manageable computing

Even though Microsoft is finally getting around to releasing a version seven of their Internet Explorer browser, most of the recent innovation has been taking place with the freely downloadable Firefox browser. The main feature Firefox brought to the mainstream and that IE7 will be offering is tabbed browsing. With a tabbed browser, you can open new browser "windows" in the same window but with the page title appearing in a tab instead of the window title bar. This makes it really practical to switch between multiple web pages simultaneously without spending all your time finding the right window on your task bar.

Beyond tabbed browsing, Firefox has captured a significant share of the browser market by offering programmers the ability to extend its functionality through add-ins they call Extensions.

Here are some of my favorite Firefox Extensions and why:

Windows XP works quite well with tons of hardware and software. But even the programmers at Microsoft have thought of a bunch of ways to make it better. Enter the PowerToys for Windows XP, a group of freely available extensions to the Windows XP operating system that you can install and use to make your life easier. I especially like the Image Resizer, Command Prompt Here, and Tweak UI which lets you adjust things like menu speed, desktop icon size and spacing.

I also like the "Send to X" powertoy from Windows 95 which lets you copy groups of filenames to the clipboard, send a filename to a command line, or send files to any folder, all with a right-click.

Blue Security has come up with an innovative way of applying real pressure on companies who use spam to generate traffic to their web sites. If identified spammers don't heed warnings to stop, participants' computers will be instructed to post a complaint to the offender's web site every time a spam message from that site is received.

When I got my first invitation to use Plaxo from a relative of mine, I was suspicious. Any company that was offering to help me manage all my contact (and calendar) information at no charge HAD to be up to something no good. Well, I've been using it for about 6 months now and I am absolutely sold!!! Basically you install a Plaxo program on your computer that copies your contact data up to your own private space on the Plaxo server somewhere in the sky, okay I mean Internet. The first benefit is that you just created an off-site backup copy of your contact data!

If you suspect something fishy has made its way onto your system and your virus and spyware programs aren't picking it up, download HijackThis , unzip the program to a new location, run the program and produce a log file, then copy and paste its contents into the space provided on this web page: this HijackThis log analyzer.

This process will tell you what experienced people believe about the programs running on your system. If you have any BAD items, search the list of spyware removal strategies found on the same website.