BRUCEB NEWS
A Few Nice Things
We can all use some nice things. The illustration above is from Charlie Mackesy's book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse, a gentle book about love and friendship and how they build resilience; about hopes and fears; about courage in difficult times. It's a...
MORE DVD FORMAT WARS
There continues to be chaos in the world of recordable DVDs. The blur of acronyms has not changed in the last year or two - DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-Ram and the rest. There is some...
OUTLOOK ADD-INS
Here's an interesting collection of add-ins for Outlook that might solve some issue for you. I don't have any experience with them so I can't vouch for their quality, but they do...
BRUCEB VACATION
Bruce and his loyal staff will be out of town during the week of February 16. Now, now, don't panic - but as always, don't take any unnecessary chances. To be safe, unplug your...
AOL INSTANT MESSENGER ADWARE
There's a new irritant spreading in the AOL Instant Messenger network, pretending to be a web-based game named "Night Raptor" from a service named "BuddyLinks." DON'T CLICK ON...
SBC DSL & FIREWALLS
The software supplied by SBC for its DSL customers makes me angry. I've described some of the reasons on this page - the sole purpose of the software seems to be to ensure that...
SHOULD YOU SHUT THE COMPUTER DOWN AT NIGHT?
A new article addresses the perennial question of whether it's better to leave the computer on all the time, or shut it down at night. In the past that question has focused on...
MYDOOM REMOVAL TOOL FROM MICROSOFT
Microsoft released a small, free tool that will remove the MyDoom and MyDoom.B viruses from computers running XP and Windows 2000. According to the company, "the tool...
JUNK MAIL FILTERING
Outlook 2003 continues to do a good job of filtering out spam. There's so much spam coming in to my mailbox that I simply stopped looking in the Junk Mail folder. I just turned...
IMPORTANT WINDOWS UPDATE
Microsoft released an update today that should be installed at your earliest convenience. Go to Windows Update and apply all Critical Updates. (Some of you will see the "Windows...
VIRUS SPAM
You're probably getting confusing messages in your inbox. They're a side-effect of the MyDoom virus, but they're not directly generated by the virus at all. Instead, they're...
VIRUS UPDATE
The "MyDoom" virus is getting lots of headlines. It's the worst virus in history! 100 million infected messages! Large companies brought to their knees! It's the end of the...
MSN TOOLBAR
Microsoft gets irritable when anybody else dominates anything related to technology, so it's no surprise that it is planning an assault on Google. The first bullet was rolled out...
PAPERPORT 9.0
Much to my surprise, I had a good experience with the new version of Paperport today. Many of its prior failings have been cured. Paperport is an inexpensive document manager....
BROADBAND UPDATE
When Comcast turned on Internet service in Sebastopol, it looked like a maneuver to put pressure on its negotiations with the city of Santa Rosa. It must have worked - after long...
AOL INSTANT MESSENGER ANNOYANCES
AOL's new 9.0 software continues to underwhelm me - I have yet to meet a computer that seems happy about having it installed. Too many times I've seen slowdowns and crashes where...