Tom Doyle :: TALK

I recently stumbled across Microsofts Live Local offering while trying to find directions to a friends house in Northern Ireland. Initially I started out at Google Maps, but got very frustrated when the place I was looking for was seemingly insignificant enough not to be on any of Google Maps or Googles Earths maps.

So for once, I decided to see if Microsoft could do better…. And yes they did, a hell of a lot better.

I was very impressed with local.live.com - not only were these insignificant places on the map, it also offered you the ability to right click on your location and your destination in order to get directions.

Not only does it give you directions, it also provides you the option to choose the quickest route in time or the shortest route by distance! When you are happy with your results, you can print the map and text directions in nicely formatted fashion.

Although it doesn’t have the nice zoom as close as possible features that Google Maps has, it does however provide you with some very useful tools for mapping your journey.

Definitely a site worth bookmarking!

McAfee have a great tool for letting you know if the website you are visiting is likely to have spam, spyware, viruses or if it’s an online scam. You can download the plugin for your preferred browser at www.siteadvisor.com

It hooks in with Google, so when you search, you can see which sites in the search results are likely to be dodgy. A handy little tool for finding good sites amoung the haystack of many many dodgy websites!

FairUse4WM is a tool created by a hacker that calls himself Viodentia. It allows users of Windows Media player to remove DRM from files legitimately purchased from online subscription services such as Napster and Yahoo! .

Microsoft have patched the hole that allowed Viodentia to do this leading to critiscism from Engadget, read article here >>

I have to agree with this article. I being a fond listener to music would tend to buy a lot of music as opposed to downloading, which I am very comfortable at doing. I like to think I am helping the artist by buying their recordings. But if I can’t transfer music easily to my mp3 player because of the DRM protection, I’m not interested in buying the music online…..

Anyone that knows how to download music without having to pay will do it the easy way and it will most likely be a file sharing program. But for us who like to purchase our music, we just want to make it easy to put this music on to our portable devices, which FairUse4WM does very well!

Did you ever want to browse the web and cover your tracks so no-one will ever know where you’ve been? Well if so…. you are either extremely paranoid or you have something to hide!!!

But for people like you, there is a new FREE tool out there that will allow you to do just that!

A new modified version of Mozilla comes in the name of Torpark and can be downloaded here >>

I hope this post doesn’t facilitate anyone to particiapte in illegal activities!!

I’ve been in business for 4 years now and this is the first time I’ve really felt like venting my anger at Irish businesses attitude towards paying invoices on time. This seems to be an Irish phenomenon as with clients from UK or the US, they always pay on time. I’d be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this…

But anyway, what has me so annoyed is that I watched a programme on  RTE on Monday night. It was one of those programmes where a family decides the want to buy a “holiday home” abroad. Just as I was about to switch channels and look for something a bit more interesting, the family were introduced…. and low and behold it was a family that I had done some small business with (note the small) and who in fact owed me money. It’s not a large amount of money that they owe me, but it’s the fact that they don’t take my calls, reply to my emails etc etc that annoys me. They didn’t even have the decency to let me know they no longer required our services, which were costing ME money.

So you can see why when they were about to purchase a house for over €240,000 in Italy, that it got up my goat!! They owe me a measly amount in the small hundreds that they can’t seem to pay but have enough money to buy a foreign property. Now, I wouldn’t be as peeved, if they worked for a company, but they were both self employed. They’ve probably even used my invoice to get some tax free allowance for god sake………….

But this seems to be a common occurence in Ireland. I have another client who owes me money over a year now and ignores me everytime I ask for payment. Unfortunately I can’t do much about this one as it is money for work completed, so its not as if I can take down his website or something….

No don’t get me wrong, I have a heart and if people have problems paying their bills, they just need to approach me and tell me. I have at least 3 cleints who I know are very slow payers, but I always get paid. But it’s a mutual respect, I know they won’t go anywhere else, I know I’ll eventually get paid and they know they can ask me to do something and not be breathing down their necks for payment. That situation works for a very small few.

Anyway, rant over…. lets spend the rest of my day chasing payment for outstanding invoices or there will be no money to pay the wages!

I was shocked to hear last night that Richard Hammond from Top Gear was involved in a high speed car crash. In the last hour or so it has just been announced that he is still in serious condition but stable. Thank God for that!

Finally got my hands on AudioSlaves latest album, Revelations - you can buy it here >>

Although the album has everything I’d expect from an AudioSlave album, classic Rage Against The Machine style riffs and Chris Cornell’s amazing gravelly voice, it just doesn’t do it for me. Surprisingly Tom Morello even tries a “normal” guitar solo at one stage and pulls it off pretty well. Brad Wilk also seems a bit more adventurous on the drums than he has in previous albums.

The biggest flaw of this album in my opinion is the lack of catchy tunes! It sounds like the album was rushed and not much time was spent creating a new set of classic songs. But in saying that… it’s still a good album for the hardcore fans! It’s definitely worth the €12 to have in your record collection!

Well as I expected, Arsenal proved to be a step too far for Uniteds youngsters on Sunday. I always thought that this would be United’s first crunch game of the season and that it would be hard for United to overcome Arsenal’s talented side.

Arsenal who haven’t had a great start to the season were much better on the day and thoroughly deserved the win on Sunday. Yet again, I felt United were poor in defence and upfront.

United just weren’t at the races. Rooney still looks like he is far from match fitness, Scholes was kept well under control by Arsenal’s midfield, Wes Brown fell asleep a couple of times and our stand in keeper was, well, a stand in and it showed.

So where do we go from here? Well let’s hope we can pick it up again, but I don’t think we’ll ever get a season again where we could have been so far ahead of our main rivals!

Manchester Uniteds 5th game of the season turned out to be one of their biggest challenges yet. United were 1-0 down within 21 minutes after a great finish by Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Although United looked the better team, Celtic looked like they wanted to win this game more than United did.

It took only 9 minutes before United were gifted with a dubious penalty, when Boruc was deemed to have fouled Ryan Giggs in the Celtic box. Louis Saha took a great penalty to level it at 1-1. My man of the match Paul Scholes, created United’s second goal on 40 minutes, with a great pass to Saha that left him with only the keeper to beat. But not long after this Shunsuke Nakamura scored a beautifully taken free kick to level it at half time.

In the end United were gifted with their third goal when Gravesen mislayed his pass into the path of Paul Sholes who with ony three touches created another great pass to Saha who was denied by Boruc only to be followed up by Solskjaer. The only other player that caught my attention all night was Boruc who had a tremendous game.

All in all, I think this shows, that with all the hype surrounding Man Uniteds great start to the season that this is only because they have yet to be tested by a top team.

United were poor at the back and although I believe Saha suits Uniteds style of play better than Ruud, he didn’t seem very convincing in front of goal. Rooney looked tired and unfit while Michael Carrick looked totally unconfident. His passes were simple and we never saw any match winning passes or even attempted passes from him.

Although Arsenal have had a very poor start to the season, I think the game against United on Sunday will be Uniteds biggest test so far this season. I expect Arsenal to come out with all gun blazing as they always do against United.

I think this is where we will see if United are true contenders for the premiership this season.

Reports today suggest that Windows Live Search will replace MSN Search and power the searches on MSN.com. The site is now live in the UK and US only. You can view the site here : www.live.com

It’s obvious that Windows Live Search is trying to immitate that simplicity that Google brings us. But it’s just not the same….
Features include a scoping bar on the top of the results page keeps information from a previous search so a subsequent search can be executed in the context of the first. The new “related searches” feature on the right side uses an algorithm that uses the queries and results of others who have performed the same search.
Interesting times ahead in the search engine arena!