As we covered a couple of days ago, television and films are highly popular at Christmas, but, frankly there’s nothing to say about them really, watch the Home Alone box set and all will be reet.

Moving on, users of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and any other non Internet explorer based browser should be feeling very smug tonight, as Internet explorer has been cocked up royal once again. Yes the browser which my grandma uses, has quite a big hole in it. The exploit was discovered by Chinese criminals, stealing passwords from computer games. But since it was discovered, other criminals are trying to make use of it for more than breaking in to peoples Runescape accounts.

It was reported late last week and Microsoft are working on a fix, and they might (just might?) release an urgent update to quickly fix the problem before the whole world (or 69% of it anyway) get infected.

Industry Big Wigs have been encouraging people to get Firefox, as they do when any such opportunity arises. However, because we like IE, we don’t think this is too necessary, but certainly some common sense would assist. Keep your anti virus up to date, get your updates as they come, and be careful when entering in passwords. You’ll see when/if the exploit kicks in to action because your browser will unexpectedly close and reopen. Best thing to combat it is to run IE on its highest security settings and excercise caution with which sites you access.

Update: As of 6pm tonight (presumably Seattle time), an update is being issued to rectify the issue and maintain security when using IE.

PIB

I speak in a time of economic crisis, banks are collapsing, people loosing savings, Christmas should be a write off, right? But no not at all, because our good leader Gordon Brown who borrowed his way in to this mess, has the solution to the problem! To borrow his way out of it.

For the last few years, the banks have been lending out more money than they have, and suddenly some bright spark realised that wasn’t a very good idea. Instead of promoting this guy, the government nationalised a big chunk of the banks and told them to keep lending, and they’d sort out the rest.

Mr Brown then left his friend Mr Darling to come up with an idea to save the world, which turned out to be lowering taxes, by a whole 2.5%. That means a Parker Vector fountain pen, which did cost you £9.99, now only costs you £9.78, so the good people of Britain walk around with much jingling of pockets, feeling once again quite rich, till they scoop it all out to find a pile of 2p’s.

How does it work out for big sales, such as laptops? Well, the Samsung NC10 netbook which was around £300, will now set you back only £292(ish). That’s a whole £8 saving, that’ll buy you, no it won’t even buy you a Parker Vectra fountain pen. Clearly then the change in VAT isn’t going to line our pockets with gold and make this an easy Christmas.

So what’s the best way to enjoy Christmas, well frankly this Credit crunch isn’t that big, it’s been overexaggerated by businesses looking for an excuse to axe staff or just having a big put on marketing camnpain. Our answer, just pretend nothings wrong and enjoy it.

Another tatty review by Plugged In Blog

Now, I do try to have a social life too, which is why I have missed days 12 and 13. But I’ve come to post today and looked back at my list of which Christmas themed items I’d be writing about on which days and found I’m overdue to have written about presents, television and Christmas lists. So I’m going to try to find some sort of way to combine them.

Well, presents are on your Christmas list, and you could get a TV as a present. If that was my conclusion this blog wouldn’t be worth the time of day, and I’d like to think it is. Let me try to come up with something these all have on common.

And I think I’ve got it, traditionally television has played a big role in our Christmas day activities, and Go!View for the PSP has ensured that one way or another that will continue. So with your PSP Chrimbo present, that was on your Chrimbo list, you can watch all those sky one type programs, and traditional classics like ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ will have you going ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s got a battery for an Ericsson my PSP.

These come in different packages, we know of a comedy pack, an entertainment pack and a sports pack, these cost £5 a month, or £8 for two, or £10 for all three. If you fancy watching a more traditional Home Alone film at Christmas, you can rent films for £2.50 for TV programs for £1.50. Bet the queens speech won’t be on there though..

PIB

Why Netbooks, because I bet a lot of people get Netbooks for Christmas, so we’ve going to look at your best options, like a good consumer friendly site.

The Cheapest

It’s the Elonex One, but seen as they don’t seem to exist, let’s go for the next one up. It seems that realistically the cheapest Netbook you can buy is the Eee PC 2g, at around £129.99. Look about hard enough it should be available from somewhere, but it’s not hugely available. The Eee is a well built cheap model which does everything the initial idea of a Netbook was meant to.

The Best Value

They’re all now pretty darn cheap, but we’re going to consider best value as reliable, spacious, stylish and something that runs Windows XP. There’s a load that fit this role, these being the Acer Aspire One A150X, the Eee PC 904HD, the Toshiba NB100 and the Samsung NC10. All these are between £230 and £300 and can really be used as a fully functional computer if needs be, they’re not over priced and all do their job and more very well.

The Most Expensive

Probably the HP 2133, your looking at about £250 for royalty free Linux, it seems you can pay up to a staggering £400 for one with Windows Vista Business, which means it’s not really good for anything except telling people how much money you have (or haven’t any more). To wise Christmas present buyers in these trying economic times: don’t buy it. To people with lot’s of money, think twice. All that said though, the 2133 looks the business, has nearly a full sized keyboard fingers crossed HP’s reputation for build quality.

PIB

What do you do when you see something worth remembering in the 21st century? When your walking along and your friend falls flat on his face in mud? Or a really beautiful car gliding past? Or when you’ve got an aerosol and a lighter and made the best flame thrower ever? Simply, you get your phone out and record it. The problem is though that by the time you’ve found your phone in your pocket, unlocked it, selected the camera, switched it to video mode and set it recording, the moments usually past, and all you catch is a 176×176 little shot that you can barely upload to Youtube.

The answer comes from Kodak, in the form of the Zi6, a compact high def camcorder. Already fairly popular in the US, it intends to make its UK debut this Christmas. It works at up to 720p HD at 60fps, and takes up to a 32gb SDHC card. The USB port that pops out the side uploads straight to Youtube, and with an included lead it can be piped out straight in to a HD TV.

A young man (a few years older than me) from the Kodak corporation demonstrated one to me, and I can say that the quality is superb. I looked at some video clips recorded at a gig, what I was impressed most about was the sound quality, even on the small speakers inside the Zi6 you could hear the screams from the crowd and the music as though you were there, and though you can’t experience true high definition on a camcorder screen, the picture was smooth and to a high standard.

It’s shaped similar to a mobile phone, the idea being that it can be quickly extracted from ones pocket to capture the moment, before a swift publication to Youtube, and with youtube now supporting high def, what better time to get one. The software included with the camera takes care of the uploading for you, just plug it in to the PC, type in what details you want and leave the rest to it.

The still camera is only 3mp, which is still as good as any good phone, so if you have it with you, its there to use, it captures a good photograph though, unlike the usual you can expect from a camera phone. I’m impressed with it overall, it costs £129.99 which isn’t a bad start, and I think this idea will progress further in the near future.

PIB

Stocking fillers, that’s gadgets, now we can get back to some good old tech. Popular stocking fillers usually include chocolate, cheap AM/FM radios, or for the slightly more tech savvy parent *COUGH* Santa Claus, USB gadgets.

One of this years so called cheap stocking fillers seem to be the radio control helicopter, nearly every shop seems to have some type of micro helicopter on their Christmas shelf. With so many out there, which is the best one?

Lets have a look at this one, it seems to do everything, its small, made from strong durable polystyrene, charges quickly and needs no real maintenance, you can get it out, charge it, fly it, annoy auntie Helen and then oh… It just got boring.

This looks more like it, a Chinook, like they have in wars. Two rotors, 4 motors all controlled by a ’sophisticated gyroscopic stability system’, it flies smoothly and you get a whole 10 minutes of tangling the blades in peoples hair before having to charge it again. That looks more like it. Only real limitation is that as you’ll see from the picture, it is in door use only.

Now, normally in this type of review, one would at least comment about a third item, but there isn’t really one. Up from that are proper radio controlled helicopters, which aren’t really what you’d fit in your stocking, or fly around your relatives heads. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the stocking filler range that fires missiles or fireworks, so I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for that, but hell, I’d be chuffed if Santa brought me one of those. As for prices, these are both unbranded tat, that you’ll find in most stores for between £10-£15, but if you must know, these specific products can be found below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000QJF44W/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001L95HWU/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

PIB

One thing which goes hand in hand with Christmas would be Dickens. Everybody knows the story, all be it more likely through the many movie adaptations that are out there. And on the subject of adaptations, here’s another one, ‘A Geek Christmas Carol’.

Along the same story line as Dickens Christmas Carol, it follows the events of Ed Scrooge, tight wadded miserable owner of a tech business, looking to out source his operations, who gets visited by the ghost of Christmas past, present and future and taught the error of his ways.

It was put together by Friends In Tech in 2005 as an audio stream and can be played by clicking below.

Via Friends In Tech

PIB

These days, Christmas presents which everybody wants are all really expensive. A convenient coincidence for the manufacturers making them. Parents seem to bend over backwards to get the latest iPod or Nintendo, to replace last years whatever it was. What was it like before? When was before?

I am particularly keen on the past, which is a shame really seen as I spend so long wishing I was in the past that by the time I come to enjoy the present I’ve missed it and the vicious cycle begins again. As a sign of my keen-ness, my loft still has our set of Windows 3.1 setup disks, a Zenith computer and a commodore 64 keyboard, hold on, the commodore 64 was a keyboard.

So, keen to find out what all the rage was in the past I asked someone from there, my mother, to see what they all wanted, she only remembered getting her tape player, which also now lives in my loft.

Action man was also big in the 70’s, as was the Atari 2600, the first games console. Perhaps then surprisingly, Christmas in the 70’s wasn’t that different to today, only that the presents cost less, were bigger, and had less microchips in them. Let me explain, cassette player, iPod. Atari 2600, the Grandfather of the Nintendo’s and that Sony thing they do, it was all based on the same principles.

So, what then will next years big most wanted presents be? The next music player, the next games console and a baby Annabel that can do gymnastics.

PIB

It seems for me, that no matter how much I hope for a white Christmas, I never properly get one. Even this year when we’ve seen snow in December, as opposed to the usual April, it’s still all gone by the end of the morning. 

Having some time ago now seen an inspiring episode of Viva La Bam, in which they cover the house with snow mid summer, I do wonder how possible it would be to re enact such a situation.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you’re going to replicate an Arctic blizzard,but for under 40 quid you can get a gentle snowfall on demand with a remote controlled snow machine, that can project an artificial snow fall up to 6 metres. It uses what’s called snow fluid, which becomes little snowflakes that flitter around before setting either on your tree or on whatever is below them. I don’t think you’ll be having a raging artificial snow ball fight any time soon, but it’s a nice idea thought.

Via Maplins

PIB

In the old days, it was easy for Santa to do his run without being spotted. They didn’t have GPS and heat signature recognition and fancy technocrap like that, yet still in these modern days of terrorism and surveillance he can fly round the world, depositing mystery parcels in children’s bedrooms all in one night, leaving less of a trace than Osama Bin Laden. And, this strange man who goes in to kid’s rooms while they’re asleep and leaves presents hasn’t been added to the paedophile register.

Santa there getting his back end out in Miami 

But could that all be coming to an end this year? NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) and everyone’s friend Google have this year are bringing you the Santa Tracker, excited children will be able to see Santa’s progress on Google maps, and get a glimpse of him from various Santa cams dotted around the world.

To find it, hit http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html in your browser, there’s a count down till Christmas and plenty of stuff to do in the run up to St. Nicks little spin in his sleigh.

PIB