PC News Digest

I Lied About Twitter

2009-05-14T12:45:00.003-04:00

Yes, Virginia I did close my original Twitter account as I said in an earlier blog post. But, I've since reconsidered. I was looking at Twitter bass-akwards. It's not about how many of your friends are there, but about how many new friends you can make. So I'd be happy to have you join me (LouisBruno) on Twitter.

Vonage: Switch for Savings, Stay for Service

2009-03-27T09:34:00.002-04:00

Let me tell you a quick, true story about my phone company. I had previously dealt with them via email and their website. But now I had a problem that needed a live person. Frankly, after years of un-service from the likes of Verizon and AT&T, I dreaded the call.

I dialed the number for service -- expecting to be shunted to a call-center in Bangladesh -- and was greeted by a recording that asked me to wait a minute then put me on hold. Bad start, right? Wrong! Great start! Less than 10 seconds later, another recording said "I see you're having trouble porting your old phone number. Let me transfer you to someone who can help."

Without further ado -- and without endless requests to identify myself, give my mother's maiden name, social security number, and the number I was calling from -- Rick in New Jersey said "Hello," accessed my records, and discussed the problem, incidentally not of their making. Rick explained the problem and took responsibility for it, telling me what he'd do and what steps to take if his solution didn't work.

Rick's efforts solved the problem. I never called back to thank him, so Rick, if you're out there, a big thanks for your help.

Oh, and the name of the phone company that uses intelligent systems and intelligent service representatives? VONAGE!

I switched to Vonage three or four months ago, porting two numbers and acquiring a third for fax service. The "installation" couldn't have been simpler, with custom Vonage adapters integrating easily with my existing computer network straight out of the box.

I love the "extra" features included in the service -- stuff like caller ID and call forwarding I call "extras" because I used to pay extra to have them. With Vonage, they're included, more extensive, and easily managed online through their website.

And the sound quality, which I can adjust from normal to higher to highest, according to how much bandwidth I can spare, beats my old POTS (plain old telephone service) hands down at all settings!

Oh yeah, and did I mention all the money I'm saving? At Vonage you'll switch for the savings and stay for the service!

Do You Twitter?

2009-02-13T13:38:00.004-05:00

I don't. I did. Long enough to find out why I don't.

As you know, I'm a business consultant providing management, real estate and technology services. My address book, including a few dozen friends and relations, has over 500 contacts.

Would you believe only a half-dozen real people from my address book are on Twitter? (Chris Pirillo isn't a real person, he's a self-aggrandizement industry.)

One Twitterer was a relative who'd set his preferences to prevent auto-hookup of followers. I see this syndrome on LinkedIn, too, where I maintain an active profile. Why, exactly, would anyone join a social network to be anti-social? I mean we're not talking about Tom Cruise here, or the Pope.

Another was a life COACH. (He lives in CAPITALS.) Looking for work, I guess. Never did understand why anyone would him to think for them.

Two were legitimate people checking out Twitter. Each sent a tweet 5 or 6 months ago. Just one. Never returned. Not anal like me. I deleted my account.

And two were just plain lonely, losers. Clients of mine I've long since fired. One of whom is still a real estate broker. Probably still complaining about not being able to make a living at it.

Don't look for me on Twitter. OK?

The White Plains Press: A New Press Release Publisher

2009-01-01T21:00:00.005-05:00

As a website producer, I have produced some clever websites, some that are elegant, even some that are artistic. But my claim to fame is that I produce websites that work.

My promise to each new client is that the website I make for them will help their organization grow, adding business, members, and prestige. That's a pretty tall order for a few bits and bytes in cyberspace.

Usually, "making it work" requires some marketing of the organization, often including press releases.

Until recently, I'd work up the press releases, send copies to the local newspapers, and "publish" it online using a press release service. Some of these services are nominally free -- and have a spotty record of success. Others, that work consistently, have a fee schedule that depends on speed, tracking, and promised distribution, etc.

Eventually, I realized that what the press release publishing services actually do is to make sure the major search engines, particularly Google, picked up and indexed the press releases I trusted to them.

But wait a minute. I don't need to pay someone to do that. I can do it myself with a little care and effort. And so the White Plains Press was born.

At the Press, you'll find press releases for local non-profits, like Bryant Gardens and the White Plains Council of Neighborhood Associations (WPCNA), for small businesses like Delmonte-Smelson Jewelers, Hudson Valley Energy Consultants (HVEC), and Balch Buyer's Realty, for upstate companies, like Bob & Sallie Connelly who do appraisals, auctions, sell antiques, and run an art gallery, for out of state organizations, like the Biz@Net Business Networking Group, and for local chapters of the American Society of Appraisers. And that's just in its first three weeks of operation.

Today, the White Plains Press is a useful (and successful) handmaiden to the Webshop@servenet.com. Tomorrow, well tomorrow the child could be feeding its parent.

The Trouble With PC World

2008-12-11T07:56:00.003-05:00

If PC World were free, I wouldn't mind the bad advice.

The problem is that the PC World staff, under the pressure of compiling and publishing a magazine every month, puts out a product that is repetitive, often biased, and sometimes just plain wrong.

First about that bias. While I understand that folks in publishing tend to use Macs and to be Apple-centric, when I want to read about Macs, I'll buy PC World's sister publication Macworld. Hey guys and girls, let's stop proselytizing and start reviewing. And while you're at it, please stop the childish Microsoft-bashing. It's so 1990s. Review, not stew. We want food for thought, not clever jibes.

And then there's the formulaic repetition of boring content. I don't need more articles about what's wrong with Vista. Or column after column about the latest "holes" in Microsoft products. You only know about the holes because Microsoft patched them, and guess what. They're patched on my PCs, too. And frankly, I'll scream if I you spend yet another page exhorting me to be careful opening emails, and not to visit unfriendly websites. Geez, am I the only nerd in the world who's kept his or her PCs virus and malware free by safe-surfing and by choosing and using competent software?

Now it is true that almost every techie product out there includes a microprocessor, but cameras, HD TVs, and audio are NOT PCs. Really. When I want competent and complete reviews of these products, I go elsewhere. Reviewing these products just isn't your forte.

But most insidious of all is just plain getting it wrong when it comes to products and software. Particularly software. In the last few months, I've installed more than a few applications that didn't come anywhere near performing as described. It's obvious the reviewer never tried them. And ditto for websites. I know you're not responsible for sending readers to a website that delivers a viral payload -- but surely you can tell whether a website actually lives up to its press releases?

PC World feels a lot like a high school science fair. Lots of projects done to get a grade. The rare project that makes it all worthwhile.

Being a self-starter and self-refresher myself, I've never been on a retreat. But maybe that's what the PC World staff needs. A little time away from the grind to review their mission and renew their means.

Take ten.

AOL's Ugly Webhosting Shutdown

2008-11-11T09:44:00.003-05:00

AOL could take a lesson from our lame-duck President and go out in style.

In its favor is the fact that AOL email can now be collected via IMAP. Yeah! (No folks, I don't use AOL myself, but I still have clients who believe they'll lose contact with the world if they close their AOL accounts.) But on the negative side of the ledger is the way the Information Technology Specialists that populate AOL's decimated Virginia offices have phased out their webhosting services.

Once upon a time, every AOL subscriber got "free" software, dial-up access, and "free" webhosting at http://members.aol.com/Screenname. Over time, that free software became bloated adware, laden with network problems, and PC "maintenance" tools that slowed user's machines down to a crawl. Meanwhile, the dial-up service that propelled AOL's growth became a Model T, found only in extreme backwaters.

Today, the software's been discontinued. No loss. AOL as ISP is history. No problem. AOL no longer charges for its "services," having long since morphed into an ad-supported business model. Nothing for nothing. And as of 10/31/2008, AOL's webhosting has shut its doors.

And there's the rub. AOL didn't just shut down the servers and disappear. That wouldn't have been nice, but it wouldn't have been awful either. And AOL didn't offer subscribers with websites on their servers a forwarding service. That would be the professional thing to do. No, the folks at AOL decided to send all links to Hometown Has Been Shutdown (HHBS).

The problem with that is twofold. People who have the old AOL address for a website won't know if it's moved or defunct. And if they use a search engine to locate a moved website, the results page will continue to show the AOL address, leading folks back to HHBS. Round and round we go ...

Dear AOL. I know it's probably too late and/or too much trouble to provide the folks who paid the bills all those years with forwarding for moved websites. But it wouldn't be hard to deliver an error 404 page for removed websites. That's the standard protocol and would eventually get search engines to drop the defunct AOL website URLs. Delivering a live and changing page (HHBS is a live blog with comments) causes search engines to maintain the erroneous listings.

So, dear AOL, if you can't provide forwarding, and won't follow WWW protocol by delivering error 404 pages, how about writing the search engines -- heck there are only a handful left -- and asking them to stop indexing any URL that includes members.aol.com or users.aol.com or hometown.aol.com?

Geez, if Bush can do it gracefully, so can AOL.

FTP Client: FileZilla

2008-11-10T06:26:00.004-05:00

Like many website designers, I used and relied upon Ipswitch's WS_FTP file transfer software for many years. It's the "industry standard." It's modestly-priced -- now about $55 -- shareware that's frequently updated, versatile, and secure. And over the years, I tried other freeware and shareware file transfer clients, mostly for clients with less rigorous needs, and found them slow, lacking features, or just plain ponderous.

Recently, faced with rebuilding my primary desktop and another Ipswitch paid upgrade pending, I decided to sample the alternatives again. I looked at CuteFTP, SmartFTP, Core FTP, and for a while even used FireFTP, a Mozilla Firefox add-on. All were suitable for limited-duty. But none satisfied this old nerd's hunger for a speedy, well-behaved, small footprint FTP client with just enough features and security.

As you know from the title of this post, that was then. FileZilla is now. It's well-supported (wikis, forums, bug and feature requests) open source software that's lightning fast to load and to function. Hey, fast is important when you're updating more than one or two files at a time. It's frequently updated with security patches, bug fixes, and small new features. That's like tweaks, not bloat. It's intuitive for both right- and left-brained types. It never crashes. And did I mention, it's fast?

Three things I especially find helpful in FileZilla:

Cross platform support means I can use the same client on pretty much any machine I'm working on.
Easy to use site manager makes adding a new site simple, selecting an existing site, simpler.
Remote file editing so I can do quick fixes for a client on the fly.
Drag and drop support is built-in, not quirky like some, and not slow

If you try FileZilla and find yourself loving it as I do, don't forget to support it. It's free to use, but not a throwaway. It's a thoroughly professional project whose developers deserve to get paid for their efforts.

Google Chrome

2008-10-04T09:51:00.004-04:00

Google has taken its eye off the ball with its too-hasty release of the Chrome browser. While its handling of each tab as an independent entity is just what's needed in an imperfect Web 2.0 world --and hopefully will be emulated by IE and Firefox developers -- Chrome falls short of implementing the usability that has long attracted users to Google products.

Because of a non-compliant proprietary JavaScript engine, Chrome does not work with many websites that IE and Firefox handle gracefully. For shame!

But the deal-breaker for me is that Chrome doesn't work with the widely-used Roboform password manager. Yes, Chrome offers to save passwords. But I've got literally hundreds of site-specific passwords and (a) I need portability from browser to browser and PC to PC, and (b) I'm not trusting my passwords even to the worthies at Google.

Chrome is clean, and quick. But without Roboform, it's stupid.

Why Vista Gets a Bad Rap

2008-09-12T06:39:00.005-04:00

I know, it's cool to bash Microsoft. And sometimes, it's appropriate. Windows ME was truly bloatware, and Internet Explorer didn't really shape up until the competition showed the way. But Vista is a worthy extension of XP, and all it gets is grief.

As an old gray beard who's been a geek tweaking PCs since before the words "geek", "tweak", and "PC" took on meaning, I'm amazed that the armchair techies -- whose jobs depend on the existence of Gates, Microsoft, and Windows -- can find nothing to like in Vista.

And then it hit me. Every negative comment or review about Vista carps about (a) cost and activation, and (b) UAC -- User Account Control. And that's because they're techies, not end users!

Techies have multiple computers and like to switch systems and play. Software that's not free and not authorized for multiple machines, is a pain for techies, who are notoriously clever but impecunious.

And techies, almost by definition, are continually downloading, installing, configuring, and reworking new software -- all conditions that trigger the UAC pop-up in Vista. For a techie, UAC is a toothache that smarts with every chew.

But for the great mass of users -- one machine, and very infrequent technical changes -- Vista is fast, fun, sexy, safe, and stable. Would they like it to be free? Sure, but what a silly idea. In the real world, users expect to pay for their cars, their combs, and the computers, including the operating system.

Now that it's out of the starting gate and over the speed humps, what's not to like about Vista?

Network Solutions Scam

2008-03-07T14:36:00.003-05:00

As if you needed another reason to avoid the high-handed, high-priced offerings at Network Solutions (NetSol), here's another quirky NetSol scam masquerading as a service.

Catherine Palmiere is the President of Adam Personnel and Adam Temporary Services, one of New York City's premiere employment agencies and staffing services. Catherine asked me to register a new domain name for her company and point it to the Temps page on her primary website. She suggested www.adamtemporaryservices.com and www.adamtemps.com.

We decided on the latter, which I promptly checked for availability. To my surprise, it was taken. Looking further, I noticed it had been "taken" just moments before her email to me. Wow, what a coincidence. But wait, lighting struck twice! The other domain, too, was taken. And guess who had 'em both: Network Solutions, LLC. Both were "registered" for one year, with nameservers set to reserveddomainname.com.

It turns out the domains are actually available, but with a catch. The domain records say "This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com, 13681 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 300, HERNDON, VA 20171 US." You can't directly register these domains with another registrar, say GoDaddy or Tucows, unless you fork over fees to a go-between or domain name broker. But you can register them directly at NetSol -- and pay their inflated fees.

In case you haven't guessed yet, what happened here was that Cathy at Adam had checked availability for these domains on the NetSol website and NetSol immediately registered the names. Since Cathy has a NetSol account and was logged in when she checked availability, this sort of made sense. She's their customer and reserving the names for her made sure she'd have them available.

But wait. NetSol will also let me -- or you or anybody -- register those names, as long as we do it through NetSol. So maybe the preemptive, protective reservations weren't for Cathy's benefit, but for NetSol's. To test this, I used a no-cookies PC to check the availability on the NetSol website (without logging in, of course) of a silly domain name, viz. cranberryham.com. I don't know if cranberry ham is Kosher or not, but I do know that (a) I'm not a NetSol client, (b) I researched the domain first elsewhere, and found "no registered match", then checked at NetSol, and (c) as of today, it's now reserved by them for a year*! And that ain't Kosher for sure.

The problem here is simple. It's called conflict of interest. The company which issues domain names -- in the public's interest -- shouldn't be allowed to register, reserve or otherwise control any names other than the ones it needs for its own website and email. It's time to get the fox out of the henhouse. And let the cranberries propagate without grafting or layering.

* Although the record shows an expiry one year after the creation date, the "registration," is probably set to expire in five days. After all, NetSol is tricky, not stupid. Registrars can create a registration, then delete it within five days at no cost. The five-day grace period was designed to allow them to fix mistakes without penalty. The scam is they're using it to penalize clients!

P.S. Others have discovered and commented on this Networks Solution scam as well.

Philadelphia: Brotherly Love and Great Appraisers

2007-08-31T14:38:00.000-04:00

The Philadelphia Chapter of the American Society of Appraisers (ASA) asked me to take over and make over their ailing website. Makeovers are hard -- the originals are usually flawed technically, weak on navigation, and lacking in search engine optimization -- but I agreed because the Philadelphia Chapter is a wellspring of professionalism and enthusiasm.

The Chapter is home to several ASA Regional Governors, including business valuation appraiser Mark Penny, the current Governor, and also has spawned at least two ASA International Presidents. But more importantly, it boasts nationally recognized appraisers like Samuel F. Luceno (real estate) and Shirley S. Swaab (personal property), appraisers noted both for their appraisals and for mentoring. In fact, the Chapter has won the annual ASA trophy for Best Mentoring Program three times in the past six years. Now that's Brotherly Love!

Shirley Swaab is a good example of what I like to call the DaVinci principle -- the fact that the efforts of a single person can make a world of difference. Ms. Swaab, who is a well-respected appraiser, is also a noted collector of decorative and fine art items. Year after year she lectures, teaches, and conducts hands-on seminars, bringing items from her own collections for participants to pass around and examine. She's a perennial on the Maine Antique Digest circuit, and of course, at ASA both nationally and locally. How many speakers do you know who have people wait-listed for their next engagement?

It's axiomatic that every project takes at least twice as long as expected. The ASA Philadelphia makeover was no exception. But it was fun. The Chapter has a treasure trove of newsletters, articles, Q&A items, strong appraisers, rich seminars, and a long tradition. That made it interesting. The hard part was honoring our self-imposed commitment to keeping the site online throughout the makeover with no "under construction" signs, dead links, or missing pages. Done, but fun. Looking for a business valuation, gems & jewelry, machinery & equipment, personal property or real estate appraiser in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Delaware? Take a look at ASA Philadelphia!

Getting the (E)Mail Through

2006-07-13T11:48:00.000-04:00

At its best, email is fast, fun and tremendously productive. But email, like the weather, is largely unpredictable. That's because it depends on the Internet, which belongs at once to everyone and no one. In short, no one's in charge of making sure email gets through.

While there are no delivery guarantees, it is possible to tilt the odds in your favor. Here are some tips in order of importance.

Address Book. Most undelivered email fails because of a bad email address. Although email addresses are not case sensitive, everything else about an email address must be just right. You can avoid typos and misspellings by addressing email from verified addresses in your address book. This also prevents common substitutions, e.g. name@com for name@org or name@edu, and incorrectly transcribed addresses, i.e., my friend Michael spells his name Micheal; was that Coles, or Kohls, or Coals? Remember, even the owners of email addresses misspell them. Don't click on Reply to send an email. Use your address book!

Sidestep SPAM Filters. Today, most hosts filter inbound email to quarantine or delete SPAM and viruses. Some hosts, notably AOL and Hotmail, are notoriously aggressive, generating a high percentage of false positives. Even Big Blue (the famous chess-playing IBM computer) can't outwit SPAM filters. The best solution is an end-run around the filter: ask your contacts to add your email address to the list of accounts whose email will be accepted without filtering. This may be called a Friend's List, Contact List, White List, Acceptance List, etc.

You Get What They Paid For. Some email accounts are more equal than others. Many users have so-called free (meaning ad-supported) email accounts. Others pay. You can't sex them by looking at the email domain. For example, I have an email account at hotmail.com which is free, and an account at yahoo.com, which I pay for. It won't surprise you to learn that email to my paid Yahoo! account gets through virtually all the time, with intelligent SPAM filtering, virus and spyware protection. Email to my Hotmail account is pokey, unreliable, and likely to wind up in the SPAM bin. The best defense against a pokey recipient is to join the fray. If you're having difficulty getting through to a recipient who uses AOL, open an AOL account and send from there. Intra-ISP transmission is fast, and subject to few rejections and misclassifications.

Don't Play in Traffic. Just as there are good and bad times to go to the mall, cross a busy street, or call a help desk for service, timing counts when sending email. As you might expect, first thing in the morning is a busy time for email, and Monday mornings are generally worst of all. Your email is more likely to get through quickly and with the least likelihood of loss if you send it later in the day, and in the middle of the week. Need more timing info? Check out the Internet Traffic Report .

Size Counts. Size counts in two ways. Large emails automatically receive a low priority and are delivered more slowly than small ones. And some emails, usually with large attachments, may be accepted on your end but turned away or just deleted on the receiving end. In general, emails less than 10 MB in size will get through -- eventually.

Makeup Matters. The makeup of your email -- how it looks and what it contains -- matters. Not only do the Intenet routers assign a lower priority to email with attachments, but many receiving ISPs, including AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Earthlink, and Yahoo!, check incoming mail for viruses and spyware, and machine-read email to filter for SPAM, and to place contextual ads.

HTML-formatted email and email with attachments that can harbor viruses or run spyware -- including *.doc, *.html, *.exe, *.pif, *.swf, *.com, *.bat -- will be processed more slowly, and sometimes mistakenly rejected or deleted. NB: AOL is infamous for deleting inbound email without notifying the sender or the recipient. Emails that include URLs, viz. website or email addresses, may also be misclassified. If your email address is not in your recipient's Accept List, makeup with care! Your best bet is short, plain-text email with no attachments.

Consider The Alternatives. Email is free. You can't pay anyone to guarantee when or if it's delivered. Important communications need to be sent by postal mail or a parcel delivery service. For quick and easy communication with a friend or collaboration with a business partner, consider Instant Messaging (AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, Google, ICQ all offer free, and generally reliable services) or text messaging (Short Messaging Service). When it comes to communications, we can all take a lesson from the under-30 crowd.

Machinery & Equipment Appraisals

2006-07-03T10:54:00.000-04:00

Kal Barrow, a machinery and equipment appraiser and the recent past President of the Northern New Jersey Chapter of the American Society of Appraisers , asked " How come I'm not included in the Chapter's Directory of Appraisers ?"

The answer is that the Directory is a website directory -- you have to have a website to be in it, just as you need a telephone to be listed in the phone book. The analogy is apt. A modern business without a website is like one without a telephone two generations ago.

To get Kal into the Chapter Directory, we needed to get him a website. After checking out several alternatives, I set up a Gmail account for Kal, which let me build a site using Google's Page Creator . This looked good for several reasons: no cost, good choice of templates (skins), easy set up, no ads, and hosted by a company not likely to go out of business.

I gave it a good effort, but Page Creator is a poor choice if you're trying to build something other than a blog. Formatting the text was formidably difficult -- and I'm a website designer. I liked the layout and color scheme but had to fight to change font size, line spacing, centering, boldening, etc. Sayonara Page Creator.

I'd previously built a similar courtesy website for another machinery and equipment appraiser, Jim Tonkinson. But Jim's site took too long, and is hosted on my servers, so Jim has to contact me for updates and changes. I wanted something Kal could change and perhaps customize himself.

Having just completed a PBWiki for the Binghamton, NY July Fest , I decided to use that platform again. The wiki for Barrow Appraisal Associates is a little noisy visually -- wikis always are, especially free ones that include advertising -- but it tells Kal's story quickly and neatly.

Machinery and equipment appraisers are typically called in when a business changes hands -- think sales, acquisitions, mergers, bankruptcies, partnership dissolutions, estate settlements -- or needs financing. Often they collaborate with business valuation and real estate appraisers to get the full picture. They do appraisals and cost surveys, often giving testimony in court cases as expert witnesses. Their work covers most industries, including mines, factories, offices, etc. The best part of their job? Most, like Kal, are very well-traveled!

Kal offers over 40 years experience worldwide for a variety of clients and industries. Educated at New York University, he is a popular speaker and writer who "gives back" by teaching and contributing to professional organizations, like the American Society of Appraisers (ASA). If you're an attorney, accountant, business owner, manager, or governmental official looking for a top machinery and equipment appraiser, visit the Barrow Appraisal Associates website.

Binghamton, NY July Fest Wiki

2006-06-23T15:13:00.000-04:00

What's a website designer doing with a PBWiki? Creating a webpage for Binghamton, NY's 44th annual July Fest , of course!

The July Fest arts and music festival is sponsored by the Downtown Binghamton Business Association (DBBA) of which my clients, Bob & Sallie Connelly, are prominent members and ardent supporters. One of the attractions this year is Bob Connelly's Binghamton Antique Roadshow, a free appraisal clinic that Bob, a master appraiser and local celebrity, will run with help from other area appraisers. When Sallie asked me to put the clinic on their Calendar of Events , I agreed, but noted that I couldn't find a webpage for the July Fest.

"Oh," said Sallie, "funds are low, and the DBBA never gets around to it. I'll send you the July Fest flyer , and when you put up the Clinic notice, I'll ask the papers to link to it."

Well, I wrote up Bob Connelly's Appraisal Clinic for their Calendar, wrote a PRWEB press release to get a little action for the Clinic and publicity for Bob (he deserves it) and the Fest, and decided to use this month's public service hours building a webpage for the July Fest.

I found a few mentions of past July Fests on the web and even one current mention, but relied on the flyer for most of the current information. First I made a list of the sponsors (where would a fest be without backers?), using Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search to ferret out websites and tag lines. Beside Bob and Sallie Connelly , the Fest has some really major sponsors -- IBM , Clear Channel Radio , and Crowley Foods -- and lots of local merchants, including some spirited ones, like the Brunelli Gallery and M&D-R-Nuts . Then I made a list of events, taking graphics from the flyer and making some to illustrate Bob's Appraisal Clinic, the Arts & Crafts Show, Artist's Showcase, Antique Car & Truck Show, Children's Area, and live music by Splash and the Morgan String Band .

I was writing the introduction when I realized that July Fest is an annual event and much of what I was preparing for this year's outing would be good for next year, and maybe some of what I was doing was inaccurate, or could be supplemented to advantage by others with more resources. And then I thought wiki. A wiki is a perfect way to display information about a topic in a way that can be easily modified, both by the original editor and by others, including others the editor wouldn't and couldn't know to invite.

And that's the story of the Binghamton July Fest wiki . Check it out, and if you're in the Binghamton, NY area on July 7 or 8, go see it in person. It's got something for everyone!

Toolbar Chest

2006-05-22T13:40:00.000-04:00

Here's a program for everyone who uses Windows, Internet Explorer and toolbars or browser add-ins. Gee, that's just about everyone! Brett Bartholomew's Toolbar Chest is a tiny (250KB) program which saves the configuration (content, position, size) of your Internet Explorer Toolbar, then restores it when it gets messed up. It works with virtually all flavors of Windows (98,ME,NT,2K,XP) and all versions of IE. And it's free. Visit Brett's website for other neat, no-nags, no-strings freeware. He has a Toolbar Chest for Outlook Express (which I didn't try), a Context Menu Editor to manage links in right-click pop-up menus (works great), and more than two dozen others. Thanks Brett!

Get $3 at Staples for Used Printer Cartridges

2006-05-06T09:17:00.000-04:00

Recycling is a good idea. Convenient recycling is a better idea. But best of all is recycling that pays. Staples has made recycling used ink and toner cartridges easy and profitable.

When I bought printer cartridges recently, the cashier told me that I could exchange used cartridges for $3 off coupons. The coupons, valid for 3 months, can be used in store, online, or by phone for most purchases with minor, reasonable restrictions.

Before I left, I was given a preprinted press-to-seal poly bag in which to return used cartridges neatly and safely (leaks contained). When I returned four cartridges yesterday, the cashier promptly and pleasantly produced four $3 off coupons. The used cartridges will be remanufactured and sold under the Staples brand or recycled.

Thanks to Staples for supporting recycling. The coupons for cartridges program is part of a larger, company-wide committment to recycling. Applause, applause.

And more applause for making it easy to recycle printer cartridges, for training their Staples staff to support it, and for incentivizing the process. This is how recycling should work!

You're right Staples, "that was easy®."

Tooltips by Walter Zorn

2006-02-10T12:28:00.000-05:00

There are still a few of us who code our webpages "by hand." If you're one of us, this pointer to Tooltips by Walter Zorn is for you.

Tooltip Example.
A tooltip is a popup information box, similar to the box that appears when you hold your mouse cursor over an image whose tag includes alternative or title text. Except Walter Zorn's Tooltips -- like this one -- are configured by you, not the browser.

Uniquely Suitable.
Of course, Zorn's isn't the only code out there for producing tooltips, but after testing a number of them, I found his unique. It's highly configurable, browser friendly, well behaved, easy to use, and available for a voluntary donation or free.

Well Behaved.
Zorn's Tooltips are the only ones we tested that behave predictably and intelligently. Other's unexpectedly "get stuck" on the page, or don't pop up when the target lies near the browser's edge, or dance drunken attendance on the cursor -- and some exhibit all of these misbehaviors.

Cross-Platform, Browser Friendly. It's easy to find tooltips that work pretty well in late versions of Windows' Internet Explorer. Walter Zorn's Tooltips work well in Konqueror 3, Browsers with Gecko-Engine (Mozilla, Netscape 6, Galeon), Netscape 4 and 6, and Opera 5 and 6 on Linux and in Netscape 4, Gecko Browsers, IE 4, 5.0, 5.5 und 6.0, and Opera 5, 6, 7 in Windows. And probably more, too. Use Zorn's Tooltips and you can be certain that 99.9% of your visitors will see them as you intended.

Easy to Use. I may code by hand, but I hate things that are unnecessarily complicated and/or bloated. Zorn's code is lean, clean and resides, as it should, in a separate JavaScript file. To use it, you add a link at the bottom of the page, just before the end Body tag. And you call the script with a brief mouseover.

Highly Configurable.
Just about everything -- size, colors, fonts, shadows, opacity, behavior, etc. -- is configurable globally, in the outboard JavaScript file, and locally using overriding commands in the mouseover call. For example, this Tooltip was configured locally. The Tooltip can contain HTML tags, including images!

Best Choice Award Winner.
It will come as no surprise that we've chosen Walter Zorn's Tooltips as the well-deserved recipient of this week's PC News Digest Best Choice Award. We enjoy using this carefully crafted JavaScript software; we're happy to recommend it. We hope you'll use it, and make a donation to Walter to encourage him to keep up the great work.

Remote PC Control Made Easy

2006-02-03T08:03:00.000-05:00

For many years, we've used pcAnywhere -- now sold by Symantec -- to provide offsite IT support to clients all across the United States. While it has always been expensive and always cumbersome to set up, we stuck with it version after version for the reliability and security. But recent hardware and firewall compatability problems prompted us to consider other ways to implement remote control.

Of course, Windows XP has built in remote control software, but some clients still don't have XP, and we're not always working from a machine equipped with XP Pro (required to control another XP machine). The widely advertised and well-regarded GoToMyPC -- a remotely hosted service -- fills the bill but, at $240 annually for the plain jane version, it's more than most of our small business clients are willing to spend.

After checking pcAnywhere alternatives and hosted services from smaller companies, we tried LogMeIn, which offers hosted remote access software in several versions. We haven't tried all the flavors or options -- we're just users, not product reviewers -- but we've used LogMeIn with different browsers, versions of Windows, firewalls, routers, brands of hardware, and Internet access from DSL, to cable modem and T1. And we haven't found any combination that LogMeIn didn't ace.

There's a lot to like about LogMeIn. It's extraordinarily easy to set up. Actually, there's no set up; LogMeIn's tiny software download does it all for you. No configuring necessary. The remote PC must be running Windows 98, 2000, XP, or Server 2003 with Internet Explorer or Netscape 4.0 or better installed. The local (controlling) PC needs a 4.0 or better browser with Java, but is even more flexible about operating system. LogMeIn says "any operating system with Java enabled within the browser." That means you you can also access your PC from any web-enabled Pocket PC device!

It's fast, with easily selected display options. Even with a dial-up connection to the remote desktop, LogMeIn provides reasonable speed. Broadband connections provide remote functionality as good and often faster than pcAnywhere, e.g. about as fast as intranet remote across a large inhouse network.

Naturally, the graphic quality of the display, depends on the connection speed and video cards, but it's always more than adequate for anything by image editing. Changes in the number of colors, screen resolution, and windowing are easily selected from an unobtrusive, auto-hiding menu that defaults to a top-center screen position.

The best thing about LogMeIn is that it can be installed on the remote PC by anyone who can open an email and click on a link. You don't have to physically visit the remote to install it; and you don't need an IT-guy to configure it. I've set up remote sessions with clients proud of their "computer illiteracy" in less than five minutes.

So what's the catch? It's not the price. A full-function remote connection costs only $69.95 annually (otherwise, $12.95/month). But if you don't need file-sharing and transfer, you can use the free version, which is otherwise identical to the subscription edition. What's not to like?

Building Web Forums

2005-08-19T12:58:00.000-04:00

Some forums are more equal than others, with some active and lively, and others quieter than snow. Over the years, we've built both bombs and bombshells, learning along the way. Here are some pointers on building forums based on our experience.

Moderators Make the Mission. Our first forum, The PC Forum about personal computing, has always been a magnet for new PC users with problems. It taught us that forums don't "take care of themselves," but must be moderated to stay on mission. The moderator's job is to quickly delete off-point messages, and just as quickly to answer, or find someone to answer, those that he wants to encourage. Without a moderator, a forum soon drifts into uncharted waters, and eventually sinks. (Hint: The PC Forum needs a moderator.)

Software Makes a Difference. The PC Forum and our next forum, now called the Genealogy Forum of Long Island were both built using a simple Perl script by Matt Wright. The script was a barebones but popular affair whose minimal feature-count was cured by add-ons written by others. But it was primitive -- chewing up server resources and presenting hackers with more meat than a herd of hippos. It was so poor that a group of experienced coders got together and produced a drop-in replacement for that and Matt's other scripts under the NMS acronym (politely expanded to Not Matt's Stuff). The good thing: Matt's script was search-engine friendly, encouraging spiders to index the main board (homepage) and every last message.

Ouch: Dynamic Pages, Proprietary Formats. That wasn't true of the first version of our next forum, Mohawk ShopTalk, a forum about automotive equipment in general, and Mohawk lifts in particular. This forum was built to support our network of Mohawk distributors, and today with NMS scripts it does, generating from 10-20% of each distributor's traffic. But it was initially built using a clever script from Darryl Burgdorf, which created the main board on the fly, and stored messages in a neat proprietary format. Unfortunately, search engines couldn't index the main board -- which didn't exist as a static webpage -- and they simply ignored the individual messages.

And Ouch Again. Darryl's isn't the only script that gives spiders the cold shoulder. Any script that generates pages on the fly (i.e., when called up, or dynamically) or that stores messages in database format (think MySQL) will probably do poorly in search engines. Before you build a forum, check out live examples that use the script. Find snippets of unique text in two-three week old messages and see if those snippets are indexed by Google and Yahoo!. If not, pass on the script, unless you're building a forum for your company intranet, where indexing by search engines doesn't matter.

Frames a No-No, Too. Dynamic pages and databases aren't the only way to make a forum that search engines ignore. The use of framesets and frames is another way. This HTML coding technique is nifty: with it, you can make a fixed menu panel control the contents of a display panel. Nifty but shifty. Unless you remember to create a parallel "no frames" version, a forum set up with frames will fly right under the radar of all current search engines. We learned this the hard way with METRO: The Real Estate Forum for NY, NJ, CT Buyers, Sellers and Owners, which is currently being revamped to eliminate frames.

Hackers, Commercial Posts. As web forums become successful, they attract not only constituent visitors, but a variety of leeches. Entrepreneurs looking for free advertising hover over forums like gulls at a beach party. Fortunately, once their graffiti is deleted and the software set up to ban them by email or IP address, they usually go elsewhere. More pernicious are the bot-writing hackers, working for commercial interests, who SPAM forums with messages for pharmaceuticals, pornography, stocks, loans, and love for sale. To thwart these suckers you need to select software that prevents duplicate posts and closely-spaced multiple posts from the same source. Your software should also require registration before posting, and in the case of ongoing problems, use opt-in registration where the board sends the registrant a password before allowing posts. Also helpful with hackers -- and the foul-mouthed -- is the ability to automatically censor posts based on a blacklist of undesirable words.

Boring Topic? Dead Forum! If you're beginning to feel that building and moderating a forum is a full-time job, you're right. After all, if it's successful, you might well join Craig Newmark (think craigslist) on line at the deposit window. Okay, fantasy over. More likely, you'll do everything right and still wind up with an unsuccessful forum. We did. Our first bomb was the forum now successfully devoted to genealogy on Long Island. It used to be devoted to the history of Oyster Bay. Right. Nobody cared, other than the historical society that nominally "sponsored" it. Another bomb: the ValTalk Appraisal Forum, about appraisals and appraising. Even more people don't care about that. Everybody wants to know what grandma's vase is worth, but nobody wants to talk about the process of valuation. Of course, it doesn't help that this forum is built with software that might graciously be characterized as piggishly ponderous. As always on the web, speed counts.

Another Trip. Our latest forum, the Bryant Gardens Forum, a community forum for the residents of the Bryant Gardens Cooperative in White Plains, NY is another trip entirely. We built it using open source YABB software, which handles the problems discussed above, and has lots of add-ons available. Why another trip? This one's for a community full of ideas and looking for an outlet. Offering news, views, stories and classifieds, we had twenty registered members in two days and hundreds of visitors. And although it's showing up nicely in the search engines -- thanks Yahoo! and Google -- this time we recruited members the old-fashioned way, with handbills and notes tucked on resident's doors. See what I mean? Another trip!

Free Business Website

2005-08-06T09:10:00.000-04:00

It used to be that a business without a fax number was considered a very small business. Today it's the lack of a website that shouts "small."

No Excuse. And yet there's no excuse for not having one. At least no monetary excuse. For years, professional organizations, such as the American Society of Appraisers, have offered their members free webpages. But today you don't have to belong to an organization to get a free business website. All that's needed is Internet access -- and you can get that at your local library.

Yahoo! Steps Up Again. Now in beta, but sure to go gold soon, is Yahoo!'s free website for local business owners. I checked it out last night, creating a website for the Webshop in about 30 minutes, using the supplied templates and filling in the blanks -- no experience in webbery required.

Really, really, really. Yahoo!, who has lots of experience supplying and managing the free GeoCities websites for personal use, figures you'll like your free business website so much, you'll probably spring for an upgrade. The free site has limitations: it's supported by Yahoo! ads, can't easily be expanded or heavily customized, and resides at a hard-to-remember domain, like ours -- http://ny.local.yahoo.biz/webshop/. But heck, it really is free, it looks really nice, and you can pack in more than enough info to make it really useful.

We Do Free, Too. Of course, if you want a professionally created, professionally managed website for your business, my Webshop has a free website offer, too. This one will cost you something. You pay for domain registration, hosting, and server setup, and we'll build a basic website for free. Like this one for Griffith Appraisals, run by Tim Griffith, a New Jersey real estate appraiser, or this one for Tonkinson Apppraisals, run by Jim Tonkinson, a machinery & equipment appraiser, or this one for Sugarhill Services Corp., the Harlem real estate property developers and managers. Totally free is better than looking "small." But, with apologies to the Donald, a website that works trumps that, too. At the Webshop, our committment is to websites that work -- that not only look good, but are productive. Check it out.

AOL: Privacy or Piracy?

2005-07-31T18:04:00.000-04:00

As a PC consultant introducing his clients to email and the web, I personally recommended and installed America Online (AOL) at least fifty times, probably more. To keep current with AOL, I had an account myself until two years ago.

Unused Account Gets SPAM. I closed my AOL account, although my wife enjoyed using it, when I found buckets of SPAM pouring into a screenname I'd set up and never used. Since the screenname was unique and unlikely to be generated by a dictionary attack, I assumed internal piracy. This was later confirmed when an ex-employee was prosecuted for stealing screennames. So much for privacy.

Checking Out AIM Webmail. Recently I read that AOL was offering webmail to users of their AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) service and to folks, like me, who'd closed their regular AOL accounts. To see what they were offering and how it worked, I set up an AIM account with my old AOL screenname, then followed the links offering free webmail.

Almost As Advertised. Two or three clicks and a few web-seconds later, I had webmail with my old screenname at aim.com. Easy to use. Nice features. Plenty of storage. What's not to like? Well, there was just one thing. When I clicked on the addressbook, I found it populated with the names and email addresses of people I hadn't contacted in years -- literally.

Privacy or Piracy? You might think that really convenient. Me too, except it makes me wonder what other information they still have, who they've been sharing it with, and whether it's any safer than that unused screenname that was inundated with SPAM. Privacy or privacy? You tell me.

SMOKING: If you're a heavy smoker and want to quit, please read my article on How to Quit Smoking. It worked for me and hundreds like me.

Hacker Alert for Webmasters

2005-07-31T14:40:00.000-04:00

If the name Jim Rhodes and the company name deadlock Design ring a bell, you may be one of maybe thousands of webmasters who installed Jim's free Refer Me script. Written in Perl, it's a basic cgi script which visitors invoke to recommend your website to their friends.

The Disclaimer. Like most freeware it came with a disclaimer: "deadlock Design accepts no responsibility for consequences arising from use of this script." This time, the disclaimer was necessary. Yesterday, a copy of the script was hacked by a SPAMmer who used it to relay thousands of advertising emails to AOL accounts.

The Damage. The least of the damage was the hundreds of delivery failure notifications resulting from SPAM to closed, blocked or nonexistent accounts. The worst was AOL's pre-emptive and unilateral blocking of all email originating from my service. Hopefully, it's a one day block that will expire and not require explanations and negotiations.

An Alternative. I don't blame Jim or his circa 1997 script, written in simpler times. I blame myself for forgetting to replace that old script. A word to the wise. A more secure, freeware alternative from a source that continues to write and upgrade scripts is William Bontrager's Master Recommend V3. Naturally, I accept no responsibility for consequences arising from use of his script.

Don't Connect to Broadband without Protection

2005-07-30T07:26:00.000-04:00

If you're buying, building, or reformatting a PC, please don't connect it to the Internet via broadband -- cable modem or DSL -- until you read this.

Instant Infestation. One of this morning's Lockergnome newsletters included the article Practicing Unsafe Web, which is a must read. The author reformatted a PC, installed Windows XP, SP2, and Microsoft AntiSpyware, and enabled the built-in Windows firewall. Going online, he found he couldn't download and install Zone Alarm (firewall software) or AVG Antivirus. Why not? Because the malware got to him first!

An Ounce of Prevention. His recommendation: before you go online, make sure you have working antivirus software, antispyware software, and a third party firewall, such as Zone Alarm. I agree, except about the firewall. I'd rather have a fortress than a platoon of noncoms to protect me. Skip the software firewall -- which, like antivirus and antispyware software, needs constant updating, and which will interact with other software -- and get the almost completely bulletproof protection of a hardware firewall. How? Get a router. Every one comes with a first class hardware firewall built-in, no tweaking or updating required.

A Pound of Prevention. Wired broadband routers from major manufacturers -- I prefer Linkys by Cisco Systems -- are available at your neighborhood office supply store at everyday prices around $60. Or get one on eBay for half that. Connecting a router is as easy or easier than connecting a printer, so there's no excuse for passing up this protection. Of course, some folks just like pain...

P.S. Wireless routers have built in firewalls, too. For a few more bucks and a little more setup time, you could have your protection and a WiFi network, too.

Great Free FTP Software

2005-07-21T20:09:00.000-04:00

When it comes to software, I am a firm believer in the maxim that less is more.

I prefer software that has a small footprint (uses less not more disk space and active memory or RAM). I like software that does the job and nothing more. I'm a big fan of software that loads and runs quickly without trickery -- preloading is trickery in my book. And naturally, I like software that costs less, not more.

So when I got the "invitation" to buy yet another upgrade of the FTP client software we use on the Webshop's five machines, I decided to go slow. I've been using WS_FTP Pro and regularly upgrading for seven or eight years. It's reliable, competent software that really doesn't need to be improved, except to accomodate hardware or operating system changes -- or to pump up Ipswitch profits.

So instead of putting another nickel in Ipswitch's meter, I checked out the alternatives. Last time out, I'd found reasonable alternatives in SmartFTP and CuteFTP. SmartFTP is more than most home users will ever need, has a small footprint, is quick, and is free. I'm not fond of its interface, but then I'm a right-brained, linear-thinking compulsive. CuteFTP, whose "Home" edition has escalated to $60, has a slicker interface than SmartFTP, twice the footprint, and does little more. I passed on the "Pro" edition altogether.

My choice for a terrific WS_FTP alternative and the winner of this week's PC News Digest Best Choice Award is CoreFTP, available in a Lite freeware edition and a Pro edition for $35. It boasts a small footprint (a third the size of WS_FTP), all the features needed to handle website design and development quickly and securely, clean, intuitive interface, and no excess baggage. And this puppy even works nicely on older PCs. It needs just 16MB memory, 4MB disk space, and Windows 95B with IE 4.1 or later. I'm already using it regularly on an older laptop we use for backups. You can bet CoreFTP will be installed on each new machine I build and any I upgrade.

PDFs: Always Portable, Now Affordable

2005-07-15T10:15:00.000-04:00

It's happened to all of us. A friend sends an important document but you're unable to view it because you don't have the appropriate software. For example, to open a meeting notice created with Microsoft Publisher, you need Publisher or compatible software. Or perhaps you're trying to open a pamphlet created with QuarkXPress, software written for the MAC, but you have a Windows PC and couldn't use Quark if you wanted to. As they say in France, quelle drague.

Get Adobe Reader Fortunately, the folks at Adobe Systems have made it their business to solve the problem of document intransigence caused by software and/or platform (operating system) incompatibilities. No matter what operating system you use -- within limits, but Windows, MAC, Unix, Linux, Palm, Symbian, Pocket PC, even OS/2 Warp are all supported -- you can download and install Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. (We recommend the final release of version 6.0; the just-released version 7.0 is piggishly slow and plagued with security problems.) That's part one of the Adobe solution. Once installed, Adobe's Acrobat Reader will open any PDF (Portable Document Format) file, no matter what software was used originally to create it, and without regard to the original operating system.

Making PDF Files The second and last part is making the document to be shared into a PDF file. PDFs retain the format, graphics, fonts and color of the original and can be opened by anyone using Acrobat Reader. It will come as no surprise that Adobe also makes some very fine software for making PDF files. It's called Acrobat, The Standard version will set you back $300; an online subscription to convert documents to PDFs is $10 a month or $100 annually. For most of us, that's more than it's worth because we're probably not going to create PDF files on a daily basis. Other manufacturers, such as ScanSoft offer software in the $50-100 range that can code and decode (convert back to native format) PDF files. The limitation here is that you typically get to activate and install the software on one PC, and then you can buy another copy for your laptop, another for your partner's PC, another...

Built in PDF Creation Some software, such as the OpenOffice suite, some versions of MS Office, and the software bundled with some scanners, include the ability to export as a PDF any document they create. If you expect to make a lot of PDFs, it's worth looking for this easy-to-use feature when purchasing office suites and scanning software. But what if you don't own these programs and aren't planning to buy them anytime soon?

Free Online PDF Creation For the casual user who now and then has a webpage (HTML), text file (TXT), spreadsheet (XLS), image (BMP, JPG, GIF), or MS Word document (DOC) to convert, there are several free online converters. A good one is PDF Online, formerly goBCL. You upload the document, or tell the converter where to find it on the web, and get back a PDF of the document via email. The conversion is free because the developer hopes you'll like the results enough to buy his desktop or server software.

Free PDF Print Drivers The same kind of thinking motivates software designers who offer free, downloadable PDF print drivers. An example is PDF4Free, which we have not tried. The print driver route is particularly felicitous, but usually limited to Windows systems. Once installed you can use it with any software on your system that makes printable documents. It makes no difference whether it's an invoice, a CAD drawing, an appraisal, a picture, a postcard, a spreadsheet, an email, or your last will and testament. If you can print it, you can send it to the PDF print driver which will make it into a PDF file, usually with a number of creation options. The drawbacks? We've seen versions that time out after a small number of conversions, and at least one that installed spyware. Caveat emptor!

Our Choice: PDF Creator Naturally, I saved the best for last. The PDF creation software I recommend without reservations is PDF Creator, a free, no strings, Open Source PDF print driver that works nicely in any 32-bit version of Windows, from Windows 95 on up. It won't time out. There's no spyware. And because it's Open Source, it's continually being upgraded.

Go for It! In case it wasn't obvious, the Adobe PDF solution won't "fix" that incompatible document we talked about in the first paragraph. The PDF solution only works proactively. You and your correspondents need to equip yourself with Adobe's free PDF Reader, and with PDF Creator or similar, and then share your documents as PDFs. Got it? Go for it!

P.S. We haven't found a MAC equivalent of PDF Creator, but MAC users might want to try PrintToPDF, shareware (free to try; $20 to buy) from a reliable source.