Where do you start?

Well, at the beginning obviously.

Google

I'm astounded that this whole Google privacy mud slinging exercise is still going on. As usual the frenzy is being whipped up by the people that have no idea what the real issue is.

Here's what happened. Google sent out its Street View cars to photograph every street in the world in order to improve its comprehensive online maps service. It also monitored any wifi signals it happened to pick up while driving along. The gps coordinates of the wifi signals were logged in order to improve location based services and search.

When a domestic wifi router broadcasts its signal it sends out a unique MAC address. No other router has the same one, and it was this information that Google was interested in.  Unfortunately some second hand computer code was used to capture the data and it also ended up capturing some data that was being broadcast by the wifi routers and computers attached to it.  This included e-mails, website addresses and any other traffic normally sent between computers at home.  

However, some people are silly enough to leave their wifi router's security switched off, leaving their whole network vulnerable to snoopers. Would you willfully let your neighbours go looking through all your computer's contents?  So the only data that was captured by the Google cars was snippets of data, as much as you can pick up in a few seconds while driving by, data that is only accessible on unsecured wifi networks. 

If you wilfully left your personal filing cabinet with bank statements, credit cards and family photos lying in the street outside your house, would you really have the right to complain if someone came along and had a look inside, or worse, stole it and misused it?  

Google made a mistake by not double checking the software loaded onto the cars, when they found out what had happened they apologised, deleted it, and got on with the job. No big deal.  But the same folk who are complaining about the so called privacy invasion are the ones who are turning a blind eye to all those with their wide open (lack of) security and invitation to all and sundry to plunder their internet connection.  Either these folk have no interest in their personal data security or they don't have the skills to enable their router's security. Either way it's Darwinism at work. 

20 minutes later...

Why is it I can leave my DVD player, my hi-fi or my TV switched off for a week and when I switch it on, they work straight away, but when I do the same with my laptop I need to wait 20 minutes while it does updates and then reboot before I can get anything serious done?

Roll on Chrome OS!

How to get on and off a high speed train without it stopping.

HTC Desire, hottest phone of 2010, apparently.

‘Hottest’ New Phone for 2010 – HTC Desire The Hottest Phone for 2010 award is all about the phone that will create the most excitement among consumers. HTC unveiled the Desire at Mobile World Congress in February and it certainly caught the attention of many industry pundits. Since then it has been launched widely across most networks and retailers, and, backed by HTC’s biggest marketing push yet, is selling very well. In short, the general public seem to like it too. There was no question among the judges which handset should the cool phone, nothing is going to come through that hot this year,’ said one judge. ‘It has a broad appeal to the market and crosses a barrier because it is a phone for everyone. The Desire will take off through viral and word of mouth, because it has the looks and style and will create its own buzz.’ Another judge added: ‘HTC has definitely got the consumer excitement. Everyone has Google Maps on their phones for free. The look and style of the Desire is slick and is going to have a huge impact on the market.’ The Desire is a reworking of the Google Nexus One. But to most observers, the HTC Sense UI skin, coupled with the latest Android 2.1 platform, gives it the edge over the Nexus One. Its 3.7-inch AMOLED screen renders pages beautifully, and Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor makes it the fastest smartphone around. Its capacitive touch-screen is excellent and Android 2.1 supports multi-touch in the web browser. HTC has also added new software in the shape of Friendstream, which syncs Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts, streaming them into a single feed. The user’s contacts book automatically syncs contacts with their social network profile. The Desire is also very user friendly – it comes set up with internet and social networking. The HTC Desire’s top browsing quality, ease of use and customisation, speed and screen rendering makes this a phone for everyone. As such, the judges had no hesitation in naming it the Hottest New Phone for 2010

Make an Amazing Moving Cube!

via youtube.com

I've seen the light

I'm by no means a tree hugger, but I do like to cut down on my energy use in order to save cash.  If I can get the job done with no loss in performance or convenience then I'll choose the low power option.

I've never been a lover of low energy light bulbs, they take ages to "warm up" and they are never as bright as conventional halogens or incandescents.  However, most of our house lighting is now low energy bulbs, apart from what Peter Kay would call the "big light" on the ceiling of the living room and dining room, which are low voltage halogen clusters. 

I recently bought a desk lamp and because it would be sitting 12 inches from my face, I didn't want a burning hot halogen GU10 bulb.  So while I was shopping for options I came across an LED GU10 that claimed to be the equal of a 50 Watt halogen in terms of light output but only uses 3 Watts of power.  The bulb body itself just looks like a bog standard GU10 but the face of it is covered in 60 white LEDs.  The downside is the price, it was £10 from B&Q.  On the plus side it's really bright, gives a nice crisp white light, and it's cool to the touch when on.  These bulbs also last for thousands of hours and use a fraction of the electricity of a halogen GU10.

So on to my next wee project.  My bathroom lighting consists of 3 halogen 50W GU10 downlighters over the sink, and 2 large incandescent 60W spotlights illuminating the rest of the room making a total of 270 Watts.  That's a lot of power to light what is the smallest room in the house.  So when 2 of the 3 halogen lights blew recently I decided it was time to investigate a cheaper to run alternative.  I checked out LED GU10s on the internet hoping to find a cheaper source than B&Q and sure enough there was a Chinese supplier on Ebay selling them for about £3.  Beware of some of the sellers though, they're selling low wattage ones which wouldn't give off the same amount of light.  I bought one just to see what it was like, and after 2 weeks awaiting delivery it arrived yesterday.  Fitted in seconds as the body is standard GU10 and it gives off a stunning clean light.  As you can see from the picture, it is comparable to the 50W Halogen on the left in terms of brightness. The light is almost blue/white in colour but looks fantastic, I think I'll safely invest in another couple of these and then look into replacing the 60W spotlights.  I see there are now compact fluorescent low energy spotlights available, so may look into getting a couple of them.  This should bring the bathroom energy requirement down from 270W to around 30W.