Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Microsoft Office 2010

There are some nice new things to get used to in Office 2010. I’m loving and hating Outlook. The conversations are great and painful at the same time.

Thank goodness for Xobni or I think I would go mad trying to find some emails.

I do have two exchange accounts running in Outlook, hence the reason I had to go to the Beta. The good news is the RTM version is now only 2 months away.

I’m running 32bit Office 2010 at the moment. Here are some articles about the differences between 32bit and 64bit.

• Understanding 64bit Office
• Compatibility Between the 32-bit and 64-bit Versions of Office 2010

The things I do for you readers! Oh and thanks for reading.

Today I spent some time going through all the Google Chrome extensions and finding what I consider to be the good ones. Ok I didn’t go through all 2670 (at time of research) but I did go through the top 400.

Remember the days of using Firefox, and its extensions, until it got all so buggy and memory hungry that it kept crashing? And even session manger couldn’t rescue it!

Well then Chrome came along and we got all minimalist for a bit. Stoically and philosophically said “don’t need extensions!”

So why go back to extensions. Well, Chrome is probably the best browser out there right now. Memory use and security wise its ahead of the others. Screen space its miles ahead with no extra “chrome”, toolbars and other stuff using valuable screen real estate, and for those who know I run off 6 monitors, yes even then screen real estate is important. So there were some things I found missing from Chrome that I have now found extensions for.

Import an RSS Feed into Google Reader. This extension puts an RSS icon into the address bar when the page being browsed has an RSS feed or feeds. Clicking it allows you to select the feed and open a subscribe to this feed using … subscribe page – very useful. This RSS Subscription Extension is an official Google one.

I just sent this to my Member of Parliament regarding the proposed internet censorship scheme.

Feel free to use this if you want. I adapted this from Broadband Revolution.

Dear Mr _______

I was wondering if you were able to answer the following questions for me please about the proposed filter / censorship scheme that Senator Conroy is planning to introduce.

1. Has the probability of inadvertent exposure to Refused Classification material by adults been quantified? If not, is this probability judged to be: low, moderate or high?

2. Have the consequences of inadvertent exposure to Refused Classification material by adults been measured? Are these thought to be minor, major or serious?

3. Has the quantity of potentially Refused Classification material in existence on the Internet been estimated in either absolute or relative terms?

4. Does the Government have an estimate or measure of the percentage of potentially Refused Classification material on the Internet that is currently Refused Classification? What is that estimate?

The following is a slightly edited letter I sent to Senator Trood. I encourage you (if you are in Australia) to write to your liberal senator with something similar. To stop the clean feed filter nonsense we need to target the liberal senators.

Understand the real issues at stake here, write your senators, get involved. (twitter tags #nocleanfeed #sicbne)

Dear Senator Trood

I would like to ask that you consider carefully the position that the government is taking and intending to introduce legislation on in relation to internet filtering. I believe that they are using the concept of child pornography (an abhorrent thing) as a red herring to pull a much greater invasion of privacy off. Similar to the hidden intent of the thankfully failed Copenhagen accord, this is a way for the government to introduce the potential for censorship in an unprecedented manner for any western nation, and will in fact place Australia in line with countries like Saudi Arabia, China and Iran (see this article) in terms of what it can enable government beaurocrats to do. Most of the content targeted by this so called blacklist filter is not illegal, and would in any other medium require a judge to issue a ruling on restriction of the publication of the content.

Senator there are two issues I would like you to consider and if you agree, to take to the public as the hidden costs to this proposed legislation that Senator Conroy is planning to introduce.