2005 February

These programs (as picked by PC World) let you lock away files and ensure that your e-mail isn’t intercepted by snoopers.

OuttaSight allows you to hide any application window from your desktop. You can choose to hide it completely or minimize it as an icon to the system tray. The program also includes an auto-hide feature that lets you hide specific windows automatically whenever they appear. Additional features include hotkey operation (Boss Key) to hide selected […]

I don’t travel enough to have the packing routine completely down. My strategy is to grab the smallest bag that I can find and stuff it with as much as I can. Whatever fits in the bag is what I end up using for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately, you can’t fit a lot […]

Janet writes:
With all the security warnings for Internet Explorer, do you have a suggestion on another browser?
The Web browser (used to view sites on the Internet) has been under attack for some time and the biggest target is the one most widely used: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. With the sheer number of daily users running in […]

Last week I featured a worksheet that had been generated by a student. The worksheet was essentially a checklist of things to do on a weekly basis to keep her machine working and clean. Only two items on her list have attracted comments: expunging the history files, and cookies.
Most of us would agree that both […]

Not everyone has a dedicated fax machine in their home or office. XP includes a fax service that provides you with complete faxing capabilities. Using your XP computer, you can send, receive, track, and monitor faxes.
Once you have the fax service installed and configured, you can use your XP based computer to receive faxes. […]

Once you have the Fax service installed and configured, you can begin sending and receiving faxes from your XP computer. You can send a fax directly from a Windows-based program such as Microsoft Word 2002. The process is a relatively simple process as outlined below.
The following steps demonstrate how you can send a fax in […]

Dave, You say Firefox has “elegant built-in RSS capabilities, but I cannot find it in any menu or help. How do I get Firefox to function as an RSS ‘browser’ or aggregator?
While Firefox has built-in RSS capabilities, it’s perhaps too integrated into the browser because I see a lot of these sort of queries in […]

Remember that guy who used his camera phone to make a video of himself having sex with his girlfriend, (and can you imagine the logistics involved?), only to have the video show up in the corner porn shop, and on an Internet auction site?
And the folks who use their camera phones for upskirting and downblousing, […]

Windows is always a hassle to get loading quick on start up. For some reason it throws in a few extra things that are unnecessary for the most part. But what are the things you need, and what are the things you don’t need? Curt Simmons wrote a good article showing you on how to […]

Gary Brolsma obviously didn’t read Aunty’s cautionary tale about the teenager whose home movie of himself having sex with his girlfriend ended up on the Internet.
Or, maybe he did.

It is nice when you see two or three large companies playing nicely to benefit the users. This is the kind of effort I see being put forth when I look at this situation with your AOL buddy lists now being accessible within Microsoft’s Outlook.

“Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird… it’s a plane… no, it’s Superman.”
So went one of the most memorable openings in the golden age of radio, the show being the Adventures of Superman. Starting as a comic book hero in 1939, the man of steel has transcended all forms of entertainment and media. […]

Last night I had a blast with Jake and Chris working the phones on THE CHRIS PIRILLO SHOW - who would have thunk it? Me answering the phones (er - phone) on a something like radio for the Internet show. I still like to call it Better Than Radio because, well… it is. Let’s go […]

If you use Microsoft Outlook, you’ve come to depend on it as one of the most important applications on your system. Is your data safe?
Viruses, worms, trojans, power surges, hard drive failure, and human error are just some of the many ways that you can lose data from your PC. […]

SCARABAY is an easy to use password manager that can store your Web site logins in an encrypted database. It offers a convenient drag and drop approach to enter the username and password into the Web site form. The program includes a built-in password generator, and supports multiple users, each with their own database files. […]

Back in they heyday of the World Wide Web, it seemed like one out of three sites had HTML tutorials, free corny graphics, and other resources for starting Web developers. I know I remember this period of time, and I’m sure you can also recall when every Web page looked like it had been regurgitated […]

Q: Someone told me that it’s possible to accurately pinpoint where someone is in the world just from their computer’s IP address. This seems kind of crazy, but I was wondering if you knew of a way to demonstrate how this is done.

This column started out being addressed primarily to persons tutoring seniors in computer usage, but it has grown a bit in that many on the letters I get are from students who have been surfing for sites and articles dealing with senior issues.
Since neither seniors nor senior issues are well-defined categories, the issues discussed here […]

Not everyone has a dedicated fax machine in their home or office. XP includes a Fax service that provides you with complete faxing capabilities. Using your XP computer, you can send, receive, track, and monitor faxes.
Once you have the Fax service installed, you must configure it before you can start using it. To configure […]