Two UK lads, Gary and Ash, have taken upon themselves to go into Internet chats, posing as a 13 year old girl and converse with various men who happened across them.
Sadly many of the men who chat to them aren’t asking them about their interest in sewing patterns, but do in fact try to engage with them in sexual discussions.
Gary and Ash keep up the 13 year old act, while recording the conversations, they then encourage the (normally) older men to turn on their Web cams, which they also record.
The old boy at the other end of the connection then begs for them to switch on the “13 year old’s” Webcam. Much to their surprise, they see two lads who then inform them that they’ll be featuring on the Catch-A-Perv Website.
While it looks clear that they are exposing people who shouldn’t be discussing such things with those so young, Gary and Ash have given themselves a route out of possible legal problems by stating that “The website does not claim any persons shown on the site are paedophiles – there is no reference that suggests this – it is clear however, that the behaviour demonstrated is unacceptable.”
It’s a pretty distasteful read, so it’s lightened by reading the front page, where perhaps by mistake, or in joking way, they say they’re “raising awareness of the issue in hand.”
So, there I was at the first ever PICNIC – a cross media conference taking place in Amsterdam last week…
In a break, Marc and I talked around my (
Pesky phone thieves may get more than they bargained for if a new anti-theft system proves a hit with punters.
Mark Whiteman, managing director of Remote XT, said: “Theft-proof phones spell disaster for the huge criminal industry that has profited from mobile theft for too long”
The all-conquering uber-supermarket chain Tesco has announced plans to take on Microsoft with the launch of its own-brand software.
“When it comes to software, there is little choice and prices are high. Our new range of software changes this, bringing choice and value to a market that has offered little of either,” he added.
Producing high quality, well-lit, studio-style photographs can be quite a challenge if you don’t happen to have access to a studio set-up at home or be the proud owner of an expensive camera.
The Cubelite cubes come in a range of sizes, from two foot up to six foot six inches, with each package including a 500w tungsten light and tripod, two-sided silver and white reflector, white background and carry case.
Unleashing the beast
Following the straightforward instructions, we stuck the lamp on the tripod and set it up so that it shone it through the fabric from a distance of 18 inches.
A useful, albeit minimal, single sheet of A4 paper advised us on how to sort out the colour balance on our camera, and before long we were knocking out some s-s-s-studio style photos with ease, with the diffusing material making it a cinch to grab attractive, shadow-free results.
We found the Cubelite easy to lug about, although the towering tripod and heavy duty lamp may have bordered on overkill for such a small set up.
Rating
The BBC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft. Areas of the potential investigation and collaboration that the non-exclusive agreement includes, covers “search and navigation, distribution, and content enablement” (what ever that means in English).
Microsoft has been creeping into the BBC’s online media for a long time now. It first came to light when we broke the story near the start of 2004 that the 
With the Photokina 2006 photo fair opening its gates for business, the big guns are rolling out new product announcements at a rate of knots, and Kodak has offered details of their budget-priced 7.1-megapixel EasyShare Z710 Zoom.
At the rear there’s a (now) rather miserly 2″ LCD, plus the standard array of controls and an optical viewfinder (we like them).
Kodak are claiming that the 7.1 megapixel image sensor and ‘professional quality’ Schneider Kreuznach Variogon 10X optical zoom lens are capable of capturing high-quality prints up to 30 x 40 inches (76 x 102 cm), helped by their Kodak Color Science imaging processing chip.
Hackers racked up attacks on home PC users and financial services companies in the first half of this year, according to the latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Trends.
The notoriously leisurely Microsoft averaged nine days per patch, but that snail-like response was still faster than Sun Microsystems.
Orange has launched, nay unleashed, the Unique phone, its first converged service using a single handset that connects via WLAN in the home and then switches to the regular mobile network when the user goes walkabout.
So far, only the Motorola A910, the Nokia 6136 and the Samsung P200 can be used with the service, but more phones will be launched in 2007.
We get to see an awful lot of gadgets here at Digital-Lifestyles, so it’s not surprising we get quite a few emails asking what gizmos we personally use, so here’s my personal choices. And yes, I paid for ’em all myself!
Camera
Clad is an understated logo-free black body, this isn’t a camera that’s going to get people’s attention when you’re out and about, but its armoury of full manual controls and user configured settings means that it’s a great carry-around shooter.
Enjoying a daily hammering of ska, punk, electro and indie tunes is the 
Now in its third year (that must be something like 70 years old in laptop years!), my Sony Vaio SRX51P is still doing the business, although with a mere 850 MHz Pentium III-M CPU and just 384 meg RAM on board, it can’t keep up with the new boys.