web site

I sure am keeping busy! With the weather as bad as it's been, there really is no reason for me to leave my comfortable computer chair ... other than to sleep, eat, and use the bathroom. Today I spent 12 hours marathon-programming multiple web ... scripts to help automate things, in lieu of the many changes happening to the web site. The newsletter subscriber base has now been reconfigured to accept 2 new fields of data: newsletter frequency (2 or 3 times a week), and the choice of a text or HTML newsletter. Now that this portion is complete, I'll be updating the web site to accept both requests ... (view more)

Have you heard of Shell Extension City? If you haven't visited this site, you're really missing out! Shell Extension City (Shell X) is a web site which features short-but-sweet reviews of very cool and totally free software on the Net today. What is ... a shell extension, anyway? The phrase "Shell Extension" is actually a computer term used to describe the integration of an installed program and the operating system. One example of a shell extension might be the program Winzip. Winzip is a popular compression agent for Windows that is used widely on the Internet. Once Winzip has been ... (view more)

I've been toying with some different ways to help get the word out about the infopackets web site. I'm on a tight budget, especially after getting $burned$ from a sucky web hosting company . In fact, I sent the Sucky Web Hosting company an email ... yesterday asking when my account was going to be refunded because my bank statement reported no activity. Here's two emails I received regarding my refund: November 29: " Your account will be refunded all but the $99 Setup Fee. Refunds are usually processed within 24 hours of cancellation ... sometimes it can take a while to show up in your bank ... (view more)

Are you sick of hearing about my mis-adventures yet? I've got more to talk about, and if you want to keep informed about the status of the web site and newsletter delivery, you'll have to read up on it. So, here goes: The current host will literally ... pull the plug on the (current) web server effective November 30th which is at the end of the 30-day "money back guarantee" period. Access to the infopackets web site might be interrupted temporarily until the rest of the Internet catches up to par with my nameserver update. If you don't know what a nameserver is, or if you want to know ... (view more)

Does the drama ever end? No, and it's costing me a bundle. Unfortunately, I have to drop my current web-host because (among other reasons), bandwidth has been capped at 1.5 megabits. According to current server statistics, a 1.5 megabit connection ... isn't enough to meet the demand of knowledge hungry Infopackets Readers and the other web-owners who are sharing the dedicated web-server. And now, the rest of the story (for now)... If you read the last issue of the Gazette , the infopackets web site was originally configured for a 10 megabit connection. According to my current host, the server was ... (view more)

After pumping out that 3-part series on Shopping for an LCD monitor , I've decided to take a break and let you all know what's happening with the web site. I mentioned a few newsletters ago that I had to fork out some serious $$ for a new web ... server. I ordered it at the beginning of this month and have been waiting patiently to register my own nameserver. Nameserver? What did you name your server? Actually, a nameserver is a technical term for a database record which points to the location of a web site. I have two nameservers for my web site and their names are ns1.infopackets.com and ns2. ... (view more)

There's a few things that need to be addressed in this issue of the Gazette. Just last month, I had the server upgraded to match the demand for the ever-growing infopackets web site. For the Month of September, 2002, infopackets had 114,241 unique ... visitors that viewed 275,331 pages. In the last 7 days, infopackets has been averaging between 3,500 and 5,000 unique visitors a day. The server is humming along for now, but I fear that it will reach another limit in the very near future. The next "step up" for a server upgrade is going to cost $650.00 USD a month (or, $8,000,000 CDN ... (view more)

Yesterday's Visitor Feedback posed the question, "where can I get free parental control software that will filter out pornography , gambling, bad language, nudity, sex, and violence?" Since I was unfamiliar with the subject, I decided to ask the ... readers of the Gazette to send me their thoughts. Jeanne A. writes: " Thank you for your great newsletter. In response to your request about parental control software, I use We-Blocker on my kids' computer and it does an excellent job. You can set the level of control and allow or disallow additional sites. Best of all, it's free and ... (view more)

It looks like yesterday's problem of Outlook Express not displaying images via email stirred up a lot of responses. I woke up today to find that my Inbox was jammed full of excellent suggestions from our Readers. First, let me explain who might be ... affected by missing pictures in Outlook Express 6: Anyone who has upgraded to, has installed a patch for, or uses Outlook Express 6 Anyone who installed Windows XP, or XP Service Pack 1. These people also have Outlook Express 6 installed on their system. From what I can gather, that pretty much sums it up. There were multiple solutions to the ... (view more)

This issue of the Gazette is dedicated to "tying up a few loose knots" from our ongoing discussions about Hackers and Security threats . First, I'll give you all an update to Gazette issue dated October 10, 2002 (Windows Security Threat -- NTFS ... Alternate Data Streams ). To recap: an anonymous reader (John Doe) sent in an email that discussed a potential security risk in Windows which might allow a hacker to take a screen capture of a computer with the NTFS file system installed. I realize that this article was a bit on the "technical side", but I did my best to clear up ... (view more)