"A good heart is worth all the heads in the world"

Want to read something nice today? Check this site out - the Random Acts of Kindness site.

Test the accessibility of your website

The newest way to test website accessibility has been initiated by the Usability Exchange

The Usability Exchange is taking the next step forward to ensure that websites become more accessible to users with disabilities, by offering the first real chance for disabled users and website owners to have real interaction with each other.

Usability Exchange works by allowing website owners to submit their sites for testing by disabled users. It's become the closest thing to a usability testing forum, where people from both sides of the problem - site designers struggling to know how to make their sites better, and users struggling with accessibility of sites - can meet and make their needs known.

Site owners can create tests tailored to specific end user groups, and testers can register for free and carry out tests at a time that suits them. It's the best of all worlds, because sites are being tested not by a dedicated team of users whose job it is, nor by people trying to anticipate what accessibility problems are, but by the people who are in the best position to find the problems.

Usability is becoming more and more of a buzzword for sites now, with people, quite rightly, no longer accepting that some sites are poorly designed, hard to navigate, and in some cases simply unusable. If you're really into it, or want to find out more, visit the Usability Exchange or read the PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites, developed jointly by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and the British Standards Institution.

Recognition out there for bloggers!

It seems at last that the literary world is starting to recognise the erudite contributions from the world's 60 million or so bloggers.

The first short list for bloggers turned authors has been announced - 89 entries have been whittled down to 16, and the winners will be announced on the 3rd of April.

Bob Young, founder of the self-publishing site Lulu, which sponsors the award, said that books from blogs are now becoming hugely popular.

Any blog book, or 'blook', published anywhere in the world before January 2006 was eligible for entry in one of three categories - fiction, non-fiction, and comics. The prize fund is $4,000 - the overall winner to receive $2,000, and the other two category winners will each pocket $1,000.

The majority of entries are from the US, but two of the strongest UK contenders are Belle De Jour, whose blog tells about life as a prostitute, and Russell Davies, whose eggbaconchipsandbeans blog is a guide to the best greasy spoons in the UK.

Interestingly enough, considering this marks a synthesis of e-medial (is that a word?) and more traditional publishing (paper) materials, the prize marks the 450th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of moveable type.

Could you cope with 24 hour living?

Imagine this a few years from now "For sale, semi detached, newly decorated, kitchen/diner, lounge, bathroom, no bedrooms.."

Doesn't quite sound right does it? What's missing? Well everyone's seen episodes of Star Trek TNG, Stargate, Deep Space Nine, (and Space1999, Blake 7, Flash Gordon if you go back a bit further!) where nobody needs to eat anymore and everyone survives on one small pill everyday, but a pill that can remove the need for sleep?

Well it might not be as far away as it sounds. Modafinil, launched around 7 years ago can allow you to function for nearly 2 days without needing the ZZZZs. Modafinil, developed by the pharmaceutical company Cephalon and marketed under the trade name Provigil, is a mood-enhancing psychostimulant that wakes you up without causing the same jitteriness, anxiety, or eventual crash that can come after using more conventional methods of giving yourself a 'lift' such as amphetamines or even caffeine. Developed originally as a treatment for narcolepsy, it seems that it might have wider reaching appeal.

Of course we all know caffeine keeps us awake and we've known this for centuries. We all probably take in more caffeine a day than we realise - tea, coffee, soft drinks, chocolate. But the other thing that has always been recognised is that loss of sleep does catch up with you - the real problem is always the accumulated sleep-debt. You know you can get by for a week on 3 hours sleep a night if you have to, as long as you can have back-to-back espressos during the day, but come the weekend, you know you're gonna have to sleep for 14 straight hours.

What modafinil would seem to suggest is that the next generation of wake-performing drugs may offer constant wakefulness without the associated sleep debt. Modafinil's not quite there yet, but who knows what's next?

John Caldwell, with the Air Crew Health and Performance division of the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, conducted a study of modafinil with army helicopter pilots. The study showed that modafinil can allow people to remain awake and alert for 40 hours, and still retain their ability to function normally and deal with complex problems - something that's usually missing in people that have been awake for too long. Then, after 8 hours' sleep, they can get up again and do another 40.

Joel Garreau wrote in the Washington Post that one of the oddest things about trying the drug for his article, was having to learn to distinguish between being tired, and wanting to sleep, because that's what modafinil does, removes the desire to sleep.

Could this mean that the graveyard shift is a thing of the past? In 50 years's time, will our children look on disbelievingly when we tell them that we used to drink coffee with caffeine in it and spent one third of our lives asleep?

Samorost2

Play this. It's great.

Er, what?

Ever had a frustrating day when nothing goes right, and then to cap it all off your PC crashes with some unintelligible message that you feel thick for not being able to understand, and you end up hunting around on the manufacturer's website only to find no-one else in the entire world has ever had the same problem, and therefore the manufacturer concludes that in fact either a) there is no problem or b) you're stupid?

Well it's not only you. And chances are if the message seems unintelligible, you're not imagining it, it probably is. When Ben Ezzell of Guerneville, California was researching his latest book "Developing Windows Error Messages", he and his publisher O'Reilly & Associates asked people to send in some of their favourite bad error messages.

For ones that are guaranteed to cause a bit of head scratching and some severe metaphysical uncertainty, here are some of the best.

1) "The procedure failed with the following error: the command completed successfully. "(Oh, good... I think...)

2) "Error: keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue or Del to enter setup." (Someone's having a laugh, surely.)

3) "Your mouse is not working. Please click here to acknowledge."

4) "Contest entries." (????)

5) "Windows has found an unknown device and is installing a driver for it." (Hmmm, that'll be the generic 'unknown device' driver then. If you can get drivers for unknown devices how come I have to search the Epson website from top to bottom for the correct driver every time I want to reinstall my printer?)

6) "You need to supply a fax number in order for your request not to receive fax notifications to be processed."

7) "Your system shell has changed. The Compaq software will work with your new shell, but the new shell will not work with your Compaq software. Do you wish to keep your Compaq software working? Click Yes if you are unsure." (Can I have the options again please?)

8) "Printer on fire." (Oh my God, is it?!!!) NB. This is a unix error, apparently it has been changed in version 2.4.20 to read 'unknown error' instead of 'on fire'. How dull.

Warning: Windows virus set to activate on 3rd February

PC users are warned to scan their PCs before the 3rd of February to avoid being caught out by the Nyxem virus.

Nyxem has infiltrated many computers by disguising itself in an email attachment labelled as pornography. The virus is also known as Blackworm, MyWife, and Kama Sutra amongst others.

On the 3rd of February, the virus is set to delete Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, Zip, Photoshop and Acrobat files on infected machines. The virus also tries to protect itself by disabling anti-virus software on infected machines, and disabling the keyboard and mouse.

Home users are thought to be most at risk from viruses, as they are less inclined to regularly patch Windows and update anti-virus software than large businesses.

Virus-scan your PC before the 3rd February to make sure you're not at risk.

If you think you're infected and your regular anti-virus software doesn't remove the problem, F-Secure have a disinfection utility available as a download from their site.

Anti-stress ideas for the new year

I don't know about you, but I sometimes find the new year pretty stressful. It's when you realise that you did everything "too much" over Christmas - ate too much, spent too much, sat around too much, and January is always the time for having to bite the bullet and deal with the results. It's the time when you realise that you have to sort out the credit card, get off the settee and do some exercise, stop watching valium TV in the evenings and do something intelligent instead. And all that can of course bring on stress.

I found the other day, in the Co-Op Bank magazine, 10 top tips for beating stress. Not really the first place you'd look for anti stress ideas, but some of these actually sound quite sensible.

1) Have a laugh.

Apparently it's impossible to be amused and stressed at the same time, so give up the anxiety and find something to laugh about instead. Just in case you're already stressed and can't think of anything funny off the top of your head, here's a joke to kick things off: Two vultures were eating a clown, one said to the other, "Does this taste funny to you?" (Joke courtesy of codebrush, not the Co-op bank.)

2) Walk the dog (even if you don't have one)

Hmm, naughty Co-op bank, advising us to nick other people's dogs to walk with. This is a 3-part-combo on the stress beating front though, hitting 3 stress-busting areas at once; exercise, fresh air, and distraction from the things that are causing you to be stressed.

3) Decide whether the thing that's stressing you is within your sphere of influence.

The idea behind this one is that if the thing that's making you stressed isn't in your sphere of influence, there's no point worrying about it because there's absolutely nothing you can do to change it.

For example, if your train is cancelled and it's going to make you late for a meeting, calm down, phone the people you're not going to be able to meet, buy a coffee and a paper, and relax and wait for the next train. Getting stressed about things we can't control is purely a waste of energy.

4) Breathe in some lavender.

Lavender oil relieves stress and eases tension. The bank advise that you keep a hanky in your pocket with some of the oil on it. You'll smell like a summer garden to other people, and will waft around on a little cloud of serenity. Lavender oil does also help you sleep though, so be careful smelling it if you're on the last night train home and you don't want to miss your stop.

Also useful when you end up next to someone with questionable body odour on the tram.

Co-operative bank

Users decide about your site in 50 milliseconds

A Canadian study has shown that internet users make up their mind about whether they like a website or not in a fraction of a second.

The research, published in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology showed that the brain can make a decision about the quality of a page in just one 20th of a second, less than a 10th of the time that researchers had expected, and these first impressions have a lasting impact.

Volunteers in the study were shown brief glimpses of websites, lasting only 50 milliseconds, and were then asked to rate the websites in terms of how aesthetically pleasing they found them.

Surprisingly, the research team found that these 'quick' conclusions tallied very closely with opinions formed after the users had had much longer to examine the sites.

The researchers believe that a phenomenon known as the 'halo effect' is responsible for these quickly formed impressions lasting. If people have a positive impression of the way a website looks, these positive thoughts will influence the way the user sees the rest of the site, such as the website content.

Since people like to be right, they will carry on using the website that gave them a good first impression, and this will reinforce their belief that the intial decision was a good one.

Dr Gitte Lindgaard, lead researcher of the paper, said that companies should be aware of this.

"Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors," she warned.