I’m all for silver surfing, and with the positive impact it appears to have had on the life of this 78-year-old widower over his YouTubing career, perhaps it’s something we should be positively encouraging.

For the uninitiated, here’s his first Vlog:

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/silveryoutube.flv” /]

Good for him. And before someone makes the obvious joke, no, he’s not my alter ego.

This morning, having seen posts by Mark and Dwight, I’ve been playing with some of Windows Live’s new services, and I’ve been left distinctly underwhelmed.  I don’t mean to be rude, but I just don’t understand why they bothered with many of the products on offer, when they bring nothing new to the market, and really aren’t very good.

First off, I’m writing this in Windows Live Writer.  This is a program which allows me to post things on this blog: Something I’ve done quite successfully without the need for special software 925 time before.  What’s more, it doesn’t even seem to aid me in any way that WordPress doesn’t, and in fact in many ways is worse than WordPress.  For example, where WordPress gives me an exact representation of how my post will look on the blog at the touch of a button, Windows Live Writer helpfully provides an inaccurate estimate with half of the page cut off.  Great. 

There are some advantages: I can use Desktop style keyboard shortcuts, like Ctrl-I, instead of using Alt-I which I inevitably forget to do – but it doesn’t bother with standard Microsoft red-squiggle spell-checking, which is one feature which could actually prove useful.  Alright, it does allow for posting to multiple blogs, but very few people ever do that.  And it does include some handy options when inserting images, like adding shadows (see above) or watermarks, which could be useful for some sites.  

Then there’s Windows Live Messenger, which practically everyone on Earth will inevitably continue to refer to as MSN.  I’ve just upgraded from the latest MSN release, and can see virtually no difference other than a skin-change.  Microsoft is now co-operating with Yahoo, but since I have no-one I want to talk to using this interoperability, it does little more than warm the cockles of my heart with the spirit of friendship and co-operation.  What’s the point?

Next? Windows Live Mail.  This is a huge improvement on the standard Hotmail interface, but it’s still buggy, clunky, slow, and full of big flashy ad banners to drive you crazy.  Gmail’s done it first and done it better, and so have Yahoo with their latest Beta.  What’s the point in Microsoft trying to compete using an inferior product?

Then, tying in with that, Windows Live Mail Desktop, possibly the most cumbersomely named piece of software ever to leave Redmond.  It’s basically the now unsupported Outlook Express, stripped down a bit and given a God-awful skin which includes large flashy banner ads.

The Windows Live Safety Centre took the best part of three hours to assess my laptop, whilst running it reported that it found five viruses, but then the results page said it hadn’t.  So quite what happened there I cannot say.  It’s good to see Microsoft taking security seriously, but I did feel that this product wasn’t up to much, either.  Though for novice users, perhaps it’s better than nothing at all, and I guess it’s good to have everything in one place, but why on Earth choose a web-based place?

Other components, like the live.com personalised homepage, just seem like copies of things competitors have done, and have done better.  But, like with Google’s releases, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of an overall plan here.  It seems like a load of “Ooh, Google’s launching this, we better compete” releases cobbled together under the Windows Live brand.

Maybe if I was a Hotmail aficionado with a terrible MSN Spaces blog then I would be excited by these releases.  And there’s no doubt that they will be the next ‘big thing’, because Microsoft will ram them down our collective throats until we accept them.  But it seems disappointing that a pioneering company like Microsoft can’t produce something better, more worthwhile, and generally more useful, instead of seemingly copying everybody else’s ideas, and copying them badly.

The sjhoward.co.uk toolbar, for Internet Explorer and Firefox, has just undergone a radical makeover… it’s now pretty much a news junkie’s dream!

The feature list, with some of the changes highlighted:

• Improved: Instant access to sjhoward.co.uk from any site on the web, including full search functionality and built-in access to the latest posts
• Improved: Search from anywhere on the web with Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Wikipedia, and more!
• New: Live built-in headlines from more than fifteen of the top UK news sites, updating throughout the day
• New: Live links to hundreds of the latest news videos direct from the BBC and Reuters, constantly updated to give you easy access to the very latest content
• Improved: Links to more than twenty of the most important news sites on the web – with the list growing all the time
• New: The weather forecast for wherever you are throughout the world, always conveniently displayed
• New: An email checker to let you know when new messages are waiting – works with Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and any service with POP3 access
• Privacy protector blocks pop-ups and clears history, cookies, and browser cache on request
• Fully customisable: You choose which components to display, and even add your own!
• Free automatic updates of new features as they become available
• Now available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox

The toolbar is provided completely free of charge. It comes with no spyware or viruses, does not open pop-ups or hijack your searches, and no personal information is required to use the software. This is the fourth version of the sjhoward.co.uk toolbar, which first appeared way back on simonhoward.co.uk as a browser modification, followed shortly by a customised version of Internet Explorer. This was later replaced by an EffectiveBrand toolbar, of which this latest release is the second version.

Current users will be automatically updated (indeed, should already have been automatically updated). New users can download the toolbar here, or get more information here.

Some time ago, Professor Stephen Hawking posted a question on Yahoo Answers asking how the human race could survive the next hundred years. A few days or so later, he (as you might hope for such an intelligent guy) answered his own question with an audio message, which Yahoo have inexplicably combined with a patronising slideshow to create this video:

My first reaction to this news was that, with all that brainpower, you might hope that Prof Hawking would be having happier thoughts. You know, sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, that sort of thing. With a brain the size of his, an awful lot of happiness could fill the space currently occupied, quite clearly, with a whole lot of misery. 😉

Then it occured that the most respected thinkers and philosophers of every society ever (or, at least, quite a few) have predicted the downfall of the human race to be in the near fuure, and it’s not happened yet. What makes the good Prof any different?

Next, it occured to me that it was, perhaps, reassuring that this video was popular enough to make it into the most-watched videos on Yahoo’s site. It shows that people must be interested in the problems which may affect their offspring after their death, that they care for the world in which they live, and actively want to aid the survival of the species.

Then I noticed what was above this video in the chart:

My faith quickly evapourated… but my smile grew.

Live TV… can you think of anything else that can provide this much schadenfreudic entertainment? Watch and enjoy as Windows Vista’s speech recognition is put to the test. And fails, miserably, in front of millions.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/speechrecognition.flv” /]

It’s all a little bit reminiscent of this, which you may remember from eighteen months ago, when Bill Gates himself experienced a Windows failure at the worst of times… But then, doesn’t Windows always fail at the worst of times…?

I’m delighted to see Guardian Unlimited leading the way once again with a brand new feature launched this week: G24. Essentially, this presents a multi-page almost magazine-formatted downloadable PDF digest of the very latest news on the website, so that one can print it off and read the very latest news at one’s leisure.

The G24 (a play on the names of ‘G2’ and ‘G3’ sections of the paper) currently comes in five editions: Top Stories, World, Media, Business, and Sport, each updated every fifteen minutes and containing no more than 10 A4 pages.

The launch is covered in more detail in the Editor’s Week column of today’s Grauniad:

This week Guardian Unlimited launched a new print edition – but unlike any newspaper you’ll have come across before. For a start, its distinguishing features appear to owe more to the world of online news than traditional print. It is updated every few minutes, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is free, and it can be found around the world.

The big difference is that we’re now asking you to, in essence, supply the printing press.

Is this the future of the newspaper? I don’t know. But it’s definitely a service I’ll be using (indeed, it’s one I’d probably be willing to pay for, as I already do for an ad-free Guardian site), and I will be amazed if this isn’t imitated within weeks by competitors.

I think this is a really good idea.

Today’s 4radio Morning Report first highlighted for me the story of Senator Ted Stevens’s rather large gaff (and yes, I know that puts me way behind the curve). The guy in charge of regulating e-commerce in the United States thinks the internet is a series of tubes. Tubes that can be filled and blocked.

Here’s Jon Stewart’s take:
[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/tubes.flv” title=”The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central)” /]
Now my worry is: To whom do I report an internet leak? And if ten people watch that video, my personal internets may be delayed.

This is an interesting question, and one that techies like to debate for hours on end. For the record, I use Firefox with IETab, so that sites that have to use Internet Explorer still can, without needing to bother me. But Firefox isn’t the only browser, and it may not be the best browser for you.

As a webmaster, I’m often pushed in the direction of recommending a browser, whether it’s by pestering you to death through plugins like these, or by incentivising me to point you in the direction of one browser. But, frankly, who am I to say which browser is best for your needs? I don’t even know you!

I think how you want to use the net is up to you. So the philosophy around these parts is to make the site as near to identical as possible whichever browser you might want to use, and also to allow some different methods of access to the site. I’ve just finished the latest little bit of tweaking which now brings the Firefox and IE interpretations of the site design a little closer (the differences now are barely perceptable), and also allows the site to be zoomed more gracefully, so that the fixed-width gives if you want to read at a greater font size.

Of course, the old facilities of listening to the site through the audio links or podcast feed, or even accessing the site via a mobile phone are still available (see the Site Guide for details). And if you like to print a hard copy, go ahead. It will always be formatted for printing automatically. It doesn’t make sense to me for people to worry about whether they’re viewing the ‘Printable Version’ or not. Surely if you’re printing, the printable version is what you’re after – so why put it another click away?

This site is certainly not unique in this kind of design – and, in may ways, this site in particular is far from perfect. But I do wish that more sites would strive to be more openly compatable: Only when they are will the end-user really have full choice of which browser they prefer.

My email archive doesn’t contain spam. It does contain 33,871 emails. And I don’t think I’m alone.

I’m certainly not a prolific emailer. I do send more than President Clinstone, but not a huge many – I’d say I’m probably a fairly average user of email. Yet, in the last month, I’ve received in excess of 1,000 non-spam emails.

Not all of them are personal, of course. The majority are newsletter subscriptions, or the hundreds I am sent every month by people from uni, usually advertising houses in a different part of the country to me. Not helpful, but not really spam.

In the same period last year, I received 292 emails. So my volume of non-spam email has more than tripled in the last year. If this trend continues, my email inbox is going to become completely unmanagable.

So instead of presenting my emails most-recent first, why not invent a ‘rate this email’ feature, much like the ‘rate this song’ feature on music websites, so that my webmail system can learn what’s important to me, and present that first, and adverts for pub crawls last?

Now there’s a thought.

David Miliband has a blog. A blog that cost the taxpayer £6,000. And isn’t allowed to contain political comments.

Question one: How on earth did it cost £6,000 to set up? That’s hundreds times more than this blog has cost in it’s entire lifespan, and there are a great many tools out there (WordPress.com and Blogger, for example) that would have allowed him to do the same for nothing.

Question two: What’s the point? A politician sets up a blog that can’t have political comments on it?

Question three: Can I have my money back, please?

To be fair, he does attempt to answer one of the above three questions in his blurb:

This blog is my attempt to help bridge the gap – the growing and potentially dangerous gap – between politicians and the public. It will show some of what I’m doing, what I’m thinking about, and what I’ve read, heard or seen for myself which has sparked interest or influenced my ideas.

I’m not entirely sure who Mr Miliband thinks will read his blog, and I’m slightly scared that the fact I’ve visited it will be one more hit towards the definition of success. And quite how he’s going to tell us what he’s thinking as a politician without making political comments is unclear. But I’m sure this is a good use of taxpayer’s money…!

Even Boris can do it better…