成人快手

The first time I saw a home recording device was in 1978, when a friend told me that he had a way for me to see the Carol Burnett/Dolly Parton TV special I'd missed.

VCRs were still unheard of at that point, but in any case that wasn't what he had: he had a reel-to-reel video tape recorder. It had no programming ability, so he had an elaborate setup of timers to make it record the right channel at the right time, but - the key thing - we got to see the show! Even though we'd been out when it was broadcast!

VCRs of course made all this less complicated, but the legendary flashing 鈥�00:00鈥� on so many of them is a testament to how little improvement there was for the next two decades. TiVo changed everything by inventing the personal (digital) video recorder. TiVo largely failed in the UK due to marketing problems, but they are still loved enough to command a premium on eBay for one reason: the interface.

TiVo's key innovation was to create a video recording system that anyone could use. The key element is electronic programme guide (EPG) data; users can pick programmes off the schedule or search by keyword, title, or subject, or push a button to record a whole series.

And so to YouView, due to launch sometime in 2012. Formerly known as Project Canvas, YouView is a joint venture between the 成人快手, ITV, Five, and Channel 4 鈥� together with British Telecom, TalkTalk, and the infrastructure company Arqiva. We won't be seeing YouView boxes for some months yet, but the plan calls for the boxes to combine the best elements of personal video recorders with the catch-up functions of on-demand services like the 成人快手 iPlayer and the flexible access to content off the internet. For the first time, there will be a single interface unifying all these modes so you can search for programmes backwards in time as well as forwards and watch internet video on your TV set.

The key to user acceptance will be the programme guide and the interface. The key to industry acceptance will be more complicated. The intention is that commercial broadcasters will be able to offer pay services over YouView. Still, some companies, such as Virgin and Sky, have complained that the venture is unfair competition; other commentators have questioned whether building it is an inappropriate use of the licence fee. A third group believes the technical standards underlying the platform should be more open, ensuring widespread access to those wishing to build compatible equipment and services. However, the 成人快手 Trust has demanded that the 成人快手 publishes detailed technical specifications and information about changes as early as possible so that manufacturers and content providers have time to adapt their technology.

It's a reasonable analogy to compare an open platform to the World Wide Web and a controlled one to Apple's app store. Both of those approaches have created innovative content and services. But if the web had been controlled the way the app store is, it would be much smaller and much more limited than it is today.

We will have to see whether YouView is evolution or revolution.

Web designers want people to use modern browsers so their sites can work more like online applications than static magazine pages.

Does it matter which web browser you use? It shouldn't, but it does. Several companies are competing to provide the best browser, and Microsoft hopes to leapfrog its rivals with a new version it's testing now: Internet Explorer 9.

Web designers also want people to use modern browsers so that their sites can be interactive and work more like online applications than static magazine pages. However, different browser suppliers are adding support for these new features at different speeds, and sometimes implement them in different ways. If a page doesn鈥檛 work correctly in one browser, it's usually worth trying something newer.

Most people use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which is included with Microsoft Windows. Three main versions are in use because companies and some individuals are slow to upgrade. IE6 shipped with Windows XP in 2001, and while a great browser in its day, it has many quirks and does not support modern technologies. IE7 was included with Windows Vista, and IE8 with Windows 7. The next version will be IE9.

According to the Netmarketshare website, which is based on browser use at selected websites, IE has a market share of 60%. This is split between IE6 (16%), IE7 (11%) and IE8 (31%).

There are dozens of rival browsers, led by Mozilla's Firefox (23% market share). Newer challengers include Google's Chrome (8%) and Apple's Safari (5%).

Web browsers are written to support HTML, the HyperText Markup Language specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This has progressed through HTML 2.0 in September 1995, HTML 3.2 in January 1997, and HTML 4.01 in December 1999. Today, all the providers are competing to implement features that come under the blanket heading of HTML5. This includes the "canvas" element for drawing, and audio and video tags. One aim is to allow web pages to embed videos without using a separate media player such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight.

New browsers provide new capabilities but also make life harder for web designers. If they use the new features, they may have to provide alternatives for older browsers. They rely on users upgrading their browsers every 18-30 months, which is why it's a problem that so many people are still using IE6 after nine years.

How websites look and work on your browser is not the only thing that matters. You should also think about speed, security, the availability of plug-in extensions, the user interface, and how well it works with other software. At the moment, Google Chrome leads on speed, and it is also the least vulnerable to malware attacks. (Chrome runs in a "sandbox" that makes it harder to attack the underlying operating system.) Firefox has the biggest range of extensions.

But you don't need to pick just one. Many people now use two or even three browsers, because no single browser works best with all the sites on the web. What's more, all of the popular browsers are free.

If you鈥檙e about to enter a coffee house in San Francisco it's a signal that you鈥檙e probably not at home in Tooting.

A year or so ago there was a great website called Pleaserobme.com. It took feeds from Twitter, Facebook and all the rest and drew attention to people who used the social networks to announce when they were out. They might be away, they might be gone for hours or days, but they鈥檇 made it very public that they weren鈥檛 around for a while.

Status update: the back door key's under the bin

It would be tough to find documented cases in which thieves had found their quarry using social media, they鈥檙e terrible at filling in questionnaires about where they found their victims, but certainly last year there was talk of insurance companies increasing their premiums for people who wilfully make their location available everywhere to any passing crook who鈥檚 online.

Pleaserobme feels the point has been made. Unfortunately the issue of people giving thieves an open invitation to break in and help themselves is far from closed.

It鈥檚 likely to be highlighted again as General Motors brings its On-Star communication tool into an alliance with Facebook, assuming the rumours are true. Your car will be able to help you update your Facebook status. But can it do it without bleating that you鈥檙e away from home, too?

Location-based networking, as it鈥檚 called, has many uses and benefits. Services like FourSquare will end a Tweet telling everyone where you are which is brilliant if you鈥檙e, say, between meetings and would like to see if anyone鈥檚 around for a coffee. 鈥淚n Trafalgar Square considering a coffee鈥� might well get a response from someone who鈥檚 in there and equally at a lost end. There can be many reasons for wanting to know where your friends are.

Likewise many cameras and phones offer geotagging of their photos. This means the picture will carry little bits of data on when and where you took it, so that sort-out of pictures and the wondering-where-the-thump-you-were-when-you-wore-that-jumper-in-front-of-that-mountain ritual can become a thing of the past; click on it and it鈥檒l tell you it was Milton Keynes, last week, or whatever.

How can I protect myself?

The snag is that people are starting to leave these services on by default. If I had malicious intentions then yes, I could take your automated announcement that you鈥檙e about to enter a coffee house in San Francisco as a signal that you鈥檙e probably not at home in Tooting. Even when people switch the automatic notifications off, though, a handful still insist on announcing when they鈥檙e about to lock up and go on holiday.

I suppose there are two ways around this. The first is not to leave the house empty in the first place, although although of course it's not always easy with a busy 21st century lifestyle. The second is of course to watch what you Tweet, Facebook, LinkedIn and otherwise announce to the world 鈥� and if your home鈥檚 going to be vulnerable, don鈥檛 tell everyone.

Most people have mobiles that are more powerful than computers of 30 years ago.

The 成人快手 recently reported that a group of schoolchildren were being taught how to program computers using a collection of ancient 成人快手 Microcomputers maintained by the National Museum for Computing at Bletchley Park.

Back to BASIC

The 成人快手 Micro, designed and built by Acorn Computers, was part of the 成人快手 Computer Literacy Project in 1981, and around one and a half million of them were sold.

Its facilities were minimal, with a tiny amount of memory and no built in disk storage, but it did a great job getting people introduced to computers and computing.
成人快手 Microcomputer

The 成人快手 Microcomputer

They were tough machines too, and tended to last a long time. When I first started writing for WebWise at its launch (in 2000) my daughter鈥檚 primary school still used them for some teaching, even though much more powerful computers were available.

In the thirty years since the Micro was launched computers have gone from being rare and expensive objects that few people owned or understood to form the basis for much of our everyday life, certainly here in the UK. Most of us have mobile phones that are far more powerful and many of us have laptops at home and use computers at work or in college. At home, washing machines, dishwashers and cars are packed full of electronics.

Yet the 成人快手 Micro had its advantages, even if it was hard to get started with and lacked many features we consider vital in today鈥檚 computing world. For one thing, it encouraged users to be programmers too, by making it very easy to enter and run programs written in the BASIC language, and it was very easy to add new components to it, so users got used to taking the lid off and messing around with cables and connectors.

Computers still don't bite

The reason students from Newport Pagnell were taken off to Bletchley Park to use old computers for their classes was to encourage them to learn a bit more about how they work, as well as just how to surf the web or look up information in databases, and this is an important aspect of WebWise too.

There鈥檚 a direct line between the 成人快手 Computer Literacy Project, 鈥楥omputers Don鈥檛 Bite鈥� in the late 1990s and WebWise today, because being WebWise has always been about much more than just getting by online or knowing which button to click on your screen.

It鈥檚 about understanding what computers can and can鈥檛 do, what they can do for you, and how they are changing the world for all of us, and that鈥檚 one of the reasons I鈥檓 so excited about being part of WebWise as it goes forward.