| Number 10 | June 14, 1999 | ||
| Announcements - June marks our first anniversary. Thanks to all our loyal customers and readers. -Educyber publishes two editions of Edunotes, one for Educators and one for Computer Users. To change or add to your subscription, contact Educyber (303-421-2223, edunotes@educyber.com) Inside Edunotes Educyber Site Guide |
I was quite dismayed by my first foray into AOL chat rooms. Though to date I hadn't received any unsolicited mail at my AOL address, within minutes of first logging into chat rooms, my inbox began to fill up. Spammers just monitor the screen names of those who log on, add aol.com and spam away. (NOTE: AOL recommends creating a screen name different from your regular email when going into chat rooms to, amongst other reasons, avoid this kind of spamming.) And just like the folks who send you junk mail through the local post office, online junk mailers are getting creative. I've received several interesting notes from people like Patty or Joleen that say things like "Sorry I haven't called in a while. Let's talk next week." The only problem of course is that I don't know anyone named Patty or Joleen. I didn't reply but suspect that had I done so, even to say they must have gotten the wrong number, my email address would simply have been added to their list. In other words, under the guise of "getting a wrong number," they actually verify that it is a valid address. What can you do to protect your privacy? If you post your email address on your web site or set up a personal profile with AOL, Netscape, Yahoo, or any of the other places that collect such information, there's little you can do to stop it. However, you can keep spamming to a minimum if you make sure you don't reply to any "wrong" numbers and don't give out any more information that absolutely necessary in online profiles. Also, when giving your email address in an online form, check for and read the privacy policy. If there isn't one, there's a good chance someone is making money off of your address. You can of course, be an email hermit, never giving out your email address; not even to register your software or hardware. But in doing so you cut yourself off from the Internet community at large. It would seem to be wiser to give it out cautiously and make a point of never replying to spammers. |
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| Edunotes Newsletter This newsletter is created by Brian and Maki DeLaet at Educyber, Inc. Subscriptions in the U.S. are free. Subscribe online at www.educyber.com or call (303) 268-2245. Educyber is based at: 4251 Kipling St. #190. Wheat Ridge, CO 80033 NOTE: Links and Web sites change frequently. All links and web sites were accurate at the time of publication. |
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Words (a glossary for computer users) POP: Post Office Protocol. A way of retrieving email from an email server. POP3 can be used on its own or with SMTP. POP: Point of Presence. The telephone number your computer dials to get Internet access. POP: What we'd like to do to those people who come up with all the crazy acronyms we find in computing. SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. SMTP is used to transfer mail between mail servers. It is also used to transfer mail from the client (your computer) to the mail server. When configuring an email client like Netscape or Eudora or Outlook, you usually need the POP3 information to get mail from the server to your computer and the SMTP information to get mail from your computer to the server. |
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Sports fans can follow their favorite baseball teams at several sites. There are baseball fans and then there are baseball fans. If you are a stats junkie, you'll want to visit http://www.baseballstats.com/ where you can follow the stats of your favorite player/team or check your knowledge of the greatest players throughout baseball history. You can also catch up on the season, discuss your favorite teams or join the fantasy leagues at http://www.baseball.com/ You can follow all your favorite sports at The Sporting News: http://www.sportingnews.com/ If you don't like being a spectator and want to get outdoors, visit the National Parks website at http://www.nps.gov/parks.html to plan your vacation. This site has everything from maps to tips on what to take/how to prepare. You can even make or confirm your reservations online. Another good starting point for outdoor sports is the GreatOutdoors at http://www.greatoutdoors.com/ If you've got some time off and want to try something different and romantic, why not travel by train? Visit the Amtrak web site for more information: http://www.amtrak.com/ If warm weather brings you no particular pleasure and you intend to spend your summer working hard, there are many websites that can help you do that as well. If you're looking for work or a career change, try Career Mosaic at http://www.careermosaic.com/ or the Monster Board at http://www.monster.com/. If you're researching companies Yahoo has nearly Four and a half million listed at http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/ If you're thinking of starting your own business, whether to supplement your income or venture out on your own, try the Small Business Administration's Starting Your Business web site at http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/starting/ Perhaps you're planning to do some studying to improve yourself? The Library of Congress provides a wealth of links and resources to help you study at http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/internet/training.html This is a particularly valuable site if you are interested in learning about the Internet and the World Wide Web. Another excellent place to study web design is at the Yale Style Manual website at http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html What a difference a year makes. When was the last time you used a floppy? Did you really need to? Within a year most 3 ½ " floppy drives will have gone the way of the 5 ¼ " drives of a few years ago. With hard disks now measured in GigaBytes, a large (it won't fit in my shirt pocket) floppy that only holds 1.44 Megabytes of information seems rather bulky for the amount of storage. Whether you're shuffling data between computers or backing data up, there are better ways. If you still want to use removable media, the SuperDisk, a Zip disk or another of the 100+ Megabyte media is a lot friendlier. For most individuals, all of the data they need backed up will fit on one of these disks. Imation's SuperDisk is a nice solution as it backwardly compatible with floppy disks but an internal zip drive works quite well too. But as out world becomes increasingly networked, we can begin to question the need for any removable media for individual users. If you're in a company or school setting, you probably have space on a network drive to put files. The network drives should be getting backed up on a regular basis so this is the best place for your important files. If you're at home or your work doesn't have a network, there are lots of places on the Internet where you can back up files for free or for a small fee. Atrieva (http://www.atrieva.com/) gives you 10 MB of space for free. @Backup (http://security.atbackup.com/) helps you backup up to 40 MB of files for only $99 a year and includes other backup services in that price. Around on the Internet)
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http://www.computingcentral.com/topics/ bandwidth/speedtest.asp When you follow this link, the site sends data to your computer and calculates how long it takes to send. In addition to showing you how fast your line is, it displays a graph showing how your connection compares with the rest of the world. Try it out. A. Computers running Windows 95/98 or NT all have a very important database on their computer called the registry. The registry keeps track of all the user settings and, if a computer has more than one user, keeps track of each user's settings. When you install or uninstall a Windows application, changes are made in the registry to reflect the changes in software that is installed in your computer. You can view this database by click the start button and then clicking on run, typing regedit in the box and pressing enter. Remember going shopping with your mother and hearing her say "You can look but DO NOT TOUCH"? That's a good saying to keep in mind should try regedit. If you make changes to your registry that don't reflect actual changes made on your computer, windows will get angry and may refuse to start. This is also why you should never try to remove a program by simply deleting the files in its directory - always use the uninstall program that came with it or use the Add/Remove icon in the control panel. Next time you install or uninstall an application, watch the process and you'll probably see when the registry is being modified. Because this file is so important and so sensitive to change, Microsoft has added a new utility to Windows 98 called the Registry Checker. This utility saves a backup of the registry every time you turn on your computer and scans the registry at every start or restart. If it finds a problem, it restores the most recent backup. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ This very informative web site shows you how things around you really work! Among the topics such as "How Car Engines Work" and "How Cell Phones Work", be sure to check out the sections covering "The Internet", "Computers", and "Understanding Digital Technology" to learn more about your computer. For example, do you know how your modem gets all the information you ask it to through that small phone line? What are BPS and PPP? What is new about ADSL? Well, they are all explained in plain English in this site so that you can have a better understanding of this world of modern technology. The site also provides related external links for each topic. Ancient History http://personal.jax.bellsouth.net/jax/t/m/tmlove2/ This site is for history lovers. It contains the entire timeline of humanity starting from oldest known stone tools found in Africa in 3,000,000 BC to extinction of the Norse colony in Greenland in 1500 AD. You can also view the timeline by different regions to learn about a particular part of history or view it by specifying a civilization to discover more about certain people. The are some parts of the timeline that have clickable text that gives you more information about the event. This site also is a part of The History Ring giving you easy access to 700 other participating history-related sites. We're talking about Real Network's RealJukebox. It works like an old-fashioned jukebox, letting you pick which songs to listen to, but the exciting part is where it gets those songs. You've got instant access to thousands of MP3 songs at several websites. Jukebox will also RECORD any music CD's you play as MP3 files and keep them for you. If you're already listening to your favorite song, Jukebox can silently record your CD while you go on listening. Once you've got several songs saved, you can create your own playlists, play songs at random, or play continously. You do need to be careful though as you can quickly fill up your hard disk if you record and or save too many selections. Get the RealJukebox at http://www.real.com/. |
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