Tuesday 13 May 2008, 2:39 PM
Telescopic oversight
Microsoft Research's new WorldWide Telescope, in the brief time we've had to play with the beta, looks wonderful. A real productivity-killer, in fact -- especially as I'm lucky enough to have a powerful PC and a 30in. screen to view it on. So it would be churlish to poke fun at a typo we found in the 'Many worlds' guided tour wouldn't it?
Ah well, here it is:
Eruopa eh? Those Amreicans could sure use a spelling lesson!
More sensible stuff on the WWT soon.
Friday 25 April 2008, 12:53 PM
Upload your own avatars to ZDNet Community
OK, its a pretty small piece of functionality, but we've just added a feature to allow you to upload your own avatars to ZDNet. When you're logged in and go to you profile page you'll see a 'change picture' button below your picture. You should be able to figure it out from there. Just note that images should be 100 pixels square. You can upload larger images and they'll be scaled. You can upload rectangular images, in which case they'll be cropped automatically to a square, which means that if your face is over to one side of the image it might get lost altogether. Best stick to squares.
If you already had one of our stock avatars your profile will retain this until you decide to upgrade to a real picure of you. Go on, you know it's always good to put a face to a name.
Wednesday 16 April 2008, 2:13 PM
We return to our regular transmission
Did you see the traffic cones on the site last night? Apologies to anyone who tried to post a comment or find an article ZDNet UK had some downtime so that the Ops team could move our co-location facility. It's all up and running now, and it's business as usual.
Those of you who've done a similar switch with all the server, email and other services to wrangle know that this is the cue for a Very Long Night. Still, the photos below show the guys managed to resist the lure of curling up in the coils of cable:
Can't see any cans of Red Bull...how did they do it?
So thanks to the Ops guys for hard work and successful switch. I'm sure that such jobs don't always go smoothly
Friday 11 April 2008, 12:10 PM
To netbook or not?
Here's a question for you good folks: should we adopt the term "netbook" for what we otherwise tend to refer to as "low-cost subnotebooks"?
I refer of course to things like the Asus Eee, or the MSI Wind, or the HP Mini-Note. You know, the cheap, little laptops that you'll pretty much just be using for surfing the web.
Is the term "netbook" just jargon (it was coined by Intel this February), or is it useful shorthand for what is pretty clearly a whole new market? Over to you...
Friday 11 April 2008, 11:02 AM
Fujitsu goes wooden
Fed up with plastic or magnesium alloy notebooks? How about a wooden one? That's what Fujitsu is showing at the 'Japan Design 2008 - Innovation' show, which runs from April 16 to 20 in Milan as part of of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, an interior design trade show (the world's largest, it says here).
Pity the keyboard isn't wooden too, but the system does use environmentally friendly bio-based plastics, as seen in the slightly more conventional FMV-BIBLO NX95Y/D:
It may not be quite so green, but what we'd like is a perspex laptop honeycombed with tubes filled with a selection of transparent brightly coloured liquids that move around as the system heats up a sort of Liquid Len-top, for those of a certain vintage. Oh dear, it must be nearly the weekend...
Monday 17 March 2008, 3:20 PM
Who's your IT Community Hero?
Tis the season for us at ZDNet Towers to start thinking about planning the CNET Networks UK Business Technology Awards, which celebrate the past year's tech successes (and are an excuse for a great party). This year, we're adding a new category: the IT Community Hero, given to reward community efforts within the tech industry. While we have our ideas, what are yours? Here are the criteria:
The winner will be the person, team or organisation who has done the most to make the lives and jobs of people in IT easier and more productive through building connections and fostering a sense of community. The judges will be looking for a strong community focus on IT through inclusivity, outreach and collaboration. Evidence of actual benefits to and active participation by community members is important.
You can suggest anybody you can make a case for--from a usergroup admin to a top exec, from an open-source leader to a corporation. Just post a comment under this blog with your suggestion, with any URLs that we can check out. If you really appreciate the work someone's been doing, this is your chance to tell everybody about it.
Wednesday 12 March 2008, 10:20 AM
Work yourself fit
I've often wondered where the gym with which CNET Networks UK has a membership deal is located. People head off looking purposeful, and return looking knackered it's never appealed, really. Now, if US company Steelcase gets its way, the gym, or something that looks like it, might make a disturbing appearance right here in the office.
Enter the Walkstation, which is basically a treadmill with a desk attached.
Reassuringly, the Walkstation's inventor, one Dr James Levine, claims "its purpose is not to cause users to raise their heart rates or work up a sweat" just as well, as an approaching deadline does that quite nicely.
Now if this contraption could be wired up to generate electricity, it could be a handy addition to the 'green' office. Perhaps it could directly power the computer on the desk: stop walking, computer dies, no work done, no job...no, let's not go there.
The picture speaks for itself really, but if readers fancy coming up with captions, be my guest!
Wednesday 5 March 2008, 12:23 PM
Want to deliver your blog by RSS? Now you can
Good news--we've added RSS feeds for each ZDNet member's blog, which will make it easier for friends, fans and fellow workers to keep up with your posts. Anyone who wants to can subscribe to the feed and get links to your latest blog entries delivered to their desktop.
You'll find the RSS icon for the individual feed in the top right corner of the member's blog in their profile.
Click on this, and you'll be taken to a page where you can either subscribe to the feed via your browser, or grab the feed URL if you use a standalone RSS reader.
You might have noticed that we've had this feature up and running for a while. We've spent the last few weeks ironing out glitches and making sure it all works smoothly. If it doesn't, let me know. We want to make it easy for you to stay on top of the blogs posted by your contacts or your favourite ZDNet writers.
Of course, we have had feeds for the ZDNet content, such as news and reviews, for much longer. There's an RSS icon on every page, on the top right, that takes you to the list of ZDNet feeds, if you want to check that out. (We also have plans for a revamped system of alerts for all of our content--watch this space for news.)
If you're new to RSS, visit the FeedBurner Help Center, which has a good FAQ. Or you can send me questions, comments or concerns through the ZDNet message system or by emailing community.manager@zdnet.co.uk
Tuesday 26 February 2008, 12:40 PM
Any answers?
It's frustrating to be stumped by a problem that you suspect has been solved already, but you can't find the answer. So if you've got a moment, and if you're feeling generous, take a look at these queries from ZDNet UK members and see whether you can help out. I'm sure a lot of our members will be grateful.
-- "Is Microsoft DFS (Distributed File System) a good or bad thing? What are the benefits?"
-- "I have written a script which when run on a client workstation will download a registry file to set cleanmgr settings. BUT..although I set up the tasks originally to run as a network administrator, the tasks that end up on the workstation are set to run as the local user. Any ideas anyone?"
Friday 22 February 2008, 4:38 PM
Winner finds depth in wide-screen monitor
Here's a nice illustration of the capabilities of the Hazro wide-format display, the lead-off prize in our 12 Days of Christmas competition, courtesy of winner Geoff Oakshott. You can see not just how the monitor has more scope widthways, but also how its resolution can show enough detail to let you go "deep" with your images.
Here's Geoff's description of the photo: "At last, using Canon Remote Capture and after only 30 attempts(!), we have the 'shot within a shot' effect I have been trying to achieve. There are four quite clearly visible, with a fifth that shows up by zooming in to the left on the original 5MB TIFF."
Congratulations to Geoff, and thanks to everyone who took part in the competition series. Keep checking the competition page, as we should have more coming soon.
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