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One of the problems created by the Internet is that everywhere is as close as your mouse. If you’re trying to find something for the significant other in your life and they’re in to techy stuff, it’s not as easy as wandering around your local mall. Google is so voluminous with its information that there’s just too much to explore. What is needed is something where some human selection has been applied.

Where better than the Gadgets Galore Store, you might think? In a way that galore word may be the danger sign: it seems to cover too many types of artifacts. PC World might home in better on the right kinds of gadgets but again it overwhelms with the quantity of information. A more focused one for technical news that seems more useful is the Gadget Advisor for PC Hardware, Software and Tech related items. It provides advice on what it covers and I found useful info on best extensions for Firefox and best Windows software. A Blaze Media Pro review also caught my eye: that software seems to be almost the Swiss Army pen-knife approach to handling images.

If gadgets are on your Christmas list, then hopefully this will give you some places to start your research.

When you think of mobile ATMs, you may imagine machines that arrive on a truck such as those made by Canadian Automated Bank Machines Inc. (CABM).  It certainly is nice to have such a facility close at hand, just when you need it. However you can imagine the security concerns that such a handy ATM creates.  Whatever arrived on a truck can clearly disappear on a truck as well.

Of course banking nowadays is not really about physical coins or paper money.  It is all really a branch of information technology (IT).  What is needed is therefore an IT solution.  Just send a few bytes (encrypted) from A to B and the job is done. Lo and behold, RBC Royal Bank is now providing that with Mobile Banking: Online Banking on your Mobile Phone.

As they explain in a message to customers with RBC® Mobile Banking+ you can now access Online Banking through your web-enabled mobile phone. Simply enter www.rbc.mobi using your mobile web browser and login using your Online Banking login and password.

You’ll have instant access to many of the features available in Online Banking. With RBC Mobile Banking you can:

• Check your account balances
• View your recent transactions
• Pay bills
• Transfer funds between accounts in Canadian and U.S. dollars

There are no extra fees for this service, at least from the Royal Bank. However I doubt that your wireless service provider will be equally accommodating.

Computer monitors now have a bigger screens.  If you check the visitor traffic to any website, you will find that fewer visitors have screens that are less than 1024 pixels in width.  1024 x 768 is often the most popular screen size for visitors.  Web designers are usually creating websites that will give the best viewing experience at this resolution or even bigger.  Perhaps it is not surprising since that is usually the screen size they are working on.

What is often forgotten is what goes on the page.  If the whole screen is bigger, then presumably elements on the screen can be larger too.  That clearly is the thinking behind the news that iGoogle Goes Wide, Introduces Canvas Pages as Erick Schonfeld pointed out last week.

Google’s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.

Partners that are launching with expanded gadgets include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TV Guide, iLike, CurrentTV, and Go Comics. Google itself has created extra-wide gadgets for Google Reader, Gmail, Google Finance, and YouTube.

Another item that can be re-examined in this bigger screen world is the size of display ads on web pages.  Surprisingly they are often 125 pixels by 125 pixels, which can even work well on that old 800 pixel width screen.  In the new StayGoLinks redesign we have gone with 160 pixels by 160 pixels as the normal minimum standard for a sidebar ad.  As time passes and people get more accustomed to designing for the bigger screens, then this may well become the trend.

Clearly the larger area (almost two thirds bigger) gives an advertiser much more space to develop an eye-catching ad.  It will be interesting to see how quickly such ads become the norm.

We often forget how hazardous the Internet can be. It really is a jungle out there and some of the denizens have sharp claws. It opens up the whole question of what kind of Internet we would all like.

A discussion at Cre8asite Forums about an article, Clickjacking: Researchers raise alert for scary new cross-browser exploit, raised my sensitivity level. The recommended solution was to download an add-on for Firefox called NoScript. (I assume all my readers are using Firefox — if not, why not?)

When browsing with NoScript I was astounded to find how often others wish to determine what I will see. Quite often the intrusions go completely against my wishes. Nevertheless I found I was so slowed down in my browsing with NoScript, that it now sits available for action but disabled. My browsing is mainly through mainstream websites and I am fairly sure that they are largely to be trusted.

Once you look into this area however, you begin to see the size of the problem. Just two important websites will illustrate the efforts that are needed. At the detection level we have Spamhaus, which is Working To Protect Internet Networks Worldwide. It tracks the Internet’s Spammers, Spam Gangs and Spam Services, provides dependable real-time anti-spam protection for Internet networks, and works with Law Enforcement to identify and pursue spammers worldwide.

Another important organization is StopBadware.org.

StopBadware.org is a partnership among academic institutions, technology industry leaders, and volunteers, all of whom are committed to protecting Internet and computer users from the threats to privacy and security that are caused by bad software. We are a leading independent authority on trends in badware and its distribution, and a focal point for the development of collaborative, community-minded approaches to stopping badware. We invite you to join our community, to help reduce the impact of badware and to regain control of our computers.

To an extent each of us can do our part to spread the word and encourage good practices. Comodo is a well-respected internet security company, selling the digital certificates that make it possible for online businesses to operate on secure socket layers. Comodo has published a Trusted Internet Manifesto. Melih Abdulhayoglu, its CEO, has a blog about the Trusted Internet and covers many other related Internet security issues.

Surviving in the jungle requires vigilance and the right protective gear. This is not a walk in the park.

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There is an awful lot of political chatter in both Canada and the US at the moment. An interesting tool being developed in the Google labs allows you to stay on top of all this chatter. It’s called the Google Audio Indexing (GAudi) technology. Arnaud Sahuguet describes it in a post entitled Straight from the horse’s mouth.

You can now search for and watch political videos right from the Google News US election page.

Just enter the topic you’re interested in, or the sequence of words you want to find, and we’ll search candidates’ YouTube channels to return a set of relevant videos. You can filter the results by channel (all candidates, McCain’s campaign, Obama’s campaign or the presidential debates). When we return a result, we use yellow markers to indicate the exact moments the words you’re looking for are uttered. Just hover over the marker to read the transcript of a short audio snippet or click on it to jump to the right moment inside the video.

It is an interesting example of the power of speech technology. We can expect to hear more and more such applications in the very near future.

It is hardly a sign of a successful product when they have to rely on gimmicks to get it into the prospect’s hands .. or rather under their mouse. That is one reaction you might have to the Live Search invitation to Sign in to the SearchPerks! Program.

Apparently Microsoft is going to pay you to use its search engine. Until the end of the year, you’ll get points every time you use Microsoft’s Live.com service. With enough points, you can buy free music downloads, gadgets, even frequent-flier miles. (The offer is limited to the first 1 million people who sign up. .. and it only works with Internet Explorer for Windows.) (Tip of the hat to Pay Per Click Offer)

In some ways it is a further extension of their Live Search Club where you can win points by playing games. It may be that they are leveraging out what has already proved to be a successful strategy. However I am from St. Louis on this one.

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