GREATER BOSTON SENIOR COMPUTER GROUP NEWSLETTER
Issue No. 52, December 10, 2003
CHAIRPERSON:: Arline Ekman, AVE@alumni.unh.edu
EDITOR: Harriet Mandell, harrietd@rcn.com
WEB PAGE: Garry Ziffer, http://users.rcn.com/gbscg
LIAISON: Eve Welts, ewelts@rcn.com

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MONEY FOR THE HOLIDAYS… Applying Wild West bounties to modern Internet crimes, Microsoft Corp. set aside $5 million to pay large cash rewards to people who help authorities capture and prosecute the creators of damaging computer viruses. Flanked by federal and international law enforcers, Microsoft executives promised to pay the first rewards of $250,000 each to anyone who helps authorities find and convict the authors of the original "Blaster" and "Sobig" Internet infections unleashed this year. Start looking….
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INSTALLED OR UPGRADED TO WINDOWS XP and wonder where those familiar desktop icons went? The icons like My Computer, My Network Places, Internet Explorer, Recycle Bin, and My Documents did not go away. They are waiting for you to restore them from their secret hiding spot. Here's how to place the regular icons back on the desktop. Right-click the desktop and choose Properties to launch the Display Properties. Select the Desktop tab under Display Properties. On the Desktop tab, click the button marked "Customize Desktop" to launch the Desktop Items dialog box. Now you can select from your favorite icons of Windows past. You can choose from My Computer, My Network Places, Internet Explorer, Recycle Bin, and My Documents.
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LOST BUT NOT GONE…to find a missing toolbar in one of your programs, just right click in the area where the toolbars should be. In most programs, there will be a list of available toolbars. Click the one you want. Microsoft often includes the choice "Customize." Click that and you can design and build your own toolbar.
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GAME SUGGESTION from Garry Ziffer "If you like puzzles, I found a really good one called Touch Puf, and it's guaranteed to be addictive. It has 150 levels, each harder than the one before. On each level you have limited amount of time before the clock runs out. Press a button to restart the clock at any time, but that also resets that level to its starting position. You must complete a level before the program generates a password allowing you to go to the next level" To download the game, go to http://www.zawayed.com/other/touchpuf15.exe
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OBSOLETE DIGITAL DEVICES the following list of web sites maybe potential non profit outlets for used computers and other items, reports Chan Touart www.tecschange.org , www.worldcomputerexchange.org , www.ybboston.org and www.yte.org . Anyone who has success should report back progress.
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GOOGLE TOOLBAR… http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar after downloading use the options menu and activate pop-up blocker and other items.
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TAKE YOU COMPUTER TO ANOTHER DIMENSION… explore using it for video and chat with a webcam, or just chat without a webcam live with friends and family, share video messages, music and photos. The product is free at the site http://www.eyeballchat.com The site will show you the way.
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DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY WINTER FUN PACK 2003… Turn your own digital photos into holiday greeting cards by winterizing and also adding them to your collection of holiday landscapes for your screen saver or your wallpaper by using Microsoft free seasonal templates. The Digital Photography Winter Fun Pack http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/digitalphotography/downloads/winterfun
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EMAIL ADDITIVES….Are you running Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, or XP. APOP3 or IMAP4 mailbox. A standard email program such as Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora? Then you may find Spam Pal, a mail classification program that can help separate your spam from the mail you really want to read. This does not work with AOL, Hotmail,Yahoo,Juno or MSN. It will explain it to you at www.spampal.org/download.html. Along with this program there is a third party utility called POPTray when used can preview emails on the server allowing you to delete messages from the server without downloading them. This is supposed to work with Hotmail, too. www.poptray.org . Feedback always appreciated.
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YAHOO! FREE SITE TO SHARE PICTURES…After going to www.yahoo.com register for a free account which gives you 30MB of storage to store up to 90 high quality photos. . Follow directions and email the link. to your friends.
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HOW AND MAYBE WHY YOU CAN MOVE YOUR TASKBAR… to any of the four sides of your monitor screen. How? Click and drag. Click on the Task Bar and hold down your button. Then Drag it to the new position and release your mouse button. The bar will hop to its new position. Trying a different location may give you a different and possibly a better perspective on your monitor. You can always move the bar back to the bottom again.
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SOME SPAM…this maybe part of the cause…. Personal E-mail accounts, with tools like Outlook's "Out of Office Assistant" make the process easy, but also hide the fact that a general auto-reply is not like saying the mail box is closed. Spam mails trolling for live addresses, knowing that these messages will reply to everything that arrives including spam, have found a home. People who would never knowingly reply to spam mail and set up an out-of-office or on vacation auto-reply message can also create a round-robbin where one-auto reply answers another filling up a mailbox. Going on vacation? Send direct e-mail to contacts that matter. The rest will find you when you get back.
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WANTED: URL's of web sites; Helpful hints for Mac users, Win 95/98/ME/XP. Software reviews, desired topics for future meetings. Send these items via email to the editor. Please sign your email with your name. We will publish your email address, but not your name, phone number or address without your permission