Whether you are at work, in an internet cafe or just on your laptop at home, there are some really useful tools for keeping in contact with that special someone in your life, your work buddies and your family.

1. Pidgin

Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. It supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

Pidgin to me is the Swiss Army Knife of IM applications, I have my Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo and AIM accounts all tied into it. It allows you to group contacts and protocols together allowing you to merge your friends AIM and MSN protocol into one entity on your contact list. It supports your file transfers, away messages and buddy icons. It’s open source and constantly in development……..Overall it’s a pretty nifty piece of kit.

2. Meebo

Meebo is the Pidgin of the browser IM market. It is free, it supports major protocols and allows you to log in from your favourite browser wherever you are in the world. Handling over 100 million messages a day, it really is the big player in delivering instant messaging to those who can’t install software at their workplace or internet cafe.

3. Facebook

Facebook has become a bit of an internet phenomenon. Recently valued at $15,000,000,000 (that’s billion’s folks!), the social networking site has overtaken Myspace as the weapon of choice to keep in touch with friends. Boasting an impressive amount of features on a user’s profile, Facebook has made it easy to keep abreast of what your friend’s are doing through their profile feeds, making you appear a little bit stalkerish when you approach them about some of the information you gleaned from their profile page!

4. Start a Blog

The number of blogs on the internet is fast approaching 100 million. Some act as online news portals, some exist to showcase a persons talents but most exist as personal web logs (the term blog deriving from this term) that help a close network of online and offline friends updated on their current status (take this site as an example).

A list of some free blogging platforms:

• Wordpress - Either hosted by Wordpress or downloadable to install on your own server, Wordpress is one of the most popular blogging platforms famed for it’s plugins and themes.
• Blogger - Hosted by Google, it’s as easy as owning a Google Account!
• Livejournal - A blog platform with a bit more of a social twist. Ask nabiy for details!

As simple as giving someone your URL, your blog is whatever you want to make it.

Honourable mentions for keeping in touch with friends/family/co-workers are:

• Twitter - A micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website or 3rd part applications.
• Myspace - Probably the first real social media site that tempted the masses. Famous for it’s garish user themes and bad design.
• Skype - The VOIP client allows you to hook up your microphone and chat to people across the world using the program. Supporting webcams for video calls, it very cheap…….(ok it’s free). They offer real landline numbers allowing cheaper overseas calls to peoples home phones for a small fee.
• Email?! - Do we still use it? Course we do! I have to side with Google Mail (Gmail) for ease of use, Spam protection and innovative design.

As the social aspect of the internet continues to grow, we will see platforms that will encompass all the services mentioned into one internet based service. All we can do is keep track of the different products on offer and make informed choices as to how they will impact our lives. With more ways to keep in contact with someone, you also have to way up the privacy implications.

It seems that after Google’s recent update of their pagerank algorithm, Matt’s Journal has risen one point to the dizzy heights of “3″!

What can I do to boost my Pagerank?

Quite simply, get other sites to link to your website. By producing relevant content, engaging the user with new and unique ideas, you could increase the probability of someone linking to you, making you a trusted source for information, Google smiles apon this :).

When you create content, if it references another source then link it. Pagerank doesn’t necessarily boost your site because you do this, it will help drive content to the sources you reference therefore giving them “Google PR”. Google will know that content they produce is worth listing. By linking, you open up the idea that the referenced site may want to return the link love and link you back.

Make sure you have a Google Sitemap and make sure your tags promote Google to crawl your website. Keep your design simple.

Im not popular but I’m a personal blogger, a pagerank of three can’t be too bad!

I logged into my Wordpress admin panel this morning and found a new URL referrer, that of http://brandwatch.magpie.net.

Clicking the link takes you to a login screen, so deciding to work out who they were, I googled them. Turns out that Brandwatch is a marketing tool (I think used by bigger companies) to see how their brand or products are being portrayed on the internet (focusing mostly on blogs).

Let Magpie explain:

Brandwatch tracks your brand quickly and clearly, and then goes into detail - it tells you who is saying what about your brand and why. Where they are saying it and when.

It lets you see the context in which your brand is being mentioned and finds the issues raised in connection with it. Which topics are gaining strength and relevance? It can highlight who and what is influential, pick up the first signs of new markets, and draw out target audiences, profiles, and demographics.

Use brandwatch to gain an instant view of the public perception of your brand and compare it with other brands. Monitor how successful a campaign is. Find out immediately what the web thinks about your new product launch or whether your endorsement is a hit or miss.

Brandwatch can generate data for any brand across the entire internet, fast. We automate the process that a team working 24/7 would have had to do manually. It saves money and time and eliminates human bias. Our technology is transparent. And because we own it we can develop it in new directions. There are no illusions. It has been developed over time, by top engineers into a robust, simple to use system.

Source: Magpie

If you click here, you can see a demo of how the service works.

My guess is that either Barclays or Pipex are checking their reputation amongst blogging losers like myself who have nothing better to moan about, does this mean I have hit the big time?

Haha, who cares, it’s all a bit of fun.

I and 500,000 other Barclays customers have been sent the new device that aims to stop online banking fraud. The device named “PinSentry” I supposed to allow me to: “Use their online bank account to set up payments to new third party accounts will begin using PINsentry devices. The devices will be used together with the customer’s normal debit card and its PIN, to authenticate their identity at log in and for making certain payments. This will replace the need for passcodes and memorable words.”

What Barclays didn’t tell you is that it is as big as one of those scientific calculators, it requires you to have it whenever you log in and you physically need to put your card into into the device each time you want to log into your online banking. Quite plainly, it makes less sense than your nan trying to explain you what the TCP/IP stack is.

HSBC did it well with their keyring, it has one button and generates a keycode without the use of your card. With PinSentry, how you are meant to use your online bank account when you are on the move is beyond me, you are at work and you suddenly wop out a massive calculator just to authenticate your online session? I wouldn’t be surprised if people thought you were trying to clone a card you just found.

Luckily, Flipper over at Faulty Flipper has exactly the same sentiments and has attracted the interests of other like minded individuals. VW on the comments of Flipper’s blog has one way to get you out of using this awful system:

# VW Says:
September 27th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

I have also recently received one of these inconvenient PINSentry devices, but have just now called Barclays and managed to get them to make the login portal NOT require me to use the PINSentry. I will have full functionality by logging in the old way, except I will need the PINSentry to pay a “non-standard” payee for the first time. I will not need the PINSentry to pay “standard” payees nor to pay non-standard payees who I have paid before.

Here is what you need to do to get them to make this change (note that only the Conventry Helpdesk team can do it):

1. Call the Online Banking Helpdesk on 0845 600 2323 or 02476 842063.

2. Press option 1 for the PINSentry Helpdesk. Then Hold.

3. When someone answers, ask whether you are speaking to the Conventry Helpdesk or the Mumbai Helpdesk. If you are speaking to neither, ask whether you can be transferred to the Conventry Online Banking Helpdesk to change your PINSentry online setup. They will probably say they are not able to transfer you to Conventry, in which case ask if you can be transferred to Mumbai please, then return to the beginning of this step. If you are speaking to the Mumbai Helpdesk, ask to be transferred to the Conventry Online Banking Helpdesk to change your PINSentry online setup. Don’t take no for an answer.

4. Once you are speaking to Conventry, explain that you have received the PINSentry device but don’t want to use it for online banking because you logon from many places including when on-the-move, and it is really impractical to lug the PINSentry around everywhere. They should tell you that they will alter your account so that you don’t need it to login or perform most actions, with the exception of setting up a new “non-standard” payee. They should do it on-the-spot. If you have any trouble, you could try asking for Sanj - she did it for me without fuss.

Note that even if you don’t do this, you will still be able to logon to online banking without your PINSentry, but you won’t be able to do anything except view your accounts - see http://www.barclays.co.uk/pinsentry/questions_noflash.html#q20

Source: VW on Faulty Flipper

Hacking of the device has already started, it’s not destructive….yet. Have a look: http://www.mrg9999.com/pub/psm/

Update - 20/12/07

I know this adds a little more wording to the mix but an Anonymous manager working at one of the Barclays call centres took the time to answer some of the questions raised on this article. He writes:

I am a manager at one of the Barclays call centres (but I’m not telling yuo which one for fear of reprisals from my boss!) and we are just has hacked off at this whole system as you, our customers are.

I would ask you to try and be as patient as you can be with the advisors you speak to on the phone. At the end of the day, they have had no say whatsoever in the implementation of this stupid service and there is nothing they can do to opt you out, cancel your accounts etc. What I would ask you to do however is log it as a formal complaint, and insist that it is a formal complaint.

If logged as a formal complaint it HAS to be escalated to Retail Banking Customer Relations and you must be given a complaint reference number and response (if if it is just to say the complaint is received) within 5 working days. You may not get the complaint resolved to your satisfaction (i.e. they aren’t going to be able to opt you out of PINSentry) but the more customers that do this, the more likely John Varley, Deanna Oppenheimer and all the other top level management are to sit up and take notice.

Plus each escalated complaint costs Barclays at least £40 in man hours, telephone calls, compensation etc so it’ll hit them where it hurts.

Just to clarify a few things mentioned in some of the other posts:

1. Card machines cost £6 each to get another one (this is the base cost and no profit is made from this)

2. ALL Barclays customers now have to pay for a second card machine (Premier included)

3. The policy (for the moment at least) is set in stone - there is no opt out. This has always been the case for Premier clients but since the 26/11/07 this has also been the case for Retail customers too.

4. We are dealing with incredible amounts of calls regarding PINSentry at our call centres, which is impacting a level of service we are able to give to non-PINSentry related calls so people are queueing longer and longer to get through. Because of the incompetence of the offshore operation we are then having to wait 20+ minutes in a queue to get through to Online Banking help desk to get a problem fixed which should only take a few seconds. If you think verifying yourselves as Barclays customers is hard with Mumbai, I’d welcome a job swap with you for a day to show you how hard it is to inform them that we are staff coming through on a customers behalf!

5. If you live abroad and you haven’t received your PINSentry machine yet, this is because we are unable to ship them abroad at this stage. What we are trying to do to get around this is ship them to a UK address (your mum’s, your best friend, whoever you as a customer trust) and then get them to FedEx it to whereever you are in the world. Barclays will then refund you the cost of the FedEx for you to pass on to whoever it is that has sent it abroad for you.

I hope this helps any of you! If you have any questions, please stick them on here and I will do my best to answer them ASAP.

Update: 11/01/08

The Register has covered the technical problems this device has caused. You can read the article by clicking here. To view other customers comments on this, click here.

There is also a Facebook Group for people who hate the device….click here to view.

Natwest Card Reader

Whilst we haven’t received any complaints about the Natwest card reader, I feel obligated to post this here too. At work we have been given a new reader to authenticate any transactions made from the business account. This works the exact same way as the Barclays PinSentry does and has caused just as much controversy.

Over on Jez McKean’s blog, he has a post similar to this one detailing the woes of using the Natwest card reader. Take a look.

Conclusion

Im not sure this is a long term solution but it could help for the short term. I have decided to add a petition to the bottom of this post, maybe if we can drum up enough support, we can get Barclays to drop the scheme. If you know of people who maybe interested, please send them the link!

Our Petition Is Now Closed!

We had received over 250 signatures against using the PinSentry system. The only reason it was closed was due to a fault caused by a site upgrade. If anyone has a good idea as to how we can use these signatures to impact the current banking system, please leave a comment.

I signed up with Pipex about three years ago now, their service was highly recommended by friends and they were relatively good value. In April I saw that we were being billed £24.99 a month for 2MB Broadband when they offered 8MB “Unlimited” Broadband for exactly the same price! Noticing that we could get increased speeds, I switched the service over (but was made to accept a 12 month contract) and everything ran super fast……..but not for long.

Within a month of having the service, the download speeds plummeted, both for HTTP and Bittorrent transfers. I went from having 800kb/s+ to 30kb/s for my torrents and my downloads (even from Microsoft) topped out at 500kb/s.

Whilst I agree that ISP’s should engage the “Power Users” and stop them from downloading massive files, I probably average 10GB of downloads via Bittorrent per month, that wouldn’t even register on their leader board of people who abuse the service.

(more…)

There are thousands of lists of what bloggers deem to be the best plugins for the Wordpress blogging platform. My aim here today is to throw you a few that you haven’t heard of but may be interested in using. So here goes…

1. DoFollow

DoFollow is a plugin designed to spread joy amongst bloggers by spreading the link love to your readers. 99% of you have the Askimet SPAM plugin installed, so why not reward the people who do comment on your blog buy allowing Googlebot and his friends to crawl to their sites also?

2. Tiger Style Administration

You’ve been blogging for years using Wordpress and you still cant work out why the team haven’t made the Admin interface a little easier on the eye. This new style from Ordered List replaces the bog-standard layout with one that is not only a lot sexier but it actually makes the navigation easier to master.

3. WP-Postratings

You can see this plugin doing it’s thing on this very post. It adds a tasty looking ratings bar for you to give your feedback on an authors post.

4. WP-Slimstat

WP-Slimstat allows you to report on your blogs traffic from the comfort of your Admin Panel. Slimstat boasts:

• Liquid layout: optimized for 1024×768 and 800×600
• Metatags to show stats on your blog
• Fully localizable
• Improved browser and platform detection
• Tracks Wordpress search form
• Shows visitors and unique IPs, not just hits
• Uses of a local ip-to-country database

5. Google Sitemap Generator

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. It basically makes your blog more visible to the world and means you are indexed by all the major online search players.

That wraps it up for now, expect an updated one when Wordpress 2.3 has more compatible plugins.