A Belgian consumer watchdog reckons Nokia’s claims that exploding batteries in their phones — more than 20 cases this year, according to Nokia — are non-original replacements is not necessarily true. Test-Aankoop, The Register says, claims that some Nokia batteries are also unprotected against short-circuiting.
Not the catchiest name, but Practisearch seems to do a lot of what the Google Deskbar does: Select the text you want to search, press a hotkey, and a Google web page will open already with the search results for that text. It also does other stuff. It costs $20.
CNN reports that more than a million households deleted all the digital music files they had saved on their PCs in August, a sign that the record industry’s anti-piracy tactics are hitting home. It quoted research company NPD Group as crediting the ongoing anti-piracy campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and said publicity about the move led more consumers to delete musical files. In August, 1.4 million households deleted all music files, whereas prior to August, deletions were at much lower levels, according to Port Washington. It sounds good in theory, but I have my qualms. Smartalec Internet Security Suite 2004 combines a firewall, and anti-worm block, and a spam blocker, all for $20. But when I click on the main link to buy it from their online website, Live Wire Media, I’m diverted to a website inviting me to get paid for doing surveys. Is this a mix-up, an elaborate scam, or is the company that makes Smartalec also on the other side of the spam business? I like to use software which isn’t from the big boys, but nowadays it pays to check the provenance of even the most kosher-sounding programs.
If you’re not a big user of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s browser — and therefore no fan of Google’s Toolbar — you may be interested in their new Deskbar.