Andy chats about the latest technology and interesting websites each week with Nerissa Pace on the "Talking back the night" radio show, heard across Australia.

 

Top 3 websites
http://www.finababysitter.com.au
The “find a baby sitter” website is a great way to track down a baby sitter in your area.
You have to pay a subscription to sign up to the site, but if you find the right baby sitter, you won’t need to renew.

http://ninemsn.com.au/recipefinder
Ninemsn’s recipe finder website will help you find meal ideas for just about any occasion…easily found by a keyword search. There are also other reader recipes, cooking tips and a food forum where you can just talk food.

http://www.yourtv.com.au
If you enjoy your TV, you should probably add this site to your favourites list so you can plan your viewing.

Feature Chat – Monitoring your children’s Internet use.

Tips for keeping your kids safe.
* Move the family computer into an open area
* Take an interest in your children's Internet habits
* Talk about appropriate computer usage with your kids.

Monitoring software - for when you can't be there.
* Keeps a record of all email and instant messaging conversations
* Tracks websites visited
* Reports all internet activity

Recommended programs (both have free trial versions)

http://www.itcompany.com/cyberalert.htm

http://www.cybersentinel.com/

 
Top 3 Websites
http://www.starsinyou.com
Do you think you look like a celebrity? Do you friends or family agree? They might just be saying that you keep you happy, but here's the true test.

http://www.teamwiggly.com
This website is great for a laugh and all you need to participate is a set of Googly eyes (like what you would find at a craft shop for making puppets) and a digital camera.

http://www.famousr.com
Which celebrity is more famous? On this website the people vote!
You'll be presented with photos of 2 celebrities at a time and you choose who you think is the most famous

Feature Chat - Universal Remote controls

The big question is how many remote controls is too many!!

Personally I think that once you hit 4 remote controls and they start to become a feature piece on your coffee table or you constantly pick up the wrong remote control, it's time to look at getting a universal remote control.

Firstly I should say that the range of Universal remote control devices out there is massive, but if you generally steer clear of any of the cheap and nasty stuff you will get good results.

For Under $100 you can however find Universal remotes than can learn control codes from your existing remotes, it's just a matter of putting in some setup time to 'teach' you new remote it's new tricks!

At latestbuy.com.au you'll find the Digitech Universal remote control for 90 dollars - it can replace up to 8 remotes and has many popular device commands already programmed in which may save you time.

If you have a bit more to spend, the Harmony range of Universal Remote controls from Logitech get great reviews across the product lineup, but the entry price is around the $150 mark and goes all the way up to $700 for a device that is the size of a small book and controls just about any device you can imagine.

The advantage with Logitech's Harmony remotes is that you can use your computer to program them by downloading the specific commands for each of your devices , then you can program simple functions like "watch TV" or "listen to music" to single buttons that send commands to different devices.

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Top 3 websites
http://www.left-or-right.com/
An ongoing popularity contest with no real objective.That’s what you’ll find at this site….vote for your preferences on things like “google or yahoo”, “Ferrari or McLaren”…or how about “jesus or the easter bunny”.
A fun site for a few minutes.

http://www.foldschool.com/
If you have kids on school holidays this site is a fun one to check out.
Basically if you have any old cardboard boxes around this site shows you how to make them into kids furniture!

http://www.justin.tv
A guy called Justin who wears a camera that broadcasts everything he does…live over the internet…yes even when he goes on a date or to the mens room.

Feature Chat – what else is new on the web this week
Apart from the top 3 websites there are a few more items of interest that have popped up online.

The first is the new “my maps” feature in Google Maps.Most people would know Google as the worlds most popular search engine, but Google Maps is a great tool for finding a location or even viewing your own house using the combined satellite images.
The new ‘my maps’ feature allows you to draw on map to create directions from one point to another that you can share with friends…or even add test, photos or videos to locations on the map that you visited on holidays to put them in context…a great way to make a travel journal.You can use google maps and the ‘my maps’ feature for free at http://maps.google.com.au

Also here’s something new for iPod owners.
Apple has just introduced a new deal in the iTunes online store called “complete my album”.
Basically the the idea is that many people will only download a few of the songs they like from Albums in the store, so they are offering an incentive for you to buy the rest of the album.
How ‘ complete my album’ works is if you’ve already bought, say 2 songs from a particular album, if within 180 days of you buying those songs you decide to buy the rest of the songs from that same album, you’ll actually get a credit of $1.69 for each of the songs you’ve already bought from it.
www.apple.com.au/itunes

Avoid dangerous websites using McAfee SiteAdvisor - A FREE download from siteadvisor.com - Don't search or surf without it!"

 
Top 3 websites
http://www.envelopecollective.com
While many people now use email in the same way as they would have posted a letter in the past…the humble envelope hasn’t been completely written off…in fact this website encourages ‘letters as art’.

http://www.whynottry.org
No doubt you’ve head the expression “you only live once”…well that’s fully embraced by the ‘why not try’ website which suggests all sorts of things that you should try doing.

http://www.zingfu.com
If you enjoy taking digital photos and sharing them…here’s something to have a bit of fun with…and it’s free>While there are plenty of Photo sharing websites around, The Zing Fu website injects a bit of humour into your snaps.

Feature Chat – Webmail
For anyone who likes to stay close to their email, no matter where they are, a webmail account is a great solution.

If you’re a newbie to the whole thing, Webmail is basically email that you access via your web browser.Some of the popular services include Hotmail, was really the first mainstream webmail service…along with Yahoo …but there are more out there such as Google’s grail.

One of the great things about webmail is that with all the popular providers it’s actually free…(a few years ago they did try ‘premium’ style accounts, that cost money, but these services had very limited success).

The biggest feature of webmail these days is that they now offer enough storage space so that you’ll just about never have to clean out your messages inbox! (not sure if that’s a good thing if you’re worried about information overload)

Just 10 years ago Yahoo offered 4 megabytes of storage space in yahoo mail…which was ok for simple text messages, but as soon as you received a few photos you had to start deleting!

In 2004, both Hotmail and Yahoo bumped up their email storage to around 100megabytes per account…and just 12 months later Yahoo increased this again to 1 gigabyte.
While this was going on , Gmail appeared (now owned by Google) and they now offer around 2.8 gigabytes of storage space for email.

The really big news this week though is that Yahoo has just announced that in may they will start to convert all Yahoo mail accounts to unlimited storage in May this year.

Imagine never having to delete anything from your computer because you will never run out of space…this is obviously how Yahoo see the future and I’m predict that some of those other webmail services could follow their lead very soon!

Yahoo mail can be found at http://mail.yahoo7.com.au