A little window appeared in the corner of my browser on my office laptop this week saying I needed to upgrade my “Viewpoint Player” or something like that. What I soon discovered that Viewpoint is a POS (Piece of XXXX) software that pretends to be a needed service for AOL IM. Let me tell you straight. Let me also tell you - remove it asap - it takes up valuable system resources and valuable screen real-estate inside your IE browser. I can’t believe companies like this still exist. Wores than that, I can’t believe companies still advertise with crappy companies like this. Browser toolbars other than Google and maybe StumpleUpon suck.

To uninstall simply head to your control panel - scroll down to Viewpoint and you’ll see 2 installs, one for a media player (right, a media player!) and one for a toolbar - click the uninstall button and you’ll be a happy surfer again. BTW, just to prove how crappy a company they are, when you uninstall the POS, it quickly opens an IE window requesting feedback - let me tell you, I left them some feedback!

It’s hard to believe, but the home computer that started a revolution (in the UK at least) is now 25 years old. The Sinclair Spectum, the successor to the ZX80 and ZX81 was the most popular home computer of it’s era - 1982-186 and only went out of fashion due to Sir Clive selling his technology to Alan Sugar, he of Amstrad fame. Of course, the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST also killed off the spectrum, thanks to their 16-bit processors, but there’s no denying just how much the Spectrum and it’s 8-bit Zilog chip changed the world. The BBC have put together a pretty sweet article taking a look at the life, death and afterlife of the Speccy:

It’s difficult to estimate how many Spectrums were sold around the world, for several reasons. First, the official machines were available in no less than seven distinct versions, from 1982’s 16K original to 1988’s Spectrum +3, with 128K of RAM and a built in floppy disk drive. Second, there were various semi-official Spectrum-type computers released in the US and other overseas territories by Timex, the manufacturers of the official Spectrum. And third, the machine’s simplicity meant that pirate copies of it were common. Indeed, cheap Spectrum copies are still in production in Eastern Europe at the time of writing. Undoubtedly, however, the Spectrum sold millions of units throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s.

The machine came in two models - £125 for a 16KB machine and £175 for a 48KB machine, making it one of the first affordable machines. For many people in the UK the Spectrum was their first experience of using a computer and it quickly gained a loyal following. At the time it was competing against the BBC Micro, which had been released the year earlier and was popular in schools, but was priced starting at £235. Other machines from rival firms in the UK followed, among them the Jupiter Ace, Dragon 32 and Oric Atmos.

Rick Dickinson, who was responsible for the look and shape of the machine, said the company had no idea it would make such an impact. “We started selling kit computers to hobbyists and thought we would sell 1,000 machines a month. “We went on to sell 200,000 a month and ran into supply problems.”

He said cost was the driving factor behind the design. Many of today’s video game luminaries cut their teeth on Sinclair computers, among them Dave Perry, who runs Shiny Entertainment, and Tim and Chris Stamper, who founded Rare. In 1967 Sir Cive Sinclair pioneered the miniature TV “Sir Clive Sinclair gave so many British people an incredible step up into the videogame industry, which in a few more years will be bigger than the music industry,” said Mr Perry, who began writing games as a school child on the ZX81 and became a professional programmer thanks to the Spectrum.

“Clive is a national hero,” said Mr Dickinson. “He loved looking for technology ideas and often had an idea and had to wait for the technology to catch up.

Here’s some screens of the most popular games on the Spectrum:

Aaaah, the good old days of blinking load screens, Ferguson tape decks, dodgy tapes, pirating games at school and programming in Sinclair Basic…. Life was simple in those days!

According to Imagini, I’m an easy rider, drawn to the drama of a big spectacle…. As for the rest of my profile, thats kinda private… Check out Imagini, a pretty neat, new social website that identifies your “Visual DNA” and shows you, via a series of images, what kind of person you are, you know, the one you hide from your partner, boss, family etc… It’s pretty neat and well worth the 2 mins of your time it takes to complete.

Simply click on the image you feel answers the question (I think there are 8 questions) and voila, it’ll show you what the real you is all about… Me, I’m happy to be an easy rider…

I’m missed this story breaking on Feb 1, but it seems a guerilla marketing exercise for the excellent Aqua Teen Hunger Force has caused multiple security alerts in Boston. It seems a third-party marketing firm working for the Cartoon Network, put up electronic light displays depicting a Mooninite character greeting bean-town citizens and visitors with an upturned middle digit. Somehow, the light boards were misinterpreted as suspicious devices.

Boston then swung into a full security alert. Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies shut bridges and sections of the Charles River – CNN then reported that US Northern Command was monitoring the situation from its Colorado Springs headquarters.

Two men involved in planning and executing the stunt have been arrested, the Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley has confirmed. The charges they face include a felony - placing a hoax device that caused panic - and a separate count of disorderly conduct.

It remains a mystery as to why a full security alert was called on Wednesday over advertising devices that had been present in Boston - and other major US cities including Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles - for the past two weeks, although Coakley attributed it to the devices having a “very sinister appearance” and “wires”.

Turner Broadcasting spent most of Wednesday evening apologising for the chaos both in the form of a written statement and by on-air captions during Cartoon Network programming.

I was reading this post on Folio magazines website today and I wanted to throw the laptop into the trash. It makes me puke when I hear publishers such as Inc. and Fast Company falling for the sales pitch from ABC and BPA.  ABC and BPA get fat and rich of their “audit” services for print magazines and newspapers.  A couple of years ago, a bright spark at these two companies realized they could print more money if they offered their “auditing” services to publishers - but for their online properties.  Both companies then embarked on a PR/Marketing blitz to publishers saying “you must get audited” and told Ad Agencies and large advertisers “don’t trust websites that aren’t audited - demand transparency!”.  To this, I say PFFFT!  What a crock of crap!

Any decent size website is already 3rd party audited - and NOT by ABC or BPA - but by long-standing, trusted vendors such as Websidestory’s Hitbox, WebTrends or even Google’s Analytics.  These vendors are well established in the market, provide excellent, bulletproof data and reporting and don’t rely upon scare tactics to get publishers to sign up.  The message to publishers and advertisers is don’t get sucked into the FUD from ABC or BPA -check out all the options and data points and make your decision based upon relevant points.