You have a custom domain, everyone seems to have a domain for themselves except me. I'm stumped. How do I find an available domain and buy it?

Dave, I purchased a used macbook from a friend and need to change the Home Icon (House) name from his to mine, but I can't find information anywhere to do this. It is driving me crazy. Can you possibly assist?

I was browsing the juvenile fiction area of the public library earlier today and was pretty confused to see copies of The Chronicles of Narnia's book "Prince Caspian" (the basis of the upcoming movie of the same name) listed both as book #2 and book #4 of the series. What the heck? Which is correct?

I'm trying to figure out all this blogging stuff, but I'm a bit confused about two aspects of blogging: pings and trackbacks. What's the difference?

I need to be able to send my parents a copy of some documents I have in PDF format, but I want to ensure privacy and encrypt them first. Is there some easy way to do this?

Not to sound too antisocial, but the new chat feature on Facebook is driving me a bit wacky. Every time I'm on Facebook now, people are bugging me. Is there some way to turn it off?

I have a similar problem to that which you wrote about in How to read message headers in Google Gmail: If i have received an email from my friend, how can I tell whether it is spoofed or not?

Okay, I bought a new Time Capsule from the Apple Store and it's a great wireless base station but... I want to use it for Time Machine backups too and am a tiny bit lost on how to get that set up. Can you help me out?

I know that Google's Gmail service has a spam filtering system, but a friend of mine was also telling me that you can use a "plus notation" to compartmentalize incoming spam too? Do you know what he's talking about?

I've been using Hotmail for years without a problem but suddenly it rejects my password, and when I go to the password recovery option, it doesn't like my zip code or other secret information. I have vital information in my inbox! Can you reset my password for me or tell me the new password?

I'm a busy guy, constantly doing twenty things at once. I am also a heavy user of Google Calendar and find it annoying as heck to constantly have to get to the Calendar page before I can add something to my schedule. Is there some neat Mac gizmo I can run so I can click on it, type in my appointment, and be done with it?

I'm an HR executive and I've very recently started using LinkedIn and found it very interesting and helpful but I'm having problems regarding how to use LinkedIn when it comes to searching for the right people, e.g. I'm particularly searching for managers, or asst.managers in IT industry. How do i locate them on LinkedIn?

I've been writing some scripts to display large directories of images in HTML in an automated fashion and not infrequently the static HTML generated ends up not matching the underlying images on the server. I could generate the pages on-demand, but it's too processor intensive. Instead, I'd like to know if there's a way I can automatically display an "image no longer available" graphic instead of just a broken link?

I'm working with a company that's overseas and they want to send me some contracts via fax. Problem is, I don't have a facsimile machine and going to somewhere like Kinko's and paying to receive their fax seems a bit daft. Are there free fax services on the Web, or at least cheap fax services online?

I am a member of a bunch of groups on Facebook that I don't really care about any more, but I keep getting bulletins and updates in my inbox. What's the easiest way to unsubscribe from them?

I'm still falling down the well of Twitter, or is that falling into the Twitterverse? Anyway, I'd like to have a couple of different profile photos that I can switch between. Is this possible?

Dave, every time I go into the electronics store I have the same sudden anxiety attack about buying a new device: should I also buy the extended service warranty from the store? The salespeople are quite convincing, but I can't help but be skeptical about the whole deal. What's your opinion?

Is it possible for someone to access sites when i'm online ? Sites have appeared in the history of my mothers computer that i was using but did not access. As you can imagine these weren't particularly desirable sites.It also mentioned about inserting a disk something else i just didn't do. Is it possible to hack somehow whilst i'm online ? at the time i was using google and visiting sites such as myspace and bebo! I would really appreciate your help as it's caused quite an argument but i genuinely did not access these sites.

I've never had this problem before: I upgraded Firefox on my Mac OS X system and now any time I'm on a page with a "mailto:" link, those links are not clickable. Any other sort of "href" works fine, but email links do nothing. I looked through the preferences, but nada. How can I fix things?

I've been searching for some help on this a for about four, five years. I'm 16 years old and I've been writing novels since I was about eleven. Everyone thinks that i could be the next J.K. Rowling. I even have a pen name L.G. Kelly. I Just don't know how to get published. So how do i get publsihed and fast without getting ripped off? Or having to get an agent?

I have a couple of blogs (using Blogger) that are monetized using Google. But, the ads that appear are often completely unrelated to the content - sometimes embarrassingly so. Is there any way of getting the ads to be more relevant? I do use tags, but that doesn't seem to help. Sigh.

A pal of mine was telling me how he'd had some problems with his Sony PSP and that as a result of a particularly bad moment to have his battery die, it was now "bricked". What does that mean?

This is regarding script #62 (define a word): Looks like WordNet has changed their online version again and I tried the following replacement for the url=

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=

But the script doesn't return anything but goes back to the prompt. I tried the url with a word in lynx and I got the source. Could you push me in a general direction?

My teacher wants me to figure out how they calculate a stock index and my Dad said that the Dow Jones average is easiest to figure out. Can you tell me how they calculate the DJIA, please?

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how Google forces you to interact with your email when you're using Gmail and really miss folders. Can I emulate the same sort of auto-filing of messages with the "labels" feature so that messages from a specific mailing list never show up in my inbox at all?

Hey, Dave! Is there any way to find people that twitter in a local area - like your buds in Colorado? I'd love to find someone to have coffee with occasionally here in Key West.

I want to add photos to my blog, and a buddy told me that I can use images from the Yahoo Flickr site. I don't want to get in trouble, though, so can you tell me if there's some way to identify those photographs and other images that are legal for me to republish?

I've been hearing a lot about High Dynamic Range (HDR) in the digital photography forums, but I don't understand what it is or why I should care. Yet, people who are talking about it sound very enthusiastic. Can you explain what it is and why I should care bout it?

I keep thinking that Google would hide this, but is there any way to figure out the last time that the Google search engine spider (Googlebot) visited a specific Web page? That'd be particularly useful for competitive research...

I have a web site that I placed on the Internet in the year 2000. It consists of HTML 4 and Frames. At this time it opens in different browsers with no problem. With the advances of CSS and newer browsers running CSS more proficiently do you think the older web sites with frames will stop working correctly? I don't even know where to start with changing over to CSS as I have over 100 pages.

My boss has me working on our company Web site and she wants me to add a box on our "contact us" page that lets people type in their address and at the click of a button bring up a window with driving directions from their location to our office. Is that even possible?

I read your earlier article about how to change your default MySpace profile photo, but the suggestions did not help me at all. The way your instructions were explained, they did not flow with the current MySpace screens in either "classic" or "new" mode. Can you post an updated tutorial, please?

I'm a recent convert to Twitter (thanks partly to your own twittering, actually!) but can't decide between the two major apps on the Mac: Twhirl or Twitterific. Which do you use, and why?

If you travel as frequently as I do, you've probably learned a few things about life on the road, tips that help you avoid problems and ensure that fluffy pillows are the biggest complaint you have, not lost data or crashed laptops.

One of my favorite tips, one that I have seen people ignore with really terrible results more than once, is to never apply a security update, patch or other system change when you're away from your office. If it goes wrong, you're in big trouble and you don't have your local geeks around to help recover things.

The second rule of thumb is: back up your critical files before you leave on your trip and again at least once while on the road. Just in case.

That's why I was glad to have an extended trip to Hawaii as an excuse to try out a few different approaches to data backup. The candidates: A Corsair 32GB flash drive, a Western Digital 160GB Passport drive and Memeo's LifeAgent Internet backup system, all connected to my trusty MacBook Pro.

I think I'm hallucinating or something: it appears that I'm getting spam events added mysteriously to my Google Calendar schedule. What the heck? How is that happening, and how can I stop it occurring?

I've signed up for Twitter and am having lots of fun with it, but every time I add someone new, all of their Tweets end up going to my cellphone as SMS text messages. This is bad, and it's driving me crazy. Is there some easy way to fix this?

I need to find the sender of an email I received that was a death threat and the domain was @gmail.com. I have contacted the police and fear it will take too long for them to find out any information. Is there anyway you can assist me? The email address was deadlykillers61@gmail.com.

My brother recently got a call telling him that he could get his tax refund that's part of the economic stimulus package early - and not have to wait until May or later. He almost gave his savings account number, but then he got suspicious. Now he wonders. Is this a scam?

Yes, it's a scam. Even before Congress passed the $170 billion stimulus package to boost the economy, scammers started calling people to get their bank account and credit card information, so they could steal money, identities, or both.

Some scammers even claimed that you would lose your refund if you didn't give them your personal and financial information immediately.

This is just one of over 1,000 IRS scams that is currently circulating. With the tax season upon us, scammers are now pulling out all the stops to fool their victims.

Here are some of the most popular IRS scams that are currently making the rounds...

You seem to be the wizard of unwrapping searches on sites and showing how to add them on our own Web sites, which is awesome. I saw - and really liked - your article on how to add a Google search box to my site but instead of searching Google, I want to search Google Images. Doable?

My wife and I have a bet: she says that Bruce Springsteen's iconic Born in the USA has been used in more films than Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender. I think she's wacked. Can you settle our bet?

I used to program my TRS-80 in BASIC when I was in high school, and took a class in Pascal in college. Now I want to try to write applications for my Mac but don't know where to start. Help!

Searched for a few things on your site and I hit pay dirt! Thank you. I'm am nonetheless uncertain on how to pick a MP3 player. I don't know what factors to take into consideration in order to guide my choice. What do you suggest? I'll use it mostly to listen to music on the train as I commute to work. I'm no tech wiz and one of the first things I'll need to master is how to download, so a complicated gizmo won't work out for me. So what should I consider : memory (how much is good?), size, weight, crash proof, compatibility with other technology that might be coming up, keys? As you can read, I have no clue!

I am going to be selling my 15" Aluminum Powerbook G4 soon. I would like to sell it with some of the programs included (Office and Adobe CS2 - I figure I should make a few extra bucks including them) but without exposing any personal information. What's the best way to do a thorough cleaning of my Mac without actually losing everything. Additionally, will I be able to use these programs if I reinstall them on a new mac? What's the easiest way to just do a clean sweep of a mac and reinstall applications that I have now - do I need the original software CD/DVDs? Other suggestions?