Beijing Olympic dates (tags: Olympics 2014 wiki wikipedia 1952 micro ancient)

The Beijing olympics are fast approaching.

Are you ready?

The Beijing Olympics opening ceremony starts on August 8 2008 (there is a football match scheduled on the 6th). The closing ceremony is on the 24th of August.

We decided to do a quick check of some of the ways JustLocal friends can help you ready for the next Olympics.

Get your Australian flag. From small flags for those who just want to wave a little, to giant flags where you run around jumping and screaming with excitement. The Hopping Kangaroo has an extensive range of flags for you to choose from. (Visit postcode 3805.) If you are going to China you might want to get some of their neat friendship pins. The pins have both the Australian and Chinese flags. Sure to be a winner at any event.

Have a great voice. Then belt out the national anthem. What, you don't know the words! Grab some bookmarks from the JustLocal book project which has the national anthem on the back and never be lost for words again. And during the quiet times between events, grab an Australian book at the book project (http://www.book.justlocal.com.au/) and never lose your place with the JustLocal book mark.

Don't forget those business cards. The Olympics are a great time to network and you can get some great business cards made up by Rising Star Designs and Communications. If you're organising a corporate function I'm sure Renée can create an invite that will win gold.

Keep your eye on The Great Give-Away as shortly we will be adding a High Definition USB TV adaptor so you can watch the events whilst are working. Never miss a great moment. This is a great little unit. You can replay that magical moment time and time again with the time shifting feature and then catch up by fast forwarding through the advertising. Who said the Olympians have all the fun.

Whether it's food for the masses from Big Brother Pizza, or a relaxing massage from Veunique after watching all that sport, if you need something for the next Olympics, try the JustLocal search. If a JustLocal friend doesn't have it, one of the Google advertisers will.

Wishing all Australian Olympians they achieve beyond their wildest dreams. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.

- Kelvin.

You've received A Hallmark E-Card!

If you receive an email with the subject "You've received A Hallmark E-Card!", it won't take long to realise you haven't really received a Hallmark E-Card at all, but some undesirable email.

We have received warnings from contacts regarding Hallmark E-Cards so we decided to investigate.

The easy way to identify a legitimate Hallmark E-Card is a card sent from Hallmark will contain the senders name. If there is no name, then it is not a Hallmark E-Card.

For those with OzEfilter you may be able to see the country from where the card was sent. We were surprised to see our test Hallmark E-Cards came from Germany. Of course the advantage with OzEfilter is you can delete the undesirable Hallmark E-Cards and not let the email reach your computer.

May all your greetings be good greetings.

- Kelvin

Trial of a JustLocal search engine using Google.

Hi,

A number of people have asked to be able to search JustLocal friends for a product or service using a search engine. Whilst the JustLocal site is designed to encourage people to buy without leaving their area, it is very appreciated JustLocal friends and supporters wish to support each other with their buying power.

I would like to experiment with the Google service and provide a JustLocal search feature. This has been set up to include the site of JustLocal friends.

Please test the following search engine and let me know what you think. For example: does it achieve what you would like? Would you prefer the search engine to have the Google advertising or would prefer to have no Google advertising?

http://www.justlocal.com.au/search.html

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

- Kelvin Eldridge

Is it blond or blonde?

This question recently came from an Australian English spellcheck dictionary user and I thought it was very interesting. The question was: is the spelling blond or blonde?

Now I have often wondered about this word as well. According to the Macquarie dictionary and the Australian Oxford English dictionary, both words are valid in Australia and it is interesting how they are used.

The word blonde is used to refer to a light haired women. The word blond is used to refer to a light haired man and also light colour hair. This is a rare instance in Australian English where we have a different word for a male and a female.

The following are a couple of examples of usage.

• That means we have blonde jokes and in my experience, not blond jokes.
• The blonde has blond hair.
• When we talk about blondes having more fun, we probably aren't talking about guys, but I'm sure blonds have more fun too.

In this case both the dictionaries are consistent and for the purpose of the Australian English spellcheck dictionary this information means both words will be included in the the full version and the Kelvin version of the dictionary.

What is interesting is usage within Australia according to the Kelvinometer. This tool shows the number of pages returned from search engines for pages from Australia, for two words with different spelling, but the same meaning.

Very interesting is there are about six times more pages returned with "blonde", compared with "blond". This is an enormous difference and a quick check of Google pages shows a great number of people using the words incorrectly.

Perhaps the question then is: are people using the word incorrectly, or has our usage in Australia evolved and the word "blonde" is now the preferred usage?

What do you think?

Kelvin Eldridge - Creator and maintainer of the Australian English spellcheck dictionary files now used by over half a million people.

This little card could save your life.

"This little card could save your life" is the catchy line for the exciting new product Medi-Card which will be launched shortly.

VPS members please feel free to check out Medi-Card. This really is an exciting opportunity as I know the creator of Medi-Card Raymond Read, is putting together a valuable service and a quality product.

To find out more visit www.JustLocal.com.au/clients/medi-card.

Kelvin Eldridge

How to Survive a Heart Attack When Alone.

I just received an email from a friend about how to survive a heart attack when alone. The subject of the message was "very good advice" and a PowerPoint presentation was attached.

I wondered if there was any truth in the Cough CPR method or was it perhaps another hoax virus. I selected the words which I thought would be a good candidate if this was a virus, and also potentially the source if indeed the information was true. I entered the search "journal of general hospital rochester" as the authority mentioned was General Hospital Rochester.

Sure enough Hoax Slayer came up and this hoax appears to have been circulating since 1999. As I mentioned in an earlier post if you receive an email from your friend that suggests passing it on, then please check your friend is also not simply passing it on without checking. It only takes a few moments to check if you are being tricked by a hoax virus and your friends won't benefit from suspect information.

If you have passed this message on to others please let them know it is a hoax.

Happy hoax slaying. - Kelvin Eldridge

FREE OzEfilter 1.7 demo version now available.

When OzEfilter 1.6 was about to expire I was amazed that everyone using the program wanted the latest release. One person even said their email experience as they knew it would come to an end without the update. We would also find it very hard to do our work without OzEfilter.

As of right now, OzEfilter has allowed me to delete 58,110 emails before they reached my computer. Whilst I would not stop using anti-virus software, I've not had a single report of a virus infected email reaching my computer since November 2005.

We all know that every anti-virus program can't catch all the viruses and the cost of fixing an infected computer can be expensive, let alone the inconvenience. I've even seen one computer with hundreds of virus infections. The user wondered why it was running so slow.

So more people can enjoy the freedom from unwanted emails and try OzEfilter themselves, we have created a demo version. The demo version is a full version of the current version of OzEfilter and will run until the end of September 2008.

Virtual Profit Sharing members can let their family, friends and contacts know about the free demo version of OzEfilter and when their membership code is passed on, VPS members will receive the very healthy referral reward if their contact later purchases a copy of OzEfilter.

You can find OzEfilter as www.OzEfilter.com.

Enjoy - Kelvin

Microsoft updates causing havoc for users.

Hi,

I tend to come from the old school of computing where a computer was set up and once working, left to work. On a regular basis updates which had been tested, were then applied across all the computers. The approach was very reliable and the computers very stable. It took me a while to warm to the new school of thought of constant updates. Whilst the constant update approach has advantages, it also has disadvantages.

Last night a family member asked for assistance with their computer. After the latest Windows XP update the computer would no longer connect to the network and thus the Internet. The network card had been disabled. Enabling the network card caused the infamous blue screen of death.

The short term solution was to perform a restore using the Windows XP restore facility. That took the computer back before the update and it was working fine. I also advised them to review and simplify the number of products on the computer such as the anti-virus/firewall programs.

In this case the issue turned out to be a conflict with ZoneAlarm. The following is a link which indicates how to fix the problem (issued by ZoneAlarm). Another solution of course is to remove ZoneAlarm and the person had actually disabled ZoneAlarm in a second computer which avoided the problem.

I regularly see updates from Microsoft causing problems and it makes me wonder is this always connected constant updating world we now have, not causing us more problems than it cures.

This type of repair would often be a $100 plus support call out. I suspect quite a bit of money will be spent by people to solve this problem and the sad thing is it shouldn't be necessary.

If your computer after an update suddenly stops working as it should, you may consider the built-in restore feature of Windows XP to be your friend. You can find it under Accessories, System Tools.

The family member has now taken my suggestions and removed unnecessary security products based on a quick review of their set-up and their computer is again working.

Happy computer - Kelvin

How do I spell that word? Ask the Kelvinometer!

Hi,

Somewhere around the mid 1900s the dictionary makers decided to start recording the words we use and stopped being a guide on how to spell. This has always caused me a degree of frustration. In Australia there are thousands of words which have more than one spelling. I personally would like to use the preferred spelling and based on the number of people downloading the Kelvin version of the spellcheck dictionary files, so do many others.

When I started the dictionary work I knew I wanted to create a spellcheck dictionary that offered the preferred spelling to make my life easier. At the time I didn't know what this was called and so I called my dictionary the Kelvin dictionary. I have since learnt what I was creating is called a prescriptive dictionary. (A descriptive dictionary is one which provides the different variations and the meaning.)

The two main dictionaries in Australia (the Macquarie and the Oxford) generally list the preferred spelling (the spelling used by more people) as the first entry and then an also entry for alternate spellings. Sometimes the dictionaries however differ.

That is when I turn to the Internet and the search engines. By searching on the different variations and restricting pages to Australia, often the Internet resolves the issue of which variation is the preferred spelling.

Since I do this quite a bit I decided to write a basic tool for myself where I could enter two words and I obtain the search engine results. I call this tool the Kelvinometer (which is from an in-joke with one of my friends).

For those who are interested I am making my rather raw tool available at the following address.

http://www.onlineconnections.com.au/kelvinometer/


Please enjoy. - Kelvin Eldridge

Podium Power - The 7 Secrets of Successful Presentations

Podium Power - The 7 Secrets of Successful Presentations

Unlock the Presentation Master Within
Friday 11th July 2008
12 Lucky people will discover the 7 Lost Secrets of Presentations...With my help it will all become easy!

Do you have a great product or service but are not sure how to present it?

Do you want to promote your business confidently and with flair?

Do you want to overcome fear and nerves and create presentations with pizzazz?

It’s easy with Deanna Roberts, a professional speaker and presenter with experience in business, corporate management, the performing arts and mentoring. Deanna’s simple but effective methods, delivered with humour and style, can help you create better presentations and build your business. Designed for small business owners or departmental heads, Deanna’s workshops will make presenting your service or product a pleasure and for you and your audience.

Don’t miss out! Develop your podium power!

For more information visit the JustLocal postcode page (http://www.justlocal.com.au/3000/) and click on Deanna.

- Kelvin

OzFilter 1.7 now available. Stop spam dead.

The latest edition of OzFilter 1.7 is now available.

For those who don't know about OzEfilter, OzEfilter is the result of months of research trying to beat spammers at their own game. During the research we identified spammers change messages frequently, change addresses frequently and the change the servers they send from frequently. Spam filters often treat good emails as spam and for some that can result in lost emails and even worse, lost business.

The solution to the problem however came as a result of the other group often considered a nuisance, the telemarketers. Caller ID helped to a certain extent but what really helped was being able to set the telephone so calls from friends would ring with one tone and could be answered, and calls from unknown people (nearly always a telemarketer) could be filtered using the answering machine. That enables us to accept good calls, but filter unknown callers. The same design is built into OzEfilter.

OzEfilter is used to monitor your emails at your mail server. As you receive emails from friends you add them to your conditions so emails from friends will be received. You only then need to review the list of emails from people you don't know. If you don't want the email you delete the email at the mail server.

This approach keeps unwanted emails out of your computer. We have not yet found an anti-virus software package that hasn't been beaten, so using anti-virus or anti-spyware software by itself is not enough. Using that approach by itself means it is not a matter of if you will get infected, it is only a matter of when you will get infected. Infections are often costly and inconvenient.

I use OzEfilter and could not live without it. In the last two and half years OzEfilter has deleted over 57,000 unwanted emails at the mail server safely away from my computer.

For more information on OzEfilter 1.7 visit http://www.ozefilter.com/.

May all your emails be good emails - Kelvin Eldridge

PS. OzEfilter is now a VPS partner. VPS members can now refer OzEfilter to others and continue to receive a referral reward whilst the person continues to use OzEfilter.

Fw: WARNING - BIG VIRUS IS COMING

Hi,

I regularly receive emails from clients letting me know the next big virus is coming. Sadly, in almost if not all cases, the clients have been tricked.

This is what is known as a hoax virus.

It is simply an email that has been designed to trick people to warn others. As a result lots of people pass on the hoax to others creating a great deal of concern for their friends.

If you receive a virus warning then don't send it on to others unless you know there is a real virus. In the last three years I have received dozens of such warnings and every one has been a hoax.

Often these messages claim to have been checked and well known names are mentioned. It is these very same names that you can use to help you check the virus is a hoax.

For example in the message I received today was the statement:

"This is the worst virus announced by CNN."

If this were true then if I visit the CNN site then there is no doubt it would be a major news item. A check of the CNN site shows no mention of any such virus.

Next we see that Microsoft is mentioned.

"It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. "

A quick visit to the Microsoft site and again no mention of a virus. Not a mention of the virus there either.

As you can see a quick check of the sites being mentioned pretty much tells us it is a hoax.

You may also wish to check the major newspaper sites. Unless the newspaper itself is tricked, if the virus threat is real, it will soon appear in the media.

I would also suggest asking your source. If they have not checked or personally know about the virus from their contact (not via email), it is a good chance they have too been tricked.

The good thing about a virus hoax is it has usually been around for a while. If you take the main words from the email and search using Google, you will often find the hoax has been reported. But you really need to take care here. Only check the sites which you know are well known sites such as the anti-virus companies. Going to a site which is not known could in fact be a trick to infect your computer. I have seen this happen on a Windows XP SP1 computer.

In this case I decided to search for the phrase "opens A POSTCARD IMAGE" including the quotes using Google. This returned an entry from hoax-slayer which confirms it is a hoax. But since I don't know if hoax-slayer itself is a friendly site or not, I would not suggest this site to others. Yes it is best not to trust sites when it comes to viruses.

It should also be kept in mind that in general Google is not a good place to search for up-to-date information. Google can take weeks to index a site and I have seen a new virus come out on the weekend from Asia and infect Australian computers on Monday morning.

If clients contact me and this will happen in the case of a real infection, if I see the infection hit more than one client then there is a real issue and I will post about the issue as quickly as possible. This blog may be your best source of information in the case of a real outbreak.

In my case I don't see these unwanted emails as I use a product I wrote called OzEfilter. OzEfilter lets me view a list emails from people I don't know, safely at the mail server. I then delete the emails before they reach my computer. In fact I've deleted over 57,000 such emails. I've not had one virus infected email reach my computer in nearly three years.

One thing I do find is when people send these hoax emails on they can feel pretty silly. No one likes to think they have been tricked. It can be quite embarrassing to go back to everyone and let them know you were tricked.

So please check your facts and your source first before helping a virus hoax achieve its goal. Your friends will appreciate the extra effort you take.

Happy hoax slaying - Kelvin Eldridge

VPS work-in-progress on JustLocal.

Hi,

I would like to let everyone know that JustLocal is evolving and that's a good thing.

JustLocal is a participant in Virtual Profit Sharing. Currently if a Virtual Profit Sharing member refers a business to JustLocal, the business has to manually enter the member's code in order for the member to share in the profit.

I am currently upgrading the system so the VPS member's code is automatically transferred to the order form. This will take some time and I appreciate your patience.

If you find anything unusual that you feel we may not have meant to do (we often do unusual things) then please feel free to let us know. Your feedback and assistance is appreciate.

Thanks in advance - Kelvin

Jewellery Expo at Watsonia Neighbourhood House on the 26th of July 2008.

The Watsonia Neighbourhood house sent us the following event information for the upcoming jewellery expo.


Welcome to the Wonderful World of Jewellery at Watsonia Neighbourhood House, 47 Lambourne Road, Watsonia.

Meet members of the Monday Night Jewellery Class. See their creative designs. All items will be for sale. Orders taken.

Saturday 26th July 2008, 10.30am to 3.00pm. Enquiries 9434 6717

You can find information about the Watsonia Neighbourhood House by clicking on the image at the bottom of the JustLocal postcode page 3087.

Spellcheck bug in Firefox 3.0

A user of the Australian English dictionary files contacted me to let me know the words "Colorful" and "aluminum" were not picked up correctly by the spelling checker. This was quite strange since the words are not in the dictionary.

On further investigation of Firefox 3.0, I found if you open Firefox 3.0 and then paste "Colorful aluminum" into a form, these words will not be correctly identified as being wrong.

To get around this glitch turn Check Spelling off and then on again using the context menu. Once the spellcheck is working, the spellcheck continues to work.

There is no need to report this as a problem to me (the creator and maintainer of the Australian English dictionary files) as the problem is not in the dictionary, but is with Firefox 3.0. Please report the problem to the Firefox project.

Thank you Andrew for bringing this to my attention.

Happy spellchecking - Kelvin Eldridge

Interest charged even though you pay off your credit card in full by the due date?

Are you being charged interest on your credit card even though you pay it off in full and by the due date?

I recently received a question from a person because even though they paid of their credit card off each month in full and by the due date, they were still being charged interest. Whilst outside the scope of what I do I decided to investigate since I have also fallen for this credit card trap so I thought I would share my experience with others.

There are a few gotchas with credit cards.

1. If you miss paying off a credit card by the due date then you get charged interest on the next statement and it applies to all purchases made since the start of the statement period.

Miss paying off your credit card in full also affects how you are charged interest on your purchases from that point on.

2. If you don't pay off your credit card in full then every purchase from then on incurs interest at the going rate. There is no interest free period on purchases when you owe money on your credit card.

The trap however is if you pay the full amount due stated on the statement, you are not paying off the full amount since some interest has already been incurred between the statement date and when you pay. You always receive the statement a few days after it is printed.

In order to stop being charged interest you need to have your credit card owing you money at the next statement end date.

One way to do this is to keep the card owing you money for the entire following month. If you don't want to pay interest in your purchases during the month this is the way to go.

Another way is just before the statement end date check the balance of the credit card and pay off the credit card plus a bit more so that at the next statement the credit card owes you money. You may end up paying some interest on purchases using this approach.

Another way is to use another credit card until the credit card is paid in full and no interest has been charged. This may take two statement cycles.

If all you ever do once you miss paying off your credit card in full is to pay the amount due, you will continue to pay interest on your credit card.

I hope this experience helps others to tame their credit card. - Kelvin Eldridge

NOTE: This information should not be considered as financial advice. It is for general information only.

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007

Recently, Nigel, who is one of the Australian English dictionary file users, let me know that Microsoft support sent him to the JustLocal site to solve his Outlook Express problem. His spellchecking in Outlook Express was not working since installing Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007.

What I found really interesting which I wasn't aware of, is the student edition of Microsoft office, previously the Teacher and Student edition in 2003, was now replaced by the Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 edition.

This means many more people can afford to run Microsoft Office on their home computers. Retirees like Nigel are one group who benefit and I suspect there are many more.

With the ability to load the software onto three computers, it should cover the needs of most families, including grandpa or grandma's computer.

We've added a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 to The Great Give-Away so there is a copy up for grabs. If you can't wait and want to take advantage of Microsoft's $40 petrol voucher offer, you can buy now and if you win the free copy, we give you the option of getting a second copy, or a refund of the purchase price plus delivery.

Thanks Nigel for you feedback - Kelvin

Firefox 3 Australian English dictionary files now available.

Firefox 3 is just around the corner.

I have now updated the files to work with Firefox 3 and also made some minor changes as requested by a number of users.

You can find the Australian English spellcheck files on most JustLocal (www.JustLocal.com.au) pages at the bottom of the page by clicking on the following graphic.



You can also go straight the dictionary page at www.dictionary.JustLocal.com.au.

As the creator and the maintainer of these files for the last five years I would like to thank you for your ongoing support. Without your support producing these files would not be viable.

Happy spellchecking - Kelvin.

New free prizes added to The Great Give-Away.

The Great Give-Away is proving to be very popular with both the businesses giving away prizes and the people winning them.

More exciting new prizes have just been added so grab that mouse and get clicking. Visit http://www.justlocal.com.au/ and click on The Great Give-Away.

You could be the next winner in The Great Give-Away.

GPAC: A Tribute To The Hollywood Musicals.

B.E.A.T. (Bayside Entertainment and Theatre) presents "A Tribute to the Hollywood Musicals", a revue devised and directed by Ron & Maureen Sudden, at the Blakiston Theatre, G.P.A.C. from June 26th to June 28th 2008.

This variety show has a cast of 30 singers and dancers, a 4 piece orchestra, and a troupe of young dancers.

The show pays tribute to 30 of the most loved musical films from the 1930's through to 2002, with songs from the likes of "Singing in the Rain", "Easter Parade", "Guys and Dolls", "Fiddler on the Roof", "My Fair Lady", "Paint Your Wagon", "Annie Get Your Gun" and many more, performed by a very talented and enthusiastic cast. A show not to be missed.

For more details check out http://www.GeelongBEAT.com/.