Go away Google!

Now don't get me wrong I'm not a Google hater; after all back in the days when we all happily trawled through Altavista (the supreme search engine at the time) Google was like a free gift to spods everywhere. A fresh new look and a fresh new indexing technique all at the power of our fingertips. We could now quickly and easily find what we wanted in the rapidly growing collection of unsorted paperwork which was the Internet.

Posted by Daniel: 21:28, Wed 12th Sep 2007

Are the W3C going down the toilet?

For those of you that are new to web design you may or may not have heard of the W3C so before we start heres a quick summary:

About the W3C

The W3C are basically a consortium dedicated to creating standards and guidelines for the code that makes up web pages. Now the first thing you might say is "what gives them the right to make those guidelines?", well nothing I guess but since their director is none other than Sir Tim Burners Lee the guy that invented the 'World Wide Web' in the first place, I think its only fair that we at least give them a chance...

Posted by Daniel: 20:32, Sun 9th Sep 2007

Instant Messenging - Setting up your own server...

Instant messenger has a bit of a strange existence. Similar to texting on mobile phones, many consider it as a bit of a joke or a toy application associating it with kids chatting online about their favorite pop groups. However as with text messenging dismissing IM in this way could mean you miss out on many opportunities.

Posted by Daniel: 0:07, Mon 3rd Sep 2007

Buying Guide - Dell Vostro Laptop

Choosing a laptop

Trying to decide which laptop to buy is always a hard decision; do you go down to PC world where you can see and touch the machines or do you take a risk and buy online based on other peoples reviews?

For me it was an easy decision, I had a distinct set of requirements for my new laptop which retail shops just couldn't satisfy.

Step 1: Make a list of what you want

One of the first things to do when buying a laptop is first decide exactly what you want. For me this was easy as I've had many many laptops over the years and I also have a fair bit of experience with computers so I made up my list of requirements.

Posted by Daniel: 11:20, Thu 30th Aug 2007

Mobile Data Contracts - Making the web affordable

It's quite surprising in our society of modern high speed mobile phone protocols that a simple task such as using your mobile phone as a web browser, or perhaps more practically using your phone as a modem for your laptop is so expensive in the UK?

With protocols like 3G's HSDPA offering huge broadband like data rates sometimes even up to 14.4Mbit/s it seems only natural that it should be integrated into laptops or at the very least offered on mobile phone contracts for a less than back breaking price.

So what are the providers offering and is the dream of always on Internet access for our laptops realisable?

Posted by Daniel: 19:50, Sun 19th Aug 2007

Hardware Review - Dell Vostro 200 Desktop - Whats inside

I the past Dell have occasionally had a bit of a reputation for monkeying around with hardware. I've seen motherboards that have had the ATX connector omitted so you would have to buy a higher end model to play games (even though the print was on the board). There has even been some talk of Dell swapping around wires in the PSU so you couldn't replace it with an off the shelf model if it broke. Because of all this I have been particularly interested in the new Dell Vostro series and what improvements and changes Dell have made.

Posted by Daniel: 20:50, Thu 16th Aug 2007