Neat Net Tricks Issue #68
December 15, 1999
Sender: owner-neatnettricks@neatnettricks.com

IN THIS ISSUE:

01.  Neat Net Tricks holiday selections
02.  A good look
03.  System Commander Deluxe
04.  AutoSave
05.  Fast route to System Properties
06.  Best Defense
07.  Shortcut to screen saver
08.  MemTurbo
09.  ClipTrakker
10.  Mapping for the New Millenium
11.  A central storage place
12.  Gator
13.  Quick launch bar
14.  Readers write

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01.  NEAT NET TRICKS HOLIDAY SELECTIONS.  To observe this holiday
season and put you in a festive spirit, Neat Net Tricks recommends
the following sites, arranged in no particular order, as representative
of this holiday season on the Internet.  Are these the absolute best of
the year's selections? Not necessarily.  Are there others likely as 
good?  Of course.  As with any list, you may disagree with these, and 
that's OK. Just please don't put a lump of coal in my stocking.

http://prime-fe2.lvcablemodem.com/oldjim/chris1.html
http://www.originallook.com/christmas1.html
http://www.bmts.com/santa/
http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/christmas.html#2
http://www.shastahome.com/christmas/links.htm
http://members.tripod.com/nascarulz/xmasscenes.html
http://www.idir.net/~sunny/index.html
http://www.snopes.simplenet.com/holidays/xmas
http://www.bconnex.net/~mbuchana/realms/christmas
http://www.happychristmas.com
http://www.claus.com

02.  A GOOD LOOK.  DigiCams says it best, from their Web site at
http://www.rocketfx.com/dcpro/dcproindex.html : explore the
exciting world of Internet WebCams with your PC and internet
connection."  Using a 600 camera database, DigiCams Pro lets you
browse the world and view what is happening at this moment.  From
the White House in Washington, traffic in Atlanta, a New Zealand
skyline, and bikinis on the beach to those indoor cams where you'll
never know what you might see.  Try it free or buy for $14.95.

03.  SYSTEM COMMANDER DELUXE may be useful if you're considering 
installing a new OS, as in Win98 overlaid on Win95.  It checks out your
hard drive for the best configuration and then provides step-by-step
installation instructions, protects original OS, eliminates conflicts 
between OS, creates partitions if needed, and restores your system to 
the previous OS if the new OS doesn't work properly.  More details are 
at http://www.v-com.com/products/scd.html .

04.  AUTOSAVE is backup software that automatically saves your files as 
you work on them and creates multiple history versions of changed files.
The backups are sent, as you specify, to network drives, Jaz, Zip, or 
LS120 media, or local drives.  Take a look at 
http://www.v-com.com/products/as.html

05.  FAST ROUTE TO SYSTEM PROPERTIES.  Instead of clicking your way 
through the My Computer icon to get to System Properties, an easier
way is the Windows key + Pause.

06.  BEST DEFENSE.  It would be great if there were no hackers trying 
to access and manipulate our systems, plant viruses, flood our screens
with porn and .. well, it would be great but that's not the real world.
Along comes SOS-Best Defense, described as a "fully customizable
Internet pornography filter and PC Desktop security utility." It creates
a personal firewall, blocks sites, generates a log of sites visited and
browser usage, regulates access, prevents registry editing, searches and
removes viruses, etc. Read about it at http://www.sosbestdefense.com .

07.  SHORTCUT TO SCREENSAVER.  There's no reason you need only one 
screen saver if you like others, or that you have to wait until a
screen saver activates on the prescribed idle time you've set.  Create
a shortcut to any screen saver by Using Windows Explorer to the windows\
system folder, then, right click on the desired screen saver file with a
file extension .scr and drag it off to your desktop.  Release the mouse
button and in the resulting window, click on Create Shortcut Here. Now,
double clicking on the newly-created shortcut will activate the screen
saver whenever you desire.

08.  MEMTURBO.  Let's see, this description may be a bit too tekkie for
some readers, but, briefly, MemTurbo at http://www.memturbo.com is a 
little piece of software that resides unobtrusively in your tray and 
professes to defrag physical RAM on demand or at timed intervals to more
closely match virtual memory with the layout of physical memory.  It 
attempts to reclaim RAM from the operating system and applications to 
avoid costly swap file access and paging in order to decrease load time
and improve application performance.  It claims to recover memory leaks
to increase the amount of available physical and virtual memory.  To 
free RAM, it flushes unused DLL and libraries from the system paging 
file.  It allows advanced users to tune cache sizes, and it can recover
RAM automatically when a set low alarm level is reached.  Try free, 
buy for $19.95.

09.  CLIPTRAKKER.  I like this one!  One of the great Windows puzzles 
is that the Clipboard works fine with copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V)
but only stores the last item you put there.  ClipTrakker gets around 
that limitation by copying a snapshot of each image you've saved to 
Clipboard, creating a thumbnail page of that image, and then storing it
in a history file, ready for display and simply a drag-and-drop to 
wherever you want to place the material.  Give it a free test run at 
http://www.ClipTrakker.com or spring for $25 for a very useful tool.

10.  MAPPING FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM.  That's the slogan for Precision
Mapping, and their Streets and Traveler combo package is not your 
ordinary map-maker and direction-getter. True, you can do the usual
searching and trip calculation; but there are customization features
you wouldn't believe.  Mark your place on a map with pushpins; create,
add, and edit new streets; and draw and overlay objects.  And, if your
vehicle has a GPS receiver, Traveler will connect and update your data
to allow you to follow your vehicle along the road.  See more at 
http://www.chicagomap.com/Products~.htm .

11.  A CENTRAL STORAGE PLACE.  Yodlee at http://www.yodlee.com allows
you to place all your sites under one roof and access them with one 
account number and password.  This is particularly useful if you have
a hard time remembering all your account names and passwords (don't we
all?)  Yodlee offers a wide range of categories, such as auctions,
financial sites, bills, calendars, address books, credit cards, email
accounts, investments, travel reservations, etc.  Not every site is 
supported but if you find one you need, there's a feature to recommend
its addition.  And, a nice feature indeed, it's free.

12.  GATOR. This little pop-up utility has been around for quite some 
time, but if you haven't checked it out, download it at 
http://www.gator.com .  It's a small file and installs easily, then 
after entering some standard stuff such as your email address, snail 
mail address, telephone numbers, credit card numbers (if you wish) and 
so on, Gator resides in your taskbar and springs to life whenever you 
need to fill out forms with repetitious data such as user names, 
passwords, account numbers, whatever you have had to enter before.  
Now if you're squeamish about entering sensitive data, rest assured 
that Gator information resides only on your hard drive, and you can 
even password Gator if your computer is used by more than one.  This 
is a real time-saver and is free.  Caveat: in the interests of fair
reporting, I must add that Gator works fine for me on Netscape 4.5 in
Windows 95.  With the same browser and Windows 98, it has frankly
bombed and succeeds in crashing my system so consistently that I often
must do a cold reboot.  Gator's tech support has kindly suggested that
they haven't heard of similar problems.  Others have told me of like
dissatisfaction.  So, there you have it.  Your results may vary, and
for me, it's been a love-hate relationship.  Gator is a delight on my
Windows 95, absolutely disgusting on Windows 98.  Go figure.

13.  QUICK LAUNCH BAR.  Windows 98 provides a Quick Launch section in 
the taskbar that is more efficient (with just one click and no need 
to minimize) than having the shortcut icon displayed on your desktop.
You'll recognize the Quick Launch area because it will likely have 
icons there for Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Show Desktop, and
View Channels.  To place an often-used program in this Quick Launch 
area, browse in Windows Explorer to the shortcut (or create a shortcut)
and then, right-clicking on the shortcut, drag it to the Quick Launch
area until a big black "I" appears, release it, and choose Create 
Shortcut(s) Here from the popup window.  Or, you can simply drag 
shortcut icons from your desktop to the Quick Launch area, and delete
any you no longer wish to keep with a right click and select Delete.

14.  READERS WRITE.  For a full mail box, I need only include in each 
issue a URL that isn't working.  Some of the mail is quite interesting.
Here's a sampling of recent email:  "Please fix the Internet, mine 
isn't working."  "That link doesn't work, why can't you make sure it 
does before you send out your publication?" "Why are you wasting my time
telling me to go somewhere and I can't get in?"  "I know you have 
probably received this a million times, but did you know that URL 
doesn't work and can you let me know what I'm supposed to do by fast 
return email because I'm waiting?"  And the list goes on.  Maybe I 
should again mention, I'm not in charge of the Internet and have no way 
to fix it.  Every site mentioned in Neat Net Tricks is checked within 48 
prior to publication.  What happens after that is unpredictable: sites
do go down, and little glitches occur (a misplaced or omitted word here
and there, even with the most meticulous efforts to proof).  Rather than
send out 60,000 or so additional email messages with the answer (if, in
fact, I have an answer), the preferred solution is a comment on the NNT 
Web site at http://www.NeatNetTricks.com on the "What's New" page.) And,
if you figure out how to "fix the Internet" let me know, will you?

Another reader writes "with the recent over-abundance of trojans and 
virus warnings, worth mentioning is http://split.netset.com/hackfix ."
It is, indeed.  It's a real education.  In visiting this nonprofit
site, totally devoid of advertising, you'll find how to determine if
you've been infected, what do to about it, and you can even sign up 
for email notification to stay updated on these little creatures.

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Copyright 1999 by Jack Teems.  All rights reserved.
