I n f o B u l l e t i n

What is it ?

A neat, free, portable piece of cleaning software. X-Cleaner sniffs out advert-generators and spy-software which may have been installed by stealth on your PC when you signed up to a list on a web site for some completely different product or service.

Gator sued for pop-up adverts

Although X-Cleaner sounds as though it's reserved for paranoids and security consultants, the recent suing of the Gator online network by a group of 11 publishers shows it's a serious problem. The plaintiffs alleged that Gator sold advertising space on third party web sites without their permission via its parasitic software.

Among the items cleaned are cookies and temporary files cleaner for all browsers, chat and buddy-list data from messengers, recently opened document and file search lists, clipboard and recycle bins.
Although some of these 'junk collectors' have their own maintenance methods, like the Recycle Bin, X-Cleaner puts cleaning control for them all into one place.

Also included in the same utility - via a set of neat tabs - are :

• a file shredder (all traces removed from your disc)
• a system tray editor (removes annoying startup programs)
• a random password generator (set your own word length and security level)

Benefits

• Removes the 'junk' from your PC to make it faster
• Increases security by removing spyware.

How to make it happen

Weighing at only just over 400KB, X-Cleaner can be carried around easily as it fits on less than a third of a floppy disc(!) and can be found at http://www.xblock.com although it may be easier to simply have them deliver it by email from http://www.xblock.com/cgi-bin/mm/mm_mailfile.pl. It's also installation-free: you just run it!

The 'pay-for' upgrade

For US$39.95, you can buy the 'Pro' version, called X-Cleaner 2.0 Deluxe.

Additional benefits and features here include :

• access to a members area, with many more bonus PC monitoring programs
• updates from a spyware database for a year
• email support
• shows open ports on your PC that may be available to hackers
• scan for then drag-n-drop old pictures into a 'shredder'

Contacts

http://www.xblock.com

Telecomms companies, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and just about everybody else talk about the speed of Internet services in Kbps (Kilo bits per second), but this rarely relates to anything you can measure easily.

Many FTP clients (File Transfer Protocol utilities - used for uploading your web site to your Internet web space) like Terrapin and WS_FTP Pro show this transfer rate directly in Kbps, so a comparison with what your ISDN (64Kbps) or ADSL (512/256Kbps) service should be delivering is fairly straight-forward.

Maximum line speeds
Max speed shown in ...	Modem	ISDN (1 channel)	ADSL
Web browser status bar, KiloBytes per sec (KBps)	7 KBps	8 KBps	64 KBps download, 32 KBps upload
ISP's line specification, Kilobits per sec (Kbps)	56 Kbps	64 Kbps	512 Kbps download, 256 Kbps upload

Since there are 8 'bits' in a 'Byte', and your bog-standard old web browser displays Bytes per second in the status bar at the bottom of its window, you can quickly check the actual speed you're receiving pages at (see the Maximum Line Speeds table) and compare whether you're getting your money's worth.

But hang on! My ADSL provider says I should get 512Kbps (64KBps) and my browser is only showing between 38 and 40KBps!

You're not the only person on the line!

Unless you have purchased a dedicated leased line, you'll be sharing that Internet connection with several other hungry people/businesses/organisations at the point where connections reach the ISP - a kind of exchange known as a Point of Presence or PoP (not to be confused with POP - Post Office Protocol).

Depending on how meanly or generously the ISP 'shares out' connections will reflect how slow/fast your own speeds are. An ISP investing poorly in routers, switching and communications equipment might share out one line in miserly fashion between 40-50 'contenders' - hence the term "contention ratio", a key factor to look out for assessing services and ISPs.

You're not the only person in the organisation!

Assuming you are not the sole worker in a branch office and you are not self-employed, other people in your building (strictly, on your network) will be demanding Internet speed through the same modem, router or DSL terminal device. Most such devices will 'load balance', so that your individual browsing speed is further shared evenly and dynamically between you and your colleagues.
To see this in action, you only have to set one PC going on a long download - say it's achieving 50KBps - and then set up a second similar PC download, and you can watch the first PC speed slowly degrade towards 25KBps, while the second climbs up from zero to 25KBps.

Download times
*Downloading a typical ...	Modem	ISDN	ADSL
Web page	14 secs	6 secs	1.6 secs
30sec video clip	3.5 mins	1.5 mins	0.4 mins
10MB file	24 mins	10 mins	2.5 mins
*Quoted download times are based lines working at optimum speed. Content caching can cause these download times to vary

A site worse off?

Even if your ISP is generous with its contention ratio and your own office makes minimal demand on the connection, there is still the 'other end' to consider: the site that is serving up the pages you want to see. A hobbyist running a web site from an old PC through a permanently-connected modem simply wont be able to match the demand from lots of visitors with connection capacity aplenty. So in practice, the speed a web site can deliver (and also its own ISP) and the amount of other traffic accessing it will affect how 'nippy' the content in your own browser behaves.

Broadband is getting there - gradually

Since installing our own 2Mbps ADSL connection at Co-Operative Systems, most web pages really do appear fairly 'instant' and the speed is more comparable with accessing files on our internal network; the difference between web sites is less noticeable than one might reasonably expect, indicating that ISPs and web designers are upgrading their connections on a par.

Contacts

What is it ?

These Menu shortcuts complement our Everyday keyboard shortcuts published earlier.

The key here (forgive the pun) is to position your appropriate digits over the most oft-used keys.

Document navigation

SHORTCUT	FUNCTION	MENU PULL DOWNS	GOOD FINGER TECHNIQUE
Alt-F4	Close an application & all its sub-windows	File menu | Exit	Left thumb poised over the Alt key.
Ctrl-Tab	Cycle between documents	Windows menu | 1,2, etc	Left thumb poised over the Alt key
Ctrl-F4	Close a document, but not the application	File menu | Close	Left little finger poised over the Left Ctrl key.
Alt-Space	Size a document (minimise, maximise)	Sizing box to left of title bar	Left thumb poised over the Alt key

Document shortcuts

SHORTCUT	FUNCTION	MENU PULL DOWNS	GOOD FINGER TECHNIQUE
Ctrl-S	Save your work to disc (documents, spreadsheets, email etc)	File menu | Save	Left little finger poised over the Left Ctrl key.
Ctrl-P	Print the current page or active frame of any document, spreadsheet, email etc	File menu | Print	Left little finger poised over the Left or Right Ctrl keys

Desktop navigation

SHORTCUT	FUNCTION	MENU PULL DOWNS	GOOD FINGER TECHNIQUE
Alt-Esc	Cycle between applications that are open	Use Task Manager | Switch to	Left thumb poised over the Alt key.
Alt-Tab	Cycle between all applications, inc. minimised ones	Use Task Manager | Switch to	Left thumb poised over the Alt key.
Ctrl-Esc	Pull up the Start menu	Click Start button	Left little finger poised over the Left Ctrl key
Ctrl-Esc | P | as above, then use arrow keys	Start an application	Click Start button | Program menu	Left little finger poised over the Left Ctrl key

For the dextrous and double-jointed, key combinations involving the Tab key can be combined with the Shift key to cycle in the reverse direction, thus :

To move back between frames, press Ctrl-Shift-+Tab.

To cycle back between all applications, press Alt-Shift-+Tab.

Your fourth left finger best handles the Shift key.

-IB-

Some people just love to set records

Aiming to become the world's biggest bankrupt company in history probably isn't on most people's wish lists though.

Fraud - everybody's doing it

WorldCom's chiefs, Scott Sullivan and David Myers face prosecution for fraud and filing false statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over allegedly hiding billions in expenses while reporting them as investments. KPNQwest too, the ISP providing one of Europe's largest Internet backbones, went bankrupt and was 'switched off' temporarily at the end of July, a week after workers abandoned their workstations to leave the network on auto-pilot. AOL (Almost Off-Line?) was being investigated in August by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in a criminal inquiry into its accounting practices, though media giant AOL Time Warner have said their accounting is appropriate and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

That's just what WorldCom's did on 22nd July when they filed for bankruptcy after collapsing from a massive alleged accounting fraud resulting in US$32bn of debt. Via "Chapter 11" protection (where under US legislation you are allowed to raise funds to keep the company trading, pending any trials) they were still desperately making optimistic noises about finding such financial backing. WorldCom's non-US subsidiaries are not included in the filing and will continue to operate normally.

WorldCom and its related companies and subsidiaries (MCI, MSF, UUNET, to name but a few) still supply a vast chunk of the globe's telecommunications infrastructure, being the world's largest Internet traffic carrier.

Wither the Internet ?

While there was a catastrophic drop-off in many telephone links on 11 September, by comparison the graduated 'decay' of Internet connections displayed its military ARPANET roots by standing up admirably in the face of network overload. The distributed nature of Internet networks thus lends them great resilience.

However, when more and more of those communication lines rely on centralised 'backbone' hubs and single commercial corporations, providing the fastest links between, say countries or states, then that resilience is weakened or compromised.

So, with stable global enterprises becoming rarer than a cautious post office van driver, is it still safe to invest your IT with a large company or ISP?

One might venture the 'monkeys and peanuts' argument applies here, after all, we consumers still have a variety of ISPs to choose from with a range of prices to match, but it makes you wonder if your average chimpanzee couldn't do better at counting the beans in the large enterprises when contemplating the size and ubiquity of current fraud prosections.

So could this spell doom for the Internet ?

What is it ?

Now that we are all being encouraged to walk, cycle and go by public transport, knowing what the next few hour's worth of local weather will bring becomes more crucial than a rough idea of the day's forecast.

Apply some Web technology and suddenly ...

... we can see much further afield using 'radar'.
In my days of designing radars for ships, we often used to borrow our high-tech radars to 'see' what the weather was doing a few miles away - handy for timing that walk to the station.

Nothing new here really; this is the kind of forecasting we all do - a Web-enabled version of looking out of the window! The big benefit is that although the weather you're witnessing is (very recent) past history, you can make a pretty good guess about what coming your way next - crucially: is it wet or dry?

Show me

So the two things we Brits all love to talk about continually - the weather and the BBC - are brought together in that well-known site, the BBC radar. Wait for the slides to load and watch the clouds and rain scud by!

Past 24-hours : http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/radar.shtml
Past 6 hours : http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/radar6.shtml

Go to the source

But the Meteorological Office site gives you the whole thing in close-up - so detailed you can almost see the drops falling! And this is the source that all the other weather forecasters get their data from anyway.

http://www.met-office.gov.uk/weather/europe/uk/radar/ or
http://www.meto.gov.uk/weather/europe/uk/radar/

For a quick summary, you can't do better than their home page - doesn't even require a click! Just hover your mouse cursor over the "Tomorrow" or "Today" buttons :
http://www.meto.gov.uk/

Benefits

Dry clothes, happy feet.

Drawbacks

Armchair weather-watching can seriously damage your fitness. GetALife.com it ain't!

Contacts

The BBC's admirable weather radar can be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/radar6.shtml

How difficult can you make IT !

The other day a friend of mine sent me the menu choices for his stag night ...

• ... by email (methinks "aha, very efficient"),
• ... compressed in a zip file (hmmm, I have to work on this - OK well it was quite large ...),
• ... in a bitmap BMP picture format (that's why it was large! Is this some sort of IT test?),
• ... of a scanned handwritten photocopy, rotated a quarter turn sideways (do you really want me to starve? I'll just guess and have potage du jour then).

From the sender's point of view you can see the logic:

I have a written paper menu: let's scan it. Wow, it's too large, so let's zip it up and attach it to an email.
Whoops - it's rotated sideways! Start again!

But in the time it takes to start again with another go round the scan/zip/email process, our potentially stag-bound reveller could have typed a short menu and sent it as a plain text message, saving his (an other people's) time and a lot of Internet bandwidth.

Keep it simple

There's a lot to be said for 'rounding down' to the simplest format you can - it's makes for faster communication in the end.
If you don't need to send pictures or tables or even bold text, just stick to plain text.

So many formats, so little bandwidth ...

The bottom line is that the simpler you can make your attachment, the more likely that your recipient will be able read it - and read it soon.
However, at some point you may want to start emphasising text with bolds, italics and so on (styled text) and sending graphics, pictures and drawings.

Some formats are proprietary and you have to literally 'buy into' them, commonly Microsoft's Word and Adobe's PDF.

Tip:

Rich text Format (RTF) has been hailed as the 'secret' exchange format for the step beyond plain text because, although being a proprietary format, it has become so universally employed that most of us have some basic tool (word processor or even email) that can interpret RTF.

Here we provide a table to help you choose the most suitable format and achieve efficient document exchange with your colleagues ....

Document Formats
Document type	File extension	Advantages	Disadvantages
Plain text	.TXT	Small size, easy to send, any old email client can read it, as well as any word processor. Universally defined (ancient) format, so just about any tool can build text, eg MS Notepad.	No styled text (bold, italic, underline, etc), no tables, pictures - just text.
HTML (web page)	.HTM or .HTML	Can be read by any browser and many word processors. Universally defined format (W3C) so many (free) tools can be used to make htm pages, even text editor. Can carry tables and styled text (bold, italic, underline, etc). Can be commonly read by email clients now.	Images must be separate files. Uncompressed, need to use a zipper (eg WinZip) if attachment(s) is/are large or if you prefer to send a single file.
Rich Text Format	RTF	A single file. Can be read and constructed by most word processors. Can carry styled texts and pictures. Smaller size than MS Word. Can also be read by most email clients now.	Proprietary Microsoft format, but fairly universally used.
Portable Document Format	.PDF	A single compressed file. Can include tables, images, drawings. PDF retains the structure (fonts, colours, layouts) of the original. Particularly suited to 'printing at the receiving end'.	Proprietary Adobe format needs Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) to read it and one of many Adobe products like PhotoShop (purchase only) to create it.
Word processor format	.DOC (varies)	So universally used, many people can read it or convert it. Can include tables, images, drawings	Proprietary format, eg Microsoft Word. Can be subject to many macro viruses. Large size when sending.
Comma Separated Variable	.CSV	Good for exchanging database data and spreadsheets. Universal, plain text format.	Limited application for anything else.

Defaulting to plain text - how to make it happen

• In MS Outlook:
  - pull down Tools menu | Options | "Mail format" tab
  - at the top for "Message format", select Plain Text instead of HTML

• In Pegasus:
  - pull down: Tools | Options | Message formatting
  - tick "Disable all text styling options"

• In Outlook Express:
  - pull down Tools menu | Options | Send tab
  - at the top for "Mail sending format", select Plain Text instead of HTML - click OK

You can always send HTML-formatted messages on the fly in a new composition by pulling down :

Format | Rich Text/HTML

Barry Lam is a name that doesn’t ring a bell to many, and that’s how he likes it. Fond of keeping a low profile, Barry Lam is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Quanta Computer, the world's largest maker of laptop computers. Big brands including IBM, Apple and Compaq are most likely to be made under the same roof in Quanta’s factories. The giant, with current sales of over $3 billion, has become a leading contract manufacturer, by focusing their time and energy on design and making gadgets and leaving the marketing to the famous brands which naturally enjoy the limelight. However they reckon to be raking in $10 billion a year by 2004, 'on the quiet' you might say.

Originally creating a company called Kimpo, which has become the world's largest contract producer of calculators, our Barry is quite content with calling himself the "king of calculators and laptops"!

A "product guy" at heart, the 52-year old puts his accomplishments down to great confidence, self-belief and a lot of hard work.

Mr. Lam is looking to become the “Server King”

However it doesn’t end there; Mr. Lam is looking to become the “Server King” as well. Servers are not the same as laptops and calculators, where the end user is not a consumer but a big company. However, this requires a completely different marketing and branding approach. And the self-styled conqueror also has his sights on wireless gadgets - a market sector that is very much dependent on the uncertainties of consumer demand for third-generation (3G) technology, and where competition is fierce.

Only time will tell if Mr Lam succeeds in completing his kingdom with being the king of servers and wireless gadgets!

What is it ?

Just a seasonal reminder to clear your old Windows 9x PCs of all those temp files.

Benefits

Prevent your local C: drive filling up with out of date files.

Where and what are they ?

In C:\windows\temp\.

Just about every major application makes temp files as a backup. Whether you edit a document, change a spreadsheet or revamp a Web page, your word processor or whatever makes and extra copy of the original to go back to, just in case you decide to cancel all your changes or - horror of horrors - it crashes, and of course, that's never happened, right? Yea - hence the necessity.

How to make it happen

Takes 3 minutes.

The Manual Way:

1. Close all your applications
2. In Windows 98 or Windows 95, open Find by clicking | Start | Find
3. Find *.TMP files by looking in C:\windows\temp
4. In the search results below, you may want to sort them by date (click the "Modified" button over the date column.
5. Now delete all the all those older than, say, last month.

The Slick Way:
The Disk Cleanup utility cleans out all sorts of temporary files on both Windows 9x series and Windows 2000 without having to search for them :

• Simply run | Start | Programs | Accessories | Systems Tools | Disk Cleanup
  and follow the prompts.

Spring cleaned all done and dusted.

Nuff said.

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