The Turbo Fridge Defroster
Here's some home-grown Kiwi craziness from a guy who really knows how to save time when defrosting his fridge.

The Fish Bonker
No, we're not talking about another fish of the opposite gender -- this is a fisherman's friend.

When Good Tennants Go Bad
If you're the house-proud type then you probably don't want to look at these pictures -- they're bad, really bad.

We Are Half a Billion Strong
The online population has now hit half a billion people world-wide.

That's one awfully big crowd and, as I'm sure the spamware vendors will soon start telling us, a huge market for products and services sold online.

The surprising thing is however, that this half-billion figure is just eight percent of the world's total population. This must surely highlight the massive digital divide that has opened up between the haves and have-nots.

One statistic I'd like to see published is just what percentage of the world's total wealth is owned or controlled by that eight percent of the population. I'm sure this figure would send marketing executives all over the world into spasms of delight.

Readers Say (updated hourly) Nothing Yet Have Your Say

Do You Need Two ISPs?
Most of us know (some learning from bitter experience) that when it comes to computers and data, it is not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

It's a fact of life that software has bugs and hardware breaks -- so we usually protect ourselves by backing up our data onto CD or tape and making sure that the computers we buy can be readily repaired.

But what about our Internet connectivity? How many of those who rely on the Net for important business communications have gone to the trouble of organising backup connectivity I wonder?

Of course this week has provided a couple of timely reminders that no matter how big an ISP is, they can still suffer irritating outages. Telecom's DSL outages seemed to affect XTRA customers more than others and IHUG's little "oops" yesterday knocked thousands offline for several hours.

I suspect quite a few business now realise that it's well worthwhile to organise a backup account with another ISP "just in case." If a low-cost metered account is used then it might cost just a few cents a day to have alternative connectivity ready to go if your main supplier has an outage.

Don't forget that the phone service itself can (and from time to time) does fail -- so organising a data-connection for that flash new cellphone can be another great way of saving your bacon in an emergency.

Remember, the key to effective disaster recovery is to organise the backup systems *before* you need them.

Have your say.

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