Dan Smith

"Windows only: System monitoring utility BatteryCare shows detailed information about your battery's wear level, capacity, and consumption—and even shows the CPU temperature as an added bonus. The utility not only gives you loads of great information about your system's battery, it also will let you automatically disable Windows Aero if you are running on battery power, or pause demanding services—though it doesn't tell you which services those are. Overall it's a useful little utility definitely worth a look if you are dealing with battery charging issues. BatteryCare is a free download for Windows only. - Dan Smith

"Wired reports that over half of the web's most popular sites are using Flash to track users who block traditional browser cookies." - Dan Smith

"I’ve never been comfortable in open water, ever since having a panic attack halfway between the shore and the buoy my teenage pals and I dared ourselves to swim to. Thus, my body doesn’t trust itself to exhale underwater. “By keeping your head above water, your hips sink lower, increasing your resistance,” Payne says. She advises taking in small breaths of air every two or three strokes, then blowing out through my nose underwater. It’s tricky, often ending in a splurting mess of bubbles and desperate gasps for air. But after a few goes, a rhythm begins to develop. I’m also in the mindset that kicking my feet furiously will get me to the other side quicker. Not so, says Payne. Again, by splashing my feet through the water surface, my resistance is increased. Subtle flicking of the feet underwater is what’s needed. However, my front crawl stroke was “pretty good” apart from the bent wrists (keep them straight with fingers together). But the breaststroke needed some work. Paddle the water with your hands, while your elbows shouldn’t go beyond your back. Also, when you kick your legs out, your feet should be at a right angle to your shin, acting as an oar. After these minor (ahem) tweaks, my stroke improves to the point where I’m powering through the water twice as hard as I was. Just watching an Olympic swimmer in full flow is eye-opening enough. But if you’re competing on Saturday, concentrate on your own swim or your star-struck head will get a knock from a stray limb in the melee." - Dan Smith

"The URL shortening service tr.im is shutting down after discovering that nobody wants to buy it. The latter fact may not be surprising to many readers. But it did to the tr.im people, whose web page announces that tr.im is now in the process of discontinuing service, effective immediately. Statistics can no longer be considered reliable, or reliably available going forward. However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009. Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected. No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount. There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening -- users won't pay for it -- and we just can't justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner. There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep." - Dan Smith

I saw where they were back up. Personally tr.im worked about 60% for me so I won't miss or use them anyway. I did like the sour grapes comments on their home page about Twitter and bit.ly haha - cheapsuits

"Facebook has acquired fellow Silicon Valley startup FriendFeed, in the clearest sign yet that it plans to extend its lead over rivals such as MySpace and Twitter. The world's largest social networking company said it was acquiring its Californian neighbour for an undisclosed sum – believed to be in the tens of millions of dollars – in an attempt to hire "the best engineers"." - Dan Smith

"According to Kaspersky Lab’s Stefan Tanase (see important disclosure), the new wave of Koobface attacks includes a change in tactics.  The hackers are now using a well-designed Facebook lookalike page and unique Twitter messages to trick Windows users into downloading scareware programs. This Twitter Search shows examples of the attacks underway. A user clicking on a malicious link in Twitter is presented with a fake Facebook page with what purports to be an embedded video file. The target is presented with an Adobe Flash Player upgrade message but this too is fake and dangerous. If the user attempts to apply the Flash Player update, the machine is infected with rogue security software that badgers the user into paying for a disinfection tool." - Dan Smith

Darn, I missed it. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

That's awesome, but the questions surely is why do Americans use a different (and obviously incorrect) date stamp. Very interesting that they're the only ones too. Wiki didn't seem to have the answer does anyone? - Toby Graham

"Widespread internet attacks that hit services at Google, Facebook and Twitter on Thursday could have been the result of an online assault against a single blogger. According to senior industry figures, the strikes that affected hundreds of millions of web users around the globe on Thursday were part of an attempt to damage just one individual - a controversial Georgian known only as Cyxymu. Max Kelly, Facebook's chief security officer, told CNet news that the strike was an attempt to silence Cyxymu - an outspoken critic of last year's conflict between Georgia and Russia in South Ossetia - as the anniversary of the war approaches. "It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," Kelly said. "We're actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can." The strikes appeared to be one of the most widespread and coordinated attacks ever seen online, shutting down Twitter for significant portions of Thursday, as well as causing serious problems for Facebook and blogging service LiveJournal. Google, too, was subjected to attacks but said it had been able to prevent any damage - although some users reported some unexpected problems with the internet giant's services." - Dan Smith

"DC Thomson, which yesterday acquired Friends Reunited from ITV for £25m, has also admitted that it has approached the Office of Fair Trading in a bid to gain clearance for the deal, which will see two of the three biggest online subscription genealogy businesses in the UK merge. Brightsolid, the DC Thomson subsidiary that runs Find My Past, plans to integrate Friends Reunited's social networking, dating and genealogy operations with its own businesses. It has no plans to scrap or sell any of the Friends Reunited operations. One of the first plans under consideration is the launch of a Friends Reunited dating service specifically targeting the over-50s. Friends Reunited has traditionally attracted an older demographic that has the potential to fit in with the generally older users of Find My Past. Its Genes Reunited site takes a much more mass-market approach than Find My Past, which is used by more "hardcore" genealogy buffs." - Dan Smith

"Hackers slowed Twitter to a standstill early on Aug. 6, frustrating millions of users. For the culprits, all it took to snarl the popular social-networking site was one of the oldest tools in the Internet hacker handbook: the distributed denial-of-service attack (commonly shortened to DDoS), a method that has been used to crash some of the Web's largest sites, including Yahoo! and CNN." - Dan Smith

"Eldar Murtazin over at mobile-review has chimed in on those alleged Nokia N97 Mini shots that leaked last week -- and as anyone who follows the mobile industry knows, when the ridiculously well-connected Eldar speaks, folks tend to listen. The dude says that the N97 Mini is very much real, as is the name, which -- get this -- he claims was leaked by Nokia itself in an effort to stave off an unnamed competitor who'd also been planning to release a smaller version of one of its handsets with a "Mini" label slapped on the name. At any rate, the N97 Mini apparently isn't pulling any punches -- it's said to be exactly what you see, little more than a smaller N97 with a reconfigured keyboard and no camera lens cover. That sounds like a tough sell at first, especially when you throw in Eldar's claim that it'll step down to 8 and 16GB versions from the N97's 32GB, but the good news is that Espoo's seemingly looking to get this on the market for about €100 less ($144) than the N97. As for an official announcement, Eldar says that Nokia's planning to unveil it at Nokia World next month; the original model was revealed at last year's show, and frankly, we're hoping for a little bit more innovation than this by the time they're done unveiling the new lineup. Rover, perhaps?" - Dan Smith

I have a Hero. You are right. Nothing beats a real keyboard. Auto correction can be annoying, specially when you type in multiple languages like I do. Typing standing in a train is quite an effort. - Daan

I've been told to not be put off Blackberry's. They might have a rep but they are supposed to be pretty decent phones now. - Kol Tregaskes

"LOS ANGELES —  Coming soon to a theater near you (if a judge agrees): a full-length motion picture filled with footage of Michael Jackson's last rehearsals. The movie would come with all the elements of a major studio release: product tie-ins, merchandising and even a director's cut and special editions. But that's only if a Los Angeles probate judge approves the deal by Monday. The judge has scheduled a hearing for Monday to see if Jackson's mother, Katherine, has any objections." - Dan Smith

"A swine flu call centre worker has been sacked from her job - after contracting swine flu. Emily Morgan of Plymouth, Devon, said she was angry at losing her job from a pandemic call centre - after being off work with swine flu. The 21-year-old said she called and spoke to her helpline bosses to let them know she was ill. But when she recovered and returned to the call centre on Sunday a security guard told her she was on a list of leavers who were not allowed in the building." - Dan Smith

"The government has made the demise of domestic air travel an explicit policy target for the first time by aiming to replace short-haul flights with a new 250mph high-speed rail network. The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, said switching 46 million domestic air passengers a year to a multibillion-pound north-south rail line was "manifestly in the public interest". Marking a government shift against aviation, Adonis added that rail journeys should be preferred to plane trips. "For reasons of carbon reduction and wider environmental benefits, it is manifestly in the public interest that we systematically replace short-haul aviation with high-speed rail. But we would have to have, of course, the high-speed network before we can do it," he said." - Dan Smith

"Windows only: System utility Deskcretary cleans up your desktop folder with scheduled or manual scans, archiving and compressing files into a separate folder automatically. Once you've installed the software package, it will place a new icon in the system tray where you can access all of the configuration options. You can choose whether to compress archives or simply move them, keep an extra copy of duplicates when archiving, and whether to run the cleanup daily, weekly or monthly. Once you've run through the cleanup, you can browse through your archived copies using the built-in explorer tool." - Dan Smith

"Windows: When you're away from an outlet and flying on battery power alone, keeping an eye on how much juice your laptop has is critical. BattCursor makes it easy to track how much power you have left." - Dan Smith

"If you're heading off to a foreign country and want to quickly familiarize yourself with its language, try changing the default language on your favorite gadgets to help jump-start your education. Photo by permanently scatterbrained. Tech weblog Geek Sugar reminds us that you can tweak the settings for everything from your smartphone and television to your favorite gaming system—and that this can be used as a way to pick up some words in a language other than your native tongue. If you use a social networking site like Facebook, try tweaking those language settings as well. As the post notes, "every little bit helps" when you're trying to learn a new language. Speaking of which, if you haven't already, check out the previously mentioned master list of free online language lessons, and for more language learning with your gadgets, look into how you can turn Your Nintendo DS into a translation dictionary." - Dan Smith

"August 3, 2009 @ 3:43 pm · Filed under Alpha Releases We just pushed an update to alpha testers (Build 61, r23296 r23311 r23319) which introduces many new features and enhancements. As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include: Brand New Look: We released a sleek new default skin called “Windows 7″ (by Derek Erdmann). If your skin is set to anything besides the default, this will not override your preference.  If you prefer the old look, go to Preferences > Skins and choose the “QuickSilver” skin. MySpace Newsfeed: In Build 60, we switched the Infobox over to a full blown web browser (WebKit).  We said that the change would make the Infobox much more versatile and this is the first example of that.  We are introducing a completely redesigned MySpace newsfeed which now includes a full Activities Stream, status updates, and the ability to browse through photos. Global Status: A new Global Status dialog makes it easy to set your status across social networks and IM accounts. You can access it from the status dropdown on the buddy list or by double clicking any social network.  The Global Status dialog also makes it easy to share links (via digs.by) and pictures (via pic.im) URL Shortener: We are launching a URL shortener just for Digsby users under the domain http://digs.by. In the future you will be able to access a history of links you shared and statistics about how many times they were clicked. OneRiot: We partnered with OneRiot to make it easy for you to search the real-time web. Just hit “Ctrl + F” on the buddy list to search." - Dan Smith

"Adobe's free PDF reader has long been a standard for handling its extremely popular document format, but you aren't limited to using it to view your PDF files. Let's take a look at five of the most popular PDF readers. Last week we asked you to share your favorite PDF reader, and now we're back to share the results." - Dan Smith

"A diabetes patient stood on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth for an hour to raise funds and awareness for a diabetes charity. Richard Chapman, from Selsdon, stood on the plinth between 9pm and 10pm on July 28 to raise money for the charity Diabetes UK. Richard, 34, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes 20 years ago, marked a white board every three minutes he stood on the plinth to represent how often a person is diagnosed with diabetes." - Dan Smith

Reading the other post, it seems like Flickr doesn't float the boat? Did you check out the archive page? Here is mine for March: http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Justin Korn

There's some great looking themes there. Cheers Kol. - Dan Smith

I guess Flickr is no good? - Kol Tregaskes

Worth a go, more people will see the question. - Kol Tregaskes

"Jinni is a kind of 'Pandora for movies', because it aims to recommend movies and tv shows to you based on its Movie Genome (aping Pandora's Music Genome Project). Jinni's genome project contains over two thousand "genes" that describe plot, mood, style, setting, soundtrack and more. Jinni says that its ontology was created by film professionals - much like Pandora employs people to create its unique music database." - Dan Smith

Has anyone tried Jinni or Filmaster? I'm interested in finding something to recommend films based on films you like. - Dan Smith

I love Jinni, not tried Filmaster. There is also Flixster but I keep my ratings up to date on Lovefilm and can get recommendations from them, though I think I have enough films on my wish list on Lovefilm already. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Free or nearly free events in London - Dan Smith

"According to Harvard Business blog, most of our interactions are governed by a simple event-reaction-outcome chain, where our knee-jerk response leads to an often undesirable outcome. For better results, they propose tweaking your thought chain to focus primarily on the outcome. More simply, "just because the event catalyzed your action, doesn't mean it should determine it. How you react can and should be determined by the outcome; by the future you want to create." - Dan Smith

This would probably save a lot of arguments! - Dan Smith