I cannot express my joy enough: I finally got rid of Telecom Italia!!! It has been a long project but it went a lot smoother than I expected. I renewed  my ADSL contract with SiADSL last year and paid a one time fee of 99 euro to get a new line installed without Telecom Italia. I spent a lot of time this autumn evaluating the various VoIP technologies. My main requirement was that I wanted a solution that did not require a PC that was always one. That ruled out most Skype based solutions as they integrate with the Skype client on a PC. This LinkSys cordless Skype phone was a possible compromise as it has a separate base station that I could connect to a server but ...

Google Pages is very simple and intuitive to use. Best of all; the free hosting service does -not- automatically insert loads of advertisements like many other free hosting services do. No technical knowledge required as you see what the finished page will look like every step along the way: The editor is simple to use and lets you choose from a set of templates and layouts without having to write a single line of code: The online editor solution offers one big advantage over the work offline and upload to the server option: you can edit your site any where, any time. Google has a -lot- of bandwidth and takes cares of backups so it beats hosting a site at home ...

These 0.39 euro stamps issued by Dutch post look great: They are made with lenticular technology developed by Lenticular Technology: Lenticular is a specialised printing process that can show depth, motion, HD video, film or combinations of these. The lenticular material is made up of tiny ridges or lenses (hence the name "lenticular" printing). We take raw images and process them through a computer algorithm, which matches the lens surface of the lenticular material. When the two work together it enables the image to be replayed back to you. Check out their gallery for more examples. The technology would be great for making personalized stamps. Imagine ...

Tired of MP3 players that break if you sit down with them in your pocket? Then the MX7000 should be the right thing for you: The Monolith Premium is fused into a solid 1.5mm aluminium casing (called X-Protect); not stuck together with glue or screws – ‘fused’, in a unique manufacturing process pioneered by the manufacturer, Estar Laboratories. This makes the Monolith Premium practically indestructible; we have run the player over with a car, shot the player with a BB gun, thrown the player against a brick wall – it just doesn’t break. The MX7000 plays MP3, WMA, OGG, WMA DRM files and has a FM tuner/recorder.

The Ariel Atom looks mean: And it is mean. Check out the video of the Top Gear review by Jeremy Clarkson as it gives you a feel of what the go-kart car can do. It is powered by a super charged Honda i-VTEC 2.0 in a very light body which gives it 3 times the horsepower per kilo compared to a Porsche Carrera 911! Via [paultan.org]

This is great news; Google is offering Gmail for users at any domain like live.com. You no longer have to worry about running a 24x7 operation to have e-mail up and running for your users as Google takes care of everything. Users have access to their e-mail any time any where and you don't have to worry about end users loosing all their e-mail due to client hardware failure or a virus: This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain. Gmail - 2 gigabytes of storage and search tools that help users find ...

bxAutoZip automatically compresses attachments in Outlook and Outlook Express. A great way to save space in your inbox and bandwidth. bxAutoZip is free for personal use: bxAutoZip is a dedicated add-in utility for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express which automatically and independently compresses any files attached to an e-mail message. Compression dramatically reduces the size of e-mail attachments, allowing much faster transfer times. The result is significant savings in time and money for both the sender and the recipient.

The Binary To Text conversion tool lets you convert text to binary and back again: 01001000011000010111000001110000011110010010000001010110011000010110110001100101011011100111010001101001011011100110010101110011001000000110010001100001011110010010000100001101000010100100011001110010011011110110110100100000010000110110111101101111011011000010000001001111011100100010000001010111011010000110000101110100 Say Happy Valentines Day to a nerd the binary way

Check out the Cool Or What link blog to see the best items on my blog roll that I never posted about. I come across a lot of interesting items on my blog roll that I don't post about. It is a shame, so I have decided to something about it and create a link blog. I will keep the link blog separate from my blog for now. Cool Or What will continue to have a post or so a day but the link blog will have more traffic (~10 posts per day?). It is an experiment and the future of the link blog is not clear to me yet. I may keep it separate forever or integrate it in Cool Or What using a dedicated category. I spent the weekend considering the different formats: One daily ...

Dedicated fans have created several episodes of Star Trek; New Voyages that can be downloaded online (with DVD cover of course): The original Star Trek set out on a five-year mission that network execs cut short in 1969. Now a new confederation of amateur Kirk worshippers and studio renegades is repairing the space-time continuum and finishing the job....The great people helping Marshall make New Voyages have grown more proficient with each episode. But it's still obvious at times that this is the work of enthusiastic amateurs. As with almost all fan films, the weakest element of New Voyages has been the acting. For this third episode, the New Voyages staff has worked ...

Scott eVest celebrates the 5 year anniversary with a 50% sale on many items like the cool SeV Gadget Tie: It is 100% silk and has a has a hidden pocket for carrying a credit card, key, money or other small items.

Astronauts on the International Space Station will throw an old spacesuit overboard tomorrow, Friday 3rd:The SuitSat has been equipped with batteries, a radio and internal sensors to measure temperature and battery power. It will transmit its condition as it circles the earth. The radio message can be heard using a police scanner or a ham radio tuned to to 145.990 MHz FM. Unlike a normal spacewalk, with a human inside the suit, SuitSat's temperature controls will be turned off to conserve power. The suit, arms and legs akimbo, possibly spinning, will be exposed to the fierce rays of the sun with no way to regulate its internal temperature. "Will the suit overheat? ...

Internet Explorer 7 looks pretty cool judging by the screen shots and the new features Tabbed browsing with “quick tabs“ Better security Integrated search bar with configurable search engine RSS support I cannot tell for sure though. It only runs on Windows XP so gives me the following error message when I try to install it on Windows 2003: "Your operating system is not supported by this package" :-( Via [Better Living Through Software]