Tip-offs to journalists could shortly be coming via text messaging if a new service takes off. In the past, anonymous letters, faxes and more recently e-mails have often been used by people seeking to draw attention to stories, but now a way of sending anonymous text messages from mobile phone to mobile phone is being offered. Communications company FTXT.com has launched its ANONYMOUS service, which charges users 50p to register and then 50p per message sent. For those who don’t want to spend 50p a message and have access to the web, the best deal around for texting is 02 (www.o2.co.uk). The site allows people to send up to 600 text messages a month for free.
USA Today (www.usatoday.com) is to increase the security of its website following an attack by a hacker in which fake stories were posted. According to USA Today, the stories – which included one about Israel being under missile attack – resulted in the site being shut down for several hours last week. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the hack.
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If you are getting fed up with trying to remember passwords for different web sites and other online services, you are in the majority. According to Abbey National, the number of PINs and passwords the average person in the UK has to remember is a staggering 13.
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The latest version of Apple Quicktime media player is now out. Having previewed it for just over a month, the final version of Quicktime 6.0 is available for downloading. The new version features enhanced playback of audio and video and certainly keeps Apple in the public eye against competing offerings from Microsoft and Real. What format do you use? Let me know.
If you are seeking ways to distribute your content, a useful website is Freesticky (www.freesticky.com). As well as being a resource for getting free content, the site features valuable guides for learning how to syndicate yourself. And when looking for a source for content that you might need on your site, Freesticky has comprehensive listings of those offering content from daily jokes to news. Meanwhile, if you are looking for images and have a low to nil budget, two useful sites are istockphoto.com and freeimages.co.uk. It costs about 15p to use an image from the istockphoto.com collection, while freeimages.co.uk is totally free other than giving the site a mention where the image is used. While neither site is good for breaking news or celebrity stories, they do offer a useful resource for generic images.
Leslie Bunder
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