The PC Improvement News
Issue 1-24
March 24, 1999
ISSN 1488-3163
Published electronically by PC Improvements (c) 1999
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/
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Welcome to the 24th edition of the PC Improvement News. In
this newsletter,
I have a couple of tips to make your computing life easier
as well as
highlights of the past weeks PC Industry News. I am more than
willing to
discuss any PC related topics in this newsletter. Just email
me at
editor@pcin.net with
your suggestions. I would also appreciate it
if you let me know if there is any strange formatting in the
newsletter so
that I can fix them.
Give me two or three issues, and I know that you will get
something great
out of this!
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SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
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I HIT 200 SUBSCRIBERS THIS WEEK!! IT TOOK ABOUT 5 MONTHS.
THANKS TO ALL OF YOU AND LETS TRY TO ADD ANOTHER 200
MORE IN A MUCH SHORTER TIME!!
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THE NEWS
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Y2K Scams
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A spokesman for Frost National Bank in San Antonio said a
man had phoned
the bank to report receiving a call in which he was told it
would be
necessary to move his money to a special "bond"
account as part of the
bank's work to prepare computers for the Year 2000. He was
then asked for
personal information, including account numbers, which he
declined to
give. Good thing. Be sure to be on the lookout for people
who will try to
take advantage of people's paranoia.
Email Policies
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I don't know how many of you have read my article on email
policies (you
should at http://www.pcimprovements.com/help/emailpolicy.html)
but there
was a good article in US News and World Report recently that
talked about
the same thing. There were a couple of employees of a company
who emailed
each other and called their boss "Old bald-headed goat."
"Idiot." "Useless
control freak pseudo figurehead numbskull." Needless
to say, the boss had
access to the company email and the people got fired. It is
a very serious
thing to abuse your company email. Of course an excellent
newsletter like
this can only help your productivity :-) but you should be
careful with
too many leisure things.
For more info:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990322/22work.htm
Get everyone's email address
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For a lot of webmasters, one of the most important things
is to get
peoples email addresses. The honest ones try to do that by
having site
update newsletters and other opt-in lists. The not-so-honest
ones try to
steal it. Visit http://www.roltrader.com/down.htm (Link
no longer works)
and you'll see what I mean. The page loads and the last thing
to come
up is a warning message asking if you want to submit the form
by email.
What form? I never filled out a form! The webmaster has used
HTML to try to
get a persons email address. The webmaster is hoping that
a visitor will see
the message and just click OK to get rid of it. Of course,
then this unscrupulous
person will have your email address and who knows how many
thousands of people
he will sell it to. Visit that site and see if you get the
warning message.
You should. When you get it, just press cancel and everything
will be
fine. If you don't get a warning, then you'd better figure
out why the
messages aren't appearing. You don't know how many people
have gotten your
email address that way.
What's up with Microsoft?
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For the next month or so I will only have this one link (for
new
subscribers). The trial is on a recess, so not much will be
happening.
Cyber Trial of the Century
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/msdojtrial.html
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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
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Sneak Previews at the Movies
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Do you like to know ahead of time what movies will be coming
out in the
next few months? Well, I came across a site run by AC Nielson
Research
that lets you be a "trailer" reviewer. You visit
the site and you are
shown a trailer for a movie and then are asked a few questions.
I don't
know what trailer they are showing now, but I watched one
for a new David
Spade movie that I hadn't seen advertised anywhere. You videos
are shown
in RealVideo and the opening screen tells you if you can view
the trailer
or not.
Visit the site at http://www.reelresearch.com/welcome.asp
Speed up your CD-ROM Part II
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Last week I included a small review of a program called CD-Quick
Cache (
you can download a trial of CD-Quick Cache from
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/circuitsys/.
Well, a subscriber
emailed me and asked permission to copy the review in his
newsletter. I
agreed and after seeing his newsletter, I thought it might
interest some
of you. Visit http://users.skynet.be/sky88639/
and check out his archives.
"This site was originally set up as a tribute to the
presence of humour on
the net, until I figured out that the web was rather a meeting
place for
weird individuals instead of funny ones." The site is
called The Weird
Side. Check it out!
Learn how to...
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A few weeks ago I shared a site that told you "How Things
Work" and I just
found another one. Visit http://www.learn2.com/
and learn some more things.
Lastly...
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I don't know why this week I have so many web sites to share.
I guess it
just worked out that way. In 3 or 4 different newsletters
that I get, I've
had reports about http://www.emailfile.com/
a site that prompts you to
input the location of a file and then it emails it to you.
Your assignment
for this week is to try it out. See if you like it and then
let me know.
I'll include the most insightful and wise critiques next week.
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Lastly, send in your comments, tips and news and you too can
be included in
The PC Improvement News with a reference to your name and
web site.
Send email to pcinews@pcimprovements.com
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Well, that's all for this week. Remember that if there is
anything that you
want to learn about, let me know and I will try to accommodate
you. Also,
feel free to send any comments about the newsletters and the
topics covered.
This newsletter is sent to those who subscribed only. We don't
believe in
SPAM, so if you have somehow gotten this and you don't want
it, please see
the subscribe/unsubscribe options at the start of the newsletter.
The PC Improvement News 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 (either good or bad) for the
results obtained
from trying the tips in this newsletter.
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Editor: Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1999, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights
reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as
long as the
editor is notified.