tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5027609793915645642012-01-31T17:31:15.494+13:00...one byte at a timeHi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.comBlogger3461100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-49958630498429616432010-11-17T14:26:00.000+13:002010-11-17T14:27:43.627+13:00

No doubt that files can be transferred via pen drives but what if the need arises to reinstall the Operating System in case of a system crash or if the requirement is to install the new Windows 7? What then? How would it be if you upgrade or re-install your Windows OS via a flash drive? There are a number of ways in which you can load or install Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 from the USB Pen

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-91736896695226030032010-07-30T16:13:00.001+12:002010-07-30T16:42:10.284+12:00

Probably the best free security list in the world.Says it all.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-70690191063838386432010-07-30T15:33:00.001+12:002010-07-30T15:40:27.734+12:00

Safely remove memory cards without waiting: You're supposed to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray before unplugging memory cards and the like--but waiting for it is such a pain that you'll be itching to pull your memory card without waiting for Safely Remove Hardware to do its thing. The key to making quick removal safe is to ensure that Windows isn't writing to the card

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-44298396777978320022010-07-06T14:46:00.004+12:002010-07-06T15:00:02.621+12:00

More goodies from around the traps:A great anti-keylogger for free. Spyshelter is an anti-keylogger, and also warns if a remote system is attempting to perform a screen capture or view your clipboard. It runs under all recent version of Windows.Best free Genealogy / Family Tree software. Genealogy is one of the most searched terms on the internet these days. Here's a list of goodies to get you

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-60633945802413251892010-06-11T17:08:00.003+12:002010-06-11T17:12:33.287+12:00

I have a personal website that shares drama scripts. (Pop over and see us at www.dramatix.org) It's getting pretty big now, with more than 1200 scripts listed, so I'm running up against some storage problems, especially with larger pdf files. I think I've found the answer in MediaFire, a free online storage system, that allows me to store and then share a very large quantity of pics, pdf files,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-9262370428380149832010-06-11T17:02:00.002+12:002010-06-11T17:04:35.510+12:00

Many of the videos you view on websites are in the .FLV or Flash format. Trouble is, if you want to download them, there is obvious way to do so. At last, here's a tool to find hidden .FLV flash video stream URLs, called URL Helper, which is basically a URL finder. This free tool can be used to find out the links or video URLs of the flash videos from various web sites so that you an download

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-12000816546246531722010-06-11T16:52:00.002+12:002010-06-11T16:59:19.594+12:00

There are some great new free photo managers coming available. Some people swear by Picasa, while others are happy with a simpler style such as Irfanview, which tacks image management onto a very good editor. XNView has been another very popular manager, which I have also used in preference to Picasa (I don't like the way Picasa takes over my system). The new kid on the block sweeping all before

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-50860233353782885642010-06-11T16:29:00.006+12:002010-06-11T17:07:09.078+12:00

Here are some invaluable system helps.Asterisk Key does one thing, but it's a lifesaver. It reveals the actual passwords hidden under the dots or asterisks in the password field. Invaluable when you've forgotten yours.You are supposed to "unmount" USB drives before pulling them out of your computer. Which in XP you do by clicking on the little icon at the RH foot of your screen. But sometimes

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-69635098276763823992010-06-11T16:21:00.003+12:002010-06-11T16:29:16.669+12:00

PDF to Word Converter is a free tool that turns a PDF document into a Word document. It holds the layout quite well, but it does use a lot of paragraph returns to do it.If a pdf file is locked or password protected, no pdf conversion tool will touch it. However, PDF Password Remover will do just that. Sadly, it's not free, although I managed to get a free copy via another site, so keep a look out

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-86567879652153124382010-06-11T16:17:00.003+12:002010-06-11T16:21:28.636+12:00

Fix blurred photographs with free software, Unshake. It really does work, and it's great for those cellphone pics that don't quite cut it, although it takes a bit of experimentation to get best results.Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-25276249313695581032010-05-07T15:16:00.010+12:002010-05-07T15:39:10.189+12:00

Some recent gleanings from round the traps:Do you routinely hop from one favorite Web site to another, just to see if anything new has been added? There's a faster, easier way: Use an RSS reader. (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, a technology that enables sites to come to you instead of you having to go to them.)One of the most popular is the Google Reader, and here are some hints on how

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-47137560812447220002010-04-22T16:48:00.002+12:002010-04-22T16:50:04.473+12:00

Sometimes when malware gets into your computer, it takes over the security software and stops it from cleaning everything out. Lincoln Spector has some suggestions for how to ensure that you get a completely clean scan.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-45068155983935509972010-04-22T16:43:00.000+12:002010-04-22T16:44:00.095+12:00

Digital photography keeps getting better. Higher-resolution images, sophisticated but easy-to-use controls, and more. This article helps you sort out the features that matter, and those that don't.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-66344842996673728432010-04-22T16:39:00.002+12:002010-04-22T16:42:16.782+12:00

How often do you find that dialogue boxes extend below the bottom of your screen, so that you can't click on the necessary buttons? Happens to me a lot, and I have a reasonable size screen. Here's a little utility that allows you to drag any window (including dialogue boxes) around by holding down the Alt and Windows keys.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-91864257120508261082010-04-22T16:37:00.000+12:002010-04-22T16:38:33.438+12:00

With vReveal software for Windows, it's easy to quickly fix the videos from your cell phone, HD camcorder, digital camera, or other device. Stabilize, brighten, sharpen, add fun effects and more with just one click. It's completely free.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-4905787045757363082010-04-22T16:35:00.002+12:002010-04-22T16:37:25.977+12:00

When you launch a new tab in Internet Explorer, that tab automatically opens with your default home page. Sadly, Firefox doesn't have that feature, but a new add-on - New Tab Home Page - can provide it. Very simple to install.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-41235745292775769742010-04-22T16:33:00.001+12:002010-04-22T16:34:51.945+12:00

Posterous is almost certainly the quickest way to create a web page and get it online. Post a simple text message, or include additional content such as an MP3 file or a picture. Unlike traditional blogging and publishing services, such as Blogger or MySpace, you don't even need to sign up for an account. Just think of something to say, then email it to post@posterous.com. Within a few

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-72479856135489636712010-04-22T16:30:00.000+12:002010-04-22T16:32:52.723+12:00

Fix it Center is a new Microsoft service currently in public beta that provides a set of online and offline tools for diagnosing and fixing common PC and device problems. Fix it Center consolidates into a single product a whole range of trouble shooters, wizards and other support resources currently scattered throughout the Microsoft site and Windows itself. It works with any Windows version

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-9269036864473979322010-04-09T16:41:00.007+12:002010-04-09T16:57:31.896+12:00

Whew! Haven't posted in a long while - things got a bit hectic on the work and home fronts. So to kick things off, some helpful articles spotted in the intervening time...How to block bad websites, from Gizmo.Why your DVD player can't play some disks. In order to exercise greater control, movie studies pressured DVD manufacturers into splitting the world into separate play regions. NZ and

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-34839040939820368272010-02-24T10:33:00.002+13:002010-02-24T10:38:09.229+13:00

One of the deficiencies of the Windows operating system is that it allows you to copy and paste only one item at a time. The one (sort of) exception I know is that in Word you can hold down the Control key and select discontinuous pieces of text. Fortunately, there are numerous free utilities that will hold a bank of clipped items, which you can copy and paste from with ease. Some examples are

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-41459539939120676562010-02-23T14:33:00.000+13:002010-02-23T14:34:01.808+13:00

A study of more than 30 million passwords found that almost half use names, common dictionary words, or sequential characters like "qwerty". Fingerprint scanners and other biometric controls are becoming more mainstream, but the password will still be the main barrier between hackers and your data for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, here is how to create a secure password that you can

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-65402363927773449602010-02-23T14:07:00.003+13:002010-02-23T14:19:31.931+13:00

The first 3D movie I saw was a Mighty Mouse cartoon back in the 1950s. The second was Michael Jackson's Captain Eo at Disneyland three decades later. There has been a quantum leap in the technology since, and suddenly 3D movies are the rage. Dozens are being released this year, although the number of cinemas fitted to screen them is still small. But you can make your own 3D photographs using the

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-74567576909318251832010-02-23T14:02:00.002+13:002010-02-23T14:06:57.076+13:00

1,193,526 public domain songs by 10,253 artists, boasts the website Dewey Music. You can listen to, download, remix, and share anything you see on this site legally and for free.But if you are into music, the best website in the world for my money is GrooveShark, which plays streaming audio of every conceivable genre. You can tailor the site to send you just exactly what you want to hear, and it

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-45359319798544412842010-02-23T14:00:00.001+13:002010-02-23T14:01:23.340+13:00

Computer screens get dusty, dirty, and dingy just like windows. But unlike glass windows, computer screens are complex, sensitive electronic devices that can be damaged by incorrect cleaning. Here's how to clean various types of computer screens safely.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-16795751439793857222010-02-23T14:00:00.000+13:002010-02-23T14:01:21.884+13:00

Computer screens get dusty, dirty, and dingy just like windows. But unlike glass windows, computer screens are complex, sensitive electronic devices that can be damaged by incorrect cleaning. Here's how to clean various types of computer screens safely.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-9338412323576695182010-02-23T13:57:00.002+13:002010-02-23T13:58:38.266+13:00

Sometimes your computer seemingly goes to sleep for no apparent reason. Lincoln Spector has some trouble-shooting tips.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-28813306739668931192010-02-23T13:50:00.003+13:002010-02-23T14:00:27.655+13:00

Gmail is not bad as an internet-based email system - better than most of its competitors, possibly. But it's not perfect. Here are 9 tips to improve it. One tip not covered: If you have an "ordinary" email client (ie, program, like Outlook or Thunderbird), you can gather your incoming Gmail emails through that, without visiting Gmail at all. Here's an article that shows you simply how to do

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-37322502810582678712010-02-23T13:49:00.000+13:002010-02-23T13:50:29.044+13:00

It seems that every day we go online and there's some new type of nagging Web annoyance to deal with, says Jared Newman. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to worry about auto-playing video ads, leaping pay walls to read the news, fake emails phishing for our bank details, or Farmville spam from Facebook. But for now, we're on our own. Here are 15 of the most annoying things on the Internet,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-39547028020850326562010-02-23T13:47:00.001+13:002010-02-23T13:49:09.200+13:00

"The central mistake of recent digital culture is to chop up a network of individuals so finely that you end up with a mush," writes Nick Galvin of the Sydney Morning Herald. "You then start to care about the abstraction of the network more than the real people who are networked, even though the network by itself is meaningless. Only the people were ever meaningful." He looks at why the internet

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-20949662592503581072010-02-23T13:45:00.004+13:002010-02-23T13:46:47.571+13:00

You can keep a toolkit on a flash drive for those times when things go wrong and you need some fix-it tools. Lincoln Spector shares his list of must-haves.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-81347252842050130712010-02-23T13:42:00.001+13:002010-02-23T13:44:09.778+13:00

"If you're suffering from email overload, I bet you didn't know you have a solution at your fingertips. In fact you have your very own personal inbox secretary at your disposal. One waiting to read all the emails you receive (and send); then manage them for you.," writes Debbie Mayo-Smith.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-85456289562582895152010-01-20T09:23:00.003+13:002010-01-20T09:33:52.997+13:00

1. Are you annoying at having to register on a free web site just to read some news or view some information? Here is a simple method to get access to protected content without need to endure the annoyance of signing up for an account.2. Restart Windows without restarting your computer. The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart. Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-22142885787589826592010-01-15T11:20:00.008+13:002010-01-15T11:52:29.237+13:00

It's back in harness at the desk, and here are a few goodies noted around the traps:1. Create a Flash-based website. Most websites are constructed using a mark-up language called html, which while not as complicated as computer programming still takes a bit of learning, even for the basics. Wix aims to bypass that, and let you construct a free website just by dragging and dropping elements. 2.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-89575288606202848872010-01-15T11:17:00.001+13:002010-01-15T11:20:28.520+13:00

Here's a helpful tip that lets you view two Word documents side-by-side without using the Document Compare function. "In other words, the documents aren’t compared and marked up as with Doc Compare—they are laid out side-by-side so you can do a visual check of them. And you can synchronize the scrolling of the documents too so that you don’t have to change focus or jump between each one as you

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-88200910113143030562009-12-18T15:41:00.003+13:002009-12-18T16:15:56.596+13:00

With holidays looming, this will probably be the last last posting for 2009, as a major work project around the house beckons over the next couple of weeks. To tide you over, here are a few gleanings...Have you ever wished for a magic wand that could make annoying Windows problems disappear? Like, say, a missing Recycle Bin icon, or those pesky Runtime Error messages in Internet Explorer? FixWin

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-60581243875461994172009-12-17T13:56:00.002+13:002009-12-17T13:57:26.193+13:00

"Thanks to online video, Web apps, social networking, and so on, the humble Web browser is being pushed to do more and to do it faster," writes Chris Brandrick in PC World. With a few simple tweaks and tools, you can improve your browsing experience and save yourself some time in the process.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-88103629035791918242009-12-16T10:45:00.004+13:002009-12-16T10:48:48.321+13:00

Sometimes you want to duplicate a tab in your favourite browser. Here's a very simple means to do it.1. Insert your cursor in the address field at the top of the screen. 2. Press Alt-Enter.This works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.Incidentally, you can use the keyboard command Ctrl-T to create a new blank tab.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-60459988615385164272009-12-15T14:30:00.003+13:002009-12-15T14:33:56.725+13:00

Sometimes when working the web, you have to go through a lot of repetitive actions, like entering long addresses, or going through numerous checks to get to a particular page. DejaClick is a Firefox add-on that aims to automate these tasks. I have been searching for a long time without success to find a good freeware macro recorder. This might be the closest thing around, even though it only

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-65698036676922618512009-12-15T14:26:00.003+13:002009-12-15T14:29:24.903+13:00

USB drives (pen drives, flash drives, memory sticks - they have almost as many names as styles) have revolutionised portable media. How many of you still use a floppy disk? And they can carry massive amounts of data, or even bootable operating systems. But as Dave Thompson points out in The Press, they can fail if not handled carefully, potentially leading to as much grief as a failed hard drive.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-11994956768693497862009-12-14T12:07:00.003+13:002009-12-14T12:14:09.878+13:00

So what's scary? The day when you can quickly point your smartphone at a person in the street and know within seconds that person's name and particulars may not be all that far off.That's the logical consequence of a new technology called Google Goggles, being run out now by - who else? - Google. At the moment the technology is very much in its infancy, but the promise is that one day you will be

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-7115302268354783412009-12-11T15:32:00.002+13:002009-12-11T15:39:36.620+13:00

If you are confused about which firewalls to install on your computer, Gizmo has a very helpful article listing the best free utilities available. And also gives some good pointers about how they work. And seeing it's nearly Christmas, here's a list of 10 free alternatives to Photoshop (a number of them are Mac only, but it's about time the Mac got some attention). Surprisingly, the article does

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-69961557160646904822009-12-11T15:25:00.003+13:002009-12-11T15:31:55.459+13:00

I accidentally erased some files from a memory stick this week. Normally, when you delete files from your hard drive, they reside in the computer's Trash Can until you finally empty the trash. And before that, if you realise you still want them, you can restore the files from there. But files erased from a memory don't go to the Trash in the same way - they are gone. Well, not exactly. A good

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-24366440679336457442009-12-10T15:50:00.003+13:002009-12-10T15:53:10.378+13:00

The Thunderbird email program (for some obscure reason in the computer world, email programs are called "clients") has just had a major upgrade. Thunderbird is a stablemate to Firefox, and I use it very successfully at home, so the new features sound welcome. I'll be downloading the new version asap.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-47094595030522940302009-12-10T15:46:00.005+13:002009-12-10T15:49:46.622+13:00

I have been having some major hassles with my home computer lately. All of a sudden it has taken to switching itself off in mid-flight, or rebooting randomly, often at quite frequent intervals. I have begun running all the usual checks (spyware, viruses, etc), but so far nothing obvious has shown up. If you're in the position where your technology is refusing to cooperate, you might find this

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-31949571013671488042009-12-07T14:17:00.002+13:002009-12-07T14:24:03.328+13:00

It seems that Google and Bing release new features almost every second week, in a bid to try and establish dominance. Bing has a new Visual Maps feature, which tries to outdo Google Earth and Google Maps. It's similar to Google Street View, but adds some mash-ups, many of which are more applicable to the USA than here, but no doubt will migrate before long. One particularly clever app is

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-4693478737317839392009-12-04T15:06:00.004+13:002009-12-04T15:15:38.595+13:00

People cope with the technological world in a variety of fascinating ways. Some, for instance, live a good deal of their time in the past - or an invented past. My three children are all members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), which endeavours to re-enact the more fun parts of mediaeval times (ignoring the plagues, famines, poor health care, hovels, etc). So they regularly don

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-90560241399444063282009-12-03T15:39:00.002+13:002009-12-03T15:43:20.898+13:00

I don't know whether it's coincidence, or whether I've become a victim. Just days after reading that many people round the world have apparently suffered a Black Screen of Death on their PC following the latest Microsoft patch download, the same happened to our home machine this morning. Software firm Prevx claim millions have been infected; others say the victims number only in the thousands,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-92043335196400972562009-12-03T14:57:00.003+13:002009-12-03T15:37:40.138+13:00

I've spent much of the last couple of weeks building a presentation in PowerPoint for my organisation. The aim was to create an interactive presentation that would play video and audio clips automatically at some points, while allowing viewers to choose options and links at other points. It's been a high learning curve, but I think I've largely cracked it. While PowerPoint is a bit clumsy in the

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-45919779127868589122009-12-01T14:53:00.004+13:002009-12-01T14:56:17.349+13:00

In the brave new world of cloud computing, when you have several colleagues all needing to access the same document as a work in progress, there are several options now available. Email attachments is the most obvious and basic, but other newer file-sharing tools are quicker and easier. Pattie Pegler gives a run-down on some of them.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-21141850336341317102009-12-01T14:35:00.004+13:002009-12-01T14:51:59.428+13:00

The staff of the organisation I work for have just been given new phones by 2 Degrees as part of a sponsorship from the phone company. The Nokia I have chosen is a world away from the old very basic Nokia I have otherwise had for the past 3 years. But I need a week-long seminar to learn how to use even the basic features. Fortunately, we have a 19-year-old Chinese young woman boarding with us who

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-63854536131734624302009-11-26T16:14:00.005+13:002009-11-26T16:23:23.066+13:00

Just about all the malls are in full Christmas regalia now, but I haven't seen many homes in suburbia that have yet dusted off the deorations. For several years the good folk at Westlake in Halswell decorated their houses magically, until the hoons and vandals destroyed it for everybody. However, a private home at 370 Cashmere Rd, Christchurch, has opened up and for a small donation to a charity

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-58661348340978789512009-11-26T16:10:00.003+13:002009-11-26T16:13:46.819+13:00

3D is making a strong comeback in the movies. Maybe we'll see a return as well to those wonderful stereoscope 3D photo viewing devices that were the delight of your grandparents. If you can't find a stereoscope, you can create your own 3D photos, using the instructions at this web page. Now... I'm really hanging out for when they show us how to create our own home 3D movies.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-2345632370981561362009-11-26T16:08:00.001+13:002009-11-26T16:10:12.750+13:00

Simon Hendry in the NZ Herald has some words of caution, and some helpful advice, on avoiding becoming another identity hacker's statistic.Twenty years ago the typical hacker was a bedroom-based teenager with an IBM clone 386 PC, a dial-up modem, whose goal was to gain geek kudos by infiltrating and disrupting an unsuspecting corporate computer system. Today's more scary incarnation, says Owen

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-24549993384310656972009-11-25T14:30:00.003+13:002009-11-25T14:37:10.900+13:00

Google is constantly in the news these days. Last week the industry got a first look at Google's proposed new Chrome operating system (OS). Many were unimpressed and said it will never replace Windows or Macintosh. However, Robert Strohmeyer says they are missing the point - Google has designed Chrome OS as a platform for people who use computers primarily online, not for those wanting myriad

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-56059031604486858232009-11-24T16:43:00.001+13:002009-11-24T16:46:21.136+13:00

Spending so much time in front of computers, and particularly on the Internet, is changing us, in some perhaps surprising ways. This NZ Herald article traces one researcher's line of thought.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-83442308879805098432009-11-24T15:35:00.003+13:002009-11-24T15:46:55.741+13:00

Creating a Flash movie is not for the faint-hearted. (Flash in this case does not mean fancy - it's short for Shockwave Flash, which is a movie format used to produce streaming videos, animations for websites, and so on.) You can use a Flash movie to create more complex titles for your home videos, or to build advertisements for a website. It's only limited by your imagination. Most of them are

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-23339524704591460662009-11-19T16:35:00.001+13:002009-11-19T16:38:37.127+13:00

While I love Firefox, it has an annoying little habit. When you click on a hyperlink inside a program or document - for instance in an email - it launches a Firefox window and puts the other program in the background. There are a couple of fixes for this annoyance, which Rhiannon explains over at the Gizmo website.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-24829864755080179752009-11-18T14:31:00.003+13:002009-11-18T14:42:25.331+13:00

These days a lot of selling is done by email. I use "selling" in the broadest sense of the term - whether you are promoting a club, your own interests, or a business, you just want your email to look more attractive. But most email programs are not up to the job of formatting them attractively. And most of the professional emails you receive have been created with expensive software, or using

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-26834088656602122642009-11-17T15:52:00.005+13:002009-11-17T16:03:51.492+13:00

A few sightings from the last day or two:Feeling overwhelmed by social media? You're not aloneWhy is My Computer Slowing Down? Lincoln Spector provides answers to some of the most common reasons why a once-fast PC is slowing down. Surprisingly, though, he omits one of the most common - an email program that has become clogged with messages. The simple solution: clean out the Sent and the Deleted

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-47735583223293702272009-11-13T15:50:00.006+13:002009-11-13T16:19:25.888+13:00

I have been doing an audit to see what free software I use on my computer. I was staggered at how vast the list is. All the following are programs I use regularly, in many cases could not do without. Often there is no commercial equivalent or the paid-for version costs way too much. In every case, these programs do an excellent job and come well within the "essential" category. Some of them just

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-71918355302603899462009-11-12T11:16:00.003+13:002009-11-13T16:17:21.278+13:00

Some programs just refuse to uninstall properly from your computer, no matter what you try to do to get rid of them. Some programs you install never make it to the Windows Add/Remove control panel, others simply disappear from the list. Making things worse is that some well-known apps don't create uninstallers on your machine. For instance, AVG Free, the antivirus program, puts its uninstaller

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-22383305131294223912009-11-12T11:09:00.002+13:002009-11-12T11:16:06.987+13:00

Sometimes it's helpful to know the properties of a particular file on your computer: eg, how large it is, where is the original file located if it's a shortcut, and so on. The usual way to find out is to right click on the file and then choose Properties from the dialogue box. Here's a simple shortcut: Alt-left click on the file, and it brings up the same dialogue box. Incidentally, checking the

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-75123718129975675602009-11-11T10:09:00.003+13:002009-11-11T10:22:08.719+13:00

Most search engines (eg, Google, Yahoo, etc) allow you to alter the number of search results that show up on each page, by going into Preferences and choosing a number. However, this does not apply to image searches. So Google gives you a stock 20 results per page, for instance, and that can't be changed. Bing, the new Microsoft engine, is more bizarre. It gives you every result on one screen,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-56805080652669440512009-11-10T14:58:00.003+13:002009-11-10T15:05:30.450+13:00

Tabs are an absolutely essential part of my life when using Firefox. I can't imagine how I lived without them before they were introduced. I wish I could say the same about Microsoft Word. Instead, when I have multiple Word documents open, I have to fish among a piled up set of icons on the Task Bar. It should have been an obvious feature for Microsoft to incorporate in 2007. However, there is a

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-86053968348959101282009-11-10T14:33:00.005+13:002009-11-10T14:58:17.187+13:00

I'm astounded how often I discover obvious things that I had previously missed. Latest case in point: In the Microsoft Word "Recent Documents" list, you can pin a document so that it doesn't get bumped off. Just click on the little pin icon at the right of the document title. And deselect it when you no longer want the document on the list.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com231tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-33881562467083602402009-11-09T13:58:00.003+13:002009-11-09T14:04:28.439+13:00

Here's a handy free utility to solve one of the frustrations of Windows and Microsoft Office. When you go to save a document, or to save a download file to your computer, the dialogue box has only five buttons on the left-hand Explorer-style bar. This bar is known as the Places Bar. Needless to say, the folder you most frequently want to save a file to is not among the five. The fix-it comes by

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-49880819235996894762009-11-06T13:36:00.004+13:002009-11-06T13:54:08.143+13:00

Here's a Friday collection of sighted/cited pieces of interest:Users running Microsoft Office can stump nearly three-fourths of all known attacks targeting the suite by applying just one three-year-old patch, according to recently published data. Almost three-out-of four attacks -- 71% of all those spotted in the first half of 2009 -- exploited a vulnerability in Word that was patched in June

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-9139135435230345502009-11-06T13:31:00.004+13:002009-11-06T13:35:40.605+13:00

On Wednesday, I linked to an article by Clay Shirky about the crisis in the news industry. This piece from Naomi Wolf also looks at what's happening, and suggests where news may come out in the near future.There is no way to disguise the reality: newspaper readers, in the West at least, are getting older; younger readers prefer to get their information online, where readers spend far less time

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-84210189447159403142009-11-04T14:23:00.005+13:002009-11-06T13:34:49.477+13:00

We are living in a time of epochal shift. It's hard to believe that the internet as an essential everyday part of life for almost everybody has effectively only been around for little more than 10 years. I began working life as a cadet journalist on a small-town newspaper (The Marlborough Express, in Blenheim). Journalist courses of any kind did not exist in NZ in those days. Since then I have

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-31416510290287666282009-11-04T10:10:00.002+13:002009-11-04T10:27:08.724+13:00

I've just learned a (relatively) simple way to create a PDF form that can be emailed for others to fill out electronically and return by email. I've been wanting to be able to do this for ages, but was stumped because I thought it required expensive software. (While you can create fillable forms in Word and Excel, the process is clumsy and daunting. It also allows for little design capability,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-29861273283350523502009-11-03T14:15:00.003+13:002009-11-03T14:35:21.854+13:00

Among the many advantages of PDF files are that you can open them on any computer and they look just the way they were created - you don't need the original software which created the document, nor the fonts - and generally the file size of the PDF is smaller than the original. But not always. Sometimes, they come out bigger, which can be a frustration. This usually occurs because the document

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-11344591633789679562009-11-02T14:08:00.002+13:002009-11-02T14:21:14.958+13:00

I frequently save websites I come across for reference purposes. Fortunately, there are several ways to do this, depending on your needs. If you need only the text from a site, in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can choose File/Save (Page) As, and the option "Web page, html only". Both browsers also have the option to save the whole page, including graphics, as a web archive. In Firefox,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-36108320260357171202009-11-02T13:50:00.004+13:002009-11-02T13:58:34.833+13:00

You're probably getting to be a rare person if you've never had to deal with a supposed "customer service" (note the irony of the quotes) representative in a call centre located a million miles and a cultural galaxy away from you. Some of the most frustrating hours of my life have been spent trying to find someone who actually spoke a modicum of English and who understood my problem. So I

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-64306863750295600192009-10-30T14:36:00.005+13:002009-10-30T14:58:04.368+13:00

The new Windows 7 operating system has apparently changed the way you access programs (applications). I'm not familiar with Vista, but in XP, you either go to the Start menu, and then choose All Programs, or you can access them via the Quick Launch feature of the Task Bar, which is a lot quicker. However, when you install a new program, it does not always install an icon on the Task Bar. Never

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-77157051886391309872009-10-29T15:40:00.002+13:002009-10-29T15:50:08.752+13:00

The transition from XP to Windows 7 is not going to be smooth - certainly as smooth as from Vista to W7 - if the plethora of online articles is to be believed. I run XP, but don't plan to upgrade until next year at the earliest, probably after the inevitable Service Pack 1 for W7 comes out, and in conjunction with a hardware upgrade, which I'll be due for anyway by then. Hopefully, by then some

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-89340778660696841532009-10-28T16:28:00.004+13:002009-10-28T16:46:01.638+13:00

There's one major reason why I cling to Microsoft Word as my primary word processor. It's the ability to fairly easily deal with the mess that you get when you copy and paste text from either a pdf document or an email. I am sure you will have already discovered that the text frequently comes across with either a hard return (ie, a paragraph return) or a soft return at the end of every line. It's

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-55460413050244981092009-10-27T13:58:00.008+13:002009-10-27T14:53:29.498+13:00

Go away for a couple of days, as I did over the weekend, and when you return your email inbox is filled with several hundred essential emails, at least half of which are not essential at all. In my case, many are newsletters I subscribe to; perhaps I should be more ruthless in unsubscribing. So it was perhaps good news that Mozilla has launched a software project designed to let people better

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-15154846688563823002009-10-21T13:19:00.003+13:002009-10-21T13:32:57.582+13:00

I'm going to be out of town over the next few days, so here is a miscellany of items culled from various IT blogs to keep you going. See you next Tuesday.Sneak peeks at 8 emerging technologies: From transparent aluminum to billion-year memory chips to household pest-eating robo-furniture, these are some of latest technology trends that promise to affect our lives.Windows 7 is being released fully

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-51012103319104957592009-10-20T13:53:00.003+13:002009-10-20T13:59:19.396+13:00

Mozilla has now unblocked a Microsoft add-on thought to pose a danger due to a software vulnerability, but a second add-on remains blocked, the organization said on Sunday. (See post yesterday, and today's item at PC World.)Tens of millions of U.S. computers are loaded with scam security software that their owners may have paid for but which only makes the machines more vulnerable, according to a

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-81330332229190806132009-10-19T14:49:00.004+13:002009-10-19T14:53:49.735+13:00

This week is definitely a case of 'you win some, you lose some' for Microsoft. On the win side, Windows 7 (see following post). On the lose side, a real nasty. If you use Firefox browser, in the last couple of days you have probably noticed a pop-up window saying that Firefox is blocking some software installed by Microsoft. The thing is, Microsoft installed the code secretly back in February,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-65165732501094806902009-10-19T14:43:00.003+13:002009-10-19T14:49:27.804+13:00

This week ushers in the new golden age for Microsoft, or no doubt that's what the company would like to have us believe. Behind us will be all the bad news that accompanied the Vista operating system, and we can now sail into the sunset with Windows 7, which is perfect in every way. But if you are wondering what Windows 7 is all about, and will it really make a difference, one of the best

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-88459472571242149882009-10-16T16:42:00.004+13:002009-10-16T16:50:35.909+13:00

Wet weekend coming up? Instead of numbing your mind in front of the goggle box, curl up with a good book. Great image, except it's a bit hard to visualise curling up with a computer while reading an online book. That apart, there are thousands if not millions of books now available on the internet, and Stephen Keroff has done us all a favour by compiling an amazingly comprehensive list of sites

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-19406298170284680132009-10-16T16:35:00.003+13:002009-10-16T16:41:19.646+13:00

Gizmo editor Antti Koponen has just finished a major update to his super popular list of the best security products. As Gizmo says, "If there is a more comprehensive list than this on the web, I'm yet to see it."Caveat: It pays to check on the web for reviews before installing some of these products, as they sometimes do unexpected things to your system or conflict with other security products

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-34708214626577935512009-10-15T16:45:00.003+13:002009-10-15T16:51:02.740+13:00

There are times I feel like a bear with very little brain, and Freeview TV is one of those things I struggle to understand. I get confused because it can come to your house in several different ways, and in the early days there were question-marks over which decoder was best; and then there are issues of what is high-definition and what is not, and how you can record it, etc etc. As you can see,

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-25984737316862253752009-10-14T16:59:00.002+13:002009-10-14T17:01:39.881+13:00

Talking of keyboard shortcuts (see blog below), the NZ Herald has a very good article on simple shortcuts to carry out many of your common tasks. I use the keyboard as much as possible, as it really does speed up work compared with swapping to the mouse.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-79557442526854279512009-10-14T16:49:00.004+13:002009-10-28T16:48:59.189+13:00

This is a blog of frustration. Once upon a time, the Mac operating system used to have a very simple facility to record macros, so that you could automate common tasks. You clicked a Record button, carried out the required operation, and clicked the Stop button. Then you assigned a keyboard key. That was it. It worked brilliantly. Sadly, it was dropped around about System 7. The PC has never had

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-34942603090943907152009-10-12T15:28:00.002+13:002009-10-12T15:32:36.443+13:00

I think it's fair to say that YouTube has changed the way we view the world, and in particular has changed the whole entertainment industry. It has rewritten the rules. The staggering fact is that 1 billion hits a day are now made on the site, which is staggering, especially when you consider that the site was officially launched only four years ago. It was taken over a year later by Google.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-42040297361755392782009-10-09T16:12:00.002+13:002009-10-09T16:19:26.020+13:00

Easter Eggs is a quirky name that techies give to messages or features hidden inside software applications or games. Most of them are amusing, and some are even useful (though being useful is probably the last thing the authors intended). The How-to Geek has a list of some of the better-known ones. There's even a website devoted entirely to the genre, and the range is quite mind-boggling. This

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-58062743652583359312009-10-09T15:36:00.001+13:002009-10-09T15:38:03.406+13:00

Who better to give advice, I suppose. Michael Santerre, Google's Consumer Operations Associate detailed Google's password advice in a recent blog post. Read more at PC World.

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-49437976925349978572009-10-08T15:07:00.001+13:002009-10-08T15:09:09.369+13:00

This webpage really brightened my day.Do you ever give a thought for all those buttons on the Internet? You know, the things you click. They say things like "Submit" or "Send" or "Reset", and you click them and they take you to another page. Don't you think they might get tired? The Internet is open 24 hours a day! Most web sites never give their buttons a break. Here at EnglishClub.com we don't

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-38831712684049965142009-10-08T11:14:00.002+13:002009-10-08T11:22:49.683+13:00

Launching programs in Windows can be a bit clumsy. Mostly, I add program icons to the Taskbar at the foot of the screen and click on those. But that can be quite slow. Just as slow is using the Start button, and you can only in so many items to the Start menu before you run out of real estate. So I am delighted to have discovered a neat way of launching programs called MouseExtender. Once you

Hi from John.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15897543687013464785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-502760979391564564.post-1505632184865252022009-10-07T14:59:00.003+13:002009-10-07T15:09:40.156+13:00

One of the frustrations of Microsoft Word is that it opens at the top of the document, rather than where you left off reading or editing. If it's a long document, it can be a pain trying to find that spot again. Fortunately, there is a solution, using a little-known feature of Word: the Go Back command. No matter where you are in a document, when you press Ctrl+Alt+Z your cursor jumps back to the

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Sometimes, your browser window becomes so cluttered with toolbars, there's barely any room left for the actual web page. You can temporarily turn off all the toolbars (those at the bottom as well as the top of the screen) by pressing the F11 key on your keypad. This works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. On the Macintosh, press Ctrl-B. Bingo - it's like going to wide-screen TV! You can

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Skype really started something six years ago, when it introduced the world to free phone calls over the internet. Today a huge number of people use either it or many imitators to call friends and family, video conference and the like. It's still not for everybody. Forget it if you don't have broadband or live outside the cities. And New Zealand's slow broadband can make the video part almost a

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Dennis Baron doesn't believe so. The author of "A Better Pencil" explains why he considers such hysterical hand-wringing is as old as communication itself.

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I try out a lot of software, much of which I later uninstall. But the uninstall routines on the PC often leave artifacts behind (bits which the installation has burrowed into your system like tics, and which can cause all sorts of problems later on). This is one area in which the Mackintosh excels, because when you install a program it does not modify the system, so the number of system and

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The days are starting to look numbered for Outlook Express, Microsoft's slimmed-down email client. (Why do they call email programs 'clients'?) It was not added into the Vista suite of programs, and neither is it be in Windows 7. You either buy the full Outlook program, or use one of the many free email clients, like Thunderbird, which is what I use at home. But I still use Express at work,

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Google has added some new features to its Search Options feature, a list of search-refinement features on the left-hand side of search results page that you can choose to turn on or off. They include the ability to filter for blogs, books, or news; and to see only sites you’ve already visited, or only sites you’ve never visited. For me, the most helpful new features are two that allow you to

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Ross, like most buyers of DVDs and CDs, had assumed that a new disc would be clean, but that's not my experience. I've found so many wearing all sorts of laser-confusing lint and micro-grit that I now clean every disc I buy before the first playing. Rented movies are far worse. They're so often pock-marked with scratches and fingerprints it's a wonder they play at all, especially in the

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Email programs like Outlook and Outlook Express have an alert that sounds when new mail arrives. I find that particularly helpful, as I have the program set to automatic download, but I don't have to keep checking while I am working on other things. So how can you get a similar feature if you have a Gmail account? One answer is Gmail Notifier, of which there are two versions. There's a Firefox

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