Browser App to raise funds for your favourite cause when you shop online.

Give as you Live™ - Download our Browser App to raise funds for your favourite cause when you shop online.

I love how technology can be used to so much good effect in so many places.

sharing and sending large files over the internet

Online Collaboration Tools - Productivity Solutions from YouSendIt

Sending large files (over 10mb) via email is often not possible. here's a simple and cost effective way to send them

Mailing list providers for newseltters

Have been looking at a number of different Mailing list providers. They each have slightly different benefits, (like click through reporting to see who has opened your email and followed what links) and costs (some are free for a small number of contacts, or features)

http://www.mailchimp.com/pricing/p1/
Free for ever for up to 500 subscribers, includes complete click thru reporting

but if you go over 500 it costs ( pre pay PAYG for 3cents/email if you do less then a monthly mailings, or a monthly unlimited plan for $30/month, or more depending on size of your list)


http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/
is free up to 1,000 subscribers. (max 1000 emails/month)

But if you want to easily upload a mailing list or see who opened, or be able to see who clicked on what link and do a follow up email, you pay, but only a few pounds a month, with a sliding scale according to how many emails you send (plus you get unlimited contacts )

Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age - Geoff Canada

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcr3X6jgYsk&feature=channel

times of Transition that we live in. Digital divide ... who do we include who do we exclude ... how do we do that... a talk at Goolge...

"Geoff Canada, of the Harlem Children's Zone talks about the danger of allowing technology to widen the gap between rich kids and poor kids and our responsiblity to ensure that this does not happen. "

Get Instant Downloads in firefox and Vista

Get Instant Downloads: Right-click the navigation toolbar (above the address bar) and select customize. This will bring up a box containing icons. Drag and drop the downloads icon to the toolbar. Now whenever you want to download something simply drag the link to the button to begin.

email hoaxes scam websites identity theft

Here's some great info of what to look out for in Hoax emails.

http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1138

also tips about fake websites.

http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1120



Do NOT give any personal details (phone number address, etc) If you have this website could be useful. http://www.identity-theft.org.uk/protect-yourself.htm

If you have given them personal information, and they now do have your phone number or address be REALLY careful about replies to what look like official agencies.

IF ANY doubt *don't* respond. ( say you're busy and ask for a number to call back) do NOT answer any questions about any financial info, bank or card details ( especially if it's an official sounding organisation) unless you can check form your previous records that it checks out as legitimate.

is that email a hoax

Often times people really care and want to keep their friends safe however it's not always initially clear if something is a hoax or not. As I seem to keep getting asked this kind of thing here are some of the things that I've found can be useful to check if an email is a Hoax or not:

The quick way I have as a 'heads up' when I think something might be a Hoax is to cut a section of the email ( 7 or 8 words, so it's long enough) and paste them into a web search engine ( I like Every Click )

How do you recognise if it's a Hoax? Well I've started to get a 'sense' for it. This is partly through trusting my intuition also reading about it. There is some really good information about how to recognise Hoaxes at http://www.hoax-slayer.com/#latest-email-hoaxes

I find this http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ website generally is also a good way to check if something is a Hoax

It's also useful to know and use some basic email saftey measures.

basic email saftey

There are several pretty important things to do to keep safe when using email

One thing I've heard and seen over and over that the best thing to do to keep safe is to not open anything if you don't know who its from, if it's a blank email, the subject doesn't make sense, or has an attachement that isn't mentioned by the person who sent it; if in doubt delete and or ask the person who sent it!

Another thing is to use, and keep up-to-date, a good set of basic protection software; a good firewall, antivirus and anit spyware, are all pretty essential these day's; I also now use a good spam filter to filter out spam before it lands in my computer.

And, finally, if sending a group email, it's now pretty much a good practice to use Bcc or a group mail sending program or company - it helps keep the spam down.

search engine that raises money for charity

Everyclick is a search engine that lets you raise money for charity.
this was recommended to me by a friend who is a parent at the local Steiner School in Exeter.

I really love to have money from my web searches going to help a good cause, rather than profits for a big, huge even, business. You can chose your charity or join me in money going to the Steiner School.

Every Click is based on the Ask search engine, I sometimes find it useful to search in Google search

email melt down/gridlock

For several years some people have been talking about email melt down. I've experienced my second mini meltdown this year.

major delays on emails

sending email via smtp often not working

receiving email via pop3 often not working

webmail often inaccessible

Back in the summer I started to have pretty big problems with my emails getting delayed, sometimes for days, also sometimes not being able to send. Eventually after quite some research on the web and talking with a couple of different ISP's I discovered that there was a spate of spambot computers taking over the web servers of ISPS's, and sending out lots I mean lots of Spam and flooding them, causing them to gridlock.

It was a fairly new technology for several ISP's to deal with. and took a while for some of them to fix. My ISP at that time, Ontel, had their web servers major compromised for about 6 weeks)

There is now another spate of this happening; I'd started to notice problems earlier on in November. and last week the same major delays for my email started happening with Lycos servers.

I also discovered that anyone sending from Lycos smtp or with an email or domain that is listed with Lycos will not be able to send email to hotmail or yahoo addresses and some others.

I've now set up a new account . . . (which I'm not going to put on this bog !!)

My websites www.movingsound.com and www.christofferdegraal.com are hosted with Lycos and all the emails I have given to people are with that domain, so I really REALLY hope that this gets fixed soon. ( I spoke with their customer help line. they've been working on fixing it for several weeks now.)

I thought initially that this was just for the ISP's concerned. However, in another conversation, ( how OD I get into these conversations !?!) It was explained to me that when I send an email it goes down kind of like a motorway, looking for junctions that are free enough to take... to go to the next 'sector' as the email jumps from the wiring from one ISP to another, going around the world.

Unfortunately even if the ISP I am using is not overrun by Spam, my email can end up going thru a grid locked ISP because the sign at the junction say's all is ok and then, a very short way down the path . . . gridlock and delay.

SO . . . at the moment this problem that some of the individual ISP's have can effect us all. It's a kind of leapfrog of spammers causing increasingly complex problems that then take some time to fix; weeks at a time it seems.

hope this of use for some people somewhere. -- now I need to prepare to send another update to let people know my new address.

Music recording with Linux

As I've been getting ready to upgrade / rebuild, my PC for music recording, I've taken some time to day to a bit of web research, could this be a good time to move form windows to Linux. It 's a whole new world there and, at the moment, there's not a program that's quite ready to use. However it's been interesting touching into that world, with names for programs like 'Jack' and 'Ardour' http://ardour.org/node which looks and feels lovely. AND I like the whole concept of open source software. Shame Ardour hasn't got the ability to record midi yet. So, rather than get distracted, I'm gonna leave it for now and probably do the upgrade of Sonar, as I've been using that for several years on Windows. ( I'd have to learn Linux as well as the new program so all in all to much time would be needed)

Iona - clip from the recording

Here is a 6min clip from a recording I made in Iona Abbey made during a 10 day retreat on the Island. After having sunk deeply connection with the land, I spent the night in the Abbey meditating and praying, tuning into the atmosphere of the place. At about 3am, shortly before sunrise I put on the minidisc and started playing; I'm looking forward to releasing this as a CD


or to download, right click and 'save as' (8.4mb)

Posting with summaries and 'read more'

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it. --- except that it no longer recognises how to do this . . so ... I need to find out how to do this in the new templates, or how to add the labels links section into the old template.

after searching around a bit I found this 'hack' Peek-A-Boo view of posts in label/archive pages at http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/

what I want ot be able to do now is be able to post via email with this feature