Apple recently added their Safari web browser to the Apple Software Update and pre-checked the box by default. This effectively means that a lot of Windows users will now, possibly without knowing it, have installed Safari.
I'm not going to discuss the ethics of this practice here, instead read John's Blog - CEO of Mozilla.

But what it means for the humble web designer or developer is that we should really be installing Safari on our Windows machines and adding it to the list of browsers we test our sites against as the number of users is bound to increase as a consequence.

Competition in the browser business is good and over the last few years Firefox has begun to gain ground on Microsoft's Internet Explorer domination. It has also forced the browsers to become more standards compliant, thereby helping web developers and designers design cross-browser, cross-platform web pages.

According to Apple, Safari is a standards compliant browser built on the open source WebKit project, so hopefully if your pages have been built to W3C standards they will require minimal checking, but it is always wise to test. Apple have a range of web developer resources for the Safari browser, including the Safari CSS support, Safari developer FAQ, and a general web development best practices guide.

Since my last entry concerning the mobile video format 3GP, I've come across a much more useful and professional program that converts 3GP to AVI.

It even converts 3GP to animated GIF although the picture quality is obviously greatly reduced and you lose sound in this format.

3GSauron

3GSauron is freeware and is a stand-alone EXE, so you don't have to install it. The only downside with the software I can see is that you can only convert files one-at-a-time.

I've added a link to the authors site below where you can download it.

http://www.3gsauron.com/

PCPlus the UK computing magazine for computing enthusiasts recently launched a mini version of it's popular magazine specially designed for Java-enabled mobile phones.

Having received my 3rd edition of the mini magazine, I felt obliged to shout about it. Since I subscribed three issues ago the service has been improved to include SMS download prompts and much faster loading times (Tested on a Nokia 6600).

It's perfect for those train or tube commuters who wish to while away a few minutes of their journey.

The magazine contains news stories from the industry and reviews of the latest PC hardware.

The service is free and you can view demos and subscribe to the magazine from the link below.

http://www.threeoclock.com

As Windows Media Player goes I think it's a pretty good media player, but the new release (Media Player 10) includes a killer feature that now makes it much more useful as a CD ripper.

Previously Windows Media Player could only rip tracks to it's own WMA format, however with the new player you have the option of ripping to unencoded MP3 format. A boon for all you Windows iPod fans.

Not only does it rip to MP3 but it doesn't restrict the rip speed like Musicmatch's Jukebox.

This is a great feature that is long overdue, but I'm sure Microsoft's competitors don't think the same, including the company that used to make the MP3 ripping plugin for the old version of Windows Media Player.

The other feature that's been added to the new Windows Media Player 10 is search functionality, a very useful tool when you have an extensive media collection, and considering it's not a google search it's pretty fast.

Windows Media Home

The title of this article speaks for itself, however preparing a Windows based computer for a life connected to the internet is not as plain sailing as it used to be.

With the amount of viruses, worms and trojan horses on the web increasing almost exponentially it's vital to make sure your computer is protected the minute you connect it to the internet.

Reports earlier this year suggest that an unpatched unprotected PC can be infected in less than 30 minutes!

Security Recommendations

The first thing I do when I've finished installing a fresh installation of Windows is to install a personal firewall. I recommend Zonealarm, it's very good and a free version is available from the link below.

Do this before connecting to the internet, if at all possible try to gather a collection of useful tools on a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM should contain a personal firewall, anti-virus software and the most recent Windows Service Pack for your version of Windows.

If you don't have the Windows Service Pack on CD then you'll need to download it. Make sure your personal firewall is up and running, then go to WindowsUpdate.com. Follow the instructions and download all the 'Critical updates'.

Once your updates have downloaded and installed restart your machine and install your anti-virus solution. I recommend the excellent AVG from www.grisoft.com, which also has a free edition.

You may also find that using an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer such as FireFox (www.getfirefox.com) or Opera (opera.com) will significantly reduce your risk of web borne viruses and spyware.

Zonealarm personal firewall