Recently I've got back into using my PDA, mainly because I found my spare charger meaning I could keep it charged by the bed (I'd packed it in a box when we moved and never unpacked it!). Anyway, so once I reset the date on it I set about looking at the software already on it and some new software for it.

First stop was the OS. I'm currently on Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.1 is out, however it doesn't look like there's any upgrade for my PDA (Dell Axim X51). Okay, that wasn't a major issue. I then looked at the next two important things, an RSS reader and a decent browser. I used to have an RSS reader on there but when I switched to Google Reader I just used that online, however now I have all of my feeds at Newsgator which allows you to read feeds online and offline and syncs the two (best of both worlds). In the last year I've been very lazy with feeds and not kept up to date with reading them, so I pruned my feeds in my account down to those I considered worthwhile of keeping and added a few new jQuery ones.

Newsgator comes with its own software for the PC, however after a quick look I found it also has software for the Windows Mobile OS. This is quite similar to their mobile online version however it does the synchronising which is great as it means I can download the feeds, sit on a train or take them away with me, read them and then just sync it when I can get online again and I don't see the same post twice.

Newsgator requires the .NET compact framework, so I had to download this from Microsoft.

Next job was a decent browser. The Internet Explorer on the PDA is a bit basic and I longed for tabbed browsing. Firefox used to have a mobile browser called Minimo, but this is no longer maintained, and instead have progressed to Fennec, but that's for Windows Mobile 6+, which is no good. Then Martin sent me a link on twitter for Opera Mobile. I have this on my mobile, however that doesn't have tabs, but it is quite nice so I figured it was worth a go. I used to have Opera installed however it was charged for back then so I removed it soon after, but now it's freely available which is handy. After a quick install I opened it up and discovered that it does have tabs and it's a really nice browser on the PDA too. It's got a nice screen and makes full use of the screen. My only gripe is that to scroll down you have to slide your stylus up the page (as if you're dragging the bottom of the screen up), as the scroll bars don't display. It's a bit confusing when you're used to sliding the scroll bar down!

Opera Mobile also comes with Opera Widgets, one of which is a Twitter app, although I'm not sure if it's as good as Dabr.

A couple of other pieces of software that I've tried out and recommend are SoftX FTP Client which is a simple but useful FTP client to access sites, and then a Pocket Text Editor to edit the files. Useful if you need to make a quick change or fix whilst away from the PC.

Now all I need to do is work out how I can make the PDA connect online via my mobile when I'm out and about!

There's this new hosting around called Cloud Hosting (well it's new to me!). It's a different type of hosting than normal server hosting in that the site files are on a server cluster, so you don't get slowed down by a maxed out processor or someone else's poorly coded site (something we've probably all experienced on a shared host!).

Another nice point is the ability to run Windows and Linux scripts side by side, which is something I needed back in January for a site that needed Windows to auto update the database nightly into MSSQL (a supplied program from the database provider) but PHP to allow me to write the code, as I've long since forgotten ASP!

Finally, the additional bandwidth costs on this type of hosting are a lot less than standard hosting, around 50% of the cost. A friend who runs a popular entertainment site recently had a shock when a trailer they were hosting became a bit of an internet sensation sending visitor numbers soaring. The only problem is their 24 hours in the spotlight racked up bandwidth bills of almost £700 on their shared hosting account, and that bill was reduced by the hosting company in good faith. If they'd been on cloud hosting then that bill would have been around just half that.

As I mentioned Cloud Hosting is quite new to me, however a good friend of mine has started selling it through his hosting company who I recommend for all types of hosting. The packages are sold on a monthly contract and you get an inclusive bandwidth and space in that price, then any extra you need is charged for at the end of the month, a bit like our pay monthly mobile phone contracts.

So if you've got a site that can go up and down in bandwidth, or have large bandwidth bills, or you need to be able to run PHP and ASP together, then take a look at Cloud Hosting.

My Mum's laptop has been slowing down on her recently and she's clearly getting fed up with it. Admittedly it was the bottom of the range and bought 2.5 years ago. It's running XP Home with 256MB RAM so I'm not surprised. Anyway, I finally went and checked on the Crucial website to see how much it would cost to perhaps buy a 1GB RAM stick for her. The laptop can run 2GB max but I figured, get 1GB for now and another later on. I put in the details of her laptop and it came back with the exact type of RAM I needed and 2GB for £28. It's a no brainer really, £28 for 2GB of RAM? It was only 18 months ago I paid about £65 for 1GB for my old laptop (which then died the following week much to my annoyance! It wasn't the RAM by the way ). So I put the 2GB into my basket. Whilst I was there I checked on the new desktop we purchased last month to run as our server. I got a very good deal on a Dell Optiplex at just over £300. It's currently got 2GB of RAM in it but can take another 2GB. After a quick look I found 2*1GB sticks for £28 for that computer. Another bargain! So another add to basket.

Crucial is a fantastic site. The main site is for the US but in the top right you can switch to the UK site. They do free shipping for 3-5 days after purchase, which is fine by me (although I ordered this yesterday and it arrived in the post today!). And if you're not 100% certain on your equipment you can go to the site using your laptop/desktop and just use the system scanner. It will tell you what you already have and what RAM is suitable for you. It also does graphic cards and sells a few other peripherals but RAM is what it started with and its main focus. It's a fantastic site, so easy to use and you won't leave there with the wrong kind of memory for your machine.

My only other experience of buying RAM wasn't so great. I had an old Packard Bell that had about 64MB of RAM so I called up Maplins, a local electronics shop (they're a chain shop, not a one man band). I told them exactly what I had and was sold 256MB RAM for the laptop. I went over to pick it up, got home, pulled the cover off the laptop and took a stick out the box. Hmm the stick was twice the size of the slot! They'd given me desktop RAM not laptop RAM. So another half hour round trip, and this time I took my laptop with me so that they could fit it in the shop. I wasn't impressed!

Anyway, if you've got a spare slot or not running to your full capacity (or you don't know what the full capacity of your machine is) then go over to Crucial, run the system scanner and see what it comes back with. The memory is so cheap now it's worth maxing out your machine.

* No I don't work for Crucial, there's no even affiliate links in this post. I was just very impressed with the prices we got yesterday, and the speed and efficiency of them.

I downloaded the Portable Firefox 3 from PortableApps the other day, to run on my external harddrive and see how the new version was going without overwriting my current installation. Before running it I copied my profile over from my current installed Firefox to get my bookmarks, extensions, theme and details copied over. Unfortunately my passwords didn't seem to copy over, but well it is only a test version.

First impressions are great. It's much quicker at rendering pages. I love when you log in to a site it doesn't pop up asking if you want to save the password but instead a bar along the top of the page appears asking instead, leaving the page to continue loading. This allows you to check and see if the page logs in (ie. the user details are correct) before clicking Remember (you may be able to do this on Firefox 2, I've not really tried it though!). I've often saved a username and password several times before I get it right! Another great little feature is that on the page info window you can view all the passwords stored for that particular site/domain. This will come in very handy after the amount of times I've scrolled through my saved passwords, searching for the correct username/password combination for a particular page or site.

At present very few of my extensions work, StumbleUpon, Stylish, Server Spy and that's about all. Even my theme doesn't work with it, but the default theme isn't so bad. They've tidied up the icons along the top a little which looks quite cool. I've also found one client site that has a couple of items in the wrong place, so not sure about their CSS support with Firefox 3, but I'll leave Dave to worry about that when it's officially released (plus it may just be a bug).

The great thing about this at present is that things that stopped working correctly on my installed version such as target _blank pages opening in the same tab as the page I was on, so every external link in Google Reader had to be Ctrl+Clicked, plus my spell checker, are now working again. Probably some extension issue, but it's nice to have a few defaults back, even if it'll just be for a short time until I manage to break them again

There is also a new folder on the bookmarks toolbar, called Smart Bookmarks, which seems to offer a frequently visited list of sites, a list of recently bookmarked sites, and also a recently tagged list. Not sure about the latter and how that works just yet. I've also noticed that I can't seem to manage my bookmarks (unless I'm being totally blonde and missing where to click!).

Finally, they've also improved the drop down on the address bar. It lists both the page title and URL, and as you type in your address it not only lists the recently visited addresses that match that, but also any from your bookmarks too (don't ask why I would type in an address if it's in my bookmarks, I just do!).

So all in all, looking good, and can't wait for the release of Firefox 3

Today has been mad with email spam. I've had around 250-300 spam mails slip past Spam Assassin. Thankfully I run Mailwasher Pro on my computer so this picks up and colours all of my obvious spam in a very bright red and I can delete it off the server before downloading the one or two real emails.

Doesn't seem I'm the only one noticing the spam today. Jason has also posted about it today, how his wife says it's just the right size!

Usually I would set up various filters to help block obvious words within the subject or body of the emails, however I'm an unfortunate position in that one of my major clients sells (genuine) swiss watches and another runs Pharmacy recruitment! I guess I can't really justify blocking 'watches', 'rolex' or 'pharmacy' from my incoming emails.

What frustrates me is that all this spam gets past the spam blockers, yet I tend to find my own emails get blocked on route to the recipient. Whether this is due to the mention of Web Development, or another obvious reason, who knows.

I think I'll spend the weekend building a filter list blocking every russian character I can find