Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Opt Out of Junk Mail and Prevent Credit Snooping
11:30PM Kevin Purdy | Sick of answering those telemarketing calls that always seem to arrive just as you’re expecting something more important? Want a little less mail to sort through? The World Privacy Forum web site has a helpful roundup of the best ways to opt out of marketing materials online and off, stop data brokers from snooping through your life and avoid being pinned down by browser cookies. A few of these tips have been covered before on this site, but there are a few unique tips, and the page makes for a good all-in-one bookmark for protecting your data and cleaning out the marketing clutter. AU – The Australian Do Not Call register can be found here. World Privacy Forum: Top Ten Opt Outs [via PC World] More »
Do More from GNOME’s Panel with Gimmie
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Linux only: Keep your recent documents, frequent contacts and favourite file locations close at hand with Gimmie, a panel utility for GNOME-based Linux clients. Gimmie fits a lot of handy stuff into four buttons, including Pidgin integration, a Windows-like list of frequently used programs and quick network browsing, and promises more web and office document functionality in the future. The newest version runs on the release candidate for Ubuntu’s Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), but Feisty Fawn (7.04) users can install it from the repositories by entering into terminal: sudo apt-get install gimmie Gimmie is a free download, Linux only. Gimmie [via Tombuntu] More »Busted
10:00PM Tamar Weinberg | One year ago, we set a MacBook up to catch its thief using iAlertU and the built-in iSight camera to upload photos of a perpetrator over FTP. More »
Hibernate vs. Standby
9:00PM Gina Trapani | Quick: What’s the difference between putting your PC in Hibernate or Standby mode? Yeah, we weren’t sure either. Luckily the Productivity Portfolio weblog schools us on the finer details of Windows XP power schemes. Using Standby: Your machine recovers quickly as your data is stored in RAM. The slower part is waking up the peripherals. Although your machine is in “standby” the power has been cut to items such as your hard drive and monitor. You’re running your machine in a very low power mode, but it is still on. This mode can be useful if you’re on a notebook and need to conserve your battery while you step away. More »SOL launches Australia’s first online political party
4:19PM Sarah Stokely | via Kwoff – Senator On-line claims to be Australia’s first internet-based political party, and says if its gets a candidate elected to the Senate, all Australians will be able to view and vote on every bill which goes through the Senate. SOL senators will vote in line with the majority ruling of the people’s vote. I’d like to be able to vote online (if the technology was unriggable and not a “hanging chad” disaster like the voting machines in the last American election) and being able to scrutinise the political process online would be great. But what if you don’t have internet access? I’d like SOL’s ideas better if they offered a plan to ensure internet access for all Australians.
More » DivX shows off prototype media player
3:44PM Sarah Stokely | DivX has started showing off their prototype “Apple TV killer” – a low cost networked media player device with 720p output. The Ubergizmo blog got a look at the device and wrote it up:
“DivX made a technology choice that is completely opposite to Apple’s. The Apple TV is basically an entry-level computer without an OS. It has a CPU, a GPU, and a hard drive, these are generic components found in all recent computers. However, AppleTV still need to be connected to a bigger computer (to talk to iTunes).
By leveraging the fact that their device is connected to a computer, DivX shows that the same basic functionality can be built at a much cheaper price, because instead of using general-purpose hardware, it uses only stream-decoding hardware that is a lot cheaper to make.”
DivX is claiming the device could retail at $US99 within a year – that’s a third of the price of an Apple TV. Will be interesting to see if any hardware manufacturers decide to take a punt on it. Mind you – as Apple is no doubt finding in Australia with its Apple TV - without easy access to content, the media player itself is pretty redundant.
DivX’s Apple TV, but smarter [via PVRblog]
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Where do you shop online?
3:04PM Sarah Stokely |
A while back Adam wrote a post on how to become an online power shopper. At that time, reader Danielle commented on the lack of good online stores here in Australia.
“As an American living in Australia, it kills me that hardly any stores even show their products online, much less give you the ability to purchase them. What is the deal?”
From my experience of buying online in Australia, the UK and the US, I have to agree with Danielle. While we have a decent range of PC and computing related online stores who understand how to present products and offer a fairly user friendly buying experience, I can’t name an non-IT related Australian online store I regularly go to. I love the idea of online grocery shopping but tried several and gave up because the ordering process took so long. I regularly buy from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk but haven’t found a decent local online bookstore.
But I don’t want to just whinge. I want to find the stores which have good websites – preferably offering online shopping, but even if they’re showing off their products online to entice you to come to their shop, that’s something. While I like to purchase online, I also like to use the net as a browsing tool for items I’d prefer to buy in person – so stores with online catalogues would be a plus too.
I thought Lifehacker readers might share my interest in online shopping, so thought I’d throw the question to you – what are the good online shopping sites? Which stores have decent websites showing their products, even if they don’t sell online? Of course, given how well the Aussie dollar is performing against the greenback, buying online from overseas is less expensive than it was – even if postage can be a killer. So if you have any favourite overseas sites you shop at, let us know about them too. Leave your tips in comments please!
More » MySpace to offer Skype calling
1:58PM Sarah Stokely | Skype VoIP services will be offered to MySpace IM users under a new deal between MySpace and Skype’s owner, eBay.
The Age wrote up the deal which will see MySpaceIM offer free voice chats between MySpace and Skype users, and let MySpace users link their profiles and photos to their Skype accounts.
The MySpaceIM with Skype software will be available for download in November. The Age reported that “In addition to free PC-to-PC communications, it will support Skype’s fee-based services like SkypeOut (for calls to landlines), SkypeIn (a local phone number allowing users to receive calls from landlines or mobile phones), voicemail and call forwarding.”
The story says MySpace has around 25,000 local users for its IM application – a figure I have to admit struck me (a MySpace newbie) as quite high. Have you used MySpaceIM, or would the new Skype features tempt you do so? Let us know in comments.
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