Yahoo! was created as a hand-picked directory of Web sites. Over the past
decade, however, the Yahoo! directory has become a less and less important
part of the Yahoo! pantheon of services—to the point where many users don’t
even know the directory exists. After all, if you use the search box on the
Yahoo! home page—which Yahoo! obviously wants you to do—you pass over
the directory entirely.
That’s too bad, because the Yahoo! directory is actually a pretty good assem
blage of what’s out there on the Web. It’s also arguably the easiest search site
for Web surfers to use.
It all boils down to the basic difference between a directory and a search index.
You see, there are two approaches to organizing all the information on the
World Wide Web. One approach is to use a special type of software program
(called a spider or crawler) to roam the Web automatically, feeding what it finds
back to a massive bank of computers. These computers hold indices of the
Web—in some cases, entire Web pages are indexed; in other cases, only the
titles and important words on a page are indexed. This approach is the one
taken by the big search engines, such as Google, AltaVista, and HotBot—and
by Yahoo!’s Web Search feature.
The other approach—the one taken by the Yahoo! directory—is to have actual
human beings physically look at each Web page and stick each one into a
hand-picked category. After you get enough Web pages collected, you have
something called a directory.
Unlike a search engine, a directory doesn’t search the entire Web—in fact, a
directory catalogs only a very small part of the Web. But a directory is very
organized, and very easy to use, and lots and lots of people use Web directories
(such as Yahoo!) every day.
Of course, that’s not to say that the Yahoo! directory is perfect. Far from it. For
starters, it’s small—only 2 million pages, versus 3 billion or so in Yahoo!’s Google
supplied Web Search index. (That means that Yahoo!’s directory content repre
sents less than 1⁄10 of 1 percent of the total number of pages currently published on the Web—not very comprehensive at all.)
Fortunately, you don’t have to limit yourself to the listings in the Yahoo! direc
tory; Yahoo! supplements its directory listings with search results from a third-
party search engine. Read on to learn another little secret about Yahoo!’s search
capabilities.
The Yahoo! Directory Has Higher Quality Results than Yahoo! Web Search—but Fewer of Them
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Use the Direct Address :-
Even better, almost every Yahoo! service has its own unique URL that you can enter directly into your browser’s address box, or bookmark as necessary. You might think that remembering dozens of unique URLs would be difficult. And, of course, you’d be right—if you actually had to memorize the URLs. Fortunately, Yahoo! uses an address scheme that’s easy on the old memory, thanks to its common-sense nature. Yahoo!’s address scheme is simple. Just take the yahoo.com domain and add the service name in front of it, like this: service.yahoo.com. So, for example, if you want to go to Yahoo! News, you enter news.yahoo.com. If you want to go to Yahoo! Mail, enter mail.yahoo.com.
Even better, almost every Yahoo! service has its own unique URL that you can enter directly into your browser’s address box, or bookmark as necessary. You might think that remembering dozens of unique URLs would be difficult. And, of course, you’d be right—if you actually had to memorize the URLs. Fortunately, Yahoo! uses an address scheme that’s easy on the old memory, thanks to its common-sense nature. Yahoo!’s address scheme is simple. Just take the yahoo.com domain and add the service name in front of it, like this: service.yahoo.com. So, for example, if you want to go to Yahoo! News, you enter news.yahoo.com. If you want to go to Yahoo! Mail, enter mail.yahoo.com.
| Yahoo! home page | www.yahoo.com |
| Yahooligans! | www.yahooligans.com |
| My Yahoo! | my.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Address Book | address.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Astrology | astrology.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Auctions | auctions.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Autos | autos.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Banking Center | banking.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Bookmarks | bookmarks.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Briefcase | briefcase.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Buzz Index | buzz.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! by Phone | phone.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Calendar | calendar.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Chat | chat.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Classifieds | classifieds.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Companion (toolbar) | companion.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Education | education.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Entertainment | entertainment.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Fantasy Sports | fantasysports.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Finance | finance.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Games | games.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! GeoCities | geocities.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Get Local | local.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Greetings | greetings.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Groups | groups.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Health | health.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! HotJobs | hotjobs.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Insurance | Center insurance.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Launch (music) | launch.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Loan Center | loan.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Lottery Results | lottery.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Mail | mail.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Mail Plus | mailplus.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Maps | maps.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Message Boards | messages.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Messenger | messenger.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Mobile | mobile.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Movies | movies.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! News | news.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! PayDirect | paydirect.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! People Search | people.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Personals | personals.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Pets | pets.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Photos | photos.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Picture Gallery | gallery.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Products Search | products.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Real Estate | realestate.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Shopping | shopping.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Small Business | smallbusiness.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Sports | sports.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Store | store.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Tax Center | taxes.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Travel | travel.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! TV | tv.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Wallet | wallet.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Weather | weather.yahoo.com |
| Yahoo! Web Hosting | webhosting.yahoo.com |
Not a Windows XP SP3 beta tester, but can't wait for the official release? Or just like to stay on the bleeding edge? There's a way you can get access to it via Windows Update.
It does involve editing the registry, but it's not that difficult.Here's all you need to do. You need to create the following
key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\WindowsUpdate\XPSP3
Then create the string value RCPreview below that key, and give it the
value:1c667073-b87f-4f52-a479-98c85711d869
If you had previously had a version of SP3 earlier, you might already have the registry key; just make sure only the string value RCPreview exists in the key when you're done.
Once the key is in your registry, if you go to Windows Update, you'll see you can download SP3 RC1, as above. I've tried it (obviously, since that's my screenshot) and it works.Of course, your mileage may vary, and changes to your registry should be made with care.
Naturally I recommend you back up your registry before trying this, and there's also no guarantee Microsoft won't change things with RC2 or even tomorrow so that this no longer works.If you want you can also download and run the batch file
here
It does involve editing the registry, but it's not that difficult.Here's all you need to do. You need to create the following
key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\WindowsUpdate\XPSP3
Then create the string value RCPreview below that key, and give it the
value:1c667073-b87f-4f52-a479-98c85711d869
If you had previously had a version of SP3 earlier, you might already have the registry key; just make sure only the string value RCPreview exists in the key when you're done.
Once the key is in your registry, if you go to Windows Update, you'll see you can download SP3 RC1, as above. I've tried it (obviously, since that's my screenshot) and it works.Of course, your mileage may vary, and changes to your registry should be made with care.
Naturally I recommend you back up your registry before trying this, and there's also no guarantee Microsoft won't change things with RC2 or even tomorrow so that this no longer works.If you want you can also download and run the batch file
here
The Tech Report posted an article on 7/13/2006 on how to create PDF files without Acrobat. It's detailed, but I have to wonder why they make you jump through so many hoops, when you can simply download free software at PDF995.com which will do everything The Tech Report wants you to do, but without all the manual labor. Interestingly, The Tech Report wants you to use GhostScript, and a partial version of that is used in PDF995's software. What's the drawback of PDF995's software? You are "subjected" to an ad in your web browser each time you run the programs. That's little to "pay" for such a useful suite, though.
My friend purchased a cheap Linux PC. Of course, the idea was to reformat and place Windows on it. However, after starting the install, Windows XP reboots ... at this point the message "Disk Boot Error" is displayed. So the install cannot complete.At this point he was lost. I decided to take a look.
I had a feeling there was a Linux boot record that was causing a problem. The reformat wasn't taking care of it.What I did was use the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows.
You create this using a set of freeware tools and your Windows XP CD. I used this to boot the system, and used MBRWiz (Master Boot Record Wizard) to wipe the Master Boot Record.
Crossing my fingers, I started up the Windows XP install again. It went through the first pass, booting from the CD, then it rebooted. At this point in the install XP has to boot from the HD.
Here's where it was failing previously.And it worked. So the problem was indeed that Linux had mucked with the Master Boot Record. Makes sense, though.So, if you want to convert a cheap Linux PC into a Windows PC, don't forget to clear the MBR. It's not enough to reformat. Remembering this will save you a lot of time and effort.
Viruses, trojans, spyware. All of these fit under the general term of malware, software designed to damage a user's computer. But how to choose a package? There are many antivirus vendors; which one should you use?
Note: most vendors have a subscription model nowadays ... you buy the software and have to renew either the program, or the virus update subscription ... or both, after a year for a fee.
Do You Need a Firewall? Well, Windows XP has a firewall built-in ... it's simple, but it works. I wouldn't think you need to buy a different firewall. Also, if, like many people, you use a router with your broadband connection, you shouldn't need to use a firewall as hackers won't be able to get past the router ... unless you open up a lot of ports, that is.
The Big 2
The safe (?) choices would be the biggest companies ... the ones that most people have heard of. Those would be McAfee VirusScan and Symantec Antivirus. Both of these vendors offer security suites that include spyware detection and firewalls. Since these are considered the big 2, they are the safe choice. And, in fact, both do a good job of securing your system.
Negatives? Symantec Antivirus is notoriously heavy. It uses a lot of resources, and will bog down slower systems. Additionally, Symantec requires activation of its products ... personally, aside from Windows XP, which leaves me little choice, I refuse to buy products that require activation. The initial problems Symantec had with activation shows why.
As far as McAfee goes, I used to use it, and it was very light on resources. But I don't like its use of ActiveX technology. Obviously the use of ActiveX in an antivirus product shouldn't open vulnerabilities, but since ActiveX has such a bad rep ...
One other negative of buying the biggest: many hackers consider getting around Symantec and McAfee to be a challenge ... and, as outlined in this Business Week article, many are successful.
Choosing From the Rest
Just because they're the biggest vendors doesn't mean Symantec and McAfee are your best choices. Quite a few people use other software. How should you make your choice?
One thing I would do is check for a) reviews (not that easy to find), b) test results.
Virus Bulletin awards the VB100% Award to products that a) detect all "In the Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning in Virus Bulletin's comparative tests, b) generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files. You have to register at the site but it's free. Note: they do not test every month, and they usually test only one platform (OS) each time.
ICSA Labs certifies antivirus products. A list of the currently certified products is here.
AV-Test.org also tests antivirus products. One interesting spreadsheet on the site indicates how quickly vendors reacted to the Zotob virus that spread earlier this year. It also indicates which products detected the virus proactively, using heuristics. More on this later.
Now, the failure or success of one product over another in the tests does not necessarily mean a product is good or bad. What does count is if a product succeeds or fails consistently.
Now, heuristics. I like to look for antivirus products that have good heuristics, that is, they don't rely just on virus signatures but also analyze files to determine if the file could possibly be a virus which does not have a signature yet. Of course, this can lead to occasional false positives, but I'd rather have a few (note the emphasis on few) false positives than have a new virus slip by.
There are quite a few second-tier vendors that can be relied on to provide a reliable, effective scanner (I use one of them) ... for me, the final decision was based on effectiveness combined with light use of resources (I am a gamer and, although I could turn off a heavy antivirus program during gaming, I prefer not to).
Spyware
I don't feel it's necessary to have a background spyware scanner running. I'm just careful and make sure I don't opt-in or install anything I don't want. Also, many antivirus products look for spyware by default. I do occasional standalone scans using both Spybot - Search & Destroy and a-squared free edition. Both are free. Both are effective. Usually all I find are some tracking cookies.
Trojans
A Trojan (short for Trojan Horse) differs from a virus in that it cannot replicate itself. Frequently Trojans log your keystrokes or open backdoors to your PC so that the writer can turn your computer into a zombie. I prefer a stand-alone antitrojan program. This limits me, as there aren't that many vendors. You can look at BOClean (which has saved me more than once!), Trojan Hunter, ewido ... and there are a few more. But it's a smaller, tougher biz than antivirus, TDS-3 recently dropped out of the business.
What Have We Learned?
Honestly, if you don't go with the big 2 (and you don't have to) you need to do research at the sites I mentioned, as well as look for reviews. Determine if you can live with a heavier program or if you want a light one. There are even free antivirus programs (such as Avast and AVG) also, with limitations, usually on number of virus definition updates / day. Just be sure you have some protection. The amount of time an unprotected system can be connected to the Internet without infection has dropped to below 20 minutes.
Note: most vendors have a subscription model nowadays ... you buy the software and have to renew either the program, or the virus update subscription ... or both, after a year for a fee.
Do You Need a Firewall? Well, Windows XP has a firewall built-in ... it's simple, but it works. I wouldn't think you need to buy a different firewall. Also, if, like many people, you use a router with your broadband connection, you shouldn't need to use a firewall as hackers won't be able to get past the router ... unless you open up a lot of ports, that is.
The Big 2
The safe (?) choices would be the biggest companies ... the ones that most people have heard of. Those would be McAfee VirusScan and Symantec Antivirus. Both of these vendors offer security suites that include spyware detection and firewalls. Since these are considered the big 2, they are the safe choice. And, in fact, both do a good job of securing your system.
Negatives? Symantec Antivirus is notoriously heavy. It uses a lot of resources, and will bog down slower systems. Additionally, Symantec requires activation of its products ... personally, aside from Windows XP, which leaves me little choice, I refuse to buy products that require activation. The initial problems Symantec had with activation shows why.
As far as McAfee goes, I used to use it, and it was very light on resources. But I don't like its use of ActiveX technology. Obviously the use of ActiveX in an antivirus product shouldn't open vulnerabilities, but since ActiveX has such a bad rep ...
One other negative of buying the biggest: many hackers consider getting around Symantec and McAfee to be a challenge ... and, as outlined in this Business Week article, many are successful.
Choosing From the Rest
Just because they're the biggest vendors doesn't mean Symantec and McAfee are your best choices. Quite a few people use other software. How should you make your choice?
One thing I would do is check for a) reviews (not that easy to find), b) test results.
Virus Bulletin awards the VB100% Award to products that a) detect all "In the Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning in Virus Bulletin's comparative tests, b) generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files. You have to register at the site but it's free. Note: they do not test every month, and they usually test only one platform (OS) each time.
ICSA Labs certifies antivirus products. A list of the currently certified products is here.
AV-Test.org also tests antivirus products. One interesting spreadsheet on the site indicates how quickly vendors reacted to the Zotob virus that spread earlier this year. It also indicates which products detected the virus proactively, using heuristics. More on this later.
Now, the failure or success of one product over another in the tests does not necessarily mean a product is good or bad. What does count is if a product succeeds or fails consistently.
Now, heuristics. I like to look for antivirus products that have good heuristics, that is, they don't rely just on virus signatures but also analyze files to determine if the file could possibly be a virus which does not have a signature yet. Of course, this can lead to occasional false positives, but I'd rather have a few (note the emphasis on few) false positives than have a new virus slip by.
There are quite a few second-tier vendors that can be relied on to provide a reliable, effective scanner (I use one of them) ... for me, the final decision was based on effectiveness combined with light use of resources (I am a gamer and, although I could turn off a heavy antivirus program during gaming, I prefer not to).
Spyware
I don't feel it's necessary to have a background spyware scanner running. I'm just careful and make sure I don't opt-in or install anything I don't want. Also, many antivirus products look for spyware by default. I do occasional standalone scans using both Spybot - Search & Destroy and a-squared free edition. Both are free. Both are effective. Usually all I find are some tracking cookies.
Trojans
A Trojan (short for Trojan Horse) differs from a virus in that it cannot replicate itself. Frequently Trojans log your keystrokes or open backdoors to your PC so that the writer can turn your computer into a zombie. I prefer a stand-alone antitrojan program. This limits me, as there aren't that many vendors. You can look at BOClean (which has saved me more than once!), Trojan Hunter, ewido ... and there are a few more. But it's a smaller, tougher biz than antivirus, TDS-3 recently dropped out of the business.
What Have We Learned?
Honestly, if you don't go with the big 2 (and you don't have to) you need to do research at the sites I mentioned, as well as look for reviews. Determine if you can live with a heavier program or if you want a light one. There are even free antivirus programs (such as Avast and AVG) also, with limitations, usually on number of virus definition updates / day. Just be sure you have some protection. The amount of time an unprotected system can be connected to the Internet without infection has dropped to below 20 minutes.
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Adding an external hard drive the EASY way would be to just buy an external HD and attach it to a USB port (or Firewire, but these days it's mostly USB 2.0).
The hard way ... buy your own enclosure and HD, hook them up and attach it to a USB port.
Doesn't sound THAT hard. But in my case ...
I found a Maxtor 300 GB HD on sale (with rebate) for $89.99. I found a nice looking aluminum external enclosure for about $30. I also received a rebate of 4% from one of my rebate sites (MrRebates or Fatwallet, can't recall which). Or I could have purchased a 250 GB HD for $149 + tax. I'd never tried this before (I'd hooked up new internal drives, though) so I thought it would be easy.
Well, first thing I did after getting the parts was was hook up the drive to the real hardware of the enclosure ... the part that had the USB hardware + the power connection and IDE port ... and I noticed the HD was making a clunking noise when I powered it up. Uh, oh.
Connected it, and as I figured, nothing. HD was bad. Sigh. Returned it (they gave me a credit of $8 for shipping and it cost me $7.80 for shipping and insurance ... whew).
All right, just got the new HD. Hooked it up. No clunking. Put things together. Oops, I screwed everything in but did not put the panel on top (side) of the enclosure. Unscrew things. Let's try it again.
All right, connect it to the PC. It's recognized. Open up Windows Explorer. Hey, where is it?!
I figured I knew what it was, but I wasn't 100%. I opened up the Disk Manager (Start, Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management). I could see the drive, but no drive letter and no partition. Figured it was the partition that was missing that was screwing it up.
Well, I'd never partitioned a HD in XP. I actually had to look it up. I used the DiskPart command line tool ... didn't even know about this. After partitioning it using the a) List Disk, b) Select Disk (2 in this case), Create Primary Partition commands, I could see in Disk Management that the partition was there, but still no drive letter.
Right clicked on it ... and viola, I could NOW select a drive letter.
Now all I have to do is format it ... then comes the fun part ... hooking it up to the Linksys NSLU2 NAS device I have already purchased. I might wait until tomorrow for that one!