I, like many others, spent my Christmas holidays buried in Dan Brown's ‘The Da Vinci Code', marvelling at how he brought together fact and fiction in a thriller.

Like many others, I also went on the Internet to find out exactly how much was fact and how much was fiction. One finds lots of diatribes against the Da Vinci Code written by defenders of the Catholic Church and Christianity.

Brown makes lots of claims in the book (fictional I know) against the reliability of the Bible, the divinity of Christ and the historical facts about the Priory of Zion and the Knights Templar. While I am not saying such defenders are wrong in asserting their historical facts, their voices are mainly too strident and sometimes suspect.

From my reading of other books on the subject of the Knights Templar (and there are lots of theories about their activities in southern France, where I live), I can see Brown took a lot of conjecture from some of the better known conspiracy books and connected the more specious dots.

While it is a fictional book Brown makes clear that he claims his research on the religious organisations and artwork is all fully authentic. For those who are interested in ensuring they do not perpetuate the fictions and mistakes in the book it is worth checking out Opus Dei's defence of itself at www.opusdei.org and the Christian defence at www.christianitytoday.com.

For more fabulous fare online try www.milano.arounder.com, which features high-resolution close-ups of Da Vinci's Last Supper at the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. That really is a woman sitting beside Jesus. You can try www.lisashea.com/hobbies/art/lastsupper.html for a thorough discussion of all the

religious and non-religious claims made in the book (for example the Louvre Pyramid does not have 666 panes).

The more enterprising among us can go to the CIA site (linked through www.elonka.com/kryptos/) and try and crack the code in the “Kryptos” Sculpture. The sculpture is mentioned in the book and was built by artist James Sanborn. It is inscribed with several enigmatic messages, each written in a different code.

Apparently only one person has so far broken the code.

***

If you have small fingers and sharp eyes here are Dr. Stephen Palley's ‘Top Ten Games' for your cellphone. Palley, described by ZDNet as “a noted mobile gameologist”, writes for the Wireless Gaming Review (www.wgamer.com) and Game Spot Mobile (www.gamespot.com). All of the games are reviewed there are available for download. Some cell phone companies actually give some of the games away:

1. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm (battle a group of Marxist drug pushers in Colombia).

2. Chip's Challenge: (navigate mazes to help Chip get his girl).

3. Vans Skate & Slam (destroy public property while riding a skateboard).

4. Jamdat Sports NFL 2005 (play all 32 NFL teams).

5. OP15: Rising Threat (enforce global peace with your special commando).

6. Deer Hunter (shoot deer in the wild).

7. Neverwinter Nights: Mobile (save an enchanted forest).

8. Rolling Stone 20 Questions (test your music knowledge).

9. Might and Magic (rescue a magic kingdom).

10. Gauntlet (run through mazes).

***

Sign of the times: CVS Corp., which runs a chain of pharmacies in the US, offers what it claims is the world's first disposable digital camera. The camera (www.cvs.com) sells for $19.99. You also have to pay $10 to process the 25 prints. It seems also contradictory to buy a disposable digital camera. Why shell out $30 when you can get reusable digital for about $50?

***

Linux users should download patches issued by Red Hat, Novell and Mandrakesoft that fix several vulnerabilities. Five of the updates released were rated “highly critical”. Red Hat (www.redhat.com) released three of the updates, Novell (www.novell.com/linux/suse) one and Mandrakesoft (www.mandrakesoft.com) one.

***

Here is one for the executives among us. TechRepublic has put up its free online audiocast on the key technologies you should consider when developing your organisation's corporate portal.

While you may not ever have to know the details of all the considerations about building the relevant content and applications you should know the basics so you can provide the most effective instructions to your site's builders. The audiocast features presenters from Oracle Corp. and from Ovum.

What is a portal? According to the two presenters a portal is a “unified action point with all business information, business processes, and collaborative flows, required to perform a business function or role”. Aside from this obfuscation the discussion is worth seeing.

Contact Ahmed at ahmed.elamin@wanadoo.fr