Internet

Making a call for PC technical support is often not a enjoyable experience. In fact, many customers have voiced complaints about how their PC provider handles technical support, with Dell being at the top of the list. (Source: buzzMachine.com ) Dell ... has realized that many of its customers are unsatisfied by its current technical support and is hoping to silence the criticisms with a new service that allows technicians to remotely troubleshoot a malfunctioning PC over a high-speed Internet connection. Dell announced that all U.S. customers currently under warranty will receive this service for ... (view more)

StumbleUpon is a browser toolbar which brings social networking together with web browsing. All that you need to do is join the service and download the toolbar. You then select your interests and then simply click Stumble!, and voila -- you're ... immediately transported to a web site where you can read more about a topic and even meet up with other users with similar interests. The browsers supported are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Flock, and Mozilla. Once you display a site using Stumble!, you can press the thumb-up or thumb-down button to 'vote' for that site. As you continue to do ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Mary C. writes: " Dear Dennis, Is there a way to do a BCC [Blind Caron Copy] from a list of email addresses I keep stored in MS Word? I want to copy and paste email addresses to an email message using Outlook Express, but it seems ... that I can only do this if addresses are present in my Address Book. Can you help? " My response: You can copy and paste a list of email addresses into the BCC field (or the TO: field for that matter) by separating the list of email addresses with commas or semi colons. For example: email@one; email@two; email@three, etc. For more information on ... (view more)

SimplyBill is a Web 2.0 billing web-based application. SimplyBill lets you easily create invoices that you can send to clients by email or print out to mail. You can subscribe to your invoices with RSS (handy!), export your data for use in desktop ... spreadsheet applications, send reminders and thank-you messages to clients, keep track of payments you've received, get email alerts when invoices become overdue, set up recurring invoices to make sure you get paid, and tag your invoices to find out which types of invoices you send the most and which are for the most money. There are many pre- ... (view more)

A few weeks ago, I was offered a chance to try out one of the many free services that Google is developing. The service is Google Page Creator and it's main purpose seems to be making it really easy to create your own web pages. Take a peek at my ... Google Page here . The great thing about it is that you don't have to learn HTML or even worry about paying a web host to have your own web site! From Google.com: " Create your own web pages, quickly and easily. Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just ... (view more)

CourseForum is a small and fast web application for the home, a small business, or the classroom that allows you to create an interactive website on a local network. After I downloaded CourseForum's small 1.7mb installer, I had a personal website on ... my Local Area Network (LAN) within minutes! I was able to access my website and make changes on my LAN from any PC. I am just thrilled that something this easy to use is free, and it's available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD. Click here for a CourseForum screenshot. From the CourseForum website: " An Easy to Use Web Application: CourseForum ... (view more)

The world of 'the Internet' versus 'computer users' (realized as separate entities) is amazing, but I've found that attitudes on both sides tend to polarize folks. For example, you have The Browser Wars: Internet Explorer vs Netscape with Firefox as ... the latest Mozilla contender and Opera watching from the wings with an aloof cultured shrug; or The Operating System Wars: Apple vs PCs (IBM and clones), Windows vs Linux (pick your distro); add to this, GTalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Trillian ... and your head starts to get dizzy. From my seat over here in the Old Newbie corner, I ... (view more)

I just got a sneak peek at a new and fascinating communication tool called Stickam , which officially launches on February 13th, 2006. In a nutshell: Stickam brings live streaming video, video conferencing, and multimedia to web pages and blogs. ... Stickam is a very powerful video communications player, offers unlimited bandwidth, and best of all: there's absolutely nothing to download! Simply cut and paste the Stickam JavaScript or HTML code to an area of your website and bingo bango, you're ready to go! All this, and it's free, too! ;-) Here's the breakdown of what Stickam has to offer: Easy ... (view more)

If you haven't checked out Gtalkr lately, it's time to rewind! Gtalkr is a tool used to log into your GoogleTalk account online (via their website), in place of using the GoogleTalk program. When you use Gtalkr to chat with your buddies, your ... Instant Message (IM) conversations are saved and are then searchable... so it's like you can Google your IMs! But Gtalkr is so much more than just instant messaging. You can also add content, like RSS feeds, to your Gtalkr page. Several popular feeds are already available to add with a click of a button, or you can add your own. Other Gtalkr extensions ... (view more)

The past week I've been BOINCing around with a new (to me) program that does a wonderful thing. Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing: an open-source software platform for computing using volunteered resources. Stay with me now, this is ... really very exciting. Remember I've told you before that computers are not very smart, just incredibly fast and able to do the same thing over and over and over without getting bored with the repetitiveness? In fact, most of the time your computer is waiting to do something and it would be quite happy to have something, anything to break the ... (view more)