Is the web world ready for another web browser? I dunno, all I know is that i’m not too bothered about it.

Edit: It was made available earlier than many reported: download it here.

On windows: as Gaeilge, suomi, en-gb, no sign of welsh yet.
Mac: as Gaeilge, suomi, en-gb.
Linux: as Gaeilge, suomi, en-gb.

p.s. some languages can be installed as language packs allowing you to switch between various languages if needed. Irish isn’t listed here yet but we’ll see if we can get it up there soon enough. Btw, when I say “we” I mean the Mozilla guys & the ‘Firefox in Irish’ team after I whinge so much that they decide to pacify me by adding it to the list.

EDIT: Bear with me while I try out a few new themes…

You may also have noticed that workpress seems to be taking on a life of its own. It has decided, without consulting me I might add, to reorder the posts on my blog … the most recent post is now at the bottom of the page.
And it doesn’t end there; it also seems to have screwed up the RSS feeds as I am getting a lot of old posts coming though on Google Reader. In addition the 15 “most recent” posts it shows in the admin pages are actually the very earliest 15 posts I made on this blog.

Perhaps it’s time to update wordpress … i’m only about a year or so behind everyone else!

Now, this isn’t simply a case of me not deleting my spam mails and letting them build up over a period of months. No, I use gmail, which automatically deletes spam mails older than 30 days. Therefore these ten thousand spam mails have all been received within the last 30 days … that’s 10,000 spams in one month! Savage!!

I should point out that I use gmail as a pop mail client and it pulls mails from my rarely used website email accounts but even so it’s quite a figure. I’m certainly glad I gave up on Thunderbird; imagine having to trawl through that number of mails every month checking for legitimate mails! With Gmail I don’t bother as I’ve found it very reliable at the spam catching lark plus it’s easier to search for legit mails than with Thunderbird.

I’m wondering now if I should delete them all or wait for Google to give me an award for hitting this milestone.!.

I feel like we should hold a wake or something. Netscape was the first big browser used by over 90% of web users in the mid-90′s; until Internet Exploder came along; it’s market share is now around 0.6%.

Although the browser will soon disappear within a short while in body it will still remain in spirit in the guise of Firefox [FF 3 coming out very soon] and Firefox clones such as Flock [1.1b out now]. AOL are of course recommending people switch to either of these two browsers.

IE8 is due out soon enough, beta testing begun a while back, and it is expected to support some advanced CSS stuff such as CSS tables which, with my limited knowledge of CSS browser support, should mean css tables can be more widely used. Which is nice.
CSS tables, fyi, should provide designers with an easier and more robust way of producing multicolumn css layouts.

Now if only people would make the switch from IE5/6/7 asap without holding on to old browsers for donkeys years we’d be in a much better situation.

Anyway … Netscape Navigator … all the best me aul mucker!

“Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.”

At first glance it looks quite interesting; it’s certainly worth a test try anyway.

Prior to that I bought a 3D modelling DVD course which was advertised as new from the UK … turned out to be a copy from Pakistan!

Lesson 1: Don’t trust people, people are cunts. Except you, I like you.

It’s then that I discovered just how utterly fucking useless Paypal are; you have ZERO buyer protection in reality because once the seller has a shipping number then Paypal will side with the seller; irrespective of whether they sent you your item or not.
Thank god for Credit Card purchase protection though!

Lesson 2: I wouldn’t rely on Paypal as any kind of insurance if you get ripped off. Plus their customer service in the US are very impatient grouchy folk, you won’t get much understanding from them.

Last night I went shopping for a new USB key; the one I bought upmteen years ago in currys has served me well but at only 128mb I barely have enough space for my animal porn. So last night I bought a 2Gb key which should keep me going.

I was advised by a friend to buy a key from Hong Kong; but if it’s anything like China, thought I, you just can’t trust the hoors! They take a 256Mb/516Mb/1Gb key then reprogram and repackage it as a 4Gb or 8Gb key so when you put it in your computer it looks like a 4/8Gb key but of course you won’t fit anywhere near that amount of data on it.

And sure enough when I went looking for keys I can across this page warning about this very issue.

It got me thinking, why don’t Ebay do more to prevent fraudsters and scammers on their site??? Perhaps they are just scared of losing money but a quick browse of the forums will tell you that there are many members continually getting ripped off through ebay and it seems both ebay and partner paypal are completely useless when it comes to offering their customers (buyers) any decent level of protection.
I really don’t understand why sellers & buyers are allowed to use fake names/addresses and multiple handles; why isn’t some from of identity proof such as a credit card required of each buyer & seller?

When I purchased an item of Pixmania I had to forward a scan/copy of a picture ID PLUS then confirm what I sent over the phone to their customer service before I could complete the purchase. An article recently questioned why Ebay’s business was stagnating, perhaps it’s because the site is riddled with cunts selling fake products or ripping people off.
Surely it would be in Ebay’s best interests long term to insist on some proper proof of identification for all members. Wouldn’t a buyer/seller be less likely to rip someone off if they had to provide a validated name & address/photo ID such as a passport/a bank account number or credit card details? I think so.

Lesson 3: Don’t trust anyone on Ebay! Be aware that you’re taking a risk every time you use the site and don’t rely on Ebay to protect you.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some very decent honest sellers on Ebay, but get ripped off once and it can put you off online shopping for a long time.