And the winners are...

At last week's Adobe Contribute software prize draw, one of the lucky winners were Pembroke 21C. Below, Elizabeth (left) and Linda (right) on behalf of Pembroke 21C accept their prize from Phil (centre), their local Circuit Rider.

How to deal with spam

More and more frequently I get asked by clients what they can do about the amount of spam they are receiving. To know the answer, we need to understand a little about what spam is, why we get it and things we can do to minimise or irradicate it.

What is Spam?

Spam is any email sent to you from someone you don't know or email that you didn't specifically request. If you signed up to a mailing list or ticked a box on a company's website granting them permission to send you email about occasional offers which you simply no longer wish to receive, that is not spam - you requested it.

Read the full article here

Adobe Contribute Software Prize Draw

Today, Anne Barrett-Evans the Chief Officer at PAVS on behalf of the Circuit Riders project kindly drew out the names of the winning entries in the Adobe Contribute software prize draw competition.

The 10 lucky winners are:

• Aberystwyth Printmakers
• Aberystwyth Innerwheel
• Aberystwyth Visually Impaired
• Pembroke 21C
• Monkton Voice
• 1574 (Pembroke Borough) Squadron ATC
• Pembrokeshire Counselling
• CATCHUP (Llanelli)
• Jobforce Wales (Llanelli)
• Carmarthenshire LIFE Community Magazine

Congratulations to the winning groups. Your local Circuit Rider will be in touch soon to arrange delivery of your prize.

Buzzword and it's silky charms

I've spent some time recently looking at the gamut of online office applications, from the comprehensive and somewhat overwhelming (Zoho), through to the single purpose app that just does what it says on the tin.

The latter category seems to be the hardest to pull off. Most online office tools seem to be focused on competing with Microsoft Office, which seems a little futile given the huge advantage and existing market share that Microsoft has.

To compound that, Open Office pretty much fills the niche of comprehensive and free MS Office alternative, and it's desktop based, so there's none of that sitting around waiting for things to load malarkey.

So whilst tools such as Thinkfree, Zoho and Google Docs
are great, the internet just isn't really fast enough for most mortals to get much work done using a whole online office suite.

Adobe Buzzword on the other hand is just a word processor. It has all your basic formatting options, you can share documents with anyone by sending an email to them from Buzzword, and let them be a co-author, a reviewer or a reader. Authors and reviewers can add comments to the text in cute little side boxes, and it all just works. In contrast to every other online office application I've used, aside from the initial loading time which is comparable to opening up MS Word, Buzzword is pretty fast and definitely doesn't slow down your workflow.

Oh yes, the looks. It looks, and I must try not to gush here, it looks gorgeous. Minimalist and shiny, it makes all other office applications look like the deranged doodlings of a child with an oversized crayon. The interface is slinky, intuitive (to me anyway) and has just enough features for your average user, but not too many to confuse the novice.

With all that taken care of (did I mention it looks great?) you can focus on the benefits of using an online word processor, which are - you can access your documents from any computer connected to the internet. No need to carry usb drives around, save to your hard drive, burn to disc or any of that time consuming stuff. If you wish, Buzzword does import Word documents including the new Word 2007 format. It can also export to your computer in either format, as well as rich text or plain text.

So, if you're considering your options when it comes to word processing software, and don't already have a copy of Office, it may be worth looking into some of the online alternatives and see if they would suit your lifestyle. Look out for a more comprehensive review of online applications of the Wales Circuit Rider website soon.

M D Armitage