Browser design flaw? Or is it search engines?
I took call from a reader today who couldn't access a link in the magazine because they had entered it into the search engine box rather than the address bar of the browser. It's an easy mistake to make. After all, the search box is right in the middle of the screen.
It's not always a problem, type www.computeractive.co.uk into Google and the website is the first result in the list. But, type www.snipca.com/X911 (a shortened link to Windows Update) and there are no matches.
Surely it's not beyond the likes of Google to look through the search term and warn that it might be a link in the wrong place if www or http:// is found.
There’s no such thing as privacy
Fascinating post on the F-Secure blog about what privacy settings in Facebook really mean. Sean added a photo to a Facebook account making sure that every option was set to private. Unfortunately Facebook still adds a public link for the image. Checking the link I realised that this isn’t just a link for anyone on Facebook, you don’t even need to logged in to view it.
Something to bear in mind before you post photos, no matter how funny they are.
Keeping files in step across different computers
Hopefully I’m not too far from normal with the challenge of working on documents across several computers, not to mention different versions of Windows and Ubuntu.
USB keys are one solution provided you remember to put them back in your pocket and online office suites like Zoho and Google Docs are best used when you’re, well, online.
Enter Dropbox. It’s an online service that offers 2GB of storage at no cost (or 50GB and 100GB for $10 or $20 a month respectively) with a clever program that updates files automatically. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Folders can also be marked for sharing with other Dropbox users, which should come in handy when working on projects with several people.
Dropbox isn’t the only online storage service. I’m also using the paid for version of Humyo for backing up my work, but it’s handy to have a separate account just for working from and sharing with friends.
BT Internet Ranger
Following the Digital Hero campaign I reported on last year, BT is looking for their Internet Ranger of the Year.
The award is for young people under 16 who have helped other people get online. There will be four winners, one each from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, who will receive an HP laptop and £2500 worth of IT vouchers. An overall winner will receive an extra £250 worth of IT vouchers.
There will also be an award for a school that has encouraged pupils to help other people with their IT skills. The winning school or group of schools will receive £5,000.
There’s not long to apply as the closing date is Friday 15th January. Click here to find the application form. The schools form can be found here.
Digital hero winner
The Digital Hero campaign has found it’s Hero. Gill Farrington from Derbyshire has been arranging for local school children to help older people with the Internet for the last five years. She was awarded a £10,000 prize.
Twelve regional winners were chosen by a public poll and the overall winner was then decided by a judging panel.
More information about all the winners can be found on the Digital Heroes website along with a video.
The awards were held in conjunction with Citizens Online a charity that works to promote digital inclusion.
Fonts video
Fonts can be a contentious subject. Is there any place for Comic Sans in the Post Modern Age and are the Calibri and Cambria fonts with Office 2007 and Vista good enough?
FontShop has an interesting interview with Simon Daniels from Microsoft about fonts and the various standards that are competing online.
Important update for Opera browser
Opera version 10.10 has been released and it’s very important that you upgrade as soon as possible. Click on the Help menu and then Check for updates.
According to ZDNet, the most serious flaw could allow an attacker to take complete control of the computer, and you don’t need me to tell you that’s a bad thing.
Yahoo Design grids
Sit down to create a website and pretty much the first hurdle is getting the layout right. Tables are deeply unfashionable and won’t help you with search engines.
The ever-useful Yahoo Developer network has a good solution to this problem with the YUI 2: Grids CSS, a collection of page templates with, apparently, 1000 page layout combinations.
If you don’t want to get your hands too dirty with the code, the YUI Grids Builder offers a quick and simple way of setting the different areas of the page. The screenshot shows the page tool and a preview of the page appears in behind it in the browser window. Once you’re happy with it, click on the Show code button to copy and paste the code into the HTML editor of your choice.
There’s lots of help and documentation on the website along with a 42 minute video. Common to most of the the YUI pages there’s a PDF cheat sheet, which is a helpful reference.
The only disadvantage that I can see is that the default code uses stylesheets stored on the Yahoo website. It is possible to download these as part of the full YUI Library to host on your own website.
YouTube 4 You: Book review
YouTube. All you need to know is that links arrive in emails on a Friday afternoon with a hilarious video of someone falling over yes? Well, not quite. There’s a lot more to YouTube even if you only want to watch videos.
The book explains how to use the YouTube site with the various tools and other links that appear when watching a video. Signing up to YouTube is highly recommended, you can log in with a Google account if you already have one.
Once logged into YouTube it is then possible mark videos as favourites to share with other people and then to
One useful tip that was new to me was the QuickList feature. Video thumbnails have a small + symbol in the bottom left hand corner. Click on this to add the video to the Quicklist, which then appears as a link on the top row of the YouTube page. This list only lasts for that visit to YouTube so there’s no need to clutter the Favourites list with videos that might not be of any interest.
Creating content for YouTube is covered as well with tips on what software is available and the best settings to use to keep the best quality when the videos are converted by YouTube. Videos don’t have to look like they were made by a professional director; a webcam is quite acceptable for a video response.
Saving videos to watch offline is also explained, with some warnings that this can be a bit of a grey legal area. Still even big names like RealPlayer offer the ability to save YoutTuve videos although this particular program isn’t mentioned. Helpfully there are also links to programs that can convert videos from the flv format used by YouTube to something more suitable for mobile devices.
This is a good book if you want to get the most from YouTube. It’s reasonably priced and comprehensively covers what’s available from YouTube.
Title: YouTube 4 You
Author: Michael Miller
Publisher: Que
Price: £12
ISBN: 978-0-7897-3698-7
F-Secure Backup update clearly shows protected files
I reviewed F-Secure Online backup about a month ago (read it here) and found it to be both effective and unobtrusive. An update was installed that has had quite a dramatic effect on my Desktop as you can see on the right.
A coloured dot has appeared on most of the icons indicating whether or not the file has been backed up. I actually think this is quite a good idea because it can be hard to know whether files are protected when the backup software works quietly in the background.
