January, 2011

Last year we moved from the Firefox browser to Google Chrome; and boy is it fast! One thing we have missed though is the ability to subscribe to various RSS feeds to get the latest news and updates from our various favourite websites. In Firefox, we could do this by just clicking on the RSS logo and asking Firefox to dock the feed onto the top navigation bar as shown here:

We really missed this functionality in Chrome, so asked our friend and the guy that actually pushed us to move over to Chrome (Steven McCullagh) if there was a plug-in available to add this feature onto Chrome. Well there is!

RSS Live Links is the plug-in of choice that lets you do almost the exact same things as the default Firefox options let you do. There are however, many more benefits with the RSS Live Links plug-in.

RSS Live Links not only displays your chosen feeds in a neat and tidy way (rather than consuming your entire navigation bar at the top of your browser) but it also offers a plethora of functionality such as opening all unread news feeds, audio notification when a new article is posted, and a ridiculous amount of customisation features that really lets you view your RSS feeds how you want to.

Google Chrome is a web-browser produced and developed by the people at Google. If you’ve not already tried it, and you’re still stuck on a slow clunky browser, why not spend half an hour today giving it a whirl? Google Chrome can be downloaded here.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced he will go on medical leave from his position. Jobs had surgery in 2004 for pancreatic cancer, which medical experts have said explains the liver transplant.

“My family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy,” said Jobs.

He did not reveal specifics about why he had been given time off.

“At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company,” he told employees.

Apple stock fell about 6% trading Monday following the news. Investors will have to digest the news about the chief executive as well as the latest earnings for the Christmas season. If this turns out to be a temporary leave of absence, for comparatively minor medical reasons, then this shouldn’t have much effect on your shares. But if the absence is longer and the problem more severe, who knows what will happen to Apple!

Steve’s email in full is as follows:

Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve

Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703396604576088143564482196.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/17/steve_jobs_medical_leave_apple/

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/01/18/244943/Steve-Jobs-takes-medical-leave-from-Apple.htm

Google has updated the SLA for its Google Apps suite so that they no longer make excuses for scheduled maintenance. Meaning that ANY dwntime, no matter how little, will be recognised as downtime and applied to the agreement with the customer.

At present, when Google alert users to “Scheduled Downtime”, this downtime is not covered under the SLA and the end-user has no retribution via the SLA for a refund.

Google have now fine-tuned their highly-distributed infrastructure so that servers can be taken offline one-at a time or in multiples and the end-user wont notice. This is nothing new however, Google have been able to do this for a while now, but have never included this kind of interruption as part of their SLA.

Now, should a service be made unavailable at Google’s end as a result of this downtime, the end-user is well within their rights to demand compensation under their SLA.

In 2010, the company says, Gmail was available to business users and consumers over 99.9 per cent of the time. This equated to about seven minutes of downtime per month. During that period, there was no scheduled downtime for end users.

Microsoft are currently rolling out a competing cloud-based product, Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which is intended to bring the Office suite onto the web with phenomenal new features and services. As avid Google Apps users, we’ve just started trialling the BPOS service from Microsoft and will post an update with our findings in due course.

It was revealed in a recent study today that almost one in ten children are actually ‘addicted’ to their video games. The study showed that greater amounts of gaming, lower social competence, and greater impulsivity seemed to act as risk factors for becoming pathological gamers, whereas depression, anxiety, social phobias, and lower school performance seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming.

The study adds important information to the discussion about whether video game “addiction” is similar to other addictive behaviors, demonstrating that it can last for years and is not solely a symptom of comorbid disorders. (Study: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2010-1353v1 )

In the 2-year study of more than 3,000 school children in Singapore, researchers found nearly one in ten were video game “addicts,” and most were stuck with the problem. (Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70G15J20110117?pageNumber=1 )

Douglas Gentile, who runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University said: “When children became addicted, their depression, anxiety, and social phobias got worse, and their grades dropped,”

But an independent expert said the study had important flaws.

“My own research has shown that excessive video game play is not necessarily addictive play and that many video gamers can play for long periods without there being any negative detrimental effects,” said Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.

“If nine percent of children were genuinely addicted to video games there would be video game addiction clinics in every major city!” he said in an e-mail, adding that the concept is not currently an accepted diagnosis among psychiatrists and psychologists.

Part of the problem, Griffiths argued, is that the new work may be measuring preoccupation instead of addiction.

The computer age has brought many wonderful conveniences, but along with those conveniences come some unexpected issues. One of the biggest issues is having something terrible happen to your computer and losing everything. For those who live in Scotland one of the best moves they can make is to enter into an IT support contract Edinburgh style. This will give you the support you need if and when technology takes you for a run for your money. Knowing that your information is safe from harm is a big weight off your shoulders.

The unexpected is one of the biggest reasons that computer users of all calibres should have backups of all of their important files and programs. This will ensure that if something happened the person would be protected. They would be able to retrieve the important information that was on the computer even if the computer does not work at all. This is vital to keeping information safe for future use. Choosing to use a backup system is a smart business and personal move. This information can be backed up on a daily basis at regular intervals to ensure that you are saving the most current information. If you have an IT support contract Edinburgh IT professionals can help you set up a system that will work for your schedule.

Choosing to backup your important information and systems is one of the ways that an IT support contract Edinburgh style can give you the security you need in business and personal computing. There are a number of excellent backup systems to choose from when deciding how to back up your computer systems. Your options will be based on the size of the system you are backing up and how much information you want to backup as well as how often you intend to use the system.

When using a computer it is very important to remember that everything that you put in the computer is not necessarily tucked away safely. If anything were to happen it would take a miracle to get your information back if you didn’t have a backup system in place. This having been said, having an IT support contract Edinburgh IT professionals can offer you is one way to ensure that you have the protection behind you that you need to ensure that that your information is safe. This is one of the most effective means of protecting your information and your systems.