With the ever-increasing use of HTML email, senders can embed images into their emails. These can then be loaded from a remote web server or attached directly to email. When images are remote, they can be tagged by the sender to know who, exactly, opened the message and when. Giving them, in effect, a return-receipt capability that can't be disabled by the recipient. Here's a safe demonstration of this concept. Luckily, I loathe HTML email so I have it disabled anyway.
Rectal Foreign Bodies - need I say more?
French telecommunications comparison site Comparatel has just launched the Belgian version of their service. You can use it to compare telephony operator costs or internet service providers. Let's hope the opening of the local loop to competition in 2001 pushes prices, other than for international calls, right down.
On the road but desperately need to fix something on your web server? Wapsh allows you to remotely login into a unix shell via your wap-enabled mobile phone. Of course, it's probably slow as hell. And that's if you can get that far without wap crashing your phone. (Can you tell I don't think much of wap?)
DJ Hell seems pretty pissed off at the summer anthem status of Zombie Nation's Kernkraft 400:
"The whole thing was a big accident. We never thought it would be picked up by the trance scene - for us, it was just a great '80s-influenced electro-record."
The third web browser, Opera, has just reached version 5.0 and it's now available in a free version for windows. The free version is a sponsored one, like the recent versions of Eudora, which means you get a small banner somewhere in the interface in exchange for no registration fee. I hope this gives Opera more market share, they really deserve it. It's a great and compliant browser with loads of features unavailable in the other two bloated monsters. And the alpha version for Macintosh is coming along quite nicely too!
