PC NEWS DIGEST: January 09, 2001 PC computing, hardware, software, searching, news, books, websites, web design, humor. The PC News Digest is published by SERVENET.COM PLEASE NOTE:
WE'RE BACK...Like many of you, we're back at work after enjoying a long holiday week off. We look forward to seeing you here, healthy and happy throughout 2001! Our thanks to the many readers who've been taking the time to vote in our quick polls. Your votes help us produce a newsletter tailored to your needs and interests. Keep on voting, folks, and don't be shy about writing directly with comments and suggestions. They're always welcome!
This week's poll is about your Internet connection. We promise no butterfly ballots and no hanging chad. Go vote! 0.0 Humor: Haiku Error Messages 0.0 HUMOR: HAIKU ERROR MESSAGESThree things are certain: The file you need Windows has crashed. Yesterday it worked. Chaos reigns within. Wind catches lily, With searching comes loss The Web site you seek You step in the stream, No keyboard present. This site has moved. First snow, then silence. Printer not ready. Haiku Error Messages QUICK TRICK: REMOVE BROWSER BRANDINGTo clear the branding (AOL, Compaq, Earthlink) from Internet Explorer, go to Start, select Run, copy the following string, without the quotes, into the field and select OK. Works for most. "rundll32.exe iedkcs32.dll,Clear" THE PC CLINIC AT INSTALLATIONS PLUS+PC PROBLEMS? Help is just a mouse-click away! PC News Digest subscribers get priority treatment at the FREE personal computer clinic at Installations Plus+. The FREE PC Clinic at Installations Plus+ 1.0 UPDATE: FREE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERSIt's not too late to sign up for FREE Internet service, but the picture's changed since we wrote about it on December 12th. Mergers, acquisitions, and outright failures have diminished the number of FREE Internet Service Providers (ISPs). More significantly, the biggest services have begun limiting the number of free access hours. NetZero now limits users to 40 free hours (charging $9.95 per month after that); BlueLight, a K-Mart affiliate, caps usage at 25 hours monthly; and Juno urges customers to pony up $9.95 a month for better service, more reliable connections and fewer ads. Two factors have put pressure on FREE service providers. Funding from venture capital and online advertising has diminished markedly since a year ago, when many free ISPs were just getting started. At the same time, traffic exploded with users staying connected indefinitely instead of as needed. For now, FREE Internet service is still available (100% Free USA ISPs is a good way to find a provider), but don't count on unlimited access or your provider being in business tomorrow. Our advice: Hook up with one of the big three -- NetZero, BlueLight, Juno -- if it's available in your area. Those services might still be on tap tomorrow. Save $20-30 A Month With A Free ISP! NetZero BlueLight Juno 100% Free USA ISPs 2.0 THE MERCK MANUAL NOW ONLINE AND FREEAs a youngster working after school in the local drugstore/soda shoppe, I knew I'd be asked to "Get the Merck" whenever a patient asked the pharmacist for an off-the-record diagnosis. And when a new edition of the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy arrived, there'd be a Greek chorus of supplicants plying Doc S. with offers to take the old one "off your hands." After more than a 100 years in print, The Merck Manual is in its 17th edition and for the first time available online FREE. The original Merck Manual, written for physicians, covers diseases, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. It's available in a searchable text version. The Merck Manual of Medical Information: Home Edition is derived from the original and written in everyday language. This is the one for you and me. It's online in a text version with illustrations, and in a brand new interactive version with illustrations plus photos, videos, animations, and pronunciation. Both versions are FREE, searchable and have detailed tables of contents. The text version works on most PCs. The interactive version needs at minimum Windows 95 with a sound card and SVGA video, Internet Explorer 4.1 or Netscape 4.06, and Real Player G2. Next time you have a medical need to know, look it up in the Merck like Doc S. did. Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy Merck Manual of Medical Information THE LOOK-UP CENTER AT INSTALLATIONS PLUS+Scouring the web for basic information? Find what you need in one place for FREE! The Look-Up Center has telephone numbers by name, by address and reverse. Weather, stock quotes, dictionaries, quotations, package tracking, calories, currency conversion, maps, metric conversions, books, music, and more. The FREE Look-Up Center at Installations Plus+ 3.0 BETTER THAN BOOKMARKS -- POWERMARKSNetscape and Opera call them Bookmarks; Microsoft dubs them Favorites. They're the Internet shortcuts that transport you to web addresses you don't know by heart. Although everyone collects them, no one likes how they're organized. Until now. Powermarks from Kaylon Technologies, Inc. changes how you use and store bookmarks. Getting started is easy. Just import your existing bookmarks from Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera or from files in HTML format. Powermarks checks to see if your bookmarks are current and displays them in a neat searchable table. Adding new ones is easy. You can quickly add them to Powermarks or your browser's list, and synchronize afterward. We like adding to Powermarks and letting the software download the name and keywords to categorize them. Locating a bookmark in your browser's list (or most bookmark managers) is like using a search directory, e.g. Yahoo!. Using Powermarks, which runs in your System Tray, is like using a lightning fast search engine, e.g. Google. A keyword search displays the bookmarks in a table that can be quickly sorted by freshness, rating, or number of visits. Click on a bookmark to visit the page in your default browser. Right-click to use another installed browser. Students and researchers like Powermarks' ability to export a sorted text file of selected bookmarks showing Titles, URLs, and creation dates. Voila: Instant bibliography! Webmasters enjoy its ability to export bookmarks in ready-to-post HTML format. If Powermarks had no additional features, it would still deserve our Best Choice Award. But this small (it fits on a floppy), fast, well-designed program has another feature that endears it to everyone who uses more than one computer. (Powermarks should not be confused with web-based bookmarks files offered by Yahoo! and others. Those are similar to the lists kept by browsers, but they depend on the quality of your Internet connection and the good faith of the host server.) Powermarks is shareware (FREE to try for 30 days; $24.95 to buy). The evaluation copy is fully functional. Licensed users may install as many copies as needed for their own use. Powermarks Yahoo! Bookmarks 4.0 YOUR CLICKS KEEP US FREE: VISIT OUR SPONSORSAmazon.com -- A lot more than books and music! Dell Computer -- Let Dell build a PC for you. eBay -- Auctioning everything imaginable! StoreRunner -- Shop your favorite stores. 5.0 TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR INTERNET COOKIESA cookie is a tiny text file stored on your computer by a website you've visited. Many websites use them to make browsing easier. A cookie can store your site id and password so you don't have to type them each time you visit. However, not all cookies are created equal. Some are used to conduct sub rosa marketing surveys, a practice many find objectionable. You can control cookies proactively by setting your browser to notify you when one is being stored, and to let you refuse it. However, notification and refusal aren't practical for most of us. With many sites setting cookies, some in multiples, notification quickly becomes annoying. And some worthwhile sites require a cookie for access, or to use advanced features. A more practical way to control cookies is with software like WinMag.com's FREE Cookie Viewer. This little program -- another of Karen Kenworthy's Power Toys -- scans your hard drive(s), finds the cookies, and displays their contents. The viewer tells you which site set the cookie (hyperlink provided), the data contents, and when it expires. Don't want to provide data to www.advertising.com? Vote with your mouse: Click on the viewer's Delete button. Wimag.com Cookie Viewer v3.3 6.0 BOOK: GUIDE TO STARTING A BUSINESS ONLINEDon't quit your day job. The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Business Online (published December 1999 by Hungry Minds, Inc.) isn't about getting rich quick. But Jason R. Rich's little (5.26 x 8.21 inch) book will help you learn the skills and avoid the scams associated with Internet startups. This is the perfect book for someone just starting out in e-commerce. It covers businesses that work, business plans, and the nitty gritty of building a website from selecting equipment and software, to marketing and promotion. Jason Rich dishes details and serves up even more in marginal notes. Jason uses in-depth interviews of independent experts to cover selecting an ISP and webhost; website design from software to graphics to building an online store; advertising and marketing. His extensive bibliography of websites alone is worth the price of admission. You can get your copy of this Wall Street Journal bestseller at your favorite bookstore, or buy it here for $12.76 (20% off the cover price). The Unofficial Guide to Starting a Business Online 7.0 WEBSITES FOR AUTOMOTIVE EQUIPMENT DEALERS.
For websites that work -- the WebShop at SERVENET.COM Ready to join the Internet explosion? Let our experts build a website for your real estate related business. Want to see a sample of our work? Check out the site we built for Specialty Automotive Equipment Company, Inc., a New Jersey dealer specializing in Mohawk Lifts. Specialty Automotive Equipment Company The WebShop at SERVENET.COM 8.0 USING ACTIVE DESKTOP TO TRACK NEWS, WEATHERFirst it was the election. Now it's the weather. There's always something to track while you work. (Did someone say sports?) If you use Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 or later, or a version of Windows with IE built in, you can set up Active Desktop to add a mini-browser to your Windows Desktop. Say you want to follow the news on CNN. Right click on the Desktop (not on an icon) and select Properties from the context menu. Select the Web tab and check View my Active Desktop as a web page. Click on the New button and in the New Active Desktop Item dialog box, type the URL (web address) for CNN -- http://www.cnn.com/. Click on OK, and then OK again when the Add Item to Active Desktop dialog appears. The Customize button in that dialog box will allow you to limit the amount of content (skip images, for example) and to determine when the page is updated (synchronized). After the webpage downloads, select Apply from the Display Properties dialog and close it. That's it. A small moveable, resizable window is now displaying the CNN homepage on your Desktop. You can add others, including pages stored locally on your hard drive or office network, as space permits. To add local pages, use the Browse button in the New Active Desktop Item dialog to find and open the file. You can display and resize any webpage (HTM or HTML file) and display but not resize images (JPG or GIF files). Need a personal bulletin board? You can do that too with Active Desktop. Create notes, reminders, to-do lists in most word processors or web authoring tools, and save them as HTM files. Then use Active Desktop to post them. (To delete them, use the Display Properties box that pop ups when you right click on the Desktop.) 9.0 IBM P166MMX THINKPAD NOTEBOOK -- $499Here's the laptop you've been waiting for. Cheap but powerful, the IBM 760XD (9546-U9E) ThinkPad has an Intel Pentium 166 mHz MMX processor with 32 mB of RAM. The refurbished laptop comes with a 3 gB hard drive, 8X CD-ROM, and a 1.44 mB floppy drive. Its 12.1" XGA TFT display is driven by a 2 mB video system. It has an MWave sound card powering built in stereo speakers, and an internal 33.6 kBs fax/data modem. Originally shipped with Windows 95, it is suitable for Windows 98 but has no operating system installed. The price for the item for sale is $499, plus shipping, and tax where applicable. PayPal, M/C, Visa. Limited time offer. U.S. orders only please. The warranty is 90 days except on the battery, which has no warranty. Call 1-212-567-3705 mailto:specials@servenet.com 10.0 WEBMOVIES: REDEFINING HOME THEATERBreak out the pop and the popcorn, webmovies have come to the small PC screen in a big way. Two sites, IFILM and AtomFilms offer large collections of FREE movies ranging from action to sci-fi in shorts from under a minute to just over an hour. Although AtomFilms gets our vote for catchiest slogan -- Get into our shorts -- it loses points for unfriendly navigation and unnecessary use of Flash animation. Both sites have extensive, searchable collections of short films in a variety of categories. Many of the films are experimental, quirky, and contributed by new and hopeful talent. Aspiring film makers take notice! Both sites feature viewer's ratings and reviews, chatty newsletters, and the option to download shorts for delayed viewing. Both require visitors to fill out a registration survey. To enjoy these sites you'll want to arm yourself with the latest FREE versions of the big three in video players: Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and Real Player. Users with slow processors (less than 100 mHz), small amounts of RAM (under 32 mB) and slow Internet connections (under 28 kbs) should pass on webmovies for now, or practice extreme patience. IFILM AtomFilms Windows Media Player QuickTime Player Real Player 11.0 JIGSAW PUZZLE: SNOWSCENE IN COLORADOLynda Lester took the photo we used for this week's puzzle (35 rotated pieces). Exhibited in the SCD Photo Gallery, Geosphere room, it shows a fresh snowfall creating a beautiful winter day in Colorado. We used Tibo Software's Jigs@w Puzzle program to make the puzzle, which downloads in 45 seconds at 56.6 kb and plays in 15-20 minutes on Windows 95 or later PCs. Tip. To rotate a puzzle piece 90 degrees: select, then right-click it. P.S. You can download puzzles from earlier editions of the PC News Digest from our Puzzle Archive. You can also get a list of past puzzles with download links by sending an email to library@pcnewsdigest.com with the subject "send file puzzles" (no quotes). SCD Photo Gallery, Geosphere Snowscene Puzzle Jigs@w Puzzle PC News Digest Puzzle Archive  12.0 WANT TO TALK? WE'VE GOT A FORUM FOR YOU!As a public service, SERVENET.COM hosts and moderates four online forums. You are welcome to participate in any or all of them. * The PC FORUM for help with computer problems. * The REAL ESTATE FORUM for buyers, sellers. * The OYSTER BAY HISTORICAL SOCIETY FORUM. * The SHOP-TALK FORUM for things automotive. 13.0 SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE/SUGGEST/ETC.PAST ISSUES.09/19/2000 09/26/2000 10/03/2000 10/10/2000 10/17/2000 10/24/2000 10/31/2000 11/07/2000 11/14/2000 11/21/2000 11/28/2000 12/05/2000 12/12/2000 12/19/2000 12/26/2000 SUGGESTIONS. Your thoughts about our newsletter and our website are always welcome. Tell us. We're listening! RECOMMEND US. Tell a friend about our website and newsletter. LINK TO US. Written by Louis J. Bruno Edited by Judith Reinfeld ICQ:101670502 AIM:LouisBruno |
You can upload and store Powermark files on Kaylon's servers for FREE, then synchronize the local and remote copies at will. Add bookmarks at work or school, then synchronize them into your home file. At last, one bookmark manager for all browsers and all computers!