SPOT THE CAT 3

And here you are again?!  Must be keeping you amused...

Once again, click the image

No, not that one!

This one...

See if you can get it now it's a little more zoomed in again.

Answer tomorrow if you don't...

SPOT THE CAT 2

Back again? Didn't spot the cat from yesterday's picture?

And I didn't mean this Spot!

Here's a slightly more zoomed in section of the photo. See how you get on this time.
Again, click the photo to see the full size image - otherwise things are a little tricky...

Get it...? If not, last one tomorrow...

SPOT THE CAT

One of my favourite cartoons is Hong Kong Phooey, and of course I love Phooey himself who blunders around all over the place and eventually gets the glory for the hard work that his cat, Spot, puts in to solve the mystery...

And of course, Spot is actually not at all spotty but stripey.

Anyway...

Here's another type of Spot The Cat that should get the brain cells working.

Can You Spot The Cat? Click the image to see the full size one as you won't stand a chance otherwise!

I'll post another image tomorrow and Friday that will help. Just check back after midday (GMT).

NEW GRAPHICS...

This week we are excited at 'Polonsky Towers' as we have launched a new Infographics business (@ewinfographics if you want to follow us on twitter).

Therefore, I thought I'd keep the blog posting light and simply put up a link to an infoG (I am getting tired of typing that long word already?!) about a subject that means something to me - hailing from the land of Fish and Chips as I do...

So, without further ado (click the graphic to go to the original large scale version)...

by Wildyles

east west infographics also has a pinterest board if you want to follow us.
Here's the link.

Expect more along the same theme very soon.

WINDOWS 8 THE KEYBOARD?

Not much from me on Windows 8. I haven't yet installed it here but I have been chatting with plenty of developers who are lukewarm (mind you they are mostly iOS developers so that’s an obvious reaction from them?) Here's a tweet that I spotted today - which shows what it's all about in one simple picture... touch based computing.

Excited? Well, don't get too over the top on this one as the photo below shows - the blue screen of death is still a standard Microsoft feature!

This says it all about #Windows8. twitter.com/digitim/status…
— Tim Grimes (@digitim) November 2, 2012

Opens up massive opportunities no doubt and will rival the adoption of iPads and other tablets. But they'll have to sort out those annoying crashes sometime soon...

JOBS FOR...?

These are not my words.. they appeared today in response to a 2 hour long blog/open discussion hosted by The Guardian newspaper here in the UK about local economic development and inward investment. Effectively a talking shop on how best to approach increasing employment and getting foreign owned companies to invest in places outside of London.

As I say, they are not my words (in fact they belong to someone named 'simsum' on the Guardian site)..  but I must say I agree with almost every last one of them.  And I am qualified to say that given that half of my work involves exposure to people working for local authorities and charged with 'creating' employment!

There is a very good reason that councils are referred to as "simple shoppers" by the private sector because they have absolutely no idea how to create wealth, jobs, opportunities or manage resources effectively. That is the reason they work for the council because they had/have no ambition or ability other than to either obtain a job with a council to stay the course for life or perhaps stay long enouhg in that council to eventually get bumped up the greasy pole by route of drinking with the boss, saying all the right "buzz words" at the right time or the charity work scam!

Numerous examples exist of how housing associations/councils have jumped into bed with PFI contracts without the ability to adequately seek an alternative for the taxpayers. Why? because they simply don't have the skills or ability to do so that is why they work for councils. 

I have two relatives who are jokingly referred to as a deputy and chief exec (why these titles exist in local authorities apart from the fact it allows the scam of paying themselves obscene salaries and then claim it is on a par with the private sector i will never know). 

What exactly is localism? Does anyone know? Does anyone know how it is applied to the long suffering taxpayers? 
How will localism really work when the threat of central government oversight is being waived about by eric pickles like a kebab about to be stuffed in his fat face!

If local councils were able to create jobs, growth, real savings for taxpayers do you think they would be working at the council?

What we have are councils up and down the country who are unable to create anything other than council job hoping managers and fat redundancies at the taxpayers expense. It don't matter to them because it is not their money unlike the private sector entrepreneur who has a personal stake in his creation.

Do all the European jollies and paid for corporate days out really help the local economy and if so how?

The best thing councils and councillors can do is to shuffle paper around and stay out of the way of real wealth creators. 

These words come hot on the heels of news this week that a fraudulent company has taken a bunch of headteachers for idiots to the tune of around £300m in a technology and equipment leasing scheme - the headteachers claimed that they were told they could have loads of IT resources and didn't have to pay much for them as an anonymous donor had stumped up most of the money. When they signed the leases (for the full amounts per month - doh!!!) the company then disappeared and they were left with big bills. Some even ended up paying 4 to 5 times what the equipment was worth.

What happened to the teachers? Sacked? No, not really - they have retired on their pensions. Only happens in the public sector! Here's the link

I rest my case.

PHISH AGAIN..

Those that know me (how many times have I used that phrase on my blog?) know that I am a pretty experienced web user/publisher/professional. It's part of what I do each day sat here behind my desk.

I have a good friend who is the same, perhaps even more so given he owns and runs a prominent website in Hungary.

So, this morning I was a little surprised to receive an email from facebook saying that my friend wants to be your friend on Facebook. Surprised me because he already is on my facebook list - given that he was the first person on there many years ago! - and surprised because I use my iPolko email address on facebook and not my work address (because that's just sensible).

So, I forwarded the email to my friend and he confirmed he hadn't sent a request to my work email - why would he?

I then went back to the original email. Took a better look at it and suspected a phishing / identity theft scam disguised as a legitimate Facebook friend request type attack. It was expertly done though, given that the friend's name and facebook profile were part of the email and that they had connected my work email with my facebook friend - even more strange as Polko Polonsky and my work name are very different!! There are very few people who know both and know they are the same person.

Here's the email. If you get one similar be real careful and don't click the link to go to facebook.

Always better to type the URL/web address directly into a browser (it's not exactly long is it?) and go to facebook yourself without the assistance of a 'convenient' email link saying that No matter how far away you are from friends and family, Facebook can help you stay connected.

If you use the link you won't be very connected for very long as the phisher takes over your account and spams everyone on your friends list!

So, you have been warned - be careful. Always think twice before using a shortcut link sent to you in an email. Even the most wary and experienced of us can sometimes (almost) be fooled.

More wise words (and some foolish ones) soon...

P

ANNOYING WEB ADS...

I posted a few years ago about how to block most ads from messing up the pages you were browsing..

Time moves on, the advertisers find new ways of annoying us. So, it's time to take a refreshed look at the best sites and methods to get the most out of the web without being tempted to spend on your credit card...

Let's make one thing clear - there are two aspects to protecting yourself from adverts. Turning off the ads is one thing, but some like to be sold everything connected to where they've been. So, the second aspect is managing cookies. Ads very rarely appear when you are browsing these days without a knowledge of what else you have been doing on the web. This information they get from cookies stored silently on your browser hardware (phone, pad or PC etc).

In what follows I will take you through blocking ads. But turning off various cookies is a more powerful way of browsing and for that you need to review my earlier post - which I have summarised in the dark box at the bottom..

1. AD BLOCKING

GOOGLE CHROME
Ad blocking is free if you know where to go and what browser settings to look for.. I mainly use Google Chrome for every day web browsing. It has a third party extension called AdBlock Plus - when loaded you can make it as complicated as you want with subscriptions to 'ad blocking lists' that others have put together.. The link for that library of useful content is here. If you go to the Spanner / Tools / Extensions menu in Chrome you will see AdBlock Plus there once installed. Click Options and you can set which AdBlock list to use - the default will be English ads and some basic setup blocks. If you browse Italian, French or other language sites regularly that's where to use the drop down list and add the regional filter for your language.

AdBlock is also available to install for Firefox and Safari (for you Mac and iPhone users).

The best feature of AdBlock is that if it ever misses an Ad and it creeps onto your browser, you can right-click on the ad and select "AdBlock Plus: Block image"; this will allow you to create a custom filter blocking that ad and ads similar to it.

FIREFOX
Firefox is the easiest browser to block ads in because of its massive support for add-ons. The only setting up you need to do with AdBlock Plus is select the adblocking filter you want to use - these are pre-defined lists according to where the browser is being used - or technically where it's being pointed at. English ad blocking won't block Chinese ads for example.

You need to select one of the filters to use. Unless you know what you are doing, just leave it at "EasyList" and click "Add subscription". You do this by following the menu list: "Tools" -> "AdBlock Plus Preferences..." -> "Filters" -> "Add Filter Subscription..."  It should install with EasyList and English subscriptions. Leave it like that unless you really do browse a lot of other language sites.

Right clicking is available in Firefox as already covered in the Chrome section above.

Some Firefox users install a plug in called NoScript. This is not really the correct way to block ads - it blocks all java and scripts running in the browser window. That's not good as a lot of websites still use javascript code to make your experience better. I use it on some sites I've done to generate fading images for example. If you switch it off, you'll only ever see the first one!  Lot's of sites use it to generate games boards, user feedback and things to play with whilst on site. You will only be getting a half of what they thought you might like by blocking their scripts..

INTERNET EXPLORER
If you have Internet Explorer then blocking ads is a bit more complicated as Explorer has no AdBlock Plus-like plugin.Plug-ins do exist for IE but the free ones are nowhere near as good as in other browser technologies.


Internet Explorer's InPrivate Browsing - the mode that makes sure no browsing data is stored on your computer - has a feature that allows users to filter content. This filter can be used to block ads. A user on DSLReports forum created an XML file out of AdBlock Plus's list of ads to block and this XML file can be imported into InPrivate Browsing's content filter.

This filter uses AdBlock Plus's filter list so you will be blocking the same ads as people using other browsers with AdBlock Plusd installed. Neither do you have to be in InPrivate Browsing mode for the ads to be blocked. Ads will be blocked like normal as long as you have "InPrivate Filtering" enabled ("Safety" -> "InPrivate Filtering").

The biggest hassle is that you must turn on "InPrivate Filtering" every time you run Internet Explorer. For me, it's just too much hassle and you are likely to forget. If you insist on this route there is a registry hack to enable InPrivate every time IE is run - google it and you'll find, it's much too complicated for this blog and the sapace I have here..

OPERA

Opera is a bit like IE. Blocking ads has up to now been quite complicated.

Before Opera 11 the best way to block ads was to use the browser's built in content blocker (similar to IE's InPrivate Filter) and an add-on to block Flash ads specifically. However, ever since Opera introduced extensions (Opera 11 onwards) third party developers have started making add-ons available. Opera Adblock is one of the most popular.

Opera Adblock makes it extremely easy to block ads. Similar to Adblock Plus for Firefox and Adblock for Chrome, Opera Adblock uses ad filter lists to block the ads. In fact, it uses Fanboy and EasyList which are the same as AdBlock Plus. The best part is it is extremely easy to setup and use - just install Opera Adblock from Opera's extensions website and you are automatically covered.

That's about it. Hope you find this guide useful.

2. COOKIE CUTTING

The DART cookie used by Google is the widest used cookie you'll probably want to switch off - so check the link in the dark section below (towards the bottom).
____
Here's the original anti advertising links if you can't find them:

Ads on the web are served to your browser based on a number of settings and your location, history of other websites you've visited etc.  Basically, tailoring ads to your preference.

Or that's how the advertisers like to market their tracking tactics, always watching where you've been and which sites you use.

Now I'm not paranoid and I'm happy to share my recent web history with everyone (on most days at least!) but the use of tracking cookies to tailor ads - or make more money for the advertisers - sits a little uneasy with me.

There is a light at the end of the ad tunnel.  You can frustrate their efforts!

Most (reputable) ad serving businesses allow you to opt out of the tracking cookie and therefore of targeted ads that are much more likely to lure you in.  No matter how web experienced you are, and how many browser add-ons you install ads will still get through and you will click on one at some point. It's just the way of the web.

So, here's where the main ad-tracking opt out sites are for (mainly my) info..

Doubleclick's DART cookie opt out page

   this is the one owned by Google and therefore the most widely used on the web.

   Go there, have a read, click the bottom link if you want to cookie-block.

24/7 Real Media Opt Out page

   A large network, useful to opt out of this one.

Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out page

   One of the larger opt out networks, a network of networks really.

   From here you can opt out of many many different ad networks.

   After Google, the most useful opt out page on the web.

Problem with all this activity though is that you need to re-do all the opting out if you clear your browser's cookie/history files.. bah!

If you use Firefox (and if you don't see an earlier post!) or IE (why?) then life is easier to block the DART cookie at least - go to the Google Permanent Opt Out download.

Unfortunately, Google Chrome users cannot use this opt-out for obvious reasons that Google don't want you ruining their commercial value.

POLKO'S BOWL...

...is full of Oreo's this week (and has been for a few days).  Amazingly not depleted by mini-me being here for the last few days. Think he forgot about them!

Nothing much more than that on this blog update..

..check my recent posts for something slightly more interesting.

P

E CLASS, JUST CLASS..

Most of my regular readers (who am I trying to kid?!) know I am a proper child of the 80's. I firmly believe that almost everything I enjoyed when I was a kid was better than any generation that has gone through the spots and emotional swings of teenagehood since.

Sure we didn't have access to the money and technology that kids do now, parents were always worried about unemployment or not paying the bills (I grew up in the north remember, not the more cushioned south). We were in the last dying days of traditional manufacturing, dirty clothes after a 10 hour shift and none of the Health & Safety nonsense that goes on today. We did odd jobs down the seafront for a £1 an hour if we were lucky. We had smelly kids at school that got taunted for it (but not that often to be honest?), teachers didn't do too much about it, you were posh if you had a racing bike with 14 gears and we never saw parents outside the school gate picking kids up in cars.. even the paedophiles probably did what they did on foot?

It was all somehow less complicated and I liked it.

So it is with cars. Beyond the really old 1960s British sports cars, I am generally stuck in the 80s when it comes to admiration for nice cars. A lot of kids in my town - and yours I am sure - grew up with posters of either a red Ferrari or a white Lamborghini on their walls alongside the Deborah Harry posters. Tacky? Maybe. Of the time. Most definitely.

Even in the 90s this image remained. KRS-One a not particularly materialistic rapper chanted 'Mercedes Benz and Range Rover outta here...' on one of his first solo tracks in the early 90s. Proper Range Rover's mind, not the stupid space age re-designed ones or RR Sports that chav dads aspire to these days.

And so it is to Mercedes Benz.

The E Class in particular.  Probably, no definitely!, the most memorable car from my childhood. In the middle of the 80s, at the time I was getting ready to leave school and start those first few poorly paid jobs, it was the symbol I aspired to in the car world (though I did have the white Lambo poster until I was about 13 or 14). Either a Mercedes 320CE (the W124 shape/chassis if you are a techie Mercedes nerd) - this was a pillarless, two-door coupe in the massive saloon chassis (see pics below) - or the cream of the crop the SEC. This was again a pillarless coupe but shared the S Class chassis (W126 for the nerds).

This car could be drvien today and still turn heads yet it is 25 years old!

Note the lack of pillars between the front and rear window sections. 

Coming from a relatively small place I knew nothing of the 500E at the time. A now very rare beast created in cooperation with and assembled by Porsche. It used the 5 litre 32-valve V8 Mercedes engine that also pops up in the 500SL sports roadster of the late 80s/90s. Here's a very well known one in deep metallic burgundy (Lady Diana's 500SL).

Nowadays I am fortunate to drive an E Class as a non-winter car (try driving a rear wheel drive car of this size in slippery, icy road conditions where I live if you dare) - extremely fortunate in fact because it's my wife's car and she's as mad about Mercedes as me!

A new Mercedes Benz E Class has just been released (August 2012), the E300 BlueTEC Hybrid. A hybrid engined big Mercedes. Now our 5 yr old one regularly gives us 44 mpg but imagine what he hybrid will do, and how quiet it will be in town traffic when not using that combustion engine? The engine is a 2.2 litre diesel (strange as the 300s have all been around 3 litre engines since their introduction) but there's also a 20kW electric motor onboard powered by a 19kW Li-Ion battery. To put that in perspective, the battery in a modern smartphone is about 5 watts of power against the car's 19,000 watts, or 3,800 times more.

So, how efficient is it then? This is where it gets crazy. The car can accelerate from 0 - 62 mph in 7.5 seconds, reaches 150 mph on the right road or track but still gives close to 66 mpg.

Typical that I am not fortunate enough at the moment to be able to go to the dealer and swap ours for a new one. Not that I would. Buying new cars really is for mugs. Best advice in the world is to wait a few years and let someone else take that initial hit on depreciation. A golden rule for almost all - the saving is clearly huge with a big and expensive car but is still large (and in % terms can be larger) when you consider the heap (word used very intentionally) of cheap Korean and Malaysian cars that are flooding our streets these days.

So, see you in a few years when I'll post a review of the all new 2012 Mercedes E Class.

Hopefully..

Or get yourself to autotrader and pick up a 300CE 24-valve for around £4,500 to £6,000 (25 yrs old and still worth a fair amount.. show me the cheap Far Eastern one that will be at that age?). The SEC's regularly sell for £7,500 upwards on a mid-80s plate. Bargain!

YOU SAY YOGURT, WE SAY YOGHURT...

Not many people worry about the milk that their yoghurts (yogurts if you're American!?) are made from. But a few have issues with dairy products, and some even soya that is the usual substitute.

Now there's a second alternative. And I must say it sounds delicious..

Co Yo?? I hear you say.. Heaven in a mouthful??

Co Yo is a new Coconut Milk Yoghurt. The only non-dairy, non-soya yoghurt available in Europe at present. They are made with freshly squeezed cream from the white flesh of the coconut, thus provide big health benefits.  With no added sugar, preservatives or additives, Co Yo contains 150 calories per 100g and 0g sugar.

Co Yo has already won  a Natural & Organic Food Awards 2012 category for ‘Best Special New Diet Product’.

It is taking on fast, though a little expensive at the moment.

The official launch website is here. Current stockist map here.  I've searched but can't find it in any online shop selling to the UK at the moment.

I can't wait for the soon to be launched Coconut Milk Ice Cream either!

Enjoy.

£5m TO SPEND?

Here's an extract from a very focused interview I just read online.


Question: If you had £5m to invest in commercial property tomorrow, what would you buy?


One response was particularly impressive I thought.


Len Rosso, Head of Logistics & Industrial at Colliers:
I would start by purchasing a site for development as a small multi-let industrial scheme. These are currently in demand and difficult to acquire as a standing investment. For this, I would pay around £1 million with a build cost of circa £600,000 as once fully let it would be worth substantially more hopefully.

I would also acquire five smaller industrial warehouse units at around £300,000 each, ideally brand new or modern, which had been sold over the last 12 months at a discount due to the lack of liquidity within market. When the market improves the capital value of these would go up, but in the meantime a prospective yield of circa seven per cent still looks very attractive.

I would also purchase a mixed-use development site and then apply for commercial usage planning with retail on the ground floor and, ideally, residential above. This would be in a good M25 town or alternatively within one of the London boroughs. I believe this could be purchased for in the region of £1.5 million and once you have achieved planning the value could be raised significantly.

Finally, I would look for small retail/offices within town centres which would have potential residential use above ground floor, spending up to £1 million on these or potentially one unit.


I like the last option - especially the number of pubs that are coming onto the market for conversion to offices below, residential above. So there you have it, after the Lottery this week click back here and take Len's advice. Or not, as you wish.


Full article is here


Good luck.
  

WAKEY, WAKEY...

A great infographic find in this morning's browsing. First snooze button on a clock in the 50's? 

The History of Alarm Clocks – An infographic by the team at OnlineClock.net

3D EVERYTHING??

We are now used to having an enormous amount of data in our pockets.  The iPhone has boosted this enormously, and Android users are adopting GPS based mapping, location tweeting and facebook check-in's too.

I happen to think mapping related software is brilliant. I would, I use a high end Geographic Information System (GIS) almost every day in my work to visualise data and inspect options for putting together reports for my clients. It is often much better than Excel and pie or bar charts. Though those that know me, know I do like pork pies... oh, that sort of pie.. focus Polko..

Otuside of the world of work and expensive computers and software, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world a handheld GPS or phone can find stuff. Quickly. (except in one of Britain's many wi-fi/data blackspots of course!).

We are all used to Google maps on our notebooks, tablet PCs and desktops too. I also use these at work extensively, and have started to explore Bing maps as these seem to be a little better visually. Give it a go. See what you think. The 3D rendering on Google Maps and Google Earth are generally good – although sometimes the light makes for a poor photo and lack of clarity in tight city and town centre fly overs.

However, a new development by Apple is on its way - the new maps on the iPhone and pads etc will be available in 3D format. See the video here for an example, a video fly-through of Oslo. The 3D mapping has been created from fusing satellite data, photographs and - it being Apple - some head-working crazy algorithms for height and depth information.



So, for those that are looking for the next big thing to show off to friends, or those who can't quite read a flat map (and there are too many of you out there!!!), you don't have long to wait before Apple gives you another helping hand.  I'm sure Google will follow very quickly.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE..

Everybody is aware of personal security when they approach a cash machine these days, perhaps less so when loading the car with groceries at the supermarket or returning to your vehicle in a car park after hours.

But most people use common sense and are prompted by the environment (dark corners, late night car parks) and remain safe. In the cosy surroundings of your home or bed though, things are a little different.

Once you logon to facebook and chat away with friends you loosen up a little. Everybody does. It's natural. So the helpful Veracode blog came up with this brilliant web security infographic..



Infographic by Veracode Application Security

IF AT FIRST..

Having had a fair few disappointments in business over the past few months (pain of the recession kicking in?) I thought I'd share a post I just read on the Virgin site.
A Blog posting about how to keep going in the face of adversity, keep batting away and as the post reminded me - the words of one great ice hockey player (Wayne Gretzky) - "You always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take."

Here's the link - Virgin Blog on Picking Yourself Up

Those who know me know that I am usually a confident person and full of the joys of spring and business. I relish a challenge.  Strange though, recently I've found myself searching for inspiration and feeling as if I need to radically change direction. It must be my age or the lack of real hunger to get out there and get the contracts in.. Whatever, I like the blog's phrase, "put on your big boy/girl pants and try again!"

A few other phrases stood out in today's reading;
Failure is only temporary
View "blips in your time-line as character-strengthening hiccups" (bit of a mouthful but too true!
Tomorrow really is another day - literally and metaphorically

So, with all this in mind I just emailed out to a few clients that have chosen others and not me recently. There are always new avenues to explore, even with the few that have said no in the past.

Mind you, if they come back and say no again then I'll have to take a different approach? Off to research light machine guns and Improvised Explosive Devices. Perhaps I'll become the next Al Capone of the consultancy world...

tongue firmly in cheek.. til next time..

INTELLIGENT MONITORING NETWORK..

Like everyone else my google mail account receives Spam from time to time and I forget
about it (Google filters do a good enough job of it all being dumped into the Spam folder)
until it's time to do a bit of cleaning of the mail account.


Today I was looking for a holiday booking and thought it might have 'gone to Spam' by
mistake so checked the folder. No booking confirmation (next job is to phone the company!)
but I noticed a brilliant Subject Title on a spam mail.


It said (and in everything that follows I'll cut and paste in large red font,
leaving in all the sp. errors and mistakes as it makes for great reading);


FBI CONTACT THE PAYING BANK NOW REGARDING YOUR FUND


From the FBI no less! Cool. Polko is a friend of the FBI.


The email went on to explain how;
We the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI Honolulu) United States Of America have discovered through our intelligent monitoring network that you have a transaction n going on as either inheritance payment,Lottery or contract payment in a tone of Millions of United States Dollars which have been approved but have not been settled.


Even better - millions of dollars!


Then they suggested;
we have been having so many complains from people who have been scammed around the world hence, after concluding in a meeting with members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we came to a conclusion that every payment will be made through the SKYE BANK OF NIGERIA (SKYB).


The Skye Bank no less. And in Nigeria. How convenient for me. The keen reader of this blog will know how Polko always does his international banking with Nigerian companies?!


All I have to do apparently is give them my name and address, all my details,
my age, sex and occupation and - of course - my passport number...


Then they are going to sort out the mess about the millions of dollars and;
your funds will be loaded in TWO BATCHES into an ATM card,and sent to you, from this card you can withdraw a maximum of us$10,000 per day from any ATM machine worldwide, BUT from the financial houses there is no limit.


I can't wait for that golden card to drop through the letterbox.
Then I can start hitting my local cash machine for US$10K a day...


Wait a minute, the email seems to come from E-@hotmail.com
Surely hotmail is not the FBI's main email address domain? I never knew that?!


Must be part of their 'Intelligent Monitoring Network'?


ho hum.. on with the day job..