Internet and technology

I recently went to the Cell C website to find out about their contracts. When I got to the home page I clicked on a "more" link which I thought would take me to the website content I was looking for, and to me it looked as though nothing had changed (even though the page had refreshed), as the same large flash advert at the top of the page kept playing - there was no indication that I had moved to the content that I had requested.

Was listening to an old webdevradio podcast (which I've just discovered and really like) and Michael mentioned wink, a freeware tutorial and presentation creation software. This captures screenshots and mouse movements that can then be outputted to a variety of formats, including flash swf. This could be quite useful for anyone who does any kind of computer/website training. I know that I do and am definitely going to give it a try on my next training project.

Here's an update to the Google desktop privacy issue, in what appears to be a more level headed and less sensational article.

Read an article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) site that urges people not to install the new version of Google desktop (currently in version 3 beta), due to it's new "Search Across Computers" feature that stores copies of files on your pc(s) on Google's servers. If you're at all worried about your privacy and the contents of your computer, check it out.

I often need to send photos via email, and because it's good practice and good manners not to block up the recipients inbox with very large photos (ie. leaving the photos the default size that the camera creates) I always used to use Adobe Photoshop to optimise them to a manageable file size. Recently, I started using Microsoft Windows XP's built in "Send to >> Mail recipient" which you can find by right clicking on the image(s) you want to send and choosing "Send to", and then "Mail recipient" from the menu, but found it to be a real pain and incredibly buggy, even though it was much easier than optimising in photoshop. So I decided to find out what other options existed to perform this simple function.

Yesterday (the 15th September 2005) was the South African Johannesburg launch of Macromedia studio 8 at the Dimension Data Campus (Bryanston). Being someone who develops solely in Dreamweaver (not only for design but also for PHP coding), and who also uses Flash whenever I get a project that's suitable, I thought I'd check it out.

Top of my podcast list are the following (in no specific order): [I've given links to their websites and podcast feeds]

• Geek News Central :: website :: podcast
• IT Conversations :: website :: podcast

For those that don't know it yet, there has been a split between Miro, the original creators of the Mambo content management system and the Mambo developers. It seems that disagreements regarding how Mambo was controlled led to the split, and the developers have created a new project called Joomla!. This will leave many wondering which project to follow: Mambo or Joomla!

It looks like internet usage in South Africa is on the rise again in 2005, with the latest figures estimated to be at 4,780,000 users (Internet World Stats). That's about 10% of South Africa's population.

I heard Chris Pirillo interviewing Michael Robertson of the Gizmo Project, on the Chris Pirillo podcast. It's a great interview, and provides a more in depth understanding of how Gizmo is different to Skype.