internet explorer downloads

download the FULL version of Internet Explorer here - includes all the old versions like 5.5 sp2 (suitable for an old Windows 98 PC). avgfree demands at least ie5 for example, and windowsupdate doesn't even attempt to work on older versions of ie. (that's if it's still available for win98 machines).

Apple Love

"A stupid little detail in an Apple app nicely illustrates the extreme attention to the fine points of user experience that makes people fanatical about the company." Wired News.

Here's my version: "A stupid little detail in an Apple app* nicely illustrates the extremely poor documentation and implementation that makes people frustrated with Apple software."

* Microsoft Entourage is the app in question. Getting the application to open other users shared calendars is the part that has extremely poor documentation. (You need the latest version of Entourage with SP2 for it to even think about working - and the exchange servers need at least SP2). The method of the madness is that it doesn't work simply by looking up the person in the address book, no, you have to go into the advanced properties and use the full alias of the username @ the root/parent domain of the organisation in order for it to work properly. For example instead of using jo.blog@centralblog.com you have to use blogj1@blogger.com where blogj1 is the actual username** on the (exchange) system, and blogger is the parent domain. Thankfully this is documented on the Internet, here, although it is noticeably missing from any Apple or Microsoft pages. And does anybody ever answer mac support questions on the internet to a point where a solution is provided? No, never in my experience.

** The stupidness of the exchange / active directory (AD) implementation of usernames is that you can have blogj on the system twice in AD, once in the blogger/centralblog domain and again (as another person) in blogger/otherdomain - yet exchange doesn't like this one bit at all, and will give the second blogj a DIFFERENT alias/username, such as blogj1 !!!

Cats Carrying Fish

Video - "Which cat can carry the largest fish? Only Japanese television can tell us."

Cute cats video. Mario Brothers tune played on an 11 string bass.

Are Electric Cars the Future?

There were/are several new electric cars at the british motor show. The Smart EV (70mpg, 72 mile range, from £15000), the Mega City Nice (40mph, 50 mile range, rentable London), and the Reva G-Wiz (£7000). All fun names apart from the Smart. The G-Wiz has the following benefits:

"Drive electric & save over £8,000 per year
* up to 600 'mpg' equiv.
* exempt from road tax
* exempt from (C) charge
* free parking in London
* free charging in London
* lowest insurance group
* 100% tax write down for business
* lowest rate company car tax at just 9%
... and cut your emissions impact by between 74% & 100%"

More about electric cars here.

Wouldn't it be great if...

You could get the "Saturday" or "Sunday Papers" on-line - you know, the massive Sunday Times, or Observer, or Guardian etc. I mean the internets great, but you don't get the wide variety of stuff shoved in your face like you do with the Sunday Papers - for example by flicking through every page you get a quick snippet of news that you might find interesting, you'd get some random article about someone famous in one of the magazines, you might get a small section on a car, and you'd get some highlight on a TV program on in the next week that you should watch... I know you can probably find all this information on line, but it's not been pre-packaged for you. You see the thing is, that there's so much random content that when I look through I find a number of interesting articles to read, but the next person who reads it would probably find a completely different set of interesting articles...

Saying that... these sites are quite interesting (and produce the main sunday papers):
Guardian Online
Guardian News Blog
Observer Blog (Guardian / Observer are the same thing)
The Times Online (you can read the current issue online, but it's a big list of text links)
Telegraph (website down?)
The Independant

Win a Digital Camera worth £200

Courtesy of DigiCamReview. Sweet!

Intel Core 2 Duo Finally Available

Well, the Pentium M descendant, the Intel Core 2 Duo, has finally entered the desktop market. It's even quicker than the Intel Core Duo that's been in laptops etc. And prices are very competitive for top of the range Intel chips - being priced less than the single core Pentium M chips...

You can buy motherboards from around £100 at scan.co.uk and chips are likely to be available on the 24th of July from overclockers.co.uk, with speeds up to 2.9ghz!!! Prices of dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 chips seem to have dropped dramatically as they appear considerably slower than the new Intel chips.

Have you noticed? (Seti Changes)

If you do Waller Seti Effort - and you were using the old optimised clients then it might have stopped working. If it did stop, you might need to uninstall and delete all your boinc / seti folders and re-download the latest version. The new version seems better optimised. And seems to give the following results:

Pentium M 1.8ghz - 20 - 29,000 seconds
Athlon XP 2000+ (1.667ghz actual?) - 31,000 seconds
Apple G4 1.25ghz - 45,000 seconds
Celeron 749mhz - 81,000 seconds
Via C3 Nehemiah 1.2ghz - 117,000 seconds

These numbers are very vague as the new "enhanced" seti results seem to fluctuate quite wildly. Results from the Pentium 4 and Athlon CPUS seem to better now than in previous versions.

Kitty is SO two faced!!

NBC10 have published a photo and video of a kitten with two faces, two mouths, two noses, 4 eyes - "The kitten was born Wednesday morning in Ohio. It has two mouths that meow in unison, two noses and four eyes that have not opened yet." (found at Boing Boing)

ipod transmitters legal in November

FM radio transmitters are due to become legal in the UK from November - these devices can be used with ipods in order to listen to your ipod in the car by tuning the FM radio into the ipod transmitter. story here.

Mac vs PC

So have you seen the Apple adverts for the Mac featuring a PC guy and a Mac guy? Well, here's some alternative versions featured on VH1.

How to be Happy

Pupils at Wellington College, Berkshire, will soon be taking "Happiness Classes" / "Positive Psycology". Some of the following tips provided by Metro are:

1- Money doesn't make you happy - don't spend on gadgets, spend on holidays and memories instead.
2 - Say thank you - keep a gratitude journal.
3 - Go to the gym - 30 minutes of excercise a day may help beat depression.
4 - Eat fish, turkey, chicken, beans, avocados and bananas - they all contain an amino acid that will boos serotonin.
5 - Have a laugh - join a laughter club: www.laughteryoga.co.uk

The Best Rock/Pop/Rap/Hip-Hop Album Ever! 2

The Best Rock/Pop/Rap/Hip-Hop Album Ever! 2 (now on YouTube)

Link

Some geezer has recreated Pac Man in the real world using crickets.

Link

Google can be used as a virus scanner.

Websense is involved so I am immediately a little skeptical but hey, if it works, it works.

Chinese Man Invents Robots

This one carries him on a rickshaw. Others serve tea and light cigerettes. Unfortunately he's having to sell some as one of them caught fire and burnt down his house. BoingBoing.

10 years late?

Marantz have released a new high end dual tape casette deck. Looks very swish.

You know how 10 years after something has died (like the Atari Jaguar, or Sega Megadrive, or Atari ST, or Amiga) a company releases the best ever program or add-on for the system ever, and nobody buys it because all the machines are already in the bin... well I can see some parallels now with the Marantz tape deck...

except for the fact that we still have all our tapes lying around, loads of older cars still have tape decks, and CDs (and DVDs) are much more scratch prone than we were led to believe by all the CD marketing people! Fact: You leave your CDs in your car (or your mates car) for a period of time, and you get back a scratched CD that doesn't play properly!

Update: Someone's released a new game for the Atari 2600 via BoingBoing

Link

Turn your Windows desktop in to an interactive Mario leve.

Microsoft Windows Vista Pants Rating

Okay, we'll start with a Pants rating of 5/10, i.e. we're assuming it's mainly pants. Every time someone writes something positive about it, the pants rating will go down, and every time someone writes something negative about it, the pants rating will go up.

Positives:
Tom's Hardware give it the thumbs up. (-1)

Negatives:
Deleting shortcuts in Vista takes too many steps (+1)
Vista takes longer to boot than XP. (+1)
Pants versions available. (+1)
MSNBC (Microsoft NBC) Say it's pants. (+1)
Computerworld - 20 things you wont like in Vista. (+1)

Updated (27/06/06) Current Microsoft Windows Vista Pants Rating: 9/10 - Almost ULTRA Pants