Sorry!, I hvent been around as much as usual for a while but my excuse is going to be that I started work last week and therefore have been a bit busy etc but normal service should be resumed starting with my report on my new purchases!- Today I took the plunge and bought a new monitor (22” of pixel lovliness) and a new swivel chair for my study – this counts towards my dose of new gadgets for this month and I must say they are brilliant. There is a great feeling that comes with buying some new gadgets / equipment that cannot be replicated. After they’re installed you can just look at them and think ‘I like this’ which is what I’m doing right now.

I’ve set my new monitor up next to my old 17” Dell as a dual monitor set-up and its brilliant, having mail and media on the smaller and browsing/working on the mahoosive one is just a joy. My new monitor is made by ‘Belnea’ who I must admit I’ve never heard of!, but it was cheaper than others that I saw in other IT shops in the area at £139.99.

I shall try to resume usual service and bring some great news about developing tech soon! (I’m keeping an eye on Googles ‘Android’ Mobile phone open source operating system)

According to a recent study (don’t you just love that phrase?) blog readership is going up in the UK with 1 in every 84 web sites visited being a blog, at first this didn’t sound a lot but this is apparently 101% more than the figures 3 years ago, which is pretty darn amazing.

Source: http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/07/uk_visits_to_bl.html

Now of course this increase in blog readership could mean there is even more great information for people to look at and research into, however on the other hand it could just mean that silly, funny and entertaining blogs like http://icanhascheezburger.com/ and http://ihasahotdog.com/ are on the up.

Some people are quite worried about this increase in the number of people able to express their opinions so widely so quickly however I think its great! – whilst I understand that a real social life is important just think of the increased socialisation that now occurs thanks to blogs and forums with people being united through a particular interest for example.

Heres something little to keep you entertained however  I will warn you that it is addictive and may have you playing it for about an hour or more:
Fantastic Contraption

Heres a question for you – Would you rather have a fast or pretty system?

Imagine that the scenario is simple – one computer with average specs – would you rather have a fast operating system which just does the job and doesn’t have any bells or indeed whistle or would you like a pretty system which perhaps is a little slower buy looks a lot nicer whilst doing the jobs. I could put this into context and say XP vs. Vista but then the security issues, compatibility and transfer would be taken into account.

I personally love to have a nice pretty computer which has bells and whistles to show off to other people, I therefore like Vista, the sidebar, Aero and flip3d. When on Xp I like Rocketdock but when I get down to doing some video or photo editing I wish that I just had a fast system which could wiz through the processing of the files rather than sorting some pretty stuff in the background – there is a compromise to be had.

So, what would you like? – Fast and get the job done or pretty and show off to friends?

It is that time of year again when you can almost guarantee the receiving of some useless USB gadget, now some useless gadget things I like – specially the ones at Christmas but I have to admit that I hate USB gadgets like this – they use up valuable USB ports, which I know could be resolved with USB hubs but this should not be the case. A whole host of useless junk is available:

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I believe I could be the saddest of all geeks, however I also believe that I’m not alone, I have often thought of what my ideal house would be in the future (when I’m rich, famous and boss of a big company) I thought as a bit of proof of my geekiness I’d write some thoughts down:

• I’ll start with waking up, this would of course normally be done using a normal alarm clock however in my future tech home it won’t be a normal alarm clock, it’ll be a networked sound system programmed to come on a certain time so I can wake up to my favourite radio station or tunes from my library. The curtains would also open at this point automatically (leaving the blinds shut too - what a clever idea!). Read more

To say that the internet today is better than the internet we knew many many years ago would be a huge understatement. From being used all those years ago for university’, research and the military to its many uses today is a massive achievement.Not only has the internet changed from when it was introduced, it has also changed peoples lives – well in a way – people can now do a lot of things on the internet (whether they do or not is a different matter):

• Shopping – an obvious and yet very useful tool available on the internet now is the ability to shop – not only for new toys, gadgets and computer stuff but also for groceries, convenient goods and kitchen appliances.
• Home videos – another obvious choice here is linked to YouTube, home videos and such posted on the internet, but there are a vast amount of websites which enable you to do this – Vimeo is another example of a brilliant website which in all honesty is exactly the same as YouTube. Read more