scout doodle

Subject: Not one Scout on your doodle team?
To: proposals@google.com

Greetings,

The worlds largest youth organisation celebrates the Birthday of it's Founder, Lord Baden-Powell today 22nd February. Yet again I notice a non-scouty Doodle on the homepage (sad face)

As I look at the Google homepage every day of the year, I notice all the birthdays, festivals, anniversaries, elections, national and independence days and out of the ordinary days. Last year on this day you celebrated Heinrich Rudolf Hertz 155th Birthday, (fun fact, he was born the same day and year as Baden-Powell) and the only previous doodles to be featured on February 22nd was in 2002, 2006 and 2010 for the Winter Olympics. I'd place a safe bet that on this day next year there will be an Olympic themed doodle on the front of your homepage.

So the Scouting and Guiding community world wide, all 38 million members (not including past members!) in 217 countries will have to wait until at least 2015 for the next available window and a possibility to be celebrated on the worlds most viewed homepage.

I urge you to read up on Baden-Powell, Scouting and Guiding world wide and make a note in your calendar for 2 years time! I know I'll be excited to wake up and see if Scouting will get the celebration and recognition I believe it deserves.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

Kind Regards,

Darran.

microsoft online password length

Last month Microsoft released an App for SkyDrive, however I couldn't log in because my password was longer than 16 characters. I contacted support and their response was:

Would you please change your password to be 16 characters or fewer? That way will help you to sign-in on iOS device successfully. Link

I left it go for a while, put it down to app teething problems. This week however I noticed that to sign into my hotmail or outlook (as it's known as now) I was welcomed to this message:

Microsoft account passwords can contain up to 16 characters. If you've been using a password that has more than 16 characters, enter the first 16.

I had a quick look on the official forums and found this response from a Microsoft Employee:

Windows Live ID passwords have always been limited to 16 characters.  What has changed is the login page now gives you immediate feedback to ensure you understand your password is not more than 16 characters.
To avoid this error message, do not enter more than 16 characters.
We are working on increasing the maximum password length. Unfortunately, for historical reasons, the password validation logic is decentralized across different products, so it's a bigger change than it should be and takes longer to get to market. Link

This is also going to be a problem in Windows 8. So I tried to find an official policy from them on passwords and their length. On the official Microsoft Safety and Security Center, on a page titled: Create strong passwords, it clearly shows an example password 28 characters long: ComplekspasswordsRsafer2011.

So what I want to know is why Microsoft doesn't want us securing our accounts with strong passwords. I stopped password reuse as part of my new years resolution and now use KeePass (syncs with Dropbox/KyPass on iOS/KeePassDroid on Android) to save all my passwords under one strong master password. All my other passwords are 32 characters, Upper, Lower, Digits and special characters.

Speaking of passwords, check out this awesome password tester, and nice master password generator.

TL;DR: Microsoft limiting your password to 16 characters, thus doesn't care about your online security. correct horse battery stable

Edit 2017-04-08: The link to Microsoft's Security Checker is broken as they seem to have taken it down. And if the password tester above is too complex for you, try this one.

back to normal-ish

I left re-registering this domain name to the last second, and also wanted to move it away from the default GoogleApps registrar, GoDaddy. So I experienced a bit of downtime and visits to the site have halted to a stop (obviously!). I'm back now on blog.langersblog.com for your viewing pleasure.

scouting ireland on twitter

I couldn't let the year to by without a small post, you know, to get the 2011 date activated in the blog archive! I decided that I'd talk once again about Scouting Ireland and a topic close to my heart, Twitter.

Timeline of Events:
September 2007: I started the @ScoutingIreland twitter account. I planned to use it to publish the news from the website onto twitter.
October 2008: I managed to get the account set up to tweet news from scouts.ie. It took a fair bit of work to figure out how to get the news from the static page to an RSS feed and in turn onto Twitter.
October 2010: New website and RSS feed launched! (Which I blogged about here!) After my hard work, I could change the RSS feed to the official one.
April 2011: I handed the account over to National Office. I was contacted and gave up the account to the Communications Team. Up to this point I gained about 1,300 followers.
April 2011: I set up another account, @IrishScouting and began the process again of pulling the news from the website into twitter. The account provided me (at least) with the official news from the site.
December 2011: @ScoutingIreland (the official account) has about 1,900 followers and steadily growing each day. @IrishScouting (unofficial) has about 80 and not gaining many each week.

I've looked at both these accounts and took a snapshot of that last 3 months to compare how well Scouting Ireland is looking after the account they made me give up. I was promised they had a plan and was told the account would be put to good use as part of the new Communication Plan.

Stats from @ScoutingIreland over the last 3 months:
Total Tweets: 64
Direct news from the website tweets: 15
Retweets from other accounts: 2
Test Tweets: 1
Replies: 1
Random, not official news Tweets: 4
Tweets from Group Leaders Conference: 41

Number of official news items from the website that was not published on their official feed: 22


And yes, those 22 were published on @IrishScouting!

new scouts.ie website

Before I begin, this isn't a dig at anyone in particular. This is me talking about Scouting Ireland. I'll also state that I'm not perfect nor is neting I do!

Scouting Ireland relaunched their new Scouts.ie website yesterday. This new website will be the public facing, what's scouts about and how do I join for the public to view and get information. This website has also been finished for the last number of weeks, waiting a whole big unveiling at a Group Leaders conference this weekend. So they should be well prepared for their 16:15 launch, which eventually went live at 16:45ish.

I have seen many new websites go live, been involved in many go lives and even had the pleasure of testing, breaking and proofing website before launch. Standard practice, get people to test and look over your website, usability test etc etc. It seems that there wasn't many people left into the inner circle of testing this new website. I will go through some of the things I came up with on a 30 minute quick look through the site last night:

Typos typos everywhere

I found a total of 25 typos on a website that contains about 30 pages. In no particular order:

1 & 2 - On the National Management Committee page.

3 to 6 - On the Professional Staff page.

7 - On the Parental Information page.

8 & 9 - On the Campsite Locator page.

10 - On the homepage page.

11 & 12 - On the Join Today page.

13 to 15 - On the History of Scouting Ireland page.

16 & 17 - On the One Programme page.

18 - On the Cub Scouts page.

19 - On the Scouts page.

20 & 21 - On the Venture Scouts page. 

22 & 23 - On the Benefits of Join page in the Leaders section. 

24 & 25 - On the Why become a Leader page. 

Broken / Formatting Errors

Here are some of the things that I found didn't work as expected or there was a formatting issue

1. That Huge Banner doesn't link correctly. On the home page it links correctly to Beavers, Cubs and Scouts but click on the Ventures Banner and your directed to Rovers and click on the Rovers links to Leaders. The Leaders Banner is usually the first one that loads and it doesn't link anywhere. Also If you miss the banner, there is no way to go back, you have to wait until it goes around again.

On any section page, for example Venture Scouts, the banner rotates with different Venture Scout images and click to find out more (Why would I want to click when I'm on the page?), but they say Ventures and then link to the other sections, Beavers Cubs etc..

2. Section or Recent News. Every section page, Beavers to Leaders has their own Recent news box, which should contain news for that section. In this example, Cub scout news contains Venture Scout news. There is also a Read more Section News, which should bring you to loads of other Cub Scout News, but it fails and just brings you to the article about Challenge 2010.
Ok, there is a lack of news as the site just launched, but there could be a place holder Cub news for their section?

3. Formatting in Other Links. Again, a little formatting hiccup that should have been picked up straight away.

4. Contact Page. This is perhaps the worst designed page on the site. First off they seem to want to SHOUT about GROUP and CHILD PROTECTION POLICIES. Then there is a nice map, but no location placed on it. Sure National Office is somewhere there, but where? Then I only noticed it out of the corner of my eye, there is a contact form (with an missing image). There was no mention of filling out a form on the page, it is just there!

5. Group Locator page. When you click on a group, you get a nice balloon popping up with details of the group. It is however butt ugly with scroll bars. Format it correctly please!

Final Thoughts

On the design of the site, I think the banner is too big, the duplicating of the groups and ages on the main page takes up far too much space. There is no RSS for the latest news and no social media integration (HUGE opportunity missed here). I believe the correct term is Scouters not Leaders as National Office has drilled up for the past few years, but decided to let it slide on their national website. 

Ok, it is a website for the general public and we will have to wait until next Wednesday to see the amazing my.scouts.ie website for actual members to use. Overall it does its job but there is a lot of really bad mistakes. I've been trying to look at it in the mind of a potential youth member or parent and hopefully it will increase members and raise the profile of Scouting.

nct

My car is due its NCT on Wednesday morning. I had a look at the NCT website and they publish their test stats, showing how many tests took place and the pass rate. What I found really interesting was that it doesn't change from one year to the next. Take a look at the graph I did comparing their data and the consistency between years:

I have about exactly 51% chance of passing first time. If I fail, I will have about exactly 90% chance of passing.
It will be interesting on Wednesday if I am in the lucky 51% or the unlucky 48% (±1%)

bye bye rte

On Friday I handed control of all the RTÉ twitter accounts back to RTÉ.

After what happened in the previous post, I didn't want the same happening to all the other accounts. I counted that there was over 15,000 people following all the different accounts I had running. So after a quick tweet or two to Mr. O'Shea, I found who I should be contacting about the transfer of details.

I got a two sentence email back from them four days later:

Dear Darran,
Thank you very much your email. We are happy to take over the ownership of these accounts and will appreciate if you send us all necessary details.
Best regards,

After over two years of providing the service and not abusing the names or the accounts for my own gain (quite easy to embed my own advertising into the feeds) or just holding onto them and doing nothing with them, all I got from RTÉ was that two sentence, poorly written email.

I sent over all the log in details and after a couple of days downtime the accounts have started spewing out news once again. Already there are problems with their new account feeds, which I would have picked up on and fixed straight away... lets see how @RTE_WebDesign handle it :-)

P.S. Can you change the email address on all the account or I might forcefully take them back!

worldscouting on twitter

So I created the Twitter Account @WorldScouting in July 2008 and had a custom RSS Feed to update it from January this year with any World Scouting News from the WOSM Website. It gained a number of followers, from the emails I received, over 1,350 Scouters started following the account. I even noticed that there was a link on the official scout.org website to follow them on Twitter, linking to that account.

This evening I received an email from Twitter themselves:

Hi
It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/worldscouting
is in violation of the Twitter Rules:
* Trademark: We reserve the right to reclaim user names on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those user names. Accounts using business names and/or logos to mislead others will be permanently suspended.
In this case "trademark" is the issue. To avoid confusion regarding brand and/or official affiliation with the business/company in question, we've removed your profile from the site.
Thanks,
Twitter Support

That is fair enough... I put my hands up, it was me, I broke the rules. However my issue is the way this happened. Was it a request from WOSM to close the account or did Twitter come across the account themselves and act on their own? Was I given a chance to answer why I did it and if I wanted to transfer ownership over to WOSM?

A few weeks ago I did notice that a new account has been set up as @worldscouting2 and that account seems to have taken the place of my @WorldScouting. This new account has a classy new low resolution JPG instead of a PNG as an avatar giving a poor quality effect. They also don't capitalize their name properly (@worldscouting should be @WorldScouting)

That's only a little thing that annoys me, but the biggest annoyance is the fact that over one thousand people on Twitter who were getting frequent updates and retweeting them (over 140 retweets) now have no idea that the account that they were following does not exist anymore and they have to re-follow the new @WorldScouting to start receiving updates!!

My message to the guys in Geneva, I'm sorry I provided a service that you didn't offer at first. It wouldn't have been very hard to find out who ran the account. A quick tweet with "@worldscouting who runs this" would have gotten a reply from me. I would have happily handed over the log in credentials and you could have kept all the followers, after all I am a good Scout! Instead you went running to cut off the head, losing over 1,350 followers!

(On a side note, this gives me food for thought with all the other accounts I have... might go on a deleting spree!)

avoid ryanairs credit card fees

Mr. O'Leary will love me for this but I just booked a flight and saved paying the 5euro each way/per person charge for using my credit card. It is simple and here is how:

1. Head over to entropay.com and sign up. Create a virtural card and leave it at that for the moment.
2. Start booking your Ryanair flight.
3. Don't add any extra's or bags, just pay for the flight and the web check in fee of 5euro each way/per person.
4. When you get to the payment screen, select Visa Electron and watch as the total doesn't increase!
5. Head back over to EntroPay and load your card with the required amount, down to the cent. You will be charged a loading fee, but I will talk about that below*
6. Copy the details of your new virtural card and paste them into the Ryanair website where they ask you for your Visa Electron Card (I used my own address).
7. Click Pay!
8. Once the flight is confirmed go back to the main Ryanair homepage and click manage your booking using Option 3. You can then choose to add more bags or extras. You can use your main Credit Card now as it won't be charged the 5euro handling fee!

*EntroPay charge a fee of 4.95% to load the card. Booking your flight without bags etc will cut down the EntroPay charge as it is a percentage of the amount you are loading. You can pay for the bags with your normal credit card without any fees once the flight is booked.

Please note, this method is only beneficial if the cost of the flight and online check-in is under 202euro per person (404euro for two people etc..), mine was 77.32euro. I believe my maths is sound. Here is what I just paid for my flight using EntroPay:

I know it is only a 6.17euro saving, but because it is Ryanair it is even more sweeter!

On a side note, it has been a long time since a post here, but there have been many over on tumblr! I am also in a position to talk once again about the Amazing Teaching Council of Ireland.... but that's another post!

somas album

I got an email from Soma a few weeks ago, but i'm only getting around to listening to it now.

Three of my friends, Mezer, Eric and Walshy are in the Band and unfortunately I have only been to one of their gigs so far. I've been listening to their songs all evening, and they're not so bad!

< Begin Press Release >
Soma’s album, “The Somatic LP” is now available to buy for just €5 at the following outlets:

• Music Zone, Carrigaline, Co Cork
• Plugged Records, Washington Street, Cork
• Tower Records, 6-8 Wicklow St, Dublin
• For digital download at downloadmusic.ie/soma
• From the locker/boot of any of the band members!

There are 11 songs on the album cites influences from The Smashing Pumpkins, The Foo Fighters, Ash, Death Cab for Cutie, Jessica Alba and My Bloody Valentine.

The album was recorded from Nov 08 to Feb 09 in various locations in Cork. The album was mastered in April 09 by Richard Dowling in Limerick who as previously worked with such greats as S Club 7, Rachel Stevens, Steps and Busted. (He has also worked with some unknowns such as David Bowie, The Foo Fighters, The Undertones, Jools Holland and Interpol…ahem!)

Try before you buy, you can listen to the songs at: myspace.com/somamusiccork
< /end >

There was a load of free copies to people who knew them, but apparently I don't get one (something about not trusting me...)
Anyway, if you were wondering who is who on the album cover:

• Mezer would be the same as Cindy in the lower left
• Eric is the same as Marcia
• Walshy is where Bobby is
• And lets not forget Dave who is in the same spot as Greg

Head over to their website anyway and have a listen to a few songs!

A mission

Sometimes it feels like it is a test to see how long I can go without updating this.

Lots happening on tumblr!

modernize

So here is what I've been up to this January

• New Years in Kandersteg
  
• Skied and sledded a bit
• Been working away at Musgrave
  
• Got my car repaired, twice
• Sent away all the details about my degrees to be assessed by the Teaching Council of Ireland
  
• Weekend in Tramore for Teoiny and Sandys Birthday
  
• Started a Wakoopa account
  
• Caught up with a lot of US telly
  
• Managed to see every The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for January
  
• Figured out why he says Repor (It's like there is a silent T like in Colbert)
  
• Started using Twitter a lot more
  
• Been to the cinema
  
• Watched a load of movies
  
• My contract has been renewed till April
  
• Didn't get to play as much Call of Duty as I wanted to
  
• Posted over 170 items on my Tumblr
  
• Been to a few Scout meetings

How has it been for you?

2008

A bit late, but here are the stats for 2008. More of an Irish base compared to last year, more subscribers and Mac on the up as well as Firefox. A huge chunk of traffic came from search engines.

Posts: 50
Comments: about 100

Total for 2008:

• 14,460 - Page Loads
  
• 10,964 - Unique Visitors
  
• 10,129 - First Time Visitors
  
• 835 - Returning Visitors
  

On average, each day:

• 40 - Page Loads
  
• 30 - Unique Visitors
  
• 28 - First Time Visitors
  
• 2 - Returning Visitors
  

Top 5 posts this year:

• free priority boarding
  
• iphone prices worldwide
  
• subcard
  
• our next chief
  
• 20 pixels
  

Traffic Sources:

• 63.25% - Search Engines
  
• 26.74% - Referring Sites
  
• 9.97% - Direct Traffic
  

Top Countries:

• 39.28% - Ireland
  
• 18.55% - United States
  
• 14.38% - United Kingdom
  
• 3.59% - Canada
  
• 1.97% - Germany
  
• 22.23% - Other (96 including: Australia, Netherlands, France, India, Sweden, Switzerland, etc..)
  

Top Cities:

• Dublin
  
• Cork
  
• London
  
• Limerick
  
• Galway
  

Top Browsers:

• 50.90% - Internet Explorer
  
• 40.13% - Firefox
  
• 5.16% - Safari
  
• 3.81% - Other (Opera, Chrome, etc..)
  

Top Operating Systems:

• 87.55% - Windows
  
• 9.18% - Macintosh
  
• 2.30% - Linux
  
• 0.97% - (iPhone, iPod, Symbian OS, etc..)
  

That is who visited the actual website. The total feed subscribes is 65

Thanks one and all for contributing, taking part, subscribing, reading and commenting. Check out my Tumblr for daily fun stuff and my Twitter for daily what am I doing stuff :-)

kisc gmail gadget

If you loved the Kandersteg International Scout Centre Webcam Gadget for iGoogle as much as they did in Switzerland to even mention me on their webcam page:

NEW: ADD THE KISC WEBCAM TO YOUR iGOOGLE PAGES!

Use this fantastic widget to keep an eye at the Centre from your own personalized Google site! To insert the KISC Webcam to your iGoogle, click here! (thanks Darran for creating this widget!).

Well the you will love this! (Thanks for the kudos too!)

K.I.S.C. Webcam in your Gmail!

As you can see, a little version of the Webcam right there in your Gmail, which I have open way more than iGoogle! So here is the step by step guide on how to add it:

1. Click on Gmail Labs in Settings
   
2. Scroll the the bottom and enable: Add any gadget by URL
   
3. Click Save
   
4. Click on Gadgets in Settings
   
5. Paste in the address for the gadget:

http://darranc.googlepages.com/gkiscam.xml

That's it! If you want to move it around, like above chat, go back into Labs and enable: Navbar drag and drop.

Met Éireann Gadget
On the topic of Gmail Gadgets, Peter created a nice Met Éireann Gadget to keep track of the weather!

Add this line to the Gadgets page:
http://www.highonsnow.com/metgadget/metgadget160.xml

my opinion of irish opinions

Over two years ago I signed up for Irish Opinions. They take all your details and areas of interest and in turn send you surveys to complete online. Each survey has an estimated completion time, cut off date and reward. They usually last anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes and the reward is usually from €0.50 to €2.50.

This has been an easy deal with the amount of surveys increasing from 1 in 2006, 10 in 2007 to 15 so far this year. I have earned about €40 which I can redeem for HMV, Tesco or Amazon vouchers.

The last few surveys had really annoyed me. I got one this morning that was the final straw!

I received an email as usual telling me there was a survey waiting for me. I clicked on the link, nearly as soon as the email appeared in my inbox. Standard first question pops up; Age and Sex. When I fill it in I get this response.

Thank you for coming through to our survey, unfortunately we already have enough responses for this survey.
We hope to invite you to other surveys in the very near future.
Please wait whilst we register your participation...

This wasn’t the first time this has happened to me, several surveys in the past couple of weeks I didn’t fit the criteria or the quota was already reached. I fired off an email to them asking why they sent me a survey they knew I wouldn’t be able to complete due my age and sex (which they already know). I was fobbed of with a generic reply about sometimes the quota is reached on a survey.

I’m fed up with them wasting my time asking me to do surveys that they would know I can’t complete if they looked at the details and surveys about myself I’ve filled out.

I have decided to cash in my rewards and just stop. Once I receive them I’ll be closing my account. Thanks for Isabel… if that is your real name!

P.S. I sometimes lied on those surveys when they got too long and I just wanted to finish!

dell laptop repair

Yesterday, the graphics card on my laptop went again for the second time. I bought it in September 2007 and I got 1 year next day on site repair and 2 years complete collect and return repair.

Last June I had a similar problem and it was fixed the next day by an engineer who came around to the house and replaced the motherboard. Great stuff!

This time around I’m not covered by the on site repair. So I rang support and went along with the various checks they did over the phone. He then said he would send an engineer out to repair it. Great stuff again I thought! So he booked me an engineer for Tuesday.

Photo owned by refeia (cc)

Today I got a phone call from Dell and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello
Dell: Hello Mr. Crowley. This is [Subject Name Here] from Dell.
Me: Hi. How’s it going?
Dell: Good. I’m wondering if you are willing to have your laptop sent to us for repair?
Me: Didn’t you organise an Engineer to come tomorrow and fix it at my home tomorrow?
Dell: Yes we did. But it looks like your warranty doesn’t cover the next day on site call.
Me: How long would it take to get my laptop repaired if I sent it to you?
Dell: About 5 working days.
Me: So I could have it fixed tomorrow or wait 5 more days?
Dell: Yes. We would prefer if you sent it to us.
Me: Right. I prefer the engineer to come tomorrow.
Dell: Ok. You are aware in future you are only covered by our collect and return service.
Me: I know. That’s why I was surprised you were sending someone tomorrow.
Dell: Ok. Thank you Mr. Crowley.
Me: Thank you, bye now!

Score one me not Dell :-)

screw u xbox live

Microsoft really knows how to rub some people up the wrong way. This week, my friend Brick got first hand experience of how ridiculous their online gaming system (Xbox Live) runs.

Quick introduction to Xbox Live: When you connect your Xbox to the internet, you register your gamertag (nickname). This gives you a gamercard (like an account id) showing your gamerscore (how many points you earned playing different games). There is two types of memberships; Silver and Gold.
A Silver Account is free and allows you to chat with friends, download content from the marketplace. A Gold Acount allows you to do all that plus play games online with other people and friends. Currently the price for 12 month Gold Membership is €59.99 in Ireland and Europe. However in the United States, this is only $49.99 (~€40)

1. When Brick was in the States he signed up for a free Silver Account. He created his gamertag and built up a gamerscore playing games. When we returned to Ireland he transferred his account over to his own Xbox 360 and continued to play and earn point on his gamertag.
2. This week he decided that it was time to get a Gold Account so he could play with his boyfriends friends online. But since he signed up with a US account, it would not be possible for him to pay for it unless he has a US credit card billing address.
   
3. He rang Microsoft at Xbox Live to change his account to an Irish one so he could pay for Gold Membership.
4. He was told: no. It was impossible. They didn't even want to listen to his problem or reason for the request. 
5. The only way he could pay for a Gold Account was to registered a new gamertag. He would loose his gamerscore, stats, friends list and current gamertag (which he was quite attached to).
6. So Microsoft were refusing to accept €59.99 off him, right there.
7. A little bit annoyed at them he ploughed on with the online payment system on the Xbox, hoping they wouldn't notice that the billing address for the credit card wasn't in the US.
8. After his second payment attempt his phone rang. It was his bank wondering about the suspicious activity on his account. He explained his problem to the nice lady on the phone and she turned off all security for his credit card. He then put through the order, this time it was manually authorised, billing his credit card the US amount for a US 12 month Gold Membership, about €40!

So Microsoft wouldn't take the whole €59.99 off him when they had the chance. Instead he ended up paying two thirds that, and next year won't even think about getting in touch with Microsoft when renewing his account! They will keep losing about €20 a year all because they wouldn't play nice on the phone and accommodate him by changing his address!

How To Ruin Xbox Live For Everyone Else

Note on US accounts: There is more free downloadable content in the marketplace than you can get on an Irish account. Brick can access this straight away, but there is no reason why you can't sign up for a free Silver US account and avail of the free stuff. Most of my friends have two accounts!

fake christmas tree

Following on from Dec's post on Christmas Trees, I thought i'd share my thoughts. We have always had an artificial/plastic Christmas tree and I don’t see the problem really. There are many advantages to a fake tree:

• They pay for themselves the following year
• They are safer. They are made with fire resistant materials they don’t go up like dried out trees do
• They don’t loose their needles
• There isn’t an issue with sap (sticky stuff not anything here)
• It is environmentally friendly. And don’t listen to those people who tell you that are from a controlled forest. What happens to your real tree when you’re finished with it? You gotta pay for a wood chopper, or chuck it in a car park/recycling centre and it will set on fire? Right?
• They save time. No need to search for a nice tree
• They are allergy friendly. Nothing on a fake tree will cause you to sniff your way through the month of December if you suffer any allergies!

There are a few advantages to having a real tree (so my argument is kinda balanced):

• Help the local economy
• Cheaper to produce.. yes it is true.. 
• The smell of a real Christmas tree.

That last point would be a very strong reason to have a real one. This however can be artificially created too! Just buy a load of Royal Pine car fresheners and stick them around the tree, out of sight. This will give you the real smell you were looking for, without having to go get a real tree!

Anyway, with trees like the following video ... why would you ever consider a real tree again!

P.S. I notice from a comment that they were first invented by those who make toilet brushes! Classy!

google a to z

• Google Analytics *
  www.google.com/analytics
• Google Book Search
  books.google.com
• Google Calendar *
  www.google.com/calendar
• Google Docs *
  docs.google.com
• Google Earth *
  earth.google.com
• Google Finance
  finance.google.com
• Google Groups
  groups.google.com
• Google Health
  https://www.google.com/health
• Google Image Search *
  images.google.com
• Google Jobs
  www.google.com/intl/en/jobs
• Knol: a unit of knowledge
  knol.google.com
• Google Labs *
  labs.google.com
• Google Maps *
  maps.google.com
• Google News *
  news.google.com
• orkut
  www.orkut.com
• Google Page Creator
  pages.google.com
• Google Questions & Answers (Russia!)
  http://otvety.google.ru/otvety/
• Google Reader *
  www.google.com/reader
• Google Scholar *
  scholar.google.com
• Google Talk *
  www.google.com/talk
• Google U.S. Government Search
  www.google.com/ig/usgov
• Google Video
  video.google.com
• Google Webmaster Central *
  www.google.com/webmasters
• Google Lunar X PRIZE
  www.googlelunarxprize.org
• YouTube *
  www.youtube.com
• Google Press Center: Zeitgeist
  www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

* I use this on a regular basis.
Some others that I use that are not included: AdSense, Alerts, Blogger, Chrome, FeedBurner, Gears, Gmail, iGoogle, Mobile, Pack, Picasa, Toolbar, Translate and of course Web Search!

kc's queue cam

Following on from the KISC webcam gadget I made for iGoogle, (which can be found here) I made a similar one for the K.C's Queue Cam.

I know how lazy people are when it comes to things:

• Finding the K.C's site and webcam page
• Getting the address of the webcam image
• Search for a webcam gadget to allow you to put in the address
• Adding that to your Google homepage
• Then edit it so it shows the KC's Queue Cam

So i've done all the hard work for you. With this gadget you can add it directly to your iGoogle page or to your own site/blog. Enjoy!