HIV or Unemployment?

This is a million miles away from what I would normally talk about on my blog, however after Dimitris Papageorgiou (@lopbox on identi.ca) brought this to my attention I felt unable not to talk about it.

The story in question has received hardly any media coverage in Greece and next to none in other countries, yet this will probably shock the majority of readers. The news story that was brought to my attention is available here and here (translated from Greek).

It concerns me that people feel that they need to infect themselves with the HIV virus rather than risk going into an uncertain future. Granted I do not live in Greece and am not aware of exactly the situations of these people however I can't help but feel that this is an incredibly short sighted (and worrying) view of life. Are these user aware of the dangers HIV exposes them to or are they simply feeling betrayed by their country and honestly feel that there is no alternative.

The articles state that the users are infecting themselves, at huge risk to their health and (I assume) life expectancy for the sake of 700 Euros a month. To put that into some other figures: 964 US dollars, 617 British pounds. Whilst I can't speak for the US, I know that working full time on minimum wage will net more than £617 in Britain at the end of each month.

The recession and the financial climate in Greece has been in the media focus for some time now, however these stories are not filtering through to the rest of the world. I can't help but think that a citizen of a member country of the European Union should have more security in the present time and hope for the future.

Whilst nobody wants to be the focus of charity work, even this would be better than infecting oneself with HIV in order to get by. However here in Britain, I have not seen any charity work for nearby countries like Greece. We (the British public) seem very keen on shipping goods and aid to far off countries. I am not condemning this, it is a worthwhile venture. However we also need to focus on those who are struggling in our own country and our neighbours in Europe. I am also aware that we are in difficult financial times, however, is our situation really that bad that we would infect ourselves with a deadly virus for an extra £617/$964/€700 a month?

For more information on the HIV virus visit the relevant NHS pages

This is a million miles away from what I would normally talk about on my blog, however after Dimitris Papageorgiou (@lopbox on identi.ca) brought this to my attention I felt unable not to talk about it.

The story in question has received hardly any media coverage in Greece and next to none in other countries, yet this will probably shock the majority of readers. The news story that was brought to my attention is available here and here (translated from Greek).

It concerns me that people feel that they need to infect themselves with the HIV virus rather than risk going into an uncertain future. Granted I do not live in Greece and am not aware of exactly the situations of these people however I can't help but feel that this is an incredibly short sighted (and worrying) view of life. Are these user aware of the dangers HIV exposes them to or are they simply feeling betrayed by their country and honestly feel that there is no alternative.

The articles state that the users are infecting themselves, at huge risk to their health and (I assume) life expectancy for the sake of 700 Euros a month. To put that into some other figures: 964 US dollars, 617 British pounds. Whilst I can't speak for the US, I know that working full time on minimum wage will net more than £617 in Britain at the end of each month.

The recession and the financial climate in Greece has been in the media focus for some time now, however these stories are not filtering through to the rest of the world. I can't help but think that a citizen of a member country of the European Union should have more security in the present time and hope for the future.

Whilst nobody wants to be the focus of charity work, even this would be better than infecting oneself with HIV in order to get by. However here in Britain, I have not seen any charity work for nearby countries like Greece. We (the British public) seem very keen on shipping goods and aid to far off countries. I am not condemning this, it is a worthwhile venture. However we also need to focus on those who are struggling in our own country and our neighbours in Europe. I am also aware that we are in difficult financial times, however, is our situation really that bad that we would infect ourselves with a deadly virus for an extra £617/$964/€700 a month?

For more information on the HIV virus visit the relevant NHS pages

HIV or Unemployment?

Problems with Nvidia on update to kernel 3.1.0-1

I recently came into some problems which gave me a great deal of hassle whilst updating to Linux Kernel 3.1.0-1, I have a 64 Bit System and source my software from the Debian Testing repositories.

On what should have been a fairly routine update, I restarted my system later in the day to find myself dropped into a command line with a message stating that X server had failed. Running the command nvidia-xconfig would produce a new xorg.conf file, but I would still receive the same error message about the nvidia module being unknown.

I spent a few hours trawling the forums on the net and they all pointed to a rebuild of dkms, however putting in the command sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-kernel-dkms, left me with the error message

Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.

This left me scratching my head and very frustrated as I knew that the kernel source was installed. Finally I started looking at the installed components and noticed that the kernel headers did not match the kernel source number, my kernel source was 3.1.0-1, whilst the installed headers were linux-headers-3.0.0-1-common and linux-headers-3.0.0-1-amd64, a miss match.

1. I simply ran the command: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.1.0-1-common linux-headers-3.1.0-1-amd64
2. then I followed it with: sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-kernel-dkms

and viola, upon restart I was back in my graphical environment. This, of course, will not solve every bodies problems, however this is the simple fix that worked for me, but it took me a long time to find it. Hopefully this will spare some people a few hours of pain and frustration.

I recently came into some problems which gave me a great deal of hassle whilst updating to Linux Kernel 3.1.0-1, I have a 64 Bit System and source my software from the Debian Testing repositories.

On what should have been a fairly routine update, I restarted my system later in the day to find myself dropped into a command line with a message stating that X server had failed. Running the command nvidia-xconfig would produce a new xorg.conf file, but I would still receive the same error message about the nvidia module being unknown.

I spent a few hours trawling the forums on the net and they all pointed to a rebuild of dkms, however putting in the command sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-kernel-dkms, left me with the error message

Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.

This left me scratching my head and very frustrated as I knew that the kernel source was installed. Finally I started looking at the installed components and noticed that the kernel headers did not match the kernel source number, my kernel source was 3.1.0-1, whilst the installed headers were linux-headers-3.0.0-1-common and linux-headers-3.0.0-1-amd64, a miss match.

1. I simply ran the command: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.1.0-1-common linux-headers-3.1.0-1-amd64
2. then I followed it with: sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-kernel-dkms

and viola, upon restart I was back in my graphical environment. This, of course, will not solve every bodies problems, however this is the simple fix that worked for me, but it took me a long time to find it. Hopefully this will spare some people a few hours of pain and frustration.

Problems with Nvidia on update to kernel 3.1.0-1

Putting Browsers to the test with Acid3 and Peacekeeper

During episode 5 of TuxJam I reviewed a browser called SRWare Iron. This is a fork of the Chromium browser (an open-source community version of Google Chrome) with a few tweaks under the hood.

I put three different browsers to the test using two online tools: Acid3 and Peacekeeper. The three browsers in question were:

1. SRWare Iron
2. Firefox 9.0a1
3. Seamonkey 2.3.3

From the Acid3 test, all the browsers performed very well:

SRWare Iron


Firefox


Seamonkey


However, it is during the second test using the Peacekeeper resource that SRWare Iron really separated itself from the other two. A brief look at the overall points:

Then we can break these down into more detailed reports of how the browsers final score was achieved.






From these findings on the Peacekeeper website, it appears that SRWare Iron performs doubly well compared to Firefox and Seamonkey. Whilst I did find it was a fast browser, I didn't notice that much difference between the three. However all of these browsers noticeably outperform Internet Explorer which I have to use day to day in my place of work. I do not wish to install it and run it using WINE to perform a fair test.

During episode 5 of TuxJam I reviewed a browser called SRWare Iron. This is a fork of the Chromium browser (an open-source community version of Google Chrome) with a few tweaks under the hood.

I put three different browsers to the test using two online tools: Acid3 and Peacekeeper. The three browsers in question were:

1. SRWare Iron
2. Firefox 9.0a1
3. Seamonkey 2.3.3

From the Acid3 test, all the browsers performed very well:

SRWare Iron


Firefox


Seamonkey


However, it is during the second test using the Peacekeeper resource that SRWare Iron really separated itself from the other two. A brief look at the overall points:

Then we can break these down into more detailed reports of how the browsers final score was achieved.






From these findings on the Peacekeeper website, it appears that SRWare Iron performs doubly well compared to Firefox and Seamonkey. Whilst I did find it was a fast browser, I didn't notice that much difference between the three. However all of these browsers noticeably outperform Internet Explorer which I have to use day to day in my place of work. I do not wish to install it and run it using WINE to perform a fair test.

Putting Browsers to the test with Acid3 and Peacekeeper

Using WeeChat with Freenode (the basics)

I recently tested out WeeChat which is a very fast and lightweight IRC client that is used in the command line.

I must say that I was extremely impressed with the program, but not with the documentation. The quick start wasn't of much help and the user guide was way too heavy and detailed, going into things that were far beyond what I was needing for internet chat.

I'm assuming that the user has already installed the program, if not check the repos or visit http://www.weechat.org for installation details.

Start the program:

weechat-curses

Set your username (dont forget to include the quotation marks"):

/set irc.server.freenode.username "{enter your username here}"

Set your real name (optional):

/set irc.server.freenode.realname "{enter your name here}"

Connect to Freenode:

/connect freenode

However if you would like to connect to Freenode by default every time you start up WeeChat:

/set irc.server.freenode.autoconect on

If you've registered your username (highly recommended so that nobody can pretend to be you) then you will need to prove you own the username by supplying the password:

/msg nickserv identify {your password}

Identify your username automatically every time you log on:

/set irc.server.freenode.command "/msg nickserv identify {your password}"

Join a channel (don't forget the hash # tag):

/join #{channel name}

Automatically join a channel (or channels) every time you log onto freenode:

/set irc.server.freenode.autojoin "#{channel 1},#{channel 2}"

These channels will open up side by side, one does not replace the other. However as this is a command line tool there are no tabs to click on for different chats. The next few commands give some examples of navigation, they all produce the same outcome using slightly different techniques, try these and decide on the ones you are happiest with.

Move to the next channel:

/buffer +1

Move to the previous channel:

/buffer -1

If you remember the channel name:

/buffer #{channel name}

All of the channels you join are assigned a number (the channels start at 3, 1 is the Freenode front page) To jump straight to the channel:

/buffer {channel number}

All of the above /buffer commands all essentially allow the user to navigate through the active chatroom channels, decide which one works best for you.

Should a user send you a private message, you are able to navigate using the above commands, it behaves just like another channel. When a user sends a message, their username will appear at the bottom of the screen, above the text entry box.

Any messages that mention your username during the chat, their username will change to a yellow text with a purple background. This makes it easier to keep track of a conversation in a busy chatroom.

Send a user a private message:

/msg {username} {your message goes here}

A condensed version of this post is available for download in odt format here, this is ideal if you wish to print these off and can also be easily edited.

This isn't even close to all of the commands and tools available to the end user, however it should be enough to allow the user to perform most of the basic required functions for an internet chat on the Freenode network.

If there are any tasks or command that you feel this guide is missing then please leave a comment below.

I recently tested out WeeChat which is a very fast and lightweight IRC client that is used in the command line.

I must say that I was extremely impressed with the program, but not with the documentation. The quick start wasn't of much help and the user guide was way too heavy and detailed, going into things that were far beyond what I was needing for internet chat.

I'm assuming that the user has already installed the program, if not check the repos or visit http://www.weechat.org for installation details.

Start the program:

weechat-curses

Set your username (dont forget to include the quotation marks"):

/set irc.server.freenode.username "{enter your username here}"

Set your real name (optional):

/set irc.server.freenode.realname "{enter your name here}"

Connect to Freenode:

/connect freenode

However if you would like to connect to Freenode by default every time you start up WeeChat:

/set irc.server.freenode.autoconect on

If you've registered your username (highly recommended so that nobody can pretend to be you) then you will need to prove you own the username by supplying the password:

/msg nickserv identify {your password}

Identify your username automatically every time you log on:

/set irc.server.freenode.command "/msg nickserv identify {your password}"

Join a channel (don't forget the hash # tag):

/join #{channel name}

Automatically join a channel (or channels) every time you log onto freenode:

/set irc.server.freenode.autojoin "#{channel 1},#{channel 2}"

These channels will open up side by side, one does not replace the other. However as this is a command line tool there are no tabs to click on for different chats. The next few commands give some examples of navigation, they all produce the same outcome using slightly different techniques, try these and decide on the ones you are happiest with.

Move to the next channel:

/buffer +1

Move to the previous channel:

/buffer -1

If you remember the channel name:

/buffer #{channel name}

All of the channels you join are assigned a number (the channels start at 3, 1 is the Freenode front page) To jump straight to the channel:

/buffer {channel number}

All of the above /buffer commands all essentially allow the user to navigate through the active chatroom channels, decide which one works best for you.

Should a user send you a private message, you are able to navigate using the above commands, it behaves just like another channel. When a user sends a message, their username will appear at the bottom of the screen, above the text entry box.

Any messages that mention your username during the chat, their username will change to a yellow text with a purple background. This makes it easier to keep track of a conversation in a busy chatroom.

Send a user a private message:

/msg {username} {your message goes here}

A condensed version of this post is available for download in odt format here, this is ideal if you wish to print these off and can also be easily edited.

This isn't even close to all of the commands and tools available to the end user, however it should be enough to allow the user to perform most of the basic required functions for an internet chat on the Freenode network.

If there are any tasks or command that you feel this guide is missing then please leave a comment below.

Using WeeChat with Freenode (the basics)

Yibo - Android micro-blogging client

I came across this micro blogging tool purely by accident and thought I’d give it a try. This supports a variety of social networks, however at first appearance identi.ca and status.net do not appear to be an option. But on closer inspection it does allow the user to edit the API so to use Yibo with your identi.ca account simply enter the appropriate username and password and enter identi.ca/api for the API. My original intention was to review this application in an upcoming episode of TuxJam, however I couldn’t find out which license it has been released under so I decided to add it to my blog instead.

The UI is definitely aimed at twitter with the yellow bird and blue theme, however it is actually quite nice. The avatars are clear, if a little on the small side. Your username and avatar are permanently on display at the top of the screen and new posts are made by a (nicely) obvious button in the top right of the screen. The user can set the update frequency, however moving your finger down the screen will perform an instant update.A long press on a dent allows the user to reply, a nice feature of this is that the message your replying to remains on the screen under the message that the user is composing, this ensures that the correct dents are sent to the appropriate user, I’ve personally experienced issues with this before when I dent the wrong person. Other options on a long press include: redent, mark as favourite, view user profile, share to other accounts and copy to clipboard.

At the bottom of the screen, again the icons are obvious, this is a good thing as this has been written for the Japanese market, so personally I would find it impossible to read any documentation on it. The users ‘inbox’ is split into three (only two of which seem relevant to identi.ca): your replies and direct messages. The replies work fine, however there seems to be an issue with direct messages as only the most recent one is shown, even selecting more did not produce any additional direct messages. There is a third option that is entitled comments, however this personally gives me a nil response so I’m assuming that it is a Twitter feature. There is a button to view your profile and dents, a search feature and a few more that I didn’t use, again I think these were more aimed at Twitter users. There is also a well laid out menu page that directs the user to a number of places.

A bug (well I'm assuming this isn't a feature) that I discovered was that the dictionary does not appear to work with this application, whenever you are composing a dent no predicted text or spell checker comes up. I found this a bit of an inconvenience, but as I know a lot of people turn this feature off anyway, then it should not put potential new users off.

Whenever you exit the application, it displays a logo at the top of the screen to inform the user that the Yibo is still running in the background, that’s a handy feature if you want to ensure maximum battery life. Notifications are regular, however, by default, it alerts the user to all the new dents in their timeline, not just your direct mentions. This feature will be quickly switched off by the majority of users.

Overall it’s a nice application with some good features. As far as speed goes it’s quite quick, it doesn't have the lag that some of the Android micro-blogging clients suffer from. It seems very stable, not had any crashes after two weeks of testing. If you can get past the Twitter like colour scheme, then this is a very nice client that is worth checking out.

I came across this micro blogging tool purely by accident and thought I’d give it a try. This supports a variety of social networks, however at first appearance identi.ca and status.net do not appear to be an option. But on closer inspection it does allow the user to edit the API so to use Yibo with your identi.ca account simply enter the appropriate username and password and enter identi.ca/api for the API. My original intention was to review this application in an upcoming episode of TuxJam, however I couldn’t find out which license it has been released under so I decided to add it to my blog instead.

The UI is definitely aimed at twitter with the yellow bird and blue theme, however it is actually quite nice. The avatars are clear, if a little on the small side. Your username and avatar are permanently on display at the top of the screen and new posts are made by a (nicely) obvious button in the top right of the screen. The user can set the update frequency, however moving your finger down the screen will perform an instant update.A long press on a dent allows the user to reply, a nice feature of this is that the message your replying to remains on the screen under the message that the user is composing, this ensures that the correct dents are sent to the appropriate user, I’ve personally experienced issues with this before when I dent the wrong person. Other options on a long press include: redent, mark as favourite, view user profile, share to other accounts and copy to clipboard.

At the bottom of the screen, again the icons are obvious, this is a good thing as this has been written for the Japanese market, so personally I would find it impossible to read any documentation on it. The users ‘inbox’ is split into three (only two of which seem relevant to identi.ca): your replies and direct messages. The replies work fine, however there seems to be an issue with direct messages as only the most recent one is shown, even selecting more did not produce any additional direct messages. There is a third option that is entitled comments, however this personally gives me a nil response so I’m assuming that it is a Twitter feature. There is a button to view your profile and dents, a search feature and a few more that I didn’t use, again I think these were more aimed at Twitter users. There is also a well laid out menu page that directs the user to a number of places.

A bug (well I'm assuming this isn't a feature) that I discovered was that the dictionary does not appear to work with this application, whenever you are composing a dent no predicted text or spell checker comes up. I found this a bit of an inconvenience, but as I know a lot of people turn this feature off anyway, then it should not put potential new users off.

Whenever you exit the application, it displays a logo at the top of the screen to inform the user that the Yibo is still running in the background, that’s a handy feature if you want to ensure maximum battery life. Notifications are regular, however, by default, it alerts the user to all the new dents in their timeline, not just your direct mentions. This feature will be quickly switched off by the majority of users.

Overall it’s a nice application with some good features. As far as speed goes it’s quite quick, it doesn't have the lag that some of the Android micro-blogging clients suffer from. It seems very stable, not had any crashes after two weeks of testing. If you can get past the Twitter like colour scheme, then this is a very nice client that is worth checking out.

Yibo - Android micro-blogging client

Barrage - the life of a defence turret

Are you old enough to remember the days when the Westwood released the game Dune 2 (one of the first real time strategy war games on the market)? Then a few years later the genre went from cult status to instant classic due to the popular Command and Conquer series. We built up our bases and always included several strategically placed defence towers. If you ever wanted to know what life was like as a defence tower in the first Command and Conquer game then Barrage is the game for you.

The graphics are taken directly from the original of the C&C series games, with the vehicles, tanks and soldiers all members of the GDI (Global Defence Initiative) along with a familiar dessert landscape. They move around smoothly and are accompanied by some nice sound effects of guns firing and bombs exploding, however I feel that background music would have been a nice addition.

The sprites move vertically up and down the screen, some of the tanks change their pace slightly, but overall they remain mostly at the same speed. The game is contained within a three minute timeframe: kill as many of the enemy as you can within the allotted time. Any of the enemy units that cross the screen safely will result in points being deducted. The game is controlled using the mouse; simply move about the screen to target; left click shoots rockets; right click reloads and middle click fire grenades (useful on soldiers only).



Although the sprites do not move that quickly, the sheer number of them will have the user requiring quick reflexes and a sharp eye along with a wee bit of anticipation depending on the enemy unit being aimed at.

Overall this is fun, but without the ability to move the game soon becomes repetitive. Also there is no way of increasing your allotted time: 3 minutes and that's it. The main reason for returning to the game is to beat your top score. There are no extra missions (as far as I can see) and given this game is dated 2003-2010 then it's probably unlikely they will be added, however I will update the post if this happens.

There are some good ideas in here and the game is fun for a few minutes, however it soon becomes repetitive and the lack of progression hurts this games longevity.

Are you old enough to remember the days when the Westwood released the game Dune 2 (one of the first real time strategy war games on the market)? Then a few years later the genre went from cult status to instant classic due to the popular Command and Conquer series. We built up our bases and always included several strategically placed defence towers. If you ever wanted to know what life was like as a defence tower in the first Command and Conquer game then Barrage is the game for you.

The graphics are taken directly from the original of the C&C series games, with the vehicles, tanks and soldiers all members of the GDI (Global Defence Initiative) along with a familiar dessert landscape. They move around smoothly and are accompanied by some nice sound effects of guns firing and bombs exploding, however I feel that background music would have been a nice addition.

The sprites move vertically up and down the screen, some of the tanks change their pace slightly, but overall they remain mostly at the same speed. The game is contained within a three minute timeframe: kill as many of the enemy as you can within the allotted time. Any of the enemy units that cross the screen safely will result in points being deducted. The game is controlled using the mouse; simply move about the screen to target; left click shoots rockets; right click reloads and middle click fire grenades (useful on soldiers only).



Although the sprites do not move that quickly, the sheer number of them will have the user requiring quick reflexes and a sharp eye along with a wee bit of anticipation depending on the enemy unit being aimed at.

Overall this is fun, but without the ability to move the game soon becomes repetitive. Also there is no way of increasing your allotted time: 3 minutes and that's it. The main reason for returning to the game is to beat your top score. There are no extra missions (as far as I can see) and given this game is dated 2003-2010 then it's probably unlikely they will be added, however I will update the post if this happens.

There are some good ideas in here and the game is fun for a few minutes, however it soon becomes repetitive and the lack of progression hurts this games longevity.

Barrage - the life of a defence turret

DuckDuckGo Search Engine

In season two of Tuxradar podcast the group challenged themselves to use an alternative search engine to Google for a week. Sadly they all reported back on a terrible week being forced to use Bing, Microsoft's search engine. This got me thinking: have we come to rely on Google so much that we can't even use the internet on a daily basis without it? After a browse around for various search engines I discovered DuckDuckGo.

The front page has been heavily influenced by the classic Google homepage, simply a white background with the name and logo above it. To further enhance this theory that it's influenced by Google's design: the badge is modified regularly to correspond with the relevant date (sounding similar).

One of the first things I noticed was the lack of a search for news, images or videos. Something that we have become accustomed to with the Google search engine. However upon a bit more digging I discovered that DuckDuckGo uses a facility called Bang commands, some of the most popular these can be accessed by clicking on the arrow beside the search box, most need to be entered directly into the search field. The bang commands include:

• Amazon !a
• Google images !gi
• identi.ca !identica
• IMDB !imdb
  
• map !m
• news !n
• Open Clipart !oca
  
• Wikipedia !w
• YouTube !yt

For example to search Amazon for a Drupal 7 book you can enter !a drupal 7 into the search box.

However the bang commands listed above don't even make up the tip of the iceberg, a full list of the bang commands can be found here.

DuckDuckGo also has a policy of not storing information, unlike Google, and using it for advertising. Of course DuckDuckGo does include advertising, most search engines can't survive without it, however it keeps no record of your searches. The adverts are purely based on the text you have entered into the search box. OK, you may be thinking "That's a load of paranoia", fair enough but your search bubble isn't; that is real.

From the time you've started using Google a record is kept of what you look up. So if you frequently search for baking competitions, photography and open source software in the UK whenever you type anything into a Google or Bing search it will focus it's search around you, often not giving you the most relevant search results, but what it wants to, these will also change depending on what part of the world your in. For a more depth look at the search bubble take a look at dontbubble.us

The final feature of DuckDuckGo that I really like is the filtering system, it cuts out a lot of pointless sites that just lead to a download of some pointless file you didn't want. But more importantly, especially to me as a father, it filters out adult content by default. Take a look at the example below of the same search, using default settings on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo:

Google:


Bing:


DuckDuckGo:

Of course you can switch this feature off on DuckDuckGo and I assume turn it on with the other two, but the fact that it is there by default gives me comfort. This makes DuckDuckGo an ideal search engine to be used at work and in schools.

So far I've been using DuckDuckGo for a month. I've been really pleased with the quality of the searches and it has now become my homepage and also my default search on my browsers. I've noticed that some of the Linux distros have started using it as the default search engine. It really does have a mountain to climb in order to convert users using Google and (to a lesser extent) Bing. But this is a worthwhile task in my opinion.

You can test out DuckDuckGo directly from this site: take a look in the top right of the page and you'll find a DuckDuckGo widget, give it a try for yourself.

Don't Google it, Duck it!

In season two of Tuxradar podcast the group challenged themselves to use an alternative search engine to Google for a week. Sadly they all reported back on a terrible week being forced to use Bing, Microsoft's search engine. This got me thinking: have we come to rely on Google so much that we can't even use the internet on a daily basis without it? After a browse around for various search engines I discovered DuckDuckGo.

The front page has been heavily influenced by the classic Google homepage, simply a white background with the name and logo above it. To further enhance this theory that it's influenced by Google's design: the badge is modified regularly to correspond with the relevant date (sounding similar).

One of the first things I noticed was the lack of a search for news, images or videos. Something that we have become accustomed to with the Google search engine. However upon a bit more digging I discovered that DuckDuckGo uses a facility called Bang commands, some of the most popular these can be accessed by clicking on the arrow beside the search box, most need to be entered directly into the search field. The bang commands include:

• Amazon !a
• Google images !gi
• identi.ca !identica
• IMDB !imdb
  
• map !m
• news !n
• Open Clipart !oca
  
• Wikipedia !w
• YouTube !yt

For example to search Amazon for a Drupal 7 book you can enter !a drupal 7 into the search box.

However the bang commands listed above don't even make up the tip of the iceberg, a full list of the bang commands can be found here.

DuckDuckGo also has a policy of not storing information, unlike Google, and using it for advertising. Of course DuckDuckGo does include advertising, most search engines can't survive without it, however it keeps no record of your searches. The adverts are purely based on the text you have entered into the search box. OK, you may be thinking "That's a load of paranoia", fair enough but your search bubble isn't; that is real.

From the time you've started using Google a record is kept of what you look up. So if you frequently search for baking competitions, photography and open source software in the UK whenever you type anything into a Google or Bing search it will focus it's search around you, often not giving you the most relevant search results, but what it wants to, these will also change depending on what part of the world your in. For a more depth look at the search bubble take a look at dontbubble.us

The final feature of DuckDuckGo that I really like is the filtering system, it cuts out a lot of pointless sites that just lead to a download of some pointless file you didn't want. But more importantly, especially to me as a father, it filters out adult content by default. Take a look at the example below of the same search, using default settings on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo:

Google:


Bing:


DuckDuckGo:

Of course you can switch this feature off on DuckDuckGo and I assume turn it on with the other two, but the fact that it is there by default gives me comfort. This makes DuckDuckGo an ideal search engine to be used at work and in schools.

So far I've been using DuckDuckGo for a month. I've been really pleased with the quality of the searches and it has now become my homepage and also my default search on my browsers. I've noticed that some of the Linux distros have started using it as the default search engine. It really does have a mountain to climb in order to convert users using Google and (to a lesser extent) Bing. But this is a worthwhile task in my opinion.

You can test out DuckDuckGo directly from this site: take a look in the top right of the page and you'll find a DuckDuckGo widget, give it a try for yourself.

Don't Google it, Duck it!

DuckDuckGo Search Engine