ARCHIVE 2442.pdf - ComputorEdge

About the Cover: 

I can’t help it. I really like the 

color orange. I try to pick up 

other colors, but I just really 

like orange.... You know, it is 

an excellent source of vitamin C. 

Cover Artist: 

Lyle Detwiler 

I seem to spend about half my 

life being distracted and the 

other half procrastinating.... 

I really need to make some 

time for sleep! 

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COMPUTOREDGE 

6 Digital Dave by Digital Dave 

16 Get Your Tech Laughs 

at the Expense of “Noobs” by Lucas Roebuck 

Playful bits of harmless digital tomfoolery. 

25 The Linux Link by Gary M. Witscher 

A New Age of Enlightenment 

27 Worldwide News & Product Reviews by Charles Carr 

10 The Internet’s Funniest Pranks by June Campbell 

Don't try these at home, folks. 

20 Cyber-Cyrano to the Rescue! by Joe Lavin 

Buying love letters online. 

23 Mac Madness by James Alguire 

Fun With the Mac: The Best Online Comics and Cartoons 

29 Hot On the Web by Jim Trageser 

Bringing History Into the Future 

30 Web Directory 

4 Edgeword 

18 Sudoku Solution from last week 

26 Sudoku Puzzle 

28 Calendar of Events 

31 Classifieds 

32 Career Opportunities 

33 Advertiser/Product Index 

34 Directory of Services 

October 20, 2006 

Volume 24, No. 42 

Editor’s Letters 

This week’s letters to the editor appear online only at www.computoredge.com. 

www.computoredge.com October 20, 2006 3

Iget a lot of e-mail jokes. Some are funny. Some are not. Some ask 

you to pass them along to everyone in your address book, which 

I normally don’t take the time to do. That’s probably why I have 

such bad luck! But, here’s one I’d like to share. It’s called “Thanks, 

everybody!” 

“I must send my thanks to whoever sent me the e-mail about rat 

crap in the glue on envelopes. Now, I use a wet towel to moisten 

every envelope I need to seal. And, for the same reason, I scrub 

the top of every can I open. 

“I no longer have any savings because I sent it to a sick girl (Penny 

Brown), who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time. 

As a matter of fact, I have no money at all, but that will change once 

I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending 

me for participating in their special e-mail program. 

“Because of your concern, I no longer drink Coca Cola because it 

can remove toilet stains. I don’t drink Pepsi or Dr. Pepper, either, 

since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse 

to put ‘under God’ on their cans. 

“I stopped eating at KFC because their chickens are actually horrible 

mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers. I can’t enjoy a good 

latte from Starbucks because they would not send any coffee to 

that poor Army sergeant who requested it. And, I don’t waste my 

money on expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus because I now 

have their recipe. 

“I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants, even though I smell 

like a water buffalo on a hot day. 

“Thanks to you, I’ve learned that my prayers get answered only if I 

forward an e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within 

five minutes. However, I don’t have to worry about my soul 

because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. 

Theresa’s novena has granted my every wish. 

“When I go to the gas station, I make sure to take a man along to 

watch the car while I’m at the pump so a serial killer won’t crawl 

into my back seat. I avoid shopping malls, because the girl who 

sprays perfume samples may, in fact, be drugging me in order to 

rob me. I won’t shop at Target because they’re French and don’t 

support our American troops or the Salvation Army. 

“I know better than to use Saran Wrap in the microwave, because 

it causes cancer. And thanks for letting me know that I can’t boil a 

cup of water in the microwave anymore because it could blow up in 

my face . . . disfiguring me for life. 

“Thanks to you, my friends, I can’t use anyone’s toilet but mine, 

because a big, brown African spider is lurking under the seat to 

cause me instant death when it bites my butt. On the other hand, I 

no longer worry about sudden cardiac arrest, since I can now 

cough myself back to life instead of wasting time calling 911. 

“If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 

70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhea will land on your head at 5 

o’clock this afternoon, and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your 

back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur 

because it actually happened to a friend of my next-door neighbor’s 

ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s beautician, who is a 

lawyer.” 

Have a wonderful day. And . . . you’re welcome! 

Patricia Smith, Editor 

edletters@computoredge.com 

4 October 20, 2006 

W O R D 

SAN DIEGO’S COMPUTER MAGAZINE 

Publisher Jack Dunning 

Financial Operations Marilyn Mohr 

Operations Director Norrel T. Pugay 

Editor Patricia Smith 

Technical/Online Editor Gretchen Grunburg 

Reviews Editor Charles Carr 

Contributing Editors James Alguire 

June Campbell 

Roy Davis 

Kirk Kirksey 

Lucas Roebuck 

Michael J. Ross 

Jim Trageser 

Douglas E. Welch 

Account Executive Grace Tec 

Art Director Eeka Cano 

Graphic Artists Bob Caldwell 

Theresa Green 

Webmaster Norrel T. Pugay 

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All advertising in ComputorEdge ® is subject to 

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www.computoredge.com COMPUTOREDGE 

®

DIGITAL 

DAVE 

Dear Digital Dave, 

I need a wireless 

provider for my laptop. 

I am a writer and spend 

a lot of time online, but the 

problem is, I am currently 

staying with relatives, 

thanks to a little girl named 

Hurricane Katrina. I can’t 

always get online because 

of my nephew or niece. 

I visit the library about 

once a week, but I really 

want to stay home and 

work. My son started 

kindergarten this year, and 

I have about six good 

hours to work during the 

6 October 20, 2006 

day, but like I said, sometimes 

I can’t get online 

because of those two hogging 

the phone. 

Someone told me to try 

Cingular, but the service 

isn’t offered here in 

Mobile, Alabama. I will 

hopefully return to New 

Orleans at the end of the 

year, but in the meantime, 

I don’t want to lose time. 

I’ve already lost a lot. 

Please help me. I know 

about hotspots, but they 

seem to be few and far 

between—and again, what 

I really want is to be able 

to use my laptop at home. 

Myra Faye Turne 

Mobile, Alabama 

Dear Myra Faye, 

The best wireless data 

coverage I have experienced 

is with Verizon 

Wireless, using one of the 

company’s wireless PC 

cards. Verizon has a digital 

technology called CDMA 

that is very efficient for 

voice calls, so there is a lot 

of excess capacity on its 

system that can be used for 

high-speed data. I’ve seen 

it work in many places 

where others had trouble 

just talking on cell phones. 

Digital Dave’s Tip 

Iuse my laptop at my desk at work and drag it to every 

meeting. Just about everyone in the company does the 

same thing, as we were all supplied with identical brand and 

model laptops. (Well, my wife, who works there too, has a 

newer model with a wide screen, but let’s not get into that.) 

I was crawling under the conference table to unplug 

my laptop power supply cord, when I pulled out two 

other cords before I found mine. They all look the same. 

At home we have the same problem, with too many 

power cords looking the same in the jumble under the 

desk, and we can’t find the laptop cord on the first try. 

I’m used to working on electronics equipment, where 

we use different-colored wire in the bundles inside the 

cabinet, and it’s easy to trace a wire or know immediately 

what it’s hooked up to. That gave me an idea. I fished 

Sprint uses CDMA also, 

but that service is stuck in a 

higher-frequency radio band 

that doesn’t have coverage 

as good as Verizon’s. But, if 

there is coverage in your 

area, Sprint would work. 

Cingular and the other 

carriers use TDMA, an 

older technology that struggles 

to keep up with the 

voice traffic on their systems. 

They don’t have the 

excess capacity to devote to 

data service. These companies 

like this older TDMA 

technology because the 

base station equipment and 

phone are really cheap to 

manufacture. 

As with any wireless 

service, there will be some 

spots that work better than 

others. 

I would go to the places 

you intend to use data and 

ask people you see using 

cell phones which carrier 

they are using and how it is 

working. Also, when you 

shop, don’t go to the kiosk 

in the mall. Find the Verizon 

store and ask to see its 

coverage map. You might 

even be able to borrow a 

wireless device to try out 

where you intend to use it. 

Digital Dave 


My dad and I have 

been reading your column 

every Friday over espresso 

for many years! 

What is the difference 

between LCD TVs and 

LCD computer monitors? 

Can you use these devices 

interchangeably, or are 

they incompatible? 

Dean Featherstone 

Dear Dean, 

The earliest computer 

monitors were televisions, 

but the image quality was 

very poor, so computer 

screens quickly went on 

their own path to higher 

resolution, directly driven 

from the computer. 

Now that television is 

improving with HDTV and 

LCD screens, we are seeing 

a convergence of computers 

and television. We 

have two LCD televisions 

and both have a 15-pin 

VGA (standard D-type) 

computer input, and one 

has a DVI input for directdigital 

computer signals. 

I tried the smaller of the 

LCD TVs with my computer, 

and frankly, I wasn’t 

impressed. It’s a cheaper 

(continued on page 8) 

around in my electrical toolbox and came up with my collection 

of colored vinyl electrical tape. 

I like blue, so I wrapped some blue tape around the 

ends of the cords for my laptop’s power supply. Now I 

know at a glance which plug in the plug strip is mine! 

I used yellow tape (her favorite color) on my wife’s 

power supply cords. Now, not only can we find our 

power cords in the mess, we know which power supply is 

ours. If someone should accidentally (or otherwise) pick 

up our power supply while playing power supply musical 

chairs (the last one to leave the room is missing their 

power supply), we can quickly point out the error and 

make sure we go home with what is ours. 

You can buy an assortment of colored tape in the electrical 

department of building supply stores. They have 

small rolls of each popular color (red, blue, green, white 

and yellow) for only a few dollars. That’s enough colored 

tape to last for a lifetime of marking cables. ❏ 

www.computoredge.com COMPUTOREDGE

DAVE 

(continued from page 6) 

model, and the resolution is 

not as good as my LCD 

computer monitor, so I 

never made any use of the 

TV for the computer. 

The larger LCD TV 

would probably work 

great, especially for games, 

but I don’t play computer 

games (too busy with column 

writing and such). I 

would need a long video 

cable to reach up on the 

wall, and enough room to 

be able to back up in order 

to view the screen. 

Turning the whole thing 

around, I just bought a new 

widescreen computer monitor. 

There is a reason these 

widescreens are becoming 

popular: The LCD manufacturers 

are trying to stan- 

A Joke a Day 

BINARY NUMBERS: There are 10 kinds of 

people in this world: those who understand 

binary numbers and those who do not. If you 

don’t get this joke, then you don’t understand 

binary numbers. You know decimal numbers, 

because you have 10 fingers and know that 

after counting single digits up to nine, you 

have to resort to two digits, 1 and 0, to make 

10. For binary numbers, each bit (binary digit) 

can be only 1 or 0, so you can count only up 

to 1 with a single digit. To count to two, you 

have to resort to two bits, or 10. So, in binary, 

10 equals two in decimal, which is equal to 

the number of types of people. OK, if I did a 

good job of explaining this, you have just 

switched from the vast majority of people on 

this planet who don’t get this joke over to the 

learned few who get it. 

DILBERT: If you prefer your daily dose of 

humor in the form of a comic strip, what better 

comic than the one that follows the daily 

challenges of a computer engineer named Dilbert? 

Go to Dilbert.com (www.dilbert.com), 

where you can read a new Dilbert strip every 

day. If you haven’t been keeping up, or go on 

vacation without Internet access (pretty difficult 

these days), you can read the last month’s 

worth of comic strips. You can subscribe and 

8 October 20, 2006 

dardize on one type of 

LCD for both television 

and computer use. 

The give-away is the 

dimensions of the screen in 

pixels. It’s 1,680�1,050 pixels, 

which is not in the standard 

progression of VGA 

resolutions, but fits the 

HDTV standard perfectly. 

In a recent Digital 

Dave’s Tip, I went over the 

issue of getting my video 

card to work at 1,680� 

1,050 screen resolution 

(the original driver didn’t 

do it, but a new one downloaded 

from the manufacturer’s 

Web site did), and 

now I’m happy with a 

widescreen, HDTV-like 

computer monitor. 

If I were living in a 

small apartment or dorm 

room, one of these 

widescreen computer monitors 

could double as a tele- 

vision set. I can already 

view DVDs in widescreen 

mode just by popping a 

disc in the drive. 

If I wanted to watch 

cable TV or even over-theair 

television, I could buy 

an adapter that fits in my 

computer to accept these 

signals and put them on 

my screen. Yes, the latest 

in computer and television 

displays have come together 

in a way that it is not a 

compromise to share one 

screen for both functions. 

Digital Dave 


This isn’t a question, 

but rather a comment on 

your September 8th Tip 

about adding text above a 

table in a Word document 

when the table is at the 

beginning of the page. 

receive your Dilbert comic in your mailbox 

six days a week for free. For a few dollars, 

you can get the Sunday color comic and be 

able to read the last six months’ archive. For a 

few more dollars, you get to read all of the 

Dilbert comics all the way back to the beginning. 

Such a deal. I’m too cheap to pay to read 

old comic strips when I can’t keep up with the 

latest ones, but Dilbert is still my favorite. 

HUMOR RINGTONE: How about downloading 

a humorous ringtone? What the heck 

is that, you ask? We were all used to hearing a 

bell ringing to indicate that someone was calling 

on our cell phones. Then came musical 

ringtones, and you got a short clip of some 

song playing in your pocket before you got to 

say hello. Now you can download humorous 

ringtones, where your phone tells a joke 

instead of ringing. You can find these at 

RingRingMobile (ringringmobile.com). Of 

course, if you get a lot of phone calls, hearing 

the same joke gets old after a while, so you 

will have to download a new one. Talk about a 

gold mine for the humorous-ringtone joke 

writers! I didn’t go so far as to audition these 

jokes for my phone, because you have to give 

up your cell phone number to even get that 

far. I guess I’m an old-fashioned, bell-ringing 

kind of guy. 

JOKE A DAY: If you want a new joke to 

I have found two ways 

—quite by accident—to 

put a carriage return 

above the table in such a 

document. 

1. Place your cursor in 

the first cell at the beginning 

of the table. Hit 

, followed 

by a carriage return. 

2. Place your cursor 

anywhere in the first row. 

Go to Table, and then 

Split Table. 

Hope this helps! 

David Bindley 

Dear David, 

Thanks for another solution 

to stuffing a new line 

above a table in a Word 

document, when the table 

is at the very beginning of 

the page. 

Digital Dave ❏ 

DIGITAL DAVE de •fines: 

make you smile every day, go to the Joke A 

Day Web site (jokeaday.com) and get your 

daily dose. Jokes here are usually pretty tame, 

so you could check it out on your lunch hour. 

The site does have other entertainment, such 

as the Babe A Day section, so maybe you 

shouldn’t be tempted. There are premium services 

with more (and hopefully better) jokes 

available for a small yearly fee. 

SCREEN PRINT: Some of the funniest 

jokes are the error messages that Windows 

posts in those little boxes in the center of the 

screen. People will use a screen-capture program 

to grab these screen prints exactly as 

they appear, and then post them on a joke site. 

I was checking out some screen prints on 

KissMyFloppy.com (kissmyfloppy.com) and 

got a kick out of the one called Free Space. It 

is an error message generated while installing 

Internet Explorer, which claims the program 

needs 429,543,865KB of disk space to perform 

the installation. That’s more than 

429GB, somewhat larger than the whole hard 

drive most people have in their computer. To 

add insult to injury, the error message also 

notes that it needs 14,000KB more space 

(only 14MB), but you get that back after the 

installation. Gee, thanks! 

(For more of Dave’s definitions, 

visit www.computoredge.com.) 


10 October 20, 2006 

The Internet’s Funniest Pranks 

When you read survey results 

about what people do online, 

no one reports logging on to play 

practical jokes on the unsuspecting 

public. Nevertheless, some do just 

that. ZUG (zug.com) is a prime 

example. Many of this comedy site’s 

pranks are a riot. Some may not be 

technically 100-percent legal. Don’t 

try those at home, folks. 

The PowerBook Prank 

This one involves a guy who duped 

a con artist who was trying to dupe 

him. It started when an avid eBayer 

named Jeff listed an almost-new G4 

PowerBook on eBay with a Buy It 

Now option of $2,100. Shortly after, 

Jeff received a message from Gianluca 

from London who offered to purchase 

the computer—if Jeff would 

agree to use a certain escrow service. 

Suspicious of a typical eBay scam, 

Jeff decided to play along to see what 

would happen. After reporting the 

incident to the eBay Fraud Prevention 

Team, Jeff registered at the suspicious-looking 

escrow site. Posing 

as an anxious, inexperienced eBay 

seller, he fired off a message to Gianluca 

asking how to proceed. Gianluca 

entered into a series of reassuring 

By June Campbell 

e-mail exchanges. 

In time, Jeff received a “confirmation 

message” from the bogus escrow 

site, informing him that they had 

received Gianluca’s payment. Gianluca 

then provided a shipping address 

(which turned out to be a barbershop/Internet 

café), along with the 

request that Jeff state a low value 

when shipping the item so he could 

escape the 27.5-percent duty taxes. 

After plotting the perfect revenge 

with members of eBay’s Something 

Awful forum, Jeff decided to send 

Gianluca a three-ring binder with a 

keyboard drawn in crayon. By listing 

a high value, Jeff would cause the 

scammer to pay a few hundred dollars 

in duty for a worthless item. 

Funded by donations from members 

of the eBay forum, Jeff paid the 

$67 overnight shipping fee, listed the 

value at $2,000, and sent the fake 

laptop across the pond. Next, Jeff emailed 

Gianluca, saying he had listed 

the value at $2,000 to avoid charges 

of mail fraud, but that he would pay 

the duty himself since he “screwed 

up.” 

After some complications with 

U.K. customs, the scammer picked 

up the package and paid $550 in duty 

tax. A gleeful Jeff fired off an “innocent” 

e-mail telling Gianluca that the 

“escrow site” appeared to be down, 

and would Gianluca be releasing the 

funds soon to pay for the laptop? 

Gianluca’s response was to send Jeff 

a virus, followed by a denial-of-service 

attack on the Web site that Jeff 

had put up to publicize the prank. 

Although the scammer succeeded 

in bringing down the Web site, the 

story spread like wildfire across the 

Internet and undoubtedly left the 

scammer smarter, if not wiser. 

The Funny Senator Prank 

In the spring of 2003, posing as a 

10-year-old boy, ZUG mailed a 

request to 100 U.S. senators, asking 

them to send their funniest joke for 

his school project. After a delay, 

while Homeland Security screened 

the message, responses began to 

come in. (Kudos to the 15 senators 

who took the time to send a joke to 

whom they believed was a young 

boy!) 

ZUG posted the responses on the 

site and invited site visitors to vote 

for the funniest. For your edification, 

America’s funniest senator was 



Pranks 


Republican Senator Olympia Snowe 

from Maine, who received 27.2 percent 

of the popular vote. (John Kerry 

responded and received 14.6 percent 

of the popular vote.) 

Now, as for the unfunniest senators 

who didn’t bother to send a joke, 

Senator Hilary Clinton from New 

York rated as number one, with 34.5 

percent of the popular vote. 

ZUG posted an open letter, thanking 

the senators who responded. 

The Credit Card Prank 

Ever notice that business establishments 

often fail to check your 

signature when you sign a credit card 

slip? ZUG wondered how weird a 

signature would have to be before 

someone would notice. 

All in the name of research, a 

ZUG employee signed credit card 

slips with ever-increasingly bizarre 

signatures. Signatures passing muster 

included scribbles, square boxes, 

stick figures, and even drawings of 

bugs. Next step was to sign with 

someone else’s name: Mariah Carey, 

Beethoven, Zeus, Mickey Mouse 

and Porky Pig all passed without 

comment, as did the written signature 

of “Please check my ID.” 

In Part 11 of the prank, ZUG 

signed a charge at the New England 

Aquarium with the word “Shamu” 

(who lives in San Diego, for Pete’s 

sake, and who doesn’t even have an 

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AmEx card), accompanied by a 

drawing of a whale. When no one 

caught the fraudulent signature, the 

ever-emboldened ZUG guy signed 

Krisp E. Kreme to a charge slip at 

Dunkin’ Donuts. Fine by them, 

apparently. Next, he visited Krispy 

Kreme, where he signed as Dunk N. 

Donuts. This time, our hero pulled 

out a camera and took pictures of the 

signature—and most everything else 

inside the restaurant. The bored clerk 

watched patiently and said nothing. 

Next, the ZUG guy escalated to 

faking touch-screen signatures, 

always taking pictures after entering 

the signatures. Fake names, drawings 

of the digestive track and musical 

notation all passed without comment. 

Finally, ZUG’s prankster met his 

match. When trying to sign for a 

$16,000 purchase at Circuit City 

using “Not Authorized” as a signature, 

the manager recognized the 

fraud and our researcher left the store 

without his three HDTVs—thus 

proving there is a limit to how far 

you can push this before someone 

takes note. 

The AOL Virus Prank 

Ray Owens of the Joke A Day 

Web site (jokeaday.com) pulled what I 

consider the greatest prank of all time. 

Owens sends a daily joke to subscribers 

of an opt-in e-mail list. In January 

of 2002, following the sulfnbk 

.exe virus hoax, in which thousands of 

people followed instructions in a 

chain e-mail to delete a file from the 

Windows operating system, Joke A 

Day sent a tongue-in-cheek e-mail to 

its subscribers warning of the deadly 

aol.exe virus, and providing instructions 

for locating and removing the 

“virus” if found on their system. 

Owens finished by advising people 

too timid to remove the virus 

themselves to call the AOL tech-support 

number and demand that the 

company remove the virus from the 

subscriber’s computer. “For legal 

reasons, they may even deny the 

existence of the aol.exe virus. Don’t 

fall for their story!” Owens finished. 

Joke A Day received 3,000 emails 

in response to the prank— 

many congratulating Owens for his 

wit, but others accusing him of computer 

vandalism and more. Yep. You 

guessed it: Many AOL subscribers 

did indeed delete the file, and then 

phoned AOL tech support when they 

couldn’t log on next time around. 

Owens posted what he considered 

to be the funniest messages on his 

Web site, including one from a guy 

who said he hadn’t found aol.exe, but 

should he delete auto.exe instead? 

Joke A Day advised against it, telling 

him the file controlled the monitor’s 

spatial controls to keep it from moving 

while the Earth rotated. 

The prank fast became a publicity 

stunt, with coverage by CNN, 

MSNBC, CNET, Yahoo!, The Standard, 

ZDNet, AOL, InfoWorld, Science 

Magazine, PCWorld.com, USA 

Today and About.com. Read the 

whole story on the Joke A Day Web 

site (www.jokeaday.com/7aolexe 

.shtml). ❏ 


Get Your Tech Laughs at 

the Expense of “Noobs” 

Few things bring a deep feeling of 

warm joy to the heart like the 

sight of a humiliated “tech-noob” 

(short for technology newbie) who 

has just been an ignorant victim of a 

well-crafted computer prank. 

If you have never engaged in a 

playful bit of harmless digital tomfoolery, 

then you have never lived (or 

you have better Net manners than I 

do). Either way, allow me to tell you 

some of the better pranks (slightly 

embellished by time and my bad 

memory) that I have performed or 

heard about, so that you can vicariously 

enjoy a good laugh at the 

expense of a computer-illiterate person. 

Also, stick around to the sidesplitting 

end, and I’ll show you 

where you can find what you need to 

prank your noob friends. 

Step Away From the Computer 

Many lives ago I worked for a 

newspaper, and as the resident 

nerd/geek/tech whiz, I often was delegated 

technological responsibilities, 

such as setting up the content-man- 

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16 October 20, 2006 

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agement server. When reporters were 

working on their articles, they had to 

be logged into the article database to 

file their stories. Many of the 

reporters had spent years producing 

punchy prose on typewriters, but had 

logged few hours of any sort on computers. 

These seasoned veterans—who 

were tech rookies—were my easy 

prey. 

I recall one silver-haired fellow 

—we’ll call him “Rob”—who, if 

memory serves, produced quite a 

show when I pranked him. 

Rob sat in a cluster of six desks, 

two rows of three, that faced inward 

where the heavy lifting was done in 

our open-space newsroom, not unlike 

other newsrooms. My desk was in a 

cubicle that lined the wall, where the 

editor-types sat. And where I had 

access to the content-management 

server. 

One of the features of the contentmanagement 

system was that whoever 

was physically sitting at the server 

could send messages to pop up on 

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the screen of any user logged in. 

Keep in mind that this was in the era 

before instant messages and e-mail 

flashes. Typically, the administrator 

might use this message feature to tell 

users to log off because the server 

was going to be reset. I didn’t need to 

use this message system, because all 

my users were in the same room, 

within earshot. So none of the 

reporters knew what this pop-up 

message looked like. 

One afternoon, my prankster editor 

in chief and I decided to give Rob 

a little “message.” It was quite simple, 

really. We could hardly contain 

our snickering when we pushed 

Send. The message popped up on his 

screen: 

WARNING! YOUR COMPUT- 

ER IS CURRENTLY LEAKING 

DANGEROUS AMOUNTS OF 

RADIATION. PLEASE STEP 20 

FEET FROM YOUR COMPUTER 

AND CALL YOUR SERVICE 

DEPARTMENT. 

Rob flew back from his computer, 

his roller chair grinding the floor. 

“Uh, guys,” he half shouted as he 

sprinted out of the office faster than 

any man of his experience should be 

able. 

The long hand on the clock must 

have spun halfway around its circuit 

before we stopped laughing. Of 


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course, we felt bad when Rob came 

back, red and upset that we had 

enjoyed such a hearty laugh at his 

expense. But such is the life of a tech 

prankster. 

Your Computer Is Possessed 

You can find many applications 

that allow you to remotely take control 

of another computer. IT professionals 

who have to administer hundreds 

of computers often install 

remote-control software, so they can 

take over any computer on the network 

at any time. 

Of course, the computer user who 

has no idea that someone else can 

take over mouse and keyboard control 

from another system is ripe for a 

little tease. Here’s how the prank 

goes down—it’s even better with an 

accomplice. 

“Kim” is at her computer, working 

on an important report. What the 

report is on doesn’t matter; what 

does matter is that she is intently serious 

about doing a good job to 

impress her bosses. Kim is typing 

about the quarter’s “strong results,” 

when suddenly, the words “strong 

results” get deleted, letter by letter. 

She moves the mouse to set the 

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18 October 20, 2006 Sudoku 

cursor in order to fix what she thinks 

is some random anomaly, but whenever 

she moves the mouse to the 

insertion point, it flies to the corner of 

her screen. 

She then asks “Frank,” who is in 

on the gag, to check out her computer 

to see if he knows why it is acting 

funny. Of course, he does know why, 

but he goes and has a look-see. 

“See Frank, if I move the mouse 

here,” Kim explains, “then it pops 

over—wait, it seems to be working 

now. Never mind.” 

Franks acts annoyed to cover a 

smirk forming on his lips and heads 

back to his station. Kim types “strong 

results” again, but then suddenly the 

word “strong” is highlighted and 

replaced with the word “weak.” Kim 

starts freaking out and goes to fetch 

Frank again. 

When they get back to the computer, 

however, the word has magically 

been transformed again to 

“strong.” 

“Why are you wasting my time, 

Kim?” Frank asks, continuing his 

mock annoyance, heading back to his 

desk. Kim is a little weirded out at 

this point and sits back down at her 

desk. 

The computer starts typing again, 

on its own. “Gotcha, Kim! Ha ha ha 

ha ha! Love, the boys in IT.” Frank 

bursts out laughing from his terminal. 

10-13-06 Solution 

Kim starts thinking about filing a 

harassment lawsuit. 

Get Your Red-Hot Pranks 

In the age of the Internet virus, the 

number of pranks has gone down 

considerably, because with new system 

protections, planting the sort of 

software you need to enjoy the suffering 

of others on a “victim” computer 

is much harder. 

Also, finding someone who is 

enough of a noob on whom to play 

pranks can also be difficult as our 

society becomes more technically literate. 

Still, the Internet is the keeper 

of all good things digital, and a few 

sites are dedicated to providing you 

with the software you need to humiliate 

others. 

RJL software has a whole page of 

Windows prankware, although some 

of it may not run on Windows XP 

systems. Fake Delete and Mouse 

Move are two of my favorites. You 

can download dozens of prank applications 

from the company’s Web site 

(www.rjlsoftware.com/software/ente 

rtainment). 

ComputerPranks.com also has 

some fun little software ditties, such 

as an application that makes cockroaches 

randomly crawl on your 

screen. Download the fun from the 

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Cyber-Cyrano 

to the Rescue! 

Isuppose this shouldn’t be too surprising, 

but now, along with term 

papers and résumés, you can also buy 

love letters online. Can’t get the right 

words down on the page for your 

sweetheart? Fear not. For $24.95 a 

year, you can join a service called 

Letter Rep (www.letterrep.com), 

where you will have access to hundreds 

of possible letters for almost all 

occasions in life. 

Of course, there are a lot more 

than just love letters here, but frankly, 

the love letters are the most entertaining. 

It takes a courageous person 

indeed to try using a plagiarized love 

letter from the Internet, rather than 

the real thing. 

Love 

Here’s just one example: 

“Mi Amor: Before my thoughts of 

you escape me, I have to stop and 

take time to write the feelings I have 

from a special room inside my heart. 

There have been times when we 

have been together and I have 

missed my chance to . . .” 

Chance to? Um, chance to what? 

Unfortunately, that’s where the free 

sample ends. Unless I’m willing to 

shell out $24.95, I will never be able 

to tell my girlfriend how a stranger 

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thinks I might feel about her. 

Then again, this might not be the 

best letter for me to use. If I were 

ever to tell her that there’s a special 

room inside my heart, she would 

probably ask me if that’s where all 

the voices I hear come from. 

There’s also an apology letter to 

your lover, which unwisely doesn’t 

begin with the words “I’m sorry.” 

Instead, it starts off with something 

about looking outside the window 

You wonder 

what kind of money 

Cyrano de Bergerac could 

make with his love letters 

here in the age of the 

Internet. 

and seeing the sun when you expected 

to see the rain. Something tells me 

that’s not going to cut it in most relationships. 

A few too many letters like 

this, and you’re likely to find yourself 

on the other side of that window, 

standing in the rain with all your possessions. 

Work 

Of course, there’s more than just 

love here. There are also plenty of 

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letters that you can use at the workplace. 

You can learn how to reprimand 

“an office for unsatisfactory 

behavior” (such as not writing their 

own letters), learn how to apologize 

to your boss for misconduct while 

“offering no excuse for the misconduct,” 

or simply submit a letter 

“requesting to carry a handgun for 

work purposes.” That last one could 

come in handy in many an office. 

“Henderson, I want that report on 

my desk by 5 o’clock, or else!” 

Kids 

Letter Rep is a great resource for 

kids, too. Here, you can find a sample 

letter to Santa, in case your 6-yearold 

can’t quite come up with the 

words, but has Internet access. (Can 

you get on Santa’s bad list for plagiarism?) 

And, in case you need it, you 

can find a sample letter from Santa to 

your child. “I’m terribly sorry, Billy, 

but we seem to be all out of bazooka 

guns and fireworks. Please accept 

these nice corduroys instead.” 

There’s also a very handy letter for 

“explaining why your child missed 

school.” It’s a shame, really. Back in 

my day, not only did we have to 

forge our parent’s signature, we also 

had to write the letter ourselves. 

Now, the kids can find them online, 

and probably even send them from 

their parent’s e-mail account. Seriously, 

what kind of values is a site 

like this teaching our children? 


San Diego 

www.computoredge.com COMPUTOREDGE 

Member

Rescue 

(continued from page 20 

Not Complete 

Admittedly, the site’s not complete. 

There are many types of letters 

missing. For example, I could not 

find any apology letter whatsoever in 

case you get arrested for drunk driving 

and wind up insulting the religion 

and/or nationality of the arresting 

officer. I guess you have to pay more 

than $25 for an apology like that. 

Also, while they have a personal 

essay section (just the thing for those 

pesky college applications), there is a 

disturbing lack of computer technology 

articles, meaning unfortunately 

I had to write this whole piece 

myself. 

Library Online 

Another site called Library Online 

(www.libraryonline.com) is even 

more extensive, but pricier. There are 

a number of plans, though the all- 

22 October 20, 2006 

inclusive one costs $99 a year. It’s a 

good gig they’ve got going. After all, 

if you’ve been using the service for a 

year and impressing all your friends, 

lovers, and co-workers with your 

epistolary skills, you really have no 

choice but to sign up for another year. 

Otherwise, you risk letting everyone 

find out that you’re really just a 

fraud. 

Library Online has an even more 

extensive collection of love letters. 

One starts, “I struggle to find the 

words.” Well, no kidding. Really, 

unless you’re paying a romantic guy 

with a big nose to write love letters, 

you’re best off writing them yourself. 

Still, you wonder what kind of 

money Cyrano de Bergerac could 

make with his love letters here in the 

age of the Internet. 

Then again, unlike Library Online, 

he probably couldn’t come up with 

such heart-warming classic themes 

as: “Our pregnancy [is] causing distance,” 

“Will end my marriage for 

you,” “A letter to the family of a per- 

son you had an affair with, apologizing 

for all the trouble it has now 

caused members of the family,” “A 

letter to your friend who has betrayed 

you by lying about the affair 

he’s/she’s been having with your ex!” 

Really, every possible facet of a 

relationship is covered here—that is, 

if you happen to live in a soap opera. 

If you’re lucky, someday you might 

even be able to program some of 

these onto your BlackBerry, in case 

you’re ever caught off-guard with a 

situation. As nice as a letter is, sometimes 

you need to say something in 

person. 

Well, in that case, they might want 

to expand the site slightly to include 

other gems, such as, “This isn’t what 

it looks like,” “I wasn’t looking at 

her. I just have something in my 

eye,” and “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t 

realize she was your sister.” 

As we all know, the Internet is the 

perfect resource for scoundrels everywhere, 

and you can definitely quote 

me on that. ❏ 


One of the best things about the 

Mac is that it’s designed to 

make computers more fun. Whether 

it’s the software, user interface, or the 

various available services, in general, 

everything’s more fun to use on the 

Mac. 

One of the most fun things to do 

with the Mac is surf the Internet. 

When I was a kid, my mother was a 

librarian, and I spent many long days 

running around the local library in 

Ketchikan, Alaska, checking out all 

the cool books. The Internet is like 

that library to me: A place to run 

around, discover and experience cool 

stuff that normally wouldn’t be 

accessible—all from the comfort of 

the Mac. 

Hitting Your Digital Funny Bone 

So, which online comics and cartoons 

are the best? Ultimately, the 

best are the ones that entertain you, 

and make you laugh, but here are a 

few that I enjoy regularly during my 

Internet excursions. 

At the top of my list are The Joy of 

Tech (www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech) 

and The PC Weenies (www.pcwee 

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Fun With the Mac: The Best 

Online Comics and Cartoons 

By James Alguire 

nies.org). Both take a whimsical, 

somewhat acerbic view of technology, 

computers and the Internet. Both have 

become geek-culture phenomena. 

J.D. Frazer’s User Friendly (www 

.userfriendly.org) cartoon often takes 

a more Doonesbury-like approach to 

technology humor. And to illustrate 

that computer problems are universal, 

check out Vijay Krishnan’s Silly- 

Gloop computer-problem cartoons 

(sillygloop.blogspot.com). Also, consider 

Jeff Darlington’s General Protection 

Fault (www.gpf-comics.com), 

805 

You might 

think it’s OK that 

the neighbors surf on 

your wireless 

dime . . . 

a tech toon that focuses more on the 

character’s relationships, while still 

providing insightful tech commentary. 

(A General Protection Fault is a 

common error in Windows.) 

More Mac-centric online comics 

include Zap the PRAM and Mew & 

Zach, both of which reside at Mac- 

Boy (www.macboy.com/cartoons). 

Zap the PRAM probes Mac culture, 

and Mew & Zach riffs on the music 

industry, with a heavy Mac slant. 

For some off-the-wall, pseudo-tech 

Balboa 

Mercury 

Vickers X 

163 

✂ 

✂ 

fun, I’m also enjoying Girl Genius 

(www.girlgeniusonline.com) and John 

Cooke’s sci-fi and fantasy parody site, 

Sev Wide Web (cartoons.sev.com.au). 

Fun-O-Mation 

Fortunately, because of the nature 

of the technologies that comprise the 

Web, online comics/cartoons are not 

relegated to being static cousins of 

newspaper serial cartoons. There are 

a number of animated cartoons out 

there, and arguably, Gregg and Evan 

Spiridellis, the good folks of JibJab 

(www.jibjab.com), create some of the 

most popular. 

MacBoy, mentioned above, and 

HomeStarRunner (www.homestar 

runner.com) also offer interesting animated 

fare. But the largest repositories 

are at sites like AtomFilms 

(www.atomfilms.com) and YouTube 

(www.youtube.com). 

Billions and Billions 

I’ve mentioned only a mere fragment 

of what’s out there. So, how do 

you find more outrageous humor and 

fun? Just check out these online comic 

directories for Internet cartoon frivolity: 

TopWebComics (topwebcomics .com); 

Online Comics (www.onlinecomics 

.net/pages); Keenspot (www.keenspot 

.com); Web Comics (www.webcomics 

(continued on page 24 


Madness 


.com); and to discuss online comics/ 

cartoons, the Internet Cartoons Forum 

(www.cartoonsfor um.com). 

It’s Your iLife 

Finally, if you want to take a stab 

at creating your own online comic, 

have zero drawing talent, but do have 

some great candid photos of family 

or friends, then Plasq’s Comic Life 

software (www.plasq.com) can turn 

your life into a comic that can be emailed 

or uploaded to the Internet for 

the amusement of all. 

Comic Life ($25; $10 upgrade 

from bundled version) is bundled free 

on all Intel-based Macs; provides 

templates and fonts for traditional 

comic layouts; and grabs pictures 

from the Mac’s hard drive, iPhoto, or 

from a connected iSight or other digital 

video camera. Simply drag-anddrop 

the pictures into the template; 

Give Customers a Reason 

to Visit Your Web Site: 

Add Client Interaction, and Watch Your Site Come Alive! 

24 October 20, 2006 

E-mail Newsletters • Online Q&A Sessions 

Client Forums • Frequently Asked Questions • Calendars 

• Glossaries • News Releases • Internet Specials 

Any or all of these features can be added to your site 

instantly with NetSpigot Client Interaction Service. 

If you want to make your Web site more productive 

and create more interaction with your clients, then 

NetSpigot offers a solution that is easy to use, with 

both e-mail and Web communication. 

With NetSpigot, making your Web site interactive is 

as easy as clicking a mouse. 

adjust the positioning, scaling, rotation, 

or cropping; and add the dialog 

in traditional comic thought balloons. 

Voilá! A perfect holiday greeting, 

announcement, or clever online 

comic. 

Combined with Apple’s .Mac 

online services and the iWeb component 

of iLife, it is easy, relatively 

painless, and even fun to add to the 

Internet’s burgeoning gallery of content. 

The best online comics may not 

only be the ones you enjoy every day, 

but the ones that you make. 

Hoping for Billions and Billions 

Many online comic/cartoon creators 

make their humorous magic for 

the sheer love of sticking it to technology, 

making us smile at our own 

foibles in dealing with technology, 

but they still have families, mortgages 

and bandwidth bills to pay. 

Many make do by offering knickknacks, 

mugs, T-shirts, signed cartoons, 

or whole printed books to help 

defray the costs. 

NetSpigot is a user-friendly Web service that lets you 

control the “look and feel” of your Web site, as well as 

keep information flowing to and from 

your clients. No need to learn Web 

programming, install new software, 

or change ISPs. 

Plug NetSpigot into your existing site, 

or use it to create a Web presence. 

Visit 

www.netspigot.com 

"NetSpigot Lite 

is FREE!" 

With NetSpigot, you “Click It and See It!” 

Is NetSpigot right for you? Ask about 

the FREE version – NetSpigot Lite. 

Some comic/cartoon sites offer 

subscription-style memberships, 

where members get access to 

archives of earlier cartoons/comic 

works, higher-resolution versions of 

existing material, and other benefits. 

Others support themselves using the 

now common online advertising 

support model, and many use a 

combination of all these methods. 

Some sites are more aggressively in 

your face about this, while others let 

their content do the talking. Most 

provide blogs, daily notes, and ways 

of communicating directly with the 

artists. 

If there is an online cartoon/comic 

that you enjoy, then take a moment to 

support what the artists are doing, 

even if it’s only an e-mail digitally 

patting them on the back to help keep 

them going. ❏ 

James Alguire is a writer, Apple 

Certified consultant, and trainer. 

For answers, you can contact James 

at jalguire@inkdrop.com. 

858-573-0315 

For more information about NetSpigot, visit www.netspigot.com. 


A New Age of Enlightenment 

By Gary M. Witscher 

When I started using Linux, most 

of the major distributions had 

Enlightenment (www.enlighten 

ment.org) as their desktop window 

manager. Now that I think back on 

those days, I can see why the name 

was so fitting. The word “enlightenment” 

is linked to creativity, like a 

laptop is to mobility. In those days, 

Enlightenment (also known as E) was 

about as creative as you could 

get—all of its features and aspects of 

its appearance could be customized 

by the user. So, it really was an 

enlightened window manager. You 

didn’t need a burdensome desktop 

environment; E did a better job on its 

own. 

Now, after six years of E releases, 

an all-new Enlightenment is on the 

drawing board: Enlightenment DR17 

Desktop Shell (E17). “Today, in 

development toward the DR17 Desktop 

Shell, we have created an entirely 

new set of libraries and tools that 

provide more power and flexibility 

than any other group of graphical 

libraries available.” 

Buckle your seat belt: You’re 

about to be launched into an entirely 

unique desktop experience. 

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The person behind this endeavor is 

none other than the original guru of 

the earlier Enlightenment releases, 

Carsten Haitzler (fondly known to 

many as The Rasterman). You can 

get to know him better at his Web 

site (www.rasterman.com). 

Being an artist first and then a programmer, 

Haitzler’s first consideration 

is “eye candy.” The new E is, 

first and foremost, all about eye 

candy. Many new and exciting 

graphic effects have been created for 

this new desktop age. No doubt 

you’d like to see firsthand what I am 

talking about. Visit Get-E.org 

(www.get-e.org). You’ll find screen 

shots there, but keep in mind that 

Enlightenment is no longer just a 

pretty picture. E is now animated. 

All of us are familiar with common 

desktop functionality. The drag 

bar changes color when the window 

is active, for example. When you 

open a menu, the item you select is 

highlighted. This is how the user 

interacts with the desktop. E developers 

have rethought what desktop 

user interaction is all about. The core 

libraries of the new Enlightenment 

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enable an animated desktop. Lightning 

flashes across the drag bar, buttons 

pulsate, icons radiate. 

All these actions are theme-specific. 

The theme’s author determines 

what happens, and even at this early 

stage of development, there exists a 

wide variety of themes available. 

Windows can unroll out of nowhere 

with backgrounds that are in motion; 

icons can do the same. True transparency 

is built into the foundation of 

E17, allowing dialogs to dissipate 

like so much smoke or gradually 

appear like some Cheshire Cat. 

Above all, the new Enlightenment is 

fun to use. 

Power to Spare 

That’s not to say that the developers 

have forgotten to pack E with 

power to spare. E is still the premiere 

window manager. The window-control 

menu has more than 15 

selections, many of which open 

dialogs that contain numerous 

refinements to that selection. None 

of this should concern the casual 

user, of course; the defaults work 

quite well. However, the user of distinction 

will find settings for every 

conceivable desktop function, and 

again, some never previously 

thought of. 

Settings dialogs have defaults at 

the first level, then basic settings at 

the second level, and advanced settings 

at the final level. All of these 

settings are organized in a new configuration 

panel that makes it easy to 

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navigate and find the items you want 

to customize. As an example, you 

might open the configuration dialog 

and select Window Display, where 

you’ll find that you can choose to 

have the window shading effect animated 

if you wish. If you then click 

on Advanced, you can set the pixels-per-second 

for that animation. Is 

that fine control, or is that super 

fine control? 

Modules 

The developers are anything but 

shortsighted, I assure you. They 

built in a modular interface. Anyone 

can write a module for E17, and 

many already have. My module 

selection dialog lists 34 modules, 

but E17 has really just begun. You 

can expect to see this number grow 

quite significantly. 

Modules can do things like display 

• Post Problems 

• Share Solutions 

• Have Fun�� or Just Vent 

Just go to 

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and click on the 

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26 October 20, 2006 

Join Us Online! 

graphic system monitors, clocks, language 

changers, application launchers, 

and desktop pagers. There hardly 

seems to be any limits. E has several 

modules that are part of the main 

program. 

Let’s take a look at one example: 

A module that provides the desktop 

with an icon bar (ibar) used to 

launch applications. You can have 

any number of these on your desktop, 

but they don’t have to take up a 

lot of space. The bar can be a window 

that contains a scrollable view 

of the available program icons. Of 

course, this scrolling is not done in 

the typical fashion of employing 

directional buttons. 

The ibar window scrolls automatically 

as your mouse pointer enters 

it, moving as the pointer moves, 

enlarging the icons it passes over as 

they pulsate. Program names fade in 

and superimpose themselves over 

the icon, then fade out as the pointer 

moves on. 

Well, all I can say is, you have to 

Sudoku 

be there, because mere words don’t 

do it justice. 

Find the Product 

Below are a few places you can 

get E17. Remember, E17 is still very 

experimental, and there may be distro-specific 

settings needed. Visit 

Get-E.org (www.get-e.org) first for 

more information. 

Live CD: www.elivecd.org 

Zenwalk: distro.ibiblio.org/pub 

/linux/distributions/zenwalk/people/j 

coghill/e17 

Debian and Ubuntu: edevelop.org 

* * * 

There is much work yet to be 

done on the Enlightenment DR17 

Desktop Shell, on all levels. Even 

the Enlightenment Foundation 

libraries are changing by the hour. 

The pace of development continues 

to grow with anticipation of a first 

release. That’s all good, because it 

just keeps getting better. Long live 

The Rasterman and his merry band 

of coders! ❏ 

Solve Sudoku by including every digit from 1 to 9 

in each row, each column, and each 3-by-3 square. 

For the solution to this week’s Sudoku go to: 


5 8 4 

3 2 5 8 9 

7 3 

6 8 9 

8 4 9 7 

2 1 5 

7 6 

6 8 2 3 5 

9 2 4 

Sudoku 10-20-06 ©2006 ComputorEdge Magazine. All rights reserved. 


By Charles Carr reviews@computoredge.com 

A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fall 

One of two competing new hard 

drive technologies, both of which 

involve integrating flash memory 

into PCs in different ways, is likely 

to emerge triumphant in the next 

year or two. 

According to CNET News staff 

writer Michael Kanellos, “Intel is 

backing a technology called Robson. 

In Robson, a large amount of data 

and applications will be stored in 

flash memory so that the processor 

won’t have to retrieve it from the 

hard drive, which takes far longer.” 

Dadi Perlmutter, head of Intel’s 

Mobility Group, says, “With Robson, 

you’ll be able to put your PC 

into hibernate, and come out and 

start work right where you left off 

almost instantly. Robson also cuts 

power consumption because the 

drive doesn’t have to spin as much as 

it ordinarily would.” 

Writes Kanellos, “Samsung, Microsoft 

and Seagate, meanwhile, all have 

their eye on the hybrid hard drive, 

where the flash is inside the hard 

drive. It stores necessary applications 

as well as keystrokes, URLs and other 

material that you put into your computer. 

When the flash fills up, it wakes 

up the drive, which takes the data, 

stores it and goes back to sleep.” 

Because both of these technologies 

cache data that would otherwise 

require the hard drive to spin up to 

provide, significant power savings 

are expected. 

Seagate says it will come out with 

hybrid drives in early to mid-2007. 

Robson is expected to appear around 

the same time as an option in notebooks 

based on Intel’s Centrino 

“Santa Rosa” platform. 

Search for “Robson” on News 

.com (www.news.com) to read the 

COMPUTOREDGE 

entire story. 

21st Century Disappearing Ink 

A new e-mail system called 

VaporStream is debuting as an alternative 

to traditional e-mail and 

instant messaging, both of which, as 

we have all learned from watching 

the news, leave copious records. 

The company’s Web site (www 

.vaporstream.com) explains how it 

works: “To send a private message 

using VaporStream, all you have to 

do is enter the e-mail recipient’s 

address, or select it from your Vapor 

address book. 

“Next, compose your message. 

The recipient’s name vanishes after 

you’ve begun typing your message, 

ensuring complete privacy. When 

you’re done, simply click Send to 

deliver your correspondence. 

“On the other end, the recipient 

will find your message waiting to be 

read. Once the message is opened, 

the sender’s name is omitted from 

the message header to ensure confidentiality. 

“At no time throughout the process 

is there a connection between 

the header and the body of the message, 

keeping the entire exercise 

record-less. By the time your stream 

message has been read, it is already 

deleted from our servers, and it never 

exists on the computer of either the 

sender or the recipient.” 

According to an article at 

PhysOrg.com, the company hopes 

“VaporStream’s design and low 

cost—$40 per user annually—will 

attract companies that are swamped 

with the challenge of archiving business-critical 

e-mails and throwing 

away those of a personal or inconsequential 

nature.” VaporStream will 

also be available for mobile gadgets, 

Product Ratings 

� Don’t say we didn’t warn you. 

�� 

What is that store’s return 

policy? 

�� 

We’ve seen better; we’ve 

seen worse. 

�� 

You’ll probably be happy 

you did. 

�� What are you waiting for? 

such as BlackBerries. 

Read more at PhysOrg.com (www 

.physorg.com/news78420033.html). 

ezSkin an Easy Choice? 

If you’ve seen one silicone protective 

case for iPods, you’ve seen ’em 

all, right? Try again. ezSkins (www 

.ezgear4u.com/ezSkins.htm) have 

standard equipment that sets them 

apart from the rest of the herd. 

Unlike some brands, ezSkins 

come with a lanyard and wrist strap, 

plus they cover and protect the 

iPod’s clickwheel without impairing 

its functionality. Like other brands, 

ezSkins also come with a plastic belt 

clip and screen protector. They are 

available in various colors: white, 

blue, pink, green or black. 

With all this standard equipment, 

you might expect the list price to be 

correspondingly higher than other 

brands. Instead it is a very reasonable 

$22.98. 

ezSkins also have several distinctive 

blemishes. The belt clip rotates 

360 degrees way too freely due to a 

lack of click-stops; its mechanism 

can be a bit challenging to press 

open; and the piece that connects the 

belt clip to the ezSkin’s derriére wobbles 

so much that you can end up 

tearing the silicone “bubble” covering 

that piece. The lanyard and wrist 

strap go through two small openings 

on the ezSkin’s top left side; this 

design results in your iPod dangling 

lopsidedly around your neck or 

wrist. My unit’s screen protector 

came with annoyingly distracting 

spots that resist cleaning. �� 

Review contributed by 

Barry Fass-Holmes 


Calendar 

of Events 

Saturday, October 21 

■ Ghost Personal Edition—A free class offered by the San 

Diego Community College District, Continuing Education. The 

class runs from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Room 130 at North 

City Campus, 8401 Aero Drive in Kearny Mesa. Register in 

class. For more information, call 619-388-1800 or visit 

www.sdce.edu. 

■ The Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego will meet 

for a Mini-Fair with sessions on Desktop Publishing, Going 

Online Wirelessly, PowerPoint Presentations, and the 

Integrated Genealogist. This free meeting runs from 9 a.m. 

to noon at the Robinson Auditorium complex at UCSD, off 

Pangea Drive. For more information, call 858-278-4519 or 

visit www.cgssd.org. 

■ Security+ Certification Training—This class meets two 

weekends in a row. The class runs Saturday and Sunday from 

8 a.m. to 5 p.m. To register, call 760-871-3100. visit 

www.cesdtraining.com. 

Monday, October 23 

■ Network Administrator Training: Windows Server 2003 

Implementation and Administration—Part 1 of a eight-part 

free class offered by San Diego Community College District, 

Continuing Education. The class runs Monday through 

Thursday from 5:30 to 10 p.m. in Room 130 of North City 

Campus, 8401 Aero Drive in Kearny Mesa. Register in class. 

For more information, call 619-388-1800 or visit 

www.sdce.edu. 

■ Excel 2003, Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced—Part 1 

of a five-week free class sponsored by the San Diego 

Community College District, Continuing Education. The class 

will be held Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 7 to 

9 p.m. in Room I-107 at Miramar College, 10440 Black 

Mountain Road in Mira Mesa. Register in class. For more 

information, call 619-388-1800 or visit www.sdce.edu. 

Tuesday, October 24 

■ Windows XP: Tips and Tricks—A free class offered by the 

San Diego Community College District, Continuing Education. 

The class runs from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in Room 117 at North City 

Campus, 8401 Aero Drive in Kearny Mesa. Register in class. 


www.sdce.edu. 

Thursday, October 26 

■ C# Net, Intermediate—Part 1 of a two-part free class 

sponsored by San Diego Community College District, 

28 October 20, 2006 

OCTOBER 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 

29 30 31 

NOVEMBER 1 2 3 4 

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 

26 27 28 29 30 

Continuing Education. Class will be held from 5:30 to 9 p.m. 

in Room 117 at the North City Campus, 8401 Aero Drive in 

Kearny Mesa. Register in class. For more information, call 

619-388-1800 or visit www.sdce.edu. 

Friday, October 27 

■ Podcasting Basics—A free class sponsored by the San 

Diego Community College District, Continuing Education. The 

class runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 117 of North City 

Campus, 8401 Aero Drive in Kearny Mesa. Bring headset/mic 

(combo headset and mic would be best). Register in class. 


www.sdce.edu. 

Monday–Friday, Oct. 30–Nov. 3 

■ Cisco CCNA Certification—This one-week class meets 

Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Seats are 

limited to assure multiple router/switches per student. To 

register, call 760-871-3100 or visit www.cesdtraining.com. 

Monday–Sunday, Nov. 27–Dec. 10 

■ MCSA/MCSE 2003 Security+ Bootcamp—Fourteen days 

of rigorous training. This is for the individual who has a 

working knowledge and a minimim of four years experience 

in IT. Learn from Sybex’s best-selling author Lisa Donald. Email 

resume to info@cesdtraining.com or call 760-871-3100. 

Monday–Friday, December 4–8 

■ Security+ Certification Training—This class one-week 

class meets Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

To enroll, visit www.cesdtraining.com. 

Monday, January 8 

■ MCSA/MCSE 2003 with Security+ Certification Training 

—Start your new year on track. This class runs three 

evenings a week, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 

6 to 10 p.m. To register, call 760-871-3100 or visit 

www.cesdtraining.com. 

Free events of a non-commercial nature will be listed in Calendar free of charge as 

space allows. Commercial events can be advertised in Calendar at a rate of $25 for 

25 words or less, with each additional word costing $1. Anything separated by a 

space is considered one word. 

In either case, type or legibly print your listing, including the date and time of your 

event, its location, and the name and phone number of a contact person. Calendar 

deadline is 4:30 p.m. on the Friday prior to publication date. Listings will not be taken 

over the phone. 

All commercial Calendar listings must be paid in advance by check or money order. 

Enclose listing with payment, if applicable, and mail to Calendar of Events, c/o 

ComputorEdge, P.O. Box 83086, San Diego, CA 92138. 


Bringing History 

Into the Future 

By Jim Trageser 

In mid-September, the New York 

Times—which has long had its 

electronic archives dating back to 

1981 online—announced that it had 

completed the monumental task of 

making every article ever published 

in the paper available on its Web site. 

That goes back to 1851, when the 

paper first began publishing. 

Because of the fact that, before 

1980, the Times was not yet saving its 

articles in electronic format, the new 

archive section is delivered in PDF 

format—a photograph of the article. 

Not as good as a searchable text document, 

but assuredly better than flying 

to New York and going through 

microfilm at the public library. 

When you do a search of the 

archives from 1851–1980, you get a 

headline and the first paragraph of 

each story, to help you decide 

whether that’s the article you want. 

This service is not free. But Times 

subscribers get access, and those who 

don’t want the daily paper but want 

access to the archives (and other forpay 

items on the Web site) can subscribe 

to the TimesSelect package 

(select .nytimes.com/pages/timesselect/index 

.html) for just under $50 a 

year. Or, you can purchase any single 

article for $4.95. 

There’s a free two-week trial period 

of TimesSelect. Just remember to 

cancel in those two weeks or your 

credit card will get dinged. 

The Scope of the Project 

When you look at how the Times 

presents its new archival materials, 

the reality of how much labor was 

involved is pretty overwhelming. 

As mentioned, every article since 

COMPUTOREDGE 

1981 has been available in the 

archives (again, for a price). 

The folks at the Times took 130 

years’ worth of daily newspapers and 

photographed each article (whether 

from microfilm, microfiche or the 

original isn’t clear—but the PDFs I 

looked at were pretty darn clean). But 

a simple photo of an article is useless 

for a searchable archive. So they 

added the above-mentioned headline 

and first paragraph for each article—all 

of which had to be typed in 

by hand. Then they added keywords 

for the searches, and tied all three 

(PDF, first paragraph/headline, key 

search words) into a database entry. 

It simply had to have cost the 

Times several million dollars to do 

this. Obviously, the organization is 

convinced that the above pricing 

structure will allow the archive to pay 

for itself over time. 

But it’s still a pretty nifty example 

of using technology to make historical 

documents—in this case, newspaper 

articles—available long into the 

future. 

Google Books 

When you consider how large and 

complex a project that Times archive 

was, the Google Books project is that 

much bigger. 

Already under way, while not yet 

complete—heck, it will never be 

complete—Google Books (books 

.google.com) is no less than an 

attempt to have every book ever written 

available forever. 

Similar to, but also different from, 

Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), 

Google Books involves 

scanning in every page of every book 

the company can access, and presenting 

each book as a series of PDFs. 

(Project Gutenberg has each book it 

presents—all older books whose 

copyright has expired—as a text file, 

meaning each one has to be typed in 

by volunteers.) 

But you can also search Google 

Books to find specific passages in a 

work—meaning these are searchable 

PDFs. 

While Google has focused its 

Books project initially on older, outof-print 

books whose copyright has 

expired, it has also signed deals with 

large libraries (including the University 

of California and Harvard) to 

scan in their entire collections and 

make them available to the public. 

This has book publishers in an 

uproar. While scanning in books from 

the 1700s and 1800s that are long 

public domain, and yet may be out of 

print (not every book was a classic, of 

course), is unquestionably good 

(helping more people access that large 

pool of knowledge they contain), 

publishers are concerned that libraries 

may be allowing Google to scan in 

expensive text books or other works 

still protected under copyright. 

Google’s response has been that 

the Google Books site does not allow 

someone to simply sit and read a 

copyrighted book in a sitting, but 

only to search these more recent 

books for relevant passages needed 

for a quote or to confirm a footnote. 

With lawsuits filed and more on 

the way, Google Books will at least 

serve the useful purpose of forcing 

the courts to clarify copyright law in 

the age of the Internet. 

In the meantime, untold students 

and volunteers are scanning in untold 

pages of untold books at dozens of 

major libraries around the globe. ❏ 

Jim Trageser can be reached via 

his Web site (www.trageser.com). 


Bookmark our Web page, www.computoredge.com/sandiego, for easy access to these valuable Web sites: 

30 October 20, 2006 

CONSULTING 

Business Writing by Nightcats Multimedia 

www.nightcats.com 

GOVERNMENT 

California State Government 

www.ca.gov 

California Tourism 

gocalif.ca.gov 

City of San Diego 

www.sandiego.gov 

County of San Diego 

www.sdcounty.ca.gov 

Department of Motor Vehicles 

www.dmv.ca.gov 

Internal Revenue Service 

www.irs.gov 

San Diego Hispanic Chamber of Commerce 

www.sdchcc.com 

San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce 

www.sdchamber.org 

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS 

Surf Utopia Internet Services 

help, hosting, programming, security 

surfutopia.net 

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classroom. Tax Receipt, Joe 858-277-7648. 

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FROM $179! We also offer custom 

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FUJITSU MINI LAPTOP, 11-inch screen 

800MHz, 256MB RAM, 30GB HD, 

wireless card, external CD-RW $325, call 

619-303-4084. 

HEWLETT-PACKARD PAVILION Pentium 4 

2.8Ghz HT, 512MB DDR, 80GB, 128MB 

DDR Ti-400 nVidia, DVD+/-Writer, DVD- 

ROM, modem, Windows XP $350, call 

619-410-5292. 

INTEL DUAL-CORE!! 2.8GHz, 2GB 

Kingston DDR2-533, 250GB HD, Sony 16x 

DVD+/-RW. Includes Windows XP, Office 

2003, antivirus and more $675, e-mail 

bryanbriney@gmail.com. 

LAPTOP: TOSHIBA A65 with 60GB HD, 

1.26GB RAM, with wireless card and much 

more, one week old, this is a steal $520, 

call 619-623-2390. 

SELL YOUR COMPUTER FAST! For more 

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SGI O2, 300MHz R5000, 448MB RAM, 

2x9GB HD, Extra 4GB drive in sled, SVideo 

board, O2 Camera, IRIX 6.5 for $100, call 

858-458-1525. 

Printers 

COLOR LASER Samsung CLP-510, 1 year 

old, approx 7500 copies on original drum 

and fuser, dependable and quick copies 

$275/obo, call 619-443-3581. 

COMPUTOREDGE 

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512MB 7900 GTX overclocked video 

card, either EVGA or BFG, reason for 

selling... just got married $400/obo, call 

619-850-6396. 

AMD 3200+ CPU, BFG 6800GT AGP 

video card with 2-3 hours works great, 

great for gaming, office, school $125, call 

858-578-7856 or e-mail yogi.mail@sbc 

global.net. 

ASUS P2-99 motherboard, supports slot 1 

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ian@tekist.com. 

GATEWAY KEYBOARD, mouse, 3.5-inch 

CD-ROM, 5.25-inch CD-ROM, 5.25inch 

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except CPU, make offer, pickup, call 

760-434-5495. 

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1st, STOP BILL COLLECTORS - SAVE 50% 

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Example: You Owe $30,000; Pay $15,000 

or less. Negotiation beats Consolidation or 

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info, call 800-983-9610. 

HOME2OFFICE COMPUTING SOLUTIONS, 

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for San Diego businesses since 1994, 

tailored to organizations of 15-100 

workstations and/or multiple servers. Free 

business consultation. Guaranteed satis 

faction. Call 800-800-9H2O, 858-576- 

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Software 

ADOBE ACROBAT 6.0 for $9.99, call 619- 

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NORTON ANTI Virus CD 2004 for $9.99, 

call 619-623-2390. 

WINDOWS 2000 Advance Server CD $9.99, 

call 619-623-2390. 

Miscellaneous Hardware 

APPLE MAC Mini, mint, 1.5GHz Intel core 

solo, 512MB (up to 2GB), 60GB HD, 

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www.computoredge.com October 20, 2006 31 

®

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES 

Making the Professional 

Personal 

By Douglas E. Welch 

One of the best ways to build your business, and your 

career, is to focus not on the business itself, but on 

the one, unique item you have to sell: yourself. Making 

your profession personal means giving your clients a 

direct and personal connection to the work you do. 

The professional/personal concept came to mind during 

one of my monthly Career-Op Skypecasts. These are 

open teleconferences where readers and podcast listeners 

can ask questions of me and other attendees. On two separate 

occasions, I have been asked what workers can do 

to protect themselves against outsourcing and layoffs. 

While my own work situation as a freelancer is unique, I 

believe that others can make use of some of my methods. 

Clients Hire You, Not Your Company 

In my own computer consulting business, people hire 

me, not a company. When they call The Geek Squad or 

another computer support company, they are unsure of 

who might show up at the door—which means they are 

unsure whether their problem will be solved. When they 

hire me, usually as a direct referral from an existing 

client, they are 100 percent sure that it is I who will 

respond. In my case, I am my business. 

No matter where you work, you should seek to establish 

similar feelings in your clients, even if they happen to 

be your fellow employees. Co-workers shouldn’t feel 

they are calling the IT department (if that is your current 

assignment); they should be calling Bob in IT, or even 

better, they should simply be calling Bob. You want the 

client to associate your excellent work first with you, then 

with your company or department. 

There are several reasons for taking this personal 

approach. First, regardless of how or when your manager 

recognizes your exceptional service, your clients will 

already be aware of it from direct experience. Second, 

your own personal relationship with your client can’t help 

but outweigh any negative associations with your company 

or department. 

During my time in corporate IT, clients would often 

praise my work, while complaining about the IT department 

in the next breath. It was a bit surreal, having to separate 

yourself from your department, but it is essential to 

your own mental well being. The truth is, it is often IT 

workers themselves who have the biggest issues with IT 

32 October 20, 2006 

policies. It is nearly impossible to agree with everything 

your management does. 

So ally yourself with your client. They should feel that 

you are on their side, a partner in solving their problems, 

not another drone from a nearly nameless department. 

Personal Relationships 

I believe that my ability to develop a personal relationship 

with my clients saved me from at least one layoff. I 

had been marked for a layoff from my IT position, but 

then another department, headed by someone I had 

worked for in the past, heard of this plan. I was transferred 

into his department, as his own divisional IT 

staffer. Had I not performed well in the past work for this 

client and developed a relationship beyond my IT role, it 

is very likely that I would have ended up just another 

anonymous layoff. Success in your career is truly related 

to “who you know” in some ways. 

You should also develop personal relationships with your 

management. The more your manager knows about you, 

the more difficult it will be for her to add you to the layoff 

list. It is your goal to remain employed and build your 

career as much as possible. Isolating yourself from management 

makes you only a question mark—an anonymous 

cubicle dweller about whom your manager knows little. No 

matter the quality of your work, if your manager is unaware 

of your accomplishments, it is as if they never occurred. 

Regardless of whether you are running your own business 

or working inside a large corporation, you must 

make the professional personal. You must connect with 

your clients as a unique individual, as well as an IT 

worker, salesperson or accountant. It is through these 

personal relationships that you will build your career, 

increase your client base, and cement your position within 

any company. ❏ 

Douglas E. Welch is a writer and computer consultant 

in Los Angeles. Career Opportunities is also available as 

a podcast and is a member of Friends In Tech. 

Our Readers 

Are Your Next Employees 

ComputorEdge readers are among the best educated, most highly skilled 

professionals in the industry. When they’re looking for a career change, the 

first place they turn is to the Career Opportunities Listings in ComputorEdge. 

Contact Grace in the Career 

Opportunities Department 

858/573-0315 


PRODUCT INDEX 

Computer Sales & Service 

Chips and Memory.Com 

Micro PC Outlet 

PC Club 

Data Recovery 

ADS Data Recovery Experts 

CBL Data Recovery Technologies 

San Diego Data Recovery/Computers 

SDCom.com/1USRecovery.com 

Disk Duplication 

Affordable Duplication Services 

IBM & Compatible Products 

Best Deal Computer 

COMP1 

ADVERTISER INDEX 

ADS Data Recovery Experts ______25 

Affordable Duplication Services____14 

Allstates Mailing Services ________16 

American Internet Services ________9 

Best Deal Computer ____________19 

CBL Data Recovery Technologies __23 

Chips and Memory.Com__________7 

Communications World Network __20 

COMPUTOREDGE 

Computer Depot Warehouse 

Superstore 

CTP Computer 


Online Datalink 

PC Club 

Technology Depot 

Internet Services 

American Internet Services 

Communications World Network 

Complex Drive 

Mailing Services 

Allstates Mailing Services 

Online Computer Sales 

Computer Geeks Discount Outlet 

COMP1______________________11 

Complex Drive ________________36 

Computer Depot Warehouse 

Superstore ________________5 

Computer Geeks Discount Outlet __22 

CTP Computer ________________17 

Hi-Tech Computers ____________23 

Laptops Plus__________________25 

LaserQuick __________________20 


PC Club 

Portable Computers 

Laptops Plus 

Repairs 

Hi-Tech Computers 

Laptops Plus 


PC Club 

Toner Recharging 

LaserQuick 

Video Accessories 

Mega Comm Technologies 

Web Services 

NetSpigot 

Mega Comm Technologies ______16 

Micro PC Outlet ____________12–13 

NetSpigot ____________________24 

Online Datalink ________________21 

PC Club ______________________2 

San Diego Data Recovery/ 

Computers________________14 

SDCom.com/1USRecovery.com __35 

Technology Depot______________15 


DIRECTORY OF SERVICES 

Computer Services 

Affordable Mobile PC Repair 

Unlimited PC Services Just $20 a Month 

www.ComputerRemediesOnline.com 

Hourly Rates Available—619-865-3977 

Computer Circulation Center 

Buy, Sell, Trade, Laptops, PCs, Repairs, 

Upgrades, Virus and Spyware Removal. 

24-48 Hours Turnaround—858-573-0411 

GizmoTek Consulting 

PC/Network Services for Sm Biz/Home. 

Install, Upgrade, Fix. Onsite Service. 

Paul 619-216-2580 

Supertek Computer Service 

Sales, Service, Upgrades and Networks 

Installation, Setup, Friendly Service 

800-633-9499—www.supertek.net 

Consulting 

Home2Office, Inc. 

2003 San Diego Better Business Bureau 

Torch Award Winner! Free Network Needs 

Analysis (Companies 15-100 Workstations) 

Microsoft/CITRIX, Cisco, Apple Certified! 

Expert Troubleshooting, Security, VPN, 

Spam Solutions. WAN/LAN/Wi-Fi 

858-576-1426 or 800-800-9H2O 

www.home2office.com 

vMpire 

Firewalls and Networking, 

Server Installations, Migrations and 

Virtualization, Desktop Support, Wireless 

Installations, Voice-over-IP, 

Security Assessments—619-286-7473 

Worthey Solutions 

Onsite Service, Networking, Support, 

Consulting. Database Apps. Personal 

Service and Expertise—858-405-1373 

Data Recovery 

# 1 AAA San Diego Data Recovery 

Laptop and Desktop Repair-24 Hour Average 

Turnaround. Emergency Service Available 

Manufacturer Authorized and Licensed 

Reseller. We Fix All Problems: Blue 

Screens Freezing, Slow. Dell, HP, Compaq, 

Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu, IBM Etc. 

Customers Must Be Satisfied! 

858-523-1633—619-977-7340 

#1 Data Recovery Service 

Best Prices, Service and Results. 

Please Visit www.24hrdatarecovery.com 

Call 619-696-1370/Toll Free 888-744-8808 

34 October 20, 2006 

1 A Advanced Data Solutions 

A Recognized Worldwide Trusted Leader 

Recomended by Major Corporations 

San Diego’s #1 Data Recovery Experts 

1. Over 20 Years Hands-On Experience 

2. Free Evaluations, No Data - No Charge 

3. Professionally Trained and Certified 

4. Cutting Edge High Tech. Skills/Equip 

5. All Failures, Media, and OS Supported 

6. RAIDS/Network Servers/NAS/Workstation 

7. Certified Class 100 Clean-Room 

8. All Work Done In-House, No Middle Man 

9. Best Price/Results, Fastest Turnaround 

10. Accurate, Friendly, Confidential, Svc 

11. Gov, Corp., Co., School PO’s Accepted 

12. Aqui Hablamos Su Idioma 

13. 24Hr Emergency Svc. Pick-Up/Delivery 

www.adv-data.com 24Hrs/7 day 619-336-1400 

1US Recovery/SDCom.com 

Professional Data Recovery Services 

On All Operating Systems and Media. 

Free Diagnostic. See Our Ad. Toll Free 

1-US-Recovery—www.1usrecovery.com 

CBL Data Recovery Technologies, Inc. 

Manager Doug Owens 

San Diego 619-449-1200 

www.cbltech.com—1-800-551-3917 

Clear Computer Data Recovery 

North County’s Professional Solution 

All Media, Fast Turnaround. Free 

Diagnostic. Clearly the Best—760-402-5411 

HDO Data Recovery Service 

Competent, Professional Care Since 1987 

Hard Disks, Floppy, Jazz, Zip, Syquest, Etc. 

Free Diagnostic, See Ad—858-455-0277 

Disk Duplication 

Affordable Duplication Service 

Highest Quality CD/DVD Duplication 

Full-Color Direct-to-Disc Printing 

Custom Media, Jewel Cases, Inserts, 

Booklets, Fast Turnaround—Satisfaction 

Guaranteed. CD/DVD Duplicators for Sale 

or Rental. Please See Our Display Ad and 

Web Site. www.affordable-duplication.com 

619-462-0702 

Golden Gate Software 

CD Duplication — No Minimum 

Low Prices — Quality Service 

www.ggsft.com—858-274-5938 

Macintosh Specialist 

Macsimizers 

On-Site Service for Home and Small 

Office Needs. Serving SD County Since 

1988. Richard Parcel—619-465-6499 

Networking 

JNet Services 

Network Services for SMBs 

Microsoft Certified, Member BBB 

Windows 2000/2003, SBS 2000/2003 

760-271-6528—www.jnetservices.com 

North County Technology Group 

San Diego County’s First Certified 

Microsoft Small Business Specialist 

www.nctg.com—760-734-4315 

Programming 

Golden Gate Software 

Quality Work Using MS Technologies 

VB.NET, Access DB, ASP.NET, SQL Server 

CD Duplication. ggsft.com—858-274-5938 

Repair 

A+ HP Authorized Repairs! 

Sales/Service-Printer/Plotter/Copy/Fax 

& Upgrade. Free Diagnostic/Cleaning, Low 

Cost Toner Cart./Supplies—858-560-4100 

AAA Emergency PC Repair 

Off Hours/Weekends/Holidays Immediate Svc 

Temp or Perm Repairs On-Site/In Shop. 

Pickup/Delivery Available—619-889-9674 

Chips and Memory 

PC Repair and Upgrade 

$25 Diagnostics 

858-279-2447 

LaserQuick 

Free Phone Estimates/1-Day Repair Service 

Low-Cost Flat-Rate Labor (Free Cleaning) 

619-441-5020—Toll Free 877-354-2045 

MPCR (Mobile Portable Computer Repair) 

On-Site Notebook/Desktop Computer Repair 

A+, Toshiba, Compaq Certified Technician 

760-434-8899 or www.mobilepcr.com 

Web Developers 

AAI Web Graphics & E-Commerce Solutions 

Our Prices and Completion Time Will Amaze 

You! Top Quality Guaranteed. Free Consult 

760-438-3030 www.VisualArtsGroup.net 

Web Services 

NetSpigot 

Is Your Web Site Working For You? 

We Provide The Client/Customer Interaction 

That Your Business Needs Without The Hassle 

of Installing Programs or Any Programming. 

www.netspigot.com—858-573-0315

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