Online malware scanner

Have just been made aware of this useful site. You can upload a file and it'll use a multitude of virus-scanners to examine it and let you see the results. Potentially useful for false positives from your virus detection software, or perhaps if you're writing a virus, to see if existing scanners can spot it. You're not writing a virus though, surely?

Atari Touch Tablet from 1984

I thought I knew about all of Atari's systems, but apparently not, here's photos of the Atari Touch Tablet from 1984 tested with an 8 bit Atari 130XE 25 years later! Wow! (Found at engadget).

Hot UK Deals and Money Saving Expert...

If you're looking to buy something, why not check to see if it's on

HotUKDeals.com or
Money Saving Expert Deals Forum.

Save Tango

Is Tango truly in trouble, or are they just fun, creative marketing people? You decide. And then shut up about it - it's obvious.

Looking for a cheap DVD player with USB and DivX playback?

If you want a DVD player, chances are most now support DIVX playback, but if they don't have a USB socket then you'll have to waste your time writing your files to DVD or CD for playback, alternatively you can get a DVD player with a USB socket and plug in a USB pen drive or USB hard drive*. If you want one of these magic machines from the future, have a look at these:

Cheapest: BIOSTEK - XC-150 USB/MPEG4 DVD Player £20 Pixmania via Amazon UK

Sigmatek - XS-700 Pro DVD Player - £29 Pixmania via Amazon

Cheapest with 1080p: Sumvision PHOENIX HDMI 1080p DVD Player with SD/MMC/MS Slot - £35 at Datakits (excluding postage) or £29 at Amazon (exc postage) - also features SD card slot for photos.

Cheapest branded: Philips DVP3260/05 - DVD Player with USB £39 at Amazon UK

Pioneer DV-310-K - DVD Player With USB Input (Black) - £53 at Amazon

Cheapest branded with 1080p: Philips DVP5990/05 - HDMI 1080p DivX Ultra DVD Player - £55 at Amazon UK

ONKYO DVSP406 DVD PLAYER (MULTI-REGION) 1080p - £67 at superfi

Pioneer DV-410V-K - DVD Player with HDMI Output, USB Input and High Definition JPEG Playback (Black) - £68 at Amazon

* Some struggle to power USB hard drives - I use an LG DVD player, and a Freecom XXS 250gb USB hard drive and that works fine.

Best and Worst of 2008 List

Best things of 2008 :- Lots of great cameras, all cheaper than ever, loads with image stabilisation, and wide angle lenses: Best budget: Canon A590, Sony W130, Best compacts: Olympus 1030SW, Panasonic FX150, Best zoom Pansonic TZ5, Canon SX110 IS, Best DSLRs: Olympus E510 (or E520), Canon 450D, see more here. Expect even cooler stuff next year including Olympus' Micro Four Thirds camera.

Second hand cars are now seriously cheap eg Ford Focus 2005 model (new shape) around £3500 on Autotrader.

Interest rate extremely low - so if you've got the right bank and mortgage type your mortgage could be much much cheaper.

Best technology of 2008: In my opinion is the Intel Core 2 Quad Core - 2.4ghz quad core chip was around £100 at it's lowest price this year - excellent performance and amazing price.

Biggest dissapointment of 2008: Spore - nasty DRM, didn't live up to the hype at all, not worth buying. Oh, and the awful financial market throughout the world.

Reasonable Screen Recording Software For Nowt

Not sure if it'll be useful to anyone here, but thought I'd jot a note. Yesterday I stumbled across a bit of software to record video files of you doing stuff on your PC. The most obvious use is probably to record tutorials with voice overs and stuff. So the above link is to a reasonable bit of free software to do the job. I've not been able to find any help files or anything, so it's a bit of a "follow your intuition" approach, but using their "lossless" video codec, the results can be quite good. Camtasia Studio, I gather is a more polished, sexy non-free product, that seems to get a lot of use by the pros, but for the rest of us, this free product might just suffice.

Addictive game...

fun coconut travel game - best I've seen is 13 seconds 15 coconuts 100%

The IT Crowd - Season 3 - Starts Friday

BoingBoing - if it's anything like the last series then expect to be able to watch it online, on Channel4's website here (or on 4od).

What kind of sick freak...

Came up with regional DVDs, regional DVD players, unlocked dvd players (LG) that can't successfully play a brand new US DVD, region locked Windows DVD playback software (Windows Media Player), and DVD drives in computers that spin up so loud you can't even hear the sound on the DVD!!! Why oh why is the DVD system so full of crap solutions!!!???

Sony Ericsson C905 - 8mp Camera Phone

If you want a decent camera in a phone, then it looks like the Sony C905 is the best option.

American flight security...

"“Maybe if you lit it on fire, he’d pay attention,” I said, risking arrest for making a joke at airport security. (Later, Schnei­er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.)"

12oz Bottles of liquid labelled "Saline Solution" (for contact lenses) are allowed, other liquids over 3oz aren't allowed... link

The fear, the horror, of living in the 70s

Anyone use bloglines?

Anyone else use bloglines? My rss feeds seem to have completely dried up!? (Hence why I'm updating this to see if bloglines changes...)

Monkeys - the answer to all lifes problems...

Monkey serves in restaurant, and sort of a monkey solving a problem: man dresses as monkey to scare monkeys away.

Twitter?

Anyone use twitter.com? - I do and you can find me here. So far I see little point in it, as it's like your facebook status, and you can read other people's status. And that's about it. But it's much more focused, so if you wanted to follow some random dudes updates (for example you might be able to find interesting people to follow), it's much easier to use twitter than facebook, plus you can put your updates on there, and they'll automatically update your facebook status (when you add the twitter app to facebook).

Panda Stabbed In Face With Celery

You've seen a million optical illusions.  You're sick of them.  So here's another.  There's no panda.

Chuckle Brothers Film

'Bout time really, eh?

Google Chrome Browser to be released today...

Google to launch web browser today perfect timing really since Opera is now full of bugs.

Google Chrome Links:
Download from here
Google blog
Screenshots at Hexus.net

Would you pay for Anti-Virus Software?

I know we've talked about free anti-virus software previously, and also free anti-spyware software and backup software - but would you actually pay for anti virus / firewall / anti spyware software / backup software? Even when there's free stuff out there? I've recently been trying some anti-virus / internet security software and found the following, some of it seems fairly reasonably priced:

Kaspersky AV - £35 for 3 pc license, 1yr - does AV software, scans your email, even tells you when you're missing security updates. This seems to work well - but the full "internet security" version is only £30 which makes this one seem expensive. It seems to go further than the free AV software by telling you when Outlook needs a security update for example. However - it did detect a friends 12,000 MP3s as containing viruses and promptly deleted them all!

Bullguard Internet Security - £15 for 3 pc license, ?yr - this does anti virus software, anti spyware, firewall, spamfilter, and online backup. Appears to be excellent value for money, comes with a clear and easy to understand manual, and the spam filter and online backup could be useful, especially as you get 5gb (!) of online storage. The online backup could in fact be one of the most appealling features of this software as it provides full scheduling, some advanced options, such as keeping different versions of files, and allows you to compress the backup and even encrypt it with a passphrase. So, 3 PCs backed up online for £15, sounds like a complete bargain to me. The anti virus software scan seems quite quick, found a virus inside an email that avast didn't, and unlike some other software doesn't slow the PC down even on a fairly low spec Windows XP laptop. The software seems very easy to use, with a clear and logical user interface.

Norton Internet Security - is £40 for 3 pcs, and is rubbish, and to be avoided like the plague. Whenever I've used it on PCs or experienced it because it's come pre-installed it's always seemed to cause problems and slowness, and very little protection because the pre-installed versions only lasted 90 days.

McAfee Internet Security - £22 for 3pc license. We use Mcafee AV software in work, and it's generally good as an anti virus solution - with very regular updates - and generally good and finding and removing viruses. I've not tried the internet security so don't know what it's like.

Microsoft OneCare - £20, 3users. This seems to be a combination of anti virus software, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, and firewall - which is a bit odd, especially as Microsoft already provide a free firewall, free anti-spyware software, and free phishing protection with the latest versions of IE. It does offer auto defrag, backup and a few other features, and I guess this simplifies it all, so you can manage it all in one package without having to maintain different pieces of software, and I guess that's the appeal of using an "all in on" internet security package.

There's also AVG Internet Security (£40, 3 users, 2 years), and Panda Internet Security (£18, 3 users), Trend (£40), and Bitdefender (£18).

What seems to be somewhat strange about all of this is the fact that some of these solutions don't tell you how long the subscription will last - this could have a massive effect on value for money, and PC protection, ideally you'd want something that will last several years without you having to spend money every couple of years. The prices seem to vary quite dramatically from £17 to £40 - with £40 obviously seeming a little too expensive, especially if you have problems with the software, or can find free software instead. And do you really need a 3rd party Firewall when Windows XP (SP2) comes with a built in firewall?

I guess you could setup free software to do everything these programs do, but pc security, data protection and backups have become something even people with very little PC knowledge want to do - and this software can simplify the whole process dramatically - and for this reason I guess it could be worth buying this software. Just think of the time saved by using one of these programs.

OneCare seems like it would integrate the best into Windows, and provide better automatic updates, and PC performance optimisation, and whilst it does provide backups, it doesn't provide online backup, whereas Bullguard seems to provide the best offsite / online backup solution.