Zen Monthly Newsletter

It's hard to believe that the annual PC Pro Reliability and Service Awards have been around for a full decade, but this year marked their 10th anniversary and a record number of IT professionals were balloted. A full write-up of the awards, appearing in PC Pro issue 123, on sale November 18th, will reveal that over 13,000 readers completed the survey voting Zen Internet the nation's "Best Broadband ISP". Winners in other categories included IBM, Nokia, Fujitsu Siemens and Canon.

ZenADSL Broadband prices are down from today. ZenADSL Home 250 - down to £15.31 monthly. ZenADSL Home 500 - down to £21.27 monthly. ZenADSL Home 1000 - down to £29.78 monthly. (Prices exclude VAT).

A series of million-dollar prizes for scientific or technological breakthroughs that tackle the most important challenges facing society are planned by the World Technology Network (WTN) who say the time is ripe for big rewards for big ideas to solve humanity's major problems. The multi-million dollar prize fund will follow the model of the space X-Prize, which kick-started private space tourism. Submissions are expected to centre around some major 'holy grails' in health, information and communications technologies, alternative energies and the environment.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 promises to protect you from worm attacks, stop pop-up ads, and tighten security in Internet Explorer, but PC World magazine says some people have been slow to install the free upgrade - they're waiting to hear how everybody else gets on first. There hasn't been much bad news: with SP2 finally making its way onto millions of computers, things have gone smoothly for most users.

Windows XP Professional How-to Resources is a 'straight from the source' Microsoft site that offers a wealth of practical articles on how to solve problems and do just about anything under XP. For other versions of Windows, and a strictly unofficial but still comprehensive viewpoint, there's the Windows Support Center - http://www.aumha.org - an independent Web site maintained by James Eshelman, the helpdesk man at Warner Music.

If you're the impatient type, having to reboot your PC every time you change something on the system, or install new software, will not be your favourite thing. There’s a way to expedite the boot process by performing what’s called a 'warm boot'.

What's the difference between a virus, a worm and a trojan horse - and what on earth is "phishing"?

A Swedish research team is reporting that long-term mobile phone users are at risk of developing acoustic neuroma, a benign tumour that grows on the nerve connecting the ear to the brain. Previously seen in only 1 in 100,000 of the population, the risk is doubled by regular mobile phone use over ten years, the researchers say, and all of the extra tumours seem to be on the side of the head to which patients normally hold their phone. Similar studies are underway in twelve more countries and final results will be published early next year.

The US Government has given the go-ahead for people to be implanted with microchips. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a system using RFID technology to read information stored on the chips. First use will be to provide instant access to a medical records database when patients are incapable of providing information themselves. But privacy campaigners are concerned that the chips may be used to tag prisoners or foreign visitors, possibly without their knowledge. "They've crossed a line by placing it under people's skin," Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told Nature, arguing that bracelets or cards would be just as effective.

Just thinking about checking your e-mail might be enough to get the job done if a new aspirin-sized brain implant, developed for a quadriplegic man who reads e-mail and plays computer games 'in his head', leads to the production of tiny brain-computer interface patches that anybody can use. The 'BrainGate' chip reads minds by tapping straight into neurons, according to the journal Nature, reporting on successful trials completed in Massachusetts this year.

ADSL customers are being notified about a change in the way that e-mail between Zen's customers and AOL's network is conducted. The change will affect users running their own mail server on a ZenADSL IP address. If you have any questions about how this will affect you or your business, please forward them to support@zen.co.uk.

Zen Internet has over 40,000 customers nationwide and gains over 2,000 more every month. To maintain the excellent levels of customer service and technical support that are fundamental to the company's longstanding reputation for quality provision, Zen will double its staff over the next twelve months, taking on at least 100 new employees. There are immediate vacancies and positions to fill across all customer service and technical support departments. This is a fine company to work for, with assured prospects (Sunday Times Tech Track 100; Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 50) and it could be the key to the future you're looking for.

I enjoy your newsletter, it's always a pleasant surprise. Do you think your readers would like the opportunity to express themselves with a wish list of what e-enabled public services should be like? I'm collecting views to present to the new government CIO (and looking for "wouldn't it be better if" ideas, rather than gripes and grumbles). All contributions are welcome - and they could just make a difference. Best wishes, William Heath.

Crime buffs and historians will enjoy this fascinating and ambitious project to create a searchable digitised collection of the Old Bailey's entire proceedings from 1674 to 1834. Browse through thousands of trials covering all manner of crimes, and sentencing that ranged from pillory and whipping for forgery to transportation (emigration in shackles) for shoplifting. Read the transcripts, view original documents and browse through accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

Paint by numbers, 21st century style, with reproductions of everything from Cezanne and Van Gogh to Lichtenstein and Warhol to choose from. Simply select an image (by subject, difficulty, popularity), a Java applet will open in a new window (takes several seconds to load) and click on the numbered colours to fill in. For a challenge, pick a complex pic and try to "beat the clock".

Did you know that we 'do lunch' - schedule luncheon meetings and conduct business over lunch - because eating together (a) reduces anxiety as the parasympathetic nervous system switches to rest-and-digest and (b) promotes sociability through the reptilian principle of acting alike and doing the same thing? You can tell a lot from your dining companions' gestures and body language cues too, and this massive dictionary reveals the meaning behind such seemingly innocent actions as wearing blue jeans or raising your eyebrows. The definitions, meanings and interpretations were researched by anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, linguists, psychiatrists, psychologists, semioticians and others who study human communication.

Strip the bull from your business documents with a nifty piece of free software from Deloitte Consulting. Bullfighter detects meaningless business jargon ("value-based paradigm shift") and suggests clear, readable alternatives. (Works on Word documents and PowerPoint presentations in Windows 2000 or XP.)

Lovelorn peaceniks can find a cause and a date at the same time at "the dating site for activists, leftists, news junkies - people with brains who actually care about the world". This unusual personal column Web site offers free searching through thousands of want ads and you can post your own profile free. There is a small fee to leave messages and part of the site's profits go to member-voted causes.

Computer engineers at the University of Siena in Italy have designed an artificial intelligence program that solves crosswords in any language, using words that it finds on the Internet. Inventors Marco Gori and Marco Ernandes say the algorithms developed for their Web Crow application could be used in other software that will automatically extract useful information from the Web.

With Google rumoured to be launching a Web browser to compete with the new MSN Search-integrated Explorer from Microsoft, open-source entry Firefox and Apple Computer's Safari gaining devotees, and AOL launching yet another own-label variant, it looks as if the long period of IE dominance and all quiet on the browser front could be coming to an end. Even Netscape could be mounting a challenge.

Google Desktop Search was released last month. It automatically records the e-mail that you read, the chats you have and the Web pages you browse so that you can search for and retrieve the content later. It also tracks down Word, Excel and PowerPoint files already stored on your PC. But Google have warned shared computer users to think twice about installing the software until features like password protection and multi-user support are added. Until then, sensitive information could be teased out of e-mails, copied Web pages, or other documents that might contain passwords, private conversations, or records of online purchases.

Exalead is a "whole new search experience" according to the company launching this new engine, offering a billion page index on its first day of operation. Features include: approximate and phonetic searches; automatic word stemming; search results with thumbnails and 'safe page preview'; ability to sort search results by relevance, source, or date; guides to refine searches based on keywords, categories, language, document format, or country; bookmarks to save the pages you find interesting and a smart translation system to rival Alta Vista's Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com).