Websites judged in milliseconds

First impressions are often the truest, but how fast is the first judgement? Barely a twentieth of a second when it comes to viewing a webpage, according to the BBC. A team of Canadian researchers has found that such snapshot decisions - involving rating websites in terms of their aesthetic appeal - can incorporate significant amounts of design information. The rankings gleaned from the blink of an eye, just 50 milliseconds, were found to match those from more leisurely examinations of the same sites over a much longer period of time. ...more

PlusNet cuts broadband upgrade cost

PlusNet has cut the price of upgrading an ADSL broadband connnection to ?14.99. Users with a 512Kbps connection can upgrade to either the ?23. ...more

Google makes Google Pack Brit-ish

Google has kindly made its Google Pack officially available for the UK, saving us having to download the .com flavour. Containing such freeware as Adobe Reader, Picasa, Google Screensaver and Firefox, it's a 'a free collection of essential software'. ...more

Opera pushes into PowerPoint territory putting presentations on the Web

Opera, the alternative alternative browser, is moving further into PowerPoint territory with the launch of free new software for Web-based presentations. The company's existing presentation software, Opera Show, was first introduced in 2000 but this required hands-on HTML programming. The more basic Opera Show Generator, by contrast, is aimed at more inexperienced users, quickly turning out presentations. ...more

Sun swishes back into PC territory

Sun unveils today its first sub-$1000 UNIX workstation - the Sun Blade 100. The new workstation is targeted directly against the higher-end PCs that have eaten into the market share of the traditional workstation. PC builders, such as Dell and Compaq, have long been releasing ever more powerful Wintel machines to compete for the computation-intensive work of engineers and designers, the typical workstation users. ...more