Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Switcher
11:50PM Tamar Weinberg | One year ago today, you learned how to acclimate yourself to your new Mac after switching from a PC. More »
Recycle your Christmas Tree
1:39PM Sarah Stokely | If you had a live Christmas tree then it’s probably ready to be denuded of its Christmas decorations and disposed of. Rather than adding to landfill, why not turn it into useful mulch? Contact your local council to see if they’re organising Christmas tree collection.The City of Sydney council will be collecting trees on January 16 and 30. The trees will be turned into woodchips and mulch for local parks and gardens. You need to book collection by calling the council on 9265 9333 by 2pm of the Tuesday before collection day.I advise getting the tree out of the house before it starts to dry up and drop its needles all over the house. :) More » Google Reader
1:23PM Sarah Stokely | Shortly before Christmas, Google tweaked its Google Reader product so your shared items are automatically shared with your Google Talk contacts. CNET’s News blog pointed out that Google had been spanked for this privacy faux pas, and the company’s official blog has admitted the slip, saying “we underestimated the number of users who were using the Share button to send stories to a limited number of people”. It’s worth checking out Google’s official post on the matter, as it runs you through how to selectively share items with your friends, how to tweak your “friends” list and how to clear your shared items list. More » Set a sensible weight loss goal
12:24PM Sarah Stokely | Being a happy, healthy geek can sometimes require some tweaking to your normal eating and exercise habits. The sedendary lifestyle - working in an office and spending leisure time in front of the computer – can make this tricky. So if you’re keen to cut back on your less healthy eating habits and lose some of those extra kilos, here’s some tips.
The first thing you need to do is assess where you are in terms of weight and fitness, and set your goal accordingly. Remember that most people who crash diet without taking the time to create some new, healthy eating habits end up putting weight back on once they’ve “finished” their diet. This is very unhealthy so nix the notion that you can lose weight and then go back to your old unhealthy habits. Weight loss requires permanent changes in your eating habits, end of story. If you’re ready to commit to that, then read on for some more tips. More » Check for old versions of Flash player on your PC
11:57AM Sarah Stokely | Users of Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash Player will want to update the software, and possibly check their PC to remove older versions, according to Defensive Computing blogger Michael Horowitz. He says the Flash installer doesn’t remove older versions of the program, which can be a space hog and a security risk:
“The first time I ran the Secunia Software Inspector I almost fell off my chair at the huge list of old versions of the Flash player that were hanging around.”
He also points out that you’ll need to separately update IE and Firefox, and that once you’ve updated, it’s worth checking to make sure your browser is loading the correct version of Flash Player. Read his post for the full details.
The Adobe security update came out on December 18, and you can read the details here. You can download the new version here.
Problems updating the Flash player in Firefox? Here’s Help [CNET] More » Australia-wide ISP censoring filter is on the way
10:29AM Sarah Stokely | The new Labor government is moving ahead with its mandatory ISP filtering policy, which a report in the Australian says will put the onus on users to ‘opt out’ if they don’t want their internet to be censored. The plan has been mooted in the name of protecting children at home and at school from porn and other inappropriate content.But civil liberties group EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia) has warned that filters won’t help protect children, and will erode internet freedom. The group says parents should still supervise their children’s internet access.Both sides of politics have been keen to censor the internet in recent months. Last year the Liberal government was embarrassed when its government-funded content filter was hacked within half an hour by a 16 year old schoolboy.
Labor released its ‘Cyber-Safety’ policy in November. More » RIP Netscape
10:02AM Sarah Stokely | After 13 years and nine versions, Netscape Navigator is about to be confined to the history books with the news that development on the browser will cease next month. Netscape was the world’s first commercial browser. Current owner AOL had already shed most of the staff working on new developments for
Netscape back in 2003. Most of those staff moved to Mozilla to work on
Firefox, and Netscape’s Director, Tom Drapeau, encouraged remaining Netscape users to move to Firefox. While old versions of Netscape will continue to be available to download, there will be no further updates from 1 February. More » 
