Opera fully free only today!

If you miss this, you might need to wait for next 10 years! As Opera celebrates 10 years of being on-line, it gives away registration code to virtually everyone, so you can have free Opera without toolbar for ads.

Opera is a good browser, definitely better than Internet explorer and it has improved significantly since the last time I wrote about browsers. Now it has much better user-interface, and renders sites a bit better, though you will still see some issues now and then. I prefer Firefox (simple and expandable), but I guess that for some people Opera offers more as it is packed with more features than Firefox has out of the box.

Send SMS baby, I am busy!

I believe that great potential of smartphones / Pocket PC phones is not in some side functions like editing Word files, but rather in helping user to better manage his communication. Call Assistant is a good representative of this category. If you turn it on, it will send predefined SMSs, saying probably "I am on meeting now, try at 7". And you can bet that it will do the smart way, so to send message only to some persons and not more than once to the same person. Oh, yeah, it is even free.

Opera for Windows Mobile

Surfing on mobile device has several disadvantages. Depending on the your current provider, you may have much less of a speed comparing to your desktop computer with broadband connection. Also, surfing may turn to be expensive. But that is one part of the deal that you can't solve by choosing/upgrading your pocket PC/smartphone. The problem that you can solve is to use some browser which will allow decent view of sites. Current Windows Mobile platform uses browser based on Internet explorer 3, which is fairly obsolete considering its rendering capabilities (BTW even Internet explorer 6 is obsolete in this area, but most people still afraid to brake site compatibility with it), and it usually turns out that you need too much horizontal scrolling. With much more modern rendering engine, Opera is able to show you most of the sites correctly. And you won't have to scroll horizontally anymore. Here are screen shots. I haven't tried it yet, but I think it is still not capable of dealing with most complicated sites like Google maps. But as Minimo, the only current application capable of doing this is still in development phase, it is not thing too worry.

Is antivirus your best protection?

I try to compare antivirus with safes. They protect you, but you don't want the burglars to go around them, as it is burglar's job to crack the safe. So, in real life, you put guards, cameras, additional locked doors and security procedures in order too keep everything fine.

It is very similar with antiviruses - they are definitely are must in today world of worms, but if you allow viruses to go around them, they will pass, sooner or later. So, you need additional measures to keep malware on distance.

The single and most important measure is not to open anything on your computer if you have any doubt what it is. Remember, even if it is from a well designed site you never heard of, or e-mailed from your friend, it could be still virus.

Almost as important is to keep your Windows up to date. If you don't do it malicious virus may install without any interaction. So, go to Control panel and enable Automatic updates.

Finally, you are most vulnerable in points that interact with the Internet. As Internet explorer and Outlook express are integrated into the Windows, they interact with everything on your computer and may pose major trouble. So, it could be a good idea to use alternative browsers like Firefox or Opera. If nothing else, keep your Windows updated, as said before, it will keep Internet explorer patched, and keep you safe from most attacks. Of course, you can never be 100% safe.

Koreans hate simplicity and iPod?

As you can see from design of my blog, I like simplicity. It is not that I don't like features (I am all for them), but interface made for me should have simple frontend and powerful backend. I can deal with complex interface, but it leaves unpleasant feeling, and makes me less efficient when doing every day tasks.

But, according to Register, Koreans tend to disagree. You probably know that Apple holds more than 50% of digital music players market with its iPod. However, in Korea Apple has only 1.8% share. And the reason is pretty hard to believe - Koreans like interface that is feature-complex.

To be more precise, one should also take into account that Koreans are much more likely to buy products of their own country (like Samsung players in this case) than other nations.