During a report on the recovery of a woman recently struck by lightning, the tape begins to skip as she talks. Couldn’t be more perfect if you planned it.

It really is wrong to laugh, but sometimes you just can’t help it… Hilarious!

Play more? Visit travelpod…

Fresh Diagnose is a utility designed to analyse and benchmark your computer system.

It can analyse and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard / motherboard information, and much more…

Key features:

• System Information: Scanning your system and give a complete report about your computer’s hardware and software, for examples: mainboard information, video system information, PCI / AGP buses information, peripheral (keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.) information, Windows registry settings, and network information.
• System Benchmarks: Testing your system performance, such as CPU, hard disk, CD/DVD ROM, and compare it with other systems.

The utility is provided FREE of charge by freshdevices.com but does require registration in order to use the benchmark tests. They also offer several more useful small utilities which appears very useful indeed.

Just tried the “new” Photo Gallery in the Windows Live series that comes bundled with Vista. I’m still running XP as I don’t see the need to slow down my PC while paying money to do so… Anyway, the photo application is actually very promising. It’s not a photo editing tool, but a nice previewer that can organize your photos in many different ways (also supports tagging) and enables even the novice to share his/hers photos in the most convenient way.

Note! During the installation process you will be asked if you would like to add a bunch of other crap from MS that you didn’t ask for. Simply uncheck all boxes not named “Photo Gallery” and you will get only what you asked for…

Visit the Windows Live Photo Gallery page for more information and to start download.

Akismet recently announced they now have a new competitor in the war against SPAM. Defensio have a similar approach, with a centralized API that gives a thumbs up or down for a comment, and some added information indicating “spamminess.”

In short (and in their own words) Defensio gives you:

• Stellar Accuracy

  You’ll deal with less spam on your blog, period.

• Easier Spam Management

  Managing your spambox will become dead simple.

• Personalized Filtering

  Your own habits will help make the filter better over time.

• Transparency Through Statistics

  Meaningful stats so that you’ll really know what’s going on.

I will be trying their service on my DEV blog, in the meanwhile - Best of luck, guys!