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Take A Moment To Remember http://www.clermontyellowribbon.com/untilthenflash.htm This site features perhaps one of the most moving tributes to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces using a very effective flash presentation. The faces of our young heroes and the background music of Homeward Bound from The Road Home will touch your heart. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/30/2004 09:46:00 PM 
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part VIII WEB BULLIES AND WEB ASSAILANTS 1. A Flood of Cookies Cookies that help a site owner complete a transaction or customize content for a visitor are one thing. Cookies launched to track the activities of a visitor are another. I just looked at my cookies folder and found that I had about 1800 cookies. Wow! Some of them were for websites that I've never visited and for ad services not related to any website where I've done business. About 30 of them registered as spyware cookies designed to track my activities on the web. Well over a thousand were there to track my exposure to ads and a few hundred were to track my visits to particular websites. Dumping several cookies on a visitor is akin to bully behavior because it is not consensual and at best a sign that the launching site does not care about visitor privacy. If you need cookies to run a site, consider using session cookies that do not persist after the visitor leaves your website. If you need to use persistant cookies, you don't need to have the expiration date last 20 years. The expiration date needs to be reasonable. If you run a site, you need to be responsible for the cookies launched by your advertisements. If a cookie from an ad is not associated with a machine readable privacy policy, you are dumping on your customers and treating them with disrespect. Your customers need to be able to know what the privacy policy is for the issuer of any cookie that is put on their system. Kudos to Amazon for including a link to machine readible privacy policy in all their new ads. 2. Pop-ups Pop-ups can provide a useful way to display information and can help a web visitor, but if you use them you risk website failure because many visitors will be using pop-up blocking software. Too many idiot sites have resorted to bombarding visitors with multiple popup windows to other sites and advertisements making visits disruptive and irritating to visitors. Visitors in turn have had to resort to pop-up blockers. Thumbs up to Google for including a pop-up blocker as part of their browser toolbar. Mine has blocked some 1379 pop-ups in the last three months. 3. Hostile Actions Sites that attempt to launch Active-X controls or other browser help objects really deserve a special place in web hell. Sites that have added scripts to make these things popup multiple times and then provide a prompt with javascript to try to get you to install an unnecessary program that includes spyware, trojans, keystroke loggers, or other malware need to be pushed off the web as irresponsible assailants. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/29/2004 09:52:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part VII PRIVACY POLICIES AND IDENTITY INFORMATION Each day we hear of more attempts to phish information by e-mail to steal personal information and ultimately identies. At the same time the amount of privacy threatening spyware launched by websites is on the rise. DON'T MAKE ME FEEL INFO-RAPED 1. Treat Me With Respect Remember that when I visit your website, I am your guest and I deserve a little respect as your customer. Treat me with the same respect you would for a house guest. Don't require me to tell you my life story to get in the front door, to make a purchase, or view content. My privacy is important to me. Nothing is more irritating than to go to a website that requires 20 questions to be answered to get help. 2. Tell Me What Your Privacy Policy Is If you do want information from me, tell me how you are going to use my information, who you are going to share it with, how you are going to protect it, and why you need it. I don't know how many times I've gone to a website that went right to collecting information without any link to a privacy policy. That usually tells me that my information is not going to be safeguarded, is going to be shared, and that the website shouldn't be trusted with that information. If you are running a website, why create distrust and make it ambiguous as to what you are doing? You can end up driving away customers that don't want their information shared. 3. Don't Lie To Me Recently I went to a website that claimed that federal law required them to ask for my birthday so they could comply with COPPA. There is nothing in the law or regulation that requires this. It was a misrepresentation and it was enough to lose my business. I don't know how many times I've gone to a website for a free subscription only to be confronted with a question asking where I was born, when I was born, the name of a parent, the name of child, where I went to school and other similar stuff. The representation is always the same. They say that the information is needed for audits. Well that is a load of crap. Any form can automatically capture the IP address of the person completing the form and that is unique enough for an audit. They don't need the information and the lie is enough for me to decide that I don't need the subscription. 4. Don't Give Me A Disease When you pass on spyware to me for your greedy business purposes, it is the same as deliberately passing on a disease. The latter is can get criminal prosecution and it is high time that consumers get similar protection from slimey spyware injectors. Spyware screws up my computer, makes it run slow, makes me angry, and costs me money to erradicate. Do you really think this is going to make me a repeat customer? If so, you are living in dreamland. People hate spyware and nobody likes sites that dump it. 5. Don't Ask For What You Don't Need To Know If you are going to ask for information, ask for only what is needed for the transaction. If I am buying a flashlight battery from you, you don't need my life story, a biography, or the name of my favorite pet. One website I visited recently asked no less than six personal questions about where I went to school, a family member name, and so on. Why did they neeed it? Well they really didn't did they. Customers want to make quick transactions and not have to battle to protect their privacy. 6. Don't Let My Information Get Stolen If you are going to get legitimate information from me, make sure it is protected. If you are collecting credit card information and you aren't making sure that your servers and network are updated, patched, and secure, then you are putting my information and my funds at risk. You owe it to customers to give them the best possible security. Apologies or denials after a successful intrusion and disclosure of customer information is too little, too late. Think liability and lawsuits. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/28/2004 10:01:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part VI ONLINE PRODUCT MANUALS We are moving to paperless offices and homes and that means we need reliable product manuals from vendor websites with useful information in a format that we can read, see, and understand. You Gotta Be Kidding Right? 1. Where's the manual? No manual? Oh oh. This has to be the worst sin for a vendor site. If you sell, support it. At least have the manual online. 2. Get Out The Magnifying Glass!! Who drew this micro-diagram where I can't tell what's what? Why is everything labeled "a", "b", and "c" without a legend? We probably have all been dumbfounded by do it yourself manuals and "some assembly required" products where the diagram looks more like a hieroglyph than anything remotely useful. Do better. Have step by step instructions. Don't leave out steps and assume that we will guess what you did next. Use pictures - lots of pictures. We need to see what you are doing. Make them big enough to see and understand. 3. Don't Oversimplify!! A two page manual with a page and a half of disclaimers and four lines of text is not a manual. It is a joke. Where's the beef? Give useful information upfront. If you don't know how it works well enough to write a manual, well maybe you shouldn't be selling it. 4. PDFs! Wow isn't it easy to scan a paper manual into a nice PDF file and just whip that up on the web??? Sure is. But let's suppose I'm trying to read it from a web browser on a PDA? Not so good. Suppose I'm visually impaired and am using a screen reader program? Useless. Screen readers do not read pictures. And scans of pages are usually done as guess what? Pictures! Doesn't work. If you are going to do a PDF, do it right so that it is accessible to the visually impaired or make it a total html production that is easier to navigate. 5. Really Lazy! Some sites have a link to a product manual that brings up an image of a page with a link to go to the next. Same deal. Make it accessible and adaptable to more user agents than a computer monitor. Do it right and your customers will thank you . . . or at least won't pester your help folks as much. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/27/2004 06:09:00 PM
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Intermission The series "Web Disasters - Sites We Hate" will continue soon. Congratulations to all of the wondeful Olympic athletes! Awesome! It is hard to work on the computer when such great games are on the tube. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/26/2004 11:03:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part V AVOID WRETCHED WEAK EXCUSES FOR SUPPORT When do you visit a website's support area? Most of us ignore this important area of a website until something goes wrong or until we figure out we can't get something to work as advertised. By that time the manual is long gone, the drivers are probably on a floppy or CD that hit the garbage ages ago, and the chances are good we don't know the product number. Don't stop us from getting help just because we don't know the magic number or understand your corporate jargon. And most of all don't give us a support area with a dozen clicks to get to a page that tells us it is under development, that no drivers are available, that the product is discontinued, or any other excuses. 1. Do It Right With Pictures If you have more than one supported product, help out your web visitor. Provide pictures of the merchandise so that the visitor can figure out what they have. 2. Help Us Help Ourselves Don't tell us we need to order a CD. That is no comfort when your visitor has to meet a deadline with a non-functioning product. Provide downloadable drivers, specifications, manuals, and useful help documents. This can go a long way towards reducing your need to answer e-mail or respond to phone calls from unhappy people. 3. Help Needs to Be Helpful I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a website and found that the help pages were written by morons for morons. Yes I've plugged in the computer. Yes the device is connected correctly. I can read the manual. If you have a product, you need to have a real knowledge base where you provide solutions for common problems that people experience. If I have installed your product's software and the install got hosed, what do I do? Suppose it won't uninstall and I get a message that says that it can't be installed when an install is in progress - what do I do then? Tell me what services need to be terminated, what processes need to be halted, and what registry entries are going to have to be hand edited to have a successful uninstall and re-install. Don't leave it up to the customer to guess. These are real world types of problems and your customers need answers. If you are starting up, test the product rigorously and make sure you document problems and solutions. Open a forum on your support site where users can ask questions and get real help from other experienced users and your own experts. This goes a long way towards finding solutions. 4. Add the Personal Touch When your customer is in a panic, all the neato whizbang support stuff you have is not going to help. Sometime people just need to talk to an expert. They need to describe a problem in detail and it isn't easy to fit it into a silly submit your problem box with 1000 characters or less. Give your customers a way to communicate effectively. 5. Avoid Frustrating Fumbling Scripted Answers One size never fits all. If I explain a problem in detail and tell you what I've done without success, sending me back a robot response e-mail telling me to try the same thing is not going to help and it sure is not going to impress me or anyone else. If I send you a problem, you need to read what I wrote and answer the questions that I asked and not the ones you think I should have asked. 6. Temper, Temper, Temper Finally, if you are providing support and the customer is having a problem, don't get mad at the customer because they can't figure out how to use your product. Maybe, just maybe you didn't do all your homework or the customer wouldn't be having the problem in the first place. If you treat customers like dung, they will get the message and find better places to spend their money than your website. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/24/2004 10:36:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate Part IV HELP ME NAVIGATE YOUR SITE It ought to be axiomatic that visitors want to navigate to specific information and that websites ought to make that easier. Sadly many sites are consumed with looks and feels and less concerned with making the visitor's experience a little easier. 1. You Lost Me In The Navigation Shuffle There are experts that advocate streamlined navigation with a minimum of choices to make it easier to get started. This sometimes is useful if the navigation catagories make sense to the visitor. But, it can also lead to misery for users, if the links are ambiguous. One popular computer discount house has a very nice clean interface with main catagories. Now I want to go buy a gizmo, but I have no idea whether it is computers, home electronics, consumer electronics, gadgets, or what. I think that the catagories are a mirror of the company's inventory system or store departments, but they aren't very helpful. Next I try the search box. Oh boy, I get 20 results for the gizmo and none of them are close to what I want. Finally I back of the site and use Google and three links down I find a deep link to the site with what I want. Now why couldn't the site make it this easy and why did I have to use Google to find something on their site? Navigation is the key. If I visit, I need to be able to find something and find it quickly. Give me useful navigation whether it is streamlined or with lots of links. Hint: Get feedback from users that are not part of the business management and preferably customers. See what they think before launching a navigation nightmare. 2. Where'd It Go and How Did I Get Here Oh don't you love redirects that take you to surprise destinations? Site navigation ought to take you directly to where it says it is going to take you and not somewhere else. When you change content, maybe you should update your website's navigation? If you move files around to new addresses, maybe you should update your website's navigation. Think about it webmasters! If you were out on the Interstate and followed a sign to Denver, but were rerouted to Laramie, wouldn't you be a tad put out? No surprises! Take people where you promised to take them. 3. Don't Make Me Guess In the early days of webmastering we were all bitten by the bug to use icons for navigation. Sites popped-up with cool divider bars, navigation icons, and the like almost instantly. Everybody had to have icons. It was the rage. So where did they go? Well most of us learned that people had no idea what the icons meant and didn't want to learn a different set of icons on each website. They were like hieroglyphs and about as useful. The lesson has been lost on some flash based websites that have way cool navigation with circles, squares, images, and the like that light up, make noises, and show text when there is a mouseover. If you look at the page, you have no idea what each icon does. You have to guess what goes where or pretend it is a game where you have to solve the puzzle or find clues. Come on folks. Wake up. If people wanted to guess or play games, they'd buy a game and play it. Visitors at a website want to get to information and not be bogged down with learning the site or guessing. 4. Totally Useless Navigation Perhaps the worst offenders for bad navigation are the sites that pop-up a predefined window that you can't resize that forces you to scroll up and down and side to side to see something in a small space. It becomes so hard to navigate that the site becomes useless. Recently I wanted to see a story on MSNBC about Denzel Washington called "In Denzel Washington we trust." I found it with Google and went to the page. Off to the side was a short column advertising free video with a launch button. The caption indicated it would take the visitor to an interview with Denzel Washington on the Today Show. Well I clicked on the link and MSNBC popped open a link to MSN Video. That's when navigation became an exercise in frustration. The window was presized. You can't make it change. The top half was filled with images for other stories and none of it was related to the interview. The bottom half was a box only 199 pixels high. To see the sidebar menu, it was necessary to scroll within this window. Eventually I wound up at the bottom of the menu and decided to pick a topic, it generates links that were way up at the top, but not visibile in the area where I clicked. Scroll back up. Nope that wasn't it. Scroll down to the menu and try again. Now after a few times of this, I realized that this was pretty nutso. Who has time to fight navigation like this. It sure doesn't promote finding anything quickly. In this case none of the links led to the interview, which was even worse. Even the search box did not lead to anything identified as an interview. That's probably the last time I'll click on a video on that site. If I need to see a story, I'll probably look to a competitor for coverage. This could have been fixed by allowing the window to be resized or by launching a full browser window. Its all about navigation. Make it easy to find stuff or lose customers. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/23/2004 09:41:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part III OVERWHELMED BY GARBAGE Help! I can't see the website? My eyes are flying around in their sockets! That's how your user may feel when entering your website when you over do it with visual stimulation. Okay, we understand that a website needs to bring a return on investment or server a business purpose for the owner unless it is a hobby or philanthropic site. But, take it easy on the user. VISUAL INTERFERENCE WITH SITE USE 1. Stop You Are Hurting My Eyes Wild flying mini-windows that have flashing content sliding across the screen stop the user cold and tempt them to close their browsers because it looks like something just happened that shouldn't have. Some may be afraid to click anywhere because they've learned that this could lead to cookies and more pop-up screens. Many will hit the back button and go somewhere else, f they can. Worst of all for those that stay, is that you've delayed their gratification in getting where they want to go. They may not come back. 2. You Want Me To See Your Content or Garbage? Flashing, whirling, dancing advertisements distract from what the user wants to see. Sometimes it is enough to prompt people to back away from the site in a hurry. Some site owners are dense enough to think that several of these on a page is a good thing. They need professional help. 3. Blinking Is For Bozos Blinking super huge text is a slap in the face too. Knock it off. We can read and we read better when the text stays in one place all the time. 4. Unbalanced and Unappreciated The ratio of content to advertising is important too. If most of your real estate is advertising, then it is a junk site and your visitors will feel like they are in commercial city. Learn from TV. Advertising through commercials became such a pain in the rear that people were willing to spend hundreds of dollars on devices that screen out commercials, sought out devices to automatically mute the TV, or simply opted for DVDs and cable/DirectTV channels that have less advertising. There is a point where more advertising has a diminishing return and a further point where it becomes counter-productive. Not everyone that visits your site intends to buy something or is going to buy something that lines your pockets. Get over it. 5. Get Relevant With Ads If you are going to advertise, at least try to have relevant advertising or netural advertising. Nothing is funnier than a website that has advertising that detracts from the purpose of the website. If for example, you run a story on your website critical of airline safety and advertise cheap airline flights in the sidebar, what message are you sending your visitors? I suspect they'll make a screenshot to share with friends to say look at how stupid this website is. Maybe it would have been better to advertise flight insurance with the story huh. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/22/2004 08:23:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part II ELECTRONIC FENCES - SHOCKING STUPIDITY You've enticed to a website. Now you are primed to view web content. So what happens, you can't get there because the site wants a password and personal data. This seems to be especially prevelant with news media websites. You may find a link to an enticing news story only to find that the newspaper won't let you read the story without registering first. Similarly, you spend a great deal of time getting ready to buy a product. All you really want to do is buy the product. Instead you have to register to use the website before you can buy. WEBSITE REGISTRATION - FRUSTRATION MULTIPLIER 1. Go Ahead Frustrate Customers Creating electronic barriers to the use of a website frustrates customers. 2. Registration Madness If the content of your website is public, why are you using registration? Do you understand that this is going to turn people away? Do you expect every visitor to maintain a safe blackbook of 200 passwords with each one unique for each website? Do you really think your customers think this is a good experience? Or is this your way of saying I really don't care about customers - they are there to be exploited and used. 3. Password Mania Visitors to websites are constantly assailed with requests to create passworded accounts. People hate to remember usernames and passwords. Chances are they are going to use the same password over and over again. So if another website is cracked and the user's password is compromised, chances are good the cracker will also be able to access your site with the cracked password. That really helps security across the web right? 4. None of Your Business - You Won't Get My Business Visitors who want to buy something, want to make a quick transaction. If you start asking visitors for all manner of registration information, chances are they will buy from another competitor instead of wasting time. Some vendors have it right. Macy's, for example, gives you the option to register or to make a direct buy. Thumbs up for Macy's. Other sites out there need to follow that example. It is really a pain in the rear to start to register to make a buy and then find the site wants to know your birthdate, age, gender, and other information ad nauseum. There is no good reason why the seller site needs to have my life history or anyone else's life history in order to make a purchase. If I go into a store and they try the same silliness, I'm already out the door and on my way to the next store. Guess what - the same happens on the web. Think about what it is your are doing to your customer base when you erect barriers to easy transactions. 5. Electronic Fences Kill Search Engine Visibility If you are erecting one of these electronic fences, just remember that most search engines are not going to index your content. So let's say I want to shop and your site has registration as a condition of seeing content, what is going to happen? If I search with Froogle, chances are I won't see your product. If I do a search with any search engine, chances are I won't see your stuff. I will find a website that does not require registration to browse and they will get the business you could have had. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/21/2004 03:52:00 PM
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Web Disasters - Sites We Hate - Part I Websites can be wonderful or horrible depending on your point of view. Too often corporate websites look good in the board room while the visitor has an entirely different view. BEFORE WE START: BLEEDING EDGE JUST ISN'T RIGHT Leading edge is fine. Bleeding edge stinks. Do you know your customer base? Hey dudes listen up. Not everyone out there has a brand new computer with the latest gadgets and an unlimited budget. I WANT TO GET TO YOUR SITE, BUT YOU MAKE IT HARD -- YOU LOSE 1. Upgrade to See A Site? Don't make your customers have to do a software upgrade to see your site. At best when this is free, it is really annoying to have stop and do an install that could crash your computer. If a customer needs information now, waiting for an install will drive them to a competitor site. 2. Slow, Slow, Slow Don't use bleeding edge stuff that requires a lot of time to load because it will look pretty. Eye candy is nice and good looks are important, but if we have to wait five minutes for you to download your impressive artwork, we are probably already somewhere else. 3. Inaccessible Locks Out Audience Think about disabled users. If your primary navigation is spiffy, snappy flash stuff, how will your disabled visitors get around your site? Probably they won't. 4. Whose Screen Are You Designing For? Don't let your web developer design for his 1280x1024 screen size. Too many people still are doing 800x600 and won't see half of the site without a lot of horizontal scrolling which is frustrating and annoying. Remember your customers have all sorts of old gear with all sorts of old settings that they may or not know how to change. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/20/2004 08:37:00 PM
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Windows XP SP2 Rescheduled TechNet Temporarily Disabling Delivery of Windows XP Service Pack 2 Through Windows Update and Automatic Updates Microsoft has announced that it is delaying release of XP SP2 via automatic delivery to allow customers the option to disable automatic updates. Temporarily disabling delivery will only work for 120 days. Microsoft says that at the end of this period, Windows XP SP2 will be delivered to all Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 1 systems. Click here to see schedule for delivery. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/18/2004 01:30:00 PM
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Windows XP SP 2 - From the Horse's Mouth 842242 - Some programs seem to stop working after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 Microsoft has released a knowledge base article that provides a significant list of programs that probably won't work after you install Service Pack 2. Among those listed are Visual Studeo.Net, SQL, Backukp Exec 9, Ghost Server 7.5, Symantec AntiVirus Corp. Ed. 8.0 and 9.0, Cute FTP 5.0 XP, AutoCad 2000, ColdFusion MX Server Ed. 6, eTrust 6.0.100, NetSchield 4.5 and many more. Gamers will need to be concerned about Chess Advantage III, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition, Midnight Outlaw: Illegal Street Drag 1.0, Scrable 3.0 and Star Trek StarFleet Command III 1.0. Microsoft has a support center set up for this Service Pack at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;windowsxpsp2. E-mail support may take up to 24 hours. There is no charge on support issue related to SP2 on one 800 number, but there is an inexpensive paid support option for questions regarding how to use and configure features included with SP2. Advance support continues to be pretty expensive. Microsoft warns "Long hold times may be experienced. If your issue is not critical, we recommend using E-mail Support." Now if a lot of apps aren't going to work, Microsoft has already setup a big support center, and Microsoft is telling you that telephone calls may include long waits; I'm not sure how much confidence that inspires. If you have a pretty vanilla system and are not a power user, you probably need the increased security enhancements and you may do better (but you can't be guaranteed smooth sailing on installation). If you are a power user with a properly configured firewall and strong security, it may be that it is worth watching how this unfolds for a bit. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/16/2004 10:25:00 PM
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WFTV.com - News Of The Strange http://www.wftv.com/newsofthestrange/ A local Florida TV station's website has an area devoted to "News of the Strange" with some of the most unusual news stories and for that matter photos. Check out the feature "Strange News Photos" at the upper right of the page. This slide show has 99 very unusual and weird pictures. Some might say there is more substance in these news of the strange stories than in some political speeches. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/13/2004 10:35:00 PM
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What About Windows XP Service Pack 2 -- XP SP2? Windows XP SP2 has been released and if you are running Windows XP and are using the automated updating feature, sometime in the next two months you should be prompted to download and install this monster update. When you get prompted depends on Internet usage, Internet traffic, server load at Microsoft, and a host of conditions. This is huge update just by sheer size. The SP is 256 MB in size. If you are not on broadband, downloading is probably not a good option and you'll want to scout out a CD. To find out what Microsoft has to say about this update, surf over to TechNet on Win XP SP2 where you'll find links to explain what is included and how to get a copy. While Microsoft is enthusiastic about this update, I'm not sure the rest of the world shares that enthusiasm. IBM has told its users not to install XP SP2. See, SlashDot has come down with a recommendation to users to install XP SP2. ZDnet has attempted to give users an idea of whether installing XP SP2 will be a major headache by reporting on its tests of the SP2 on its own systems. ZDnet notes that Microsoft has warned that the service pack may break some third party applications (wouldn't it be nice to have a list of them?) and may also break Microsoft Business Solutions CRM Versions 1 and 1.2. W3Reports warns webmasters that XP SP2 has big implications for websites. A pop-up blocker will impact how child browser windows can be launched. Files on websites will no longer be able to be automatically downloaded. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/10/2004 08:11:00 AM
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eBay Odds and Ends Well it is time to clean out the closet and sell a few things to support this website. Have a look at some of my latest eBay listings: http://members.ebay.com/ws2/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=profbvr Posted by WEBnME @ 8/07/2004 09:00:00 AM
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Creative Flash Production http://www.home.datacomm.ch/ marco.fernando/fla/bozzetto/olympics.swf Need a little humor? Check out this flash production, which plays on an Olympics gone wrong theme. This production gives evidence to the notion that web authors are becoming considerably more sophisticated in the presentation of information . . . and humor. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/05/2004 08:50:00 AM
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Hacker Games http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5291107.html ZDNet reports that groups of hackers are planning a global game of 'capture the flag' on dedicated machines that will serve as targets. Interesting story. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/03/2004 04:55:00 PM
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Security Pipeline | How-To | Windows XP Service Pack 2: Install With Care http://www.securitypipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=25600074 Windows XP Service Pact 2 is about ready to hit. Could it be as bad as a virus? Security Pipeline has a good article documenting some of the problems that have been encountered loading the new Service Pack. The initial results for both AMD and Intel machines are chilling. Frankly, it sounds like SP-2 is not ready for prime time and that one should only install it after a backup when you have a lot free time to fix problems. This is a step toward fixing some security problems with Windows, but Microsoft has decided on a one-size fits all. It would be much better to give users the choice whether to pick a version of SP2 like what is being offered or a second version for power users that would not overwrite individually selected settings. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/03/2004 04:50:00 PM
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Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo Rocks After eight years of neglect, I spent the last few weeks rebuilding my computer center and modernized a bit. One of the first things that i did was to replace an aging keyboard with the new Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite. I wasn't too sold on a wireless keyboard or any particular configuration, but this one looked promising with a mouse-like scroll wheel built into the left side of the keyboard. After a few days, I had to wonder why I hadn't made the shift earlier. This keyboard is very responsive to the touch with a nice sound to the keys. The wrist pad is comfortable and soft. The key layout is easy to use and includes a lot of useful special keys including some that are programable by you. If you are using Windows, you are going to like this keyboard's integration of buttons with features of the operating system. It is one sweet performer and well worth the extra bucks. The mouse that comes with the set is a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 2. It is a big improvement with contoured surfaces that fit easily into your hand. Both the mouse and keyboard scroll wheels can also tilt side to side allowing horizontal scrolling, which can be invaluable with large Excel workbooks/spreadsheets. If you are interested and need more info, take a look at this one at Amazon or buy it now and have it delivered to you. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/02/2004 12:07:00 AM
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Performance 3D Video Cards http://compreviews.about.com/cs/videocards/tp/aatpvideocards.htm Been thinking about a new video card? The link above goes to a great article summarizing some of the features of the newest video cards. The reviewer gives a slight edge to NVidia GeForceFX 6800 Ultra over the ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition. A word to the wise. Before upgrading, check to make sure your board will accept one of the newer 8x AGP cards. The slot requirements are slightly different. If you have an older board, the AGP slot may not support these newer cards. If you are looking for solid performance on a budge and aren't thrilled about paying $500 for a gamer quality card, think about the ATI Radeon 9600 XT, which is still available at a lot of computer stores. It provides very nice performance for a very reasonable price. If you are thinking of connecting to HDTV, check the manufacturer specs for the card to determine whether it can provide the correct resolution for your your HDTV. Posted by WEBnME @ 8/01/2004 11:48:00 PM
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