Electric newspapers through your geeky mailbox

Every saturday morning, a copy of my local rag (The Argus, it's not life changing, but it's local and I love it. Don't judge me, I can see you judging me from here.) drops to the in my hallway. I stagger down the stairs, I open the door and lean down to pick up the milk and the paper, then retreat unsteadily to the kettle.
I like this process, I'm not about to change it, but it's not the only way I get my news hit these days. I peruse the websites of the BBC, Piston Heads, and a wide range of websites that make me chuckle.

For some time now, there's been a brilliant way to keep up to date though. Whatever the content, and whatever (gizmo) you decide to read with.
However, it seems to just be used by us nerds, and I think you lot'd really like it too! So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the glory of RSS feeds!
Cue the tumbleweed.

Honestly though, it's great. Lunchtime comes around, and I just wander over to Google Reader and catch up on the internet at large.
I've set it up to feed me all the news articles I might like to see from various sources. It shows me what's going on in my social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. New stuff for sale on eBay that I might care to place a bid on, the latest books for my Kindle App that might be of interest, how the traffic's doing on the M25, gigs, films, recipies....... Phew, my fingers ache from typing all this stuff. You get the point, all the information I'd like to keep tabs on, delivered, categorised, and summarised for my reading convenience.

The fact that I can then download the Google Reader app onto my Android phone, or just browse to the mobile version of the site, means that Google was always going to be my favourite.
That's not to say it's your only choice of course, you can even subscribe in your browser. FireFox, Internet Explorer and all the main contenders all support it.

So I'll finish here with a little list of RSS feeds you could consider subscribing to (including all of mine of course!), and a little list of ways to read them.
I must stop here, I could rant on and on about the many reasons you need RSS in your life. The main one being that in this speedy, on demand, instant gratification world, it fits right in. Cheesetastic.

Don't forget, whenever you see the RSS icon (it looks like this , so keep your eyes peeled), you can click it to subscribe!

Some feeds for you to peruse....

• BBC News, UK Edition - UK newsfeed from the good old BBC. They just summarise each article, and you click it to read it.
• Latest news from The Guardian - These guys actually deliver full articles via RSS, great if you're on the move!
• Private Eye - Ian Hislop and his merry men, taking on the world at large.
• The Argus - Well I couldn't let you go without cramming a bit more of this down your RSS hole now could I?
• News Biscuit - It's like the news, but there's something different about it...
• Radio Times tv highlights - What's good on TV tonight dear? Dunno love, I'll check the RSS.
• Piston Heads car stuff - The latest and greatest news in the world of motoring
• Kindle Bestsellers - OK, well just 'cos they're selling well, doesn't make 'em good. Still, might be nice.
• One Sentence stories - Does what it says on the tin, people send in a story. It's only a sentence. The published ones end up in here!
• White Ninja Comics - He's a Ninja. He's none too bright. I like it.

Some feeds I made m'self!

• This Blog! - Well it had to be, really. By the way, blogs and RSS go together like peas and carrots. Just so's you know. Like a blog? RSS it.
• FossWeb.net website updates - Little changes I make to the site, that I think you might like.
• My Flickr photos - Photos I put on the internet, get spoonfed to you right away. Nice.
• My Twitter feed - Tiny drunken announcements. Usually.
• YouTube videos - Whatever videos I upload, you'll hear about 'em first.

Some things to read some feeds....

• Google Reader - Despite a few annoyances, this is my favourite by far.
• Your web browser does it. If you've got the latest versions of FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera etc. You can use 'em all to read your feeds!
• Your e-mail client does it too. Thunderbird, Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook to name but a few.
• iTunes - yes, it's true. Use your iTunes account to read your stuff!
• The WikiPedia RSS reader comparison is good, but only if you're taking this terribly seriously.

Keeping your PC all nice and clean (on the inside, not with a vacuum cleaner)

Some simple tuning gubbins you can do is to use the built in system maintainance tools to clean up. Such as the rather exciting sounding "Disk Cleanup" tool you can find on your start menu. Run it, tick as many or as few boxes as you like and press OK. I use this gizmo about once a month to keep on top of things.

Another toy you can find on your start menu is the Disk Defragmenter. This is a little bit like organising all the cr@p in your loft! Putting it in sensible places and grouping similar rubbish together.
It takes a long time to run, and it's very intensive work for your hard disk drive. So I only do this twice a year.

You might also want to run an error check against your hard drives. Just in case they're starting to degrade.
Usually, you'll have to reboot to do a full scan, and depending on a few things, it can take a long time to complete!

To start these tools, right click on the drive you'd like to scan from My Computer and choose Properties.
You'll find the cleanup tool on the General tab, and the other two in the Tools tab.

I could do with a nice cup of tea and a sit down after that.

Nerds only: Android App Inventor, amazing.

OK, so I've not got round to doing anything useful with it yet. I still needed to tell anyone who's listening that this is amazing!

Even a monkey can write their own apps now. Are you a monkey, well, are you?

Click me to read all about it properly.

Geeks guide to Android phones, People management

So, you've bought a nice shiny new Google / Android phone, possibly even because I ranted so much about how brilliant mine is. Now you're not really sure what I was harping on about. If it was me, then there's a good chance you bought the HTC Desire.
Here's a few things to get you started on making the most of it. I'll assume you've already connected your phone to any Google or social networking accounts you use, as that doesn't seem to be a problem for
anyone.

First things first. People.
This phone makes managing vast numbers of contacts so nice and easy. Partly thanks to very slick Google synching so I'd recommend keeping your contacts stored in your Google account on your phone.
If you're not sure, run the People app, open the menu, then click 'View'.
This should show you all available contact sources (SIM, Phone, Google, Facebook etc etc). It'll also have a nice little count in brackets of how many contacts you have stored in each source. I wasn't going to do anything with this, just show you that it's there. You can cancel it now.

1. So if you've got information scattered across your SIM and Phone, you may as well move it into Google.
2. Hit menu again but choose Import/Export.
3. Choose Export to SD card and select SIM, then do the same again but choose Phone.
4. Once these are both done, start Import/Export again but this time choose Import from SD card.
5. Choose your Google account then wait while it searches for the export files you just created.
6. When prompted, select Import multiple vCard files and click OK.
7. Tick each of the files you just created and click OK.
8. You'll have some duplicates now, so best to delete them.
9. Choose View from the menu again and untick everything except Phone and SIM, click OK to confirm this.
10. From the menu, choose Delete.
11. Now you've got a list of all the duplicates, open the menu and choose Select all.
12. You can then click the delete button to remove them all.
13. Now all your contacts are only stored in Google. Ta-da!

• For those that like you're social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter etc etc), you can link a facebook account to a contact in your address book. Very handy. This means that if they're calling you and it's nearly their birthday for instance, your phone will remind you about it on the screen.
• If you're feeling properly geeky, you can now use Google Contacts (http://www.google.com/contacts) online to manage your phone book. There's a find duplicates button to help you clean things up a bit, and it'll integrate with Google Picasa so that anyone it's face recognition gizmo has found, can be assigned to a contact. So their face will appear when they call you. Nice touch.

So let's see if you survived that ok, I'll leave it a week or so and then you can try something else...

For Sale - Tiny little netbook

Here we have a very well looked after little Asus EeePc 900.
It comes with the charger, and a very handy CD to reset it to factory settings (I've run this to clear the old data from the laptop). These don't actually come with a CD drive, so if you ever want to use this yourself, you'll need an external USB CD drive.
The battery won't charge anymore, but you can get one from Amazon for £30 or so.
Here's the spec to the best of my knowledge:

• Operating system : Genuine Windows® XP
• Processor : Intel® Celeron M 353
• RAM : 512MB DDR2 SO-DIMM (I can upgrade this to 2gb for an extra £15)
• Storage : 12GB flash drive
• Screen : 8.9", LED Backlit, 1024x600 resolution
• Webcam : 1.3M Pixels
• Networking :  802.11b/g wireless, 10/100mbps wired
• Weight : 990g (2.19lbs)
• Physical size : 225mm(W) x 170mm(D) x 20~33.8mm(H)

All this for only £80! Bargain. Get in touch if you want it.

For Sale - Wireless all in one printer and scanner

Here we have a nice Canon Pixma MP560 printer and scanner. It's wireless, comes packed up in the box and has all the cartridges fitted.

It's been used for a week or so before the buyer decided they'd prefer a smaller unit as it took up a lot of the desk! This is pretty much the same unit I've got, except it's wireless only and mine's got wires. I'm a geek, I still like wires.

So Given that I don't know what the cartridges are like now, I'm selling this for a snip at £100, a whole £75 less than a new one from Amazon. Get in touch if you're interested.

• Click here to have a look at this unit on Amazon, saves me typing it all up!
• Click here to see an ink pack.
• You know it makes sense, drop me an e-mail and take it out of my lounge!

How to hold down your RAM (this is nothing to do with sheep).

This is my suggested first avenue when you lot complain about slow PCs, you can just tidy up your machine a bit so it uses a little less RAM.


All the software that loads when you turn the PC on is a huge killer of RAM. Most of it's because you want it to of course, iTunes will load in secret so it can help you out when you plug your iPod in. If you're happy to manually turn iTunes on when you plug it in, you can save a little bit of memory by stopping iTunes from loading when you turn the PC on.

This gizmo's handy ( http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe ) as it'll tell you exactly what's happening on your PC at any given moment.
It's got the added feature that you can right click on anything you don't recognise and choose Search Online, this might help you find out a bit more about what you're messing with.
Just to labour my point though, if you don't understand it, leave it alone until you do understand it.


So, back to tidying stuff. First port of call, the Control Panel. From here you can select the Remove Programs option and browse for stuff you don't need anymore. If you don't know what it is, don't remove it!
If you put it there, and you don't use it, remove it. The more software you remove, the faster your PC goes.

If you'd like to see what software's loaded when you boot your machine, click here http://live.sysinternals.com/autoruns.exe and choose Run.
99% of the list that appears will be completely alien to you, don't worry about it, just don't turn off stuff you don't understand. In case it's imporant!
If you're sure you don't want something to load, untick it. Simple as that.

Next, what paranoid security stuff have you got installed? If my opinion, the likes of Norton AntiVirus and McAfee have a lot to answer for. So I get rid of them straight away. They can be replaced by a lightweight and FREE (yes, that's right, free!) virus scanner like AVG Free (which is my favourite), or Avast. The only downside is that they'll try to sell you their own extra paranoia software every six months or so. Not a problem in my book. I may even buy it one day, just to say thanks for all the free stuff!


That's the raw basics of making the most of the machine you've got, without spending more cash on it.
The more you learn about each of these little areas, the less you'll have to spend!
 
All this typing's made me hungry, I'm off.