By the by, I have now moved the BookJunkies website onto the Camelot Online website and shut down the BookJunkies domain.

I am in one of my cost-cutting moods at the moment and I figured it was ridiculous to be paying for two internet domains when I have more than enough space on my main website. So I moved everything over and consolidated it. BookJunkies can now be found HERE.

I love the internet just as much as the next person but I am constantly amazed by the number of pointless applications and websites that seem to be springing up. What makes it worse is when some of those pointless applications and websites are raved about as the Next Big Thing. What am I talking about at the moment? Twitter of course.

I mean, what is the point of it? At first glance, it looks to be a miniature form of Big Brother from George Orwell's 1984 where your every moment is tracked and recorded. Twitter allows people to tell other people what they are doing at that precise moment so you get meaningless crap like "just got out of bed" or "just scratched my ass" or "I'm having a cup of coffee at the moment!". I mean, who cares? What's next? Miniature webcams following us around tracking our every move?

There are some practical uses of the application I must admit. Companies can set up their own internal versions where a manager can update their current status to something like "gone into a meeting. Will be out at 11.00am". But do we really need some idiot from London telling us that he has just bought a tank top sweater for his dad?

Please.....get rid of Twitter!

If you ever need to waste any time or if you're mind-numbingly bored, then check out the Flickr Peepshow.

This mash-up shows photographs being uploaded to the Flickr website in real-time. If you like one, and you want to see what else that person has done, you can click on the photo and be taken directly to that person's account page.

It's amazing how many hard-core "adult" photos get uploaded to Flickr before they're finally taken down by the Flickr staff.....the amount of "oh you've "accidentally" caught me lounging about in my lacy bra, you naughy photographer!" photos have to be seen to be believed.....

Now it seems you can watch the news on your customised Google homepage. Steve Rubel's excellent "Micro Persuasion" blog highlighted this feature to me and I just had to try it out for myself. Apologies Steve for snagging your screenshot - I tried to get my own screenshot but it kept coming up black (if anyone has a great suggestion for capturing screenshots of video files, please let me know). Anyway, I just want to stress that I am not claiming credit for this picture!

I installed the widget link and it quickly loaded on the Google homepage. The sound quality and picture quality are EXCELLENT (which really shocked me because streaming feeds are normally notoriously slow, crackly and jerky).

If you're a news junkie, this is one Google widget that you need to install......as Steve points out in his blog, this is an indication of things to come. With Joost about to launch, we could be looking at the "next big thing" on the internet - live streaming television channels.

Auction Contact has brought out a nifty little tool which allows people to put your current eBay auctions on their customised Google homepages.

To test it out, I put in my eBay username and here's what came out :

Add my Gadget to your Google Homepage

Now I'm guessing that all you need to do is click on the "+Google" logo at the bottom and that should put it on your Google homepage? The Auction Contact page doesn't make it very clear.

Moving onto the next page, I customised the widget and after inputting the code it gave me, I ended up with this :




Of course it will actually start working when I list eBay auctions this coming Thursday. Right now, I have nothing selling...

I keep telling myself that I need to write more regular entries if I am going to build up any kind of regular readership but at the moment I am finding it difficult to find things to write about. I am still kind of feeling my way around with this blog, wondering where to take it, wondering what my long-term aims are....part of the problem is also that my depression is rearing its ugly head again and the past week has been a drain on my energy. I changed my meds back to Zoloft again and this has had a knock-on effect, making me absolutely exhausted. I am hoping that this week I will slowly bounce back and I can start to catch up on some of the work backlog that seems to have accumulated.

One project that I am making an effort to get back into is the DOUA (Disabled Online Users Association). I joined way back in 2004 but had to leave the following year due to ill health. But I've always been determined to return at some point and today I decided that today would be the day. The DOUA helps disabled people start online businesses on eBay to make the person self-sufficient, independent, and have an income. It's a worthy charity to support and if you can offer voluntary support, please let the DOUA know. Or if you are disabled (or you know someone who is disabled) then the DOUA is a good place to join and visit.....they even have a Training Center which members can use to keep in touch with one another.

"Google-bashing" seems to be in vogue at the moment and it would be fine if the criticism was justified. But as usual, Google is the innocent party but the nearest convenient victim to slap about.

The first Google bash of the day is the news that Google Earth is showing Nazi-era names on German locations. So a mountain in the south of Germany which was named "Adolf-Hitler-Berg" during the Nazi period is now popping up on Google Earth. Cue the usual screaming and shouting at Google for being insensitive - but let's look at this rationally.

First, the mountain was legitimally called that a long time ago, second, there are many many maps and databases in the world with a record of that name and third, Google can't possibly cover every single name-change of a place in the world. It's just too much to cover.

To their credit, Google has promised to correct the Google Earth tag so it never shows up again. So all the hysterical over-reactors can now shut up and look for something else to get worked up about (I'm sure they'll find something if they look hard enough).

The second Google-bashing story involves a restaurant who is blaming Google for a drop-off in business. It seems that the brother of one of the restaurant employees was accused of murder and it was mentioned somewhere online that the brother worked at the restaurant. Then the brother apparently helps the accused brother to escape from prison.

So everytime a hungry person looking for a restaurant searches online with the name of that restaurant, the first thing they see are references to murder and prison breaks. Cue more screaming at Google!

Is it Google's fault that a search algorithim sees the name of the restaurant in the crime stories and then links the two stories together? That's what search engines do - it looks for common search terms and then groups them together for people to find and read. If more and more people like me link to these sites, drive traffic to these sites and discuss these sites, then those sites will go higher and higher up the search rankings. That's how Google's PageRank works.

Welcome to the world of the Information Superhighway. Get used to it because it ain't leaving.

I have been hit by emails today from two people responding to my application for their writing vacancy. Both sets of people have asked me to write "sample articles" for them to "test my writing ability". In effect, they are asking me to write for them for free on the off-chance that they may hire me later. I probably won't be paid for the "sample articles", they will probably use that work on their websites (probably also taking all the credit and all the rights) and I have to also stop my paying work in order to write for them for free. Is it any wonder that I refused immediately?

Other writers may disagree with me on this but my own attitude is that if my previously published work is not sufficient enough to persuade them that I am skilled enough and experienced enough to do their assignment then they will probably never be persuaded. I don't write for free, even under the guise of "sample articles to test my writing ability".

I am still laughing over a story related to me by an English student friend of mine and I can't resist sharing it here. This story highlights some of the differences between British English and American English. I'll keep all names out of it so not to embarrass anyone.

An American colleague of my German friend / student of English is over here in Germany for 10 days for business meetings, kicking ass and so on. His braces were broken so he decided to go to a big department store here in the town for new ones. Now note the following - in British English, it is braces, in American English, it is called suspenders (what you use to hold up your trousers.....oh sorry....pants with). But in British English, suspenders are a "garter belt", what women use to hold up their stockings. Right, I'm guessing you can see where this story is headed....!

So the American chap walks into the department store with my German friend, goes to the menswear department and asks in English for a pair of suspenders. Here is the ensuing dialogue as told by my friend :

American chap : "I'd like a pair of suspenders please"
German saleswoman : (eyebrows raised) "I don't think you'll find them here. They're in the ladies department"
American chap : "Really, why? Do German women wear suspenders?"
German saleswoman : (looked a little taken aback) "Some do, some don't"
American chap : (thinking this is a quaint little German tradition) "Well I want a pair of suspenders for myself"
German saleswoman : (shocked) "You wear suspenders?"
American chap : "All the time. I find them comfortable and they're quite fashionable in the States. Lots of American men wear suspenders"

At this point, a light-bulb went on in my friend's head and he remembered what "suspenders" were in British English. So he whispered in his American colleague's ear what he was really asking for and the guy was apparently so embarrassed that he ran out of the store!

My friend can't decide if that is better or worse than the time he needed a pencil eraser and he asked another American colleague for a "rubber" (in British English, a rubber is another word for a pencil eraser but in American English, a rubber is a condom!).

This has got me in the mood to resurrect my International Dictionary Project. I just have to list all these lingustic differences!

I am well on my way to 100 postcards received with Postcrossing. The site promotes the sending of postcards which is a nice thing to promote given that these days, postal mail is rapidly declining in favour of digital forms of communication such as email and internet telephones (just ask yourself when was the last time you received an actual written letter from someone?)

The theory goes that for every postcard you send someone through Postcrossing, someone else gets your address to send you a card back. It's great if you collect postcards, or stamps (like me) or if you just like to go world travelling from the comfort of your own home. Part of the attraction is the randomness of it all. You never know where your next card is going to come from.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, please sign up (it's totally free, except for the cost of the postcards and postage of course). There seems to be an over-abundance of Finnish people on the site so Postcrossing needs a few more nationalities to even things up a bit. My Finnish stamp collection is booming while stamps from other countries are sadly lacking.

I've been frequently noticing that Gmail isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. The trash folder has a label which says that "all items in the trash folder are deleted after 30 days". But I have just checked and emptied the trash folder and it had 536 emails dating back to November last year. Now my maths might be wonky at times but isn't that 4 months ago?

Is anyone else having this problem with a non-emptying trash folder?

Steve Rubel has written a follow-up blog post on how to make your Gmail address your own personal "nerve center". This post is good but not as good as the previous post. In this post, I've found that I already do most of it - I already archive all my Google Calendar emails and I already archive my blog posts. The PDF conversion feature sounds interesting but I am not sure if I want personal / sensitive information sent to Adobe. So this post has had limited use for me but it is still worth a read nonetheless.