Previously I’ve cut and paste text and put it on my ereader,  I’ve written scripts to scrape the text automatically and I played with greasemonkey scripts to create simple versions of a few sites I read regularly.

Recently though I’ve found TidyRead which pretty much does exactly what I need. It works as a plugin or bookmarklet and for any web page you wish it will try and strip out all the extra information just leaving you with the main article text and images in a clean easy to read single page with options for colour and font sizes.

TidyRead renders web pages with better readability as an-easy-to-read manner, similar to eBooks, by accurately extracting the context text and removing the cluttered materials. Read what you should and nothing else.

I’ve been reading the quite excellent Clarkesworld Magazine with this and have found it far more pleasant with larger text, a dark background and light grey text which is easier on the eyes.

Partly this is because it’s not immediately clear how best to use the thing and partly because I know very few people using the thing which seems to be the key if you wish to collaborate.

This free ebook/guide can at least help with the first part of my problem and let me work out what I want to use it for and how to use it.

The plan is to sell the guide as a DRM-free PDF but the contents will remain freely available at http://completewaveguide.com. It already looks pretty comprehensive and being a collaborative document itself it should remain up to date as more features are added and documented.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a collaborative user manual for Google Wave written and edited by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. Launched one month after the Google Wave preview release, this guide is the most current, comprehensive, independent user resource for the most ambitious (and confusing) web application ever created.

In the spirit of Google Wave, this guide is a bold experiment in collaboration and public iteration, as well as independent book publishing.

I read a lot of ebooks but I’ve been suffering a bit staring at bright screens so I’ve finally invested in something with an e-ink screen which is much closer to reading off paper.

I spent quite a while hunting around and was tempted by the Sony Ereader and it’s stroke-able shininess but I wasn’t so keen on the proprietary format and lack of support for other formats. Finally decided on a BeBook which is a rebranded Hanlin V3 from China which reads just about anything but has the added bonus of a load of developers creating some nice custom firmware for it at OpenInkpot.org.

Played with the factory firmware for about half an hour before flashing OpenInkpot.

I might write a review once I’ve had a little more time with it.

First up is the Berkely Groks Science Show which I’ve listened to on and off for quite a few years now, looking at the archives it appears they have been broadcasting the show (at least on the radio) since 2001.

It’s a great show, well presented and if you are interested in science and technology then it’s up there with the best of the science podcasts.

Berkeley Groks is a weekly science radio program produced at KALX 90.7 FM in Berkeley, California. Each week, the hosts, Dr. Charles Lee and Dr. Frank Ling, take an in-depth look at recent events in the world of science and technology, and examine the effects of recent discoveries on our daily lives.
Each episode features an interview with a leading scientist, researcher, or industrialist discussing stimulating work in their field. The show often includes a humorous and entertaining segment; plus the world famous question of the week!

I’m particularly liking the cthulu-esque picture of octopi hung out to dry.

Doesn’t seem like much of an admission I know but its surprising the reaction that can be received from such a simple statement.

I recently posted such a statement in a forum and was faced with incredulity, called irresponsible and suggested that this sort of opinion was the reason that viruses last so long in the wild.

Now I concede that some people do need to use antivirus software but then some people need messages on their coffee cups telling them it contains hot liquid, or corks on their cutlery to stop them jabbing their own eyes out. Ok I’m being just a little bit cheeky but the fact remains that I have rarely used antivirus software and I know other similar people and what do you know, our computers have not been reduced to crash prone zombie machines infecting small children who wander past.

Lets ignore the fact that most people who complain of ‘a virus in my computer’ causing problems, probably don’t have a virus or at least not one that caused them to install some awful web search toolbar which springs pop-up ads on them every few minutes. There are only so many places that viruses can actually come from and its pretty easy to rule out most if not all of these using a little knowledge and a good deal of common sense.

I particularly like the comments by Luis Villazon of PCFormat magazine (source) quoted here:

Imagine if there was a billion dollar industry dedicated to selling you hyenas to control the badgers in your garden. Imagine that, even though there are no badgers in your garden and never have been, these companies told you that you needed to have a snarling, vicious hyena patrolling your lawn in case one should ever appear. And not just one hyena either, imagine they told you to add another hyena every month to provide adequate protection. And imagine that the hyenas were bad-tempered, smelly, dug holes in the lawn and chewed on your leg whenever you stepped outside. Finally, imagine that your garden was surrounded by a high wall anyway and the only way for badgers to get in was for someone to post them to you in a conspicuous badger-shaped parcel that you could simply refuse to accept when the postman delivered it.

That would be a pretty weird sort of business model, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t think that they would sell many hyenas.

To put my money where my mouth is I ran an online scan of my PC, which is switched on and connected pretty much 24/7. I install lots of software, browse lots of websites, use P2P, bittorrent, email, IRC etc.

The scan completed and what is this…..INFECTED in big red letters just to get my attention, obviously I need to buy the desktop version of this software to clean up my nasty infected PC before hackers steal my children. First I’ll look a little closer, ah its only found one virus…but whats this the (highlighted red might as well be blinking) virus is tagged ‘not-a-virus’…..damn strange name for a virus ready to eat my PC. Well bugger me its not actually a virus but a piece of non malicious but annoying adware, not only that…its not even an installed or a running process but a temporary file extracted from the installer for Nero Burning Rom which I had opted not to install. So my ‘infected’ PC was infected with a temporary file which I’d chosen not to run, would never be run and would be deleted the next time I cleared out the temp files.

I’m not trying to convince anyone, I don’t even really care if people want to use antivirus software and companies make stack loads of cash out of it. I just find it amazing that my opinion is considered almost heretical by otherwise rational people.

A decent daily five minute roundup of tech news delivered by Morgan Webb, one of those attractive female geeks whispered about behind server stacks.

UPDATE: As of 28th Feb 2008, Divx Stage 6 has ceased to be so streaming TV from stage 6 to XBMC is no longer possible.

Ok so I’ve spent so long playing with the Wii browser and using it as a media centre that I’d kind of ignored my nice old chipped xbox sitting under the TV.

Divx Stage 6 has taken off in a big way and many of the TV links sites are now full of divx links which on the upside means great quality video, on the downside however it won’t work with Opera on the Wii.

So I thought, maybe there is some way I can do this on Xbox Media Center, and would you know it there is and it works lovely.

Basically there are two options, one is to use the ‘Joox’ Xbox Media Center script to access the links on Joox. You can find this script by googling for the obvious terms.

Or you can install a firefox extension which allows you to right click media links from your pc/laptop and send them to the web server wunning in XBMC which will then start playing them.

This works great for me as I’m using the laptops wireless connection to connect the xbox to the internet as I’m too cheap to buy a wireless bridge.

There are also tons of other scripts for XBMC since I last looked, it really is a great solution for streaming media. Shame it can’t do flash….but the there is always the Wii.

So I’ve just been watching a couple of TV episodes, some video podcasts and listening to some internet radio and podcasts all thanks to my new found interest in my xbox.

Ben Goldacre with his usual rational thoughts on the latest scare story…..evil wifi.