Search any specified extension in Google Desktop [from: del.icio.us]

BT in VoIP giveaway | The Register

- Free PC-to-PC calls
- Free PC to UK calls
- Sign-up for the package online,
- Need to be an existing customer of a BT Together fixed-line package.
- Free calls do not include non-geographic numbers such as those beginning with 0870 and 0845, premium rate services, mobile and International calls.
- Offer is only available to the first 50,000 BT residential punters who sign up for one of BT's broadband packages before December 31.
- Runs as a badged version of Yahoo IM

Could be worse, I suppose. [from: JB Ecademy]

Tesco have launched a music download service. but like all such services, it's wonderfully illogical. Let's take a sample from the current album charts, Scissor Sisters.

- Buy the CD for £8.99
- Buy the download for £7.99
- Look at the usage rights and details.
- WMA (no ipod),
- 192Kb (good),
- DRM, Only allowed to transfer to devices that support SDMI DRM (ie not many)
- 3 backups. which is better than none.

So for £1.00 over buying the CD and ripping it yourself, you get a lower quality file, WMA only and no transfer to an iPod or most other portable music players.

Or you could go to Allofmp3.com and buy the download in MP3, no DRM, 192K VBR for $0.60 or in lossless FLAC format (identical to the CD) for $5.66

So why would you buy the Tesco Download?
[from: JB Ecademy]

A Petition for California's Secession from the Federal Government

Heh! This makes complete sense to me.
- Schwarzenegger could become 1st Emperor of California without the messy business of needing an Amendment to the Constitution first.
- Hollywood could fight the IT industry directly without having to go via DC
- California is already one of the top 10 countries by GNP
- It already has ample natural resources including oil and gas
- It would be free to open it's borders with Mexico and exploit migrant workers openly.
- Most of the rest of the USA would say "Good riddance to Munchkinland"
- They could legalise gay marriage (and any other strange sexual relationships) without upsetting the Evangelists.

But really this doesn't go far enough. They should encourage the other states from Alaska, through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Baja Mexico to seccede and join them to form a new nation of PacifiCa. Then the fight for title of Emperor could be between Arnold and Bill(Gates) (With Larry Ellison on the outside). And between Hollywood, IT, Microsoft, Boeing and leasing military bases, they'd have no problem with balance of payments. There's even probably a good business to be made by providing outsourced Correctional Facilities to the rest of North America.

Vote Seccession! You know it makes sense! [from: JB Ecademy]

Tony Marston's unique perspective on PHP database-driven site-building [from: del.icio.us]

Republican vs Democrat
Bush vs Not-Bush
Right wing vs Not quite so right wing
Metropolitan vs Rural
Informed vs Ill-Informed
Written word vs TV
Intelligent vs Stupid
Educated vs Illiterate
Religious vs Secular
Rich vs Poor
East and West vs Middle and South
Moral vs Realistic
Faith based vs Reality based
Hawk vs Dove

I'm reminded of Abraham Lincoln's famous speech "A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand"

This is now the greatest challenge facing the USA. To unite these black and white viewpoints and achieve some synthesis. And not forgetting of course that they are all gross simplifications and reality, as always, is made of many shades of gray. Or should that be purple.

try before you install [from: del.icio.us]

NTL supercharges broadband | The Register : NTL looks set to take a big lead in the UK's broadband sector by ramping up speeds next year for residential broadband customers while freezing prices. The move will leave a yawning gap between NTL's offering and BT-based ADSL services.

NTL's entry level 300k service will be supercharged to 1Mb while still costing £17.99 a month. Its new 2Mb service will cost £24.99 while 3Mb will cost £37.99.

The speed increases will be rolled out to new customers during the first three months of next year, although existing customers must cough up a £25 "administration fee" to make the switch.

Which is nice. But then my automatic upgrade from 600Kbps to 750Kbps didn't happen in late summer or September and is now scheduled for November, so I'm not holding my breath. Note also that there's no word on upstream speeds. [from: JB Ecademy]

Oh good grief. I'm going to have to hold my breath for 11 days.

[edited to add]. Make that 4 years.

If I hold my breath much longer, I think I'm going to turn blue.

I've been fiddling with the Last.fm (Listening To) block on the right hand side. The songs now link to the correct place in last.fm and there's buttons to see my last.fm rofile and to listen to my radio station.

This is all fed by winamp running on the 4 PCs in the house. So it's a mix of what my kids and I have been listening to. We're all working off the same music library so it's actually pretty representative.

Last.Fm is very cool, but they need help. There's too much code that needs writing. But ain't that always the way.

Now if I could just work out how to get the information off my Zen Xtra about what I've been listening to on the road.

Woot! visual navigation of London streets with photos of each shop along the street. See also urban tapestries. [from: del.icio.us]

[from: del.icio.us]

For the past few months, Apache has been dying occasionally for no obvious reason. I couldn't find out why so all I could really do was restart it. Today I caught it in the process and discovered that it had a very large number of sessions running Gnews2Rss (the famous Google news to RSS scraper) that were sitting waiting to write data out.

What seems to be happening is that many RSS aggregators do a feed collection at the top of the hour. People using gnews2rss were hitting my server, which was then kicking off a page request to Google. These were getting stacked up and taking too long to time out. Apache was then complaining about too many sessions.

So sadly I'm retiring Gnews2rss as it looks like I can no longer support the growing success. For the next few days all it will return is a single item each day repeating this message. After a week or so I'll switch that to a 410 Gone http message for an RSS request but leave the html display.

I'll leave the source code up there. And as I still use a local copy myself I'll be trying to keep the source code up to date and working.

As always, please hassle Google on mailto:news-feedback@google.com and ask them to produce RSS/Atom themselves.

Which aggregators do a feed collection run at the top of the hour?

If you're the author of an aggregator, please don't do this. Please add a little randomness. Otherwise, if you're successful and the app is widely used, you've created a distributed DOS attack on popular feeds.

Time to Dump IE?
Internet Explorer is a hacker's dream. Can you (and should you) drop it right now? [from: del.icio.us]

gapingvoid: the krypronite factor

Hugh McLeod has published a brilliant analysis of the task facing corporate PR. It deserves to be quoted in full.

DAY ONE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.

DAY TWO:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.

DAY THREE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Ummm... yeah I'm sure they are, but what's all this about some recent video on the net that's supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?

DAY FOUR:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend's website. And I'm kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I'm wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not... does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?

DAY FIVE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?

DAY SIX:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they're not. You guys are a**holes.

This poses a huge problem for corporate PR. For years, PR has relied on cutting services to keep track of what the world is saying about their parent company. But this is way too slow now and doesn't cover the vast number of potential websites that could be talking about you. If you're in PR now, you have to be using tools like Google News, Technorati, Blogdex, Daypop, Topix.net, or you won't be able to stay on top of what's happening. And that still doesn't answer the question of what you do next when something like the Kryptonite Factor lands in your lap. [from: JB Ecademy]

[from: del.icio.us]

Summary: Audio content on the internet is in chaos. To reign in the chaos, and to capitalize on internet audio file assets, Google will launch an audio search engine or audio file search tool by 2006, but probably sooner. [from: del.icio.us]

BushCo keeping America scared [from: del.icio.us]