Take a look at this cool personal foot powered energy device called the Weza.

Its battery at full charge is capable of jump starting a car. It can also be used to power other electrical devices.

There is an interesting article on the BBC web site on how Internet bank Egg is writing to 7% of their credit card customers to inform them that they are withdrawing their credit cards. Egg believes these customers pose an unacceptably "high risk". However the interactivity of the BBC's web site appears to have revealed the truth on the matter, when customers left comments behind on the BBC's web site.

It appears Egg are ditching customers who pay their debts off in full each month, basically customers Egg isn't making any money off in interest charges. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense credit card companies don't like people who pay any debts off their card each month. These customers don't use their credit card as a credit card they are using it more as a debit card but with the safety a credit card gives you when purchasing goods. If this is the case I will be expecting a letter from Egg pretty soon telling me that they will be withdrawing my card.

What I find interesting is there are people credit card companies are targeting (their ideal customer) who ring up debt and don't pay it off, or only pays off small amounts each month. However there is also a smaller group of more frugally minded people who use credit cards to their advantage and quite legally, who are not profitable to credit card companies. These are people who will:

• Put all of their work expenses on 0% interest free credit cards and when they claim the money back from their work, place it in a high interest savings account. They then pay off the card completely at the end of the 0% interest free period and keep onto the interest they have owned.
• Use credit cards purely to earn air miles and pay off the balance in full each month.
• Use credit cards to earn Nectar points and pay off the balance in full each month.
• Jump from card to card as the 0% interest free period runs out. These people are better known as "rate tarts". Some are incredibly well disciplined in how they switch from card to card and actually make a bit of interest out of the credit they owe in the process.

Its starting to make me wonder if these happy days for the credit savvy consumer are coming to an end as the banks start to feel the crunch?  

Its amazing how cheap laptops have suddenly become, you can now pickup an ASUS laptop from eBuyer for £189.96!

How cheap is that! The laptop comes with Linux and software for reading emails and working with office documents, it also boots in 15 seconds!

I'm pretty sure it won't be long until we are seeing laptops for £50 or £60.

Okay the title is a bit cheesy and I apologise for that, but the EzVision is sooo cool! I had seen one of these for sale ages ago and then when my wife left a Christmas catalogue from I want One of Those with the convenient little tabs you could use to mark what you liked (so Santa might buy it for you) on the coffee table. I made sure that this gadget was at the top of my wish list!

On Christmas day the first thing this little gadget was plugged into was my iPod video. I thought it would have plugged into the socket I used for syncing my iPod with my PC but it actually goes into the same socket as the headphones. The EzVision comes with its own headphones connected to the eyewear. The first thing I was expecting when I put these on was to feel as though I was right in front of a large 52inch TV screen or as if I was actually in the movie I was watching. Well its not quite like that, when the box it comes in says a 52inch screen its actually feels more like sitting near the back in a cinema and watching a large screen. At times you almost expect people to be getting up or arriving late to take their cinema seats.

The other thing I like about the EzVision is it just looks so cool, several times I've been tempted to rush outside with them on and say "Quick! What year is it?!"

Not just for your iPod

Its important to note that the EzVision is not just for your iPod it also comes with a connector that will allow it to connect to any device with an RGB or composite video output. What this means is you can connect it to an Xbox, Playstation and Wii console. Yes you heard that right you can connect this to a Wii console. "But doesn't the Wii remote need to see the TV screen?" I hear you say. No actually, if you are playing games such as Wii Tennis it works just fine and I found it was even more fun playing it this way than it was on the TV screen! Just remember than when you are trying to select menu options on the screen before a game you need to be facing the Wii sensor that is usually located on your TV. Other devices this little gadget will connect to is your Sky box if you have a scart to RGB converter, these usually come with a PS2 or you can pick them up for a couple of quid from Maplin. You can can also connect it to your PC if it has a video output socket!

Looks like Microsoft are teaming up with BT to provide BT Vision content on the Xbox!

Now it wasn't to long ago that I mentioned how perfectly suited the Xbox 360 was to such a service when I started using it to view DRM content downloaded (via my PC) from on demand services such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD and Sky Anytime. I couldn't quite figure out why Microsoft hadn't signed up a dedicated content provider or several for that matter?

What is taking place makes perfect sense there are obviously more XBox 360's in circulation than there are BT Vision box's which according to the BBC only have 100,000 customers. The only problem I can see is that BT Visions content doesn't seem all that inspiring, either that or they are just not showing all the content they really have on their web site. The other thing is that Sky seems to have most of the interesting content as far as I am concerned and no one seems to have an on demand versions of killer shows such as Hero's, Battle Star Galactica, Prison Break etc.

 Okay I haven't posted many articles lately and I have a good excuse - it was Christmas!

I thought because I work so hard (most of the time) I was entitled to a break. This usually involves lots of Xbox and Wii games followed by my favourite Christmas tipple Youngs Christmas Pudding Ale.

Its become a bit of a tradition for me getting one or two of these each Christmas. Its one of the ales I truly enjoy and only get to try once a year.  It comes complete with its own pint glass of which I now have 5. Even my wife loves it!

Sadly the browser that many of us used in the early days Netscape Navigator will cease development because not enough people are using it.  

Its a pretty sad state of affairs. I remember the earlier days when I used to use Netscape 3, instead of Internet Explorer which was the most unstable browser on the planet at the time. I then progressed onto Netscape 4. But when IE 4 came out I started to move away from Netscape which was fast becoming a bulkier browser and more sites at the time were starting to support IE.

Funny enough I found Internet Explorer started to get rather bulky and by version 7, I firmly moved over to Firefox. For some reason Internet Explorer seemed to be following the same path as Netscape getting bulkier and adding more and more features that really weren't needed. I think the thing I like about Firefox at the end of the day is that they keep it simple, they know its supposed to be a browser and that's it.

I'm not sure how different Tomb Raider is on the various consoles out there but on the Xbox 360 its got pretty decent graphics and game play. I was originally going to buy the Wii version but was advised against it by the guy at the game shop, however just to satisfy my curiosity I may go and buy the Wii version for a comparison.

Now just as a little help to anyone else who has been struggling in some parts of the game I thought I might just post a few guides every now and again to help people through. At the moment I am still on the Peru - City of Vilcamba trying to get through some more of those Inca doors.

Peru - City of Vilcamba

 Part of this level had me for a while and that was the part with the Inca door that appeared to have two levers that were just out of reach. Other than that this part was pretty simple.

Go into the right had entrance next to the door and follow this all the way through. You'll encounter some bats here so have your guns ready. You'll then get to a room filled with water and some broken ledges. Its pretty simple to workout what you have to do here.

Simply jump onto the ledges and use them to get around the room to the entrance higher up off the floor. Remember Lara can do some pretty impossible jumps and it doesn't matter too much if you miss your hand holds the water will break your fall.  You will encounter a walk way with a divide you will need to jump. Jump the divide and you will see one of the wooden bars above the gate. Now this is the part that through me. You need to jump and catch the wooden bars(or levers) that are jutting out, this will not work unless you have a good run up before jumping. After  catching the bar it will swing around. You will need to do the same thing again but on the entrance on the left hand side which is almost an exact duplicate to the one on the left. After this the gates should open.

Microsoft are again being accused of being anti-competitive by bundling Internet Explorer as part of the Windows operating system by Opera software makers of the Opera web browser.

Opera wants the European Commission to force Microsoft to bundle competitor browsers with its operating system to give people the choice of what browser they would prefer to use. They want Microsoft to be forced to separate the operating system and the browser from each other removing the dependency between them.

To be honest I believe Opera who are the current browser under dogs at the moment with only 2% of the market are feeling a bit left out. Popular browsers such as Firefox are already gaining a large percentage of the browser market and they have done this without reverting to legal tactics like those instigated by Opera. Firefox has used a more grass roots approach to its success, the sudden drop in quality of Internet Explorer has even seen me (a very staunch Microsoft type person) revert to Firefox as my browser of choice.