| We do not intend
to make this page into an advertisement page, but thought that you
would find the following items which we ourselves have found useful
(and use), of interest to you. All of this software has been tried and
tested by ourselves and is in daily use in developing our software.
Frank and independent reviews of the software written by ourselves are
also included. Some of this is operated on a commission basis
from when you click the links, but we have not let the idea of money
sway our views!!
Perl
Editors
There
are a vast number of editors and development packages available for the
average
Perl programmer. Our Perl scripts are developed using two
excellent editors which allow you to test Perl scripts before uploading
them to the internet server. For developing Perl on Windows based PC's,
we would highly recommend DzPerl {review} running with ActivePerl
, although Maxwell Nairn Andrews' free WinPerl
{review
and
download} is also
excellent for beginners developing small Perl scripts.
There is also a
version of Perl for the Sinclair QL home computer, which may be
downloaded from
Jonathon Hudson's Site.
Video
Streaming
Forbidden Technologies
offers video compression software which can be utilised to add high
quality streaming video to web-sites, or even to stream videos over
GPRS to ARMPocketPC
PDAs (such as O2 xda and Compaq iPAQ). Its main advantage over other
types of video streaming is that not only are download times fast and
picture quality good, but the player is included as part of the code
which means there is no fear that customers will have to spend a long
time downloading the latest version of a player, just to watch a short
video {review}
Faster
Memory for your PC
FreeMem
Pro
promises to improve the memory usage on your PC, freeing system
resources and
increasing speed in general. We have looked at whether this
program does
what it promises. {review)
Speed Up Internet Connections
Marketscore are a market research company, who provide some free
software to speed up your connection
and also software by Symantec to protect your system against email
viruses, in return
for you agreeing to register as a possible target for their anonymous
market research questionnaires. This gets a lot of promotion on
the Internet, but just how good is it? {review)
Propel
provide a commercial internet accelerator program which seems more
reliable and faster than that provided by Marketscore (above) whilst at
the same time protecting your privacy more.
The latest version also incorporates a pop-up and advert blocker, as
well as
speeding up file downloads. (review)
OnSpeed
offer a similar product to Propel, at a much lower cost, but lacks some
of the
nicer features and is more restricted in the range of applications
which it
supports (review)
Finding
a Low Cost Web Hosting Package
Having
searched the internet for a high quality low cost web hosting package,
we
believe that iPowerWeb are the market leader. However,
there are
other low cost internet website hosting companies available - which
ones are
worth trying? (review)
Remote Control of your PC from anywhere in
the World
Another useful utility is
the much heralded
GoToMyPC which enables you to securely access and use your PC from
any Web browser anytime, anywhere (including mobile devices). Unlike
Windows XP's Remote Assistance, which requires host users to
acknowledge an invitation and permit full access, a computer with
GoToMyPC can connect to an unattended host. On-the-fly screen blanking
and keyboard locking let you thwart intruders. A free trial
version is available for download {review}.
Internet
Service
Providers
Virgin Media Broadband
offer an excellent internet service, along with cable TV and phone
lines, all at much cheaper rates than BT. Internet access is
offered on standard dial-up accounts (either pay as you surf or
unlimited access for a monthly fee) or Broadband which is an always on
connection, offering either 10x faster access (512Kb per second
service) up to even 40x faster access (2Mb per second service) than
standard 56Kb per second dial-up modem access {review}.
Making Money from the Internet??
It would be nice to make
money from surfing the internet, or to get money back on purchases made
over the internet. Well, there are actually ways of receiving
some credit for any purchases which you make over the internet as well
as ways of winning money and working from home. We review some of the
more popular schemes for earning money (including competitions, on-line
games, paid email, working freelance and loyalty schemes). {overview} .
Internet Advertising / Affiliate Programs
One of the main methods of making money out of the internet
is through adding advertising to your website (there are one or two
small adverts on our own web-site). In order to do this, you will
need to become an affiliate of the companies whose products you wish to
offer (unless you are willing to offer free advertising). The
easiest way of doing this is to join one of several affiliate marketing
schemes - this is a overview of some of the schemes available and our
experiences {review}.
Visitor Tracking and
Statistics
If
you run a website, it is important to be able to know not only how many
people
visit your site, but also where those people come from, which links to
your
website work and which pages each visitor is interested in. The
IndexTools
program allows you to keep a close track on each visitor to your
website as they
navigate around the site. {review}.
Digital Television
and Phone Packages
We have looked at the
services which you can expect from one of the main cable TV and
telephone operators (Virgin Media) and compared them to those
provided by Freeview and BSkyB together with BT. Find out about
free interactive services and TV email without dial-up charges {review}.
Telephone
Service Providers
There are lots
of companies out there who promise cheaper telephone calls than BT - we
compare
the services and range of offers available and see whether they match
up to
their promises {review}
Posting Parcels
Are the Royal Mail the
only
means of shipping parcels available for the ordinary person? We
look at an
alternative here. {review}
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