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Last Updated: Friday, 17 June, 2005, 15:43 GMT 16:43 UK
Webscape
Kate Russell
By Kate Russell
BBC Click Online Webscape-r

Kate Russell gives us her latest selection of the best sites on the World Wide Web.

Baby Centre

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I thought I would open today with a suggestion from one of our own production team, who recently celebrated the birth of his first child.

A special moment in anyone's life, it can also be quite daunting. So it is comforting to know there are places on the web where you can get help.

BabyCentre is packed full of great advice, from the serious issues of health and family finance, to the lighter side of parenting, such as naming your child.

There are topics covering every stage of having a child, from conception through to toddler age. The articles are well written and practical, offering insights into what to expect as your child grows older.

I love the layout of this website. Navigation is made simple by the resident navigation panel on the left, and if you register you can build your own personal page - a guide based on your own stage in the process, which offers advice and tips relevant to you.

Use the Baby Calendar feature for a concise outline of what you should be noticing as your baby develops, both inside and outside the womb.

And the community section is a brilliant idea for establishing a vital support network.

Sometimes it is just nice to know you are not alone, and by entering the date of your baby's birth in the Birth Club finder, you will be connected directly to others at the same stage as you.

There is even a Dads-only area, which can be found in the menus under the community section.


Auditmysoftware.com

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In the normal course of using a computer, many additional applications and processes can get installed over time. This can slow your processor down dramatically, and often it can be hard to see what you need to be running, and what is just eating up valuable resources.

The download, provided by Audit My Software provides an answer to this quandary by listing all running processes and how they are connected to your operating system.

Download the application first by clicking the link on the opening page. It is a very quick download, and once installed you can access it by launching the System Tracker from the link placed on your desktop.

Now you will see all of the applications and processes you are running listed in the main window. If a process is using up memory it will be shown in the CPU usage column under the Processes tab. If it is unnecessary just highlight it from the list and click the X to kill it.

There are also tabs to see what is going on in your registry, and what programs are scheduled to run at start up. Keeping control of your computer's activity has never been so easy.


Ascii Art Dictionary

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Now a suggestion sent in by Ramprasad from Bangalore, which celebrates one of the geekiest forms of art I think I have ever seen.

At The Ascii Art Dictionary you will find everything you ever wanted to know about creating pictures out of keyboard characters.

Ascii stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and is basically a techie term for a character-set based on the Roman alphabet as used in modern English.

But that is not important. What is, is that many talented people have spent many a long hour figuring out ways to make these characters take on a new life.

Click Collection, and then choose a word from the list that follows to have a look at the kinds of things you can create. Everything from an Aardvark to a Zulu!

If you fancy having a go yourself there are certain things you need to be aware of, such as the use of non-proportionate fonts, and where certain characters appear on the page. There are some great tutorial links in the resources section.


Google Montage

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Finally, an art form of a different kind - although to be fair, it is still pretty geeky. It is another one of those Googlehack sites that suggests new ways to have fun with this popular search engine.

GoogleMontage is my recommendation for a little bit of random fun. Random because this particular Googlehack makes a montage of random pictures taken from the search strings you provide.

Just put in a name, enter a number of search strings on different lines, and then wait for your artwork to be delivered.

If there is a queue you will be able to see your request's progress at the top left of the opening page.

Once your submission is ready, it will be displayed in the panel below, and you can click to look at it in either full, or 50% resolution.

An interesting little curiosity this one. Do be warned though, there is no filtering on the images returned, although the website's creator does state he'll remove any montages containing inappropriate images when he sees them.


Click Online is broadcast on BBC News 24: Saturday at 2030, Sunday at 0430 and 1630, and on Monday at 0030. A short version is also shown on BBC Two: Saturday at 0645 and BBC One: Sunday at 0730 . Also BBC World.




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