The Machets’ Blog

Rumour had it that Google was about to launch a new calendar service. This turns out to be true, as Paul Stone has discovered. He came across another program called Google Links, where you can customise shortcuts and add them to the top of the webpage. One of the links you could add is called “Google CL2.” Under it, the text “A calendar for you and the world” can be found. Unfortunately, it cannot be accessed at this time. This proves that an excellent new service from Google will be coming our way soon. As soon as it’s released, we’ll write a review on The Machets’ Blog.

Edit 2/3/06: The link removed as it no longer works.
Update 28/6/06: Google Calendar has been released; you can find our review of it here.

The Machets’ Blog has just been upgraded to the new version of Wordpress, a powerful blogging system. From the outside, it doesn’t look very different, but when log in, you will notice all the changes.

Thanks to this upgrade, you can expect to see some new features and additions to our blog coming in the near future. Until then!

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail your mate who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
6. When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
7. When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial “0″ to get an outside line.
8. You’ve sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
10. You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o’clock news.
11. Your boss doesn’t have the ability to do your job.
12. Contractors outnumber permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.

And the real clinchers are…

13. You read this entire list, and kept nodding and smiling.
14. As you read this list, you think about forwarding it to your “friends”.
15. You first received this in an e-mail from a friend that never talks to you any more, except to send you jokes from the net.
16. You are too busy to notice there was no No. 9.

Name: Site Advisor Price: Free

As you know, there are many insecure and unsafe websites out there. Malware, the name for adware, spyware and viruses, can be installed while you are visiting a website. This can happen without your consent and knowledge. A new extension for both Firefox and Internet Explorer has become available that alerts you if you come across an unsafe website. In addition to this, Site Advisor will tell you how many emails you will receive if you subscribe to their newsletter or contact form. This way you can be sure that you are not going to be spammed.

Site Advisor’s simplicity is what takes it that one step further. When you are searching for websites on Google, a small green tick is visible next to websites that meet the program’s ’secure’ standards. If the website leads to bad downloads, will send you spam and/or carries annoyances such as pop ups, a red cross can be seen next to the link to the website.

Upon installation, a small box sits in Internet Explorer or Firefox, and changes from the two ‘good and bad’ colours while you are browsing a website. If you click the box, you are taken to Site Advisor’s website which gives you information about the website in question. For instance, if you wanted to see whether The Machets’ Website is ’safe’ and ’secure,’ by clicking the green box you would be taken to this page.

Overall, Site Advisor is an excellent program that will hopefully reduce spam and attacks on your computer. We have given this tiny yet extremely powerful program a five out of five. The program can be downloaded here. Be sure to get it.

A zookeeper approaches three boys standing near the lions’ cage and asks them their names and what they’re up to.

The first boy says, “My name’s Tommy and I was trying to feed peanuts to the lions.”

The second boy says, “My name’s Billy and I was trying to feed peanuts to the lions.”

The third boy says, “My name is Peanuts.”

A manager walks into his office and sees a blonde crying. He approaches her and asks why she’s crying. She tells him she just found out her mother died. The manager tells her to go to take the rest of the day off and not to worry about work. Later, the manager calls the blonde to see how she’s doing. The blonde is crying harder than before. He tries to console her, but he couldn’t. The blonde says, “I was calling everyone to let them know about my mother’s death and I found out something horrible.” “What?” the manager replied. “I found out my sister’s mom died too!”

Microsoft has stepped back in the game with the upcoming release of Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 (IE or IE7). I have had the chance to beta test it. From what can be seen, IE7 will be a very successful program. It offers many security features and useful enhancements such as tabbed browsing.

At first glance, the new browser looks very different to its predecessors. Most noticeably, there are far fewer buttons. Microsoft has realised that most buttons are rarely or never used and have only kept the important ones such as Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop and others. A new feature that goes a step beyond its competitors is the look and feel of the new RSS button. When you visit a website that is RSS compatible (like The Machets’ Blog), IE7 lets you know. You can then subscribe to the feed and are able to view latest posts and articles.

Internet Explorer 7’s new security features take the browser to all new levels. The program includes a phishing filter and popup blocker, and alerts you when you download something in a way that it won’t be easily dismissed. Its phishing filter is aimed at preventing online fraud. Phishing is when a criminal makes a website that looks like your bank’s or like eBay or PayPal. You are sent an email which states something along the lines of “We need to confirm your personal details. Please visit this link to login. If you don’t do this, your account will be canceled.” Once you type in your account name and password, they can do virtually whatever they like. IE7 alerts you when you arrive at such a page thus preventing such fraud.

With IE7, websites you visit should never change your homepage or other settings, unless you want them to. The updated software prevents your settings from being changed, however if worst came to worst, you can easily revert back to your previous, original or the default settings. These security enhancements help to make Internet Explorer a much more secure and safe browser.

Now, let’s move onto the features that you will really enjoy. As previously stated, the browser now supports tabbed browsing, meaning that all your windows are combined into one. One of the best features added is enhanced printing. With IE7, you will no longer print pages with text cut off on the right. Web pages are automatically scaled to fit the paper. You can also choose how large or small you would like the text. By clicking a button, you will soon be able to include or remove the website link at the bottom of the page. Finally, printing webpages in landscape or portrait doesn’t mean sifting through many menus - it’s a button on the print preview page.

Internet Explorer offers many great features that will certainly make like easier. The bad part is that it’s only available to Windows 2000, XP and Vista customers, but in this case the good things outstrip the bad by a lot. You can expect to see IE7 towards the end of this year. For web developers, a public beta has become available from the Microsoft website.

An 80 year old woman was arrested for shop lifting. When she went before the judge he asked her, “What did you steal?”

She replied, “A can of peaches”. The judge asked her why she had stolen them and she replied that she was hungry. The judge then asked her how many peaches were in the can. She replied, “6″.

The judge then said, “I will give you 6 days in jail.”

Before the judge could actually pronounce the punishment, the woman’s husband spoke up and asked the judge if he could say something. The Judge said, “What is it?”

The husband said, “She also stole a can of peas.”

There are many different toolbars available to enhance your internet experience, but the fact is that there are few that actually live up to their hype. The best toolbar available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox is the Google Toolbar.

The Google Toolbar allows you to search websites instantly. That’s right - no need to type in www.googl… What is even better is that you can also search Google Images, Localised Search, News or your Gmail account if you have one. Again, you do not need to change pages to access the various searches. The toolbar comes with many other features as well, including a spell checker and the ability to have your personal details typed into to online forms automatically (auto-fill).

Yesterday, Google released an updated version of their toolbar for Internet Explorer, where you can do all of the aforementioned tasks as well as bookmark and view webpages, and email a webpage to someone. The new toolbar allows you to add and delete features that various companies create that make life simpler and easier, such as searching articles on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, the Google Toolbar developers tend to lean closer to Internet Explorer (IE) as far as updates and features go. This is probably due to IE’s design flaws and bugs. For example, up until recently the Microsoft browser had no inbuilt pop-up blocker. Still today, many users have not downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 2 which contained the crucial update. Windows 2000 users and before cannot download the latest version of IE which includes one. The toolbar includes a blocker in Internet Explorer that is very successful and user-friendly. As Firefox already has a pop-up blocker, the feature is unavailable. Google has also not developed a Firefox version (4 - the latest) of the toolbar.

The Google Toolbar is a very worthwhile addition to both IE and Firefox. IE users will find it more useful than Firefox simply because of the browser’s inability to perform. We have decided to give the Google Toolbar for IE a rating of 5 out of 5; the Google Toolbar for Firefox receives a 4 out of five.

You can download the toolbar for IE for free here, or the toolbar for Firefox here. If you are still stuck using IE6, try Firefox with the Google Toolbar by clicking the button below.
Google announced the Google Toolbar for IE version 4 yesterday on the Official Google Blog.

Average of both versions.