Wednesday 6th June at 5.03pm

Personalisation

How do you feel about search engines building up a personal profile about you, based on whatever you search for? According to reports, companies like Google and Yahoo are racing to create the most comprehensive databases of personal information. Recently, Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt caused a stir by admitting that 'personalisation' is THE way forward for the company. Adam discusses the issues it raises with Dr Jenny Fry from the Oxford Internet Institute and Charles Arthur, Editor of Technology at The Guardian.

Digital Divide

In the space of a year, the digital divide in the UK seems to have narrowed considerably. Latest figures show that 42 percent of Welsh households now have broadband, compared with only a quarter of them in 2005. Surprisingly, OFCOM's latest survey also shows that Wales now has more public wi-fi hotspots (or wireless internet points) per person than the US, Germany or Japan. Rhodri Williams, Director Wales of OFCOM, joins Adam on this week's programme to explain what it all really means.

Time Wasting Websites

Some people have the most enviable jobs. We set Mousemat regular Daniel Booth, from Webuser magazine, the sort of task you don't get from many bosses- we asked him to find us pointless web ways to waste our valuable free time, and he's done just that! He chooses five of his favourite time waster websites. They are: Cheddar Vision, Woolworths museum, Swarmsketch, Worldometers and Geograph British Isles.

PC Doctor

PC Doctor Simon Zerafa joins Adam to answer listeners' computer queries. This week there are questions about online banking and how long your PC can last for:

Part One

Online Banking

Online banking is ten years old, so we thought we'd ask Simon for tips on how to safe when banking online.

Simon Says: The first tip I would give is: do not click on any links in any emails that you purportedly receive from your bank, or from any other company that may have access to your money. You've got no way of telling, short of actually combing through the source code of your email, where that will take you once you click on it. The anti-phishing solutions are good to a point. Essentially it's always a catch up situation, a lot of the anti-phishing software relies on the fact that the site has already been reported by someone.

Once you've got to the right website, the service should be relatively secure. The site you're using should have a secure web certificate. You can tell that by the type of address you're using, which should be an https address, not plain old http. Also most of the modern web browsers do give you visual indications in the address bar, or somewhere else on the browser, that the site you're visiting is earmarked as a secure site. That's important because the information you're sending up and down to the site will be scrambled, so any eavesdroppers shouldn't be able to decode what it is that you're sending. If you're not sure, don't enter any information onto that site!

Part Two:

A question from Gareth Roberts:

Q: "How long can you keep a PC for? I've had mine for three years (which I would say isn't that long) but it's beginning to run extremely slowly, and sometimes freezes altogether. I've deleted quite a lot of files, but that doesn't seem to make much difference. Do I really need to replace my PC once every three years, or is there something else I can do to improve the computer's performance?"

Simon Says: I would say that technology, or a computer, that's about three years old, is getting towards the end of its useful life in terms of being current or up to date. That doesn't mean to say that it won't have any use. It might still be perfectly useful, but it depends what you're using the computer for. One of the things you tend to find as a computer gets older, if you don't upgrade at least some of the hardware, is that they tend to lag behind a bit. Older computers just do not have enough RAM fitted. As you use the computer, and as Windows technology gets more complicated, you need more RAM. For current versions of Windows XP, I'd recommend a minimum of 512MB of memory in any computer. For Windows Vista, the minimum memory has got to be one GB.

However, there are ways to make the computer useful. Even something as basic as backing up the computer completely, formatting it and re-installing Windows can be very effective. Keep an eye on what loads on the machine automatically. Half of these things don't need to be running when you turn your machine on. Don't let them auto-run and that should speed things up. Don't multi-task as much and you'll probably find the performance will be adequate.

Any problems for PC Doctor Simon Zerafa can be e-mailed to mousemat@bbc.co.uk

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