Category Archives: Useful websites

This category contains all posts that refer to useful websites.

Twitter – do you tweet?

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I’ve known about Twitter for ages, but it was only 2 days ago when I finally decided to join the party and see what all the fun’s about. I’ve set up a page on Twitter for GEEK! in case you haven’t already seen it – twitter.com/geekonthepc – on which I’ll be posting the most popular GEEK! posts together with all the new posts that get posted here (so you’ll see this post on Twitter).

After playing around with Twitter for a couple of days, I’m not amazed by it. I haven’t got any problems with it, but it doesn’t make my go WOW. I really like the simplicity of Twitter (unlike many other comparable sites) and how easy it is.

Twitter is much more basic than Facebook or Myspace in my opinion. You simply say what you are doing and read what you’re friends are doing. You can “follow” people so you get their updates immediately and other people can “follow” you – it’s kind of like the ‘Subscribe’ function on Youtube when you subscribe to somebody’s channel.

A large range of applications and websites have also been created to enhance Twitter. Many of them simply display the most popular tweets and Twitter URLs. I find these handy, especially if you want to grab attention to yourself.

I don’t use Twitter personally, simply because I’m not really into social networking. As I said earlier, I’ve set up a Twitter page for the benefit of GEEK! readers, but it won’t be something I’ll be joining for personal use.

I look forward to the future of Twitter. I think it will be interesting to see what Twitter becomes in the near future. It is being known to have a very high growth rate and is already extremely popular, so it will be nice to see what it’s like in a years time.

Find the biggest files on your hard drive

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Today I was quite shocked when I looked at my hard drive’s free space to find that over 70% was full, and I couldn’t work out why the hell it was so full.

So I thought I’d better check out where my biggest files were on the computer – but sadly Windows has no real way of sorting your whole hard drive into file size (at least not Vista, anyway) which is a bit of a bummer.

So I did a quick Google, and found a very useful free application which will search your computer for the 100 biggest files on your hard drive. It’s really easy to use and setup as there is no installation – you just download the 258kb file and run it. You can then navigate to the folders with the files you don’t want and delete them.

You just need to go to this site and download file with the ‘free download’ link. Then just run it and let it search your hard drive.

It helped me free up just over 12GB on my hard drive which was really handy since I need some space for the upcoming Windows 7 RC release.

Anyway, there you have it. A really handy application which I’ll place on the GEEK! Recommends page.

My top 10 iPod Touch/iPhone Apps

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I’ve had my iPod a couple of days now to play around with, and have become addicted to it. Anyway, as promised, here are my 10 favourite apps for the iPod Touch in no particular order. There are both free and paid apps, so you can have a range of both if you like.

Any comments on my choices are welcome via comments, so if you’ve tried something I mention already, let us know what you think of it.

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How far are you from your telephone exchange?

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These days, the words “up to” are the worst words you can imagine when you are in the process of getting broadband. They are the words that broadband providers always say when quoting you a speed. They always say that the speed of your internet depends on the capabilities of your line and how far you are from your exchange.

Well, I’ve found a nifty little site that will help you to determine an approximate distance that you are from your exchange. It’s called Sam Knows Broadband Checker. You can just use your landline phone number or (if you don’t have a landline) your house number, together with your postcode, to work out how far your house is from the exchange.

Bare in mind it only works out straight line distance, so if you’re in a large town or city this may not be entirely accurate, but it still does give you a good idea of how far you are.

If you are a long distance from your exchange (more than 1 mile or 1.6 kilometers – apologies for that previous measurement error) you shouldn’t consider high speed broadband as you simply be able to get high speeds. An 8MB claimed speed will be plenty as you probably won’t get much more than 2MB in real time.

If you are a short distance (within a mile) you might want to consider 16MB broadband or above as you will probably be able to get a decent speed. It’s still a good idea to check with the company that you are buying from whether you would be able to get high speeds depending on your line speed and exchange distance.

Don’t forget if you are thinking of joining a company that provides fibre optic broadband, this may not apply to you. It only applies if you are joining copper cable broadband.

Anyway, if you need to find out this distance of your exchange from your house, here’s the place to go.

Spotify – free, legal streaming music in wonderful quality! A must have!

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I recently came across Spotify – it’s a free, legal music streaming service available in many countries. It’s completely free to download and use, so go ahead and get it from www.spotify.com.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it has an interface that (I think) vaguely resembles iTunes – but thankfully, it’s much quicker and easier to use than iTunes. It’s really quick to install, and once you’ve spent 30 seconds of your time creating an account, you’re ready to start listening.

It has some distinct advantages to other free music streaming services available on the net, such as:

  • No listening limits – you can listen to each song as many times as you like. No limits like on sites like last.fm.
  • Really high quality – some sites have noticeable compressed tracks which just aren’t worth listening to. However, Spotify has really good sounding tracks that don’t sound compressed. Perfect!
  • Listen to full albums in one click – You just start the album and it will play the whole way through without any interruption, just as if you owned it.

It’s just really simple and easy to use. I’d recommend it to anyone. It’ll even scrobble to last.fm if you want it to.

Go enjoy some free, legal music that’s worth the bother.