Blogging can be a wonderful thing. Firms are exploring it in their droves as an informal but structured way of interacting with their customers. Technology vendors such as Google use the medium to keep followers up to speed with the latest developments in their labs, while other firms employ the tool to create what they hope will be lasting relationships with their customers.

And then there are C-list celebrities who post pictures of their wives' cleavage on the internet, by way of a boast. Paul Daniels has appeared approximately three times on the telly since his hit 80s magic show disappeared off the goggle box forever. One of these occasions was a warts-and-all Louis Theroux documentary, and the other was an episode of Chris Morris' biting satire Brass Eye. In said programme, the well meaning magic man was tricked into making an on-air charity appeal to raise money to save an elephant which had unfortunately got its trunk lodged up its own bottom.

Well, Daniels is back....and this time he's blogging. Although Sneak can find very little value in the photos he has posted on his blog of wife Debbie, posing as a dog, and another pic Paul took when 'she wasn't looking'. Erm, do we like it? Not a lot.

January 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can you think of anything worse than having any of today's television stars in your living room?

Sneak can't either, the thought of sharing sofa space with Ross Kemp or Noel Edmomds is rather similar to the thought of sharing an airless tank with some skunks wielding razor blades. Rather unpleasant to say the least.

Sadly, their presence - that is Ross and Noel not the skunks - could soon be felt at home as Sky Television is apparently planning to unleash them on unsuspecting viewers, in 3D virtual form at least.

According to a report in the Times newspaper, Gerry O'Sullivan, Sky director of strategic product development, recently said that a 3D television service "could be launched any time in the next two years".

Users will be expected to still wear 3D glasses of some form, and given that boxing is high on the 3D agenda, as apparently it is easy to film, gum shields too.

January 30, 2009 Television | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak recently acquired a satellite navigation device for his car for the first time, and eagerly took the opportunity to test it out when required by his significant other to perform chauffeur duty to a hospital outpatient department some miles away.

The experience certainly proved interesting. For one thing, the device - manufactured by one of the biggest names in sat nav - doesn't seem to believe that Sneak's house exists. The correct road is shown on the on-screen map display, but it only seems to show the location of even-numbered addresses.

As Sneak's road is one of those quirky streets where the even-numbered houses are actually at the opposite end of the road about half a mile away from the odd-numbered ones, this sheds light on puzzling phone calls from delivery van drivers in the past ("Err, where are you? I'm where your house should be, but it isn't here....").

While the sat nav got a fix on Sneak's location impressively quickly after being switched on, it had somewhat unimpressive ideas on the best route to reach the dual carriageway on the other side of town.

In fact, the sat nav plotted a route leading more or less straight through the middle of town. This isn't a good idea at the best of times, but especially not on a busy Saturday, so ignoring the first part of the route, Sneak set off in the hope that the device would adjust its advice to match his current heading.

Instead, the sat nav kept issuing urgent instructions to turn round and head back towards the starting point. For several miles it kept saying things like "In 200 yards, turn left," as Sneak approached a junction that would lead towards the centre of town and certain entanglement in a huge traffic jam.

Even when the dual carriageway had been reached, the plaintive voice kept issuing instructions that would have led Sneak in the opposite direction from the destination, had they been followed. By this time, Sneak was risking an accident by frantically poking the touch-screen of the device to try and force it to recalculate a route from the current position.

Eventually, Sneak managed to impose his will on the blasted device and got it to navigate safely to the hospital. However, it still seems to think that Sneak lives in a field, as the GPS co-ordinates set as "home" do not correspond to any house address the sat-nav is aware of. Maybe it needs an update - after all, Sneak's house was only built in the Fifties, and the digital mapmakers may not have had time to catch up yet....

January 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

So a fair few people tuned in to see the inauguration of America's first black president, Barack Obama yesterday. As historic events go, it was pretty historic, Sneak reckons, probably a nine or ten on the historic scale. And yet some high-profile sites still managed to fail to build in enough extra capacity to cope with the spike in visitors. Sigh.

When will they learn, eh? So says web hosting firm Hostway, one of the first to jump in and warn firms that "they run the very real risk of viewers going elsewhere" if IT teams can't cope with these events without their sites going down.

Sneak couldn't agree more. One particularly high-profile site, which might or might not be an anagram of BCB, was stuttering like Gareth Gates during the historic event. Now this site is probably not going to suffer too much from a one-off like this, but others may find their customers a little less forgiving in future.

In defence of web site owners everywhere, however, most appear to have done pretty well to cope with the massive demand. According to Arbor Networks, video streaming of the ceremony resulted in a 40 per cent increase in activity for some American service providers; one of the single largest one-day spikes in Internet traffic since the firm began monitoring five years ago. Ouch.

January 21, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Marko Calasan from Macedonia has become the youngest certified computer systems administrator, at eight-years old.

Yes, while other eight-year old boys are outside playing conkers, or inside playing Grand Theft Auto, Marko has been learning how to administrate computer systems.

"I'd like to be a computer scientist when I grow up and create a new operational system," he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The boy's mother, who runs a computer school, adds, "He is obviously extraordinary gifted, but children above the age of six could learn much more about computers than generally assumed." We can only presume that she said this while standing under a sign for her computer school and holding a number of application forms.

Cynicism aside, perhaps this is the way forward. Let's breed a generation of children who are equipped and qualified to work in systems administrator jobs from a very early age. Given their age they are sure to be cheap, and given the number of youngsters that hang around Sneak's local shops, there is an everlasting supply of the little blighters.

As office workers they might need a few daytime naps, and have the occassional sugar rush, but don't we all?

As one great lady* once said, I believe that children are the future.

*Our lawyers point out that it was Whitney Houston. We sincerely apologise for misleading vnunet.com readers by describing her in this manner.

January 19, 2009 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

A shining example of how to launch a web site - and how not to - have surfaced this week.

Yesterday the National Archives and findmypast.com launched an online version of the 1911 census. The site contains the records of 27 million people, including famous figures such as Virginia Woolf and future Prime Minister David Lloyd George, with a further nine million due to be added in the coming months.

The web site attracted millions of visitors in its first hours of going online, but the launch was a success. Sneak visited the site a few times throughout the day to see if it stayed up and running and was able to access the census records and carry out searches on each occasion.

The launch of the 1911 census was in stark contrast to the online launch of the 1901 version. Sneak remembers trying to access the 1901 census site on the day it went live back in 2002, and for days after, with no success at all. In fact, the site was taken down soon after its launch because it could not cope with the unexpected high demand. The National Archives clearly learned a lesson from past mistakes and put in safeguards this time around to ensure that the 1911 site coped with the demand.

The Queensland tourism agency could have benefited from some tips from the National Archives web site team ahead of launching its latest initiative.

Dubbed the "Best Job in the World", Tourism Queensland is offering one lucky applicant an AUD $150,000 (£68,000) contract to live on Hamilton Island for six months and report back on their experiences via blogs and video links, in a bid to entice other visitors to Queensland and its surrounding islands.

The web site set up to support the recruitment process received 200,000 visitors in the first 24 hours of going live, but it could not cope with the huge demand and the site was still down when Sneak last tried to access it this afternoon.

Queensland tourism minister Desley Boyle was keen to point out that this was a genuine recruitment process for an important job:

"He or she will be required to live in an oceanfront villa, undertake a range of activities such as swimming, snorkelling, bushwalking and exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef," she said. "They'll need to make friends with the locals and really get to know the destination and then report back on their experiences via blogs, video diaries and media interviews."

Yeah, sounds like a really tough life.

For any vnunet.com readers keen on a career change from IT professional to beach bum, the application process is open until 22 February and full details are available on the Island Reef web site.

January 14, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Daily Mail has got all excited about a revolution in technology that it says spells the end of RSI.

"Help is now at hand for the thousands of office workers who suffer from repetitive strain injury in their hands and arms," the paper says, before adding rather disappointingly, "A computer mouse operated by your feet."

There is a nagging idea at the back of our minds that perhaps this will only send the problem down below the deskline, but who are we to judge? We get someone else to do the mouse clicking anyway.

The foot mouse, which is made and designed by Keytools but doesn't actually appear on their web site at the moment, uses a slipper that you wear to control movement and a couple of pedals to replace the old left and right click buttons.

Keytools company sales manager Phil Guest is quoted as saying, "As the number of employees working intensively with computers has increased, so has attention to their workstation environment become more significant. Musculoskeletal disorders amongst computer users now occur on such a scale that the cost of lost work time and the sourcing of occupational health support services has become a serious issue. The foot mouse is a great way to cut down the risk of suffering from one of these disorders."

Having seen the pictures, and worked with human beings, we suspect that the foot pedal will only be used by a few office workers who have specific medical problems that we should not be sniggering at. But we can spare a chuckle for the Daily Mail staffers that are forced to wear them.

January 12, 2009 Science, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak discovered this week that IT professionals get a very hard time at work. New research from IT support firm Connect found that a quarter of them in SMBs suffer from physical or verbal abuse at work. In addition, a third said they have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours.

Now the last couple of stats could probably be applied to any job, but the first one? Ouch. Given that info, it's probably not surprising that a quarter said they would rather have a different career.

But now the flip side. IT workers can also bite-back, especially if they think they have been badly done to. A disgruntled IT worker was this week convicted of hacking into his former employers' network and planting spyware on his ex-colleagues' PCs, after he lost his database developer job.

The lesson to learn here is probably treat your staff nice, because hell hath no fury like an IT professional scorned. Or it would be if the guy in question hadn't lied about his qualifications and experience when he applied for the job in the first place.

January 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

In our always on, 24/7/365 modern-day culture, there are few places where one can be assured of being left in peace. Or to put it another way, there should be very few impediments left to staff productivity.

Thanks to advances in mobile phone technology which have transformed the little talkie device in our pocket into a small computer, remote workers can get down to some serious number crunching no matter where they are. And no matter where they are, they're always just a call away from the office.

Aircraft, underground train systems and hospitals have for their own various reasons been exempt from this little trend of course, much to the frustration of middle managers everywhere. But now finally, one of these last bastions of peace and quiet is set to fall, after ministers today said that NHS Trusts should allow patients, staff and visitors the "widest possible use" of their phones.

Although the Department of Health has stated that mobiles should continue to be banned where they may interfere with critical hospital equipment, it has now been decreed that they could give patients a vital lifeline to the outside world, to make their stay less stressful. That is, Sneak suspects, unless work calls while you're recovering from that nasty hernia operation.

January 6, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)