1.0 Wallowing In Words Won't Cause Taphephobia
2.0 Add Control Panel To The Start Menu
3.0 WebShop 109: More Ways To Wreck A Webpage
4.0 Book: Guide To Scanning Photographs
5.0 It's A Bird, It's A Plane. No, It's USBMan!
6.0 Real-Time Domestic Flight Status Online
7.0 Jigsaw Puzzle: Anna Kournikova's Super Serve
8.0 See Your Photos In A Slide-Show Screensaver
9.0 Humor: Today In The Stock Market
10.0 Subscribe/Unsubscribe/Suggest/Search/Etc.
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1.0 WALLOWING IN WORDS WON'T CAUSE TAPHEPHOBIA
Everyone likes to try on new words for size. Fresh from religious ed, a fourth-grade Romeo dressed up the mash note to his Juliet with a word borrowed from the Bible. "I will be your Valentine," he promised, "if you will be my concubine."
MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE DICTIONARY. If you too like words but don't want to be famed for malaprops, there are two online resources you should know about. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus has definitions, pronunciations, usages, derivations, and related words, as you would expect. It also has other features calculated to delight word lovers, including word games, past transcripts of Word to the Wise, and Word of the Day.
CANDY FOR WORD LOVERS. Word to the Wise airs daily on National Public Radio Stations. This two-minute show explores the English language, tells stories, and debunks myths. Word of the Day, which is available by email subscription and online, defines, explains, exemplifies, and illustrates a different word each day. Last week's words: oaf, infantilize, taphephobia, prescience, distrait, hortative, and voracity. How many can you use in a sentence?
A.WORD.A.DAY. Similar to M-W's feature is this delightful website for linguaphiles, which also emails a vocabulary word and its definition to subscribers each day. AWAD includes pronunciation audio clips, quotations, and other interesting tidbits about its words, which are reflect a weekly theme. This week's theme: Words that contain the vowels aeiou once and only once.
INDUSTRIOUS WORDSMITH. AWAD is the work of Anu Garg, who also produces the Internet Anagram Server. For those with email but not web access, Anu also produces dictionary, thesaurus, acronym, and anagram by email. To learn how to use these services, send a blank message with subject "help" to wsmith@wordsmith.org. Anu also hosts a lively discussion board forum with a half-dozen active themes.
P.S. You can access the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and others, from the FREE Look-Up Center at Installations Plus+.
P.P.S. Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.
Merriam-Webster Online
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21mw
A Word A Day
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21awad
The FREE Look-Up Center at Installations Plus+
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21lookup
2.0 ADD CONTROL PANEL TO THE START MENU
Microsoft finally made Control Panel more accessible in Windows ME and Windows 2000. But that's no help to the majority of us, who use Windows 95/98. Fortunately, there's a neat trick that adds Control Panel to the Windows Start Menu.
JUST COPY. Copy the line below, starting with the "C" in Control Panel and ending with the right- hand curly bracket. (Highlight the line with your mouse, then copy it by pressing CTRL+C.)
Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069- A2DD-08002B30309D}
AND PASTE. Now right-click on the Start button and select Open. Right-click on the background of the window that opened (not on an icon) and select New, then Folder. Right-click on the new folder, select Rename. Use CTRL+V to paste the line you copied above, making it the folder's name. Press enter and close the window.
(If you read the PC News Digest in Outlook Express, you'll need to work around its problem with "special characters" -- the curly brackets. Copy the line above and paste it into a text editor like Notepad. Then copy it from Notepad and paste it into the name of the new folder.)
YOU'RE DONE. Now when you press Start, Control Panel is on the Menu. Selecting it provides a cascading submenu of its applets (little applications). Each can now be used without the bother of opening Control Panel to get access, and closing it when you're done.
P.S. When a program adds an applet to Control Panel, it'll automatically appear in your Start Menu listing.
3.0 WEBSHOP 109: MORE WAYS TO WRECK A WEBPAGE
We like our designers rare, and our webpages well- done. For those who don't, we offer this sequel to our popular "10 Ways to Wreck a Webpage" article (with thanks to Jim Wilson at jimworld.com).
CRIPPLE THE COPY WITH A SLOW COUNTER. Here's a trick that overcomes fast T1 servers and broadband Internet connections. Bury an off-site, slow- loading hit counter in the HTML table that holds most of your copy. The result: nothing displays until the pokey counter updates. Want to escalate the boredom? Surround the counter with link- exchange ads fed from faraway servers.
KILL THE CONTRAST. Remember sleeping under the stars at summer camp? Share your natural enthusiasm on your webpages. Design them with dark text on a darker background. It'll be like reading under the covers with a flashlight after curfew. Makes your visitors drift quietly away.
UNNECESSARY PERSONAL QUESTIONS. Want to fend off visitors, and get them fuming? Offer a free service -- newsletter, software, greeting card -- but require unnecessary private information. You need just an email address, but you can ask for name, mailing address, age, gender, marital status, race, religion, etc. Actually, you can do this whenever you make a form, even an order form. After all, who wants visitors that turn into time- consuming customers?
PARADE YOUR PARANOIA. Your webpages are perfect, of course, and every other designer wants to steal them. If they could, they'd hijack your code by using the right-click context menu to "show source." But you've outwitted them by disabling the menu with a clever script (which also triggers an insulting anti-theft message). Too bad your regular visitors use the context menu to bookmark your page, print it, reload it, and navigate forward and back. But who has time to worry about visitors when you're busy fighting poachers?
HAVE IT YOUR WAY. The artistry of your pages is complete. It's imperative that your visitors be overwhelmed by your vision. Write a script that forces your site to occupy the full screen sans status bar, toolbars, menus, URL window, and history. That's purity! Fewer than one in a hundred visitors will know how to escape without crashing their PC. Want to really anger your captive audience? Write sloppy site navigation.
SAYONARA. Parting is such sweet sorrow. When your visitor tries to leave your site, sock him with a swift pop-up window or two. Even better, make a new window open for each one closed. It's like a fun game of whack-a-mole! Shucks, nothing keeps 'em coming back like a profusion of animated ads. There's success in them there slogans.
10 Ways to Wreck a Webpage
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21webwreck
WEBSITES FOR AUTOMOTIVE EQUIPMENT DEALERS.
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
http://www.njlifts.com/
Call 1-212-567-3705 mailto:info@servenet.com
4.0 BOOK: GUIDE TO SCANNING PHOTOGRAPHS
Your next camera will probably be a digital, but in the meantime, you have prints by the shoebox you'd like to turn into electronic images. Rob Sheppard's new book, Basic Scanning Guide for Photographers and Other Creative People, tells you how to do it.
 Rob, the editor of PCPhoto and Outdoor Photography magazines, explains how scanners work and recommends suitable hardware and software. He discusses scanning techniques, image formats (TIFF, JPEG, and EPS), and storage requirements.
The book includes tips on editing scanned images, preparing them for the web, and achieving high- quality results. It's aimed at professionals and enthusiasts strong on photography, but new to scanners.
Rob Sheppard's Basic Scanning Guide from Amherst Media (November 2000), is on the shelves at your local bookstore, and on sale here from Amazon.com at $14.36, a saving of $3.59 (20%).
Basic Scanning Guide...
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21scanbook
9.0 FEATURED FORUM: GENEAOLOGY ON LONG ISLAND
If you come from Long Island and you're interested in genealogy, check out the Forum sponsored by the Oyster Bay Historical Society.
The Oyster Bay Historical Society -- where genealogy is the better part of history.
5.0 IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE. NO, IT'S USBMAN!
Until the mid-90s, PCs were endowed with two communication or serial ports, one typically used for the mouse, the other for the modem. Adding a third serial device, such as a camera or organizer, often required the ministrations of a hardware contortionist cum software wizard.
USB ANTIQUATES SERIAL PORTS. All that changed with the 1997 debut of the Universal Serial Bus (USB), which was widely adopted (and standardized) a few years later. Faster than the original serial ports, it permits up to 127 devices to be connected simultaneously, and supports on-the-fly plug and play. Today, most new scanners, printers, mice, modems, cameras, and storage devices connect quickly and easily via USB.
JEFFREY ROBERTS IS USBMAN. Although inherently trouble-free, USB can be vexatious at times. That's when the call goes out for USBMan, aka Jeffrey Roberts, whose eponymously-named website is devoted to USB products and problems.
INFORMATION, TROUBLE-SHOOTING. USBMan explains USB, has operating system-specific guides, drivers, patches, and manufacturer's contact information. You can chat with USBMan live on Saturday nights from 8:00-10:00 PM EST, or take part in the Q&A Forum he hosts with help from volunteers. USBMan's problem guide is rich in tips, tricks, and resources.
PRODUCT INFORMATION. Even if you don't have a USB problem, the USBMan site is still worth visiting. It's rich in product news, reviews, and editorial opinions backed by hands-on experience from Roberts' active test lab and development center.
P.S. Don't be fooled by the mask. USBMan is much more than just another clever cartoon character.
USBMan
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21usbman
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+.
6.0 REAL-TIME DOMESTIC FLIGHT STATUS ONLINE
If you get a kick out of going to the airport to watch the planes take off, maybe this tip isn't for you. But if you'd rather die in Philadelphia than spend an extra minute at the airport, FlightArrivals.com is just the ticket.
SEARCHABLE FLIGHT STATUS. FlightArrivals.com has searchable real-time arrival and departure information for all commercial airline flights in the United States and Canada. Flight status information is updated every four minutes and can be determined even if you don't know the flight number. You can search by city, airport, airline, and time window.
AIRPORT DELAYS TOO. Flight status from actual take off (wheels up) to landing (wheels down) includes time and distance to destination, and whether it's ontime or late. It's supplemented by general delay information for the 40 major U.S. airports.
PLUS SCHEDULE CHANGES. Also available are schedule changes by airline and airport. If you specify just the airport, you'll get changes within a 2-hour window from 30 minutes ago to 90 minutes hence. If you specify airline and airport, you'll get a 6-hour window opened 2 hours ago.
FlightArrivals.com is a clean, quiet, speedy site that's easy to navigate and focused on service. No pretentiousness here, just good database management, intelligently presented. Do we dare hope it stays that way?
FlightArrivals.com
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21flight
JOGGING -- JOYS AND MYTHS
Jogging would be good for your spirits even if it weren't good for you physiologically. And it doesn't take much in the way of equipment or training to enjoy this sport which will help you enjoy life.
Read this popular introduction to jogging by longtime runner (and PC News Digest editor) Lou Bruno.
7.0 JIGSAW PUZZLE: ANNA KOURNIKOVA'S SUPER SERVE
Solve this week's puzzle of 35 rotated pieces to see Russian tennis phenom Anna Kournikova making a super serve during the 1999 French Open at Roland Garros. We used Tibo Software's Jigs@w Puzzle program to make the puzzle, which downloads in 42 seconds at 56.6 kb, and plays in 10-20 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).
Kournikova Puzzle
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21anna
Roland Garros
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21garros
Jigs@w Puzzle
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21tibo
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+
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21lookup
8.0 SEE YOUR PHOTOS IN A SLIDE-SHOW SCREENSAVER
Gianpaolo Bottin is a gifted amateur photographer living in Turin, Italy. He makes a living developing industrial automation software in Visual C++. When Gianpaolo couldn't find an acceptable program to display his photos in a slide-show screensaver, he wrote one himself. It's the winner of this week's Best Choice Award.
SLIDE-SHOW SCREENSAVER HAS MANY OPTIONS.  gPhotoShow is a small, efficient program for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 with many options. You tell it which folder(s) contains your images in BMP, JPG, or GIF formats, and it will stretch or shrink them to fit your screen. You can choose random or serial presentation, select the transition speed and delay between images, and set the keys that control the show.
Among the other options, the most fun is the one that lets you play your favorite music -- in almost any popular format -- while viewing your photos.
SPECTACULAR LANDSCAPE PHOTOS TOO. If you're not interested in Gianpaolo's FREE screensaver software, visit his website anyway. His landscape photos are spectacular, and available for download. Make sure you check his reflecting images combining clever Java programming with professional quality reflecting pool images.
gPhotoShow
http://servenet.com/go/to.cgi?l=21photoshow
9.0 HUMOR: TODAY IN THE STOCK MARKET
Helium was up, feathers were down.
Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.
Knives were up sharply.
Cow steered into a bull market.
Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing.
Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Light switches were off.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom.
Diapers remain unchanged.
Shipping lines stayed at an even keel.
The market for raisins dried up.
Coca Cola fizzled.
Caterpillar stock inched up a bit.
Sun peaked at midday.
Balloon prices were inflated.
Scott Tissue touched a new bottom.
And batteries exploded in an attempt to recharge the market.
HEAVY SMOKER? WANT TO QUIT? HERE'S HOW!
No cost, no gimmicks, no drugs. Just a proven behavioral method that helps the heavy smoker quit and not want to smoke again. Written by an ex-smoker and based on sound psychophysiological principles, How to Stop Smoking is a WannaLearn.com Selected Instructional Site.
10.0 SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE/SUGGEST/SEARCH/ETC.
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