Zen Monthly Newsletter

Zen Internet was named Best Broadband Provider 2008 at the annual Which? Awards, held at the British Museum in London. At the ceremony, a spokesperson for the products and services testing organisation said that Zen made the world of broadband "as hassle free as possible", explaining that the company had scored top marks among Which? members for connection speed, customer service and support by telephone as well as online. Zen was also the only ISP on test to get top marks for reliability of connection. The Rochdale-based ISP has been a Which? Best Buy for the last three years and the latest accolade follows a host of other major national awards over recent years - including PC Pro Best Broadband ISP for four years running.

Zen has signed up to Telecoms watchdog Ofcom's Voluntary Code of Practice for Broadband Speeds. Ofcom is trying to get "clarity" over broadband speeds by asking ISPs to sign up for a Code of Practice, and implement it within six months. The code involves: providing customers at the point of sale with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that the line can support; resolving technical issues to improve speed and offering customers the choice to move onto a lower speed package when estimates given are inaccurate; ensuring all sales and promotion staff have a proper understanding of the products they are selling so they can explain to their customers the meaning of the estimates provided at the point of sale; providing consumers with information on usage limits and alerting customers when they have breached them. Ofcom is also going to investigate real broadband speeds around the country. It says: The survey will use a representative sample of over 2,000 residential broadband connections attached to specialised monitoring equipment over a six month period and involve tens of millions of speed tests, enabling the most comprehensive survey of actual performance across the UK to date.

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In last month's newsletter, we reported on Google’s plan to make a little more money out of its PPC (pay per click) advertising programme - Adwords - by allowing UK companies to include competitors' brand names in the list of keywords they use to trigger their ads. It means, for example, that Asda, Sainsbury or Waitrose could bid for the term Tesco, and that Tesco copywriters would have to work harder - or pay more - to get their company's ads showing instead of the rival advertisements. Lawyers say Google's new policy could be breaking trademark law in the UK and companies from Lastminute.com and Saga Group to Tesco and Arcadia (owner of the Top Shop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins brands) are lining up to take legal action.

In a blog post that most commentators say is aimed at the regulators who could rule against the deal, Google explains that it will be "good for competition" if Yahoo! gives up some of its pay-per-click advertising space to run Google AdWords instead of small-ads from its own Panama platform. The deal is subject to a three-month period of voluntary regulation and longer delays are likely if, as expected, the case is referred to US anti-trust authorities. If it clears that hurdle, the partnership would have to be cleared by European legislators before anything changed for UK advertisers, but commentators expect the agreement to roll out globally if initial implementation in North America goes well.

New Hitwise data indicates that people living in Britain's rural areas tend to out-participate city folk when it comes to online shopping and social networking. For four weeks, Hitwise UK Research Director, Robin Goad looked at how many Internet users in a given geographic area went to shopping sites and found that city types are the least likely to visit an online retailer, while rural residents in Wales and the South West were most active. "A similar picture also emerges when it comes to social networking. London is again the most under-represented region, while Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are all over-represented", says Goad. The statistics go against what most people might imagine; urban residents are supposed to be the ones setting tech trends. But it looks like people living outside big cities have become extremely comfortable with social networks and shopping sites.

In June, we featured the 50p per gallon backyard petrol pump. We missed the story from Wired about a San Diego start-up company using algae to make oil that can be refined into petrol and other fuels that are both renewable and carbon-neutral. The company, Sapphire Energy, plans to produce 10,000 barrels a day within five years using a process that needs only sunlight and water to run its operation. EdeniQ, another California-based ethanol startup, has completed a $33 million round of funding as part of its spinoff from parent company Altra Biofuels to develop processes that will make ethanol from agricultural waste and straw to retail at less than £1 per gallon.

'As seen on TV', so it must be true, (The Money Programme, Fiona Bruce Special, BBC2) Bill Gates left Microsoft for good last week and yesterday marked the beginning of the end for Windows XP, according to the company's official calendar. From this month, mainstream PC makers will no longer be able to sell Windows XP-based PCs and retailers will not be able to re-stock boxed copies of the operating system. But although XP will disappear for many computer buyers, it will survive in some key areas. The software will be available on PCs from smaller computer suppliers until 31 January 2009 and for so-called ultra-low-cost-PCs until 30 June, 2010. Meanwhile, Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Business will continue to be supplied with 'downgrade to XP' options, making XP widely available well beyond this month. Microsoft is not ending support for Windows XP. Mainstream support continues until 2009, and extended support is not due to end until April 2014.

Grisoft, the makers of AVG, are being accused of wasting users' bandwidth and "destroying Web analytics as we know it". Grisoft's AVG - the anti-virus software used on 70 million PCs - recently added a new component, LinkScanner, which examines the Web sites you visit for potential threats. But LinkScanner also checks the sites that you MIGHT visit. For example, it follows all the links that appear when you search for something on Google, or any of the other search engines, whether you click on them or not. One AVG user said "I have Google set to display 100 hits per page. In the process of scanning links, Linkscanner downloaded over 900 MegaBytes of data in one day". For consumers whose monthly broadband bill varies with the amount of bandwidth they use, AVG's LinkScanner could prove an expensive option. For Web site owners, it's a dual problem. Multiple LinkScanner visits caused by recurring appearances in search engine results not only have the potential to push up hosting charges, they also make nonsense of Web stats - site visitor statistics. Adam Beale, who runs a UK-based Internet consultancy, said “traffic has spiked as much as 80 per cent on some sites. This is more than just an inconvenience. After all, most sites live and die by their traffic numbers". But LinkScanner can't be prevented from inflating statistics because it visits Web sites disguised as an ordinary user. AVG chief of research Roger Thompson claimed it was a necessary part of its functionality. "We need LinkScanner to look just like a browser driven by a human being", he said. Barry Parshall, director of product management at Web analytics firm WebTrends, pointed out that false traffic and bogus data will lead to businesses making wrong budget and marketing decisions. "It would be responsible of AVG to identify themselves, with agent code or whatever it might be, so that legitimate businesses can serve their customers properly", he said.

Computer Shopper is reporting that RealPlayer allows users to violate MySpace and YouTube terms and conditions by downloading and reproducing the music and videos on show. Budding musicians and film makers showcasing their work on the networking sites rely on the protection they offer, but the latest Real Player - version 11.0.3 - enables surfers to download their content free of charge.

News Writer at The Motley Fool, Szu Ping Chan, has some money saving tips for the no-download, off-line, bottoms-on-cinema-seats kind of movie watching this month, including ways to see many films free of charge before they go on general release.

Entertainment giant Viacom Media claims that piracy is inherent and systemic at YouTube and that more than 150,000 unauthorised clips from its TV shows appear on the Google-owned site, including The Inconvenient Truth documentary, which alone has been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times". Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion, claiming that it has done "little or nothing" to stop YouTube copyright infringement. The court case is an unwanted nuisance for Google, which is having trouble making YouTube pay its way even without the threat of huge fines for copyright infringement.

Spammers are increasingly using free Web site hosting at GeoCities, freewebtown.com, freewebs.com and services like Google Docs to provide click-through links for the thousands of e-mails they send out to promote their pills and porn. Using the Web addresses provided by Google, GeoCities and others helps their e-mails to survive spam filters and avoids the risk of blacklisting that would apply if they were promoting their Web sites directly. Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs, says that free hosting providers such as Google offer unlimited bandwidth and a safe Web address that is never going to get blacklisted by anyone because nobody would be stupid enough to blacklist Google. For the spammers, this is a human shield effect, he says. They can host their information and links online on a very stable source of bandwidth and links, and not worry about it being taken down or blacklisted. Google is notoriously complacent about mis-use of its resources. The company refuses reports of abuse from anti-spam services like SpamCop.net, makes reporting by ordinary users difficult, and reacts to the complaints they do receive only very slowly, if at all. By contrast, GeoCities and FreeWebs - which provide free hosting for over 40 million sites - welcome reports from consumers and find it possible to shut down spammers' accounts within hours. FreeWebTown often reply within a few minutes to say that "the account in question" has been disabled.

Are there enough connections between e-mail spam and search engine spam to help in fighting spam in search results? A patent recently granted to Microsoft explores ways that a search engine might eliminate spam from results by paying more attention to the content of spam e-mails. It’s not unusual for spam e-mail to include a Web address and noting which sites are being promoted in such messages could get them blacklisted if the patent ideas are put into practice.

Remember when AOL released massive amounts of private search engine data two years ago? The story is back in the news, in a literally dramatic way. A stage play has been created around the story of one of the searchers, who appears in the title - "USER 927: U are what U Seek". The drama is a dark thriller about cyberstalking, search engines, and the way that information can be obtained, manipulated, and released. The plot derives from research into a number of disturbing Internet trends, as well as the data leak of over 3 million AOL search queries by 650,000 users in 2006.

"Wouldn't it be great?", Google is asking its American users, "if you could get access to and manage all of your personal health information online. This would help you keep your doctors and family members up-to-date". "It's easy to sign up, and free to use", says the friendly giant of search, "all you need is a Google username and password. You can import your medical records and prescription history". Naturally, Google insists that such records will not be shared with anyone you don't want them shared with. "Google Health cares about privacy and puts it into the control of each user," said Roni Zeiger, the doctor who serves as Google Health product manager. "The user decides who should have access to the records and can revoke access at anytime. We will not sell any end user's data, and we will not share it with anyone unless the user specifically asks". Google also says it has no intention of serving ads based on uploaded medical data. And though it may share the information with other Google services, Zieger says that the company would always alert users first.

Facebook gets almost 4 million visitors per day and the company is borrowing $100 million to buy 50,000 more servers to handle its projected traffic growth. According to Business Week, Facebook will find Google and Microsoft ahead of them in the hardware shopping queue.

Google is said to operate a global network of about three dozen data centres with over one million servers. Microsoft is adding up to 20,000 servers a month. As servers become more numerous, powerful and densely packed, more energy is needed to keep the data centres at room temperature than is used for computing. Electricity consumption at the largest data centres rivals the needs of an aluminium smelter. Microsoft's new $500m facility near Chicago will need three electrical substations all to itself to keep running. Finding a site for a large data centre is now more about securing a cheap and reliable source of power than anything else. It's the reason that so many in America are close to the Columbia River, where there is plenty of water for cooling, and massive dams produce cheap hydroelectricity. Such sites are in short supply in the US, however, and the boom in data centre construction is spreading to some unexpected places. Microsoft is looking for a site in Siberia where its data can chill. Iceland has begun to market itself as a prime location, firstly for its cool climate, but also because of abundant geothermal energy.

Only weeks ago, Microsoft was calling its Live Search Books service the key advance they were making in search. But now there's news that the site, along with Live Search Academic, is closing because book search lacks the "high consumer intent" that Microsoft says it will be focusing on. The projects have digitised 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles, but now Microsoft says that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling repositories created by book publishers and libraries. The shut-downs do have one advantage: they remove the company from the line of fire about copyright. By limiting spidering to content posted by publishers and libraries, the onus of determining ownership and rights falls to those who create such repositories. In contrast, Google has been in hot water with publishers and authors, who allege financial losses following the scanning of books. Google claims its activity falls under the same kind of fair use that permits it to index Web sites without seeking permission.

Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader. This site has thousands of eBooks in many different formats including one for iPod notes.

If you need an alternative source for the kind of articles found via Live Academic Search or Google Scholar, many libraries in the US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere provide full text access to databases containing this type of material. Access is available remotely, in other words from any computer, with no need to visit the library. All that's required is a library card. Many public and academic libraries also offer free downloadable access to audiobooks and movies. Again, all you need is a library card. Try LibDex to find out what you can access with your free library card at thousands of libraries around the world.

ezSEO is the first integrated multimedia solution for connecting audio and video content to the major Web search engines. Using patented speech-to-text technology, ezSEO wraps every piece of audio and video from a site in an extra layer of metadata, including the text output of spoken-word soundtracks.

You will soon be able to spice up your search life and zip through Google, YouTube, RSS, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo! and Flickr results all in one 3D space with SpaceTime. It may spoil you for anything else, including the recently launched 3D engine at SearchMe.com, which already looks dated by comparison. Social networks and movie previews are next for the SpaceTime 3D treatment.