Just over 2 months ago my keyboard decided to pack up (might have something to do with the drink I tipped onto it) and I urgently needed a replacement. After all without a keyboard how could I use my computer properly?

So I went looking around for a new keyboard I could buy. At the time I didn’t have much money and to be honest I wasnt that bothered on what keyboard I got - as long as it was comfortable to use and not too big I’m happy. I ended up getting a Logitech keyboard but whilst I was shopping around I also came across a bunch of other really cool ones.

Here are just 5 keyboards which are different from the rest.

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Blogging has become quite a major part of the internet lately as it has become so easy to set one up. Anyone can now start a blog with virtually no technical skills needed with services like Blogger and WordPress. Only recently have I actually started reading peoples blogs (pretty much same time I started my own blog) so although its not a new thing to me, I cant say I know everything there is to know. What I do know though is that there are certain blogs which as a computer/tech enthusiast I have found to be quite interesting and a good read.

I don’t visit these all on a daily basis but these are some of the ones which I look at quite regularly. They are in no particular order but all of them I find to be quite a good read. Continue reading »

Ive spent the last few weeks violently smashing my mouse into my desk trying to get it to work. It was a ball mouse which as you would expect gets clogged up with crap quite easily. But after 10 minutes of searching the web and 10 days later I now have a brand spanking new mouse. Its a wireless, optical mouse which to be honest wasn’t the best of choices considering I have a glass table, but it works great. Its a comfortable fit and is really smooth going.

For just under £8 (about $16) its pretty good - a whole lot better than the one I was using before. I bought it from eBuyer. Take a look at the products page here.

I have to admit, as far as new technology goes I’m usually trailing behind quite slowly. But saying that one thing which has interested me is this new Surface computer from Microsoft. Now obviously touch screen isn’t a brand new (according to Microsoft’s web site neither is the Surface idea) technology however this Surface computer claims to offer a new way in which we interact with data and media. Ive spent the last twenty minutes or so reading over Microsoft’s Surface web site trying to get a better idea as to what it is exactly and what it can do.

As taken from the Surface web site its key features are:

• Direct interaction - Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands and interact with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
• Multi-touch contact - Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger, as with a typical touch screen, but up to dozens and dozens of items at once.
• Multi-user experience - The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
• Object recognition - Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.

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Its not a secret - open source software is spreading fast as thousands of people embrace it on a daily basis. Given the choice would you rather spend hundreds of pounds/dollars to Microsoft or spend 30 minutes of your time downloading a similar open source program?

I have to be honest and say that as far as open source programs go I’m not a regular user myself. My OS is Windows XP, I use Photoshop for my graphic work and MS Office for the majority of my document-related work. I could however have saved myself a good chunk of money by replacing these all with open source solutions and that is exactly what thousands of people worldwide are doing.

In the past it was mainly just large companies and well funded organizations that were developing high end applications - now however, its a completely different story. From students to professional programmers, more and more open source programs are being developed and released to the public for no charge. Continue reading »

As the whole ‘Web 2.0′ idea continues to push itself into our worlds people are continuously looking for new ways to organise their content and make it accessible. As you probably already know tagging is one of the latest crazes to hit the web.

Thagoo.com is a brand new search engine web site which allows you to search for web sites using some of the more popular social bookmarking sites. They describe it as follows:

thagoo is a tag based search engine who search on millions of user’s categorized favorite links using the most popular social bookmark sites as sources.

To understand how does thagoo works, we need understand how does social bookmark works. Social bookmarking is a web-based service to share Internet bookmarks. The Social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links through the practice of folksonomy techniques on the Internet.

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Because of some problems with both Firefox and Mozilla (they were having trouble updating to the latest version) I decided to uninstall them both and reinstall.

So I did exactly that but came into another problem with Thunderbird. After reinstalling it every time I tried to launch it I was getting a message box with the following:

“A previous install did not complete correctly. Finishing Install.”

After a little playing around I managed to fix it. If your having the same problem do the following:

1. Uninstall Thuderbird
2. Delet the “Mozilla Thunderbid” directory where it was installed
3. Reinstall Thunderbird

That should fix it - It worked for me anyway.