Neat Net Tricks Issue #81
July 1, 2000 
http://www.NeatNetTricks.com 
Reply-To: NNT@silver.lyris.net

IN THIS ISSUE:

01.  System information
02.  What did your neighbor pay?
03.  A useful freebie
04.  But what if you're dead already?
05.  Waste Whacker
06.  Downloading delight
07.  An oldie revisited
08.  Virtual sketch pad
09.  Designs on another editor
10.  Expiring address
11.  Real JukeBox
12.  Search Engine Showdown
13.  Neat Net Nifty

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01.  SYSTEM INFORMATION.  There's a wide assortment of information
available in Windows 98 at Programs|Accessories|System Tools|System
Information.  You'll find more than you'll need to know and much more
than the average bear will understand within the hardware, components,
and software environment.  If you're having problems with your 
computer, go down the list under components to Problem Devices.  Even 
if you don't know what all this stuff means, it's a handy one-stop 
location to get the information you may need for a tekkie to help you 
out.

02.  WHAT DID YOUR NEIGHBOR PAY?  At http://www.domania.com enter
your address and, if you're in the 21 million archived U.S. home sales
since 1987, you can find the last selling price of your house or all
that have sold on your street or neighborhood.  If you don't get 
results with this one, your area may not have been archived or your 
address may be listed differently (drive, street, avenue, etc.)

03.  A USEFUL FREEBIE.  At http://www.myinternetdesktop.com you get
100 mb of free storage space, a calendar, address book, calculator,
email manager, centralized and shared bookmarks, phone message manager,
and over a half dozen other features planned soon.

04.  BUT WHAT IF YOU'RE DEAD ALREADY?  That's the hazards of checking
out your life expectancy online.  But perhaps you'll find there's
still life in the body as you answer the standard health questions at
http://northwesternmutual.com/games/longevity/ .  A nice touch is the
age that is displayed prominently as you go through the quiz about
your weight, height, cholesterol, blood pressure, exercise, driving
record and other factors that affect your longevity - or lack thereof.

05.  WASTE WHACKER.  In exploring your hard drive, would you hesitate
in deleting mscreate.dir, winmail.dat, detlog, or smime files?  The on-
line help contained in Waste Whacker is useful in defining what all 
this stuff is, and it's a nice little utility to clean up some unwanted
files.  It then allows you to recycle unwanted files, or delete or 
archive them, as you wish. Download it at http://dbytes.com/wastew.html
and run it in your startup group or manually, for a leaner meaner 
machine.

06.  DOWNLOADING DELIGHT.  If you've never tried Go!Zilla you should. It
allows you to schedule downloads, finds the fastest site for your
download, categorizes files with easy drag-and-drop, sets download 
filters and throttles, resumes interrupted downloads, and simply handles 
downloads more efficiently.  A real delight at http://www.gozilla.com .

07.  AN OLDIE REVISITED.  There are lots of places on the Web to define
puzzling terminology, but the site at http://www.whatis.com is worth
repeating.  It claims to define every Internet term and every file in
the world, even shows the 20 most frequently queried terms so you can 
be very current in your search for knowledge.  And if that's not enough
they will add you to their email for a regular dose of intelligence.

08.  VIRTUAL SKETCH PAD.  Doodle, draw (but like the old "Etch-A-Sketch"
how do you keep those darned lines straight?) and leave a message at
http://www.virtualdrawing.com . Then, email it to a friend who can see 
your work of art with a couple of clicks.  This isn't high-tech but an 
interesting diversion that's better than strumming fingers to kill time.

09.  DESIGNS ON ANOTHER EDITOR.  David Vanderschel responded to a recent
item about a free HTML editor and recommended lst Page 2000, a 5.2 mb
download at http://www.evrsoft.com/ .  I haven't had a chance to look
closely, but the contents of this bundled package sound impressive:
Lots of HTML and Perl scripts, DHTML scripts, and Javascripts. And
what's not to like about free?  The site boasts no charge, now or ever,
and that has a very nice design to it.

10.  EXPIRING ADDRESS.  For one more way to avoid spam, you can set up
a temporary address at http://www.mailexpire.com .  Your mail will be
forwarded to you only for the duration you specify, and after that it
dies.  Now this might be handy if you want to post a lot on UseNet 
(newsgroups) or other places that might be rich pickings for the email 
harvesters.  The real problem, of course, is that email you would like 
to receive after the expiration period is, well, a dead letter.
 
11.  REAL JUKEBOX.  RealJukebox Plus allows you to build your own 
digital music library by recording clips off your own CDs or by 
downloading MP3 files off the Internet. When online, RealJukebox  
connects to a vast Internet database and retrieves and saves information
including the CD title, the name of the artist, and the title of each 
track. A graphic equalizer allows audio fine-tuning quality, and you can 
specify lower or higher bitrates in RealAudio, wav or MP3 format.
RealJukebox is compatible with portable digital music players such as 
the Diamond Rio 500 & PMP 300, RCA Lyra, and Creative Labs' NOMAD.   
It's music to your ears at http://www.real.com/ .

12.  SEARCH ENGINE SHOWDOWN.  That's what the site calls itself at
http://searchengineshowdown.com and you can bank on it.  Features of
all the major search engines are compared along with their search
techniques.  The size of each database is important and you'll find
this information as well; however, more meaningful is the performance
report provided of the number of dead links in each.  A database is not
of much value if it's not kept current.

13.  NEAT NET NIFTY.  Real people.  Real answers.  Real time.  Ask your
questions and after a short wait, a real person, aka "Web Wizard" will
answer it live, as in real time, and free, as in no cost.  They even 
follow up the dialogue with an email, showing the entire transcript of 
the exchange.  Now if only some tech support folks were as user
friendly!  It's known as Webhelp, at http://www.webhelp.com .

Neat Net Tricks often pauses to recognize a Web site and recommend your
visit.  Set aside some time to expore the site and enjoy it.  Sites
that are predominantly non-commercial in focus are identified as 
"nifty" when their all-around content, originality, interest, variety,
and graphical presentation have earned this award.  If you'd like to
nominate a nifty site, send the URL to mailto:jteems@neatnettricks.com 
with a breif note telling why you think the site deserves the award.

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Copyright 2000 by Jack Teems.  All rights reserved.
