PENCELAND.com - Online Tips

Online Tips

Your IP address

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Website Help:

The Internet is a very exciting and rewarding place, full of new information and new methods, but it can also be overwhelming to try to keep up with everything and not to feel that you are at the mercy of some of the things that seem to be constantly trying to take advantage of you. I am always striving to feel like I am in control of my online life, and I want to pass along some of the things I have learned and also share some of the resources I have discovered.

Fight spam

Spam—unsolicited, junk email—accounts for more than 80% of all email traffic, and if you are like me you don't want to be overwhelmed by come-ons for low mortgage rates and herbal Viagra every time you check your email. I have done several things to prevent this, including being very careful with my email address, and creating spam filters in my email reader.

One interesting solution to the spam problem that I heard and liked was to have ISPs charge a fraction of a cent for every email that is sent. This could be easily absorbed in your monthly charge for a private email account. For spammers, this would add up to big bucks, enough to make spamming not profitable.

Why do we get spam?

There are several ways your email address can get obtained for spam abuse.

Software generated spam lists
Spammers can use software that simply inputs or builds a list of names or words, and combines each of these entries with a particular mail server's domain to create email addresses ('anyname@somedomain'). Many of these addresses will be returned as undeliverable, but spammers can live with that, since many more will get through. You can see this pattern of construction if you look at the addresses in the To: line and find a sequence of names that are alphabetically close to yours followed by the same domain.
Posting your email address on web documents
If your email address appears on any Internet document it can be found by a spider, a program that visits websites gathering information, typically for search engines. Spiders used by spammers to collect email addresses are commonly called "spambots". There may be times when you want to leave your address on a web-based guestbook or newsgroup posting so that someone reading it can still contact you. One safe way to do this is to alter your address in an obvious way, as in the format mynameDELETETHIS@mydomain, and a simple inspection should tell the person reading it that they have to remove DELETETHIS to get the valid email address contained in it. Spambots will record the altered address, and since spammers most likely rely on automated, bulk processing and don't take the time to have a 'human' review each email address, it will result in spam being sent to a bogus address. (By the way, all the 'name@domain' formats I've used on this page will be accumulated by spambots!) In my Contact me section I describe another (more elaborate) way to safely leave your email address on a website.
Leaving your email address when ordering online
You risk spamming any time you provide your email address when it is needed to complete a form on a website, for instance, when placing an online order. If you don't want to receive email as a result of this transaction, don't use your regular email address, create another one at Hotmail or Yahoo to be used only for the times when you are required to furnish one. Let this address be spammed and don't use it for personal email. If you do want to check your spare address occasionally, for instance for shipping information on an order, Hotmail actually has pretty good filters to direct spam to a special Junk Mail folder.
Inadvertently requesting email when completing an online form
Sometimes you may want to place an order, register software, or sign up for something online. There is often a checkbox at the bottom of the form indicating you are agreeing to receive email. If this is left with the check-mark in it you have just added your email address to a spam list, which may sometimes even be sold to other spammers.

Uncheck this Please send me information about events and special promotions
Through your ISP
Your email address might be available to spammers through your Internet Service Provider, either if it was provided by them, or if a spammer has procured the mail server's address-book (this happened to me at work).

Spam filters

I use Mozilla Thunderbird for my email, which has really good built-in junk mail controls, but for years I used Outlook Express and had to fight with all the spam I received, and this section was written during that period.

Once your email address has been spammed there is not much you can do to stop it from recurring (never respond to those "To unsubscribe..." messages because all they do is validate your email address to the spammer), but you can set up filters in your email software to identify spam when it is received and keep it out of your Inbox. This spam can be automatically deleted but I prefer to have my filters move it into a temporary folder where I can browse it before deleting it in case a non-spam email gets mistaken for spam. When that happens, I just add the sender to my rule of sources to accept email from.

My email server is running software (SpamAssassin) that identifies most spam I get and puts a label in the the subject than enables me use a filter to trap it before it comes to my Inbox. If you don't have something like this you can create your own filters to catch spam. To set them up look for Filter or Rule options in your email software. Every email you receive will be compared to the conditions specified in each of these rules in the order you list them. Over the years before I had SpamAssassin I tried many combinations of the rules listed below and a variety of folders to have email go to automatically, but ultimately I trimmed it down to two folders, Inbox (for good emails) and Spam? (for questionable emails), and several of the following rules.

Please note: I recommend that you usually select "Stop processing more rules" as the last instruction on these filters.

For identifying good emails (these rules should be set to run first)...

Where the From line contains specific addresses that you will accept email from
I have a 'whitelist' of senders who are not in my address book but whose emails I want to receive, such as some mailing lists I am on. I created this as the first rule with the instruction "Stop processing more rules" and only emails from known sources will go into my Inbox.

You can also do this in reverse. After copying all the email addresses from the address book click on Options and select 'Message does not contain the people below'. This rule will identify emails from unknown sources, and under Actions specify, 'Copy it to the Spam? folder.'
Where the Subject line contains specific words or phrases
There are certain words in the subject of an email that I identify as something that a friendly unknown emailer would say to me, like the name of my hometown, or an interest in "music". When these are encountered they are given the instruction 'Stop processing more rules' and they will be accepted into my Inbox.

For identifying spam...

Where the Subject line contains specific words or phrases
This is one of the most used rules. Emails whose subjects contain words like "viagra", "inkjet", "mortgage"... are usually spam. You will notice the spammers using different spellings of these words (like "V*I*A*G*R*A") to get past these filters, so you may have also to add altered spellings to your list of words to trap. The previously mentioned Spambusters article makes some interesting points about the spam probability of certain words.
Where the Message body contains specific words or phrases
You can also set up a rule to monitor for words or phrases in the message itself, but that limits what your regular email correspondents can say in their emails, so make sure you screen out the good emails before this gets processed.
Where the From line contains specific addresses that are spammers
Create a 'blacklist' of known spammers. If you regularly get spam emails from a particular party, you can trap them automatically. In Outlook Express you can also add them to the Blocked Senders List.
Where the From line contains specific words
Many spammers make up a title from the subject (like a business would) and put it in the From name. Filter out emails that have words like "mortgage", "degree", "request", or "cheap" in the name section.
Where the To or CC line contains specific addresses
Sometimes I might get spam addressed to "Friend" <MyEmailAddress>. I assume the reason for this configuration is that my email address has been acquired somehow, probably by a spambot, but not my real name, which always goes out with email I send.
Where the To or CC line does not contain "name@domain" (your actual email address)
When you examine a spam, frequently you won't find your email address in the ' To:' setting, but instead you will see the name of a mailing list. Be sure you have your 'good' mailing lists specified on you acceptable rule before this rule is applied.

With each of the above rules you want to be sure you have the "Stop processing more rules" instruction as the last action to perform after it has acted on what it has filtered. Otherwise, the rest of the rules will continue to be applied to an email, and it may up having another action performed on it.

Outlook Express also has a Blocked Senders List under Message Rules. You can set this up to automatically move emails from frequent spammers to Deleted Items. For more tips on setting up Message Rules in Outlook Express see Inside Outlook Express.

Anti-spam links
Spambusters – an article about spam fighters that appeared in The Boston Globe¹ Magazine, October 5, 2003
Top 10 Spam Subjects – current spam subjects to add to your filter
Spam.abuse.net – Promote responsible net commerce: help stamp out spam!
Spam Laws
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
Spamhaus.org – Who's behind your spam?
Ban The Spam
Stop Spam! – from the editors of Internet ScamBusters
Stop Spam FAQ
Junkbusters – bust the junk messages out of your life
CAUCE - Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
The Anti-Spam Home Page
The SPAM-L FAQ
Fight Spam on the Internet!
Death to Spam
Dave Barry: Spam beats cafeteria food – a little humor never hurts

Top of page

Spyware & Popups

Popup ads can be almost as annoying as spam. When you visit a website you don't want the content of the site to be blocked by some unsolicited advertisement that overlays the page. You are targeted for many of these ads based on your web viewing, and information about you is gathered by spybots installed on your computer and transmitted back to spyware vendors like Bonzi Buddy, Comet Cursor, and Gator. Besides being an invasion of your privacy, having these data-mining components running in the background can also slow down your computer. The best way to remove these spybots from your system is to run some of the freeware solutions regularly (see WinPatrol, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Ad-Aware below). To keep popups entirely out of your browser you can use a web-browser like Netscape, Mozilla, Avant, or Opera that have settings for that, or in Internet Explorer you can add the Google and Yahoo! toolbars which both have great popup blockers. The Yahoo! toolbar also has an Anti-Spy button that you can run on demand.

Popups are not just used for ads. Sometimes they can be an amusing and very suitable way to present some content. I use them in many places on my website, some for effect, for instance, the View of the World from 9th Avenue link on my Humor page, some for links where the original content on another website was displayed in a popup, as in several of the Boston.com links under my Big Dig section, and multimedia videos just present better that way, as in my Monty Python sketches and music videos. I never have unrequested commercial popups originate from my website, so if you have popups blocked in your browser (as I do) you can safely enable them for my site.

Spyware killers
	These are the applications that I use to keep my PCs relatively spyware free.
	WinPatrol - WinPatrol.com WinPatrol monitors for spyware, web attacks, and parasites that try to install themselves on your computer. When spyware tries to update your Registry or put items in your Startup you get the option to stop this in a popup alert. Yahoo Anti-Spy - toolbar.yahoo.com This comes as an icon on the Yahoo! toolbar. It does an excellent job of allowing you to remove identified spyware and cookies. You can also run it directly from its default install location, 'C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\YPSR\ypsr.exe' (put a shortcut icon to it on your desktop). Ad-Aware - www.lavasoftusa.com A scanning utility for known datamining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components, SpyBot detects and removes the worst that the Internet and shareware/freeware have to offer. SpyBot - Search & Destroy - www.safer-networking.org Detects and removes spyware of different kinds from your computer. Some spyware is hidden, and some is obvious. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if your browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware.

Web beacons
	Web beacons are images on websites that are used to transfer information about a site's visitors by activating a script on a remote server. When the image is loaded into the web browser it sends information such as the visitor's IP address and type of browser to the server. If you consider this an invasion of privacy, disabling cookies will shut it off. Commercial sites use web beacons to track visitors, and many personal sites (like mine) have counters that do this. If you want to see an example of this type of tracking go to the bottom of my main page and click on the hit count, which will take you to the remote server and show what kind of information is typically gathered. Unfortunately, spammers can put transparent '.gif' images in unsolicitied emails as web beacons, and if you open up the email the transmission will validate your email address.

PC or Mac?

I have a PC, and Windows seems to be the target of this spyware activity. According to Mark Morford, an SF Gate columnist, Macs are immune to it. If it gets too annoying maybe I will consider switching to Mac.

Anti-spyware links (see more at Online privacy)

Ad-Aware – find and remove adware

Spybot Search & Destroy – find and remove spyware

Google Toolbar – has popup blocker

Yahoo! Companion Toolbar – has popup blocker and anti-spyware tool

GetNetWise.com – Spotlight on Spyware section

SpywareGuard – prevent an invader from changing IE's home page

How To Clear a Hijack – from PestPatrol.com

ISTBar Removal Instructions – a very annoying hijacker

NoAds – popup blocker software

Adware, Spyware and Advertising Trojans – info & removal procedures

SpywareInfo: Spyware and Hijackware Removal Specialists

SpywareGuide.com

Spyware/Adware/Hijacks

Popups must die! – tips, forums, and more, including a list of website abusers

Top of page

Hoaxes &
Urban legends

The online world is full of hoaxes of various kinds. Most of these are harmless but it is best to recognize them when you encounter them so you don't waste your time (and the time of others, and Internet resources) by unknowingly spreading and perpetuating them. Two kinds that I encounter a lot are virus hoaxes (I find these annoying) and urban legends (some of these are pretty amusing).

Virus hoaxes - a definition

You may receive an email sometime, perhaps from someone you know, that warns you of a spreading Internet virus and tells you to look for a specific file on your computer and delete it, and it may also tell you to forward this warning to others. Before you act on this you should search for the filename in Google and often you will find that this is actually a malicious hoax being emailed around innocently by well-meaning people, as in the case of the sulfnbk.exe virus hoax of 2001, which instructed you to delete a 'harmful' file from your computer. This is what is known as a social virus, where the damage to your computer is not caused by harmful software but is 'human' inflicted when you are tricked into doing it yourself, and by forwarding this warning to others you can spread the 'virus' to their computers. A virus hoax may be totally harmless to computers, like the Good Times virus myth, but it can spread like a virus causing alarm and mistrust of email, which is harmful in its own way.

Symantec Security Response – hoax page

Vmyths.com – computer virus myths, hoaxes, urban legends, hysteria

CIAC Hoax Pages – from the U. S. Department of Energy

Hoax Busters – the BIG LIST of Internet Hoaxes

Korova.com Forums – "Hoax du Jour" sightings, discussion, and other topics

Urban legends - a definition

These folklore tales have been going around for decades, since before the Internet and home computers even existed. Although urban legends may sound like true stories, and some are, they generally lack evidence to corroborate them, but perhaps since they are seldom proven to be false it adds to their credibility and keeps them circulating. A couple of the classic, pre-cyberspace stories that you may have heard are The Hook, a thriller favorite, and Alligators in the Sewers, which many of us believed for years (and possibly still do). A more recent urban legend, the Tourist Guy, was supposedly the last photo taken atop the World Trade Center. Even though the Tourist Guy confessed the hoax his notoriety continued when he began to appear everywhere.

The AFU & Urban Legends Archive – from the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban

Snopes.com – Urban Legends Reference Pages

About.com - Urban Legends and Folklore

Scams, Urban Legends & Other False Information

General

Museum of Hoaxes

Cliff Pickover's Internet Encyclopedia of Hoaxes – includes links to many sites

Health Related Hoaxes and Rumors – from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

History Buff - Hoaxes in Journalism

Top of page

Web browsers

Most of my web-surfing experience is with Mozilla Firefox, but I also use Internet Explorer, Opera, Netscape, which is 100% W3C compliant, Avant Browser, an IE-based browser with tabs for multiple windows, and NeoPlanet, another IE-based browser (see a glowing review at WinPlanet). To download the latest version of any of these browsers click on the corresponding icon above. To learn more about the Viewable With Any Browser campaign, click on the Any Browser icon.

Mozilla Firefox is an open-sourced, tabbed browser that also has a lot of nice features, including a built in Google search bar and a popup blocker. There is also a Google toolbar (allows search results in new tab) and a Yahoo toolbar for Firefox (if you go to these links in Firefox you get the Firefox versions to download). Firefox has an extension named Foxmarks, which allows you to synchronize bookmarks across multiple machines. With this extension I can have the same bookmarks on my PCs at work and at home.

Avant Browser is basically a front-end for Internet Explorer, so it uses the IE Favorites (including the Links toolbar), and has some of the same features, like the ability to remove buttons and combine toolbars on the same horizontal alignment. It offers some additional things not available for IE like tabs for multiple browser windows, a popup blocker, and a variety of skins. Avant comes with a Google search bar built in (which will allow you to open up a new window for the search results), or you can use the regular Google toolbar for IE. One thing I don't like about Avant is that because of its tabbed, multi-window client area if a website wants to 'legitimately' display a large popup (i.e. a new window) it will not display outside the client area of the browser, and this can sometimes be very limiting if this new window doesn't have scrollbars (as in this example).

Something else I like about Firefox and Avant is the way they handle Favicons. In other browsers that show these website icons in the address bar you have to bookmark the site to have the icon appear, but in these browsers you will see the icon the first time you visit the site.

Toolbars

You can install additional toolbars with most browsers. Here are a couple of my favorites. Both of these have popup blockers.

Google Toolbar
I love the this toolbar because I can search Google anytime I am on the Internet without having to go to the Google website. In IE I have it set to show the results in a new browser window. In Firefox I have it set to show the results in a new tabbed window.
Yahoo! Toolbar
I like this because it has its own bookmarks saved on a Yahoo server. I have it installed on my IE and Firefox browsers both at work and at home, and I can access the same bookmarks from both locations in either browser.

Browser tips

Firefox settings
One of the coolest things about Firefox is the easy access provided to all your browser settings not accessible from the Firefox options dialogue. In the address bar type in about:config (I have this saved as a bookmark) and it will display a page of the settings. Double-click them to change them. True/false settings will toggle and settings with values will prompt.

I disovered this when I Googled about how to make my browser check for a new page every time it visits a site.

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency
0 - Once per session
1 - Each time (my choice)
2 - Never
3 - When appropriate/automatically (default)

See all the entries at kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries.
The Personal Toolbar
Browsers provide a toolbar for quick access to specially bookmarked sites, called The Personal Toolbar in some browsers and the Links toolbar in other browsers. Links are saved to this toolbar using the same method you use for regular Bookmarks or Favorites. To set mine up, I first eliminated the links that came preset in the browser (these were useless to me) and created folders (with names like News or Maps) using Organize Favorites (IE), Manage Bookmarks (Firefox), or Edit Bookmarks (Netscape) to contain the collections of links I add. These folders are all I see on the toolbar, and clicking them gives me a menu type list of the links in them.
Shrink your toolbars
I like to make the viewable area of a webpage as large as possible by minimizing the space taken up by toolbars. After using a browser for awhile you shouldn't need the text next to each button to know its function (you can always get this from the button's popup Tooltip text) so you can set it to just show the icons, and if your browser allows you to remove buttons you don't use regularly (most button commands are available on menus) it will make the toolbars even smaller. If you choose the Small icons setting it will also reduce the height of the toolbars. After you have trimmed them down this way, some browsers allow you to combine more than one toolbar on the same horizontal line. These toolbars are dockable, and if you move a toolbar to the same line as another toolbar they will align themselves. To move them up or down, set them to "unlocked" and use the mouse to grab the move handle at the left end of the toolbar.
Multiple browser windows
There are many times when you may want to have more than one webpage open at the same time. You may be on a webpage and want to see another webpage without having to remember or save the current page's address to be able to return to it later, or maybe you like to have multiple pages open concurrently in your normal web viewing. To do this you just start up another browser window (File » New, or Ctrl-N). Tabbed browsers give you a tab in the browser for the new window, non-tabbed browsers show another instance of the browser on the Windows taskbar. Browsers are usually configurable to start the new window with your default home page or the current page or even a blank page.
Disabled Back button
Some websites disable the Back button () on your toolbar so you cannot return to the previous page. You may also visit a website that immediately redirects to a new page, so when you click on it returns to the page that reloads the new page again, basically trapping you there. To get around this situation display the drop-down list of previous websites for this browser session and click on the page you want to return to. In many browsers you can see this list by clicking the symbol located between the Back/Forward arrows on the toolbar ( ), or in Netscape open the Go menu (or click and hold down ). This tip does not apply when a link starts up a new browser window to display the page.
Get last-modified date of a web document
Some browsers have a menu option that will show you the last time a webpage was updated (see View » Page Info in Netscape) but others do not. You can create this option yourself with a little JavaScript. For example, in Internet Explorer create a Favorite (add any webpage and modify it afterwards in Organize Favorites) with the setting for the URL as "javascript:alert(document.lastModified)" and a meaningful title like "Show modifed date". When you click on this Favorite it will show you the date and time the current webpage was last changed.

Browser links

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox Help: Options Window

Firefox: Guide for the Perplexed

About:config entries

Web Sites That Don't Work Well With Firefox

Newsgroups

netscape.mozilla.user.general – General issues

netscape.mozilla.user.win32 – Windows issues

netscape.mozilla.user.mac – Macintosh issues

netscape.mozilla.user.unix – Linux issues

Internet Explorer

Microsoft Internet Explorer Home Page

Bob Cerelli's Internet Explorer Tips

IE Info Site

Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5 Tips

Netscape

Netscape Solutions – tips (and fixes) for Netscape users

Netscape Unofficial FAQ

Netscape Browser Archive – everything Netscape

Origin of a Browser – the history of the Netscape Mosaic browser

Settings in prefs.js

Advanced Communicator Preferences

Tips and Tricks

Opera

Opera Software - the Best Internet Experience

Configure and customize Opera

Opera.ini settings explained

Customizing Opera – Opera tweaks

Opera Resources

Miscellaneous

Tips for Better Browsing

Avant Browser

NeoPlanet Browser Home

Viewable with Any Browser: Campaign

Google Toolbar – includes a popup blocker

Yahoo! Toolbar – includes a popup blocker

Browser News – newsletter showing browser standards and statistics

Browser Trends – browser usage percentages

The Web Standards Project – Fighting for Standards in our Browsers

Top of page

Internet & Technology links

(find more related links at Web-authoring links and Programming)

General reference

ComputerUser.com – lots of good resources

Whatis?com – the wall of words

File Extensions – "Every File Format in the World"

TechEncyclopedia – more than 20,000 IT terms

Wikipedia – user-maintained online encyclopedia

Webopedia – Online Dictionary for Computer and Internet Terms

FOLDOC – Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing

Internet FAQ Archives – from the Internet FAQ Consortium

Netiquette Guidelines - RFC1855 – yes, there is Internet etiquette

The PC Guide – an online PC reference guide

EchoEcho.com – web tutorials, references, and stats

Cyberwalker – computer help and troubleshooting

Extended ASCII Codes

Google Groups – search newsgroups

Usenet groups by name

Online rights, privacy, & responsibility - see also Fight spam and Spyware & Popups

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – protect online privacy, free expression

Blue Ribbon Campaign

Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)

Internet Society (ISOC)

Internet Caucus Advisory Committee

Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)

Information Technology Association of America (ITAA)

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse – monitoring the legal climate for Internet activity

CERT Coordination Center – Internet security expertise

CPT's Page on Open Access – protect open and non-discriminatory access on the Internet

Open Content – promote creation of freely available, high-quality, well-maintained Content

The Open Source Page – sharing is a great concept for software

Cookie Central – "You have zero privacy anyway." Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems)

Adware, Spyware and Advertising Trojans – info & removal procedures

Spybot Search & Destroy

Ad-Aware (free) - detect and remove advertising spyware from your system

SpyBlocker (free) - block unauthorized transmissions when you are online

Shields UP! – test your computer's Internet connection security

Zone Labs – you may want a firewall for your cable or DSL modem connection

What-is-exe.com – Computer Task Database and Spyware Directory

Domain info - see also Regional Internet Registries

ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

InterNIC – the Internet's Network Information Center

Network Solutions – domain name registration (PENCELAND.com is with them)

CoolWhois.com

Uwhois.com – the universal "who is" for Internet domains

Root-Zone TLD Code Index – identify country in Top-Level Domain

Regional Internet Registries - see also Domain info

ARIN – American Registry for Internet Numbers

RIPE – R�seaux IP Europ�ens

APNIC – Asia Pacific Network Information Centre

LACNIC – Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry

Bandwidth speed tests

Speakeasy.net

DSLreports.com

Warwick Online Bandwidth Meter

Verizon Online Speedtest

Other

Internet Pioneers – profiles ten individuals who helped start the Internet

F-Secure Computer Virus Info Center – updated frequently with virus descriptions

Internet & World Wide Web History

The Internet Archive – surf the web using the Wayback Machine

The List – The Definitive ISP Buyer's Guide

Eeggs.com – The Easter Egg Archive: Hidden secrets in software, movies, music and more

The Unofficial Cookie FAQ

The Unofficial Smiley Dictionary – see also my ASCII Art page

Inside Outlook Express

CataList, the catalog of LISTSERV lists – search for mailing lists of interest

The WildList Organization International – information on viruses that are running around the Internet

Timeline: 50 Years of Hard Drives

Top of page

My broadband saga

Mass market in fast Net service is coming – article in the Globe about broadband

Broadband is touted as a high-speed Internet connection (see the "bare-bones" definition of broadband in the above article), but as a consumer, especially if you are one of millions of customers of a large, impersonal company, watch out or you may not get what you are lead to believe you are paying for. It took several years for this to become clear to me, but in the end, through my own persistence and with very inadequate help from my Internet Service Provider, AT&T, I reached a satisfactory conclusion.

In the beginning, very fast!

Since 1998 our house has been connected to the Internet over a cable-modem via our cable-TV provider, MediaOne, which later became AT&T Broadband, then Comcast. Most of what I am describing here occurred while it was AT&T. In the beginning the connection was extremely fast, and using some download tests I estimated that it was 15-20 times faster than a 56k dialup connection, somewhere in the range of 800-1000k. Over the years it appeared to slow down a little, and in my experience with ISPs this often occurred when they overloaded their hardware with new accounts, but it was generally resolved with upgrades to their equipment.

Slower and slower . . .

However, this did not seem to be the case with AT&T. I began to regularly run a bandwidth speedtest and was surprised to see that I was connected at around 100k, sometimes even slower, but never faster then 250k. In the fall of 2001 I called AT&T tech support and their technicians ran tests on my connection and reported that everything was OK. They said there were some problems at some locations in New England that were being worked on, so I was hopeful that I would benefit from that. After a month or so I had detected no improvement, so I called again and technicians were sent to the house several times to check all the cabling between the box on the pole outside and the cable-modem connected to my PC. Everything was in proper working order so they said the problem must be outside my immediate area. A neighbor on my block said he also had this same slow Internet connection, which supported that conclusion. Once again I was hopeful that this would be fixed, but over the next several months nothing changed.

Frustration

I began to call AT&T regularly (I live in Massachusetts but these toll-free calls were answered in Newfoundland, Canada) to remind them the problem still existed and that I wanted a solution. I was asked to run a series of trace-route tests on several occasions and email them the results. These tests showed the speeds over the entire path that my browser's request to a remote server took and they also showed that everything was working fine. About 6 months after my initial call to AT&T one tech support person told me that my speed was within their "acceptable" range, the low end being 40k, slower than a dialup modem. I began to realize that they really saw no need to help me improve my connection speed, and at this point I considered switching to DSL, but instead I became more determined to achieve the truly faster speeds available on a cable-modem. I felt very frustrated until another neighbor told me his connection with AT&T was fine, and it turned out that though we both rented our cable-modems from AT&T, he had a new Toshiba modem and I still had the same LANcity modem I got from them in 1998. He disconnected his modem and brought it over to my house, where I hooked it up and found to my amazement that I was connected at 1000k! So, all along the modem was the culprit. I called AT&T with this news and requested one of the new modems, only to be told that since my old one was still functional (by their definition of functional) they would not replace it. (My anger was reaching new heights!)

High speeds again!

I decided to purchase my own cable-modem and stop paying $10/month rental to AT&T for an inadequate one, a decision I should have made years before. Looking in the newspaper I saw an ad for the same Toshiba PCX1100U modem on sale for a great price with a manufacturer's rebate. I bought it, returned the old modem to AT&T (which I hope they won't try to give to someone else), and now I am connected at 1000k again!
I want to spread the word about this to help others, who are being taken advantage of by AT&T and other ISPs, to help them get the true broadband speeds they are paying for. Shame on you, AT&T!

Top of page

Downloads

I frequently download software from the Internet, sometimes utilities that help me in my everyday computing needs, sometimes upgrades or fixes to software I am currently using on my PC.

Shareware & freeware sites

Download.com – from c/net

Shareware.com – from c/net

Stroud's CWSApps - Index of Apps

WinShareware.com

Winpicks.com

DLL-files.com – download missing dll-files

Top of page

My shareware & freeware favorites

WinPatrol - (freeware) - WinPatrol.com: WinPatrol monitors for spyware, web attacks, and parasites that try to install themselves on your computer. When spyware tries to update your Registry or put items in your Startup you get the option to stop this in a popup alert.
Ad-Aware - (freeware) - www.lavasoftusa.com: A scanning utility for known datamining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components, SpyBot detects and removes the worst that the Internet and shareware/freeware have to offer.
SpyBot - Search & Destroy - (freeware) - www.safer-networking.org: Detects and removes spyware of different kinds from your computer. Some spyware is hidden, and some is obvious. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if your browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware.
Icon Corral - (shareware) - download from Annoyances.org: I have this nifty program launch in my Startup folder. It puts a little icon in the system tray that you can configure to capture specific items that have been minimized to the taskbar. It is particularly useful for holding items that run minimized whenever you have the PC booted, for example a calendar, or network connection. These items just take up space on the taskbar and the infrequent times you may want to go to them you can access them from the popup menu of the Icon Corral tray icon, or even give them their own tray icons.
IrfanView - (freeware) - IrfanView 32: This is a nice graphic image viewer/converter. It has a very good method of compacting binary storage. I have decreased the size of many of the GIFs and JPGs on my website simply by opening them up in IrfanView, making a minimal adjustment to the color with a slider, and saving them.
SUPER © (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) - (freeware) - SUPER ©: This program converts most standard video formats to different formats.
FileZilla - (freeware) - FileZilla Homepage: An FTP program with an intuitive GUI interface. I use this to maintain my website.
e-Mail Notify - (freeware) - download from WinPlanet: This program puts a little mailbox in the tray that will poll your email pop account (or multiple accounts) at specified intervals to see if you have email waiting. It displays a little counter when you have mail and can audibly signal you (I have mine beep but you can play a wave file). You can launch your email reader from here or just look at the senders and titles without receiving the mail, and you can even view the mail contents without removing it from the server.
Alarm++ - (shareware) - 12noon::Alarm++: Set up reminders to occur at a specified dates and times, and a little message dialogue pops up to display your own text for each alarm. Alarms can be set to run programs or send email, and there are snooze and very sophisticated repeat features.
TextPad - (shareware) - www.textpad.com: This MDI (Multiple Document Interface) ASCII editor provides language-specific color-tokenizing, with support for many programming languages. I use it when I edit my webpages. You can toggle between open documents by clicking on tabs, which is great when you want to copy and paste from one document to another.
WordWeb - (freeware) - wordweb.info/free/: This English dictionary and thesaurus from Princeton University is very useful to have when you don't have access to a print version, like when you are traveling with a laptop. It is freeware and there is a purchasable upgrade, WordWeb Pro.
Tweak UI - (freeware) - download from Microsoft (also on the Windows 98 CD in the \tools\reskit\powertoy folder): This Microsoft program is part of the Power Toys Set from MS and it is very useful for configuring the Windows user interface, like eliminating the 'Shortcut to...' prefix Windows like to add to shortcut icon text, or rebuild your icons without having to mess with the ShellIconCache file.
WCPUID - (freeware) - Major Geeks.com: This is a great little tool for displaying system info about a PC.

Top of page

Website Help

See also my pages for:

JavaScript
Programming

When I created my website in 1994, there were not many tools available, so I focused on learning HTML. I accomplished this primarily with books, references I found online, and using my browser's View » Source menu option to see the HTML source-code for the current page in the browser (ah, so that's how they do that). Today, in addition to there being WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) webpage software like Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage, and Netscape Composer, many Internet providers even supply templates and the methods to format your site online. Being a programmer, I still prefer coding the HTML directly to get my results, so this page has grown from that perspective. I edit my code using TextPad, an MDI (Multiple-Document-Interface) text editor downloadable at www.textpad.com. I developed the site on an IBM-compatible PC running Windows software, but this shouldn't affect its viewing on a Mac or on a PC operating in a non-Windows environment.
When I make a change to my site that involves trying out a new technique, or even when using tables for alignment, which can be tricky sometimes, I review the results in a variety of browsers with different text sizes before uploading it to the server and making it publicly available. Sometimes I have to make adjustments to the code to get things to look the way I intend, but I try to stay in compliance with the current HTML specification. I admit I do fudge this occasionally, but only if my code is supported by the browsers of a vast percentage of users. It's been my observation that both Netscape and Internet Explorer are guilty of doing some things that are proprietary to their own browser. When I encounter these kinds of things that work in only one browser, if it has a neutral interpretation in other browsers I may still use it, but if it has a negative consequence I won't. I have not made any effort to comply with PDA or cellphone technology, so you probably won't see my site successfully displayed on these portable devices (yet), but I do try to verify that my site does not require using a specific web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) to function well. See my Web browsers section for for more information about specific browsers.

Style

The format and content of the web have evolved over the years as more and more people in the general public have gotten online. When the Internet was primarily used for non-commercial research purposes at institutions like schools, libraries, and the government, text based browsers were the norm. Then Marc Andreessen and others at NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois) created Mosaic, a graphical browser, and the format of web content changed forever. Now that many workplaces are online and PCs are being sold with Internet access pre-loaded, websites are advancing to even more sophisticated levels (check out my Java and JavaScript pages).

Graphics
I recommend you keep the graphics that load automatically with your page to a minimum to decrease the time it takes the page to be completely loaded. If you want to provide a large image, make a smaller version of it and put it on the page as a thumbnail that can be clicked on to download the fullsize image. When you see an image on a site that you'd like to use on your own homepage, point the mouse at the image and click with the right mouse button, and take the Save as... option from the popup-menu to save it on your PC. Be aware of any copyright or intellectual property considerations, but in general, there is not a lot to be concerned about on personal homepages.

Tables
You can use tables (the <table> tag) to divide up sections of your page into rows and cells to give you greater control of aligning the elements you put there. This is compliant with the non-browser-specific philosophy. Tables are containers for rows (the <tr> tag), and rows are containers for cells (the <th> and <td> tags). In cells you can use the align and valign attributes for text and image alignment . When possible try to use width="__%" and height="__%" in tables instead of specifying an exact pixel size, since you don't know what size monitor and resolution the page will be viewed on. I use tables on most of my pages for layout (when looking at a page, click on View > Source). They are usually invisible because borders are turned off and they don't have background colors.
Tables can be nested within other tables. In the following example there are four tables. I gave three of them background colors so you would be able to see them. Of these three, the left one has two rows, and each row contains only one cell. The middle table has three rows, and each row contains three cells, which use the alignment attributes to locate the text within the cells. The right one has one row and it contains two cells. All three of these tables are contained in a parent table that has one horizontal row with three cells, each cell holding one of the three colored tables.

top left top center top right

middle left middle center middle right

bottom left bottom center bottom right

The HTML code below produces the above illustration. The tags are indented when they are nested in another tag's structure (this is entirely optional), with the level of indention showing the level of nesting. The first <table> tag and last </table> tag are the beginning and ending of the parent table definition. You can see the nesting of the other tables within this definition.
<table width="75%" height="150"> <tr> <td align="center" width="20%" bgcolor="#87ceeb"> <table width="95%" height="90%"> <tr><td height="68" bgcolor="#7fffd4"> </td></tr> <tr><td height="68" bgcolor="#7fffd4"> </td></tr> </table> </td> <td width="60%" bgcolor="#87ceeb" align="center"> <table width="98%" height="90%"> <tr> <td width="33%" height="45" align="left" valign="top" bgcolor="#7fffd4">top left</td> <td width="33%" align="center" valign="top" bgcolor="#7fffd4">top center</td> <td width="33%" align="right" valign="top" bgcolor="#7fffd4">top right</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="33%" height="45" align="left" bgcolor="#7fffd4">middle left</td> <td width="33%" align="center" bgcolor="#7fffd4">middle center</td> <td width="33%" align="right" bgcolor="#7fffd4">middle right</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="33%" height="45" align="left" valign="bottom" bgcolor="#7fffd4">bottom left</td> <td width="33%" align="center" valign="bottom" bgcolor="#7fffd4">bottom center</td> <td width="33%" align="right" valign="bottom" bgcolor="#7fffd4">bottom right</td> </tr> </table> </td> <td align="center" width="20%" bgcolor="#87ceeb"> <table width="95%" height="90%"> <tr> <td height="140" width="50%" bgcolor="#7fffd4"> </td> <td height="140" width="50%" bgcolor="#7fffd4"> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table>

Another useful place for a table is when you want to control the wrapping of text that is placed next to another element, like an image. By default, if the text is too long to fit on one line it will wrap to the next line, which is below the image. To prevent this, create a table, put the image in one cell and the text in an adjacent cell, and the text will only wrap within its cell, which will keep it next to the image. For examples of this text wrap control technique, see my Search Tips where I have used it on the descriptions next to my search examples. It's also very useful when you want to display captions beneath photos like I do here with my class pictures from elementary school.

Fonts
I prefer to let the user's browser handle the fonts. On my pages, I primarily use the <font> tag to change the relative size of the text or the color. Specify size="+1" to increase the font size by one relative unit and size="-1" to decrease the font size. The value for size can be 1 through 7. I often review my pages by changing the settings for fonts and sizes in my browser to get an idea how the page will look in a variety of font settings. You should do this to see how your text wraps within the cells if you use tables.

JavaScript
JavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language that works with HTML to make webpages dynamic. One of its main uses on my website is to make my buttons depress when they are clicked on. To see examples and learn more about JavaScript, go to my JavaScript page.

Cascading Style Sheets
I use CSS for a variety of things including making the borders around my code samples , the date display at the top of my first page, and to control the font and color attributes on my links. Move your mouse over the following link types to see these link attributes. I put the name of the class I use after each so you can look them up in m CSS file, penceland.css.

A normal link to an external site uses the default link settings ... a:link {}, a:visited {}, a:active {}, a:hover {}

A link in a body of text that I want to make more subtle to increase the text's readability (class="green")

A link in a body of text that I want to keep the underlining to be clearly identifiable as a link (class="blueul")

Navigation links including menus and top of section or page (class="navigation", class="menu", class="topofpage")
Words of caution...

Watch out for settings you put on the default link type because they will be applied to image links. I found this out the hard way when I changed the background color and it was shown on all my images when I went to click on them.

I used to try to make the hover attribute on links have a bold font, but even when I decreased the text size on the hover setting (font-size: 90%; height="1"2px) I was unable to keep certain letters from noticeably changing size when they switch to bold and causing movement in the text (note the difference between abc and ABC), so I have given that up in favor of just changing the color. Combinations of letters can sometimes accomodate each other in their size changing—xyz gets smaller and tuvw gets larger—but when put together tuvwxyz they balance each other nicely.
CSS links

W3C - Cascading Style Sheets
CSS Tutorial

Using a transparent file for spacing
A really interesting layout tool is having a 1x1 pixel transparent .gif file to use as a spacer. Mine is called clearspacer.gif (don't click that ... I made a link of it if you want to copy it with Save Target/Link As... from the popup menu) and I use it extensively throughout my website (view the source of this page to see). The way to use it is to place it where you need to define some space between things and set the height or width to whatever you need to create the empty space. For example, if you want a blank line that is more or less than what you get with the <p> tag, use the spacer file between two <br> tags.

Using the <p> tag for line spacing produces this:

A line of text...
A line of text...
A line of text...

Using the clearspacer.gif file for line spacing produces this:

A line of text...

A line of text...

A line of text...

The code for the above looks like this:

A line of text...
<p>
A line of text...
<p>
A line of text...

The code for the above looks like this:

A line of text...
<br><img src="images/clearspacer.gif" height="5"><br>
A line of text...
<br><img src="images/clearspacer.gif" height="5"><br>
A line of text...

Music
Music can be nice on a website, but it is not always desirable. If you have music that starts when your page loads (<bgsound> for IE, <embed> for Netscape), it is best to make the control panel available so that the user has the ability to shut it off. Sometimes the page may be viewed in an environment where music might be out of place, like a corporate office, or a family home late at night when someone is sleeping. Remember, if a visitor is put off by music on your site he or she might not return.

Website icon (favicon)
A nice distinction for a website to have is its own URL icon. Create a 16x16 .gif file named favicon.ico, and after someone bookmarks your site in Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Netscape 7.0, when they visit your site again they will see this icon in the Address area of the browser. In the IE Favorites or Links toolbar your icon will appear next to the website title, which really makes it stand out (bookmark any page on this site to see what I mean). Your website icon will also appear on the taskbar or desktop if a link to your site is placed there. Another way to achieve this is to put a line of code in your <head> section:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="anyname.ico">

One little quirk about this icon is the way it is stored in the cache. If the user checks the box for Delete all offline content when deleting temporary Internet files your icon will also be deleted from that PC, and to restore it requires your site to be bookmarked again. Whenever I discover that a site I want to link on one of my pages has a favicon I try to show it next to the link, giving it the same distinction for which it was created. For more information see:
Favicon.com – Guess what this site's topic is?
What is Favicon.ico? – personalise your site's bookmark
How to Add a Shortcut Icon to a Web Page – the Microsoft article

>Here are some links to more information on style. I found them interesting though not necessarily the gospel. They offer good guidance when developing a web site.

Style Guide for Online Hypertext – from Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web
Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition
The Ten Commandments of HTML
Composing Good HTML

Top of page

Web-authoring links Web authoring

As you can imagine, the Internet is full of information on how to develop a webpage. Books are great but it's nice to have online, regularly-updated, hyperlinked references.

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – they develop the protocols for the WWW

HTML 4.01 Specification

Index of Elements

HTML Validation Service

W3C Link Checker

Tim Berners-Lee homepage – the inventor of the World Wide Web

HTML tag references

HTML Tag list – has a good drop-down menu of tag references at the top

Deprecated HTML tags and alternatives

Dave Arns� HTML Reference

Guides, tutorials, FAQs

HTML Help by The Web Design Group (WDG) – one of the best development resources

HTML 4.0 Elements

FAQ Archives – many web design FAQ's

useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website – a guru of Web page usability

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design – ten most egregious offenses against users

The HTML Writers Guild

The Web Master's Page – archived (26-Oct-95) from Bob Allison's legendary site, BOBAWORLD (see ASCII Art)

eBORcOM: Web Development Resources
Yahoo! - ...HTML/Guides and Tutorials – quite extensive

	Google Toolbar I love the this toolbar because I can search Google anytime I am on the Internet without having to go to the Google website. In IE I have it set to show the results in a new browser window. In Firefox I have it set to show the results in a new tabbed window.
	Yahoo! Toolbar I like this because it has its own bookmarks saved on a Yahoo server. I have it installed on my IE and Firefox browsers both at work and at home, and I can access the same bookmarks from both locations in either browser.