Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Windows Vista Start Menu


Microsoft Windows Vista Start Menu Desktop. Demo of new Aero Graphics.: "There are going to be aspects of Vista where you need step-by-step instructions, but learning the new Vista Start Menu is not one of them. Just admire Microsoft's glass effects and appreciate the clearer, sharper menu icons."

Monday, February 26, 2007

Spydawn Spyware

How To Remove Spydawn (removal Instructions): "SpyDawn is a rogue anti-spyware application that is installed on your computer without your permission using Trojans and other malware. These types of programs are typically installed when a user installs what they think is an audio or video codec, but in reality is a Trojan that downloads and installs SpyDawn. When run, SpyDawn pretends to be a anti-spyware application but instead provides exaggerated or fake results of Spyware found on your computer. In order to clean the found items you must purchase the full commercial version of the SpyDawn software. These false results are actually used as a scare tactic to have you purchase the SpyDawn. It goes without saying that you should not purchase this software.

When infected with this software you will also see fake taskbar alerts stating that you have running spyware applications on your computer. This is another scare tactic used to have you purchase the software. When you click on the alert it will load SpyDawn and run a scan as described above. The title for this fake security alert is System alert! and the text for this alerts is:System has detected a number of active spyware applications that may impact the performance of your computer. Click the icon to get rid of unwanted spyware by downloading an up-to-date anti-spyware solution."

Saturday, February 24, 2007

My Live Search Maps collection

This is an example of making an online map with your own places. You can save the collection and access it from any computer or share it with others.

My Live Search Maps collection
http://maps.live.com/?v=2&cid=6DEDBAB8381B214C!263

Picnik - edit photos online in your browser


"Online photo editing made fun
With Picnik you can quickly edit all your online photos from one place. It's the easiest way on the Web to fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos.
It's fast, easy, and fun."more...:

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Free US HotSpots

: "2005 Guide to
FREE Wireless 'Hot Spots'
in the United States
Click on a State's Name to view Cities, Locations and Addresses for Available Free Hot Spots in your area."

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Create large wall posters


"Create any size wall posters from any size images --For Free

Upload an image from your computer and choose how many sheets wide
you would like your poster to be once printed

Once you're happy with your selection, you can download the PDF file containing your newly created images and print each one massively blown up, resulting in a
huge pixel poster to stick on your wall ..."

More:

Monday, February 12, 2007

Add Vista Features to XP

This is for all of us who can't upgrade to Vista but want to have some of the new features. Or even for those of us who could upgrade but aren't sure if we want to yet -- it gives us a chance to try it out.

PC World - Add Vista Features to XP: "
These tools add slick sidebars, Start menu enhancements, Taskbar tricks, and more -- without upgrading your OS."

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Free Online Games

Flexicon - MSN Games - Free Online Games: "Flex your word skills in this ultimate challenge!
Play Flexicon – the ultimate crossword challenge that offers not one but four crossword puzzles!

You must solve four overlapping crossword grids but can only play one grid at a time. One long answer, 'The Flexicon,' stretches across the entire puzzle. The unique grid design gives you a variety of ways to unlock the Flexicon's challenging answer. Use hints from Windows Live™ Search if you need help!"

Daylight Saving Time Increase

Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center: "The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by the U.S. Congress July, 2005, extended Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the U.S. by approximately four weeks. As a result, beginning in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier on March 11, 2007, and end one week later on November 4, 2007, resulting in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than previously observed. These four weeks are referred to in this article as the 'extended DST period'. Visit MSN Encarta for more general information on DST.

Previously DST started on: First Sunday of April (04/01/07) With the new law, DST will start on:
Second Sunday of March (03/11/07)

Previous DST ended on: Last Sunday of October (10/28/07) With the new law, DST will end on:
First Sunday of November 11/04/07

Unless certain updates are applied to your computer, it is possible that the time zone settings for your computer's system clock may be incorrect during this four week period. This depends on where you live and which time zone you have selected. To see the time zone settings on your computer, follow these directions."

Saturday, February 10, 2007

History of the Internet

1957 --The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response,the United States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within theDepartment of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military.

1962 -- RAND Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation (a government agency), was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal was a packet switched network."Packet switching is the breaking down of data into datagrams or packets that are labeled to indicate the origin and the destination of the information and the forwarding of these packets from one computer to another computer until the information arrives at its final destination computer. This was crucial to the realization of a computer network. If packets are lost at any given point, the message can be resent by the originator."

1968 -- ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.

1972 -- The first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA)ARPANET was currently using the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between hosts running on the same network.

1973 -- Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.

1974 -- First Use of term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in paper on Transmission Control Protocol.

1976 -- Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which allowed coaxial cable to move data extremely fast. This was a crucial component to the development of LANs.The packet satellite project went into practical use. SATNET, Atlantic packet Satellite network, was born. This network linked the United States with Europe.Surprisingly, it used INTELSAT satellites that were owned by a consortium of countries and not exclusively the United States government.UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs and distributed with UNIX one year later.The Department of Defense began to experiment with the TCP/IP protocol and soon decided to require it for use on ARPANET. 50Kbps ARPANET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 111+

1979 -- USENET (the decentralized news group network) was created by Steve Bellovin, a graduate student at University of North Carolina, and programmers Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. It was based on UUCP.The Creation of BITNET, by IBM, "Because its Time Network", introduced the "store and forward" network. It was used for email and listservs.

1981 -- National Science Foundation created backbone called CSNET 56 Kbps network for institutions without access to ARPANET. Vinton Cerf proposed a plan for an inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET. 50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 213

1983-- Internet Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983.On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely.The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers. 50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 562

1984-- The ARPANET was divided into two networks: MILNET and ARPANET. MILNET was to serve the needs of the military and ARPANET to support the advanced research component, Department of Defense continued to support both networks.Upgrade to CSNET was contracted to MCI. New circuits would be T1 lines,1.5 Mbps which is twenty-five times faster than the old 56 Kbps lines. IBM would provide advanced routers and Merit would manage the network. New network was to be called NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network), and old lines were to remain called CSNET. 50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 1024

1985-- The National Science Foundation began deploying its new T1 lines, which would be finished by 1988. 50Kbps ARPANET, 56Kbps CSNET, 1.544Mbps (T1) NSFNET, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: 1961

1986-- The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF was created to serve as a forum for technical coordination by contractors for DARPA working on ARPANET, US Defense Data Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system. Hosts: 2308

1987-- BITNET and CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN), another work of the National Science Foundation. Hosts: 28,174

1990 -- Merit, IBM and MCI formed a not for profit corporation called ANS, Advanced Network & Services, which was to conduct research into high speed networking. It soon came up with the concept of the T3, a 45 Mbps line. NSF quickly adopted the new network and by the end of 1991 all of its sites were connected by this new backbone.While the T3 lines were being constructed, the Department of Defense disbanded the ARPANET and it was replaced by the NSFNET backbone. The original 50Kbs lines of ARPANET were taken out of service.Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implements a hypertext system to provide efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy physics community. Hosts: 313,000

1991 -- CSNET (which consisted of 56Kbps lines) was discontinued having fulfilled its important early role in the provision of academic networking service. A key feature of CREN is that its operational costs are fully met through dues paid by its member organizations.The NSF established a new network, named NREN, the National Research and Education Network. The purpose of this network is to conduct high speed networking research. It was not to be used as a commercial network, nor was it to be used tosend a lot of the data that the Internet now transfers. Hosts: 617,000

1992 -- Internet Society is chartered.World-Wide Web released by CERN.NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps) Hosts: 1,136,000

1993 -- InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: directory and database services (by AT&T), registration services (by Network Solutions Inc.), and information services (by General Atomics/CERFnet).Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develops a graphical user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X". Hosts: 2,056,000

1994 -- No major changes were made to the physical network. The most significant thing that happened was the growth. Many new networks were added to the NSF backbone.Hundreds of thousands of new hosts were added to the INTERNET during this time period.Pizza Hut offers pizza ordering on its Web page.First Virtual, the first cyberbank, opens.ATM (Asynchronous Transmission Mode, 145Mbps) backbone is installed on NSFNET. Hosts: 3,864,000

1995 -- The National Science Foundation announced that as of April 30, 1995 it would no longer allow direct access to the NSF backbone. The National Science Foundationcontracted with four companies that would be providers of access to the NSF backbone (Merit). These companies would then sell connections to groups, organizations, and companies.$50 annual fee is imposed on domains, excluding .edu and .gov domains which are still funded by the National Science Foundation. Hosts: 6,642,000

1996 -- Most Internet traffic is carried by backbones of independent ISPs, including MCI, AT&T, Sprint, UUnet, BBN planet, ANS, and more.Currently the Internet Society, the group that controls the INTERNET, is trying to figure out new TCP/IP to be able to have billions of addresses, rather than the limited system of today. The problem that has arisen is that it is not known how both the old and the new addressing systems will be able to work at the same time during a transition period. 145Mbps (ATM) NSFNET (now private), private interconnected backbones consisting mainly of 56Kbps, 1.544Mbps, 45Mpbs, and 155Mpbs lines, plus satellite and radio connections - Hosts: over 15,000,000, and growing rapidly

More information at http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtml

n.b.: 1996 is the year I first logged on to the internet. I used a dial up connection (to a long distance number) with an MSN account and Internet Explorer 1. My email was handled with the original version of Outlook and my MSN address. I also had a Mosaic connection and connected to IRC chats with people around the world -- and had no idea what I was doing or how I got there. ~Wendy


Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Excel Tutorial

Excel Tutorial: "Welcome
This is a basic tutorial of Excel. Specific examples may refer to Excel (but most items discussed should work in other spreadsheets). "

Monday, February 05, 2007

Betts Garden

A web site with a bunch of interesting 'stuff' for reading and relaxing.
Index Page

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Outlook 2003 - Training

Outlook 2003 - Training - Microsoft Office Online: "Outlook 2003 Courses "

Outlook Express

Free Tutorials


CalgaryEducation.org - Free Tutorials: "Free Tutorials
Here are basic lessons for people learning how to use the Internet. These tutorials have been developed by the Calgary Public Library and CalgaryEducation.org as part of the Connect Calgary program. There is a narrated soundtrack for learning by listening as well as text balloons to read. Relax, sit back and watch or listen to these gently paced lessons on using the Internet."

Basic Web E-mail Using Hotmail

B&ECPL Tutorials :: Basic Web E-mail Using Hotmail: "What is E-mail or electronic mail?
E-mail is the transmission of messages over communication networks.
To use e-mail, you must have access to a computer that is linked to the outside world via a modem, phone line, or fiber optic cable.
E-mail messages are sent over the Internet and are stored in electronic mailbox servers for the recipient to retrieve them.
What is Hotmail?
Hotmail is a web-based e-mail provider.
With Hotmail, you can send and receive messages from any computer connected to the Internet including workstations at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. "