2005 January

Many people know that Picasa just reached the age of 2.0. Let this serve as notice to those who might have missed that or those who felt that it wasn’t a big deal - you’re missing out on a Good Thing.
Picasa wasn’t released as a 2.0 product without changes. Remember - this is Google we’re […]

ID3 renamer enables you to update ID3 tags for an entire folder of MP3 files at once. If your MP3s have tag common information missing, like for example the artist name or the genre, you can use the software to quickly add this information to all of them at once. In addition, the program lets […]

If someone was to put you on the spot and ask you what you thought some of the greatest films of all time were, what would you say? Hopefully “Dude, Where’s My Car?” isn’t your idea of a great cinematic experience. Everyone has their own set of must see movies, and their list is just […]

Patti writes:
I was planning to try working at home doing “paid surveys” online. They are asking me to install several programs that I don’t know anything about. Is it safe?
The Internet has opened up many options for those that want to work from home, but the reality is that there are more scam artists than […]

Here’s a rant I just have to get off my chest before I think about it. In some situations, it is best to capture the emotions before they are intellectualized. I just received an e-mail from a senior requesting some information and a freebie. So I responded to him with what he wanted and hit […]

Dear Gentle Readers,
Have you been helped, amused, or entertained by something which Aunty has written for you?
If so, you can show your appreciation by sending Aunty some flowers!
Yes, your old Aunty just loves flowers, and her good friends over at Flowers Fast have made it super easy! Just visit the Flowers Fast link, which […]

If your Windows XP clients are not retrieving updates from the SUS server on your network, there are a few things you can try to resolve the problem. First, all of the workstations must be running a minimum of service pack 1 for Windows XP (any Windows 2000 clients must be running SP3).
In order […]

A Lockergnome reader recently e-mailed me about a problem he was having with implementing simple passwords in Windows Server 2003. Of course my first response was to ask: “Why use simple passwords?” As it turned out, it was only in a lab environment. The reader indicated that there was no GPO applied at the OU […]

This article, which is Housekeeping 105, will focus on the dreaded folders. I am extremely pleased with folders and hopefully, by the end of this article and the next one, Folders deux, you will be, too.
There are two uses for files and folders. One is to organize all of your information so that most of […]

A couple of weeks ago, Aunty reported to you that Microsoft’s new free anti-spyware came with a price: a verification of whether the version of Windows the user was trying to protect was legitimate, or pirated.
Well, this check was but one aspect of the Microsoft “Windows Genuine Advantage” program, and if you are not […]

In his Windows Secrets newsletter, Brian Livingston discusses the results of an interesting study performed by researcher Eric Howes who runs the Spyware Warrior Web site.
Now that 80% of home PCs in the U.S. are infected with adware and spyware, according to one study, it turns out that nearly every anti-adware application on the market […]

Have you ever wondered why Windows XP never came with an instruction manual? Maybe there is just so much stuff inside it, the folks in Redmond didn’t want to bother with putting it all down on paper. Well the folks at O’Reilly have done that and a little more. The newest member […]

There comes a time in everyone’s life that you just need someone to communicate with. Sometimes that communication can come at a time when you or the person you are relating to is having a hard time. If that is the case, KidsPeace is a great site to know about. KidsPeace is an organization that […]

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Enjoy your favourite mp3 songs from anywhere you roam. All you need is MusicAnywhere and a Web browser. No separate client needed; just a Web browser will do!. Get MusicAnywhere, set it, and GO!
MusicAnywhere lets you listen to your favourite songs located in one computer from any other through the Internet using a Web browser. […]

X-Ray Mail Assistant is a powerful mail processor that can filter, add, change, or replace headers in incoming and/or outgoing e-mail messages.
It works with a set of user-defined rules that allow you to define the header values to be processed, and also perform additional actions like extracting headers to a text file, or importing […]

Want to share and listen to audio files without picking up a six figure lawsuit? Check the great new P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing program from Mercora.com. What separates this program from other free P2P programs like Kazaa is that there is no downloading involved. It uses “Webcasts” to stream audio and behaves more like […]

Believe it or not, I used to be a guitar player in a band. I still play from time to time, but all things related to technology have gulped up my spare time recently. My bandmates and I weren’t trying to become “the next big thing,” but we did have fun just playing cover songs […]

Q: I’m completely new to this whole registry thing, but I would like to get started with making some tweaks in my copy of Windows XP. I’ve seen a bunch of cool things that you can do by modifying the registry keys, but I really need to know how to back up my registry, make […]

Today I will discuss some findings in the last of the three reports I’ve found that relate to seniors and Internet usage. This one is entitled “Prescription Drugs Online” by the Pew/Internet Project. The whole report is available here. This is a recent report (October 2004), so its findings should be reasonably up to […]