I sincerely wish Ugly Bogle Kisses & Real Scary Dreams to anyone who has ever spammed, hacked, phished or created a computer virus.

The amount of frustrated time and energy I have spent trying to work with the restrictions forced on our computing experience because of the various internet evil-doers boggles my mind. This is not a good thing, thinking is hard enough without my being boggled.

Sometimes when I can't do something, like shop for clothing, or print to a shared printer, or access a file on another computer on my network, I have the hardest time figuring out WHICH of the several necessary virtual condoms I have installed to blame. Is it my firewall? Is it the other computer's firewall? Is it my browser settings? Is a port closed on the router? All too often, I just give up. I will never be able to share the glorious content of my hard drive via BitTorrent. And the world is the lesser for it. And I really really wanted that yellow blouse but I never could get my laptop to let me do it....mmm I wonder if my check book software is talking to my browser?

Recently I became concerned about the security on my father's computer. He does all of this banking, his massive stock manipulations and his drug purchasing online. Perhaps he would fall prey to some phishing scheme! I know he doesn't read things before clicking.

Or maybe I just wanted another shiny USB device. I was seduced by an article at PCWorld about the ID Guard. The device not only stores your passwords to financial sites in an encrypted format, it connects to an updated list of financial websites. When you want to access your account at any of these sites, you use the list stored on the device, avoiding any chance of mistyping a URL or ending up on some smelly phishy site, ultimately becoming a character on a TV commercial about identity theft.

I wish I had waited for some of the reviews.

The device is cute, and easy enough to install. My father is 79, and he was able to get halfway through the installation (best way to test usability on anything is give it to a senior to set up). He can use it, and he's mostly happy with it.

I bought two, because OF COURSE I needed one myself, to test...and to....yeah, fill a slot in my USB stick case.

I had to uninstall the software-I found it fatally flawed. The software pops up a window whenever you go to a site where it detects a form with a user name and password, and asks you if you would like to use the software to manage your password for this site. It pops up every time. Every single freaking time. On every single page. Yes.

There is a feature which allows you to say, "Nope never" but as far as I can tell, it doesn't respect this per site....yeah. And some sites have a log in form on every page....forums, for example. Experts Exchange a very helpful website. And apparently, every time you shop on Amazon, and check out, you get a different URL, so the ID Guard software does not respect your request to NOT ASK ME IF I WANT TO SAVE MY PASSWORD.

I know I am shouting, but stupid software just does that too me.

I honestly tried to use the thing. One of its greatest features is that you use an onscreen keyboard to type in your username and password, so that keyloggers can't capture your information. Of course, if you are infected by keylogging software, you probably wouldn't think to buy something like ID Guard. See you on TV.

Good if you don't travel a lot on the Internet. Recommended for the extra paranoid who don't mind being inconvenienced.

Fills a slot in my case.

Our Editor, in an effort to curb my never ending lust for new timepieces, pointed out this article to me.

Cell phones taking over as timepieces

According to Reuters

U.S. watch sales, which have been on the decline since 2001, fell 4.9 percent in 2005, according to a new market research study.

Obviously, I have been falling down on the job. I knew I shouldn't have returned that Movado!

But the article does point out that more men than women think it makes sense to dig in their pocket for a cell phone than to glance at their watch. This is the probably the same group of people who famously can't ask anyone for directions until they have walked around in circles for 50 minutes.

Women are apparently more loyal to their accessories than men. 40 million of the almost 70 million people who bought watches last year were women.

I didn't know anyone was watching me that closely!

As I told the Editor, as much as I love my Treo700w, all dressed up in a Flekiskin from Boxwave, it can't compete with a truly fabulous watch.

The Dolce & Gabbana watch site is Flash, but fun Flash. Wait for it to finish loading, and click on "Cream" to see the watch.

and my bank account too small for all the good toys coming out this year.

You don't even have to open the case

What more can I say. And as ridiculous as it is, the $4000 price almost seems reasonable. People pay as much for a high end entertainment display.

I must be losing my mind.

Big, Beautiful Display

Site Advisor, a new online service currently in beta, ranks websites based on whether they belong to the Evil Internet or to the light side of the Force.

After installing an Internet Explorer plug-in or a Firefox extension, the Site Advisor ranking shows up when you search on Google, MSN or Yahoo.

Sites get a green checkmark if they are very very good or a red x when they are rotten. You can mouse over the icons to get more information about exactly why the site got the rating it did.

I searched on Google for spyware. Site Advisor revealed that a lot of the sponsored links were for sites that promoted dubious programs or actually installed spyware.

I was happy to learn that Trigger Magazine has a happy green checkmark.

but I love them. I play with my queue obsessively, as if LOOKING at the movie would make it come sooner. I rearrange it, trying to decide if I really want to see The Maltese Falcon before disc 3 of season 6 of Star Trek: TNG.

I am one of those heavy users of Netflix that they hate-I usually return a movie the next day, the day after at the latest. Soon after I joined in June I noticed a serious slowdown in getting new discs, but I don't think that they admitted at that time that it was a deliberate policy.

This article from Internet Week points out that they are delaying my shipments, and that this is disclosed in their Terms of Service.

The in-store Blockbuster'hack' doesn't work for me, Blockbuster can't satisfy my ambition to watch every episode of every Star Trek series ever aired. The depth of the documentary collection at my local BB is lame enough to be laughable, so I am a willing prisoner of Netflix (and I must admit that I also belong to BB online because Netflix doesn't have the right edition of Star Trek: TOS).

And I love to play with my queue.

Regret. So painful. Why oh why did I install that new program!! Everything worked just fine before I did -or as fine as a computer can be said to work.

Have you ever said that? Or let someone else use your computer, to come back to some totally fracked up mess that won't even boot without a million mysterious error messages?

What can you do when that happens? You can call your geek friend, or take the poor thing to the nearest computer destruction repair place, or maybe you were extra paranoid like myself, and backed up your entire hard drive right before you clicked on that tempting little OK button.

Or maybe not. Here's a new kind of solution. Instead of trying to use the wayback machine to return to a time when your computer worked, use a sort of Virtual PC to test software changes, or to let your evil nephew visit whatever websites he wants while your back is turned.

From the manufacturer's website:

ShadowUser Pro insulates your PC from all manner of day-to-day problems. It runs an exact duplicate of your system as a virtual machine, known as ShadowMode. If a software installation goes wrong or a virus hits, you can completely discard the virtual machine. Conversely, if you've successfully installed software or made other important changes, you can write all or part of the virtual machine back to the actual, physical PC's storage.

It's not exactly cheap-I scored a copy for $69, but it looks like that special ends today. But......

It sure beats standing at that repair counter while some bored tech guy tries to explain to you that installing that software actually fried your motherboard and wiped your hard drive and reported you to the IRS.

Recently my sister's (old old old) computer has signaled to her in oh so many ways that it is ready to turn belly up, kick its poor little peripherals weakly, and pass into another realm, along with all her data and personal settings.

Because she's MY sister, we are giving the poor thing careful hospice care, so that when it finally does go 'bye-bye', she isn't devastated.

She purchased a large hard drive, and has been spending time the past few weeks to copy over scads of pictures, videos, documents, music files and e-mail messages.

However, like most people, she hasn't done a particularly careful job of keeping track of all the passwords to her favorites sites. This could be a real problem, because she has been a certified NetGoddess since 1994, and people depend on her writings.

She asked me how to capture the passwords she has stored now. Since Google is our friend, I was able to find out some interesting information on how Internet Explorer stores passwords, and how you can recover them.

Interestingly enough, Internet Explorer stores the passwords in something called Microsoft Protected Storage, which ultimately means that they are stored in the registry.

This gives us a couple of different ways to recover them.

We could find out where in the registry the passwords are stored, and try to export the registry key(s), and then import them to another computer, but its a pretty bad idea for most people to play in the registry.

We could use a program that can read this information and that allows us to export the data.

I tried 2 programs, one free and one commercial. I decided to buy the commercial application (of course-I hadn't pulled out my credit card for at least 30 minutes) because the interface was slicker and easier to work with.

The freeware app Protected Storage Explorer is downloadable at http://www.codeproject.com/tools/PSExplorer.asp, but you do have to register to download. Make sure you select not to recieve newsletters and other e-mail unless you really are interested in programming topics.

The commercial application I chose, Internet Explorer Password Recovery, is available from Rixler Inc. They have a number of other password recovery utilities that might be useful, depending on what you need to recover.

Another free utility I use to recover passwords stored in software applications (not for websites, however) is PassReveal. You can usually Google for this utility, it's been uploaded to many servers. If you do, you will also find out that it is considered a hacking tool (which it is). If you install it, all good spyware and trojan detecting programs will complain.

Of course, if you use a password manager, you might not have to worry about recovering passwords. I had to start using one a few years ago, if only because I use multiple computers. You can use a program to manage your passwords. I bought into SplashID a few years ago, our Publisher swears by Keepass (free!)

Tip: If you are using Firefox or Mozilla, your passwords are stored in your profile folder.

I need to buy a new laptop...something is seriously wrong with my beloved Sony Vaio.

I've decided to buy a laptop with the Windows Media Center operating system installed. I want to see how this operating system works, and I want to experiment with recording TV shows and watching them on my Samsung Portable Media Center player.

I need a little bit of tech happiness after my recent and prolonged visit to PC formatting hell.

I believe in right clicking.

A lot of smart people swear by keyboard macros. Their contention is that they are more efficient if they can keep both hands on the keyboard, and that mousing is inherently less efficient.

I am not so sure. Certainly manuevering through several clicks on a menu [File/Copy] can take longer than the key combination "Control-C". I think the efficiency gain is probably greatest if most of what you are doing is typing in a word processing or spreadsheet program, or if you do most of your work in one program where it pays off to memorize that program's unique key strokes. I prefer to use my memory cycles for other things.

The Keyboard vs Mouse debate is a religious war in the computer world, like the one between Mac lovers and Windows lovers.
Pro Mouse
Pro Keyboard

I think that having to memorize key stroke combinations is counter intuitive and counter productive, even if you have a great program like Active Words to create and manage memorized keystrokes. I believe there is a built-in connection between hand motion and brain function that is better served by mouse motion than by keystoking.

Of course, you have to be smart about your mouse use. One of the greatest conveniences of the Windows operating systems is the 'right click' or context menu. ( Additional reading )

A lot of programs will add entries to the context menu when you install them, either with or without your permission. Antivirus programs will add, "Scan with", encryption utilities will add "Encrypt with", file utilities might add "Open with". Zipping utilities in particular add lots of entries-Winrar added 6 entries to my context menu, Winzip added 4. Very confusing.

Still, I normally allow programs to modify the context menu, because I rely on it heavily, and don't want to lose fast access to functionality.

Lately however I had noticed a significant delay in menu opening in general, and right click menus in particular. This was extremely frustrating, I might wait as long as 20 seconds for a menu to appear. I googled the problem, and found out that some menu extensions can slow the appearance of context menus. One program specifically mentioned was Steganos, the encryption program I use.

I downloaded and ran ShellExView a program that lets you view and modify modifications made to the shell, or Windows user interface. I was easily able to disable shell extensions I did not want, without editing the registry. As with all tools of this sort, if you try it out, do not go blindly deleting or disabling things just because you don't know what they are, you could disable your system.

Some technical information about the Windows shell and shell extensions

Just after promising our publisher that I really really would be publishing regularly, I descended into the hell of laptop reformatting.

And it wasn't even my fault! (At least I don't think so.) In the past two weeks I have
1) Downloaded & installed the new Netscape 8 and subsequently
2) Not been able to use Internet OR Windows Explorer properly (javascript totally broken, all XML based applications totally broken)
Apparently installing Netscape 8 broke some basic XML functionality in Internet Explorer for a number of people, but on my laptop the effect was much farther reaching
2) Not been able to use business critical applications. I depend on Mind Manager to keep track of my projects and tasks, and as this program integrates tightly with Microsoft Office and is XML based, it was apparently broken by the installation of Netscape 8.
3) Reformatted laptop hard drive and reinstalled the operating system
4) Reinstalled about 50 programs (I know, I know, what can I say? I obviously believe that buying one more software program will bring the world peace love and understanding AND get me more dates.)
5) Not been able to use my Kyocera BroadBand Modem-therefore not able to access e-mail & internet on laptop when on site at client locations with locked down wi-fi
6) Ordered a new BroadBand Modem
7) Realized to my horror that it was apparently NOT the modem, but the laptop hardware that was failing, as no PCMCIA card works when inseted
8) 3) Reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled the operating system,
double checking to ensure I installed the correct drivers
9) Not been able to use my Kyocera BroadBand Modem
10) Reinstalled about 15 programs-putting off full reinstall until I can send the laptop to Sony for punishment.
11) Ordered a backup laptop from Dell in case of future emergencies (someone else at Trigger Tech central will be able to use it in the meantime)

So here I am, resurfacing from laptop reformatting hell, with a two week work backlog.

Ya would think...
that in this day and age, with all the controversy over software, ESPECIALLY browser software, making changes to your computer's configuration without your permission....
that a test installation of Netscape Version 8 (to which I am NOT going to link)
would not have broken all my file associations for Internet Explorer, and would not have mysteriously broken other programs, such as Mindjet's MindManager, to the point where I am reinstalling essential programs without which I cannot live. OK, that was overly dramatic.
I am careful when installing programs, and select a custom installation if it's available so that I can control the installation as much as possible. The Netscape installation didn't ask me if I wanted to make Netscape 8 my default browser, or if it did, that question went right by me. I plan to uninstall and reinstall to see if somehow I was at fault.
The real shame is that Netscape 8 looked like a carefully thought out version.
More later after I get myself out of this mess. I just realized I can't create links in this blog using Internet Explorer, some essential Javascript engine piece is broken.
Very very very irritated.

Actually, I don't care if you are naked, but please don't expose your poor, innocent unprotected computer to the Evil Internet.

I keep hearing crazy insane user stories about spyware and viruses. The ghostly machine that reboots itself silently at 3 a.m., the parents of one friend who confess to having thrown away "3 or 4" laptops this year because they just "stopped working", or the elderly parents of another friend whose cable internet service was cut off after their computer morphed into a spambot sending 100K e-mails an hour.

Even if you think you are knowledgeable and careful, you are vulnerable. One of my company's web servers was hacked into by spammers last summer-even after we shut the server down, it left us feeling all nasty and dirty. (We weren't running Microsoft, btw, this was a weak password issue)

So every month I will update my suggestions for safe PC based co-existance with the Evil Internet. This month's recommendations are based on my experiences over the past 6 months. I haven't focused on re-evaluating these practices recently, and things change quickly on the frontier of the Evil Internet, thus my intention to revisit the topic monthly.

These recommendations are specifically for computers running Windows-I wish Mac people the best of luck and all that but I am not allowed to join any more cults.

Briefly, for this month:

1) Run an up to date operating system. Windows 98 will be seven years old on June 25th. The threat universe of the Evil Internet was very different back then. You can secure your W98 system but....why make yourself crazy? I advise any one who asks that the cost of paying someone to work on your old computer is probably greater than the cost of a new entry level machine that will blow your old one away in performance anyway.

2) Make sure you are running a firewall. Windows XP has a built in firewall-turn it on. Download and install a firewall if you are running Windows 98, ME, NT (I hope not!), or 2000. If you on XP and you prefer to use another firewall instead of the Windows firewall, turn the built in firewall off. Both Zone Alarm and Sygate have free versions of their firewalls.

3) Learn how your firewall works. You won't do yourself any good if you don't see the alerts from your firewall because they irritated you and you turned them off. You can read some useful general information about firewalls at How Stuff Works

4) Keep your antivirus protection up to date. Suck it up and pay for it. Buy a license for each computer. I don't care which anti-virus solution you use and I don't want to play anti-virus program wars so just do it and stop whining.

5) Run an anti-spyware program. Or two. Or three. Apparently no one program catches all threats. I have had good luck running only the Microsoft Anti Spyware beta, but I advise periodically checking computers with SpyBot Search and Destroy and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware.

6) Don't click on that. You know who you are, and what it is, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Don't click on it, you will be sorry. He or she is not that hot anyway.

7) Don't believe that e-mail about your compromised Citibank account, your PalPal account, or the one from the customer service people at AOL who want to confirm your password. For one thing, you don't have a Citibank account. If you are even tempted to wonder if any of these e-mails are for real, call me. I have LOTS of better ways we can spend your money.

8) Lastly, don't believe everything you hear or read about Internet threats and PC security. Don't take what I am saying for granted (actually you can trust me), spend a few minutes reading what the people who build your operating systems and and your computers (Dell) (Gateway) have to say about the subject.

9) Oh yeah, and don't use weak passwords. Don't use your name, your birthdate, the birthdates of your loved ones, or other easily guessable information. DO NOT use the same password everywhere for every site and every secure application. I know it's hideously difficult to keep track of a lot of passwords, but we have to accept the burden of secure passwords like we accept the burden of keys. I would no more use triggertech as a password than I would walk out of my NYC apartment without locking the door. Secure passwords seem to be more trouble than they are worth up until the day you really do get that Visa bill for someone else's European vacation. Microsoft has some good non-technical information on passwords for the general user. You can use a program to manage your passwords. I bought into SplashID a few years ago, our Publisher swears by Keepass (free!)

Sunday Our Publisher called us in a panic. Something's wrong with my laptop! There's no space left on my hard drive, and I've deleted everything I can! I wasn't in the mood for a house call, so Mr Laptop came over for a visit.

Experience has led me to be a little skeptical about people's description of their computer problems, but Our Publisher is a pretty geeky guy, and it turned out that his description was accurate. He had less than 200MB free on a 40GB hard drive. This was just BAD. I investigated the usual suspects, C:/Windows/Temp, C:/Documents and Settings/UserName/Local Settings/Temp, My Documents/My Music and My Documents/My Pictures, but nothing looked odd. I tried to install my favorite disk space usage utility but it failed to install, so we downloaded FolderSizes and took advantage of the free trial.

The program installed without any fuss, and told us that the Windows folder was consuming 20 GB of disk space. Hmmm....something was frelled for sure. Even on my constantly modified system, loaded down with the remnants of many failed and tested software goodies, the Windows folder only uses 4 GB. Foldersizes told us that the real culprit was the Internet Logs folder. A little googling turned up a number of references to Zone Alarm, a personal firewall product I have used and advocated for years but which has been getting on my nerves lately. Zone Alarm logs intrusions by default and keeps 30 days worth of logs. We found over 4,000 Zone Alarm log files in the Internet Folder, most of them created in the past 3 days, most of them over the span of a few hours, seconds apart. Ouch!

A few things made this seem very odd. Our Publisher connects to the internet via a wireless network secured via Mac address. In other words, only computers that have explicitly been allowed access can use the connection. This meant that whatever was causing Zone Alarm to go mad was happening inside his network, and there are only two computers on that that network, Our Publisher's and His Partner's, which we spent New Year's Eve reformatting. (A sacrifice indicative of true friendship IMHO). Our Publisher reported that Zone Alarm on his partner's machine had been requesting access to the Internet for a program he hadn't recognized, and also that Real Player on his laptop was constantly asking if it could update itself.

I made one mistake-in my zeal to rid the laptop of 18.5 GB of log files so that we could go "Oooooh...Aaah...that's better" I opted to delete the files without analyzing any of them, so we don't know what happened. We are monitoring the situation to see if we see any future mad log growth.

Final Thoughts: A few

1) Our Publisher is running the Windows built in firewall, Norton Internet Security, and Zone Alarm. This is unnecessary and over kill. We need to decide which programs to keep. This reminds me of a visit I paid to a friend in the far distant country of New Jersey recently. She had a laptop which would not boot, and had been advised by CompUSA that the motherboard was dead. I played with it and found it would not boot because someone had improperly installed a wireless card driver. I was able to boot once I removed the card, upon which no less than 5 anti-spyware programs launched. The laptop barely crawled under the weight of unnecessary software. I chided her, but she was truly afraid of "Internet Attacks" and probably has reinstalled the software I removed.

2) Why did we have to download a program to view folder sizes? Why isn't this in the operating system? What programmer thought Eh, folder sizes, not important? when designing the Windows UI? Raymond Chen probably knows.

After a lengthy absence, Trigger Tech is returning. We aren't going to make any of the usual excuses for the long absence of posts....we were lazy, pure and simple.

ON the other hand, as our publisher remarked on a visit to Trigger Tech Central the other day, we are surrounded by toys, toys, toys and more toys, so we have a lot to share.

We have a real RSS feed now, since in this incarnation we are actually using blog software.

See you!

It is essential to have the latest fashion accessory, to gain instant peer approval. The transformation of 'tech' to 'essential accessory' is all about selling things, and I fall for it everytime. If you need a thing, why not have a pretty, shiny version of it?

My latest purchase was an Iomagic external floppy drive for my laptop. I didn't really need it, but I convinced myself it would round out my kit. And when I made my last minute selection at the jewelry counter at Computer City the extra slots for compact card and memory stick seemed convenient.

When I got the new drive home and out of its packaging, I found a little switch on the back labeled red/blue. The purpose of this switch is to change the color of the led strip on the top of the device. It's hard to decide how to choose a color.....red for days, blue for nights? red for "I have been programming all day and I am really irritated with you so just you DON'T" and blue for "Ahhh that's nice"?

I pondered the extra thought and engineering that went into building a device that not only looks like a personal accessory, but behaves as one. I'm blue! I'm red! I don't know what I am, but my floppy drive displays it!

In a recent post, I said that the Weatherbug software was full of 'spyware nastiness'. An article on Lockergnome quoting a letter from the the people at Weatherbug.com persuaded me to give it another chance, for the sake of fairness.

The dept of Homeland Security, the National Weather Service (and its NOAA agency), 7000 schools including some of the largest universities in the country, military bases/coast guard bases and the US Naval Academy and over 100 TV stations all have our weather stations and partner with us.

I have been using Weatherbug on my desktop for about 2 weeks now. As noted, the MySearch toolbar, which is a pretty mild form of adware but which does hi-jack your Internet Explorer searches, is now an optional part of the installation.

I enjoyed having the temperature and weather in my task tray, and might appreciate it more if I didn't have a television or radio in my office. After fooling around with the preferences, I was able to turn off the automatic display of the Weatherbug window upon boot, a 'feature' that would have definitely caused me to uninstall.

On the other hand, the application is still very advertiser oriented. Sometimes it opens a browser window and prompts me to select a sponsor. I usually close this window, but I can imagine many people would assume that they had to follow the instructions on their screens.

You can read Weatherbug's claim to be spyware and adware free on their site. They also have an "Internet User's" Bill of Rights. However, the real focus of its application is obvious from their web site navigation. Links to Support, their "not adware not spyware" page and their Privacy Policy can be found in small print at the bottom of each page. Their sales pitch to advertisers is part of their main navigation, and that section includes detailed information about audience sectors and purchasing behavior.

Weatherbug is apparently harmless software and can be convenient. It's business model is selling targeted advertising based on aggregated information about its users. You can buy an ad free version of the service for $20 a year but that doesn't allow you to opt out of user information aggregation. This doesn't make me morally indignant as long as I understand what the deal is, but you make your own decision. Mine is to uninstall 'cause I just am not that interested.

Other ways to get the weather on your desktop:

Commercial (non-free) software:
Wetsock - haven't tried it
Konfabulator and Stardock both have weather widgets. I like and will use the Stardock widget now that I have gone through all this testing.

Web sites
Weather.com - the Weather Channel's online presence
You can pay $20 per year and get a personal Weather.com Gold home page or just give then your zip code and select 'health' as your interest for local weather with ads. Their Desktop Weather application looks like a co-branded version of Weatherbug. You can pay for an ad-free version for $30/year.

Accuweather.com - this looks like a great site-if you are a weather nut. You can pay for a premium or professional subscription ($40 or $150/year for personal users). They also have a ad-supported desktop application.

Desktop Weather Applications:
Weatherbug
Weather.com Desktop Weather
Accuweather.com Desktop Weather
Intellicast - have not evaluated it-claims to be ad free - collects information for personalization
Free Weather - have not evaluated but am not impressed with 'offer' for free search toolbar

It's all a little bit too much weather for me, though! Looking out the window also works.

We've been 'absent' for a few days for a number of reasons. I hadn't planned to post during the holidays in the first place, then the horrific events in Asia made it difficult to think about anything else. And on a petty and personal note, our publisher's workstation was attacked simultaneously by spyware and viruses (don't let the techno-blind surf on your primary work computer) and it's taken a 15 hour effort to recover data and restore an operating system. I promise to outline my suggestions for keeping your computer virus and spyware free later this week.

In the meantime, when you think about donating money to the relief effort in Asia (and money to save lives is what is desperately needed) you can be guided by this chart from IndiaTogether.org, which can help you calculate how much money you could donate, in any currency, to give the equivalent to a day's wages.

To those reading this, I hope you are happy and well and spent the holiday season with people you love.

William Gibson, author of the science fiction classic Neuromancer, keeps a blog when he is not writing. Yesterday he posted a note about Modest Needs, an unusual charity.

If you've ever had your bacon saved by a someone giving you a few hundred dollars when it looked like nobody else would, and not making a big deal of it, you'll understand the concept behind Modest Needs.

I visited the site and checked the financials. They list the details of every request for money whether they fund it or not. It's a sad list to read.

Video: portable and transferable, is becoming more mainstream and more achievable. We used to swap videotapes, now we swap video files. There are a number of devices that allow you to download video from your computer for any-time viewing. Michael Gartenberg thinks there is a market for these devices. CNET seems more doubtful. In my opinion, the difference in market size is probably similar to the difference between the FM radio market and the miniature TV market, or the portable CD player vs the portable DVD player. You can listen almost anywhere, but most bosses will object to you catching up with your favorite television show during work hours.

I expect we will see the same controversies and difficulties over DRM that we see with portable music devices and DVR's. It's not a pretty picture in the intellectual property world. AllYourTV.com reports that Time Warner is apparently in discussion with several cable providers about limiting the ability of people to view popular TV shows which they have recorded on their cable company supplied DVR. Time Warner is calling this "transitional fair use" (transitional from what to what I wonder?) Time Warner is proposing that consumers have a limited, (one to two week) post-broadcast period during which they can watch recordings they have made of popular shows like Six Feet Under. This will only affect the barely motivated, and will irritate others into hacker mode. I don't endorse stealing the work of others, but pretending that you can effectively put shop lifting tags onto data bits is stupid.

I don't see much speculation on the potential use of these players to bore your relatives with your home made movies and vids. I do think analysts are missing out here. Anyone who makes home movies would definitely load them up on their Creative Labs Zen Portable Media Center. Come to think of it, I would probably like to watch my nephews play soccer or my niece pulverize her tennis opponents.

There are a number of portable video devices available in the $500+ range. They are often referred to as portable media players. Wired reviews are here, here and here. (The December issue of Wired is fantastic, by the way. The issue focuses on the "New Age of Exploration")

I like the idea of the DVX-Pod by Ama Technologies-you can record directly from your cable box or dvd player. I don't think I watch enough video to justify it at $600 but if it drops down I might get one to use as a DVR and portable player. If I am bored while waiting or while riding mass transit, I usually read a book, but maybe one of these players would change that.

Every tidbit on this page reads like a news alert from some sci-fi story. If this keeps up, will we even understand what the next generation will take for granted?

The six minute trailer for the extended version of The Return of the King is up at www.lordoftherings.net. If you want to download a larger (quicktime) version, there's a link on the front page of my favorite all around fan site: TORN. My copy has been on order for months. On December 14th we will test if anyone really can watch all the extended versions of all 3 movies (11.5 hours) in one sitting.

I get a lot of phone calls from people asking me to help them with their on the spot computing problems. For years, my first bit of advice to them has usually been, "Reboot".

Why? This is usually NOT the best solution for their underlying problem, but it has often been the best immediate solution for the non-technical user. Windows 98 in particular was prone to locking up or crashing because of poor memory management by programs. Many problems were solved by rebooting because the offending program was shut down.

In later versions of Windows, when troubleshooting computer slow-downs or random, odd behaviors (the computer's, not mine) I have used the Windows Task Manager or various task manager replacements to examine what processes are running and to selectively shut down errant processes, such as spyware programs or trojans, before moving on to remove them completely.

I don't usually work with the Task Manager when helping people over the telephone. Normally, I have no idea what programs they have running on their computers and trying to guess at the purpose of mysteriously named processes without being seated in front of the keyboard is frustrating for me and sometimes frightening for the other person. Who knows what PcfMgr.exe or cidaemon.exe are and if it's 'safe' to stop them? (On the other hand I was pretty sure that !@!!logger.exe was an evil program when I saw it.)

Via Lockergnome (if you are wondering why anyone would name a tech site "Lockergnome" the story is here) I have been introduced to a wonderful site that identifies many of the background processes you might find running on your computer.

cidiaemon: Windows NT4/2000/XP task which is part of the Microsoft Index Server (NT4) or its replacement, the Microsoft Indexing Service (2000/XP). 
PcfMgr.exe: For laptops : Power Schemes Manager System Tray icon (also called PowerPanel).
Definitions quoted from Answers That Work

AnswersThatWork also offers a utility that you can download which will examine your running tasks and services. The trial is free, a license costs $20.00. Of course, I had to try it out. (I wasn't kidding in the intro to the column-the laptop I am writing this on is NOT my primary computer, but Belarc Advisor tells me I have over 200 programs installed-yeah I will try anything once.)

The Ultimate Trouble Shooter was able to identify most, but not all, of the processes I was running and gave me some interesting information and recommendations about each one. I haven't tried out the full version long enough to absolutely recommend it and the trial is seriously disabled. I will post an update when I have decided one way or another.

The AnswersthatWork web site itself if very useful but it is also a hideous framed site, so make sure you bookmark the actual page you are interested in getting to.

http://www.remotelyanywhere.com/I was looking for a 1GB flash device I could stick on my keychain. They are running about $100 to $120. I saw this instead....4 GB for under $175. I gave in to it. It's not keychain-able but it comes with a neck strap. It's a hard drive device, not a flash device. Flash devices in the 4GB range are still going for around $800, if you can find one.

Having 4 GB of CONVENIENTLY sized portable storage may solve some of the problems I am encountering working in multiple workplaces. I have tried, and am using some web based services: FusionOne, Streamload, GoToMyPC, RemotelyAnywhere; some hardware: a 1.5 GB hard drive device I bought last year, a 512 MB flash device (which I broke); I can log into my SharePoint on my Windows 2003 server remotely and retrieve files...but nothing has been been simple; no one solution works everywhere, 1.5 GB is not enough storage space; everything requires forethought and planning. I need to feel confident that whichever solution I use, I am accessing the LATEST VERSION of the file.

SharePoint actually comes closest IF the documents I am working on are Microsoft Office documents, and IF the computer I sit down at has Office 2003 installed. I feel fairly confident that for these documents, the latest versions are the ones in SharePoint. But I am having trouble coordinating my Outlook mail files between computers running different Outlook versions and I keep all kinds of project assets in file folders and I am currently confused where the latest versions are. I THINK I know, but the whole thing is making me nervous and less efficient than I need to be.

I am going to try the 4GB drive. I am nervous of course about having the only copy of my most important work files on something which I can lose or break, so I have to figure out
a) my backup strategy
b) my versioning strategy.

I would like to find a utility like Beyond Compare which I can run from the hard drive itself, so that I don't have to have install software on whatever computer I am using. If anyone knows of any utility like this, please let me know.

If you've been reading this column (and I am sure you have!) then you already know about my goal to devote all otherwise useful time to the pursuit of the perfect desktop. I herein announce that I finally achieved desktop twiddling nirvana when I downloaded the Stardock series of desktop modification tools.

The Stardock line of tools includes programs to manage and design themes, icons, cursors, widgets, and program docks. Their WindowBlinds program allows you to skin, or change the appearance of every window. You can even create a customized task bar. There are shareware versions of each of these programs available for download.

Loading these programs did not seem to affect the speed of my laptop, or cause it to crash. Stardock displays the Designed for Windows logo on their site. This doesn't mean that you won't have any software related problems if you install the software, but it does mean it meets "additional standard of quality." If you are already having problems with with your Windows installation, it's wise not to install anything until you fix your existing configuration. If you are not using Windows, I assume you skipped this entire article.

I am now able to modify every aspect of my desktop. This, of course, takes hours. First hours to search for the perfect skins, widgets, icons & cursors. Then hours of configuration, loading and unloading different schemes. Then, hours of changing my mind back and forth. Kind of like redecorating your apartment, without the furniture moving.

I suppose I should be thankful that I haven't been bitten by the skin design bug. I doubt I could be as creative as the artists featured on WinCustomize. But I have a feeling I might have to try my hand at it.

I discovered some surprising things during my desktop modification adventures. My attitude towards my daily working environment changed in a positive way when I temporarily had to refocus on the interface to achieve productivity. I felt less like part of the machine. I enjoyed experiencing the interface mindfully.

The more my computing interface matches my personal needs, the easier it will be to work. Try it for yourself and see what you think.

For more information about themes, GUI themes, and desktop replacements, this article on the StarDock sign is a good introduction to the basic concepts.

Amazon recently released its own search engine, named A9, to the public. (yep I sure would like to have been able to bill for thinking up that name....someone expended some serious brain cells there-can we say fear of creativity? And what's with the mysterious number-name web site fad? At least 43 things is fun-kinda:)

I started using A9 sometime in mid September.If you log and identify yourself to A9, it provides some interesting user features. The most interesting thing A9 does is maintain a complete history of all the sites you visit, excluding secure sites. I don't particularly recommend A9-using the search engine does give you a minuscule rebate on Amazon but they are candid in their privacy policy about the fact that they are free to use any information they get about you when you surf with their tool on AND that they have the right to share this information in whatever manner they choose.

However, I was totally amazed to see that on the average, over the last 2.5 months, I visited 8,800 pages a month, A9's history counts each individual visit to a page. The daily average of about 293 doesn't sound as unreasonable. I do a lot of web development so I click back and forth testing pages. Still it made me try to remember exactly when was the last time I went outside.

Without delving into the philosophy of the database of intentions, I think that over time it would be interesting to track my browsing history and search history, but not for Amazon's benefit. I still remember the first time I 'surfed the web', sometime in 1995. You never forget your first time.

So I just added another 30 or so pages to my surfing history, trying to find a tool that DOESN'T erase browsing history. I once had a program that drew a graphical map of my surfing activity but I lost it years and years ago. Haven't found one yet, will report back when I re-surf-ace.

After my flirtation with Konfabulator, I felt unsatisfied, tired...lonely. While the widgets were fun, they sat there on the same boring, old desktop. I knew how to load my own wallpaper.....but I wanted more excitement than that could give me.

Looking to increase my thrills, I experimented with Windows Themes. Windows themes are sets of complimentary wallpapers, color schemes, icons, and cursors. The ability to recognize and change themes is built into Windows XP, for earlier versions of Windows you need a theme manager.

Anyone can fiddle around with a cursor or an icon building program, then use a theme creator to package the theme. This is a great way to creatively waste time. I downloaded dozens of themes and tried them all out.

Some warnings:

Watch out for badly designed themes. Many of the ones I tested used unreadable fonts for desktop and menu elements.

Nothing protected me from my own bad taste....(Note to self: Remember to redecorate before the next client demo.)

Watch out for spyware. One of the theme download sites I visited coyly explained that they repackaged themes submitted to them so that they could cover the cost of the site. When I started to install the theme I downloaded, Counterspy warned me that several spyware programs were trying to install themselves. I quickly bailed out of that installation but I still had to run Counterspy and then reboot to remove the spyware threats. TriggerTech was not amused. And don't click on the "theme download sites" link except to find out where not to look for themes.

Related Links: DeviantArt | ThemeWorld
Reluctantly Mentioned: Themes Unlimited (too many ads on this site)
Positively Unrecommended: ThemeXP (say "no" to spyware)
Absolutely and Positively Must Have: CounterSpy (speaking as an IT pro, this new app currently is the best tool available for removing and controlling spyware-it's only $20, and it's well worth it. Please be careful which 'spyware' software and anti-virus programs you use...some of the heavily marketed ones are spyware programs themselves....but that's another subject)

Next Time: Desktop Toys III: True Desktop Modification.

Last weekend, in my never-ending quest to avoid doing anything useful with my free time, I began playing around with some Desktop Toys. I was successful in wasting an entire weekend! And I see much time-wasting potential for the future.

What set me off on this latest craze was the announcement that the Konfabulator team had released a new version of it's javascript based desktop widget application that works on Windows. Mac people have had this toy for a while. The app allows you to download and set up desktop widgets, which basically look like gigantic icons, which allow you to run mini-applications or functions on your desktop. You can have a clock, a weather notification, access to hard drives and folders, mp3 players and lots of other time-wasting distractions. The charm of this is hard to describe, you have to try it for yourself. I hadn't thought I wanted weather on my desktop-I hate the Weatherbug software, which is full of spyware nastiness, but the Konfabulator weather widget turned out to be fun. I found a New York City traffic cam widget, and I was slightly embarrassed at some of the pictures the picture frame widget found on my hard drive.

Next Time: Desktop Toys II-Playing with Themes

Via BoingBoing, "A Directory of Wonderful Things" (and so it is) we get the ultimate rubber device protection site.

When I bought my IPod this spring I discovered the world of IPod skins, and even led my good friend Liberation into temptation. He succumbed, turning his lovely, white 20GB piece of technology into a freakish and scary object.

Now, you apparently can buy your IPod skin at Walmart (when they are in stock.) Or you can go to SkinIt, and buy matching covers for your IPod, phone, PDA and other parts. Their tag line is "Personalize Your Toys!" Can everyone say "Gift Certificate"?

I love my sony laptop but oh boy..... This looks extremely interesting. A 1 lb. pocketable PC / media player built with Sony's special sense of style. The portable keyboard is external but the unit has a touch screen panel for stylus input. There is no information on the Sony web site yet.

The U-series is still not on their web site, but you can buy an Xmas themed burgundy T-series notebook, available on-line only. I assume they are only making 1 or two of these boys...

Extremely small form factor PC's as going to be a real trend. Last month the OQO debuted to much fanfare in the geek world.

It looks like the OQO might be more usable, because the keyboard is built in, and not external. On the other hand, I am pretty familiar with Sony devices and I know two things about them: (a) they are shiny and (b) they are constantly revamping their product line, so in a few months this version will disappear to be replaced with something else.

What did I tell you! Sony's already updated the itsy bitsy thing! The picture at this link is larger and clearer-you can see that the interface is in Japanese. Since the original product isn't even available in the US yet, I wonder if this update will be? My current notebook was getting jealous, so I upgraded it's memory to 1GB. The surgery went well.

From ShinyShiny, more cute USB toys. I want the Tinkerbell one. Sadly, not available in the US in this time.

It's strange to me that USB keys are common enough to be packaged as grown-up toys at the same time that sales people at places like Radio Shack tell me that there is no such thing as a 1GB USB flash device. Is the disconnect cultural? Marketing? Is a brick and mortar retailer just that far behind the wave? I casually shopped for a 1GB key to replace a broken 512 MB key (yes, you will break it if you plug it into the USB port of the front of the workstation under your desk and hit it repeatedly with your knee) as I strolled down 5th Avenue from the 40's to 23rd street, and no one, not even the gray market camera shops, had 1GB USB keys in stock.

Ipod Killers for Christmas I
Ipod Killers for Christmas II
Ipod Killers for Christmas III
Ipod Killers for Christmas IV

11.23.2004 Update: MP3NewsWired.net has update their IPOD Killers series with IPOD Killers for Christmas IV. The VAIO U I long for gets a mention.

Apple has 92% of the mp3 player market. Somewhere else I saw 55% quoted. But there are some compelling alternatives on these pages.

All my photos and all my music! Bye Bye mini! IPOD Photo!

For years, I have subscribed to multiple mailing lists to stay up to date on things that interest me...web design, web artists in nyc, Legolas' hair color...

Getting hundreds of messages in my in-box never scared me, I felt I was always up to date with the latest latest, and I heard about things before they were reported on the news.

Now I have a whole new obsession...and I am late to the game on this one! RSS aggregators. I have known about aggregators like Amphetadesk for years, but apparently in the last year or so the content that people are making available for syndication in finally compelling enough for me to opt in. Oh, and there's NewsGator, which lets me read the web sites I subscribe to in Outlook, AND I can read the few Usenet newsgroups which still interest me, all in the one program I use to organize my life. (I am saving my Outlook rant for another day)

What this means for me is that instead of surfing to the thousand or so web sites that interest me every day, I can subscribe to their RSS feeds, and get updates in Outlook about the latest article or news. This includes content from the New York Times (registration required to see link), BBC, and my favorite web logs. All I have to do is right click on the the RSS syndication link on a site that interests me, and my software knows to go grab the latest info every hour. I am sooo overwhelmed! And such a voyeur!

NewsGator offers a free online service for consumers who want to get their RSS fixes online, it's worth trying out. We will be making this and other columns on Trigger available via RSS once we figure out how to do that.

Related Links: WWAC

There are lots and lots of gadget review sites, but most of them are so manly. Engadget, for example has the newest thing if you are a tech loving boy, like this 22 megapixel Hasselblad digital SLR with a built in 40 GB hard drive.

Engadget's influence is huge. Add a few Engadget reading geek bloggers, and now no one in Seattle can buy the new Audio Vox phone. (Want one! I think I really really need to watch the latest Stargate episode on my cell phone!)

ShinyShiny, a blog created by London tech writers Katie Lee and Charlotte Ricca-Smith, is a different sort of tech site. I didn't know what what was missing from my laptop accessories until I got a look at the Sushi USB key . Or maybe I would rather have a monitor-handbag.

Seriously, if you work with computers and haven't discovered the wonderful world of usb flash drives, you need to take a look. I bought my first one more than a year ago, and paid almost $200 for 512 MB of storage.You can get 1GB of flash memory now for under $100. I now have 3 miniature drives, one for carrying client work, one for carrying Windows patches, anti-spyware and anti-virus programs for troubleshooting client computers, and one for personal and business files. Forget about floppies, burning CD's or e-mail files to yourself. The drives are cross platform, so I can sit next to my designer while he works on his powerbook and I work on my Vaio. (Sony, true to form, has already discontinued my model, so here's a picture of my little lap toy. It's smaller than it looks, in fact its smaller than this picture.)