Mobile Stew - connected latest

Great Flickr Photo

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:41:00 -0700

This photo reminds me of when I was cramming for my exams at Uni! This cute little fella is the tarsier, one of the smallest primates in the world, found
only in the Philippines, on the island of Bohol in central Philippines
and in Sarangani province on the island of Mindanao*.

Read more here

Purchased Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 08:29:00 -0700

I'm getting a bit bored of Project Gotham 3, so I've just picked up a copy of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for the Xbox 360. Tried holding out for as long as possible, but it seemed silly to only have one game for my Xbox 360 that I play. Haven't played it yet but I'll be online before and after the Spurs game if anyone wants to show me the ropes. Don't forget I've got a new gamertag - 'Dreem Team'

Congratulations On The Silver Medal Martin - Now For The Olympics!

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:26:00 -0700

Not a lot to say today as I've been keeping one eye on the Commonwealth Games as my 'little' cousin was competing and he did very well winning a Silver Medal in the High Jump.

For those of you who have no idea what the Commonwealth Games are its for countries who basically used to be part of the British Empire, which includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, a lot of African nations and most of the Caribbean so the competition is pretty good. For some reason America doesn't take part......

Given that he's only 21 and already he the British #'1 he's looking a good prospect for the 2012 London Olympics as he'll only be 27. I'd put a bet on now.

February Competition Winner: It's Abe Again!

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:00:00 -0700

No, it's not a fix and Abe does actually exist! Like they say - you have to be in it to win it and Abe posted the best suggestion.

Congratulations mate and let me know if want more Amazon vouchers to go towards your nano. I think you should have enough to buy one now. If I don't hear from you within a week I'll just send you the Amazon vouchers.

I'm going to be suspending the competitions for a while until the site traffic builds up again to make them more competitive!

Should I Get A Hardware Firewall?

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 02:56:00 -0700

I've been thinking recently about getting a hardware firewall as in my mind it should offer a better level of protection for my home network (currently I have 2 PCs, a Xbox 360 and 2 Modded Xboxs running XBMC connected to a Netgear WPN-824 router), whilst freeing up resources on my PCs.

It just seems to make more sense to stop attacks at the 'edge' of my network rather than letting them through to PCs. I also wouldn't have to fiddle around with setting up firewall rules on each PC, instead just setting rules at a network level.

Has anybody else done this or considered this? Can you recommend any devices?

Updates To Connected Comment Tools

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 04:44:00 -0700

There are some features on my blog. The comment captcha is now all in lower case to make it easier to leave comments. Also, you no longer have to register to leave your name with a comment - a 'name' can be chosen for the comment as you post.

Hopefully, this will encourage the shy readers to start leaving their names!

Chigago Tribune Blows The Cover Of 2,653 CIA Agents Using The Internet

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 04:40:00 -0700

The Chicago Tribune says it has compiled a list of 2,653 CIA employees, just by searching the Internet. The newspaper said it gathered the information from
online services that compile public data, that any fee-paying
subscriber can access. It did not publish the names, at the CIA's request. Many
of the agents are believed to be covert. The paper also located two
dozen "secret" facilities.

It's scary how much info is available on the net. Whenever I meet someone new I tend to 'Google' their name first to see what I can learn. This backfired on me a few years ago though when I agreed to take a friend of a friend from the US I'd never met before to a party. When I googled her I found a picture ...

Brits Spend More Time On The Net Than Watching TV

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 05:03:49 -0700

A survey conducted by Google found that British internet users spend an averageof 164 minutes online daily - the equivalent of 41 days a year -compared to 148 minutes watching television.

Men spend on average 172 minutes on the web daily, and women 156 minutes. Londoners and Scots are the most dedicated net users, accordingto the survey, carried out by the TNS institute last month involving 1030 adults aged 16 to 64.

I'm not surprised by these findings. I'm actually going the other way and trying to spend less time 'online'. It is so easy to fall into the habit of logging on to see if there are any new emails or any new RSS stories.

One area where I am cutting down is my mobile internet ...

New Xbox Live Gamertag: DreemTeam

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 14:18:22 -0700

I'm going to be online in about 20 mins on PGR3 with my new Xbox Live gamertag 'DreemTeam' if anyone fancies trying to beat me in my Ferrari 355.

Add me to your buddies list if you've got a Xbox 360. So far I've got two Connected Internet readers, Dollarman1 and Wey2Good4U, on my buddies list. It'd be great to get a few more.

Apologies For Lack Of Posts

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 02:43:16 -0700

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last couple of weeks as I decided to take a break from blogging, amongst other things, as I wasn't too well. I'm back to full health now and normal service will now resume.

HDTV Buying Guide

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:26:58 -0700

I took the plunge yesterday and splashed out on a HDTV. I was going to try and hold out until the summer when HD broadcasts should be available in the UK, but I just couldn't resist it.

Choosing a HDTV wasn't easy but after spending a few hours doing my research I finally plumped for a Hitachi 42 inch plasma. I wanted to make sure that my 'HD Ready' TV was actually HD Ready, but I was astounded to find that retailers still aren't playing fair and are promoting TVs as HD when they aren't, which will only cause customers problems further down the line.

HDTV Buying Guide

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:14:55 -0700

Join The Connected Internet Team

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 11:26:50 -0700

I would like to welcome Sanketh to the Connected Internet team. Sanketh is the brains behind the Telecoms Trends blog that I discovered this week, and will start adding the occasional topical post to this blog.

I'm on the lookout for more guest authors so if you have a blog that you want to promote and are willing to contribute the odd post on Connected Internet, then please email me with your blog url and a brief summary of the areas you would like to cover.

Help Me Improve Connected Internet - Feedback Please!

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 09:49:46 -0700

I've made some minor tweaks to Connected Internet's template today, but I'm open to any suggestions for other changes. Let me know what things you think I could do to improve the site, or what topics you'd like to see more or less of.

Don't be afraid to speak your minds - I've got very think skin!

Vaja Cases - Great Customer Service

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:58:30 -0700

After moaning about Vonage earlier today, I wanted to share an example of great customer service. I recently purchased a Vaja case for my Video iPod and I'm very happy with it apart from one very small problem, which is that it is very hard to get my iPod out of the case.

I received the case about a month ago and received an email after about 2 days asking how I was getting on with my purchase. I told Vaja I was very happy apart from problems getting my iPod out of the vase, although I hoped this might get better as the leather aged a bit.

Well, yesterday I got a follow-up email asking whether I was still having problems, and I said things were getting better, ...