The James Kilgour Blog

I’ve just received my new Acer Aspire One; the most popular Netbook available. Netbooks are a new category of personal computers, that only evolved with the launch of the Asus Eee PC a few months ago.

My Acer Aspire One only took a few moments to set up, and I’m pretty happy with it. I can browse the internet, write Office documents, play games, chat on messenger and even install more open source software (after a small tweak is applied to enable the advanced mode).

The OS is Linux Linpus Lite, which is very easy to use; perfect for even the computer illiterate. The system is very quick and responsive, and the built in Webcam is a nice addition. The keyboard is almost full size, and really easy to use; (this was a worry of mine). However, for the advanced user, ‘tweaks’ need to be applied. This is something Acer has done to the extreme, locking the OS down.

The Netbook is an interesting development; Intel has said that is pretty much a ‘fad’, but I disagree. What could be better for checking your emails or a little bit of internet shopping while in a cafe or on the train (where WiFi is available).  The experience on the Aspire One is 100 times better than on a 3g phone; this is the real internet-YouTube and the BBC iPlayer, things which don’t work that well on a mobile, or even on the iPhone.

JK

The Net is home to hundreds of millions of websites, ranging from Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, to the taboo, illegal, murky side of the Web.

Should the government be able to stop us accessing this content? What about Torrent sites etc? If the government has power to block any site it wishes, perhaps it will start blocking sites that are critical of it, that speak out negatively about new policy?

What is the limit? Could we start living in a Chinese-Communist society, where our internet is firewalled? I believe this is against our human and civil rights. We should have freedom of speech, and that means accessing any sort of web content that we wish to.

In Australia, the Government has asked the major ISPs to participate in a trial of filtering over 10,000 websites that are deemed to have illegal content on them.

Rightly so, Telstra, the largest ISP has denied this, and other ISPs are following suit. My worry is could we see the same sort of thing over here in the UK? Could we be monitored? 1984 may become 2009. I hope not.

JK

The BBC is reporting today that there is a new virus affecting Facebook users, known as ‘Koobface’, (great name!). Now, when I saw this I thought déjà vu. I blogged about this a month ago on November 2nd. 

Apparently the virus send out messages acting like a friend, linking to a virus. Hundreds of websites are now reporting the same, see here. In fact, Google returns 5,580,000 results. If only people had listened to me lol.

1. My Post here.
2. BBC here.
3. Google here.

JK

I’ve just bought a new keyboard; a Mac one. You might ask why; I’m using Vista on a PC. Well, it’s because of the keyboard’s design. It looks amazing, and typing on it is really easy; the keys size, angle and spacing is perfect for my fingers. Well done Apple! Another great product. All I need now is a Mighty Mouse!

JK

So YouTube have widened their videos, with the introduction of HD. People have been complaining about it like nobody’s business. It’s change! Let’s deal with it.

JK

The PS3 is described as one of the most powerful consoles to be sold. With games packed with ultra-realistic graphics, a blu-ray HD drive and full net functionality, it’s strange to see that it’s flagging behind its competitors.

The Nintendo Wii is furthest ahead, followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Why is there such a gap?

Is it because of the price perhaps? The Wii retails for around £179.99; the cheapest of the three. The Xbox is close behind, at a price of £229.99 for the elite version, (the basic Arcade version can be bought for as cheap as £129.99).  The PS3 however is a little more. £299.99 for the basic PS3 console, with 80gb. That doesn’t include a single game. (The Wii has Wii Sports for example).

In the current economic climate, are people really going to spend that much on a gaming console? Especially the ‘casual gaming’ market that these consoles want to tap into?

Plus, the games themselves are £40 each, and for the UK consumer, the consoles are a rip off! In the US, the same console sells for $399.99, which is today equivalent to £270.00, almost the price of a game cheaper. The same console!

If Sony wants to actually have a successful console, they shouldn’t make it so expensive. End of story. They can always make any loss back through the sale of games and accessories, which would increase if they lowered the price of the console in the first place!

Here is a funny little video I found anyway:

JK

Spotify is a new music service, where you listen to as much music as you like for free! It all runs through it’s very well designed client, and the service has all the latest music.

Getting an invite to the service was the easiest! Luckily, I managed to win a competition to get an invite; the code arrived today in my inbox!

Downloading the software was very quick, and installing even more so! I only had to make one click inside the installer window!

Once installed I opened the program. I was shocked! It look almost identical to iTunes, except with no prices! The choice was good; ‘Funhouse’ by Pink and ‘Human’ by The Killers were just two of the available albums.

You would expect with such a service, (especially one in beta) would be very slow to load. Not at all. The songs start straight away, and actually, quicker than in Napster or  in iTunes. Neither have I had any problems with the streaming.

The service is also meant to have ads, but after 20 songs, I’ve only heard one of these, which lasted about 15 seconds or less. It was for Xbox Guitar Heroes, and I didn’t really bother me much.

The only thing that could improve the service would be the ability to download the songs free as MP3s! Here’s hoping. If it wasn’t for my Napster subscription, which allows me to download, than I’d probably switch to it.

So, if you want to give the service a go, I have some invites to give out. The first commenter’s on this post will be sent one each, (to as many as I get).

JK 

AcoBox is a new service offering blogger thousands of blog pictures and images to embed into their blogs.

The one next to this text is from the service, which as you can see is a very high quality, professional image.

All the images on the service are of the same quality, after being screened and optimized for blog use.

The Images are also licensed, and adding them to posts is really simple. I tested this myself with the image you see above. I registered for the service, which only took 10 seconds after entering a username, email address and a domain name. My password was them emailed to me.

After I logged in, I did a search for some landscape pictures. I could have chosen an abstract one instead, like this one for example, (a favourite of mine).

Then I just selected the size, the alignment, then copied the code from the site, pasting it into my blog.

The images load really quickly, the service is easy to use, and best of all you don’t have to spend a penny, (unlike other certain photo sites). Most images are also licensed to be downloaded from the site to your hard drive.

Overall, this site is excellent for finding images. Normally, I use Google, but this site is fantastic, because of the high quality nature of the content.

JK Sponsored Review.

YouTube, the amateur video service is rumoured to be on the verge of streaming full length movies from the likes of MGM. Soon, we could be enjoying James Bond, Legally Blonde and more, for free!

It’s all a bid to earn more in advertising revenue; something the service desperately needs to keep afloat, with such high bandwidth and storage costs.

But will the service be of any value? YouTube is characteristically slow, with small and bad quality streams. How much fun will the videos be in YouTube style?

JK

Nikon, who I’ve heard make some of the best hunting and observation gear, have started a new deal, offering Free ATB Pro Gear in the from of up to $50 in gift cards, for those who purchase Nikon ATB Binoculars before the end on December; perfect for Christmas!

A friends of mine is into Bird Watching, and he has a set of these Binoculars, which he says are brilliant. Not knowing personally a lot on this topic, apparently they are reliable, durable and clear, which I suppose are the qualities that you want in Binoculars.

JK