Maki & Brian DeLaet EduCyber founders

August 2004 EduNotes

EduCyber is pleased to present the August edition of EduNotes. This month learn to take control of your Word processing, read Ed Cyber's response to a question, get an update on the Windows XP Service Pack 2 and see if your spell checker works as good as ours. Enjoy and as always, send feedback to edunotes@educyber.com .
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Take Control
Recently we've heard from a number of you regarding the frustrations of having Microsoft Word controlling your word processing. While many of the automatic formatting and correcting features of Word are great time savers for some, they are a real pain for others who aren't used to having the computer correct it for them or for those who really don't want all that formatting. I personally like most of the features because, for example, I spelled formatting with one T twice in the paragraph above but Word automatically corrected it for me.
So what's a body to do? In Word (directions are for Word 2003 but are similar for XP and 2000), click the Tools menu and then click on AutoCorrect Options. If you don't see it listed wait about 5 seconds and it should appear.
In the AutoCorrect Window, there are several tabs. The first tab you should be looking at is the AutoCorrect tab. Here you can turn on or off several auto-correct options. For typical typing (letters, papers for school, etc.) you'll want to leave most of these on as they correct mistakes like HAving two capitals at the beginning of a word, automatically capitalizing days of the week and reversing the effect of inadvertently turning on the CAPS lock but typing like it isn't on. At the bottom is the choice to replace text as you type and it has hundreds of typos with the correct spelling. It also turns (c) into © (the correct copyright symbol).
The part that seems to give people the most trouble is the options under the Autoformat tab. The single most troublesome for our clients has been the “Automatic bulleted lists”. If it's bothering you, simply uncheck the box and click OK. No longer will Word create automatic bullets or numbered lists for you. Other things that can be turned on or off here include using superscript after numbers or changing fractions to look more like fractions.
Or, if you make the same spelling mistake again and again and Word doesn't automatically correct it, go back to the AutoCorrect tab. In the Replace box, type in the word or phrase as you typically misspell it. Then in the With box, type in the correct version. You can use this for short hand as well. For example, if you frequently use the same paragraph or long sentence, you can associate it with a series of characters that seldom or never occur. A simple example would be to have XOXO be automatically replaced with Hugs and Kisses. Then when you're writing to your sweetheart, you can just type “XOXO” and it will read “Hugs and Kisses”.
More sophisticated users should take a look in the Smart Tags area to see what they might be missing out on. Smart tags allow you to quickly manipulate things like dates, people names and more.
Whether you're a casual user or a power user, knowing how to turn on or off the Auto-correct features can give you much more control over your processing in MS Word.
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Ask Ed Cyber
Dear Ed,
I own a small business and people keep telling me I need something called esseioh for my web site. What is esseioh and why does my web site need it?

Confused in Colorado

Dear Confused,
I believe the term people are trying to convey to you is the acronym SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the business of getting your web site ranked for key words and phrases related to your business so that when someone visits a search engine looking for the kind of services you offer, they can quickly and easily find your company.
Be careful when looking for a company to help you with SEO though. Search is a fiercely competitive business right now, both amongst companies that help you and amongst companies wanting to be ranked highly for key words in their industry. The goal of SEO is to get your web site to be ranked in the top 20 (top 10 is even better) for several of your key phrases in the major search engines.
Why, you may ask, is SEO so gosh-darned expensive? Have you ever been to a carnival and tried to shoot those ducks moving back and forth? That's sort of what SEO is like. You may attain the number one ranking this week but next week find you have dropped out of the top 20. Everybody else in your industry is struggling to get their site ranked number one, too and so they may do something the search engines like even better than they liked your site. In addition, the search engines, in order to be fair, are constantly shifting the algorithm or method they use to determine rankings so that no one company can “crack the nut” of getting the number one ranking.
Does your web site need SEO? It probably needs some kind of optimization if it hasn't already had it. If the goal of your business in having a web site is to attract more customers then you should look into it. There a number of companies that are quite good at it but of course I recommend giving my friends at EduCyber a call at 720 275-4646.
Hope that helped,

Ed
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Service Pack Headache Coming
At long last the Windows XP Service Pack 2 is nearing release. For months and years we've heard about Microsoft's commitment to security. With the release of Service Pack 2 – planned for sometime this month – that commitment will be put to the test.
With a number of changes to the way things work, don't be surprised if your computer doesn't work the way it did before the service pack was installed. For a long time now we at EduCyber have been turning on the Windows firewall on client's computers. Once SP2 is installed the firewall will be on automatically and it will be a stronger firewall than the current one. While this is generally a good idea, if you're concerned about hackers, you'll still want to look into a 3 rd party solution.
If you've heard about memory problems or buffer overruns with the many viruses and worms on the Internet, you'll be interested to know that SP2 contains technology to minimize or eliminate such problems, making it less likely that a malicious program or virus can cause damage.
Worried about a virus coming to you through email and sending nasty attachments to everyone in your address book? There is also increased email handling capabilities that will isolate what Microsoft labels “potentially unsafe attachments” and protect the rest of your computer from them.
So all of this sounds good, right. Yes it does. So why might my computer not work the same way? First, you should be prepared to download additional updates once SP2 is installed on your computer. The service pack changes so much behind the scenes stuff that you will quite likely need to download updates to software such as your antivirus program, your email program and perhaps your financial package. We strongly recommend checking with the vendors of these programs in advance to see what, if any, updates will need to be downloaded and installed after the service pack is installed.
Here's a collection of links related to the service pack if you'd like to learn more: http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2004080212383739?
Open&src=con_web_nam&tpre=us&tdir=
http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/xpsp2.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/preinstall.mspx
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/tech/news/2727570
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Spell Checker
I halve a spelling checker, It came with my pea see. It plainly marks four my revue Mistakes I dew knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait aweigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the era rite Its rarely ever wrong.
I've scent this massage threw it, And I'm shore your pleased too no Its letter prefect in every weigh; My checker tolled me sew.
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© 2004 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at http://www.educyber.com/edunotes/ . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (720) 275-4646. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.
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