Chattabox

One of the best firewalls for Windows is ZoneAlarm. There are free and professional editions. The free edition is very good, and you don't have to take my word for it. Do a Google search and you'll find it gets good reviews and is very popular. It's had over 45 million downloads and is highly rated on Cnet. Another good security resource I'd recommend is the Steve Gibson web site. This site is an absolute must visit web site for all users of Windows who are concerned about security. The site is a treasure trove of advice and helpful utilities for improving the security of your Windows computer. This highly educational site walks you through the essential security risks, loop holes and potential data leaks of your computer. Best of all, the tests, advice and most of the software are free. One of the most important utilities is the firewall testing service called ShieldsUp (at the top of the home page click the Services tab). This comprehensive set of tests will let you know how well your firewall is working, and if it is protecting you as well as it should. Again ZoneAlarm has scored well in a batch of sample test carried out by Steve Gibson. The site also suggests testing how well your firewall handles outgoing connections from your computer. You can do this by downloading a small piece of test software from the web site called Leak Test (from the home page click Freeware, Security, Leak Test).

Thank you Fractured.Logic, miladinoski and Echo_of_thunder for your lovely welcome, advice and words of encouragement. They are much appreciated.

Geocities has closed and is no longer accepting new members, and will close completely later this year. It's an interesting history for Yahoo and Geocities. As reported by the BBC, Yahoo bought Geocities in 1999, for close to $3.6 billion. That means over 10 years Geocities ended up costing Yahoo $360 million per year. Thats almost a million dollars every day for the last ten years. Thats a lot of money. Plus that doesn't include the cost of hosting and supporting all those free web sites. It doesn't seem like a good way for Yahoo to have invested their money. On the face of it this was a very bad investment decision. They could have just set up their own free web hosting service using the Yahoo branding. Although Yahoo was not the only company to make disastrous business decisions around the dot com boom year of 2000. I never had a Geocities web site myself. Although I remember when Geociies was all the rage, and every tech savvy person had a web site on Geocities. It was like the MySpace and Facebook of its day. I do recall logging on to Geocities and just thinking it wasn't that interesting. It was very similar to Tripod. Many of the sites were true personal hobby sites, with somtimes unusual and (sometimes) fascinating topics from model railways to collections of old Apple Macs. There was something innocent and honest about both Geocities and Tripod. They were places were people unashamedly showed off their interests, creatvitity and even sometimes eccentricities. It was like a patchwork quilt of life, a keyhole through which you had a window on someone elses world. Because of musical MySpace pages, Facebook friends and LinkedIn lovers we are all now far too sophisticated for personal hobby sites. That is unless they are about the hot new tech gadget, coolest iPhone app or latest Google gadget. I for one will mourn the passing of the homebrew, "make do and mend", honest and intriguing, internet hotch potch, that was Geocities. May she rest in peace.

Hello this is my first post. I am interested in technology, politics and creativity. I live in Ireland. I want to develop some interesting web sites. I hope to have fun and interesting times here too. Thanks for reading my first post. Regards, D.