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Sunday, May 2, 2004

Show #36

Sunday afternoon coming down.

Kevin Maney of USA Today offers this song about Google.

We taped a caller today for next Sunday’s show who kept accidentally turning on Overtype mode in Microsoft Word. I know how annoying that can be. If it’s because you’re accidentally hitting the Insert key, you can disable that by following these instructions from Windows Annoyances:

• Right-click on the toolbar
• Select Customize from the context menu.
• Click the Keyboard button.
• Select All Commands
• Select Overtype.
• Select Insert in the Shortcut Key list
• Click Remove
• Click OK

However, she swears it’s not from hitting the Insert key. Could be from clicking the OVR indicator in the status bar below then. Turning off the status bar in the Options… View dialog will prevent that.

I’m still looking for a way to disable overwrite completely though. Any suggestions? Put them in the comments.

And now for your bonus tip: disabling the evil Caps Lock key. On Windows you can do it with a great little tool from the Microsoft Kernel Toys. I know it says Windows 95, but the Keyboard Remap application works very well with XP. After installing it you’ll see it as an extra tab when you open the Keyboard control panel. Use it to reassign the Caps Lock key to the Control key. Voila! I do it to all my Windows systems.

James in Pittsburgh has a mobile phone blog, or moblog, at uneventfulevents.com. The software he uses, Easymoblog offers an RSS feed. What’s that? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Essentially it’s a way to publish the content of an online resource in a way that any kind of program can read. Most commonly people use RSS Newsreaders to scan RSS feeds. Programs like AmphetaDesk and Newnewswire for Mac OS X make it easy to read a bunch of RSS enabled sites. I offer an RSS feed of this site because it’s built-into Typepad and I don’t have to do any additional work to implement it. Whenever possible I think it’s a great idea to offer an RSS feed for your site.

Ed in La Palma wants to improve his cell phone reception - he’s an a concrete bunker and the phone will not work. I recommended a passive antenna from Alternative Wireless. However Glen in Los Flores called with additional information. He pointed out that higher frequency carriers are going to have more difficulty. Also your proximity to the cell site will impact this. If Ed can find a lower frequency carrier with a nearby cell he may be able to use his phone. Glen also said that some GSM carriers (T-Mobile, AT&T, Cingular) will help by providing an in building bi-directional amplifier. For really big customers they may even install a small cell site in the building.

Hannah in Mission Viejo is infected with spyware. McAfee detected msg121.dll but she can’t get rid of it. Start by downloading these free spyware removal tools: AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Read the AdAware support message about removing msg121 here. msg121 is associated with Look2Me - a spyware program described here.

Christian in Wisconsin wanted to know more about XP Service Pack −2. See my entry from yesterday.

Glenn in Huntington Beach wants to know if he needs an ISP if he has DSL. Yes. DSL service is provided by your phone company, but someone also has to connect that DSL switch to the outside world. In many cases that’s your phone company, but it can also be an independent ISP like DSLExtreme, Earthlink, Yahoo, and others.

Anthony in Los Alamitos wants to turn off the “You have 123 unread messages” message on login. At first I thought that XP’s hidden User control panel would help (Click Start→Run… then enter “control userpasswords2″ to see it) but noooo. Turns out it’s a feature of the Windows XP TweakUI. Expand the Logon item and click Unread Mail to control the message.

Reb in LA is the Mac firewall in Mac OS X good enough? You bet. Turn it on using the Sharing preference pane. You may also want to look at the shareware Firewalk X 2 for more features - it’s not a firewall just an easier way to configure the built-in OS X firewall.

Lisa in Huntington Beach is going to Hawaii and want an MP3 player to put her vast music collection on. Definitely get a hard drive based player. I like the iPod of course (I have two) but Windows users might like the Creative Nomad Zen, the iRiver hard drive players, or the Dell Jukebox. Very important: If you plan to buy music online make sure you get a player that works with the store you plan to use.

Mike in Sherman Oaks wants to network two machines running XP. He wanted to know if he could use USB to do so. You can but you need a special USB cable to do it. I recommend either ethernet or Firewire (IEEE1394). Windows XP can use either without any special software. Firewire would be the fastest, of course.