I think it looks very nice, but believe you should try to shorten the vertical height of the page; many people use laptops and netbooks with very low resolution screens and your latest images are in serious danger of falling ‘below the fold’ (ie out of sight on the screen).

My advice would be to shrink some of the elements like the title/header and main photos, and selectively tighten them so as to retain the same overall level of ‘blackspace’.

You are misinformed. See:

1. Hoya and Pentax Merge Source: Nikkei via Tech On, 22 Dec 2006

2. HOYA and PENTAX Enter into an Agreement on Management Integration, Source: Hoya Press release, 31 May 2007

3. Notice of Commencement of Tender Offer for the Shares of PENTAX Corporation, Source: Hoya Press release, 2 Jul 2007

That’s a bit of a stretch; Ricoh have nowhere near the same level of marketing and technology clout as Sony. Nevertheless they are probably the best ownership candidate going, with some corporate skills that are genuinely complimentary; it is hard to see how this could have ended with a better outcome for Pentax.

The trouble is that this is undoubtedly a very tough market indeed with dominant entrenched competitors wielding huge market power. If things don’t go according to plan you have to wonder whether Ricoh will have anywhere near the same remarkable level of commitment as Hoya did, no doubt partly due to personal commitments made during the protracted takeover negotiations.

ROFL.

The bad news is that the service contract will be charged at the rate of 3.33p per actuation.

The numbers mentioned in the documentation are net book value. This is solely a more or less accidental product of historical accounting and bears no resemblance to how much Ricoh are actually paying for the shares to be acquired.

Unsurprisingly details of the actual transaction are sparse but two facts nevertheless stand out; not only is the value not disclosed but it does not require Hoya shareholders’ approval.

Now I don’t know anything at all specifically about Japanese company law, but the test for this sort of thing must surely be linked to total value. Therefore we can safely conclude this is very small indeed - unsurprisingly! And unfortunately in business, the less you pay the less your commitment tends to be to assets so purchased.

The only good news is that Rioch are probably much better at pre-production planning; if Newco can come up with an equally attractive K5 successor perhaps a much improved quality control process can deliver the market share gains it deserves.

Sorry, I don't know anything about this at all.

Normally the Flasgot add-on grabs video clips encoded as flash; if you ever come across these the audio component only may be extracted/converted using the VLC media player I mentioned earlier.

However, in the case of your Gaither site, the player application is written in flash (strictly Actionscript), which then grabs the audio files from somewhere in MP3 format and plays them back.

Flashgot somehow grabs the MP3 files directly, and offers to save them on your hard disk.

OK, a quick return to the site you mentioned and I now have a way for you to obtain the 'original' MP3 files directly:

1. If you are not already using the Firefox browser download it.
2. Click Tools--> Add-Ons then search for 'Flashgot'
3. Install the Flashgot add-on and restart Firefox.
4. Go back to your site then play a track. Once it is running right click on the screen and click 'Flash got media'
5. A dialogue will appear asking you where to save it, and hey presto. . .

I am +90% certain there is something trivial you're missing to get this working. At least one of your computers should be capable of running this, especially the desktop with the Asus motherboard if it is intended as a media HTPC.

But I understand perfectly if you are not happy to let me take control of your computer; I wouldn't let you do that to mine either