Some time ago I was asked to provide some simple advice for non-technical users on protecting their data and office computer systems. Most people are aware that computer security has become a huge problem in recent years, but the sheer amount of (often conflicting) advice on the subject often drives people to ignore it - after all, if you're just trying to do your job, you don't want to have to spend a lot of time learning obscure technical information. With that in mind, this article outlines five basic things to keep in mind to stay safe online.

I've been setting up Ubuntu on my mother's laptop because the Windows XP system that it came with 5 years ago is grinding to a halt. With a 1.5GHz Celeron M processor it's not exactly a supercomputer but with a fresh new Linux system it can still be a decent, useful computer for several more years.

I went for Lubuntu because it's lightweight and easy to use.

1. Enable error messages to be shown by writing ini_set('display_errors', '1'); in your PHP code.
2. Most likely, you will be given this error message now: Php Fatal Error Call To Undefined Function Json_decode

Zarafa is an email groupware system that aims to provide the capabilities of Microsoft Exchange on Linux servers. It's almost entirely open source, the only exception being an Outlook compatibility layer for business users who are used to Outlook and don't want to switch away.

As the lack of recent updates might suggest, things have been quite busy work-wise recently! Since I've been working a lot, and since it's Christmas, I thought I'd write something a bit different for this article. While I haven't had much free time lately, I've spent a bit of it playing a game by the name of Trine. It's promoted as a physics based platform/puzzle game, so there is a vague science angle to tie in with the rest of the site!