There goes another year! During the past 12 months, we’ve had lots of stories here on Tech Snake and some changes to the website. Because of this I thought I would compile the most interesting and important stories for 2008. So sit down, take a load off and lets have a look through the last year together..

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A festive cartoon for you all, from wetherobots.com!

Deal after deal have fallen through, and now Sky Broadband are the latest on the list of companies unwilling to front the £600 million asking price.

Sky, only prepared to part with £450 million, ended talks with the Italian owned ISP (who also have Pipex & Homechoice under the Tiscali umbrella). Of course, you can argue that the company should be worth less anyway, after loosing 37,000 customers since it was announced they were looking for buyers.

I personally have a lot of history with the ISP that includes appalling download rates and congestion. I also have friends and family that have had similar stories to mine. However, I do understand that cheap broadband breeds that sort of thing – and as many people around the country have already done, you should vote with your feet.

So with Tiscali’s bad press will a buyer ever be found that is willing to cough up £600 million?

As detailed two days ago, a serious security flaw was highlighted for Internet Explorer. If you do not have Automatic Updates turned on (which I would strongly suggest) you can visit Microsoft’s site to apply the patch manually here to make sure your system is patched and up to date.

Ideal for the geek who wants something a little different than the standard Windows screensavers, or perhaps for the person who wants to play a prank on an unknowing friend. This screensaver, available from Microsoft, will display a fake Blue Screen of Death (or BSoD) that looks so convincing most people will rush to tell you your PC has crashed. I like the idea that it’s released by Microsoft, and shows even they have a sense of humour..

Users of Internet Explorer are being urged to switch to a different browser in a bid to escape a serious zero day flaw.

Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7 are all shown to contain the flaw that could potentially allow somebody access to your computer. Admittedly, if you stick to well known websites you should be relatively safe, although Trend Micro Anti-Virus estimate 10,000 websites have already been compromised – with many more to follow after the flaw has been made public.

So maybe now is the push you need if you’re still using Internet Explorer, to perhaps switch to a more secure alternative? Firefox, Chrome or Opera (or even Flock) are alternatives that are actually faster and more web standards compliant than Internet Explorer also, so it’s a win-win situation. If however you don’t have a choice and you’re stuck with Internet Explorer, make sure that the browser is put into it’s high security mode (Tools menu, Internet Options, Security Tab, Internet – set the slider to “High”) and also make sure you only stick to websites you know and trust.

For the uninitiated, Flock is an open-source social network browser based on the same codebase as Firefox (Mozilla/Gecko). Because of this it has the same speed and security of it’s better known cousin. I had used Flock for a short period about six months ago so I thought it was time I revisited the project, and do a mini review of the current features.

After visiting flock.com and downloading the latest version, you find during the setup (not surprisingly) that if you’re used to Firefox, there are going to be no great surprises here. After the install has finished you are given the option of importing bookmarks from the other browsers on your system (and has support for the current front runners – IE, Firefox and Opera). Once finished you’ll be surprised at the clean and interesting look to the browser which does set it apart from Firefox – that, and of course, all of the extra goodies.

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People turned out in their thousands to protest against Australia’s equivalent to the Great Firewall of China.

It seems as though Australian MPs had decided a nanny state is the way forward, instead of educating the (mis)users of the internet. All but one of the ISPs in Australia refused recently to conduct trials with the new system, so it should have been plain enough to expect a reaction.

The Digital Liberty Coalition organised the rallies in every capital city on the 13th of December to bring home the message that the average Australian isn’t going to take the censorship sitting down. 15,000 were expected plus speeches from Amnesty International and the Electronic Frontiers of Australia (EFA). Read the nocensorhip.info article for details.

That’s the conclusion I came to, after finding an article on silicon.com. In an interview with Detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, the police force in the UK are looking to create some kind of magical device that can be used like a "computer breathalyser."

The device would look on somebody’s PC for any illegal activity, such as illegal file downloads, or information on fraud. Or at least that’s what the police believe – I feel a little differently about it though, as you would expect by now..

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The Beta tag has been taken off – which must be the quickest in Google’s history, after Chrome is updated to version 1.0.154.36!

Among the most recent updates are:

• Improved Speed (with more apparently due in the future)
• Stability & performance tweaks for the inbuilt plugins (flash etc.)
• Bookmark import/export & management options

Good changes I’m sure all agree – I’m still itching for the add-in engine though, enabling users to start producing their own code to enhance the browser. Especially an ad-blocker! That would be the magic ingredient to make Chrome the must-have application. Until this happens, Chrome is always going to be playing second fiddle to the likes of Firefox and IE.

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