Hey everyone,

As many of you know, I am running a website aimed at proliferating computer-related education in developing and developed nations around the globe. The second version of the site is almost finished and will power the online learning resources and added features that such a resource needs. However, as these new features require greater strength in a web server (most notably database server), there is a need to up-scale and move to a more powerful hosting solution.

Is there anybody out there that is willing to either cut us a good deal or donate web hosting to us? If so, please get in touch by seeing my contact details on my profile. This is the basics of what we require:

- Support for ASP (including ADO and MSXML).
- No limit on webspace (we will be needing large amounts of space to hold all the content and sourcecode needed to power the resource).
- High/no monthly limit on bandwidth.
- A strong database solution (either MSSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase or Interbase).

Many people will benefit from your generosity and you will not be forgotten.

Many regards,

Luke Cholerton

Hey,

There has been much talk in recent months regarding the state of email, or more precisely unsolicited messages that get through to our private, business and work inboxes. The three major webmail providers (Hotmail, AOL & Yahoo) have collaborated to form a joint-effort on beating the tide of Spam and keeping it down. However, there are things which can be done on an individual basis to stop the unwanted emails from getting to our inboxes:

- Many people (myself) included believe that Microsoft has in the past and still does sell off email addresses of subscribers to hotmail.com and msn.com webmail services. Seeing as it costs a massive amount of money to keep these services running, and not a large percentage of the users are paying subscribers, this does seem feasible.

- Posting your email address anywhere on the internet is inviting the spammers in. Many spam companies use methods where a computer program trawls through the internet (similar to a web spider) and picks out any email addresses electronically. Therefore if your email address is anywhere on the net, it is highly recommended that you take it down.

- Subscribing for regular email from companies can be dangerous. Although many companies provide a genuine, solicited regular email service, many will sell your address to other companies. Even if you choose to unsubscribe, your address may have already been passed around and placed in other databases. The initial company will not request your un-subscription from subsequent databases.

- Services exist that do not sell your email address and provide good spam-blocking facilities. I would personally recommend YahooMail as a webmail provider. I have had my current address for several months and I have not received one piece of email which I did not want. There is also great software to add-on to applications such as Microsoft Outlook which does detect the patterns of spam and blocks it. Also, the next generation of Microsoft Outlook is set to have built-in spam filtering.

I hope these tips are beneficial and of use.

Today, while walking through the city I have made my home, Porto (Portugal), I saw a level of poverty which I have never seen in any city in any western country I have visited. If I looked on one side of the street I was on, I could be in any respectable district of town, if I turned around and looked the other way - I could be in one of the worst shanty towns in South America.

So what does this mean in the big picture? Well, for one Portugal is part of the biggest or second biggest economies in the world; the European Union. Secondly, throwing 20 billion euros ($22,967,998,464US) at a country in the hope that the majority of that money be used to benefit the populous as a whole, is the wrong way to go.

Portugal is a great place, and Porto is one of my favourite cities. However I cannot say that I agree with the Portuguese government's decision to use the above mentioned EU money to create airports which the country does not need, additional roads and traffic systems which will remain half-empty just like some existing ones, and a big campaign to host next years International Football tournament. Rather, this country should invest the majority of this money in a more knowledgable population; one which in the future will be able to bring prosperity to the country as a whole.

Please, do not get me wrong - I am not narrowing Portugal out. Instead, I have found the perfect example to present what I wanted to say.

With a lot of understandable excitement surrounding the youth movement, I have been inspired for the first time in a while to think about what comes next. I mean where do we go and what do we do when the day comes where we can no longer call ourselves youth? Will we create a 'middle-age movement'?

Personally, I think that many of us will be involved in high-level politics and high-level corporate activity. I personally wouldn't mind eiter.

Tell me what you all think.

Regards,

Luke

Hey guys,

I need to get some programmers on board my project (CodeSpark), anyone with ASP, PHP or JSP experience please get in touch, there are opportunities for you l.cholerton@codespark.net . A working knowledge of databases would be beneficial but not necessary.

Thanks a lot,

LUKE