Mobile Stew

Over the last couple of weeks the rate at which I receive invites to link up on LinkedIn has increased, partly because lots of my ntl:Telewest colleagues are sending me invites because they are not sure who will be staying and going as part of the merger.

For those of you who don't know what LinkedIn is, it's a social networking site which allows users to build and maintain a
network of professional contacts. 
Linked In allows users to register their professional contact
information and send it to their contacts, as well as keeping contact
information up to date. The company offers free, advertiser-supported
services but makes the lion's share of its money from premium services,
which run from $5 to $200 per month. Job listings cost $95. 

 My network ...

Skype and 3 launched 3G data card, which enables subscribers to make cheaper VoIP calls.

Currently the card is priced at £ 39.99 and is bundled with the special
starter pack provided by skype which includes Skype software, a Skype
headset and a Skype starter voucher.

Users hoping to get the card at the cheapest price - £ 39.99 will have to opt
for the Web and Office 512 package priced at £45 per month. However users will
get half a Gb of data bundled in each month.



READ MORE HERE

As regular readers will know, I built what I thought was a pretty stonking PC over Christmas.  The spec was pretty good I thought, although I did try to save some cash by buying a X1600 card rather than a then top-of-the-range X1800 to save some cash, with the intention to buy a second X1600 to run in tandem when prices fell.

Well, I bought a 2nd X1600 last week on eBay at a bargain price, only to discover that when you run 2 X1600s in tandem you can't run two monitors so I've sold both the X1600s and bought a new top of the range X1900XT which came out this month.  Not only have my frame-speeds hit lightspeed, but the poor TV quality I'd been experiencing with Windows Media ...

Google slowly but surely are dominating the services I use on my PC.  Currently I use Gmail, Google Reader and Google Search.  As soon as I can access easily access my MSN contacts I will make the switch to Google Talk.

Now, with the latest version of Google Desktop released yesterday Google have taken over my desktop search.  I didn't like the previous versions as they used too much memory for my liking, but the latest version has some features I can't resist:

- Sidebar's can now be personalised and positioned  anywhere on the the desktop by clicking and dragging.
- information from Sidebar panels can be shard by email, chat or directly from the Sidebar

But here's the biggie for me - now you can Search Across Computers to ...

Google are quite slow at rolling out new Gmail features to international users.  Thanks to one of my readers, Jez,...

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Google are rolling out a new facility within Gmail that integrates it with Google Talk.  Gmail users will now be...

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After catching aides of US Congressman Marty Meehan repeatedly changing his biography, Wikipedia have now blocked all IP addresses that are associated with the US House and US Senate.

I'm not sure how effective this will be as all aides have to do is post from another location, so I'm guessing that Wikipedia are trying to make some sort of statement, rather than an example of the Government.

I can understand that they are quite peeved about their service being manipulated, but any surely any service that is edited by its readers is going to be abused.  Singling out one body of users for punishment isn't going to defer further manipulation.

If any readers are registered for the Newsvine beta could they please email me an invite.  Newsvine sounds like it could be an interesting service, based on what cavemonkey has to say about it:

...articles are automatically managed bythe website. The website figures out how the articles should rank by anumber of factors. The freshness of the story, how many times peopleview the article, and how many people vote for the article are allfactors which go into the rating.

Did I just say vote? Yes, that’scorrect. You can vote (and report) articles just like Digg; but sincethe votes aren’t the only factor, stories are less likely to be subjectto user stupidity. This system works very well, and just because no onehas voted ...

Microsoft released yesterday Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview.  I'm not going to install it as I'm already testing some beta software at work and I don't want to run two betas at the same time. 

Has anybody installed it?  What do you think?

Download: Internet Explorer 7: Beta 2 Preview

As most of my regular readers know I'm in love with Project Gotham Racing 3 on my Xbox360, and it is definitely one of my top games of all time. 

I decided this morning that I wanted to use one of the in-game videos as a screensaver but couldn't find any, so I set out to try and create my own.

It took a while to find a free tool, as most were screensaver tools are shareware, but eventually I found this great tool for creating Free Video Screensavers.  'My Video Screen Saver' supports the following features: