*CyberCoyote - December 27, 2007*

NEWS, NOTES and NOTICES

*Smart Computing*
Jaime Link will be here from Smart Computing next week on Jan 3, 2008. Smart Computing is a monthly computer magazine written for users at all skill levels. She'll tell how to get the most out of a subscription -- their website, knowledge base, free tech support, etc. Expect goodies too. :-) Open to non-members.
http://cybercoyote.org/links/123.html -- what to expect (3.4 MB PDF)
http://www.smartcomputing.com/

TIPS, TOPICS and TWEAKS

*Retrograde Reference*
Good notes don't help if you don't read them. :-( I'll bet you either tried Microsoft Windows Desktop Search for XP soon after George's presentation last week, or you have forgotten it entirely. Here's the link that I intended to provide.
http://cybercoyote.org/links/136.html

*Tweak UI for XP*
Here's the link to the utility that George demonstrated today (and several others). You can use Tweak UI to change many XP settings. It brings many tweaks together under one tree {sorry}. [free]
http://cybercoyote.org/links/138.html -- Tweak UI for XP

*Places Galore*
George also showed us how to use "Places", which are much like shortcuts, to make it easier to work with documents and files within Microsoft Office -- a real time saver for repetitive tasks.

There's a little utility that does something similar to Places for all programs, not just Office. There are several others like it, but FileBox eXtender is simpler, yet more powerful than anything like this that I've tried. [free]
http://www.hyperionics.com/ -- FileBox eXtender

*More gaping holes*
The whole Web seems to have fallen in love with Adobe Flash Player. It's being used at all kinds of websites. Many videos, YouTube for example, are Flash based. Now we learn that simply viewing a web page using Adobe Flash Player versions before 9.0.115.0 is all it takes for a bad guy to bushwhack your computer. The update patches at least 9 holes.

Macromedia, and now Adobe (the new owner), have both made updating Flash Player a struggle. The best way to update it may be to visit Michael Horowitz's page and learn how to do it with a minimum of fuss and uncertainty. It certainly helped me. NOTE: Update the IE Flash plug-in first, and then up the one for Firefox.
http://cybercoyote.org/links/137.html -- update Flash Player

ODDS and ENDS

*Anthony "Buck" Rogers in the 25th Century*
"While surveying an abandoned mine, Rogers, a former United States Army Air Corps officer, falls into a coma after exposure to a leaking gas, and awakes in the twenty-fifth century. Together with his new comrades, the beautiful Wilma Deering and the intrepid Dr. Huer, he struggles to rid the world of evil warlords and "Mongol" hordes."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers

*Better than DSL or Cable*
And here I thought I needed to get a bigger hard drive to download the Internets.
http://bestpicever.com/pic-905-The-internet-on-a-disc

*Web Rat*
What you always suspected about me, but never knew for sure. :-)
http://wakoopa.com/Loboloco/usage

*That's all, folks.*

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