You may wonder why I like it so much, well its quite simple. There is not another Olympic logo like it. Fair enough other Olympic logos work and indeed look good (see here) Only problem is they all look the same, they all have the same elements and all show some kind of recognisable symbol or mark, that is of the host nation. I like the London 2012 logo because its different, simple and there is nothing like it, even if it was a little expensive.

5 Reasons to switch from IE to something else:

1. Its Horrible confusing and counter-intuitive (in versions 5 - 7)
2. Its unSafe See Here
3. It causes headaches on a monumental scale, I only play with web design its not a serious job and it give me headaches I can only imagine what it does to the poor developers that design sites for a living.
4. Pop-Ups - whilst installing Google's toolbar and using pop-up blockers built into the latest version IE its still not good enough, with a couple of firefox extensions you can block anything you don't want easily and you can even stop the annoying "Zap Me!" ads
5. This is the simplest of all the reasons, its made by Microsoft and therefore supports there own proprietary software and activex controls, which should really be named entry points for spyware and nasty painfully hard to remove software that you simply don't want

Simply put switch and make your life more productive and Kill Off Bills Browser

In the beginning, the iPod let you listen to every CD you owned, even when you were stuck on the Red Line. Then Steve Jobs said, "Let there be video," and lo and behold, you could watch "Lost" die a slow, overwritten death on a two-inch screen. But while people seem content to load their little devices with as many songs and TV shows as possible, podcasts (think of them as radio programs that you download) tend to be neglected.
Listen and Learn With Podcasts - washingtonpost.com

The Answer = Not anytime soon
Why? it all falls down to the mentality of the person learning and the fact that listening to a podcast is a passive occupation, were as good learning will always be active.

Increasing technology use within schools, colleges and university's can do nothing but help the way we learn and consume that learning materials. Being able to access course materials 24/7 is a great resource to have but you don't remember the stuff you do aswell as you would from a classroom.

I think there will inevitably be some invention that takes podcasting and vidcasting out of the passive domain into the interactive and maybe then we can consider replacing the classroom. Until then I think classrooms are safe.

Designing in general can seem complicated and daunting but with just a few photoshop techniques in your toolbox. You can create a logo for you in a couple of hours or less.

You start with a blank sheet
Like all good things its best to start with no computer, a soft pencil, rubber and blank sheet of paper will do. Start by just randomly sketching something and then start working that into a logo (say you initials for example) You can spend as long as you like making this drawing look something like how you want it, but it doesn't have to be very neat.

Say Cheese
Next step take a photo of your design (or scan it) I tried drawing my logo free hand straight on the my fantastic Wacom Intuos3 tablet, but it never looked right. This way works best for those of us who aren't 100% confident with the graphics tablet.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Now for the slightly more complicated bit, open up your photo in photoshop and start using the pen tool, to trace over your logo. You can find a fantastic tutorial on the pen tool over on PixelPerfect
You can then continue and play with the path till its perfect (this is why you pencil drawing didn't need to be perfect)Then fill the path with a gradient by creating a gradient layer and using the path to mask it. Repeat this process until all elements of your logo.

Add a bit of text and you have yourself a logo. Its not that difficult, really. The harder part is making your website match your logo.

While its not quite upto the standard of Andromeda' we're getting closer.

http://www.dwavesys.com/

In my case i think that blogging has significantly improved my written (pity I didn't pick a-level english) I also find it easier to write longer more in-depth things that I would ordinarily just leave well alone.

Think of it, outside of the blogging context though. You write lots, you get better at writing, blogging is just an extension of that writing skill. You then have the flip side, the fact that you can get so into the blogging and other related things on the web that you then spend less time working and more time blogging. The key would seem to be getting the right balance of blogging and work, lets say the blog to work ratio. In my case I would love to spend every living moment making stuff for the web, and blogging. Alas I need to work because I aren't doing particularly well on the maths side of things but Computing is entirely other story.

Sorry for disjointed nature of this post, and the fact it would seem to posting for postings sake but I think it's genuinely instresting to actually see what benefits you get from blogging. We all want to blog or do we?

"Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it." Mr Plummer

We (depending were you read this blog) live in countries with few or no laws on how to protect ourselves online, fair enough there's the DPA in the UK which goes somewhere near but there is no clear definition of what constitutes hacking or any other cyber-offence.

It stupidly simple to get access to a computer that you don't own that its scary. You can take a standard off the shelf USB stick, push it in a computer it will create you a Administrator account a remote user account and give you the password to anybody who logs into that machine. Many homes now are switching to wi-fi indeed BT offer there Home Hub which is wireless with all there packages, albeit with a very simple 64-bit encryption assigned to it, but who's responsibility is it to secure there wi-fi, I am firmly in the camp that if you leave it open its fair game to anybody, but just think about what you do online in a particular day and how much somebody could find about you it just a few hours on your network. Its enough to steal your Identity and rob you blind, yet many people just don't understand the scope of the problem.

It's all well and good knowing that these things are problems but how do we stop this from happening in the first place. As yet I haven't been able to come up with a single thing that could be feasibly enforced, or surrendering our own privacy to some higher power (which I don't think anybody in there right mind would be comfortable with. This is a problem that is almost as big as Global Warming if we manage to survive what ever apocalyptic event we make. Yet, we continue for the most part ignoring the fact it is a problem and how it would effect you if your identity was cloned and bank accounts cleaned, not a particularly nice thought.

I am amazed at ThinkFree Office it is exactly what a web app should be and the learning curve is 0 cos it looks just like office on you desktop. Wel done guys, and ThinkFree Office is my default Office of choice.

And I got this from 5 minutes using it.

http://blog.thinkfree.com/