Simple Email Backup

Over the years I must have written tens of thousands of words on how to copy, transfer and backup email messages. With Outlook Express backing up the Message Store folder is not too difficult but it’s all the other bits and pieces – account settings, signatures, rules, blocked senders and so on – that make life difficult because they’re all over the place. Now it looks as though I won’t have to go through the rigmarole again.

Presenting Amic Email Backup. It’s a small freeware application that backs up all of the vital files and info in most popular email clients, including OE, Outlook, Eudora, Pegasus, Incredimail, The Bat, Poco, Netscape, to name just a few. It’s really easy to use, you can just select your email program from the list and let it get on with it, or use the Wizard Mode to create scheduled backups. Restoration is just as simple, just select the backup file and all of your email messages and settings will be put back where they belong, or you can use it to transfer everything to a new PC, so now there’s no excuse anymore for not backing up your messages and settings.

17/04/08

Songbird Sings

Is it a media player, is it a web browser? Well yes, Songbird is all those things, and much more, but the best way to find out what it is and what it can do is give it a try. Songbird is currently in the later stages of its beta trials, so don’t forget to backup important data and set a system restore point before you install, but that said it seems very stable as it should be since at its heart there’s large slices of Firefox, and the people who developed it, were also responsible for the classic WinAmp player.

Songbird provides you with access to the media files on your PC, it integrates seamlessly with popular download services and there’s plenty of add-onto to help you manage your iPod and iTunes libraries. You want lyrics or album art? Songbird will track them down, it could be the only combination multimedia player-browser you’ll ever need…

03/04/08

Ticker Tape News for Firefox

I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to the news but I have the radio on throughout the day whilst I’m working and always try to catch the hourly bulletins, but for those of you who need a constant fix of the goings on around the world here’s a great Firefox add-on. It’s called RSS Ticker and the idea is the latest news headlines scroll across the bottom of your browser window, and if something catches your eye, click on it for a summary, or double click to see the whole item.

It works with any website providing RSS feeds but it’s obviously more interesting  with constantly updated news sites, and BBC News is a very good example. It’s easy to install, just download the add-on, restart Firefox, pop along to your favourite news site, click the orange RSS icon, click Yes when it asks to create a bookmark, restart Firefox and away it goes.

17/03/08

Free Up Firefox

If like me you are a Firefox fan you might be interested in trying a ‘Theme’ called miniFox. The idea is it shrinks everything it can, including the Tool, Title bar and menus, as small as they will go, and still remain useable, freeing up more space for web pages. It’s quick and easy to install, and of course, like all of the best things in life, it is absolutely free, and if you don’t like it, just go to Tools > Add Ons and select the Themes tab.

07/01/08

Internet Investigator

Who or what is your computer talking to right now? You may think that just because your web browser or email program is not running your PC is offline. Think again. If you have a broadband connection then the chances are it is constantly chattering away, sending and receiving data. Most of it is innocuous and your Firewall and security programs should block the really bad stuff but there’s a lot of other, sometimes mysterious communications going on in the background, which could be slowing your connection down, or maybe aeven malware sending your personal details to heaven knows where.

Here’s a way to find out what’s going on. Go to Run on the Start menu and type cmd then press OK and this will open a DOS like Command window.

At the flashing cursor type the following: netstat -b 5 > netlog.txt. then press Enter. Give it a couple of minutes then press Ctrl + C to stop logging, then type netlog.txt and a text file will open in Notepad. Check the log and if you see anything suspicious Google the name or enter the IP address in the browser address line.

01/10/07

Simple Firefox Speed Tweak

Over the years I have tried a number of tweaks to speed up the Firefox browser, some of them work quite well, but this has to be the best one yet, and it is really easy. All you have to do is open Firefox’s hidden configuration menu, to do that go to the address bar and type about:config and the settings list opens. Scroll down until you come to Network prefetch-next, and if the entry in the Value column reads ‘True’ right-click on it and select Toggle (or double click) and it will change to false. It’s that easy! You should now see a noticeable increase in speed when you open pages.  

10/09/07

Tasty Way to Search

PC hardware and software companies make no secret of the fact that at or close to the top of their wish lists is a computer that in true Star Trek tradition, doesn’t need a keyboard or mouse and responds to voice commands, Over the years many, many attempts have been made to do just that and nowadays some fancy voice recognition systems can be trained to do a fairly reasonable job.

The day when you can just say what you want into Google or your favourite search engine may not be too far off, and you can give it a try right now, with a free voice recognition application called Tazti (you are supposed to pronounce it ‘tasty’). It’s now undergoing beta testing and you can download and try it right now. It works with most popular web applications, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Wikipedia, ASK, About, You Tube, Flicker, MySpace, Amazon, AOL Video and ebay, as well letting you control many of your PC’s basic commands, and it actually seems to work quite well, if you are patient with it, but don’t throw away your keyboard and mouse just yet…

22/06/07

New Netscape Navigator 9

Remember Netscape Navigator? For a while in the mid 1990s it looked like it would become the standard browser, until Microsoft started bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95. This resulted in a bitter anti-trust lawsuit, which ruled in Netscape’s favour but it was too late and Netscape never recovered. The browser’s core code was released as Open Source software, which resulted in Mozilla Firefox, and the rest is history. But Netscape is back, Navigator Version 9 has been extensively revamped with lots of new features that will appeal to members of Netscape.com, like a Friend’s Activity Bar, Voting toolbar and Sitemail Notifier but there’s other goodies, like tabbed browser windows, a URL checker (corrects misspelt web addresses) News viewer and Link Pad, which lets you save web addresses, without cluttering your Favourites list. It’s free, fast, immune to IE nasties and you can install and use it alongside IE and Firefox, so if you’re an old Netscape fan, or just want to try something new why not give it a road test?

11/06/07 

IE Add-On Adds Functionality

Fans of Internet Explorer, and yes there are still a few of you still using it, may be interested in this little freeware add-on called Bayden IEToys. It’s a suite of tools, accessible from the right-click context menu to make IE more functional. For example let’s say you are trying to read a web page that’s cluttered with images. Simply right-click on the page, click Delete Images, and they’re gone. Another click deletes IE’s History cache, there’s a useful ‘Image Collection’ utility that copies any selected picture to the clipboard, it has a built-in highlighter for text – it also works on printouts, if you see a word or term you are not familiar with highlight it and click Dictionary or Encyclopedia, you can search Google and MSN with a single click, and the list goes on. The download is tiny, just 123kb, and takes only a few seconds to download, so there’s no excuse not to give it a try. 

14/05/07

Faster Smarter Glossary Search

When you want to know the meaning of a word or term what do you do? Most of us reach for Google, or our favourite search engine and chances are you’ll find what you are looking for with a link to Wikipedia or some other on-line reference source. You’ll also get a lot of dross, which you may have to sift through, so why not give this new web service a try? It’s called MetaGlossary, and all it does is look up definitions and meanings of words and phrases, extracting just the important details from a wide range of authoritative sources, and it really works. There’s no fluff or frills, it gets straight to the point and the chances are you’ll find exactly what you are looking for at the top of the first page, without having to click any further.

07/05/07

Free Bandwidth Monitor Looks Ahead

Many broadband users are constrained by usage limits and caps that they exceed at their peril. The penalties, and costs can be fearsome, so it pays to keep an eye on how many bytes are flowing in and out of your PC. NetMeter can do that for you, it’s a sophisticated bandwidth monitor but with some very useful extras. In addition to real-time, daily, weekly and monthly logs it also takes an educated guess at your future traffic levels, handy if you’re getting close to your limits. Needless to say it’s free, and very easy to set up and use

30/04/07

Thunderbird 2 is Go

Most of us use Outlook Express for sending and receiving emails, and most of the time it does the job, but there are alternatives.

One such is Mozilla Thuinderbird, the companion to Mozilla Firefox, arguably the best browser there is, and like Firefox, Thunderbird is free, gratis and for nothing. The big news is that Thunderbird 2, the newest version, has just been launched, and first impressions are that it is even better than its predecessor.

OE users will find it an easy switch, it copies messages accounts and address book data in a trice and the layout and visuals have a very familiar ring to them. But there’s lots of extra features, like the facility to ‘tag’ emails with ‘To Do, ‘Done’ or custom labels. It has browser like forward and back navigation. Improved predictive search makes it easier to find things, and search results are saved so it’s even easier the next time you want something, it has webmail integration, uprated anti-phishing features, better security, a junk mail filter and there are hundreds of add-ons and extensions to improve functionality, so why not give it a try?

23/04/07

POP Mail Preview

Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of MailWasher, which does a bang-up job of filtering the hundreds of Spam messages I receive every day, but here’s a lightweight alternative, called POP3 Preview, a simple little freeware application that lets you examine the contents of you mailbox, and delete the rubbish, before you download anything onto your PC. It’s incredibly easy to configure and use, just create an account – you’ll need your username, password and POP3 Server address, and it’s good to go. Click the Receive button and all of your emails awaiting download are displayed, along with the message body and header, so you can decide which ones to zap. You can also block the sender to stop them sending you any more.

28/03/07

Best Firefox Add-On Ever!

If you like Firefox then you are just going to wet yourself with pleasure with this new Add-On. It’s called Tab Effect but that tells you nothing. In fact what it does is animate open tabs, so when you click to change to another tabbed window the display turns into a 3D cube that rotates to show you the selected tab. It’s brilliant and a major time-waster, if like me, you end up constantly switching tabs just to watch it doing its stuff. The download is tiny, just 38kb, simply click on the Install Now button and it does the rest, you will have to restart Firefox to get it working. If for any reason you don’t like it, or you experience problems simply go to Add-Ons on the Tools menu and click the Uninstall button. Try it now, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

31/01/07

Email & Web Image Resizer

Anyone who has ever received an email from a friend or relative with several megabytes of picture attachments will know that newcomers to the wonderful world of computing and digital photography are often unaware that they need to re-size images before they are sent by email or uploaded to websites. Windows has a picture resizer built into the My Pictures folder options but here’s an even better way, a small freeware program called PIXresizer. The key features are that works with both single and multiple files, it converts between most popular image file formats (.bmp, .gif, .jpg, .png, and .tif), it creates thumbnails and there are multiple resizing methods, to make sure you get the best looking results.

26/01/07

Flocking To A New Browser

If you like Firefox and you are into blogging and social networking then you should definitely check out a new web browser called Flock. It is based on Mozilla Firefox, so there are no nasty surprises and you should be able to use it straight out of the box, but the useful extras are some useful blogging features. These include a built-in editor, photo toolbar, drag and drop pictures and text and so on, and it works with most blog services, including TypePad, WordPress, Moveable Type, Blogger etc, and sites like MySpace, ebay, Flickr and Photobucket

17/01/07

Die Another Day…

This probably sounds a bit mawkish but now might be a good time to think about when you are going to die…

If you still need any prompting to give up fags and alcohol, or loose a bit of weight then just tap your details into The Death Clock and see how long you’ve got to go. Of course the result you get is only an estimate but the principles behind the clock are sound and if your lifestyle is on the risky side then this might just be the nudge you need to stick to those resolutions. I’m definitely going to make the most of my remaining 700 million seconds…

Free Office Suite In Your Browser

As all freebie fans know there’s a perfectly good suite of office applications, called Open Office that’s all yours, free, gratis for the cost of a download. And very good it is too, but here’s something new, a complete office suite that you don’t have to download because it works inside your web browser (Firefox 1.5 or above, to be precise). It’s called ajax 13 and all you have to do is go to the home page and click on the application you want to use. At the moment there’s a choice between ajaxWrite (Word compatible word processor), ajaxSketch (well specified image editor), ajaxXLS (Excel compatible spreadsheet) ajaxPresent (PowerPoint compatible AV presenter) and ajaxTunes (web-based media player).

All of these programs are surprisingly well featured, though obviously not as comprehensive as their Microsoft counterparts, but all of the basic elements and facilities are there, and any one of them could be a boon in an emergency or when using an unfamiliar PC with no office apps installed.

27/12/06

Nicknames for Bookmarks in Firefox

There’s a little known facility in the Firefox browser that lets you assign a keyword or ‘nickname’ to a bookmarked website. To save you looking up the bookmark on the drop-down menu all you have to do is type the nickname into the address box and up pops the page. It’s really easy to do, simply right-click on an entry on the bookmark list and select Properties then in the box that appears type your nickname into the Keyword box and click OK.

Internet Explorer has a similar facility (right-click Favorite and select Properties) but it relies on keyboard shortcuts, which are a lot harder to memorise, especially if you have a lot of them.

29/11/06

Wi-Fi Monitor With Audible Alert, Freeware

Here’s a handy little program for road warriors. It’s called WiFi SiStrfrom a Belgian outfit called Dnsoft -- try saying that with false teeth. Once installed it sits quietly on your wireless laptop’s desktop, monitoring all available wireless connections, displaying signal strength, logging your connection history and warning you with an audible alert when the signal falls below a pre-set threshold. It can also display stats for your best and worst connections, and system settings, so it’s quite handy for troubleshooting. It looks very pretty too and the display is highly customisable.

06/10/06

Activate Outlook Express Troubleshooter

Deep inside Outlook Express there’s a handy little utility that can be invaluable for tracking down faults, especially when it comes to OE not sending mail. To activate it go to Tools > Options and select the Maintenance tab. At the bottom, under Troubleshooting, you will see a row of boxes, check the first one, marked ‘Mail’. Now when you send an email (or fail to do so) OE creates a text log file that should show how and when the problem occurred. The file, in plain text format, is stored in the OE Message folder, which on most XP PCs should be in C:\Documents and Settings\<yourname>\Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express (where GUID or Global Unique Identifier is a long string of alphanumeric characters). Simply double click on ‘smpt.log’ and hopefully you will be well on your way to diagnosing the fault.

05/10/06

Find it Fast and For Free

As time goes by and your hard drive fills up it becomes increasingly difficult to find things on a PC and whilst Windows and most applications have their own Search facilities, they’re not necessarily very convenient, or easy to use, which brings us to the X1 Enterprise Client.

This is a powerful freeware desktop Search Engine that automatically indexes the files on your PC, including email messages, documents, zips, JPEGs, MP3s, PDFs and most common file formats. You can find whatever you are looking for quickly and easily using a simple keyword search, and the results are clearly shown in a preview panel. It’s flexible, highly configurable and it wont sap your computer’s resources as it can be set to carry out regular indexing operations whenever your PC is not being used.

03/10/06

Hotspotting At Airports

Wireless Hotspots have been a feature at most major airports for some time but most of them charge a subscription or fee to use them. Now that we’re all spending much longer hanging around at airports here’s a few tips to make your wait a little more bearable. First get yourself a wi-fi ‘sniffer’. These little keyring-sized gadgets cost around a tenner and they are a lot more convenient for hunting down a signal, than wandering around with your laptop. Seek out the executive and club lounges, these often have free wi-fi access for their patrons, but the signal sometimes spills out. Finally, run you PC on airport power. Mains sockets in departure lounges and at the gate are worth seeking out, especially if they’re in range of a wi-fi access point. Wireless operation will suck your battery dry in around half the time it normally takes. If you’re flying long-haul check with your airline before you go if they have power sockets in the seats, and which sort they are, so you have the right adaptor ready, or buy one of those universal travel kits.

25/09/06

Freeware Video & TV Streamer

Remember the Slingbox? It was the Summer’s hot gadget and it allowed you to stream live TV, video and music from your PC to any other PC with a net connection. Here’s a way of doing all that for free, with a program called Orb. Simply install Orb on your PC; set up the password protected login and you’re away. When you are away from home or the office all you have to do is open a browser on a PC, laptop or mobile device, logon to your Orb account and you can stream media direct from your PC to wherever you are. If your home PC has a tuner you can watch live TV, or you can watch videos, listen to music or view images stored on your hard drive. So what’s the catch? Well, at the moment there doesn’t see to be one; you just need a moderately fast PC (2.5GHz or above with at least 512Mb RAM and plenty of free hard disc space) to use the TV steamer, and it will definitely knock a big hole in your allowance if you are on a capped broadband deal.

13/09/06

Private Browser Leaves No Traces

As you (hopefully) know browsing the Internet is not a private activity and it leaves a trail half a mile wide that almost anyone with a mind to can easily track back to your PC. Everything from Windows to your ISP and the websites you visit maintain records of your activities but there are ways to protect your privacy. One such possibility is a website called EverPrivate.com.

It’s a free ‘proxy’ browser that lets you visit websites, without leaving any traces behind. If you want to take up the paid-for option you’ll be issued with a ‘virtual’ debit card that let’s you make on-line purchases, but we’re getting into uncharted waters now and I suggest you just stick with the freebie option until you know a bit more about it.

06/09/06

Where On Earth was it Taken?

How many times have you viewed a digital photograph on your PC and wondered where on earth it was taken? In the not too distant future, digital cameras with built-in GPS facilities will record latitude and longitude in the image’s hidden EXIF data file, which is currently used to store time, date and camera settings. However, you can get a flavour of things to come right now with a tiny little program called Panorado Flyer, which records location data on your images. After that all you have to do is right-click on the file and you’ll be transported by Google Earth to the exact location. To tag an image file with location data simply open Google Earth, find the location then right-click on the file and the data is automatically recorded.

01/09/06

Windows LiveWriter Blogging Tool Free Beta

If you’ve had anything to do with Blogs or Blogging then you’ll know there’s a multitude of sites and software applications, of varying sophistication, designed to help you organise your words and pictures and published them on the web, so when Microsoft get involved it’s times to sit up and pay attention. Windows LiveWriter is a fully featured desktop blogging application, it’s still in Beta form but it’s pretty well finished and available now as a free download.

LiveWriter (and get used to the word Live in MS apps and add-ons from now on) is meant for ruse on Windows Live Spaces blogging site but it’s compatible with other weblogs. including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad. WordPress and so on. It supports all popular modes and protocols, configures itself to your Weblog software in just a few moments and is incredibly easy to use through its friendly wysiwyg (‘wizzywig’ or what you see is what you get) interface.

31/08/06

Picture this -- Websites as Graphs

If you are wondering what the strange spidery image on the right is, it’s PCTopTips, or at least that’s how it looks to Websites as Graphs. Simply type in the URL of a website and it converts it into a graphical representation, displaying all of the various elements as interlinked colour coded dots.

Blue dots represent links, Red is for tables, violet is for images, yellow for forms, black for the Root node and so on. The graph doesn’t appear instantly, it slowly and gracefully unfolds -- depending how large or complex the site is -- and if you like what you see you can take a screenshot and post it on the online picture site flickr.

23/08/06

New Free Internet Phone Rival For Skype

Skype pretty much rules the roost when it comes to Internet telephony or VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol and its free PC-to-PC service has millions of fans but there’s a new kid on the block called the Gizmo Project. The basic software is free, just like Skype, and it has all of the usual VOIP facilities, including free PC to PC calling, conference calls and so on but here’s the killer features. First it’s an open source program so it should be compatible with other VOIP systems but the big news is that outgoing calls to overseas landline and mobile phones are free. So what’s the catch? There isn’t one, except that the person you are calling must also be an ‘active’ Gizmo user (active means making a few calls per week). If you want to take incoming and make outgoing calls to non-Gizmo users there are a couple of paid-for call plans but even so the rates are still very low.

02/08/06 

TOP

Remove Internet Explorer Branding

Over the years we’ve looked at several ways of removing the ‘branding’ from Internet Explorer, where an ISP’s name appears in the browser’s Titlebar and these have ncluded editing the Registry (definitely not for novices) to running visual basic scripts, however. The most painless one I’ve come across to date is a small utility called ISPunbrand. It’s basically a Registry fix but it has been safely packaged so you don’t have to do any tinkering, just download and run. It’s very small  (only 8kb) and you will find it here.

If you are feeling bold you can try one of the manual removal procedures we’ve recommended in the past. All you have to do is type the following in Run on the Start menu:

rundll32 iedkcs32.dll,Clear though to make sure there are no mistakes I suggest that you copy and paste it from the page.

The Universe on your PC

Back when I were a lad I was convinced that by the time I grew up (though to be fair that has yet to happen), I would zoom off to work each day in my rocket jet pack and take holidays on the Moon. Well owning a jet pack is just about theoretically possible, but the closest anyone is going to get to the Moon, let alone anywhere else in outer space is a sub-orbital ride on Virgin Galactic or sign up to become an astronaut. Maybe you can’t go into space for real but you can get a taster with an amazing freeware program called Celestia. Think of it as a sort of Google Earth in reverse, a real-time 3D space simulator with a database of more than 100,000 stares and almost100 objects in our own solar system, and you can add more bits of the universe as you go along. Zoom across galaxies or get up close and personal with the Hubble Telescope and the faster and more graphically blessed your PC is the better it looks!

13/07/06

ANOTHER FREEBIE FROM GOOGLE LABS

Google Labs continues to come up with clever add-ons for the world’s favourite search engine and this time its Google Notebook. It’s a sort of built in smart clipboard for your browser that lets you add notes and clippings from websites as you browse. Being Google it has to be organised, and it’s stored online and available from any PC you happen to be using, once you’ve logged on with your username and password. It’s available for test now and it works with Internet Explorer (V6 and above) and Firefox (V1.5 and above).

03/07/06

REAL TIME VIRUS ALERT WORLD MAP

If you want to see something scary take a look at the F-Secure World Map of Viruses. It’s just like a weather map but instead of fronts and anticyclones it shows waves of nasties like Netsky32 and Trojan Downloaders sweeping across globe, and heading for your PC. It shows in real-time the current threats, where they are coming from, and depressingly, where they are going to in an easy to understand colour-coded display. You can select hourly, daily monthly or yearly views and monitor the whole world, or just your part of it. There’s an Alert Level display -- graded from Quiet to Epidemic -- plus a regularly updated list of the day's top threats

Internet Time Machine

Here’s something to think about, where do old Internet pages go? Mostly they disappear forever, into the ether, never to be seen again but some of them are being saved for posterity in the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. More than 55 billion pages have been stored, the earliest of them dating back to 1966 (the Google page above dates from 1999) and all you have to do to browse the archive is tap in the web address, or use the search engine to locate pages by date or name match. The site also features collections of websites devoted to special events, like 911, the US Electron of 2000 and Hurricane Katrina and visitors with websites are encouraged to submit their own site archives.

26/06/06

FREEWARE NETWORK MANAGER & MAPPER

Anyone who has set up a home or small office network will know how difficult it can be to manage and oversee what’s going on. This little freeware utility, called The Dude, does it all for you, displaying all of the connections to your local and wide area network in an easy to understand graphic map. It automatically scans all PC connected to the network -- handy if you suspect a hack attack -- you can monitor traffic flows and it can be set to alert you if there’s a problem. The program works on all versions of Windows, Linux and Mac and supports all common used protocols and standards.

21/06/06

EXTEND WI-FI RANGE WITH PRINGLES

The range of a Wi-Fi connection varies but in most cases you’re lucky to get more than 25 metres inside a building, less if there’s a lot of metal or thick walls between your laptop and the wireless router or access point. On some systems you can increase the range dramatically by plugging in a directional or high-gain antenna, these are widely available from around £30. Some Wi-Fi cards also have this facility, but if you are handy with a soldering iron and screwdriver you might like to have a crack at making your own high efficiency Wi-Fi antenna, which should cost you less than £5.00 to build. A while back a group of experimenters came up with a home build design called the ‘Cantenna’; the original was based on nothing more sophisticated than an empty Pringles tube, which just happens to have the right dimensions, and is lined with metallic foil, which reflects and concentrates the signal. The design has been extensively improved and refined, using a variety of food containers and one of the best DIY guides can be found on the Turnpoint site. Also have a look at this UK site, which has details of a USB Cantenna. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty then you can buy one ready made, though they cost a good deal more than an fiver….

14/06/06

TOP

ELIMINATE FOREIGN SPAM

I don’t know about you but just lately I’ve been getting loads of foreign spam, mostly Russian but there’s a few Chinese, Japanese and even what I suspect to be the odd Korean message. There’s a really easy way to stop them clogging up your mailbox using Outlook Express Message Rules. All you have to do is open one of these emails -- make sure you don’t open any attachments of click on any links -- and look for a foreign language character or symbol that appears several times in the email, but make sure it's not one you would expect to see in an English language email. When you find one highlight it, and press Ctrl + C to copy it to the Windows Clipboard. Now go to the OE Tools menu then Message Rules > Mail and click the New button. Tick the Conditions box that says ‘ Where the message body contains specific words’, now go to the Actions box and check ‘Delete it’. In Box 3 Descriptions click on the underlined ‘Contains specific words’, click into the ‘Type specific word or phrase…’ box and press Ctrl + V to paste the character from the Clipboard. Click the Add button, then OK to exit the dialogue boxes. You may find that you have to repeat the exercise a couple of times, to include more foreign characters but you should be able to stem the tide quite quickly.

FREE FROM NASA

That’s right, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is giving stuff away. No rocket jet packs or free rides on the shuttle I’m afraid, but if you head over to the Glenn Research Centre website you will find a great selection of free software. There’s something for everyone, especially budding aeronautical engineers and jet engine designers, but if you’ve ever fancied designing a kite or a model rocket then take a look at KiteModeler and RocketModeler, and RangeGames is a fun way to work out the fuel usage, acceleration and velocity of aircraft. But seriously the software should be of real interest to students, graduates and those involved in the study of making things fly and even if you’re not into the science stuff, there are plenty of other things to see and do around the site.

25/05/06

DEFEAT THOSE DROP-DOWNS 

This one is for residents of the UK, the United States, Uganda and anyone else living in an alphabetically challenged country. I don’t know about you but I get really ticked-off by drop-down menus on website forms, where you have to enter your country. Sometimes you strike lucky and we’re listed as Great Britain and you only have to scroll down to G but more often than not we’re right down the bottom, under United Kingdom. I just figured out how to beat the system. Most of these forms are based on fairly standard HTML scripts so all you have to do is click the box and tap the ‘U’ key. You should then be transported to the directly to Uganda, which is normally just two or three down cursor clicks from United Kingdom. It may even be possible to get to the UK directly with a two-letter entry but so far no luck; if anyone manages to crack the code let me know.

YET ANOTHER HANDY GOOGLE FEATURE

What can’t Google do? Well did you know it can calculate and convert? Try this, open Google and enter ‘20 + 4 =’ press Enter and up pops the answer. Clever huh? But there’s much more to come. It recognises all of the standard numeric operators, i.e. ‘+’ plus, ‘-‘ minus, ‘*’ multiply and ‘/’ divide, and it also knows about percentages, exponentials, roots, trigonometric functions, logarithms and lots of other mysterious mathematical thingys.

Google can also convert units and values. Let’s say you want to know how many dollars you would get for £30, just ask, e.g. type in ’30 pounds in dollars’ then press Enter. The magic word is ‘in’, it’s so simple. It works for a whole low of other things as well, including mass, length, volume, area, time, power, electricity and so on. Go on, give it a try!

WORRIED BY THE WEB?

Here’s a useful free extension for Firefox that tells you straight away if the website you are about to visit is in any way unsafe or annoying (i.e. riddled with malware or pop-ups etc.). Siteadvisor continually tests new and existing websites, checking the content, so when you tap in the address the Siteadvisor ‘safety button’ changes colour according to the level of threat.  A green button means safe, yellow suggests caution and a red means stay away!

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CRANKY LAPTOP LIFESAVER

Windows 98 has an invaluable little utility called ‘winipcfg’. It's a godsend when trying to make new wireless and network connections (it's the Windows version of the DOS utilility ipconfig). It displays your current IP address, with the facility to manually ‘release’ and ‘renew’ sticky settings that can prevent a new connection from working. To fire it up go to Run on the Start menu and type ‘winipcfg’ (without the quotes).

Although Windows XP usually manages to sort itself out it can still get into trouble, but there’s no equivalent to Winipcfg in XP (although you can use ipconfig). There is however, a MS utility included in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit that does more or less the same thing, called Wntipcfg. The download and full instructions can be found on the Microsoft website.

TRACK AND TRACE WEB SITES

Have you ever wondered who is on the other end of that chat room your kids are using or where that web site offering bargain basement widgets is actually based? There are ways and means to track down the location of websites but most of them are fairly laborious. On the other hand a freeware utility called NeoTrace Express presents you with clear map showing both your location, and that of the website you are checking. Simply tap in the web address and off it goes, tracing the path between you and the site and displaying who the site is registered to.

ORGANISING FAVOURITE FAVORITES

The Favorites list in Internet Explorer seems to have a mind of its own. Much of the time it grows in an apparently random manner, as new entries are added but if you try to take charge, by sorting it alphabetically (right-click an entry and click ‘Sort by name’) then frequently visited sites end up all over the place. There is an easy way to bring order to the chaos and that’s to force your favourite Favorites to appear at the top of the list. It’s easy, just right click on the ones you want to see, select rename and type an ‘A’ plus a space in front of the name. If you want to sort them into a specific order then type a number after the letter, i.e. A1, A2 and so on.

LESS OUTLOOK EXPRESS, MORE EMAIL

Here are a few quick tips to tidy up the Outlook Express desktop and make it easier to use. You should know by now what all of the icons and buttons do, so switch off the text labels and use small icons and you get an instant increase in screen area for your messages and mailboxes. Simply right-click on a toolbar and select Customize and in the two drop-down boxes (Text Options and Icon Options) select No text labels and Small Icons respectively.  Click Close. There’s more savings still to be had. Click on the vertical separator bar on the far left of the Icon toolbar and drag it onto empty space on the menu bar (to the right of Help).

To round off, here’s a couple of quick time-savers, instead of mousing your way to the Send/Receive button a dozen times a day just remember the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + M for Send/Receive. You can also save mouse/wrist strain when switching between folders by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Y

MAPPING YOUR CONTACTS

Buried inside the Outlook Express Address book there’s been a facility that for many years only worked if you lived in the US. Double click an entry, select the 'Home' tab, where you enter your contacts address, and at the bottom of the field is a button marked View Map. I had completely forgotten about it until a couple of day ago, whilst poking arounf the address book for something else, I absently mindedly clicked on it and was surprised to find that it works. Clicking on the button takes you the Expedia.com mapping page, which will take you to a fairly decent local map. It seems to be a bit hit and miss and may not get to street-level detail but it could prove handy if you need to find out roughly where someone lives

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SEARCHING FOR CHARITY

Google’s dominance of the search engine market is probably not in doubt but things change quickly in this business and you, (and they) might want to have a look at everyclick. In addition to being a darn fine search engine -- they know all about BootLog -- there’s an added bonus in that 50 percent of the revenues it generates from advertising goes to charity. If you make a purchase through one of the site’s sponsored links a proportion of it will also go to charity. Some really big names are involved, like ebay, Air France, Carphone Warehouse and Expedia, to name just a few. The AA, for example will donate up to £30 if you take out one of its motor insurance policies after clicking through to its website from an everyclick link. Go on, give it a try, it works really well and tell a friend.

FASTER FINGERS FOR FIREFOX

Like buses you don’t see a Firefox tip for ages, then a dozen come along at once… Here’s a small selection of some really useful keyboard shortcuts that are worth committing to memory and will save you having to reach for the mouse when surfing with your favourite browser.

Ctrl + 1, 2, 3 etc. switches to an open tab

Ctrl + B opens Bookmark pane

Ctrl + F opens Find on page

Ctrl + H opens History dialogue box and list

Ctrl + N opens a new window

Ctrl + O open local file dialogue box

Ctrl + R refreshes current Page 1 of 1

Ctrl + S saves current page to disc

Ctrl + T opens a new tab

Ctrl + Tab steps through open tabs in sequence

Ctrl + U shows page source code

Ctrl + W closes open tab

FREE SHARES FOR ALL

Let’s suppose you‘ve just taken a load of photographs of a colleagues wedding and you’ve promised copies to ten friends, several of who live overseas. You could do a mass mail out, assuming that your ISP lets you send multi-megabyte attachments, but it’s going to take you forever, so here’s an easier way. Simply upload all of the photos onto a file-sharing site and email the web link to your friends so they can view and downloaded the images themselves. It’s really easy and there are plenty of free and paid for file-sharing sites to choose from, lke TinyPic, Photobucket and Imagehosting There are generally few restrictions apart from a maximum file size limit but since few things in life are really free, visitors can usually expect to see a few ads. It’s also worth pointing out that these are public sites, and the public being what they are means that on some of them there may be images of an adult nature so if you poke around looking at what others have posted you should be on the alert for warnings and signposts.

SWIFTER SORTING IN OUTLOOK EXPRESS

If you receive a lot of emails from the same people, or relating to the same subject then there’s a little used feature in Outlook Express that’s worth getting to know. It’s called Sort By and you’ll find it on the View menu. For example, if you want to group all the emails you received from one person, to make them easier to find, simply highlight one of their messages then go to View > Sort By and click ‘From’ on the drop down menu. Use the same procedure to group mails by Subject, Size, whether or not they’re flagged or if they have an attachment. It’s fast, easy and makes sorting through your mailboxes a whole lot easier.

FIREFOX - MULTIPLE HOME PAGES

As you know Firefox opens on your chosen home page, but you can take advantage of the ‘tabbed’ windows and force it to open with multiple home pages. This is a boon if, like me, you always open the same two or three pages every day. It’s really simple to do, just go to Tools > Options and click the General icon. In the Home Page section, in the ‘Location(s)’ box put a space then a vertical separator (‘|’ shift - backspace)) after your current home page, then type in the URL of the next one, and so on. There doesn’t appear to be any limit to the number of pages, though obviously the more you have the longer it takes for them all to appear. Incidentally, there’s another, even simpler way to do it, just open the pages you want to see in tabs then go to Tools > Options and in the Home Page section click the ‘Use Current Pages’ button.

INTERNET ADDRESSES EXPOSED

You may have heard about address ‘spoofing’ where apparently legitimate internet sites are actually cloned by fraudsters in attempt to fool you into revealing passwords, pin numbers or credit card details. Well, if you ever find yourself on a web site and you are the slightest bit dubious on no account enter any details before you have checked it out, and never, repeat never enter your credit card details into a web page that doesn’t display the Secure Transaction logo (a locked padlock) in the status bar at the bottom.

As a double check you could also try this simple little trick. By entering a short line of text in the Address Bar of the page you are looking at you can reveal the actual host URL and this may tell you if it is connected to the site it purports to belong to. Just copy (Ctrl + C) the line (below in bold), click into the address box to highlight the displayed address then press Ctrl +V to paste the line, press Enter and a message box with the ‘Actual URL’ will be displayed:

javascript:alert("Actual URL address: " + location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname + "/");

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SET SURFING TIMES - FREE PARENTAL CONTROL

Here’s a crafty little tip for concerned parents who want to keep tabs on their offspring’s Internet use, particularly if junior has an XP PC in his or her bedroom, and you have a feeling they are logging on after lights-out. This tip will let you restrict access to the Internet at preset times and in this example we’ll be imposing a ban from 10pm to 7am, Monday to Friday. Incidentally it won’t switch off the Internet if they are already online but it will stop them making a new connection during curfew time.

Go to Run on the Start menu and type ‘cmd’ (without the quotes). This will open a DOS-type window and at the flashing prompt type the following:

net user <username> /time:M-F,07:00-22:00

Simply replace <username> with the young person’s username; days of the week are represented by the letters: M, T, W, Th, F, Sa, Su and the times should be self-explanatory so tweak as required.

LIFTING THE FIREFOX BAN

There are still a few rogue websites -- like Microsoft Update -- that simply won’t have anything to do with Firefox. At least MS has an excuse of sorts but it’s still very inconvenient to have to fire up Internet Explorer just to view a page but the good folks at Mozilla clearly hold no grudges and you can persuade Firefox to open IE and display the dissident website by installing an freeware 'extension’. It’s called IE View and when it has been installed and you get the dreaded ‘You need Internet Explorer to view this page’ message just right-click into an empty area of the page and select ‘View this page in IE’ and all will be revealed.

EVEN FASTER FIREFOX

There are vartious ways to make the already nimble Firefox browser go even quicker. This is possible because it is Open Source software and expert users are encouraged to delve into its inner works and fiddle around with the various config settings. Well, this go-faster tip is for everyone, it a small freeware utility called FireTune that takes all of the guesswork out of tweaking Firefox and automatically optimises performance according to your PC specs and broadband connection. It’s safe and any changes it makes can be easily undone using the configuration backup option. It works too and on my office PCs graphics-heavy pages and sites requiring password authentication definitely took less time to load after installing FireTune

DISABLE UNREAD MAIL MESSAGE AT LOGON

This feature of Windows XP Home and Pro irritates a lot of users but the good news is that it can be easily switched off. There are two methods so let’s start with the simplest one. Download and install the Microsoft utility Tweak UI. It’s free and in addition to disabling the unread message announcement it can do a lot of other useful things besides but that’s something for another time. When Tweak UI is installed it will appear on your All Programs list under ‘Powertoys for XP’, select Logon then ‘Unread Mail’ and uncheck ‘Show unread mail on Welcome Screen’.

For those of you who know their way around the Windows Registry here’s another way, And don’t forget to backup the Registry first or create a System Restore point before you begin. Launch the Registry Editor by typing ‘regedit’ (without the quotes) in Run on the Start menu and if you are the only user make your way to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\

Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

If your PC is used by several people go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\

Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

Create a DWORD key by right clicking in the right window can call it MessageExpiryDays then give it a value of 0. Exit Regedit and reboot and the message will be no more

FIREFOX DICTIONARY

Here’s another really useful add-on or ‘extension’ for Mozilla Firefox. This one adds a dictionary facility, just highlight and double-click on a word (or press Ctrl + Shift + D) and up pops the definition. The extension is called Dictionary Tooltip, it is small, installs automatically and is ready to run the next time you launch Firefox. You can change the size and shape of the dictionary pop-up and re-configure the mouse and keyboard shortcuts from the Firefox Tools menu (select Extensions and double-click Dictionary Tooltip.

FIREFOX WEATHERWATCH

If you still need a reason to switch to Firefox then how about this. Unlike Internet Explorer Firefox can be easily customised and given extra functionality with add-ons or ‘extensions’. There are hundreds of them and it would take forever to list them all but here’s one you should try if, like most people living in the UK, you are obsessed by the weather.

It’s called Forecastfox and it displays a small unobtrusive toolbar on the bottom of the browser window that tells you what your local is weather now, and what’s it likely to be in the next day or two. You can click on it for static and animated satellite weather images and you can call up extra details like humidity, visibility, dewpoint, wind speed and direction and so on. The download is small (361kb), it installs automatically it starts automatically when you launch Firefox

BROADBAND DOCTOR

How well is your broadband connection working? There are plenty of web sites that will carry out a basic speed check on your connection for but this one, Tweaks from Broadband Reports conducts a non-intrusive test and based on the information you supply (type of connection, advertised speed, operating system)  suggests things you can do to improved speed and efficiency. Some of the suggestions are quite advanced but clicking on the links will take you to FAQs and tutorials that guide you through the procedures.

FASTER FIREFOX

Here’s yet another Firefox tuning tweak but this one avoids the need to delve into the browser's complicated configuration menu and fiddle about with critical settings. Fasterfox is a freeware utility that includes a number of options to make Firefox run quicker and download pages faster, and for the adventurous there’s a selection of manual adjustments. If you experience problems then you can reset Firefox to its default condition with one click. Fasterfox is small, it virtually installs itself and the simple to use controls appear in Options on the Tools menu.

SPEED UP ACROBAT READER IN FIREFOX

If you have a broadband connection and read a lot of PDF (Portable Document Format) documents you may well find that the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in can be a quite slow to open in Firefox, which can be quite frustrating. There is a way to speed it up and that is to have Firefox download the PDF file first and then open it in a compact Acrobat Reader window. (This tweak probably won't do much good if you have a slow dial-up connection).

All you have to do it go to the Firefox Tools menu, select Options then click the Download icon and then the Plugins button. Uncheck the line 'Adobe Acrobat Document', click OK to close the Windows and it's done.