Monday, January 12, 2004

 
Include RSS feeds in your website!

At last, an easy way to stick RSS feeds into your web pages. Feedroll is great, and it works.

Monday, December 22, 2003

 
Time to Smile

The Human Clock - A Photo for Every Minute of the Day is just the nicest thing on the internet, ever. If you need to smile, take a look.

Sunday, December 07, 2003

 
Miserable Failure

Type the above phrase into Google and you'll no doubt be entertained (*). This shows just what a concerted campaign of linking to a website can do to the Google rankings algorithm. Well played, chaps.

(*) - Unless you're George W Bush, that is.

Friday, December 05, 2003

 
Think for a minute

Quiet PC? Silent PC! This has to be one of the most must-have toys of the moment. Ever been in the office when the air-conditioning gets switched off, and thought "isn't it nice and quiet? Now I can think."? If you ever find it hard to ignore background noise, you'll love the idea of a PC without a fan. And particularly one which looks as good as the Hush ATX. I love this. Everyone's promoting the idea of PCs as some sort of multimedia entertainment centre for the living room at the moment, but who the heck wants all those noisy fans whirring away through the movie? Not me. These people have got the right idea...

Thursday, October 16, 2003

 
Progress

When the * key fell off my cellphone I asked about a replacement handset.
Well, sir, since your phone is "obsolete" it cannot be directly replaced. You'll need one of the new ones that runs on the "new service".
Fine, but will it use the same lead when I want to use it as a modem, or will I need to buy that again for the new phone.
No sir, none of the new phones can be used as modems.
So how do travelling business men check their email on the run ?
They buy an "aircard ", sir, which is a PCMCIA wireless modem connected to our phone network.
Great, how much is that ?
$300, sir.
(Splutter) How much ??
Plus tax, sir.

Needless to say I replaced my original phone with an identical used one through eBay. Cost about $30 and now I have 2 chargers and a spare battery.
Of course they will one day turn off the "old service", and I'll be stuck.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

 
Is this cool or what ?

OK, I may be behind the curve but until this week I'd never seen a Trikke.
Click here if you are wondering what I'm talking about.
That looks far more fun than a Segway ever was.
I wonder if George Bush could fall off one to keep us amused ?

Monday, October 06, 2003

 
The old ones are the best

I was recently trying in vain to do a backup. What I wanted was a straight copy of a directory with about 1GB of stuff, on onto a large external USB hard drive on another PC elsewhere on my (home) wireless network. Difficult to do unmanned because Windows would prompt midway because some file somewhere (which was encrypted) would not fully copied. And it took ages and the network fell over from time to time. In fact doing it overnight had about a 30% chance of success.
So I did what I have haven't done for ages (and never in XP) - I wrote a batch file that called the good old "command line" version of PKZIP (the original 32 bit "long filename compatible" version, called PKZIP25).
One by one I zipped huge directories, then copied the resulting file to the external drive and then deleted it off my local hard drive.
It was faster than straight Windows copying, it worked first time (and second time when I repeated it the next week). It used the storage disk space optimally, and (best of all) I now have a one click icon for it. Unlike fancy built in backup software, I have full transparent access to all the backed up files.
And people call me a Luddite because I dare to miss DOS !!!

PKZIP is still one of the coolest available. Version 6 is $39.95 and offers either GUI or good old command line. Check it out. (No, I'm not on commission - I just love the product).

Monday, September 29, 2003

 
Bye bye cellphones ?

The race to stick the boot in further to the ailing telecoms companies has really hotted up. This companyhave a product that allows you to use any PC or Pocket PC on the net (which has mike and speaker) to make phone calls to any other. Specifically, from a PDA with wireless internet. (but no actual "mobile phone" facility). For example, sat in an airport or coffee shop that offers a wireless internet lounge, you can use an iPaq PDA device as a cellphone and phone the office. You have not even touched the phone companies lines, and the only charge is the fee for getting on the net. Then if you need to call someone outside your company, you route the call through your company's own exchange and pay landline rates from back at base. Similarly, incoming landline calls to the office from customers (when you are on the road) will route to your PDA through the internet.

Bizarrely, in the US (where this thing has been launched) many of the coffee shop wireless hotspots are actually run on a paid fee basis by the same cellphone companies that this will hurt. So they're basically beating themselves up !

I love the free market !

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

 
Please say again, over

Using a standard mobile phone as a walkie talkie is the latest craze in the US. The new technology is a sort of voice over IP instant messaging system, and comes with a small monthly fee as long as you already have a data enabled phone (which comes with a large monthly fee). The idea is you just push to talk (like a walkie talkie) rather than dialling up and waiting for them to answer.
But why ? The latency, time delay and "only 1 speaking at a time" drawbacks would drive me nuts.
But then I'll never make a good consumer - my phone doesn't even have a camera.

(In fact my battered cell phone doesn't even have all of its keys anymore but that's no reason to shell out on a new one...)

Sunday, September 21, 2003

 
Time to get a new mattress

I was pretty shocked to read that cashpoint machines will soon be powered by Windows.
Just what do these clowns have to do before the world stops trusting them ?
Even more unusual is the idea that they might sell soft drinks through an ATM too. Personally I think there are far more pressing things for a 24 hr ATM to sell, especially when the pubs and late night pharmacies have closed...

Random musings. No more.

March 2003 ♥ April 2003 ♥ May 2003 ♥ June 2003 ♥ July 2003 ♥ August 2003 ♥ September 2003 ♥ October 2003 ♥ December 2003 ♥ January 2004 ♥