April 2000
News Letter
A message from the President
Message from the president:
Fifteen members were present to watch a meeting go down the tubes. We had a longer than normal question and answer period, hoping that at any minute either the Vice-President or the speaker would appear. Neither did. Speaking with Jack Konold shortly after the meeting, I found him still at work. He lost two employees in rapid fire sequence and had to fill in for them or shut down his business. First things came first. The speaker he had lined up couldn’t make
it and Jack didn’t have time to find another speaker. Jack was so busy that he forgot to call me. He was very apologetic and pledged that it will never happen again.
I am using my computer in just the way I had hoped when I bought it and do not aspire to do much more with it than I can handle. Therefore I am resigning the office of President and hope the group finds another soon. I have attendance data and group ‘stuff’ that I shall give to the new leader.
The speaker for the June 8th meeting will be Coley Bevington of Custom Computers and he will be talking about Zip Drives, etc. He’ll also be available to answer questions.
Check your mailing label. If it is highlighted in blue, then your dues are due.
We still have over $700 in the treasury and nearly 60 members, so it’s not a dying group. It just needs new leadership!
I enjoyed being the President for about two years but lately it has become more of a hassle than it is worth to me, so I am gone.
Past President Kokomo PC Users Group
Larry L. Thompson
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ON LINE HUMER!
Back in March, Bill Gates of Microsoft testified before a congressional committee that if automobiles had enjoyed the same gains in productivity that computers have achieved in the last 10 years, than we'd all be driving $25 cars that get 1,000 miles to the gallon. True, but Gates left out a few crucial points in the analogy. If, in fact cars were PCs:
* Your car would crash two or three times a day, sometimes just sitting in park.
* Apple would make a solar-powered, highly reliable car that would be twice as easy to drive, but it would only run on 10% of the roads.
* Every time the transportation department built a new road, we'd have to buy new cars to travel on it.
* Then, if we bought a new car, the brake, accelerator, and steering wheel would all be in different places.
* Every time you put your foot on the brake, a message window would pop up on the dashboard and say: Are you sure? Yes/No.
* Once or twice a week your car would stall in the middle of the freeway. Then you would have to call a mechanic in another city who would tell you over the phone how to remove and reinstall the engine.
Richard Coop
BLIND E-MAIL
In Netscape Messenger, you can prevent e-mail recipients from seeing the addresses of other recipients. This is called a blind carbon copy. Compose your message, put your own e-mail address in the To field, and
press Enter. Another To field appears beneath the first. Click it and select Bcc. Put all the recipients' e-mail addresses in this field, separated by commas. Now your e-mail recipients won't have a lengthy
list of e-mail addresses at the top of the message.
BLINK http://www.blink.com What if you could build your own private Web directory that contained only your favorite Web sites? Well, now you can, at a site called Blink. And, unlike your Web browser's bookmarks feature, your Blink directory can be accessed from any computer--at home, at work, even when you're traveling. You can even share your directory with friends and co-workers. All you need to do is create a few subject categories, then start populating them with your favorite Web sites. Blink even lets you write a brief description of each site. You can also use Blink to search the Web for new sites that you may like based on your current bookmarks. Or, if you're curious to search through thousands of sites selected by fellow Blink users, just head to the Public Library. Maybe they should have called this site "Youhoo?"
CACHE FOLDER CLEANUP As hard disk capacities become bigger and bigger, we're finding fewer and fewer reasons to use today's tip. However, for those of us who still have a modest amount of hard disk space to play with, it's often necessary to clean up as much space as we can in a hurry. Netscape stores a small (by comparison) amount of data from previous downloads in a cache folder for later retrieval. This space is usually 5MB to 20MB and is on an age-based priority system (meaning new data replaces older downloads first). To clear this data and gain back that space, click Edit, Preferences. Expand the Advanced options and select Cache. Click the Clear Disk Cache button. Netscape erases all of the files in the cache folder. Two points you should remember: First, on systems where several people have profiles for Netscape, clearing the disk cache clears only the folder associated with your name. To get the maximum amount of space back, all users must start Netscape under their name and clear their own caches. Second, clearing the disk cache may cause regularly visited Web pages to load a little slower than normal at first as the new data fills each cache.
HOW ABOUT THAT CACHE You can view the entire contents of your disk cache, complete with file sizes, file name aliases, file types, and dates. Just type "about:cache" in the Location box. Netscape shows your cache statistics and a list of every file in the disk cache.
COMPOSER TEMPLATES
Netscape users have access to Web page templates for creating personal or business Web sites. To view or use any of these templates, start Netscape Composer and click File, New, Page From Template. In the Page >From Template window, click Netscape Templates. This opens a Navigator window that connects to Netscape's Web site to show you the available templates. You have several to choose from, along with step-by-step instructions on how to use them to create your own pages.
POEM
A poem for those over 35A computer was something on TVFrom a science-fiction show of noteA window was something you hated tocleanAnd ram was the cousin of a goatMeg was the name of my girlfriendAnd gig was a job for the nights Now they all mean different thingsAnd that really mega bytes.An application was for employmentA program was a TV showA cursor used profanityA keyboard was a piano.Memory was something that you lostwith ageA CD was a bank accountAnd if you had a 31/2 in. FloppyYou hoped nobody found out.Compress was something you did to thegarbageNot something you did to a fileAnd if you unzipped anything in publicYou'd be in jail for a while.Log on was adding wood to the fireHard drive was a long trip on the roadA mouse pad was where a mouse livedAnd a backup happened to your commode.Cut you did with a pocket knifePaste you did with glueA web was a spider's homeAnd a virus was the flu.I guess I'll stick to my pad and paperAnd the memory in my headI hear nobody's been killed in acomputer crashBut when it happens they wish theywere dead.
ONWARD AND FORWARD A Tipworld subscriber recently wrote: "I often receive e-mail that has traveled around the country many times. The message might be just a few sentences long, but the names of all the former recipients go on forever. Is there a way to get rid of all those names and then forward the message to whomever I want?" Those who use e-mail as frequently as they do the telephone or the post office have encountered this problem more times than they care to count. Here's one simple solution: all those who regularly forward messages should always remember to delete the existing headers from a forwarded message (including a lengthy list of previous recipients) before clicking Send. However, you can't always count on this courtesy. Therefore, in Netscape Messenger you must edit messages before forwarding them. First, you must configure Netscape properly for your forwarding needs. Click Edit, Preferences. Expand the Mail & Newsgroups Preferences list and select Messages. Under Forwarding And Replying To Messages, make sure the first line reads By Default, Forward Messages Inline. Click OK to save your changes and restart Netscape. Open the message you wish to forward and click the Forward button on your toolbar (or press Ctrl-L). Messenger opens the message in a composition window, where you can edit all existing headers and previous recipients out of the message before sending. Select all the text you do NOT wish to forward, and remove it by pressing the Delete key. Your recipients should only receive the body of the message and not the headers from the dozens of previous forwards.
KEEPING THINGS COMPACT As you receive and store e-mails in Netscape Messenger, they start to accumulate disk space. Netscape has some features that help cope with the slack space. Start Netscape and click Edit, Preferences. Expand the Mail & Newsgroup preferences and select Disk Space. The first two options are the ones that involve e-mail messages. You can tell Messenger to ignore messages on your ISP's mail server larger than a certain size (50KB is the default). This is generally not a good idea. The option is available so that people with slow dial-up connections won't have to download large messages or attachments before they can read the rest of their mail. Unless this is a major concern of yours, I'd leave the option unchecked. The second option is of particular use to people with a lot of e-mail messages downloaded and stored on their computer. Basically, Netscape keeps track of the unused (slack) space your stored messages take up, and it can clean up and compact your messages to release that space to other applications. Netscape can do the compacting automatically whenever it can free up a specified amount of space (the default is 100KB), or you can do it manually whenever you feel it's necessary. To compact your folders manually, in Messenger, click File, Compact Folders. You won't lose messages by doing this. It merely cleans up the disk space allotted to messages but not used.
NETSCAPE 6 SLIMS DOWNNetscape 6 [http://www.netscape.com] is here at last, sort of. This is the new version of the browser that set the Internet world on fire just a few years ago. It will be the update to the version 4.72, leaping forwardafter a long lag. Based on a complete rewrite by the open-source Mozilla project, it is much smaller than the previous version -- only a fraction of the size of Microsoft's Internet Explorer -- and potentially much faster. However, although you can freely download the test version at this point, don't expect it to be completely stable or practical for all regular use, yet.
THE PESKY AUTOMATIC DIALER A Tipworld subscriber recently wrote: "Many of my clients have to sign on to their ISP with dial-up networking first, then launch Netscape. How do I set them up to dial automatically? Second, I no longer WANT to dial up automatically--how do I turn the feature OFF?" The Dial-Up Networking autodialer is up to its old tricks. Both of your questions have the same solution. First, a little background: When you start a program that involves use of the Internet through a dial-up connection to your ISP, Windows 95/98 checks to see that a connection is present. If one is not present and the Internet settings are at their defaults, Windows connects to your default (most often used) ISP. Therefore, when you start Netscape, which of course uses an Internet connection, Windows usually assumes you wish to start such a connection. Changing these settings is simple. Open your Control Panel by clicking Start, Settings, Control Panel. Double-click the icon labeled Internet Options. Select the Connections tab at the top of the window. To specify that you do NOT always want Windows to establish a connection, select the Never Dial A Connection option. The other two options, Dial Whenever A Network Connection Is Not Present and Always Dial My Default Connection, are self-explanatory. However, if you choose one of the latter options, make sure you set your favorite ISP as your default connection. Furthermore, if you choose the Never Dial A Connection option and you later WANT to connect, you will have to do it manually through the Dial-Up Networking folder under My Computer. Right-click the icon in your Dial-Up Networking window and click Connect, or drag the icon to your desktop to create a shortcut, which you can then double-click. QUICK REPLY
A quick and easy way to reply to an e-mail in Messenger is to press Ctrl-R when viewing the message. You can also reply to all recipients of the message (as in an e-mail discussion forum) by pressing Ctrl-Shift-R. These features are also available via the toolbar, the Message menu, and the right-click menu in the Message window.
Larry Thompson, 457-5622
Vice President Jack Konold
Treasurer Richard Coop Sr., 459-8731
Member Services Rodney Malkoff, 453-1159
Newsletter Editor Jerry Henry 453-4144
Newsletter Distribution Marcy Young
Newsletter editor Jerry Henry
jhenry@netusa1.net 453-4144
Please give me something to edit. You
notice that if it weren’t for Larry and Dick
the whole thing would have been on my
shoulders once again. I will never create
the whole thing on my own again. Tell me
about your new programs. Tell me about
the program that sucked. Tell me how the
simple upgrade took four times as long. If
anything has made your work on the computer easier, share it with us.
HELP.
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