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PC World Picks Auction Central Alexa Auction Sniper Grocwin Shopping EdgeGain v1.1.2 Belarc Advisor Auction Tamer Copernic Shopper

A sure sign that the free ride is over: Google Answers. We get asked so many questions which can (typically) yield top results with the right keywords on any given search engine. The problem is that, even with this kind of power at the world's fingertips, people are still too lazy to do it themselves. If you understand a subject intimately, why not make a little "hamburger money" with your knowledge. It's a great idea, actually - even though it's far from new. So, what makes this service different - or better? The Google brand. I remember reading how another search engine (Teoma) was trying to topple Google's position. I've got disappointing news for Teomites: it'll be an uphill battle you probably won't win. Not to say that it isn't worth trying, mind you. Lindows is trying to steal mindshare from Windows, too - but these things don't change overnight. Test it on your "computer illiterate" friends. Ask them where they'd go to search for information online. Ask them where they'd go to auction an item online. Ask them if they care who makes the software they use. I bet their answers will surprise you.

Jeremy Griffith writes: "Many people have probably noticed that MSN and hotmail have started popup ads, or at least increased their frequency. In its own right, this is rather annoying, but today it went overboard. I went to enter a URL in the address bar and missed a letter. As usual, Internet Explorer (6.0) launched the typical search on the MSN Web site. The MSN search page popped up an advertisement. I know I can install popup stoppers, disable scripts, etc., but then I feel like I have lost a part of the Internet. This, on the other hand, was too intrusive. Just because I mistype a URL doesn't give Microsoft the right to give me an advertisement. I would definitely not miss this 'feature,' so I went in search of a way to disable Autosearch from the address bar. I'm sure many of your users already know this tip or know a better way of doing it, but this is what I found. There was a Customize button which appeared in the search area. This brought up a 'Customize Search Settings' dialog. At the bottom of the dialog, there's a button called 'Autosearch settings.' This seemed like the place to go. Under the 'When searching:' drop-down I was able to select 'Do not search from the Address bar.' This setting has now disabled the Autosearch feature from the address bar and has increased by browsing speed when I accidentally mistype a URL."

See You in August,              
Chris Pirillo       

GnomeDOWNLOADS

Anna-O-Gram v [365k] W9x/2k/XP FREE

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http://www.darkend.net/
http://screenshot.lockergnome.com/annaogram.png

{Find any anagram} Have you ever tried to solve the jumble? Ya know, that puzzle game they put in newspapers where you have to assemble a bunch of scrambled letters to make words? Well, the next time you tackle that puzzle, you might want to have this program handy. It'll create anagrams out of any word you enter. Pretty cool, eh? I wonder how many I can make with the word 'I?' "While a dictionary file is included, it is recommended that you find a larger one." Let's see if I can find an anagram for my name... nothing impressive turns up. What about for Gretchen? "Happy wife?" She doesn't even have a 'W' in her name! How the heck did that get in there? Methinks we have a hacker in the hizouse.

Windows Navigator v1.27 [653k] W9x/2k/XP FREE

http://download.wanari.hu/products/gynav127.zip
http://www.wanari.com/products/gynav/home.htm
http://screenshot.lockergnome.com/windowsnavigator.png

{Norton Commander clone} You've used the Windows Explorer, but if you're looking for something a little different, why not try the Windows Navigator? This includes a command-line interface (as well as the ever-popular GUI), parallel file operations, search functionality, archive support, drag & drop, and context menus (just to name a few). "Supports: bmp, avi, txt, rtf, jpg, gif, ico, cur, wmf, and emf file formats; it can check the changes of the currently viewed file and offer the reload (like a log viewer); network handling is in a separate thread; rename capability on the overwrite dialog (Source or destination); more." And yes, this thing is extremely customizable - perfect for "extreme" tweakers.

Recommend It!

GnomeCLICKS

GnomeSYSTEM

Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text

http://www.expita.com/nomime.html

"Many e-mail and News reader programs allow users to include binary attachments (MIME) or HTML within their e-mail messages. This makes URLs into clickable links and it means that images, formatting, and even color-coded text can also be included. While this makes your e-mail interesting and pretty to look at, it can cause problems for other people who receive your e-mail. Sometimes, all they see is the actual 'code' of the message. If someone replies to the HTML message, the quoting can render the message even more unreadable. In some cases, the message is nothing but odd-looking text. For this reason, many mailing lists explicitly forbid the use of HTML formatted e-mail. Using HTML e- mail makes the messages larger in size by a minimum of two-thirds to more than twenty times. These take longer to download and will take up more space than plain text e-mail."

Recommend It!

GnomeASSISTANT

Web-based E-mail Insight
Scribbled by Joel and Darren

http://www.fastmail.fm/

Joel Thornton: I read a suggestion for people to try VerizonMail. May I suggest another - IMHO, far superior - alternative. Fastmail.fm wins in four basic ways: free / cheap, fast, IMAP enabled for everyone, and thoroughly feature-packed. The free account includes speedy Web and IMAP interfaces, a choice of over 50 mail domains, 10 MB quota, and more. POP3 is not available at the basic service level, but IMAP is available for all - which is a superior alternative to POP3. For a one-time fee of $15, the service can be upgraded to "Member" level, which adds SMTP access, advanced server-side filtering, an extra e-mail alias (upgradeable at will), 16mb quota (upgradeable at will), improved virus scanning, and more.

Other features (some of these require a monthly fee): custom CSS themes; POP3 access; resource usage stats; spam protection by SpamAssassin; ability to have e-mail folders archived and sent to you as a ZIP file; your own subdomain; address book; plus- addressing can be used to further sort email; multiple "From" identities; automatically import messages from another e-mail service; IMAP migration (automated migration of an existing IMAP account / folder structure to fastmail account); host MX record for your own domain name at fastmail; extra quota / aliases / bandwidth purchasable in units; gift certificates.

The service also supports a web-based forum, where both the users and the Fastmail developers are very active. In fact, I have never found a service on the Net whose developers are so responsive and involved with user concerns. Most concerns are answered within 12 hours. In short, this service is (to me) the 'Google of webmail.' Feature-packed (but not invasively so), very fast (faster than my DSL provider's e-mail service, in fact), and free or cheap - depending on your needs. Try it, you will not be disappointed.

Darren Blackham: After reading Matt's review, I decided to give Verizon Mail a look. The first thing I noticed during the sign up process is that Verizon is 'powered' by mail.com. I have had email accounts with mail.com themselves, as well as with email.com and iname.com (both of which are 'powered' by mail.com). It has been my experience that the mail.com service is unreliable at best, and while three years ago, I was raving about their service to everyone, I now warn others to stay away.

Originally, mail.com was a Web-based service which offered free email forwarding. This was a great feature, as you could forward mail to your regular email account when home, and leave it on the Web to retrieve while you were away - eliminating the need for two email addresses. However, a couple of years ago, they started to 'upgrade' their service. A large hardware upgrade, I assume. This seemed to take an entire year, and during this time, e-mails would either take days to arrive, or (often) just disappear into oblivion. I tested this myself (as mail.com support continued to deny that e-mails were being lost); many of those test e-mails simply never arrived. Bounced mails were also common during this upgrade, forcing me to resubscribe to newsletters (such as yours) time and time again. Things got so bad that mail.com support was forced to send apologies to all if their customers, although they continued to deny that anything was getting lost.

The service has settled down to "mediocre." Recently, they decided to charge for e-mail forwarding, and sent messages to some of their customers advising them of this change. I say SOME of their customers; I had three different mail.com accounts, but only received advisory e-mails through two of them. As e-mail forwarding was turned off, messages are once again disappearing. Mysteriously, I have e-mail forwarding turned on again, despite the fact that I didn't sign up (pay) for it. I won't count on it working for long, and I'll probably lose more mails while that's being fixed.

But back to my signing up for a Verizon account. I went through the entire process and got to the 'your account is now activated' message, but could not sign in. I then started the sign up process again, using the same username, but when getting a message that it was available, assumed that mail.com was as reliable as ever and gave up. As far as advertising goes, advertising pop-ups are incredibly persistent and annoying when viewing e-mail within your browser at the mail.com site. It makes me wonder how long before VerizonMail will go this route. And they're just as bad at iname.com and email.com. Verizon may have the best intentions, offering a Web-based email service, but I'd stay away from anything powered by mail.com. Thanks for letting me rant.

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GnomeFAVORITE

Hungover

http://www.hungover.net/

{Stop that hangover} We've all been there: you go out for the evening, have yourself one, two, or thirty-seven beers, and the next morning you wake up feeling as if you're being beaten about the head with a frozen turkey. No need to fret, Chet. This Web resource just might help you cure that colorful cough. You've got the disease and it has the cure. If nothing helps, it'll at least make you laugh. "Turn your pain into pleasure with hangover cures, top tens, the Memory Test, killer links, reader cures and more." I remember the first time I experimented with "grape juice plus." Mom was not impressed.

Recommend It!

GnomeTIP

Something always bothered me about the fonts in Windows. I mean, I had every option set to "Tahoma" under the Display Properties' Appearance tab, yet I kept seeing "MS Sans Serif" and "Microsoft Sans Serif" fonts in random dialogs. It didn't annoy me to the point where I couldn't live with it, but still - when I want one font all over my system, I mean it. I'd always seen the Font Substitutes section in Windows 9x's WIN.INI file, but I didn't pay too much attention to it. I wish I had; the "fix" was there all along. You can easily use this tip in your version of Windows, but for those of us with XP, we'll need to dive into the Registry. Find your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ FontSubstitutes. Now, before you go any further, make note of what you see here (or Export the branch for later merging). Double-click the "MS Shell Dlg" entry. Change it to whatever you want your font to see "everywhere." In my case, I chose Tahoma. By default, the System will go with either "Microsoft Sans Serif" or "MS Sans Serif." Reboot and you're set.

Recommend It!

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