Neat Net Tricks Issue #58
July 15, 1999

Sender: owner-neatnettricks@neatnettricks.com 

IN THIS ISSUE:

01.  Pirates should be made to walk the plank
02.  Bookmark backups
03.  Printers and power strips don't mix
04.  Another slant at EMail
05.  WebPosition Gold
06.  Faster printing by despooling
07.  Keeping up with the Joneses
08.  Online courses
09.  The new shape of sound
10.  The security blanket
11.  Shedding a little light on the subject
12.  And the winner is
13.  BullsEye hits the target
14.  A new feature

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01.  PIRATES SHOULD BE MADE TO WALK THE PLANK.
  I read a survey recently reporting that 231 million of the 615
million business software applications installed in 1998 were 
pirated.  This resulted in a loss of $11 billion in revenue 
worldwide. Of course, we all know that software piracy is a 
criminal act.  Im concerned, as we all should be, that piracy 
serves as a disincentive toward producing new and better 
software and supporting what is already on the market with 
better upgrades.  We can all write a lengthy list of bad 
software that needs improvement and the free marketplace, with 
competition, can "build a better mousetrap;" but, without 
financial reward, theres no incentive for software authors to 
do that. The word from here is: pay the price, dont pirate.

02.  BOOKMARK BACKUPS.
  I often hear wailing and the gnashing of teeth from those 
unfortunate souls who have lost their bookmarks (called 
"favorites" in MS Internet Explorer lingo.)  A little time 
backing them up against disaster makes as much sense as backing 
up a hard drive. Youll be glad you did.  With Netscape 
Navigator, simply copy the bookmark.htm file onto a floppy.  
Youll find that file in your browser path.  Or, another way is 
with CTRL+B to open bookmarks, then Select file|Save and save 
it to your floppy.  With Internet Explorer 4.0, go to 
Favorites|Organize Favorites, select all with CTRL+A, right 
click on one of them, select Send to and save them to 
your floppy.

03.  PRINTERS AND POWER STRIPS DONT MIX.
  Some printers, maybe yours, need a trickle of electricity 
even after they are turned off by their power switch.  After 
turn off, the printer may need to go through a "parking" 
process to place the heads in proper position to prevent drying 
out and clogging. If you turn your printer off through a power 
strip, the heads may not park properly.

04.  ANOTHER SLANT AT EMAIL.
  I occasionally have a need to broadcast some material to a 
much smaller list than the Neat Net Tricks database and, in the 
past, I have used Eudora's address list to send this stuff out.
Not to detract from Eudora's features, I examined a package 
called E-Mail Workshop and found some very nice features.  It 
has the usual tools you might expect for editing, such as 
spell-check (eleven international dictionaries) and 
font/character conventions.  Set-up and importing of existing 
address lists are simple.  Address list management deserves 
special recognition.  E-Mail Workshop will subscribe and 
unsubscribe addresses just like the big automated list servers 
and it processes bounces (undelivered mail,) something my 
majordomo doesn't do.  It generates reports of message traffic 
and maintains a log of problems encountered, even provides 
timed message delivery and it guards against abuse (spamming) 
by testing the validity of the "from" address before 
broadcasting the mail.  E-Mail Workshop sells for $89 but you 
can try it for free at

http://www.emailworkshop.com .

05.  WEBPOSITION GOLD
  What's the point of having a Web site on line if you don't 
generate any traffic? WebPosition Gold has seven components 
that take the monotonous, repetitive work out of marketing a 
Web site. Use Reporter to see how highly pages are ranked in 
the search engines for each keyword you are targeting. Generate 
custom-designed pages that target keywords and phrases that 
apply to the Web site's content with Page Generator. Analyze 
the design and keyword usage of existing pages using Page 
Critic. Use the Upload Manager to upload changed pages to the 
site. Use Submitter to submit the Web site to major search 
engines. Traffic Analyzer reports the traffic to each page on 
the site as well as what key words were used to find the page. 
Set a day and time for automatic submission and tracking 
routines using Scheduler.  Clear, detailed reports and 
instructions are provided along the way.  The Standard Edition 
supports up to five Web sites for $149 and the Professional 
Edition for $349 is the way to go if you are a consultant or 
Webmaster for many domains.  A free trial download is available 
at http://www.webposition.com .  This package is a must-have 
for the serious Web designer. 

06.  FASTER PRINTING BY DESPOOLING.
  Most prefer the spooling features of a printer; that is, a 
print job is dumped to the printer and you can continue to 
other computer work.  But, worth a try if you would like to 
speed up the printer's reaction is to direct it not to spool 
but rather send the print order direct to the printer.  To do 
this, right click on your printer icon from 
Start|Settings|Printer, then choose the Details tab and Spool 
Settings, x the option to "Print directly to the printer" and 
back out with OK.

07.  KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES.
  At http://www.hamrick.com/names/ enter a surname and the 
database will consult 50,000 names on file by state and display 
the frequency with which that surname is distributed in each 
U.S. state with color coding, according to the 1990 Census.

08.  ONLINE COURSES.
  The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) offers 
five self-paced online courses at http://www.aarp.org/ei Choose 
from Web and browser basics, introduction to EMail, finding 
information, multimedia on the Web, and personal Web page 
design.  If you're fairly new to computers and the Internet, 
this material should be of value to you, and you don't even 
have to be retired!

09.  THE NEW SHAPE OF SOUND.
  That's how Benwin describes its flat panel speakers and they 
graciously sent me a set to try out. The BW2000 system features 
small speakers that are just 7 mm in thickness and a woofer 
unit that occupies much less space than most. The flat-panel 
speaker is said to be an improvement over conventional speakers 
because the sound is spread more evenly in a 360-degree radius. 
The sound was quite good and this system or its more powerful 
big brothers should appeal to you, particularly if your work 
space is at a premium. I'll stay with my higher power subwoofer 
system for more depth and wall-rattling, but at just $99 
Benwin's system is worth a look at http://www.benwin.com .

10.  THE SECURITY BLANKET.
  I'm convinced we computerists value our privacy and I stirred 
a hornet's nest with item 08, Issue # 56, in discussing ways to 
remove the Netscape history file and thereby eliminate the 
trail of where we've surfed.  

One reader suggested going to Edit|Preferences|Navigator and 
setting "0" in the "pages in history to expire after ___ days."
This would eliminate the trail of visited sites from the 
about:global command, but does not eliminate the information 
from the Location drop-down list in the browser.  

Another reader commented that all these techniques would only 
hide your tracks from "a net-nave mom" and data recovery tools 
can unerase the deleted files.  He suggested a scrubber 
application to zero out a disk's free space; or, if NSA-level 
security is needed, burn the hard drive (said with an 
emoticon wink.)

Maybe it would just be easier to lock the door to the 
computer room.

11.  SHEDDING A LITTLE LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT.
  My eyes hurt after a few hours at the keyboard so I was 
anxious to try out the Eclipse Computer Light which 
conveniently mounts on or above the monitor.  Unlike most other 
lights that seem to cast a glare no matter where you stick the 
darned things, the Eclipse has indirect lighting.  In other 
words, it reflects its light from a 10,000-hour flourescent 
bulb to a mirror and then onto your keyboard and work area.  
The Eclipse retails for $59.95 and you can get a better look at 
http://www.computerlight.com .

12.  AND THE WINNER IS.
  I'm beginning to feel we're running a contest to find the 
most useful purpose for that Windows key (the one between Ctrl 
and Alt on later keyboards.)  OK, I believe we'll end it right 
now with what Jason Brunette and I declare the most useful 
WinKey command. Jason points out that WinKey + M is all well 
and good to minimize open windows but it still leaves dialog 
windows like Control Panel open (if, of course, they are open 
to begin with) and once minimized, WinKey + M does nothing to 
restore the applications to original size.  But WinKey + D aha, 
a different story!  That combination minimizes all open windows,
hides dialog windows as well, and takes you right down to the 
nitty gritty of the desktop.  Not only that, but WinKey + D is 
a toggle so that with another touch it restores the 
applications and dialog boxes to their original place on your 
desktop. But, alas, this is a Win 98 convention and doesn't 
work on Win 95.

So, Jason is our grand prize winner.  What did he win?  Well, a 
free subscription to Neat Net Tricks, of course.  We run a 
low-budget operation here :-)

13.  BULLS EYE HITS THE TARGET.
  IntelliSeek provides a means to intelligently search, manage, 
and track information on the Web with its BullsEye and BullsEye 
Pro at http://www.intelliseek.com .  The task is an enormous 
one, says IntelliSeek, because the Web consists of over 350 
million visible pages along with an "invisible" Web of hundreds 
of searchable databases and archives.  BullsEye provides a 
means to quickly check out over 450 Web sources with 11 
intelligent agents. It analyzes ranked results by eliminating 
dead and duplicate links, provides search aids such as spell 
checker and thesaurus, filters, clustering, summaries, keyword 
highlighting, organization of bookmarks, drag and drop 
searches, reports, and the list is seemingly endless and 
certainly can't be described in this small space.  The BullsEye 
retails for $49 while its big brother, the BullsEye Pro, sells 
for $149, but you can try it free for 30 days.  

14.  A NEW FEATURE.
  Beginning in September, a Tip of the Week will be offered as 
an additional feature on the Neat Net Tricks Web site.  Each 
tip will be exclusively sponsored by one advertiser whose 
message will be prominently displayed in "interest-grabbing" 
graphics not otherwise available in a text-only Ezine such as 
Neat Net Tricks.  

If you have a product or service you would like to bring to 
the attention of the Neat Net Tricks' readership, perhaps you 
would be interested in sponsoring the Tip of the Week page?  
For details, EMail mailto:jteems@neattricks.com .

And stay tuned for still another way to get Neat Net Tricks: 
twice monthly in this EMail, once monthly in the feature 
appearing in Yahoo! Internet Life, and soon, once weekly in Tip 
of the Week on the Neat Net Tricks Web site.

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Copyright 1999 by Jack Teems.  All rights reserved.
