Friday, October 16, 2009

100+ places for free books online

Wet weekend coming up? Instead of numbing your mind in front of the goggle box, curl up with a good book. Great image, except it's a bit hard to visualise curling up with a computer while reading an online book. That apart, there are thousands if not millions of books now available on the internet, and Stephen Keroff has done us all a favour by compiling an amazingly comprehensive list of sites where you can find them. So far he's unearthed more than 100. Everything from romances to the deepest philosphy, with pretty well all the major classics in-between.
And here's confession time: I am an incurable romantic, and run a spare-time hobby site sharing some of my own favourites, including some of my own writing. Because I am a particular fan of Regency romances and short stories, I have probably picked up a few pieces that Stephen has missed. Come visit!

Probably the best free security list in the world

Gizmo editor Antti Koponen has just finished a major update to his super popular list of the best security products. As Gizmo says, "If there is a more comprehensive list than this on the web, I'm yet to see it."
Caveat: It pays to check on the web for reviews before installing some of these products, as they sometimes do unexpected things to your system or conflict with other security products you are using. And before you install any security feature, set a System Restore Point first, so if things do go pear-shaped, you can set the system back how it was before.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Understanding Freeview

There are times I feel like a bear with very little brain, and Freeview TV is one of those things I struggle to understand. I get confused because it can come to your house in several different ways, and in the early days there were question-marks over which decoder was best; and then there are issues of what is high-definition and what is not, and how you can record it, etc etc. As you can see, I have not attempted to install it yet, although I do plan to sometime. So I found this article at Geekzone helpful, which is the beginning of a series following three people's experiences with three different MyFreeview|HD devices. I will follow it with interest.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Keyboard shortcuts

Talking of keyboard shortcuts (see blog below), the NZ Herald has a very good article on simple shortcuts to carry out many of your common tasks. I use the keyboard as much as possible, as it really does speed up work compared with swapping to the mouse.

Creating macros

This is a blog of frustration. Once upon a time, the Mac operating system used to have a very simple facility to record macros, so that you could automate common tasks. You clicked a Record button, carried out the required operation, and clicked the Stop button. Then you assigned a keyboard key. That was it. It worked brilliantly. Sadly, it was dropped around about System 7. The PC has never had a similar facility, and I have spent some frustrating hours trying to find a utility that does the same. There are a number of freeware utilities, but either they require a degree in computing to implement, or they simply don't work. What do I want to do? For example, the PC has no keyboard command to create a new folder (on the Macintosh, Cmd-N does the job). I believe that Windows 7 has implemented this, but why has it taken Microsoft several thousand years to catch up with such a simple operation? So seeing it's going to be a year or more before I purchase Windows 7, it appears I have to languish. If anyone knows of a SIMPLE macro utility that actually works, I would love to hear.

Monday, October 12, 2009

1 billion views a day

I think it's fair to say that YouTube has changed the way we view the world, and in particular has changed the whole entertainment industry. It has rewritten the rules. The staggering fact is that 1 billion hits a day are now made on the site, which is staggering, especially when you consider that the site was officially launched only four years ago. It was taken over a year later by Google. Co-founder Chad Hurley blogs on the milestone. The only thing missing from their perspective, I suppose, is that YouTube still does not make money. But when you're that successful, does it matter?