As you will have seen from the date of my previous post – I’m not in here often. The reason being is quite straightforward – I now have a Blog within my website which I use on a regular basis to update my clients, regular visitors and friends from directly!.
So… If you’d like to catch up on what I’ve been upto recently, head on over there and have a read…
The Blog on my site is located here – www.thenumber27.co.uk/blog
Hope you enjoy…
Cheers.
It frequently comes to my attention that the learning curve of a particular demographic is somewhat short. This is not to say that I encourage this particular group of individuals to smarten up and change their tactics as that would not necessarily be a good thing, but it begs the question: how do they survive day-to-day life when they cannot grasp even the simplest case of ’cause and effect’?.
The particular demographic in question are usually women of a certain disposition who will, for a specified amount of money and in front of a web camera, do pretty much whatever you ask. They generally operate through a website that has a great many people offering the very same ‘service’ and presumeably have to pay a commission fee type system in order to use the site. The thing that they don’t seem to be able to grasp is that while they are always trying to ‘advertise’ themselves, they are not very subtle in their method.
Creating a user account in Twitter using a random bunch of letters and numbers, then following as many people as you can and as fast as you can could be left to interpretation, but as soon as the crudely re-directed link is posted as the first ‘tweet’ the game is up! it’s all over and Twitter simply delete the account on the basis that the content of the target site in the link posted, is not allowed under the terms and conditions of use.
Twitter however, do seem to be learning from their experiences because as a result of increased phising attempts through posted links, they are about to start re-routing all links posted through their system which will allow them to filter out all the undesireable links at source – which as a net result will also include the ones for these ‘web camera’ sites.
Adobe have, through development themselves and through the purchase of other software firms got themselves into the position of owning the vast majority of ‘industry standard’ software titles for the Photographic, Design, and Web industries – effectively the creative sector.
This, you might assume is fine – afterall there are lots of companies out there that have close to a monopoly on their particular markets, but this is not the problem, the issue here is cost – Adobe price their products at an eye-watering level that almost beggars belief – especially for the UK market.
You might be thinking that it’s probably only a bit more expensive than their competitors, but because it is the ‘industry standard’ then that would be fine – well you’d be wrong – the prices far exceed what could be rationally accepted as fine. For example, I regularly use four titles, the current versions, along with their prices are:
It is immediately clear that there is a big disparity between the UK and USA pricing that equates to an additional cost of £675 to a UK user – this has no reason for being – the prices are for a digital download of the products and as there is no physical product there is no shipping or handling fees to be included, and even if a physical copy of the software was imported, it is not subject to customs excise duty.
There is a cheaper alternative to buying these titles seperately, and that is to purchase a ‘Suite’ which includes these titles (and a few more besides) however this is still subject to the same disparity. The UK price is £1,545 saving £515 on the individual prices, however the price in the USA for the Suite is $1699 which is £447 cheaper still.
So why do they insist on ripping-off their customers? The only conclusion that can be reached is this – they know they have a market that has become reliant on this software, so it is simply greed (along with a seemingly evident contempt for the UK) that motivates them. And should you think “I can get it much cheaper than that as I am a student” then yes you would be right – typically it is around 70% cheaper for students (upon completion of an extensive fulfilment of proving entitlement) – however be warned, once you have completed your studies Adobe insist that you must re-purchase your software at full prices in order to continue using it – they will disable software suspected of no longer being used with a valid license type.
NB, prices quoted are from the Adobe UK/US websites and based on direct purchase – shopping around online can find further savings, although they still reflect the different pricing structure.
So..in the run up to Christmas 2009 a grass roots campaign was started to show the cynical Simon Cowell and his cronies that the Christmas Number 1 single was not in fact part of the prize for winning the X factor.
The campaign, which was started by a couple in facebook, frustrated by the UK Christmas Number 1 spot being hi-jacked by the X facter for the previous 5 years, was soon spread into other networks like Twitter and very soon snowballed into a media frenzy. Millions of users joined and pledged their support for it, and also that they would buy the chosen RATM single at the appropriate time. Needless to say, Simon Cowell was not impressed and initially said it was a pathetic attempt to attack the X Factor – completely missing the point of the campaign.
The upshot of the saga is that RATM did indeed get the UK Christmas Number 1, Simon Cowell graciously admitted defeat and he the band said they were very impressed with how the whole campaign was run. The band has donated all the proceeds of the single sales to charity, and as a reward to the fans, they promised to give a free concert this summer for all those that made it possible.
All good so far…but now it has had the shine taken off the whole experience. the reason? the ticketing company instructed to distibute the tickets for the organised concert in the summer. In a convoluted and and arbitrary manner they have failed in the task to fairly distribute the tickets – clearly a free concert is going to attract an awful lot of interest, but the way it has been handled is at best hap-hazzard and at worst, in a very cynical and careless manner.
So what did they do? well to start they had issued a two day window in which you could register your interest in having a ticket, the registration involved submitting all your details and uploading a ‘passport’ style photo of yourself (presumeably in an attempt to defeat the touts) all fine so far, except the acceptance of the photo is somewhat random, my first submission was rejected and so I had to re-submit all info and a new photo – out of curiosity I submitted a lesser quality image – which was accepted, I have heard that actual passport photo’s were also rejected – thus establishing that the acceptance was conducted in an pretty arbitrary and random manner.
OK, so registration complete, what next? what follows is the complete failure to realise the scale of the appeal. It was announced to the successful applicants that they would need to effectively re-apply to get themselves entered into a ballot for the tickets and that they should do this from a set time on a set day. The consequences of this are clear – every single person tried to enter the site to do this at the specified time, and the site completely failed to cope and crashed. This was not only unnecessary, but also demonstrated a clear lack of foresight. The end result of this is that the tickets simply went to the ones who were lucky enough to get through to the website before it failed, they were not chosen out of a ballot of all registrants as was originally intended.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it is common sense that the second ticket ‘application’ was completely unnecessary and would inevitably result in an unfair outcome. They already had the details of everyone interested, so they could have simply balloted that to find the required number of tickets for the concert.
You will notice that all the prior posts in here are dated the same – well this is because I have neglected this blog for some time, but having just re-styled my website, I have decided to resurrect this blog and bring it bang up to date. This has not only involved a new theme and logo up top, but also new catagories for my posts – for which I decided the easiest way to organise everything already here, was to just delete it all and start fresh!.
So, we have details of my web design services outlined on the ‘About’ page, A whole bunch of info about my good friends Doll’s House and their music on the er…’Doll’s House’ page. And we have three catagories of subject matter to peruse – my favoured subject unsurprising is The Web, but Technology has a few interesting pieces in it as does Music – although Music is wanting of some more recent thoughts.
As is the case on my website, I encourage contact with comment and opinion (provided it is relevant and a valid point – so no spamming!) and look forward to hearing what you have to say on the various topics and items discussed in here.
Well thats about it for now I think – other than to say …check out the awesome links over on the right! 
Cheers
The Number 27.
Here we are in a new decade, and as with a lot of people I decided a fresh start was in order, so a complete overhaul of the website’s layout and design has been undertaken to freshen the look and feel, and also to generally simplify the whole experience for the visitor.
The first thing you will notice is the complete departure from the dark backgrounds of old, I have also fixed the height of the site so instead of the whole site potentially going on for miles – I have installed internal scrollbars to the content on the pages that need it. The other differences are that I have simplified the layout and reduced the amount of content sections. The introduction of several colours to the site has allowed me to afford a unique ‘identity’ to each page – which although was particularly complicated to implement, has worked out very nicely and I am very pleased with the result.
My favourite Quote (positioned in the top right of the site), has now been implemented into a flash movie that automatically rolls through the different site colours. The Portfolio has also had a make-over and is now implemented into another flash movie, and the gallery page now features just one slideshow, but that has been organised into several albums of different subjects that can be selected to view individually.
A consequence of this new layout and design is that it has highlighted the foibles of versions 6 & 7 of Microsoft Internet Explorer and, somewhat surprisingly Apple’s Safari. The browsers have forced alterations to the CSS (including adding a non W3C compliant ‘hack’ to fix IE issues) to enable the site to behave and look the same accross all browsers commonly used today. (although on a personal note – how anyone can still want to use IE is beyond me!).
So, Apple have launched their new piece of technology – but is it anything more than a toy? Stephen Fry certainly thinks so if his blog is anything to go by, I am not so sure however. Lets see what it can do – well it can play all of your media very well, whether its music, video or displaying your favourite pics, and it can browse the web well enough with the wifi or 3g (if you pay extra) but frustratingly Apple hasn’t learn’t from the iPhone, so it still doesn’t support flash media or multi-task.
What else can it do? Well it has an e-reader application and an accompanying bookstore on iTunes that works nicely, and the size of the screen is condusive to a pleasant experience. It also automatically supports the billions of apps that are buzzing around for the iPhone – so it will do anything that will do, but do you actually need something this big to do what the iPhone already does? and for the e-reader alone it would prove excessively expensive compared to other e-readers on the market.
So if it’s not really worth it for that, what about work? Well they’ve shoe-horned the iWork suite into it (at a fee of $10 per application) but using iWork has always been viewed as a bit of a chore, and to be honest it’s too small for any realistic work to be completed on it.
OK, if it’s too small for work, and too big to replace the iPhone what is it’s purpose? The only conclusion I can come to is that it is merely a ‘coffee table media toy’ for the faithful sheep to buy and rave over at dinner parties. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not attacking Apple for the sake of it – but the cynic in me says that this is merely something in which to extract more money from the faithful with no other purpose – especially as they are going to drip-feed the additional technology over stages (like the iPhone) in order to maximise the chances of people buying it again next year and so on…
It is without question a beautiful thing to look at, and indeed I’m reliably informed that it is just as beautiful to use – but unfortunately these reasons alone are not enough to justify it’s existence in my, and a great many others, tech collection.
Microsoft has not had a lot of luck with its (currently) market leading browser lately. Last year it was confirmed that they could no longer ship their Operating Systems without first offering a choice for users to install an alternative browser instead of having IE exclusively installed automatically. A decision that is not exactly rooted in fairness – it must be noted that their main competitor Apple, do not have the same requirements with their O/S and it’s pre-installed browser, Safari. And so the European courts exercise their muscles in not exactly a fair and impartial manner once more.
Anyway, back to point, It appears that Google, after a determined and mildly successful effort to hack into their systems in China, have decided to not only cease filtering search content in China, but are actually pulling out of the region altogether. This will be no great loss to Google – they have always stated that they never made a noteworthy profit from the region – however the implications for the region are far reaching, now that the only major search engine accessible by the general population is the state controlled one, and you can easily imagine the level of censorship that is routinely employed.
You might well be asking what this has to do with Microsoft’s IE, well the catalyst for all this is a flaw in the browser that allowed the hackers into Google’s system. Microsoft has admitted as such and are working on a patch to fix it – but that will take time to ensure it works and that it is stable, and in the mean-time the details of how to take advantage of the flaw have been posted online for anyone to try their luck with. You may think that this happens all the time, well to a certain degree it does, but this time it is seen as much more serious – The German Government, closely followed by the French Government, have taken the un-precedented steps of advising all their citizens to actually stop using IE completely and switch to another browser.
On a personal note I have always favoured the main alternative, Mozilla’s Firefox as my browser of choice as it is generally more stable, secure, and on the most part, a faster smoother experience online. As a web designer I am also aware that Firefox adhere’s to the accepted web standards whereas all prior releases to version 8 of IE have not conformed and have consequently required additional work in order to maintain the designed appearance of the site in question.
You can download the latest release of Mozilla’s Firefox for free here: www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox
In this increasing age of cybercrime the PC user has never been under more danger of losing valuable data or having personal/financial information gleaned from their system.
There are a vast number of companies providing software to try to shield us from these threats – but do they actually work? Well the answer for most of them is quite simply No – most of them do not. There is the old adage that you get what you pay for – and so the glut of free ones out there offer little protection as they simply don’t have the technology and resources to stay ahead of the criminals. This doesn’t mean you need to spend an exorbitant amount of money on protection either, which brings me to Kaspersky.
Kaspersky Labs have been producing Firewalls, Anti-Virus programmes, Full Internet Security suites, and Mobile device protection software for a number of years now. Because Mac users are now being targeted by the criminals, they produce security software for the Mac user too.
They have been consistently winning awards from the many comparative tests carried out by independent testing centres and IT publications all over the world. More than 250 million users around the globe are already enjoying the benefits of their protection along with the very low impact this companies software has on the performance of their PC.
So, to the latest version of their flagship product – Internet Security 2010 – the impressive list of threats this suite will protect you from is as follows:
Viruses, Trojans, worms and other malware, spyware and adware.
Rootkits, bootkits and other complex threats.
Identity theft keyloggers, screen capture malware or phishing scams
Botnets and various illegal methods of taking control of your PC
Zero-day attacks, new fast and unknown threats.
Drive-by download infections, network attacks and intrusions
Unwanted, offensive web content and spam
There are also a number of improvements and new features over the previous edition which includes:
Keeps your money and identity safe – Improved!
Protects against bank account fraud
Safeguards against online shopping threats
Allows questionable applications and websites to be run in ‘Safe Run Mode’ – New!
Cybercriminals won’t hi-jack your PC
Family protection from on-line predators
Your files won’t be ruined by hackers – Improved!
Keeps your PC running smoothly
Safer Wi-Fi connections
Two way personal firewall
Security Application Monitor to give you full picture on programs installed on your PC – Improved!
Identity Information Controller to give valuable data an extra layer of protection – Improved!
Kaspersky Toolbar for Internet browsers to warn you about infected or unsafe websites – New!
Advanced identity theft protection, including improved secure Virtual Keyboard – Improved!
Urgent Detection System to stop fast emerging threats – Improved!
Next generation proactive protection from zero-day attacks and unknown threats – Improved!
Special Game Mode to suspend alerts, updates and scans while you play – New!
The user interface has also been improved making it easier to understand what it is doing, and also to navigate through the settings and different features, and it also continues with the simple ‘traffic light’ status system so you instantly know that you are fully protected. A fairly rare selling point with Kaspersky Labs is that if as your license is valid you can freely upgrade to the newest version of the product you have, instead of having to wait till your license is up for renewal.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 is available to buy and download directly from their website – www.kaspersky.co.uk for £39.99 for a one year single user license, and there are also various multi-user and longer cover licenses available to choose from.
Those wishing to shop around can also find it in all these options in various retailers on the high street and online.
This suite is also Windows 7 compatible.
this is also published on Tech reviews site www.geeks.co.uk.
Having been left off the ‘grid’ by my phone’s battery power deserting me mid-evening yet again I decided I needed to invest in a portable emergency charger.
The parcel duly arrived two days later (on free delivery too!) and it has to be said that when I opened the padded envelope I was left cold – the dreaded plain thin cardboard box that so often portends cheap unfinished materials used for the product within, greeted me. Thankfully, this feeling was very short-lived as on opening the box I was faced with a thing of beauty. A clear, very solid perspex box with a curved top (rather reminiscent of a treasure chest) with the main unit placed on display on a perspex mount in the top.
Upon removal of the lid and lifting out the main unit, you then reveal the rest of the contents of the box, this comprises of:
1 x universal mains charger inc. interchangeable heads for UK, Europe, Australia and USA
1 x travel pouch
Tips included:
Nokia & Mini Nokia,
Micro USB,
Samsung G600,
LG Chocolate,
Sony-Ericsson wide connector,
Mini USB,
Female USB charging tip,
iPod/iPhone tip,
DC 4.0 for Sony PSP,
USB retractable cable.
All these attachments are standard issue, however on their website there are other tips available quite reasonably priced should you require something different.
The Charger itself is a comfortable shape and is solidly built with a good hard wearing shiny finish which is available in a range of colours. The charger weighs in at 70g and measuring at 88 x 39 x 37mm so it would not be too hefty a lump in your pocket, and would happily reside in a coat or bag without you always being reminded of it’s presence.
Once fully charged it claims to be able to fully re-charge a phone upto three times and will store it’s power for upto 6 months. This has yet to be tested by myself, so will let you know the results – I do think that this will be determined by the demand of your particular devices battery and charging circuit, but they are stating on their website that the maximum reserve power for these devices is:
All iPods – 40 hours
Mobile phones – 96 hours
Digital Cameras – 1600 pictures
Two-way radios – 24 hours
Sony PSPs – 5 hours
MP3 / MP4s – 6 hours
PDAs – 48 hours
Time will tell if this performs as well as it says it can, however if first impressions are anything to go by (and by the fact that my particularly fussy phone likes it) – then I would say that you could probably not do better than this without having to spend a lot more.
As for cost – this charger is available direct from their website www.powertraveller.com for the very reasonable price of £35.00 with free UK P&P.
Power Traveller also actively supports The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. More information on this is available on their website.
this article is published on Tech reviews site www.geeks.co.uk.
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