Mike Slocombe

Silver Surfer Week 2006
Crumblies all across the UK are being given the chance to try out the new fangled interwebby thing thanks to Age Concern’s ‘Silver Surfer Week.’
Co-sponsored by BT, Intel and Microsoft, the initiative aims to help old folks understand the benefits of using e-mail and the internet as well as improving their technical skills.
More than 1,500 IT taster sessions have been set up with old ‘uns being shown how they can order shopping and services from the comfort of their own favourite chair.
There’ll also be a bus loaded with computers touring the UK.
Silver Surfer Clubs
The campaign marks the start of a three year partnership between Age Concern England and BT, with a (rather miserly) budget worth £240,000 helping to turn Age Concern’s 150 nationwide computer “drop ins” and access points into a unified network of “Silver Surfer Clubs”.
The initiative comes on the back of BT research which found that 9.7 million people over the age of 60 are currently ‘digitally excluded’ in the UK.
Age Concern’s own research found that a total of 44% of over-50s are without internet access, but of those already hooked up to t’Web, most thought the benefits far outweighed the costs.
Frankie’s story
Booking holidays and tracing family histories were the some of the most popular uses of the Web for OAPs, with Age Concern director general Gordon Lishman adding that the internet also enabled silver surfers to pursue hobbies or meet new friends online.
Take old Frank Jones, 74, for example.
A bonkers budgerigar nut all his life, Frank popped into a computer clinic run at his local church drop-in centre to learn some digital skills.
Before you know it, Frankie had learnt how to use a digital camera and was soon sending hardcore budgie porn all over the world to new mates he’d made in places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Pakistan and Indonesia.
“I never dreamt my budgerigars would help me find friends all over the world with the same passion,” says Frank.
With his new found skills, Frank was soon teaching others, notching up a level 2 City and Guilds qualification and bagging a nomination for an Adult Learner Award. Go Frankie boy!
“Before I began the courses, I’d never even switched a computer on,” says Frank. “I’m now planning to create my own Website that my family and friends can visit to see my latest photographs and exchange messages. It’s a great way to share experiences and keep in touch.”
With a report last year by the Independent Consumer Panel for the UK communications watchdog Ofcom revealing that older folks felt alienated from digital life, we naturally warmly welcome Age Concern’s drive to get silver surfers online.
Just so long as they don’t start posting up on forums to whine on about how things were “much better back in the old days…kids today, no respect…look at the price of that… etc”
Silver Surfer Week 2006
23 May, 2006
Pentax Announce K100 And K110D dSLR Cameras
Things are heating up in the entry-level/enthusiast end of the photography market, with Pentax announcing two new new dSLR cameras offering 6.1 effective megapixels.
The Pentax K100 and K110D cameras both offer high precision 11-point wide frame AF, ISO sensitivity from 200 to 3200 ISO, a large 2.5-inch LCD screen and a shutter speed extending from 30 secs to a superfast 1/4000 sec
The cameras are compatible with most of the huge selection of existing Pentax lenses, including PENTAX K-, KA-, KAF- and KAF2-mount lenses; screw-mount lenses (with an adapter); and 645- are 67-system lenses (with an adapter) – although there may be limited functionality with some older lenses.
K100D : non shake, non rattle and non roll
Entering a market already dominated by excellent low-price models by Nikon and Canon, Pentax are hoping that the anti-shake widget in the K100D – which effectively offers a two-stop advantage – will get punters waving their wads in their direction
It’s Pentax’s first DSLR to feature a CCD-shift Shake Reduction system – and works by oscillating the CCD image sensor vertically and horizontally at high speed using magnetic force, while adjusting the speed of oscillation in proportion to the amount of camera shake detected by a built-in sensor (err, got that?).
K110D – cheap’n’cheerful
The entry-level digital K110D is exactly the same as the K100D but comes without the Shake Reduction.
Both cameras come with Pentax’s smarty-pants Auto Picture Mode for point’n’shooters. This automatically selects one of the five Picture modes – including Portrait, Landscape and Macro – by calculating various photographic factors to assure top notch results.
There’s also the usual selection of scene modes including Night Scene, Surf & Snow, Text, Sunset, Kids and Museum
The Pentax K100D (with smc 18-55mm lens) will be shunting off the shelves for around $700, while the K110D will ship with the same lens for a competitive $600.
Pentax K100D/ K110D specifications
Sensor 6.1 million effective pixels
Image sizes 3008 x 2000, 3008 x 2008 (RAW), 2400 x 1600, 1536 x 1024,
File formats JPEG (8-bit), RAW (12-bit), DCF, DPOF, PRINT Image Matching lll
Lens Mount Pentax KAF bayonet mount
Focus TTL Phase-matching 11-point wide autofocus system (SAFOX Vlll), AF Single, Manual, AF Continuous
Image Stabilization Shake Reduction (SR) system (K100 only)
AF assist lamp Yes (by built-in flash)
Metering TTL open-aperture 16-segment (coupled with lens and AF information), Multi-segment, Center-weighted, Spot
ISO sensitivity Auto, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1600, ISO 3200
Exposure compensation +/- 2EV, 1/2EV or 1/3 EV steps
Exposure bracketing 3 frames within range of +/-0.5EV, +/-1.0EV, +/-1.5EV (0.5EV steps) or +/-0.3EV, +/-0.7EV, +/-1.0EV (0.3EV steps)
Shutter Electronically controlled vertical-run focal plane shutter
Shuttter speed 1/4000 – 30 sec
Modes Auto Picture mode, Picture mode, Scene, Program AE, Shutter Priority AE, Aperture Priority AE, Metered Manual, Bulb
Picture modes Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Action, Night Scene Portrait, Standard Flash Off
White balance Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten Light, Fluorescent Light (W, D, N), Flash, Manual
Continuous shooting Approx 2.8 fps: JPEG(up to 5fps), RAW(up to 3fps)
Flash Built-in retractable P-TTL pop-up, Guide number 15.6
Viewfinder Fixed molded penta-mirror type, 96% field of view
LCD monitor 2.5-inch low temperature polysilicon TFT, 210,000 pixels
Connectivity USB 2.0 Hi-speed
Storage SD card
Power 4 x AA batteries(Alkaline, Lithium, rechargeable Ni-MH), 2 x CR-V3 llithium batteries, Optional AC adapter
Weight (no batt) 560 g (19.8 oz) 485 g
Dimensions 129.5 x 92.5 x 70 mm (5.1 x 3.6 x 2.8 in)
Pentax
23 May, 2006
Japan Gets Sony Ericsson W42S 3G Walkman Phone
Sony Ericsson has announced its first Walkman phone for Japan today and it looks like a beaut.
Due to be launched by Japanese wireless carrier KDDI in June, the W42S 3G packs a hefty 1GB of internal memory backed up by a Memory Stick Pro DUO expansion slot offering up to 4GB of storage.
The new Walkman phone comes with a power saving mode to keep the tunes pumping for up to 30 hours of playback, with the onboard player supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ music format files.
As a result of a partnership with KDDI, owners can gorge themselves on a feast of top tunes when they’re on the move, thanks to their LISMO music service which currently boasts a mighty 5 million downloads per month.
True to its Walkman heritage, the slide-out phone has a smorgasbord of built-in dedicated music controls, including a natty new mechanical navigation wotsit bolted on to the bottom of the phone.
Although it look a bit odd stuck on the phone, anyone who’s used the similar controls on Sony’s minidisk and MP3 players will now how easy they are to use.
The phone also comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera, a 2.2-inch, 240 x 320 pixels, 262k colour LCD screen, an FM radio and an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) to keep punters well-fed with programming schedules.
There’s been no firm announcement of the retail price yet, although it’s hotly rumoured to be around the $180 mark, and no announcement of a UK release yet, natch.
Sony Ericsson W42S [Japanese]
23 May, 2006
Skype Security Hole Patched
Skype users are advised to upgrade their software in double quick time after a security bug was reported late last week by a security researcher in New Zealand.
Rating the vulnerability as ‘medium risk’, Skype says that the bug affects several versions of the Skype client for Windows and could allow an evil attacker to download a file from an affected PC without permission.
It has to be said that it’s a little bit obscure – to get stung by this fella you’d have be first tricked into visiting a nefarious Web page set up by the attacker who would need to have already added the victim to his contact list.
Danish bug tracking firm Secunia said that the “moderately critical” flaw was in Skype’s parsing of URLs, so a malformed link – sent in a Skype message, for example – could begin the transfer of a file without the victim’s consent,
The bug affects all releases of Skype for Windows up to and including version 2.0.x.104, as well as version 2.5.x.0 up to and including 2.5.x.78. Skype advised users to upgrade to Skype 2.5, release 2.5.x.79 or later, or Skype 2.0, release 2.0.x.105 or later.
A free upgrade is available online now (select ‘help’ and ‘check for update’ from the drop-down menu).
This is the first security bulletin issued by Skype in around seven months – good news for us as we use the program every day.
Skype security bulletin
22 May, 2006
Microsoft Launch Pay-As-You-Go PCs
In a novel venture to bring personal computing to everyone, Microsoft has hooked up with laptop manufacturer Lenovo and chip makers AMD and Intel to launch a ‘pay-as-you-go’ service for buying PCs.
Using a model similar to prepaid mobile telephone services, consumers can get their hands on a Lenovo desktop PC by paying about half of its street price up front, and then paying the balance over time by buying prepaid cards from Lenovo.
The ‘pay as you go’ deal is made possible through a new Microsoft technology called FlexGo, with users owning the machine outright once they’ve bought a predetermined number of usage hours via the prepaid cards.
The FlexGo machines use a fully-fledged version of Windows XP that comes with a timer counting down the hours in the upper right-hand corner of the PC screen.
As the timer runs down, the PC delivers a series of alerts before limiting access to programs and features, and ultimately ceasing to work altogether until more time is purchased (by prepaid card or online).
“Today there are already more than 1 billion prepaid mobile phones used around the world, so we know FlexGo enables a familiar and comfortable pay-as-you-go model that works for people with variable or unpredictable income”, said Will Poole, Microsoft’s senior VP of the Market Expansion Group.
Microsoft has already been running trials of the program in Brazil for over a year and will be expanding to other selected, markets like India, Russia, China and Mexico.
We half expected the trials to be using bottom end, cheap’n’cheerful computers, but it seems that punters were able to use high-quality, mid-range Lenovo desktop PCs.
“Lenovo’s joint effort with Microsoft using FlexGo pay-as-you-go computing will bring high-quality PCs within the reach of millions of families for use in education, communications and entertainment”, continued Microsoft’s Poole.
It’s a cunning business plan too: in the Brazilian trial, consumers were able to buy pay FlexGo PCs for around $300 (about half the market price), but would typically end up owning the PC after spending roughly $400 to $500 more on access charges – making the total cost around $700 to $800.
22 May, 2006
Tesco Stocks Up On MP3 Players
Sitting right next to the baked beans and cornflakes at a Tescos near you soon should be Tesco’s new range of cheapo MP3 players.
Built and branded by bulk electronics firm Technika, the seven new players are aimed at the cheapskate end of the market, with prices starting at a mere £18.
Although the design is unlikely to get iPod whizzkid Jonathan Ive waking up in a lather of midnight sweat, the players seem attractive enough, offering a simple, solid construction.
The range starts with the 18 quid MP-806 player – which only manages just 128MB of flash memory – with the top end MP-806 player cranking the memory all the way up to, err, 1GB for £50.
The interface is bog standard but straightforward – there’s not much to get confused about here – and the player connects to desktops via a USB interface.
What little specs we could find say the players support MP3s and WMA files bought from download shops, although we couldn’t find any of the models listed on Microsoft’s ‘play for sure’ Website.
Tesco are no stranger to this MP3 thing, launching an online music store back in November 2004, offering 500,000 tracks which can be downloaded for 79p, with albums costing £7.99.
The company also offers a sizeable range of MP3 players, including Toshiba, Sony, Archos and Philips, with models available by mail order or from their 200 Tesco ‘Extra’ stores.
22 May, 2006
Yahoo! Messenger Worm Installs Its Own ‘Safety Browser’
Much as we hate steenkin’ virus writers, we have to reluctantly take our hats off to the author of this Yahoo! Messenger Worm for at least being a bit original.
Described as “one of oddest and more insidious pieces of malware we have encountered in years,” by Tyler Wells, senior director of research at FaceTime Security Labs, the ‘yhoo32.explr’ Instant Messaging worm takes the novel step of installing its own Web browser onto a victim’s PC.
Somehow managing to keep a straight face, the dodgy-as-feck application announces itself as “The Safety Browser”, and sneakily uses the IE icon to make it easy for users to mistake it for the legitimate Internet Explorer browser.
Once installed, the browser opens up a user’s PC to a world of nasties, switching on pop-ups by default, hijacking their Internet Explorer homepage to point to a well-iffy site stuffed full of spyware-loaded links and, curiously, introducing an awful looped music track that plays every time the computer is turned on.
Once installed on the victim’s machine, the self-propagating worm hotfoots it to the user’s Yahoo! Messenger contacts and sends out links to a Website that then loads a command file onto the user’s PC and installs the (ahem) ‘Safety Browser’.
“This is the first instance of a complete Web browser hijack without the user’s awareness,” said Tyler Wells.
“Similar ‘rogue’ browsers, such as ‘Yapbrowser,’ have demonstrated the potential for serious damage by directing end-users to potentially illegal or illicit material,” he added, before concluding that such ‘rogue’ browsers are becoming the “hot new thing among hackers.”
The worm was found by the India research arm of FaceTime Security Labs via a ‘honeypot’ a trap set to detect viruses, worms, spyware and other threats, and reflects the growing threat from Instant Messenger applications and protocols being used to distribute malicious files and executables, as well as IM spamming (which now has now earned the daft acronym ‘SPIM’).
If you want to find out more about the details of this latest worm – and the people behind it – check out the amusing blog of Chris Boyd, a FaceTime Security Labs researcher.
22 May, 2006
Review: Metro Public Transport Guide For PDA and Smartphones (95%)
For globe trotters, city slickers, urban commuters and spoddy transport types, the freeware Metro looks to be a very useful application.
Available on a host of mobile platforms from PalmOS to Symbian to Pocket PC, Métro is a predominantly text-based program that computes the shortest route between two subway stations.
The program’s looks may be basic, but you can’t knock its coverage, with guides for over 300 cities around the world – including Dublin, Las Vegas, London, Tokyo and even ‘umble Croydon.
Impressively, the program is available in 39 languages.
The guides come with differing levels of detail, with some offering both bus and subway routes, places of interest and a ‘tourist version’ offering extra info and directions to local sights.
Using Metro
Using the program is simplicity itself: just select the city and time you want to travel, select the ‘start’ and ‘end’ points of your journey.
This can be done by either inputting the names yourself (Metro will offer to auto-complete as you type) or by selecting the stations from a list.
Then it’s a case of bashing the ‘start’ button to get Metro to automatically suggest two different routes (fastest and least connections), with the option to instantly compare alternative routes by clicking on other stations and lines.
Possibly of particular use in France, there’s also a ‘Line deactivation’ option letting you navigate routes around sections of the subway that might be closed for strikes (or maintenance).
Using the program’s simple interface, you can also get Metro to display station details, stops between the stations on your journey and even associate contacts with stations.
The program is certainly comprehensive, offering 721 stops in London, 939 in New-York, 1813 in Tokyo and 838 in Paris, and a handy MétrUp updater makes it easy to keep city files up to date on your handheld.
i-Metro
Describing itself as ‘the ultimate public transport guide on your WAP or iMode phone’, i-Metro comes in Web, iMode and WAP versions for accessing route information on the move.
We couldn’t get any joy out of the WAP version (but we were using our wobbly old Ericsson T610), but the Web version worked just fine and we were able to quickly access London night bus info. Neat!
Conclusion
It may not be the most attractive travel program around, but for a freeware product the attention to detail and scope of coverage is simply astonishing.
Such is the reliability of the program that mobile moguls like Sony Ericsson, Palm and T-Mobile are bundling Metro in with their products, and even SNCF (the French national railway company) have given it their seal of approval.
For commuters, tourists and travellers we thoroughly recommend Metro.
Features: 85%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 95% (it’s free Godammit!)
Overall: 95%
Metro i-Metro Available cities
19 May, 2006
IT Staff Top Stressed-Out League
IT workers who spend all day battling with clueless idiots who have just deleted critical OS files because they looked ‘messy’ already know it, but now it’s official: people who work in IT are the most stressed folks on the planet.
Surging ahead of traditional stress leaders like medicine, engineering and education, a survey conducted by research firm SWNS for online learning provider SkillSoft found that a staggering 97% of IT workers claim to find their life at work “stressful on a daily basis”.
The poll – involving more than 3,000 people – also discovered that four-fifths of IT consultants felt stressed “before they even enter the workplace”, while around a quarter were so crushed by the “enormous pressure to perform at work” that they’d taken time off suffering with stress.
One poor techie sod who responded to the survey blubbered into his Coke can, “I spend most of my day fielding calls from people who don’t even have a basic knowledge of computers and printers. It is amazing the amount of time I spend teaching people where the on-off button is. And when I do actually find a technical problem to solve, I have my manager breathing down my neck wondering why I have a backlog of complaints.”
Meddlin’ managers
Interfering managers were also found to be a source of extra stress, with a third of IT professionals saying that pesky meddling managers made it difficult for them to get their jobs done.
The survey unearthed the main stress factors for people at work (why not see how many you can tick off?!) and these include deadlines, workload, feeling undervalued, having to take on other people’s work, lack of job satisfaction, lack of control over the working day and having to work long hours.
The survey insists that employers should take the problem of stress seriously, citing the Health & Safety Executive’s research that puts stress as the biggest cause of working days lost through injury or ill health [an estimated 12.8 million lost days each year].”
In case you’re wondering about the other stressful jobs, here’s SkillSoft’s top ten stressful jobs
IT
Medicine/Caring Profession
Engineering
Sales and Marketing
Education
Finance
Human Resources
Operations
Production
Clerical
Skillsoft
Top tips to avoid office frazzle Elsewhere, an “office stress” study conducted by CareerBuilder.com found that more than three quarters of respondents felt “job burnout”, while over half felt under a “great deal of stress.”
Rosemary Haefner, CareerBuilder.com‘s vice president of human resources insisted that “high-pressure work environments are taking their toll on workers’ morale,” adding that the stress “can be detrimental to both workers, whose health and career progress may suffer, and employers, who pick up the tab in higher insurance costs and lost productivity.”
Happily, ol’ Rosie babe kindly offered some four top tips to help reduce office stress:
– Organize and prioritize by taking care of the more difficult and important tasks early in the day.
– Manage expectations so that you can achieve your goals and deliver on promises to others.
– Set aside a period of time dedicated to responding to e-mail and voicemails.
– Lastly, take care of yourself. A healthier you is more productive and happier.
We’d give that a go ourselves, but we’re busy with some idiot on the line and he’s… making…us…. chuffing…crazy… grrr…..
18 May, 2006
Scope Watch – Possibly the Daftest Yet
Without doubt quite the silliest timepiece we’ve seen for a long time, this new watch by Japanese manufacturers Scompe manages to turn the mundane task of checking the time into some sort of sci-fi adventure.
Offering no hands, dials or any kind of alpha-numeric LCD/LED readout, the makers clearly thought that such tried and trusted (and efficient) methods of displaying the time were simply too uncool for cutting edge hipsters.
Instead, the Scope watch employs a bonkers ‘scanning’ system, activated by pressing a button on the fascia which animates two onscreen green lines – one vertical, the other horizontal.
Managing to complicate the simple task of reading the time, users must read off the vertical line for the hour and the horizontal line for the minutes, checking their values against the tiny onscreen numbers.
Minutes inbetween are displayed in a circular display to the right, which is made up of four LEDs (so 20mins + 2 LEDs = 22 minutes.)
Powered by 2 lithium cells, the SCOPE watch is quite a chunky beast, measuring 45mm x 33mm x 11mm.
The watch – available in Brushed Silver or Gun Metal – comes with a one year warranty and a stainless steel strap and sells for around 14900 Yen ($130, £75).
Tokyo Flash
18 May, 2006