Computer and Web Articles

Question: “When I am on a website and I’d like to send the page to someone, I go to the Mail icon in my Internet Explorer and click ‘Send page.’ A window pops up with Outlook all ready to go. Problem is, I don’t use Outlook as my e-mail, I use Juno.”  -Lenore, Silverthorne

Answer: As the regular opening of a never-used program is quite frustrating, let’s tackle this issue, shall we?

After some research, I located the following instructions for launching Juno when you use e-mail functions in your web browser: First, go to the Options menu in Juno and select Email Options. Ensure that the “Run Juno when I use the email features of my Web browser” box is has a checkmark in it.

A bit more research, however, found that some users still experience the “Outlook is opening” problem even though they had ensured the “Run Juno” option was turned on. If you’re one of these users, no worries, just follow these easy steps.

Start Internet Explorer and go to View, then Internet Options. Click the Programs tab and in the Mail box and make sure to select Juno from the drop-down list. Click OK and you should be good to go.

Hi everyone. Today’s column includes three of the most pertinent questions I’ve been asked over the past few weeks.) And of course, each question is followed up by an easy-as-cake answer.) Let’s get going!

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Question: I use AOL and many times I want to send an e-mail to more than one person. I think I understand how to do this, but what are those CC and BCC fields at the top of the e-mails I send? What do they do?

Answer: Great question. And you’re right - there is definitely more than one way to send one e-mail to multiple recipients. If you don’t care if all your e-mail’s recipients can see each others’ e-mail addresses when they receive your e-mail, then you can simply enter in each person’s e-mail address in the “To” field separated by commas.

The CC field you see at the top of the e-mails you write stands for “Carbon Copy,” and BCC stands for “Blind Carbon Copy.”

Placing e-mails in the CC field simply sends “courtesy copies” to those e-mail addresses - its end results are exactly the same as entering in all your e-mail addresses in the “To” field. Entering e-mail addresses into the BCC field, however, means that those recipients will not be able to tell who else the e-mail was sent to.

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Question: I recently purchased a calendar software program online. I followed the site’s instructions and downloaded the program onto my computer, but it doesn’t seem to be running on my computer. This happens with many of the programs I try to download. What’s going on?

Answer: A program cannot run until it’s actually installed onto your computer. This issue is confusing to many people, because downloading a program onto your computer doesn’t mean you’ve installed it. There are actually two steps involved in the process: 1) Downloading the software files onto your computer; and 2) Running these files to then install the software onto your computer.

I suggest you think about it this way: Usually, Web sites let you to download little “boxed-up installation packages” of their software programs. Downloading the full program would take forever, so companies compress their software programs into small, neatly packaged files that you download to your computer.

Once you download these compressed little “boxed-up installation packages,” you can click on them to open them up and start that actual installation process.

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Question: Hello eRin. I downloaded SP2 (Windows Service Pack 2) after I read your column about it a few weeks ago. Everything was working fine until I attempted to download Spybot onto my machine. Now SP2 seems to be blocking my download. What do I do?

Answer: Many people who have downloaded SP2 onto their machines have been experiencing difficulties when trying to download files and programs from the Internet. Don’t worry, though, there’s an easy fix.

Follow these five easy steps and you should be on your way to once again downloading with ease: 1) Run a Virus Scan to make sure your computer is clean of viruses. 2) Open Internet Explorer. 3) Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom. 4) Be certain that “Allow Downloads” is checked. 5) If “Allow Downloads” is already checked, then you must reset your firewall to ensure that it’s not blocking your downloads - it might be reacting to downloads as if they were virus attacks.

To reset your firewall, go to Start > Control Panel > Windows Firewall. Click the Advanced Tab. Lastly, click the “Restore Defaults” button at the bottom of the Window. That should hopefully do the trick.

A couple of months ago I had a client who desired a site involving some very complicated, very in-depth programming. I knew that in order to complete the client’s project on time and within budget, I’d need to utilize the talents of my amazingly talented web-programming buddy in New York.

So I sent my programmer buddy an e-mail asking him to contact me immediately about this new project, expecting to hear back from him within 24 hours, as I always do. (He lives at his computer, just like me.)

Twenty-four hours went by. Then 48. And then, all of a sudden, a week had gone by and my programming buddy had not responded to a single one of my e-mails. I restructured my client’s project accordingly, but wondered what had happened to my buddy.

Well, it turns out he was in London on a two-week vacation. That’s great and all, but it would have been even better if I could have been notified. He needed an answering machine for his email saying, “Hi. I’m out of the office until the end of April. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you upon my return.”

But that’s not possible, you’re snickering. An answering machine for his e-mail program! Ha! Preposterous!

Actually … it’s not preposterous. It’s just called an e-mail autoresponder. Not only does setting one up let the people e-mailing you know that you can’t get back to them immediately, it’s as easy as cake. Let’s follow a brief overview of how it’s done, shall we?

You can set up autoresponders in just about any e-mail program, but for the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on Microsoft Outlook Express.

After you’ve rolled up your sleeves, taken a seat before your computer and opened up Outlook Express, you need to create your response message. Many people like to do this by using Notepad, saving the text file to their hard drive, and linking to it from Outlook Express.

An example autoresponse might sound like, “Hi there! Thanks for e-mailing me. I will be on vacation and out of the office until July 29. I won’t be checking my e-mail while I’m away, but will respond to your e-mail upon my return. Have a great day!”

Next, you need to create an e-mail rule in Outlook Express. You do this by going to the Tools menu, clicking on Message Rules, and then clicking on Mail. This is where you can make sure that your rule is applied to “All Messages” and that your autoresponder will be delivered to all e-mails received while you’re away.

Once you’ve set up your first autoresponder, it’s easy to do over and over. The limitations of autoresponders, however, include having to leave your computer on, your e-mail program running and your connection to the Internet enabled while you’re away. Unfortunately these aren’t realistic expectations for people using dial-up connections.

If having your very own autoresponder sounds appealing to you, I highly recommend you visit http://tinyurl.com/rgu0; the tutorial offered on this page will walk you through the process of setting up your own autoresponder in Outlook Express in a simple, easy-to-understand, step-by-step fashion.

I may not use it, but I know that a large percentage of this column’s readers do. Affectionately abbreviated MSOE, Microsoft’s Outlook Express is, for better or worse, one of the world’s more popular e-mail applications.

It comes pre-installed on just about all home computers and is therefore the easy target of many, many worms and viruses.

Love it or hate it, however, most of you probably use it on a regular basis. So, let’s review some MSOE tips and tricks to help you start using your e-mail application more effectively.

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MSOE Issue No. 1: Outlook Express won’t allow you to open e-mail attachments. What can you do?

Solution: People often see the following message at the top of their MSOE screen: “OE removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your mail …” To fix this problem you need to give MSOE permission to allow access to e-mail attachments. No sweat! Just follow these four easy steps:

• In MSOE, click on the Tools menu. Then Click Options.
• An Options box will open. Click on the Security tab.
• Make sure that the option reading “Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus” is NOT checked.
• Click the Apply button, then the OK button.

And you’re all set. Now your e-mail attachments will open as expected.

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MSOE Issue No. 2: Many of my friends’ e-mails have consistent “signature” text at the bottom. They always include their name, e-mail address and phone number. Some of my friends even have quotes at the bottom of all their e-mails. I know they’re not typing these in each time; how can I use MSOE to set up my own personal signature to be included in all the e-mails I send out?

Solution: Adding a personalized signature to all your outgoing messages is as easy as cake. First, click on the Tools menu, then click Options. When the options box opens this time, make sure to click on the Signatures tab.

We want to create a brand new signature, so click on New. Now you can enter whatever text you’d like in the Edit Signature box. Write a poem, type in your name and phone number - whatever you’d like; remember that you can change your signature as often as you’d like.

Once you’re done, simply check the “Add signatures to all outgoing messages” text box. Feel free to poke around at some of the other signature options allowed in this section.

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MSOE Issue No. 3: You would like to hide all of the names and addresses of the recipients when sending e-mails to large groups of people for privacy and courtesy purposes. How is this done in MSOE?

Solution: To ensure that each person in large-group-e-mails cannot view all the other recipients’ names and e-mail addresses, you’ll need to take advantage of MSOE’s Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) field.

When creating a new message, you have a To: field and a CC: field at the top of your window. If you do not have a BCC field as well, click on the View menu, then click All Headers. (From now on when you create new mail messages, the BCC field will appear.)

Now you should have a BCC field. Simply place all of the e-mail addresses you want to send your message to in the BCC field and leave the To: and CC: fields empty. That’s it! Pretty easy, huh?

Whew! We learned a lot today, didn’t we? Time to kick back our feet, time to relax, time to enjoy the weekend and as always - timeforcake.

Our theme for today’s article is “helpful information.” Let’s get right to it.

First of all, I’ve had many requests for help from confused readers during the past week regarding the download of Spybot, one of the programs I mentioned in last week’s article.

Turns out that a slight misprint in the paper led to quite a bit of confusion; people were ending up at a totally different site promoting the sale of “Spyhunter,” a completely unrelated product.

The site you should visit is actually www.safer-networking.org, not safernetworking.org, as was printed. What a difference a dash can make in cyberspace, eh? Try out the correct link and you should be fine.

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We all run into points in our lives when we could use a bit of general help and direction. So if you find yourself feeling a bit lost and your friends and family aren’t around to proffer advice, you may wish to visit www.wisdomquotes.com.

Within this site, you can search for wisdom relating to almost any topic you can imagine: death, strength, tolerance, community, risk, joy, attitude, leadership, worry, indifference and ethics - just to name a few.

New quotes are always being added, and if you’d like, you can even sign up for the Wisdom Quotes E-mail List.

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When you feel like you need a bit of help, when your computer system is freezing up or acting strangely, first try to help yourself.

Hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete. This will open up a “Close Program” window in which you can see what programs are running and, occasionally, what’s not.

If you see any programs marked “Not Responding,” try closing them by highlighting them in the list and then clicking the “End Task” button. These nonresponsive programs may just be destabilizing your computer and simply closing them down for the moment might fix up your system.

Note to Windows XP users: After you hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete, you’ll need to then click on the “Task Manager” button to open up your “Close Program” window.

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Many people are aware that google.com is one of the Internet’s most helpful sites for finding whatever it is you’re searching for. The one issue that I bet irks many of you, though, is that oftentimes your search results include Web sites written in languages you can’t read.

Of course, results aren’t very helpful if you can’t understand them. Therefore, if you’d like to ensure that your Google search results include only Web sites written in English, follow these four simple steps:

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. Click on the “Preferences” link to the right of the search box.
3. In the “Search Language” section of the page, make sure that “Search only for pages written in these language(s)” is checked and that “English” is the only language with a checkmark next to it.
4. Move up to the very top of the page and click the “Save Preferences” button. That’s it! You’re done.

And there you have it! A (hopefully) helpful article on helpful information.

Question: This new computer virus going around (MyDoom) is really frustrating me. I’m getting tons of spam and I am not sure if my virus protection is working. Where can I learn more about this virus, how it works, and how I can protect myself against it?

Answer: Indeed, the MyDoom virus is a frustrating one. Apparently, it’s also the fastest-spreading virus to date. If you’re interested in reading a simple, plain-English explanation about it, I highly recommend going to http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-5118745.html.

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Question: I use Eudora as my e-mail program, and I HATE the splash screen that shows up every time I open the program. I don’t get it - why do I need to see the large Eudora banner every time I want to check my e-mail?

Answer: You don’t. I actually have a little secret I’ll share with you that will allow you to keep that splash screen from showing each time you open Eudora. Just follow these steps and you’ll be good to go:

1. Make sure Eudora is not running.
2. Browse to your Eudora folder (probably located somewhere like C:/Program Files/Qualcomm/Eudora). (Note: If you can’t find your Eudora folder, just do a search for the file named in step No. 3.)
3. Open the file named “Eudora.ini” with a text editor (like Notepad).
4. In the [Settings] section, type in the line: NoSplashScreen=1.
5. Save the file.

And you’re done. Cool secret, huh?

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Question: Hello eRin. You seem to know about so many cool Web sites. I really enjoy doing puzzles, taking fun tests and solving riddles and was wondering if you knew of any good sites that have lots of these sort of things. Thank you.

Answer: Why yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I know of a site that offers a TON of mind games, riddles, quizzes and professionally developed/professionally validated psychological tests. This site offers just-for-fun tests (Share your results with friends! Compete against your family!), IQ tests, polls, surveys and trivia.

I just visited the site a moment ago and noted that you can partake in a hostility test, friendship test, pop music trivia quiz, geography quiz, magic squares puzzle, memory game, IQ workout and an attention test. I mean, honestly, with sites like these - how do people go to sleep at night?

The site is called Queendom; its tagline is “Seriously Entertaining,” and it can be found here: www.queendom.com.

Have fun.

A few articles back, we reviewed commonly used chat/e-mail abbreviations. (Remember? BC = because, HT = hi there, OO = over and out/end of communication …) Today’s article is slightly more advanced and builds upon those abbreviations we learned.

You see, today we’re studying emoticons. Emoticons are another form of “Internet shorthand,” and are similar to the abbreviations you’ll find peppered through e-mails and chat messages everywhere. Unlike abbreviations, however, emoticons usually symbolize emotions, or how the typist is feeling at the time.

In short, emoticons are simply facial expressions made by a certain series of keystrokes used to convey emotion in e-mails or chat conversations.

Because we don’t have the benefit of actually hearing the communicator’s tone of voice in typed messages, emoticons often help us determine how to take things. Pretend I write the following sentence to you in an e-mail: “I am feeling happy.” Hmmm.

Was I being sarcastic? Did I honestly mean that?

Now look at the same sentence with an emoticon at the end: “I am feeling happy. =)” See the difference?

Here is a list of some of the most-common emoticons. Though emoticons can help people reading your words to understand your exact feelings, I highly recommend refraining from using them in business communications. Oh, and usually, people not accustomed to emoticons find that it helps to turn their heads sideways to better see the “faces” being made.

: ) = happy

: ( = sad

: p = sticking out tongue

:-} = mischievous smile

= o = surprised

0:-) = angel

8-0 = astonished

:, ( = crying

: -@ = screaming

%-/ = hung over

: -D = laughing

; -) = winking

; P = wink with a raspberry

= x = my lips are sealed (can also mean “a kiss”)

: { = having a hard time/ frustrated

>: ) = little devil

8-P = yuck!

8 -] = wow

:- / = wry face/used for wry humor

(*_*) = in love (sideways)

: | = bored/whatever

:-& = tongue-tied

(:-# = woops, didn’t mean to say that

:-6 = exhausted

Many people enjoy making up their own silly emoticons. The infamous Dave Barry has suggested using the following:

:-D* = person laughing so hard he doesn’t notice there’s a five-legged spider hanging from his lip

.-) = person who can still smile despite losing an eyeball

:–( = person who is sad because he has a long nose

:V:-| = person who cannot figure out why nobody wants to talk to him or her, little suspecting that there is an alligator on his or her head

So now you know all about emoticons. If you want to learn even more, go here.

Have some fun! Make up your own! =O Start helping people understand what you really mean!

All right, so today’s article - though I promise it shall still prove informative - is going to be a bit more on the fun side. No complicated tech-talk, no mind-numbing discussion about servers or ports or Javascript. Let’s get going.

In our world of emails and online chats, it’s not surprising that a plethora of abbreviations have become increasingly commonplace. For this reason, today’s article may be something you cut out and tuck away in your desk drawer for those times you find yourself needing a quick abbreviation-translation.

Perhaps you already find yourself confused by the chat conversations and emails from your niece that are peppered with ’s and talk about her new “BF.” Well, with the abbreviation-translations I’m providing you with today, you’ll now know that the ’s are really grins and her new BF is a boyfriend-not a big frog.

Though more detailed lists exist online (just try a google search for “chat abbreviations” S), I’ve compiled a listing of some of the more common abbreviations out there (as well as a few silly ones thrown in for fun). Just for you. Here it is. (FWIW & HTH)

AAMOF - As a matter of fact
AFAIK - As far as I know
BC - because
BF - boyfriend
BFN - Bye for now
BTW - By the way
BION - Believe it or not
CADET - Can’t add, doesn’t even try
CULA - See you later, alligator
DK - Don’t know
DLTBBB - Don’t let the bed bugs bite
FTF - Face to face
FWIW - For what it’s worth
GF - Girlfriend
GG - Good game
HHOK - Ha ha, only kidding
HSIK - How should I know?
HT - Hi there
HTH - Hope that (or this) helps
IAC - In any case
IDK - I don’t know
IMA - I might add
IMHO - In my humble opinion
IMO - In my opinion
J4F - Just for fun
JAS - Just a second
JK - just kidding
JMO - Just my opinion
K - Okay
KHYF - Know how you feel
KYFC - Keep your fingers crossed
L - laugh
LLTA - Lots and lots of thunderous applause
LOL - Laughing out loud
LMAO - Laughing my a** off
LTHTT - Laughing too hard to type
MRA - Moving right along
MYOB - Mind your own business
NP - No problem
NTIM - Not that it matters
NTW - Not to worry
OAUS - On an unrelated subject
OMG - Oh my god
OO - Over and Out (end of communication)
OTOH - On the other hand
POS - Parent over shoulder!
RL - Real life
ROTFL - Rolling on the floor, laughing
ROTFLAS - Rolling on the floor, laughing and screaming
ROTFLMAO - Rolling on the floor, laughing my a** off
SEC - Wait a second
SLM - See last mail
SOW - Speaking of which
SWIM - See what I mean?
SYS - See you soon
TAFN - That’s all for now
TTBOMK - To the best of my knowledge
TTFN - Ta ta for now
TTYL - Talk to you later
TYCLO - Turn your Caps Lock off (Stop shouting!)
WDALYIC - Who died and left you in charge?
WDYT - What do you think?
WOTAM - Waste of time and money
WTH - What the hell?
WTTM - Without thinking too much
YGTBK - You’ve got to be kidding
YKWIM - You know what I mean

TTFN, everyone!