Google (not going to bother linking, you know where to find it), has been in the news recently, well at least in the geeky news that I tend to read. In fact Google is rarely out of the tech news headlines, but specifically, recently they have been in the news due to the preview of Chrome OS, the beta of Wave, and rather controversially their plans to digitise and publish every book online.

Recently, Wired UK magazine had a great article about Google, it made me want to learn a bit more about the company. So at some point I do want to, and plan to read ‘The Google Story’ by David Vise.

I stumbled upon this video earlier, it sums up the various stages Google has gone through over the years, and charts their various products. It’s only a couple of minutes long and worth a watch, even if only for the nice graphics of the video.

I love social media and networking, and I think it is definitely here to stay, some however think it is a fad. What about you?

Some of the facts in this video are pretty cool.

That time has come once again, when I decide I don’t like my photography site. So I am redeveloping the website, again. While I redesign it, I wanted to put up a landing/under construction page, but not one of those cheesy ones. You know the ones I mean, with the road construction gear, flashing lights and a big yellow sign. No, I decided to go for something a little less tacky, even if it is only short term.

So head on over to CMC Photos, have a look, then come back here and let me know your thoughts.

Yesterday the BBC reported that around about 3 million homes in the UK have less that 2Mbps broadband speed, and it isn’t just rural communities that are missing out. You can read the full article here.

Ironically just as I was listening to that report on the news at lunch time, I noticed that my internet had slowed down significantly. Kind of ironic I guess. Now I do live in a rural area in south Down, so I don’t expect to get really high speeds, like the 10Mbps I get with Virgin Media in Belfast. I do however figure that my internet access should, be at least usable. So as I was saying, I have been used to my internet here being slow, but I had never done a speedtest on it. Now according to BT, the line to the house should be able to carry up to 4Mbps, and I live 2 miles from the exchange, not too far.

So I did a speed test. Now my 10M connection in Belfast has a download speed of about 8 or 9, so I was shocked at the results for my connection down here.

A download speed of 130Kbps. Appalling is the word I would use to describe it. It means that if more than one person is trying to use the internet at once, it is nigh on impossible to access anything. Twitter times out, email times out, and I can kiss BBC iPlayer goodbye.

I phoned BT, and they went through the usual guff, clear your cache, restart computers, restart Home Hub, blah blah blah. Did all they asked with no luck, so they said they would check the line. BT phoned back and told me that there was a fault on the line and it would be dealt with. However about 2 hours later they phoned back to tell me to unscrew the main phone socket and plug the Hub directly into the test socket behind. I did as they asked but there was no test socket. So… they are sending an engineer out tomorrow to look at the problem.

Here’s hoping they get it sorted….

***UPDATE***

BT engineer just left, after some tinkering with wires and a phone call to thead office…

VAST improvement, thank you…