Internet News, Tips & Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:06:00 +0000

I am actually working from a beach thanks to GoToMyPc

GoToMyPC allows me to access my PC from anywhere on the Internet as though I were sitting in front of it. So when I am on vacation or just at a friend's house I can deal with urgent email and see if I've got any eBay or Amazon orders. Now what is wonderful about this is that I don't have the hassle of trying to load everything I think I'll need onto a laptop and then having all the subsequent problems of re-updating my main PC. GoToMyPC has allowed me to take working holidays and I love it. It's not cheap though so I'm amazed to see that www.logmein.com are offering a FREE remote login service, they hope you'll upgrade to their professional service of course. So there's nothing to stop you giving this a try. You can even use this on your home network to maintain other PCs without leaving your desk.

A reader Matt recommends the also free RealVNC which is widely used by the technical community, the only hassle with this is that an Internet Cafe etc might not allow you to install the RealVNC client.

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noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:44:00 +0000

Most Internet Users: China Overtakes the USA

Well that sure is a milestone and symbolic of the increasing power of China, but I'll be impressed when there is a chinese Google or Facebook. America (and I'm not American) is still the powerhouse of ideas from Silicon Valley to Hollywood and not to forget that marvel the iPhone!

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noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:45:00 +0000

test/share your code at www.codepad.org

codepad.org is an online compiler/interpreter, and a simple collaboration tool.
Paste your code into the textbox, and codepad will run it and give you a short URL you can use to share it in chat or email.

This is a great idea which allows you to get/offer debugging help without the hassle or risks of supplying FTP details to another person, installing compilers etc.

Supported languages are PHP,Perl,C,Ruby,Python,C++,TCL etc etc

What it is
codepad.org is an online compiler/interpreter, and a simple collaboration tool. It's a pastebin that executes code for you. You paste your code, and codepad runs it and gives you a short URL you can use to share it. Paste the URL into chat or email to get help or to show someone how to do something. Or just try things out when you don't have an interpreter handy. It works well on many phones.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:18:00 +0000

MK14 Corner

My first business venture, I made and sold accessories for Sinclair's First Home Computer the MK14 which cost just �39.95. Boy was it primitive but great fun, used a calculator display as a "screen". A dreadful 16 key touch pad (I sold a real mechanical keyboard). It had no permanent memory, you had to manually enter the program in machine code.

I remember the duckshoot game and you could make it play a tune.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:10:00 +0000

FireFox 3 New Features

What is extraordinarily useful in the new FireFox is the predictive URL when you type in the URL toolbar. Formerly these operated on the beginning or the URL eg www.go would autmatically flash up all urls you'd typed beginning www.go in your history log. Now if FF3 it will match any text anywhere in the URL or in the description. So if I wanted to recall a page about goats, all I'd have to do is type goat and the URL would pop-up. Excellent

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:58:00 +0000

Backup Your PC to the Internet

Backing up is a dull but essential chore. Authors have lost the entire manuscript of their latest book because they didn't bother/know-how-to/know-they-needed-to backup. Even seasoned programmers have known disaster either because they didn't have a recent enough backup or worse found they had been a glitch in the backup process that they hadn't noticed. Backups should be automatic and not rely on human intervention. This is one of the many advantages of Internet backup services, no requirement to insert a fresh tape/DVD, automatic backups can be programmed daily at midnight, the backups are always off premises.
Amazon provides the A3 backup service, but a techie friend recommended me the Mozy.com 2GB Totally Free Online Backup by Mozy. This is free but I will be upgrading to their paid service soon so I get even more space and extra features, by the way if you sign up to their Paid Service you can use the code "June" to get a 10% discount.

Solve your backup problems forever with Mozy.com and relieve yourself of one more chore and the guilt feeling when once again you don'y get round to it.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:18:00 +0000

Creosote: The Surprising Most Important Communications Invention

The Victorian Forerunner of the Internet was the Telegraph. The Telegraph curiously was "digital" as the information sent was encoded, the later analog telephone was in this sense a step backwards. Anyway the problem for the development of the telegraph was that the wooden telegraph poles rotted or were eaten by insects. It was the invention of creosote which allowed effective protection of these poles allowing Telegraph to spread across the USA and become a commercial success. The rest is history.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:30:00 +0000

Wonderful WordPress

Somehow I've only recently realised how marvellous WordPress is. I am now using WordPress not just as a Blog but as a rapid website generator with CMS. I've tried so many of the Website CMS systems and found then too complicated/non-intuitive (and I'm a techie).

The toughest part of creating a mini-Wordpress website is choosing from the hundreds of free templates.

Here are two of my first attempts:-

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:22:00 +0000

Top Quality Free Web Hosting
The Internet constantly surprises me; free web hosting used mean that you had to display their adverts and any technical extra such as database was charged for. Well now 000webhost.com where 000 means $0.00 dollars offer a very high specification free web hosting with PHP/MySQL and Cpanel and Fantastico, what's more it's not just free for the first year but forever, don't believe me well click below to learn more!

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:39:00 +0000

ASP / PHP Cross Reference

The following page allows you to quickly convert ASP to PHP or vice-versa by showing at a glance the different syntax for say comments, concatenation etc

http://www.design215.com/toolbox/asp.php

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:32:00 +0000

Free Remote Login to your PC/MAC with LogMeIn

GoToMyPC allows me to access my PC from anywhere on the Internet as though I were sitting in front of it. So when I am on vacation I can deal with urgent email and see if I've got any eBay or Amazon orders. Now what is wonderful about this is that I don't have the hassle of trying to load everything I think I'll need onto a laptop and then having all the subsequent problems of re-updating my main PC. GoToMyPC has allowed me to take working holidays and I love it. It's not cheap though so I'm amazed to see that www.logmein.com are offering a FREE remote login service, they hope you'll upgrade to their professional service of course. So there's nothing to stop you giving this a try. You can even use this on your home network to maintain other PCs without leaving your desk.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:22:00 +0000

Does Any Hate Microsoft Vista as Much as Me?

It's not just that it is super slow, that many of my applications don't work so I have to keep my old PC going, or that what used to be 2 clicks is now many clicks, blah blah blah. No it's Vistas disappearing tricks, my Control Panel which won't open, and applications that have their icons which appear in the the little panel next to the clock have their icons disappear even though the app is still working.

I often see people moaning about Vista but do they really hate it like I do?

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:32:00 +0000

CyberCarpet opens way to Pompeii

A stroll around the ancient city of Pompeii will be made possible this week thanks to an omni-directional treadmill developed by European researchers.

The treadmill is a "motion platform" which gives the impression of "natural walking" in any direction.

The platform, called CyberCarpet, is made up of several belts which form an endless plane along two axes.

Scientists have combined the platform with a tracking system and virtual reality software recreating Pompeii.

The key to the CyberCarpet is a platform with a large chain drive.

The chain drive is made up of 25 conventional treadmills which move in one direction, at right angles to the direction the chain is pulling.

The platform gives "walkers" a walking area of 4.5m by 4.5m and moves fast enough to allow jogging at about two metres per second.

Omni-directional treadmills are not new and have been in development for many years, including work done by the US military.

"This is the first omni-directional platform that allows near natural walking," said Dr Marc Ernst, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tubingen, Germany.

Source BBC News

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:16:00 +0000

Internet advertising set to overtake TV

With the increase in internet use over the past few years has been closely followed by the increase in advertising. For many years it has been TV which holds the top spot for advertising revenues in the UK, but with broadband being available in most parts of the country now, so advertisers have seen the opportunity that it presents.

Internet marketing has grown at such a staggering rate that it is set to overtake the TV as the largest market for advertising in the UK, which is in fact the worlds most developed market for this type of marketing.

In 2006 the advertising market share was steady at around 11.4%, but by last year this had grown to 15.3%, which is an astonishing increase and with the TV market at 21.8% and the press at 19.9% the internet will be homing in this possibly this year on taking the top spot.

This goes to show how exciting the internet is going to become for advertisers over the coming years.

Source TechWatch

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:50:00 +0000

Vista : I can see in Color!

After a year or so I can see natural colors on my Vista PC, there has been an upgrade of the driver!

Pity I can't load the Control Panel though. Hmm must read the FAQ on fixing problems with Control Panel, ah here it is "First Open the Control Panel"

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:38:00 +0000

Voted Best UK Broadband

USwitch asked their members to vote for the best broadband and voted PlusNet see their banner here

I have changed Broadband Supplier 4 times so I know the pain.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:54:00 +0000

Edit Your Pictures Online with SnipShot!

Want to quickly edit an image when you are on a strange PC with no graphics program you know. Well try www.snipshot.com

Some Features

# Save as GIF, JPG, PDF, PNG or TIF
# One-click enhance improves most images
# Basic editing tools like crop, rotate, resize
# Basic image adjustments like contrast, brightness, saturation, sharpness and hue
# Unlimited undo and redo (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y, or ?Z and ?Y on your Mac)
# Nondestructive editing�we always work from the original
# Edit big pictures�up to 10 MB, or 25 megapixels (5000x5000 pixels)

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:38:00 +0000

Setting up ODBC DSN when Control Panel doesn't work on Vista

Since one of the automatic Vista upgrades my Control Panel will only open briefly then shuts down ; thanks very much Microsoft.

Fortunately you can access the components of the control panel directly if you know their names.

c:\windows\system32\Odbcad32.exe

Will allow you set up a DSN. Found this out by trial and error.

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:27:00 +0000

Buy Expired Domains

www.suspendeddomains.co.uk

Watch out though as you will be tempted to buy some of these!
I think you have to move quickly to get the good ones but I saw
http://madjobs.co.uk/ and http://livinginspired.co.uk/ still available

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:49:00 +0000

Sgrep : Super Grep?

No sgrep means Structured Grep but as far as I'm concerned it could be super-grep because it is a non-lined based grep.


# sgrep has the advantage of being non-line based
sgrep -i '("<h1>" .. "</h1>")' index.php
sgrep -i '("fred" .. "joe")' essay.txt
It gets really useful when you stream it
sgrep -i '("fred" .. "joe")' essay.txt | egrep -i 'keyword'

More details here http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jjaakkol/sgrep.html

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:01:00 +0000

iPhone Boosts Mobile Searches Fantastically

Google's logs show that more searches are coming from the iPhone than any other mobile device. How much more? Fifty times more. Google's Vic Gundotra told the Financial Times that "We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again".

This is to be expected. The iPhone makes the web easy to use on a mobile device, and every customer has a bundled data plan. In the US, AT&T says that iPhone users burn through double the data of other customers.

It also shows the growth of mobile search, and the potential revenues for Google, something of which the search giant is fully aware.

Thinks: Must get an iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:31:00 +0000

Disappearing Control Panel on Vista
On my Vista system after recent automatic updates I can no longer open the "Control Panel" or rather it opens and then closes instantly. Googling around reveals that this does seem to be some kind of driver problem. Well anyway fixing it without being able to enter the control panel will be a tad difficult. Oh what a wonderful operating system! Does anyone else have the Task Manager which you can't close problem?. Now where is that Ubuntu disk?

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Do you know ZSH?

I previously used Bash for scripting but now prefer ZSH. I've developed my own set of primitives so for instance

> cp NF ND

Will copy the newest file in the directory to the newest sub-directory.
NF & ND are global aliases (global means can be used any where in command line)

alias -g ND='*(/om[1])' # newest directory
alias -g NF='*(.om[1])' # newest file

zsh has many wonderful features, a small number are listed here:-

http://www.successtheory.com/tips/zshtips.html

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Wonderful Self-Powered External Hard Drives

Sometimes technology is wonderful. As one who has suffered over the years with trying to store data and programs on floppies, recordable Cd's & DVDs that never quite had enough space or corrupted, the advent of the USB connectable external hard drive has been a blessing. But now they've gone one better with USB-powered Hard Drives, these make it a breeze to backup data or transfer files. I bought this one (see below) from Amazon . It is so light that when it was delivered I thought the box was empty!!

noreply@blogger.com (zzapper) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:01:00 +0000

The Problem with Newbies

If you sell eBooks on eBay it can be very frustrating to deal with Newbies who hardly understand copy and pasting or what a Zip is. On the other hand Newbies are great customers. Well I've just found a great site to help them

Click www.newbie.org . In future just send your newbies to this great site you'll be happy and better they'll be happy