“ Google Buzz is an extension of the Google Mail service offered by Google which [...]]]> The Click article for this week is brought to you by Hayley Underwood, my soon to be wife, so that she can tell you about Google Buzz; a new social networking application that she has been getting to grips with.

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Google Buzz is an extension of the Google Mail service offered by Google which the Internet giants hope will lure users away from alternative services such as Facebook.

Google Mail initially created shockwaves when first introduced as they offered a huge 1GB of storage space for messages and attachments compared to most of its competitors who at the time offered a feeble 2 to 4MB.  Today they offer a huge 7GB as standard however times have moved on and alternative providers such as Yahoo Mail and Hotmail also now offer an almost unlimited amount of storage space free of charge.

Despite not having the advantage over the competition in this respect any longer, Google Gmail continues to be a popular service due to its ability to integrate well with other e-mail accounts and the way in which it allows you to manage your messages.  As an example, Gmail groups together messages that are of the same subject, making them part of a conversation file.  In this way you can manage large number of e-mails grouped into the same conversation quickly and easily so that deleting or achieving them doesn’t cause a headache.

Google Gmail is free to use and paid for by advertising however the adverts are very small, non-intrusive and are targeted so that they are more relevant to subject matter that you might find of interest.  There are no large graphic adverts and no pop-up or pop-under adverts to clutter your browser.

Google Buzz is a social networking application integrated into Gmail.  It aims to offer a better method to share photos, links, videos, and events with your Gmail contacts and personally I believe it is rather coincidental that this was developed after Facebook announced plans they were developing their own email system.

Buzz has all the basic features that you would expect from a social networking application including the ability to share status updates, photos, links and videos both privately and publically.  You can choose who you’d like to follow by simply entering their Gmail address at which point they can be added as a friend for you to see a steam of all their updates that have been shared either publically or privately with you.  As with Facebook, other users can comment on public posts and show their appreciation for an update or users status by clicking the ‘like’ button.

You can direct a comment into a fellow users Gmail inbox by simply putting @ the beginning of your comment and the user name of that person is then hidden to protect their privacy.  This feature can only be used with people that are in your Gmail contact list.  Also by clicking on the arrow to the right of any post, you can link content to the post, email the contact directly and mute the buzz that appears in your inbox.

Google Buzz also integrates with Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger, and Twitter meaning that you are able to share content from these applications directly.  This is a nice feature as it allows you to post files and albums you may have already created without having to go through the hardship of creating them twice.

The social networking market has the potential for huge rewards, especially for a company such as Google that makes such a large amount of its profits from revenue generated by advertising.   With news that Buzz will soon be available on the Android phone and iPhones platforms, it will almost certainly give the more established social networking sites a run for their money.

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“ A year and a half ago I was shown a website that was pitched to me as “YouTube for video games” and as [...]]]> This week Matt Stevenson from our Torquay Road store has kindly offered to write about the fantastic gaming site Kongregate which, as a non gamer, I felt ill-qualified to cover. Enjoy!

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A year and a half ago I was shown a website that was pitched to me as “YouTube for video games” and as an avid gamer I was rather keen to get on this website and see just how it worked. The website was kongregate.com and it has since become one of my top visited sites for many reasons.

Kongregate currently features 19,620 completely free mostly independently produced games and more are being added daily. Whilst not necessary, users are encouraged to register for an account so they can use the sites social element and contribute to the site with ratings and reviews.

The social part of the site (to justify endless hours of gaming instead of getting some fresh air) comprises of the ability to add friends who are also users or to use the site to send messages to encourage them to join your game. When playing games you are always given your game window accompanied by a chat room where anyone else who is in your chosen room can discuss anything they please.

By having an account you can also use the sites achievement system which is very similar to that offered on Xbox360 and Playstation 3 networks. By playing games, rating games and referring friends you earn badges to be displayed on your profiles, collectable cards to be used in the sites online card game and also get points which advance in rank on the site.

Most importantly Kongregate is completely free to use and is funded purely by advertising and its recently implemented Kreds system. Whilst the adverts are present on every page of the site they are never intrusive and tend to fit the ethos of the website generally being for big game/movie releases or general geeky technology.

The advertising is generally done in some rather clever ways that really get a gamers attention. For example most recently Kongregate celebrated the release of the film Zombieland with Zombie week where a different challenge was available for points each day for a different zombie based game on the site. The games were of course surrounded by rather unsubtle Zombieland branding but never did it hinder or stop you playing the game.

Loot challenges are regularly available where completing the challenges would enter you for a prize draw to win prizes such as retail next gen games and home cinema systems. These are dealt with in a very similar way to the Zombieland promotion and are never intrusive.

The Kreds system is completely optional for all users and revolves around you buying virtual currency through PayPal or a credit/debit card. With your Kreds you can purchase additional content for games, Kongai cards or even leave a tip for the developer of a game you particularly liked.

Kongregate also encourages the user to get involved by offering tutorials and free web based software for developing flash games. Most notably, with their series of Shootorials where they released script for a game developed in house and challenged users to make the best game they could offering cash prizes for the best entries.

Another innovative feature is the creation of Collabs, which acts as a meeting place for artists and musicians to contribute their digital work and meet up with like minded people, as well as encouraging developers of to create new content for the site.

Whilst the purpose of the website is of course to make money it is refreshing to see a company taking steps to create something unique and offer a great service without bombarding its loyal users with adverts and restrictions. I can only hope the site will continue to grow in popularity to truly give independent games studios and developers a chance to give their work a platform outside of the traditional games industry; in much the same way that the Internet has done so very well of late for the music industry.
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After hearing one to many people describe [...]]]> A popular technology at the moment and one that has been heavily advertised in the press is the Intel Centrino standard which is used to provide laptops with an all in one solution consisting of processor, chipset and wireless connection.

After hearing one to many people describe Centrino as a processor I thought it was long time I took a look at exactly what this technology consists of and what it has to offer the average laptop user. The fact people see this technology so simplistically isn’t really too surprising as has been implied in Intel adverts that Centrino is a processor.

Centrino is a combination of the words ‘centre’ and ‘neutrino’ and is simply a marketing term to describe three technologies sold together in the same machine – these include:

- Pentium M Processor – This is a small and light processor that uses a relatively small amount of power which makes it ideal for use in a laptop machine as cooling needs are reduced and battery life is improved. Of course there are many different versions of the Pentium M Processor including just recently a Dual Core variant.

- Intel Chipset – Several chipsets can be provided for the laptop to qualify as a ‘Centrino’ machine. Whichever chipset is chosen will be provided by Intel and be designed to have low power consumption.

- Wireless Network – The specifications for this particular component are changing constantly as wireless networks are evolving very quickly. Suffice to say that an Intel wireless network card is necessary for a laptop to be considered ‘Centrino’

Basically we have established that Centrino is in fact a group of technologies and not just one component and together these do offer the average laptop user a few advantages:

Integrated Wireless Technology:

An essential part of any modern laptop which allows you to connect to either your home network via a wireless connection or a number of Internet ‘hot spots’ around the world. These hotspots can be located in cafes, airport lounges, hotels and many other locations.

Mobile Performance

The Pentium M processor is surprisingly quick; especially the dual core version which has received good reviews in the press just recently. The processor has the ability to combine operations and works to anticipate instructions that will be issued to it in the future based on past behaviour.

Whilst none of the Intel mobile processors are yet 64-bit it should be pointed out that this technology should be covered by Intel in late 2006 which coincidentally is also around the same time as the new 64-bit version of Windows is released.

Good battery life

Because the processor uses such a small amount of energy it requires little cooling and generates only a small amount of heat which will result in improved battery. To conserve power the processor also slows itself down when not required meaning that it is not running at full speed even if you are just writing a Word document.

It should be pointed out that although Intels rivals AMD do have a mobile processor of their own that they haven’t gone down the route of marketing an ‘all-in-one’ solution. Personally I find this quite surprising as Centrino have already gained a huge market share due to the average man in the street now wanting this technology by name due to the extensive advertising.

It’s not often that I give Intel praise but in this instance the three components working together do appear very competent and anybody looking for a new laptop should certainly consider making sure it conforms to the Centrino standard.

[...]]]> I have featured a number of sites in the past which offer free downloads of fantastic utilities and assorted pieces of software. Unfortunately such sites often contain software which is simply trial versions or shareware rather than completely free of charge which makes finding the completely free goodies slightly more difficult.

Recently I came across the site www.freewarefiles.com which has an absolutely huge selection of files that are completely free and delimited. These programs will not ever ask for money or expire after a certain period of time whilst still being legal which is the way that I like any piece of software to be.

There’s not a huge amount that I can actually comment on when it comes to the site itself as the layout is a pretty standard affair but the quality of the files is what sets it out from other sites on the Internet. Online we have simply thousands of files that can be viewed by the most downloaded, highest rated, title, date, category and additionally you can choose to search the files on the site by a particular keyword. The site doesn’t suffer from pop-ups or intrusive adverts but they simply make their money by participating in a Google AdSense scheme like the one that I featured in Click last week.

Additional features include a number of free articles and ‘how to’ features along with the option to sign up for a monthly newsletter with a selection of editor picks and new additions to the site.

As mentioned above the most important thing for a site like this isn’t the layout or the interface but ultimately the quality of the files that it hosts which is where Freeware Files excels. A selection of the completely free files that caught my eye follows below – I have been careful only to feature programs that haven’t ever featured in Click before.

TV 2.0 – A program designed to allow the user to search for and view TV stations LIVE from around the world. I’m quite impressed by this program so would imagine that it will get a review in Click in the near future.

CDBurnerXP Pro – This is a quite capable piece of software that whilst will not be of interest to those of us lucky enough to be using Nero will be a worthwhile utility for those who currently only use the CD writing utilities built into Windows XP.

ABC Video Roll – Whilst not particularly powerful this utility is designed to allow you to easily mix video clips with special effects, transactions, morphs and so on.

Eraser – This utility allows you to permanently remove sensitive data from your hard drive so that it cannot be recovered by file undelete utilities like the ones I have covered previously in Click.

ImageForge – An extremely small but capable image converter capable of converting images or manipulating them with the use of special effects tools and filters.

To summerise, check out www.freewarefiles.com – It won’t cost you a penny and I would be extremely surprised if after five minutes of looking around you didn’t find some piece of software that will soon become indispensable to you.

I have tried to download the FREE things your article specified as they sounded good.

Not free – they want $19.99 for the pop up blocker [...]]]> This week I think I will once again take the time to answer a few readers’ questions:

I have tried to download the FREE things your article specified as they sounded good.

Not free – they want $19.99 for the pop up blocker alone????

Have removed all from computer now, but thought you aught to know, as what you stated was wrong

John, via e-mail

I thought I’d publish this letter exactly as it was received in order to illustrate some of the tactful, well constructed and grammatically correct e-mails that I receive from time to time. Sarcasm aside, I’m assuming this reader is talking about the free Firefox browser I recommended a few weeks back as a viable alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Contrary to what John states above this browser is indeed completely free of charge and available from www.firefox.com so I would suggest that he has a piece of spyware or adware on his computer which is popping up advertising adverts randomly on his computer. When he visited the Firefox site to download the browser this adware exposed him to a pop-up advert which was advertising pop-up stopping software; quite ironic.

I remember around a year ago a customer of my website www.refreshcartridges.co.uk complained to me saying that I was exposing them to hardcore pornographic pop-up adverts whilst they were shopping for cartridges is of course something that I wouldn’t consider doing. It did turn out that they had some rogue software running on their computer in the background exposing them to these images randomly and as you would expect, nothing to do with me.

For those who haven’t already done so (including John), download either Microsoft Anti-Spyware (www.microsoft.com) or SpyBot Search and Destroy (www.security.kolla.de), run it through your computer to remove these rogue programs and then stop asking me the same question over and over again!

I enjoy your helpful articles in the Herald Express and wonder if you can help me with a problem.

I have a friend in London and we both have recently been the victims of hate mail via email to our Hotmail accounts. I have been in touch with the police and have a crime number as well as also trying to contact Hotmail and Microsoft to report the abuse but am ignored. Is there any other way of getting Microsoft to take this problem seriously and close down these accounts?

Wendy, via e-mail.

This is a difficult one to deal with as although one of the greatest things about the Internet is that it is anonymous, this is also the cause of many problems. It would be virtually impossible for the police to track down a physical address for the people sending these e-mails and so unfortunately there is not much that they are able to do. I am quite surprised that Microsoft haven’t taken your problem more seriously however shutting down the offending accounts probably wouldn’t achieve much as they could simply set up another free account and increase their efforts from this new address.

You would probably be better off focusing your efforts on protecting your existing account from these intrusive e-mails than trying to stop the senders themselves and there are several things that can be done to achieve this goal.

The most effective way would be to just change your e-mail address entirely and then to e-mail your friends to notify them of the change – The mail you are receiving is probably indiscriminate and so it is unlikely that the sender would try discovering your new address.

Alternatively if you don’t wish to change your address then there is a junk mail filter in Hotmail that should really be activated as a matter of habit along with more importantly blocking the senders address from your Hotmail account. By doing the latter you will ensure that any messages from the offending address will be instantly deleted and not transferred to your inbox.

I wish you the best of luck dealing with this, Wendy. Do just remember that as I mentioned above this is almost certainly indiscriminate so don’t take it personally but instead just feel sorry for the offender as he clearly has no social life to speak of and instead just a little too much time on his hands.

Spyware is the collective name [...]]]> As the resolve of Microsoft strengthens against the constant band of people taking advantage of security vulnerabilities in their most popular Operating System, we see an interesting new piece of software available to download from the Microsoft website designed to tackle Spyware.

Spyware is the collective name for an almost always unwanted program that either installs itself automatically when you visit a suspect website or along with a legitimate free program as a way of financing its development. Spyware can compromise your computer in a variety of ways including collecting sensitive information from your Internet sessions, exposing you to unwanted adverts, changing your home page settings or even your Internet settings in general which is severe cases can lead to your computer dialling a premium rate number when you connect to the Internet.

Still in beta (un-finished) version, Microsoft AntiSpyware is designed to prevent such programs from compromising your computer. Of course this is no new idea as those who are regular readers to my column will testify; I have often spoke of the utility SpyBot which also aims to achieve such a task but the fact Microsoft is developing its own solution is an interesting development.

AntiSpyware not only searches for Spyware currently on your computer but it can also be set to continuously guard your computer whilst you are using it; much in the same way virus checkers do. If the program detects anything suspicious such as a webpage trying to change your Internet settings then it will stop it silently in the background. Currently 50 different avenues which developers use to get Spyware on your computer have been blocked but as Microsoft are involved in the worldwide community ‘SpyNet’ you can be sure that more preventative solutions will be added before the final release.

Whilst the Beta version is completely free of charge the website doesn’t actually state whether the finished version of this product will be free or not although I am assuming it will be. I can’t describe what a huge mistake it would be if Microsoft decided to sell the program to their users as they would essentially be charging users to fix vulnerabilities in their Operating System which shouldn’t have been there in the first place! It would be a welcome advancement in the security technology of Windows if this program were bundled with new versions of Windows bought off the shelves and also made available as a free of charge download for existing users.

One other rumour floating around is that Microsoft is working on creating their very own Virus checker to bundle with Windows and whilst this would be another welcome inclusive feature I can imagine the storm that would go out with companies such as Symantec and Mcafee heard an alternative was being given to all Windows users free of charge. Such a development would in my opinion be the start another anti-trust suit against Microsoft as happened when they choose to bundle Internet Explorer free of charge with Windows which essentially put Netscape out of business.

To download AntiSpyware head to www.mcirosoft.com and click the Anti Spyware link of their homepage. The download is around six and a half megabytes in size which is fairly bloated when compared with the alternatives available but this is what we have surely all come to expect? The program is designed to be run on Windows 2000 and Windows XP and those of you with these Operating Systems who don’t already have an Anti-Spyware utility should certainly waste no time in downloading it.

Finally I would like to thank one of my more enthusiastic readers, Ian MacMillian who initially pointed out this new utility to me and suggested that I cover it in Click.

Fortunately I have recommended a number of free programs recently such as Spybot search and destroy and AVG anti virus that seem to have gone down well with my readers so thought that I wouldn’t break with tradition in recommending another piece of essential software.

[...]]]>

Fortunately I have recommended a number of free programs recently such as Spybot search and destroy and AVG anti virus that seem to have gone down well with my readers so thought that I wouldn’t break with tradition in recommending another piece of essential software.

I have spoken about Kazaa in the past; the free program used for sharing music and other files online but I personally found the adverts a bit of an annoyance. To rectify my problems I downloaded Kazaa Lite; essentially a rip off version of Kazaa with no built in advertising and since the program in general has matured somewhat since I first featured it in Click, I thought now would be a good time to re-review it.

By heading to the site www.k-lite.tk, you are instantly greeted with a number of adverts but luckily once you break through this stage and download the program you will be left completely advert free. Simply uninstall your old version of Kazaa (if you had it in the first instance) and download the new version of Kazaa Lite which should take no more than around 10 minutes even on the most mediocre connections.

Kazaa/Kazaa Lite uses a technology known as peer to peer which basically means that the thousands of users using the program opt into a system whereby you select portions of your hard drive to share with other users. For example you could share all your music files which would enable anybody else using the program to do a search for that track which could then be copied straight off of your hard drive. Of course, anti-piracy groups are livid at programs such as this and I must stress that copying music or other programs is of course against the law unless you already own the original.

Anyway, by booting up Kazaa Lite I see that on this Thursday afternoon there are over 4 million users online sharing between them over 6,000,000 gigabytes worth of files and all I have to do to find something I would like is to click on search, select whether I am looking for a music clip, video clip, image, document or a piece of software and type a number of keywords; for example the name of a song. Kazaa Lite would then go off and does the donkey work for me to return a list of files which matched my criteria which I could then start downloading straight away.

The system often brings back hundreds of matches so you can download a file from a number of sources so if you’ve got a fast connection then you can download separate parts of the same file from a dozen users with a slower connection and once all of the separate downloads are complete Kazaa will piece all the bits together.

Nice features that weren’t present in the original that I reviewed sometime ago is the ability to rate files based on their quality which should help prevent you from wasting time downloading a poor quality song and a participation level monitor which lets other users see whether you are just leeching files from them or whether you are actually sharing and giving something back to the Internet community. The interface is a lot more slick and the program more stable than previous versions so if you downloaded the original when I first recommended it then you should download this update; for the sake of 10 minutes of Internet download time it is certainly worth it!

A niggling computer problem I’ve been living with recently just got a little too much and so the last 15 minutes have been spent looking for a solution which I thought may have been of interest to the majority of you. Specifically, the problem I [...]]]>

A niggling computer problem I’ve been living with recently just got a little too much and so the last 15 minutes have been spent looking for a solution which I thought may have been of interest to the majority of you. Specifically, the problem I was experiencing was a nasty piece of code called ‘Lop.com’ which meant that whenever an incorrect website was typed in to the address bar that the website lop.com would appear filled with adverts. So, for example if I misspelt Google and typed in www.goagle.co.uk rather than www.google.co.uk then I would be subjected to blatant advertising rather than the screen that used to come up saying that the page could not be found.

Quite a common complaint submitted by readers is intrusive software which often installs itself onto their systems with no easy way to remove it. Quite often the software contains questionable content such as pornographic links and it can be quite concerning if the computer is shared with other members of the family as there is often no way to delete the links that have been created. Although this wasn’t the problem in my case, I imagined that a program to remove ‘lop.com’ from my computer would also be able to go through and move other offensive software and so after doing a search of the Internet I managed to find a nice piece of software called ‘Spybot Search & Destroy’ which I promptly downloaded and installed on to my system.

Once you’ve started the program you should scan your system for spyware & adware which takes a couple of minutes to complete and the program then displays a list of the problems that it found on your system along with the option to automatically repair them. It’s surprising how much rubbish many of you will have running in the background constantly as I keep a regularly clean out junk applications and the program managed to detect at least a dozen or so rouge applications installed on my hard drive. By removing them you can free up valuable system resources and also make your computer slightly more pleasant to use and an important point to note is that the software does make a backup as it goes along so if you find that certain programs won’t work anymore then you can always restore your system to how it was previously. Once you’ve cleaned out all the rubbish which has then the program has the option to immunise your system which installs preventative measures to help prevent rouge software from installing itself again.

If you head to http://security.kolla.de/ then the file is 3.5Mg in size so even on a 56k connection it should only take 10 minutes or so to download and the best news is that it’s completely free of charge although the author does ask for a donation if you find it helpful. To conclude, one of the most annoying areas of the modern Internet is the large number of programmers on the Internet who believe that it is acceptable to install useless software on to your computer without your permission and without any easy way to uninstall just so they can make some quick money. Much of this software exposes you to constant pop up advertising without your permission or tracks your browsing habits so I personally believe that any program which tries to kerb this abuse has to be worth installing.