Misery for Tiscali users

If you use Tiscali as your ISP, you would do well to check that the emails you sent in the last week actually arrived.  It is likely that they have not been arriving for more than a week - and you may be quite unaware of it, as you may well have been receiving emails as normal.

Tiscali's problem is that they have been hijacked by spammers, who have piggy-backed on their system to swamp the world with millions of emails - and this has meant that most other ISP's have taken steps to block anything coming from Tiscali.

Everyone makes mistakes, or may be subject to the work of scoundrels, but the measure of a company is how they deal with these problems when they find them.  The golden rule in crisis management is to keep you customers informed - "tell it all, tell it truthfully and tell it fast" as an expert on crisis public relations once put it to me.

Tiscali, on the other hand, told very few, in fact except for a few modest announcements on their service status page (who ever looks there?) which were of the "we apologise for any convenience caused" platitudes that we expect on delayed trains, they seem to have told no one.

And the problem isn't fixed yet.  In response only to specific Press enquires they have admitted that that although they have completed the work needed rectify its status as a spammer, the changes will take between seven and ten days to take effect, as they have to convince all the other ISPs that the problem is fixed.  This is not likely to please users - if they are even aware of the problem, as they blithely email their friends and business contacts.

If you are affected, for the time being you should use a web email company, like Hotmail or Yahoo.  You might also consider shifting entirely to an ISP that gives damn about keeping their customers informed.

Juggling as it should be

If you want to see a Beatles song re-interpreted for three balls and a man dressed black, this is for you.  Chris Bliss is an amazing juggler, and this little tour de force is spellbinding.

Make sure that your loudspeakers are turned on and click twice on the Play button (bottom left) to watch.

______________________________________________________________________

A simple computer for Oldies

Can I pick some Oldie readers brains, please? I am regularly asked if there is a "basic" computer that cuts out a lot of extras and comes with sensible technical support.

If such a thing exists, I'm not aware of it. I doubt it would work, actually - there would always be something that wasn't covered, and when a computer crashes, it crashes.

I know that Apple Macs "never" crash and work on sunlight and potato peelings, but I'm sure you you know what I mean. And they're still only ever as good as your unofficial free technical support (that is, what your cousin/friend/son/daughter has). The Amstrad Emailer was an attempt at something like that, but it's a fairly weedy and expensive little thing.

But I certainly would not claim to know the whole market, so I wonder if any Oldie reader has a piece of kit like this they can recommend?

If so, for all our sakes please email me or post a comment on this site.

______________________________________________________________________________

Celia did it - with Oldie readers help...

Celia ran her half marathon!
And what fantastic encouragement from Oldie readers!

On Saturday I wrote to all other Oldie readers who had emailed Webster in recent years, and asked if they might support my daughter Celia in her attempt to raise money for the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust by running a half marathon in Leeds the next day. I was writing personally, not on behalf of The Oldie.

Celia is on the rightWell, I'm proud to say that she finished it (she's the one crossing the finishing line on the right), and what a wonderful response I had from many of those I had emailed - a huge pile of charming emails and encouraging notes for Celia, and crucially, loads of money donated through her website (www.justgiving.com/celiadt) and by post. At the time of writing the total is over £800 (including Gift Aid tax rebates) for the charity.

It may be more by the time you see this - you can go to www.justgiving.com/celiadt to check.

If you would still like to make a donation, you are very welcome to, of course - either by card at www.justgiving.com/celiadt or if you feel more comfortable paying by cheque then email me and I'll email you the details.

The whole HYMS teamThe other good news is that each of Celia's team from the Hull York Medical School also finished the run in one piece- and here's a picture of them (Celia is on the right at the back) When I spoke to her on Sunday evening after she got back to the University, she was elated, tired and sore, all at once.

But most of all she was overwhelmed by the generosity of Webster's correspondents. It comes as no surprise to me, as I have had the pleasure of your company (through cyberspace) for years, but it is no less heartwarming for that.

Celia has asked me to pass on her thanks to all who contributed and sent messages of support, and to say that she hopes to email all who donated and left email addresses in due course.

PS This has been my first exposure to Charity activities on the Internet, and it has been fascinating; I had no idea it was such big business. I plan to write about it in The Oldie in July, so if you have any experiences relating to online Charity matters, good or bad, I would be very pleased to hear from you.  Either email me or post a comment on this site.
_________________________________________________________________________________

The Human Clock

This is one of my favourite bits of Internet nonsense - of no practical use but charming, none the less.  Since 2001, Craig Giffen has been collecting pictures that show the time - both digital and analogue clocks - for every minute of the day.  So, when you click on The Human Clock you are told the time (just like any other clock) but it might be a picture of a church clock, or a chap in Mexico holding up a sign saying 12.23, or some artfully arranged vegetables.  Wait a minute the picture will change.  Wait another minute and it'll change again - just like, well, a clock.

If you want, you can submit your own version of some times - a couple of examples are below.  How about some Oldie contributions?

__________________________________________________________________________

Blair goes YouTube - in French...

I am, grudgingly, rather impressed with Tony Blair's latest effort to embrace the cyberworld - he has recorded a video to welcome the new French President, in French, and posted it on Youtube for all to see.

When I looked, over 250,000 people had viewed it (though we dont know how many made it to the end).  You can make your own mind up by viewing it here.  Is Gordon Brown capable of doing the same thing?  Do feel free to post a comment.

____________________________________________________________________

Computers finally put to a proper use

An Oldie reader has kindly sent me this picture of a computer that has been properly adapted to serve a useful purpose.

Now we are getting somewhere.

A modern fable

Here is a modern version of an old fable, at Microsoft’s expense:

An unemployed man was offered a job with Microsoft as a cleaner. He was asked for his email address, but had to explain that he had neither a computer nor an email address.  He was told that as email is the way Microsoft communicates with its staff, if he didn’t have it he could not have the job.

Stunned, the man left.  Not knowing where to turn and having only £10.00 in his pocket, he bought a large box of tomatoes at the market and in less than two hours he had sold all the tomatoes individually at 100% profit.  Repeating the process several times that day, he ended up with almost £100.00 profit.  It dawned on him that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes.

By working hard, he developed his business quickly.  After a short time he bought a barrow, then replaced it with a van.  By the end of the second year, he owned a fleet of vans and had a staff of a 100 former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes.

One day, his accountant asked for the man’s email address.  When the man explained that he didn't have one, the accountant was astonished.  "You’ve managed to make all this money without the Internet, email and eCommerce?  Just imagine where you would be now if you had been connected to the Internet from the very start!" he said.

“Well," replied the tomato millionaire, "I would be a cleaner at Microsoft."

Every fable must have a moral.  This one has three: 

• The Internet, email and eCommerce do not need to rule your life.
• If you do not have email, but work hard, you can still become a millionaire.
• If you do have a computer and email, Microsoft has already taken you to the cleaners.

PS I don't suppose that Microsoft are really as mean as that to their cleaners.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Google's calculator

Did you know that you can use Google as a calculator to do all sorts of sums and conversions?  To use it you simply enter the calculation you'd like done into the search box and press the Enter key.  Use an asterisk for multiplication and a forward slash for division.

The calculator can do basic arithmetic (365*84, for example), more complicated maths using sines, cosines and the like, calculate units of measurement and conversions, physical constants and Roman Numerals.  For example, try one or two of these in the Google search box:

15 Stones in pounds
25 degrees C in F
70 mph in kph
2007 in roman numerals

It will even do currencies (try $14 in £) with rates taken from Citibank.  Amazing.
For detailed instuctions, click here.

____________________________________________________________________________________

More on those foreign accents

Word 2003 (and some earlier ones) provides key combinations for several characters - for foreign accents, in particular. Essentially, you first type the accent using a Ctrl key combination and then follow this with the required letter. I’ve set out below some of what's available:

Accent	Control Key	Following Letters	Example
acute	Ctrl '	a, e, i, o, u (and d)	é (and ð)
cedilla	Ctrl ,	c	ç
circumflex	Ctrl ^	a, e, i, o, u	ê
grave	Ctrl `	a, e, i, o, u, y	è
tilde	Ctrl ~	a, n, o	ñ
umlaut	Ctrl :	a, e, i, o, u, y	ë

The above also work with capital letters. Note that for some symbols both the Ctrl and Shift keys have to be pressed - eg an umlaut is obtained by Ctrl Shift ;.

Other key combinations are Ctrl @ followed by an a for å; Ctrl & followed by an a, o or s for æ, œ or ß; and Ctrl / followed by an o for ø

______________________________________________________________________________