax rebates that contain a link purporting to go to HM Revenue and Customs but actually goes to fake site that will steal your personal and financial details. Click here for more.

(06.01.09) The curse of Exchange Activate seems to be making a reappearance as more and more of the effected exchanges reach their connection limit. EA is a limited form of ADSL that BT and the Scottish Executive used when they upgraded over a hundred of Scotland's small exchanges to broadband and it only provides 30 lines, a choice of 5 ISPs and maximum speed of 512K to people unlucky enough to be connected to one.

Apart from not having a suitable line, there are two reasons why someone might find their request for a broadband line refused. The first is technical and surmountable; the 30 lines are allocated in blocks of six to the participating ISPs as customers sign up, so if only one person signs up with each ISP all the blocks are allocated and if an ISP fills it allocation there aren't any more connections available to it. Signing up with another of the ISPs should get round this but it can take sometime to find out what he problem is and to sort things out.

The second reason is more serious; the vast majority of the exchanges connect to more than a hundred homes and with broadband becoming the norm even for holiday homes all 30 connections are getting filled which means that another 30 have be installed (they come in units carrying 30 lines), which has to be paid for by the Scottish Executive.

This can take sometime because it can take a while to sort out that this is actually the problem now that BT's ISP services and exchange maintenance are carried out by effectively separate companies and presumably it takes a bit of time to get the money out of the executive and for the work to be done. Also all the exchanges are due to be upgraded to full broadband in the next couple of years so there could be reluctance to spend money on what will only be a temporary measure.

So far this has effected Coll, Tiroran on Mull and if I recall correctly, Lismore and it may be effecting many other places too. I shall investigate!

(05.01.09) Happy New Year! - And thanks for all the messages and Christmas cards, it's because of all your contributions that this site keeps going. 2009 could be a very interesting year with the coming of high speed broadband to more comunities, it will be a bit like the roll out of broadband to all exchanges but in slow motion, the only place that's likely to get it soon is Lismore, which is scheduled for the first quarter of this year. The rest of us will have to wait a bit longer, years in some cases. In the meantime it will be a case of us all looking after ourselves on world wide web and the threats never stop, as the post below proves.

Antivirus Plus looks like a variation on the warning about Anti-virus08 I posted a while ago, it starts with an innocent looking pop-up and rapidly progresses to a full blown warning that your computer is infected by an incredible number of viruses. It's aim is to get you to pay for (and enter your credit card details) for software you don't need and won't do any good when you get it. Click here for screenshots of what happens during the initial attack and here for a guide to staying safe online. Thanks to Steve for the tip.