ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2001
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Welcome to the 155th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you.
You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!
Recommend PCIN at http://PCIN.net/recommend.shtml
Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.shtml
Last week I was complaining about how cold it was. Well, I think that Mother Nature listened to me, at least for the last few days. It has been beautiful. As many of you know, I work in Niagara Falls, and most days I go for a walk through the park that runs along where the Falls are. The sun was shining, the leaves are starting to turn colour. It was beautiful.
I'm still having a lot of people email me at the old FreeHelp email address. Remember, if you want help with a computer problem, then visit http://www.pcin.net/help/forum/ and post a message there. That way I, or anyone else, can respond to your question.
Google May Get Personal
"With last month's acquisition of Outride, Google may be poising itself to go forward into an area of search refinement that no major player has gone successfully before: personalized search results.
With personalized results, a person would get back a list of results that takes into account some of their demographics. For example, if you had registered yourself as a man, you might see a different set of results when searching for flowers than a woman might see."For more info:
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/10-personal.html
DoCoMo unveils 3G, with caution
"After a bumpy four-month delay, NTT DoCoMo Monday unveiled the world's first commercial third-generation (3G) service in Tokyo.
The service will allow users to receive data at six to 40 times faster than current speeds, making fast mobile Internet access and video downloads possible.
The launch was originally slated to take place in May, but technical hiccups forced DoCoMo to postpone the commercial service by three months."For more info:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/BUSINESS/asia/09/30/tokyo.docomo3Gdebut/index.html
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,64103,00.asp
PayPal To End Dot-Com IPO Drought
"PayPal is the first Internet company to file for an IPO in about three months.
Online payment system PayPal filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on Friday, looking to leverage its rapid growth and close ties with auction giant eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) to help itself raise as much as US$80 million through a stock sale.
PayPal said that the money it raises will be used in part to provide collateral for the payments it makes. Other intended uses include development of new products and additional expansion.
PayPal's registration form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) did not disclose details of the Palo Alto, California-based firm's offering, such as how much shares would cost or when the sale would take place.
'We seek to become the global standard for online payments,' PayPal told the SEC."For more info:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/13856.html
Amazon Needs a Christmas Present
"To deliver his long-promised operating profit, CEO Jeff Bezos is counting on a strong holiday season. Forecasters aren't so cheerful.
Investors are fretting already about how retailers may suffer through a sluggish holiday shopping season, but nowhere are those fears more acute than at Amazon.com. The online e-tailer, still hanging in there many moons after the demise of hundreds of lesser-capitalized e-commerce companies, saw its stock drop once more in late September after the National Retail Federation made downward revisions on growth prospects for holiday shopping -- predicting 2.2% growth instead of 4%."For more info:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2001/nf2001102_1493.htm
Here are the responses from the last poll:
Do you use any voice recognition software?
No: 82.54%
Yes: 14.29%
What's is voice recognition software?: 3.17%Total Votes: 63
Visit http://pcin.net/polls/ to participate in the new poll this week:
Do you bank or manage any other financial assets online?
Visit the PCIN FreeHelp Forum to post your questions or answer others. Each week I highlight a question, and where to go to get the answer.
Question
Since I have installed IE6 I get an opening message of "Enter your network Passord for Microsoft Net Working".Clicking OK,Cancel, or close all let's the computer to start. How can I remove this message?
Answer
No answers posted yet
Do you know the answer or have a suggestion? Visit http://www.pcin.net/cgi-bin/forum/index.cgi and check out the Software Forum. Post your answer or post a question of your own.
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Some Useful Registry Tips (Now 54 Tips!)
http://PCIN.net/help/articles/registry.shtmlPCIN Poll of the week
http://PCIN.net/poll/Support PCIN
http://PCIN.net/donate.shtml
Cheap Trick of the Week
**Banish clouds and rectangles **
When you open Explorer in Windows 98 or Me, there's a little graphic in the upper left corner, or in the upper left corner of the right pane if you use the two-pane layout. In Win98 it's a cloud design and in WinMe it's usually a set of colourful rectangles.
This graphic is set in Win98 by the file wvleft.bmp, which is a hidden file in the Web folder inside the Windows folder. WinMe also has a cloudy .bmp file with that name but the rectangles graphic seems to come from another file, wvleft.gif, in the same folder.
In either case, you can replace this graphic with whatever design you would like.
Create a .bmp or .gif file in Paint or another image-editing program and save it as wvleft.bmp or wvleft.gif in the Web folder in place of the previous file with that name. (It may be a good idea to make a backup of the old file first, in case you want to restore it later.)
When you create your graphic, be sure to make the bottom part of it lighter, so the information displayed in that corner of the Explorer pane will be legible.Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks: 2001" by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct/
Google Search Tip
Most search engines have ways to search for specific words in domain names, in links, in picture names, etc. Google is no exception. But Google also allows you to search for results that come from specific file types. For instance if I wanted to search for the terms "free computer help" and see only results from PDF files, I would type:
free computer help filetype:pdf
Give it a try. You can use file types of pdf, html, asp, txt, htm, shtml and I'm sure many more.
A Couple of Fun Sites
Here are links to a couple of sites that I check out occasionally.
http://www.ringling.com/ is the site of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. They have facts, history, pictures, and some games.
http://www.magictricks.com/ contains a lot of items you can buy (special cards, etc.), but it also has bios on famous magicians, statistics, and world records.
PCIN is brought to you by PC Improvements. The opinions expressed are those of the editor, Graham Wing. PC Improvements and Graham Wing accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.
Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2001, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.
Support PCIN by visiting http://www.pcin.net/donate.shtml