The information gurus at Google Strike again!

Next time you are on "Who wants to be a Millionaire", you can feel at ease, because when it comes time to "phone a friend" you already have a sure thing at your finger tips. Google recently announced a new service available called 'Google SMS'. SMS being the acronym for 'Short Message Service'. Google's new service allows anyone with text messaging capabilities on their cellular phone to get information about anything, quicker than they can type "GOOGL".

This new service has many uses. You can search for the number of your favorite pizzeria parlor on your way home from work to place a pickup order. You can look up the definition of sedition (Conduct or language inciting resistance or rebellion against lawful authority) to settle a dispute from a friendly game of scrabble. Most interestingly you can even use it as a study aid to validate your answers from converting english units such as inches into metric units such as centimeters. For more information on uses and tips for using this new service, please visit the brilliant minds of google @ www.google.com/sms

The most beautiful part about this service is that it costs mere pennies. For instance, I only get charged what it costs to send and receive a text message and with verizon its 10 cents to send a text message and 2 cents to receive.

I give this new service a 5.0 out of 5.0 stars. Congrats to the brains at google, keep up the good work.

--Doc

Upholding the 1st Amendment: Creating a Blog

A 'blog', is short for web log which is a journal or diary that is viewed and stored on the internet. It can serve as a "soap box" for activists, a record of events or news for businesses, or even a gateway for a couple to show off their newborn to friends and family. Virtually a blog can be whatever you deem it to be. The most interesting fact about a blog that many do not realize, is that a regularly maintained blog can be an added source of income. So today we are going to teach you how you can create your own, you will be amazed to find out how simple it really is.

For advanced users, you could create your own blog through website design and server side scripting, which basically is a whole lot of work that I don't even want to do. For the lazy (me!) and the non programmers, we have the very capable and simple to use Blogger.com.

Blogger.com is a product of the legendary Google Corporation. So, now that you know that, I am sure you feel a little bit more comfortable with the idea of having your own blog since Google strives to only release products that are easy to use, effective, and fun. To begin we'll start by navigating to blogger.com, to do this you can click the link above or type www.blogger.com into your address bar above. Next we will click the link that says "Create Your Blog Now". Next step is the account setup; username, password, display name or "pen" name, email address and the acceptance of terms, "Continue". Here we have "Name Your Blog" and this is where we are going to pick a name for the blog and also a web address that the blog can be found at. This is when it begins to be fun, selecting a template. As I am sure you realized, this template is the basis that Blogger.com uses for the look and feel of your blog. You can always change this template at a later date if you are not satisfied. Finally, the horizon is visible, and your blog is created.

From one of my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes, "Where do we go from here?" Well, I can only think of two good things to do, create your profile and post your first entry into your blog. From the blog creation, blogger.com takes you directly to your first post. Once you complete your first post, you should create your profile.This can be acheived by clicking the link in the upper right that says "Back to Dashboard". From here there is a link on the right hand side that says "Edit Profile", click it and be prepared to be as creative about yourself as possible.

Look at that you have created your very first blog and indirectly created a portal from your brain to the world. Thanks to the engineers from Google, it was easier than asking a girl out on a date for the first time. Till next time, happy blogging.

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Now, if you are looking to make this blog a source of income, there are a few things you have to keep in mind. First off, you have to have an interesting topic to talk about. Second, you have to perfect your writing ability and keep a consistent style. Third, you have to be responsive to your readers and spread the word of your blog to all your friends and family. Finally, you have to ad Google Adsense to your blog. For more information on Google's AdSense, go to your Blogger.com dashboard or directly to the source @ www.google.com.

--Doc

Spam: Don’t let it take over your inbox

For those of you who do not know what I mean when I use the word spam; spam is unsolicited email. Spam has many faces as well. It can be anything from “Lowering your mortgage rates” to sexual stimulants and enhancement drugs. Spam has become a major problem to many computer users. If it hasn’t been a problem to you personally, I am sure you know someone who it has. My mom for instance, has received over 200 spam messages over the course of one weekend. It got so bad that it took her computer anywhere between 15-20 minutes to download her email messages. That’s when I decided to sit her down and teach her a few things about spam.

So the next question to address is, how do spammers get your email address? That’s easy; they get it directly or indirectly from you. Have you ever browsed a website and signed up for a promotional sweepstakes and it asked for an email address. Or have you ever signed up for a “Free” Newsletter. In most cases, those “free” services aren’t really free. There are companies that specialize in gathering user’s information in order to sell it to hungry spammers.

What you can do:
• Have multiple email addresses. In our modern time, it is common for someone to have more than one email address. Not to mention there are so many companies that offer free email addresses (i.e. Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, Lycos.com and soon Google.com). The reason you want multiple email addresses is simple, you designate one email address for junk mail. The tricky part is how you determine whether or not to give your main email or your junk email address. Give out your main email for:
o Friends & Family(As long as they don’t send annoying forwards)
o Businesses that disclose a privacy statement
o Schools
o Trusted Sites (i.e. Google, MSN.com, ebay.com and so on…)
o Business contacts or business purposes
o Online businesses that carry the BBBOnline logo (http://www.bbbonline.org/)
For all other email requests, give out your junk email address.

• Use email filters. Most email providers provide email filters that you can configure through your options page. For instance if you get harassing email messages from a specific person each time, you can filter out any incoming message with that persons email address in the “From” line. Or you can configure the filter to search the subject line for specific keywords like ‘debt’ or ‘mortgage’.

• If you use Outlook 2003, there are updates available from Microsoft that enable outlook to have spam filtering features. If you don’t have the latest version of outlook, there are many 3rd party programs that offer spam filtering capabilities. Just go to www.download.com, do a search for “spam” and try a few out.

Utilizing these tips will greatly reduce your chances of receiving spam, if not eliminate them all together. But just remember this; they can’t spam you, if you don’t give them your email address.


-- Doc

Windows XP Tweak: Speed up Disk Cleanup

Have you ever noticed how running disk cleanup has become a time consuming process? The reason for this is that the disk cleanup utility has to scan your entire system in search of old files that you may wish to compress. In my opinion, you should not compress any files on your system for one reason, if you ever need those files in the future, it can take twice as long to read them. Ultimately succeding in slowing down your computer.

So in this edition of "Windows XP Tweaks" we are going to teach you how to disable "Compress old files" in Disk Cleanup. In order to perform this tweak we have to edit your systems registry. As always I suggest that all users backup their registry before making any changes to it. For more information on your system registry and backing it up, please visit The System Registry.

• Step 1: Click the "Start" menu and then click "Run...".
• Step 2: In the text box type "regedit" and press "OK".

• Step 3: In the left frame of the window that appears is a "file" tree. We need to navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\Volume Caches
  To do this we are going to click the "plus" sign next to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", then the "plus" sign next to "SOFTWARE", and etc... till we reach "Volume Caches".

• Step 4: In the left frame we are going to right click on the entry under "Volume Caches" named "Compress Old Files" and select "Delete".
• Step 5: Reboot the computer and run Disk Cleanup.

Till next time, Ciao.

--Doc