New Zealand Conservative

As promised (click "Read More" if the you-tube clip doesn't appear): And another...

Here's an interesting thing that probably means little in practice. After the European Competition Commission got onto Microsoft's case over shipping Internet Explorer with its software, Microsoft has agreed to ship an update which offers users of IE the option of choosing another browser . On offer Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. All good browsers. The roll out has begun but on reading the post it seems this update will be confined to the EU. Internet Explorer in its previous incarnations was a pain because of its idiosyncrasies, some of which were deliberately engineered, I understand, to constrain users to remain with IE. However IE8 when it isn't running in "compatibility mode" which maintains the old IE oddities is a leading edge browser. In my opinion it might be Firefox which is the browser looking tired and overdue for a revamp in 2010. It is certainly the one that has caused grief on this site in recent days. Which just goes to s...

Well the French and German Governments have issued this warning anyway . Needless to say Microsoft have responded claiming the IE8 is the "most secure browser on the market". I don't know about that, there will always be claims and counter claims but I for one have never been an IE fan. The thing is you can build a web page which looks perfect in every browser until you try IE whereupon everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Natively IE8 is ok but it has a compatibility mode which if in force actually introduces the idiosyncrasys, actually bugs, which make IE such a pain to have to cater for. Anyway I use Chrome for now but who knows for the future. Whatever, I'm not sure the Government issuing software advisories is really step forward.

Remember a couple of years back when a Reuters photographer got busted for manipulating photographs in Iraq to make them more, er, interesting? More smoke and whatnot. Well a guy, John Graham has written C code to detect Photoshopped cloning in images. He basically did it because he wanted to win a car in a Spot The Ball newspaper competition, and found a paper describing the algorithm he was looking for. He didn't end up winning the car but the program seems to work quite well. (See the images below). You can download the C code from his blog (and see more pictures there and here ) but I don't think there is a Windows executable yet.

Just a little public service announcement. The FULL version of EverNote Portable is FREE today only from GiveAwayOfTheDay.com . You have to download AND install it in the next 12 or so hours. If you've never used it, it's similar to Microsoft's OneNote - you can save snippets of text and data from just about anywhere. This version can be run from a USB stick. EverNote does produce a free version as well, but this download is the FULL version

Y es, I know I've been posting too much about technological toys recently. This is the last one for a while (hopefully) :) This one is for all your bloggers out there. The program is Windows Live Writer, and it's probably the best blogging tool I've used so far (the others being Scribefire and the built in blogging capability of Flock). Windows Live Writer is FREE and it is quite cool. As you can see by the screenshot of me posting this entry, it even imports the wallpaper themes from your blog of choice as well as allowing you to insert videos, pictures and the like. You can also add plugins, which is something I haven't explored yet. Windows Live Writer is FREE and it is quite cool. A nice thing is that you write an entry and save it locally to your drive to upload at your convenience. It also has all the category tags in a drop down list locally that you can tick. It's the first blogging tool I've used where I didn't have to go online and edit it...

Have you ever used an Apple Mac? If so, you may have been impressed by the smooth desktop navigation system, or 'dock' at the bottom of the screen which enables you to flow through program icons, folders and such. Well, today I discovered (while I was looking for something else), programs which give Windows users that same functionality, and what's more they're all FREE!! Below are links to some of the more popular ones. 1. RK Launcher . 2. Rocket Dock 3. Aqua Dock 4. Moby Dock 5. Object Dock . Now, don't ask me which are the best ones. I've only tried Rocket Dock and RK Launcher. Both are good. RK Launcher actually doesn't install, but runs straight from a folder, and it's small. With Rocket Dock it's easy to change the icons to something else you want. In all these programs, you just drag icons from the desktop to the dock where you want them. I installed at work today and it's nicceeee. I may never have to look at the desktop again. Check out ...

Firefox add-ons, to be exact. Zen posted about the Interclue Firefox add-on earlier which I downloaded and am trying, so I thought I'd post a few of my favourite Firefox add-ons. I really don't know what I'd do without them now - I couldn't go back to using Internet Explorer. There are add-ons for just about anything you can imagine but here are some good ones. 1. Nightly Tester Tools : Sometimes you'll upgrade Firefox, only to find (horror!) that your add-ons don't work with the newer version. Nightly Tester Tools has a handy option that ignores the Firefox version and forces the add-on to try to work with your newer version. I don't really know what else it does (it's really for those testing add-ons and Firefox versions). Invaluable. 2. Scrapbook : I don't know what I'd do without this either. It's the best way of saving webpages that you want to go look at later. You just click a button and a pane opens to the left and you drag the page ...