2005 November

Santa Chris is comin’ to town again, but this time he’s aimin’ on stayin’ longer than your average Christmas tree. We launched The Chris Pirillo Show almost a year ago and have been broadcasting live on the Internet almost every Thursday night. We’ve certainly uploaded far more than a year’s worth of fantastic MP3s since […]

Your sold, donated or discarded computer could cost you thousands!
Formatting your hard drive DOES NOT erase your data!
Don’t give away your personal information with your old PC. Over the past five years, one in four households was victimized by identity theft. If you do not erase your personal information before selling or donating your computer, […]

ClipTorrent is a handy clipboard utility that allows you to automatically spell check any text that you copy to the clipboard using multiple dictionaries. In addition, the program functions as a clipboard repository that allows you to quickly paste previously copied text snippets. ClipTorrent can also copy file names and paths of selected files in […]

With so many cool services on the Internet requiring that you create an account to use them, it only makes sense that you’ll soon be drowning in passwords if you’re not already doing so. Sure, you could just use the same password for everything, but that’s definitely not the safest way to go. It’s important […]

Jim (aka AsparaGus), wrote to take exception to my preference for Firefox. I invited him to expound on his reasons for the column, and here’s what he offered. He makes some valid points.

I was babbling about the early days, before the Web and search engines. Remember Archie and Gopher servers? And WAIS and Veronica? It was still hard to find what you wanted. The first search engine I came across, I mean the first spider type, was Lycos at CMU. Except back then there was no fancy […]

Have you ever visited a Web site containing information that you want to share with a friend, your family, or your co-workers? In IE, you can send the page or a link to the page via e-mail to someone else.

Many computer users still connect to the Internet using a modem and their telephone line. If someone on your network reports that they cannot establish a dial-up connection, you should first verify that the modem is working correctly. For advanced troubleshooting you can log modem commands to a text file. You can use the information […]

December
The Gregorian calendar we use today was created in the 1580s by Pope Gregory XIII. Start your new year here, and discover the history of the calendar’s development.

Brook says:
“My computer won’t shut down; I have to use the power button. I’m running Windows XP. Please help!”
The Geek replies:
Brook, there are many possible causes for your problem, but the most common one I see on computers like yours is a thing called the �nVidia Driver Helper� service. Neither I, nor my […]

Today’s site is one that just might bring tears to your eyes.
It’s a blog from a brave lady named Sandi who was born with a congenital heart condition. It was treated in her childhood, but she knew then that the treatment wouldn’t last forever.
She made it into her forties when she realized that her heart […]

We love each other. No, I’m not talking about you and me (although I do care about you in a strictly platonic sort of way). It’s the love of my life, Ponzi - I love her. We met a little over two years ago on Match.com, and have been together ever since. Certainly, we’ve already […]

I want you to take a look into my crystal ball. Do you see your future? No. Do you see your past? No. What do you see? You see a freeware program that magnifies things on your screen. Sure, that might not be anything new. The thing […]

Sometimes even the smartest folks do dumb things. As an example, let us take a guy who makes a .zip file of his family photos for backup purposes. Now let us say that same guy put a password on that .zip file so that nobody else could open it but him. Sounds […]

File hosting is one of those hurdles that most of us have to confront from time to time. You could just purchase a hosting plan to resolve the issue, but not everyone is willing to give up some cash in exchange for hosting. We love freebies, and that’s why so many free ad-supported services have […]

Some time ago I did a short article on counters, and recommended amazingcounters.com as one that I’d used personally. Jimmy wrote to tell me about Statcounter.com, which he considers superior. I duly noted that in a followup, commenting that I hadn’t tried it. Well, now I have, and I’m impressed.
During the last several days, Amazing […]

TCP/IP is considered to be a core component of Windows XP. Therefore, you may notice the option to uninstall the protocol is not available (see figure 2). However, there might be extreme cases where the only option you have to resolve an issue is to uninstall the protocol stack.

Creating a new remote access policy does not need to be a difficult task. First of all, Windows Server 2003 includes a wizard that will walk you through the entire process. Second, if you know the settings you want to use in the policy ahead of time, the actual process of creating a policy is […]

If you find yourself using the map drive feature on a regular basis, you may want to add this as an option to your toolbar making it slightly easier to perform the task. To do so, open My Computer, right click the Toolbar, and click Customize (of course, make sure that your Toolbar is not […]

So you are sharing an Internet connection between multiple computers. Once you have enabled ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) on your computer, you must configure the remaining computers to be ICS clients. The process is slightly different if you have workstations running pre-Windows XP platforms. When you use the Network Setup Wizard to enable ICS on […]