I use Aweber to manage my mailing lists and I notice from your pop-up that you do too, Dave. So maybe you can answer my question: how do I delete email addresses from my list that are marked as permanently undeliverable? I have a fair number of them and if I don't do this, I'm paying for the addresses in the database. For no reason.

I was poking around on Google Maps looking at satellite views of my neighborhood and when I switched to street view, was upset that the photo they have of my home includes my children playing in the front yard. That's not right, I don't want the world to be able to see that. I know that important government buildings and installations have gotten their street view images blurred in the database. Can I do that too, can I get Google to blur or otherwise obscure my house in the Google Maps database?

I was reading some updates on Twitter and saw someone had posted a URL that would let me see what projects they'd backed on Kickstarter. The URL they shared was of the form "kickstarter.com/name", which is cool. I want one too. How do I get a custom "vanity" URL for my Kickstarter account?

Just heard that Google Reader is going away this summer. That stinks! How am I supposed to read my RSS feeds? More importantly, if it is going to be shut down, how do I export my subscription list from Google's RSS Reader program?

I'm trying to upload some photos to a social media site and it's complaining that they're too big. They are, as they come off my camera huge, but I have no idea how to shrink them down and was rather hoping the site would do just that, reducing image size, but nope, it just complains. On my iMac, how do I shrink down images so that they can be uploaded and shared?

I've been on Yahoo Mail for years and while most of my friends are now on Gmail or their own Web-based email programs, I like Yahoo. It's easy, and everyone knows my address as being @yahoo.com. However, I would like to get a bit more sophisticated about my use by working with folders so that everything isn't just sitting in my inbox. Can I create and use folders in Yahoo Mail?

I'm wondering if you can step me through the process required to configure one of the new Linksys routers, specifically the AC-1750? I'm excited to get 802.11ac and its huge speed improvement, but am leery that it's going to be a bear to set up. Got one? Can you help?

I haven't logged in to my Flickr account for a while, and when I just tried to go in for some reason it refused my login and password, saying they were invalid. Flickr's owned by Yahoo so I'm using my Yahoo account credentials, as always. How do I prove I own my account and reset my password to something I know, so I can get in??

In Microsoft Word, is it possible to have bubbles reserved only for comments, and to have inserts show up as colored/underlined and deletions as colored/strikethrough? I'm an editor who's been working in Word since forever, but I always was fine with deletions being in bubbles. I just today discovered that it doesn't seem possible to make deletions be strikethroughs without making comment bubbles impossible.

Hi, Hotmail recently converted me to their new "Outlook" mail. Tried to delete an old folder yesterday. Big problem, there is no longer a "gear" icon in the folder section to manage your folders. Hence, you can no longer delete and obsolete folder. Crazy, but true! Thanks' for any help!

I just got an email from Google Voice saying that my "Google Voice forwarding phone needs to be verified within 30 days". What the deuce? Is it legit or some phishing scam? I've read enough of your articles to know that I need to be paranoid about links in any email message. So what's the story, Dave, legit or bogus?

Dave, I just got a notification from Skype that I have a voicemail message, but I'm confused how that can be, and when I clicked on the link to check it, I got an error page instead. What's going on?

Is it possible to have Instagram automatically email me a copy of every photo that I post? I know that I can tap on the email link when I post photos, but that's a manual step and I am sure I'll forget to do that sometimes, and I seek something completely automated. Does Instagram offer such a feature?

I've been reading about how lots of online services now use 2-step authentication or verification to ensure that no-one else breaks into your account and it sounds great. I have a cellphone that's always with me, so the idea of the system sending a temp second password to my cell phone and requiring that I enter that too sounds great. But does Yahoo have it yet?

I'm using Dropbox to share highly confidential files with an investigator and need to be completely sure that no-one other than myself ever access the files. I know Dropbox uses SSL connections and my account is protected by a password, but I want a higher level of security. Can I set up a two-step verification or authentication process so it requires me to both know my password and receive a text message on my cellphone to log in?

Hi Dave. I'm in Atlanta and am wondering if you have a recommendation for a computer repair person or company here in town?

I've become a fan of Instagram and really enjoy your pics [nice way to butter me up! You can find me on Instagram by searching for "d1taylor". --DT] but there are some other people that I'm following and would rather not. What's the fast way to unfollow someone on Instagram?

I saw that Instagram now offers a cool photo mapping feature that lets you look at all your photos -- and those of other members who opt in to photo maps -- on a map. Neat idea, but I'm a bit anxious about privacy: some of the pics I post are taken from my house and I don't want everyone on Instagram knowing where I live. Should I just skip Instagram Photo Maps or is there a way to control what pics are posted?

Instagram is a great iOS and Android app available to photo enthusiasts. One of the things that make it great is the interaction that one can build through images, with friends and new contacts alike. To build these new connections, hashtags play a very important factor.

Not sure how to get started with Instagram? Check out our earlier article How to get Followers on Instagram before you proceed.

I have a couple of friends who are crazy about Instagram but when I downloaded it, I couldn't see how to use it and why they think it's so interesting. Can you take me through the steps needed to take and post a photo in Instagram, Dave, then perhaps offer some tips on how to get followers of my own?

I've been uploading some videos to YouTube and am really frustrated by the thumbnail image that YouTube chooses for the video. It's usually awful. Is there a way to change it and, ideally, to actually specify the exact frame I want to have used for a custom YouTube video thumbnail?

What are the differences between an old solid-state hard drive (SSD) and a new SSD? Is there any benefit to upgrading our old SSD with the new one, and what might we lose by doing this upgrade? Is there any tutorial how to boost lightning up our boot system with Kingston SSD and what effect particularly in our gaming system with the new version SSD?

I've been reading about how lots of online services now use 2-step authentication or verification to ensure that no-one else breaks into your account and it sounds great. I have a cellphone that's always with me, so the idea of the system sending a temp second password to my cell phone and requiring that I enter that too sounds great. But does Yahoo have it yet?

I'm using Dropbox to share highly confidential files with an investigator and need to be completely sure that no-one other than myself ever access the files. I know Dropbox uses SSL connections and my account is protected by a password, but I want a higher level of security. Can I set up a two-step verification or authentication process so it requires me to both know my password and receive a text message on my cellphone to log in?

Hi Dave. I'm in Atlanta and am wondering if you have a recommendation for a computer repair person or company here in town?

I've become a fan of Instagram and really enjoy your pics [nice way to butter me up! You can find me on Instagram by searching for "d1taylor". --DT] but there are some other people that I'm following and would rather not. What's the fast way to unfollow someone on Instagram?

I saw that Instagram now offers a cool photo mapping feature that lets you look at all your photos -- and those of other members who opt in to photo maps -- on a map. Neat idea, but I'm a bit anxious about privacy: some of the pics I post are taken from my house and I don't want everyone on Instagram knowing where I live. Should I just skip Instagram Photo Maps or is there a way to control what pics are posted?

Instagram is a great iOS and Android app available to photo enthusiasts. One of the things that make it great is the interaction that one can build through images, with friends and new contacts alike. To build these new connections, hashtags play a very important factor.

Not sure how to get started with Instagram? Check out our earlier article How to get Followers on Instagram before you proceed.

I have a couple of friends who are crazy about Instagram but when I downloaded it, I couldn't see how to use it and why they think it's so interesting. Can you take me through the steps needed to take and post a photo in Instagram, Dave, then perhaps offer some tips on how to get followers of my own?

I've been uploading some videos to YouTube and am really frustrated by the thumbnail image that YouTube chooses for the video. It's usually awful. Is there a way to change it and, ideally, to actually specify the exact frame I want to have used for a custom YouTube video thumbnail?

What are the differences between an old solid-state hard drive (SSD) and a new SSD? Is there any benefit to upgrading our old SSD with the new one, and what might we lose by doing this upgrade? Is there any tutorial how to boost lightning up our boot system with Kingston SSD and what effect particularly in our gaming system with the new version SSD?

I'm confused. I received a bunch of different emails from Craigslist that are posting confirmation receipts for things I actually haven't put up for sale on Craigslist. I clicked on the link to see what was going on and all I got was a "loading" message, and it wasn't even on the craigslist.com domain. What's it all mean, Dave? Is this some sneaky Craigslist phishing attack from some cybercriminals, or a script virus or what?

I just bought new tires and the guy at the tire store told me that the reason my old tires wore out so quickly was because I never rotated them. I had no idea. They said I should have my tires rotated every 5000 miles but I'm never going to remember that, and I don't drive a consistent number of miles each week to figure out when in the future that'd occur. Can my Toyota Camry remind me when it's time to rotate the tires?

I want to get a signal booster for the wireless network on my house. Any recommendations? I don't need anything too powerful or elaborate. My house isn't that big But our Blu-ray player is in our sunken living room and the signal is a little weak.

I'm not a fan of Google. I think they're constantly violating people's privacy and the only company I know that's worse is Facebook. I'm not on Facebook. And in terms of Google, I am doing my very best to find alternatives for every one of their services, including switching to Bing Maps from Google Maps. Problem is, I can't figure out how to get "directions from here" in Bing Maps. Can you show me?

Hi, my daughter knows my security questions on Hotmail Live so she able to access my password every time I change it. This is really annoying and I need help with changing my security questions.

I know you're a big fan of the Googleplex and everything the company does, Dave, but my boss and I both prefer Bing as our search engine. Thing of it is, I want to be able to construct some fairly sophisticated searches where I exclude certain domains, search for phrases not words, etc. Is it possible on Bing to do advanced searches?

I just noticed that I'm being billed every month on Paypal for something I canceled a while back. I contacted the company and they're going to refund my charges but they said that I need to go and cancel the Paypal subscription payment. How do I do that?

I keep reading about cloud-based this, cloud-based that, different services for backups, copies of my digital photos, and even document storage so I can work on my spreadsheets from anywhere in the world. Sounds great, but I don't really understand what The Cloud actually *is* and whether it's safe and secure?

I can't get in to my Hotmail Live account even though I'm sure I know the password. It's bogus. How do I get in when my Hotmail password is no longer working?

My friend just had her Yahoomail account hacked and I am afraid mine might be next. How can I change my Yahoo Mail -- or Yahoo -- account password?

I want to set up my PayPal account so I can use the new PayPal Here application on my Apple iPhone 4s. Apparently, I need to set it up with my mobile phone number and a secret PIN code to have PayPal Here run. Except I have no idea how to go about establishing a PIN on my PayPal account. Can you help me out?

I'm trying to come up with a new name for our software product, having been informed by a customer that a really big firm that has lots of lawyers already has our current name trademarked. Ugh. We don't have money for a lawyer at this juncture, is there some way I can do a trademark or registered trademark search online?

I'm a big fan of the Starbucks app on my iPhone, but it's a hassle when I'm standing in a big line at my local Starbucks and there's an insufficient balance on my virtual card for the transaction to go through. Is there a way to program the app so that it'll automatically reload if I get below a certain balance?

I often see images on Facebook and Pinterest that have snarky comments or no comments at all, and I'd really know where they come from and the actual subjects of the pictures. For example, a few days ago someone posted a photo of a bedroom that's actually underwater. Awesome. But where is it?

I finally got approved for Google Drive and am appreciating your earlier tutorial on how to get started [see: Get Started with Google Drive] but now I want to be able to share the files I'm putting on the drive, just as I share documents with clients on Dropbox. How's it done?

As a loyal Dropbox fan, I have been hearing increasing rumors about Google's new Gdrive and how it'll offer the same basic features, but include tight integration with Google Docs. I use Gdocs a lot, so I'm interested. How do I get started with Google Drive?

I just got an e-card in my inbox from HBO, and while I'm a fan of some HBO shows, I don't know that my friends are aware of this. The subject is "You've received a HBO e-card". I'm paranoid about whether I should click on the link to read the ecard or not. Should I?

I just bought a copy of The Adventures of Tintin and there's a sticker on the front saying that I can instantly stream the film using Ultraviolet. Never heard of such a thing. What's Ultraviolet and how do I use it to watch my Tintin movie on my computer?

I've been using the Chrome web browser from Google for a long time and recently noticed something weird: I can't copy and paste URLs from the address bar. This is a pain because I frequently want to share links with my friends but now have to type them letter-by-letter.

Now that I have an AppleTV I keep hearing about an upgrade that changes the user interface and makes it faster. Nice. But how the heck do I get my Apple TV to upgrade it's operating system firmware?

I'm kind of freaking out. Apparently as of March 1st, 2012, Google will be tying together all the activity I do across any and all Google properties, and mining all of my old search history, both on Google the search engine and YouTube. Yikes! How can I opt out?

On a comment to another article on my site, someone asked: "Why do you have to pay an organisation to buy your own web address, isn't the internet for everyone and why should you pay a monthly fee for a domain name that only you could create, why?"

Hello I have purchased an Apple laptop. It's offering me a choice of 6 WiFi networks to connect thru. I don't have a clue as to which one to use. Can you please point me in the right direction. Thank you!

My friend - female, 22 - was telling me that she went to a spot on Google and learned that it thought she was a 30 year old guy based on its profiling of her searches and use of the different Google tools. Creepy. Interesting. How can I find out what Google thinks about me?

I heard from a friend that Google's going to be shutting down Picasa because of Google Plus and I'm kind of freaking out: I have hundreds of photos on the site and no idea how to save them from vanishing when they pull the plug. Help!

You've taught me to be paranoid when it comes to computer email, Dave, which is good. I got a note from a gal named Shawna Dennis from the Better Business Bureau saying that they've received a complaint from one of my customers and that I should reply to the complaint to share my side of the story. But my customers would come to me with complaints, not some Bureau in Arlington, Virginia. What's the story? Is this legit?

Just loaded my first video up to YouTube and it came out great, except that for some reason, Apple's iMovie 11 program has it marked to be "private" even though I specified "public" when I did the upload. What's up? How do I fix it?

Google has jumped into the cloud music fray with an interesting, though rather crude, offering of its own called Google Music, and I decided that it'd be darn helpful to have all of my almost 9000 songs available to me anywhere I was online, through just about any Web device.

Here's how I got started with Google Music...

I just got an email from an organization called NACHA that claims I have a failed ACH automatic payment transaction. Well, I do pay some bills through electronic funds transfer, but I'm confused: why wouldn't this message have come from my bank rather than some central organization. Is it a scam?

An old school chum and I are trying to plan a lunch meet up in Seattle, but we're on opposite sides of the city. Is there any way for us to find a good lunch spot restaurant that's approximately midpoint in a city neither of us knows?

I know I can upload photos and photo albums to Google Plus, but I'd like to try using Google's Picasa program instead. Can you give me some tips on how to upload my photo gallery to Picasa? Thanks.

I'm trying to arrange a date and we're meeting mid-point between our houses to minimize driving. Problem is, neither of us know the area very well. Is there some way in Google Maps or some other tool to specify a location and then learn what restaurants are in that immediate vicinity?

I've been on MobileMe for years now, and love that it could automatically sync calendars on my iPhone, iPad and computers, even to where I could access my calendar (and contacts, lest I forget) from any Web browser in the world. Very handy for someone who lives and dies by his calendar. Now there's a new player in town, iCloud, and it's a mandatory upgrade for all MobileMe users.

How can you most easily upgrade your MobileMe account to iCloud?

My friend and colleague Drew, on Google Plus, asked: What did Google do to Picasa? It is now part of Google Plus but I can't figure out how to embed those photos on my blog like I used to be able to do. IT is not an option. Can anyone help me figure this out?

I figured out how to add Google Analytics to my Web site, thanks [see Add Google Analytics to your Web Site Today] but now my colleague wants access to the Analytics reports and I really don't want to share my entire Google account information with her. Can I add people just to an Analytics account without them getting to my Gmail, Google Plus or other Google accounts?

I'm digging Google Chrome, but I really want to have a different skin or theme. Is that possible, and if so, what's the easiest way to do so?

I just got an email from my bank - Wells Fargo - that says "Wells Fargo Bank technical department is performing alert upgrade to improve the security of our online banking notifications as part of our enhanced security measures". Not suspicious, except the next line says "This is mandatory validation exercise for all Wells Fargo Bank customers. During the database upgrading exercise we discovered a credit advice of a substantial inflow in your favor." What? Is this legit? I clicked on the link and it sure looks like Wells Fargo, but I'm scared to proceed in case it's some criminal phishing hack or other.

Compared with the dial-up connections that most web users were using up until just a few years ago, even the slowest broadband connections are capable of providing users with relative high speed web browsing. However, as speeds have gone up, similarly, so have the expectations of users, which mean people are now using their internet connection for much more bandwidth-intensive tasks. Tasks, such as downloading television programmes, streaming latest film releases or even making voice calls. Unless you have a fast, reliable broadband connection, and a well set-up network, you may encounter some bandwidth issues- such as slower downloading speeds or even frequently interrupted streaming, which will only become a nuisance.

While the most obvious step is to invest in a better broadband service, such as those offered by Sky.com (check out their latest broadband offers on the website), there are plenty of ways you can improve your existing connection- things you can do to improve your broadband speeds.

I bought a new Yeti Pro microphone and while it looks very cool and probably sounds great on recordings, I can't get it to work on my Microsoft Windows 7 system. When I check the system status it shows "This device cannot start (code 10)" and when I plug it in, it fails. On some discussion boards they say that I should just keep unplugging/plugging and it'll eventually work, but that's driving me crazy. How the heck do I get this to work??!

I've been using Comcast's slick Xfinity.tv service for a while but my sister's been going in and changing all my favorite channels. I really don't want to watch DisneyXD, that's totally for l0s3rs. How do I change my password so she can't mess things up again?

I'm really terrible with typing and often spell addresses wrong when I try to go to different Web sites. Used to be that I'd just get an error from my Web browser that it couldn't be found, but now I get this stupid error page from Comcast that includes all sorts of advertisements. I don't want to see that, I want my old errors back. How can I switch things?

I'm wondering if there's any way to use Google Image search or another tool to find images or photographs similar to one that I have on my computer? If not, would that be a hard program to write given a database of image files?

I'm finally ready to say goodbye to my AOL account after a ridiculous number of years wasting money on the subscription. But they sure don't make it easy. How do I cancel my AOL (America Online) account, Dave?

I like Google Chrome as a browser but all the pop-up ads are driving me crazy. I'm used to the blocking capabilities built in to Firefox and just can't find them. I think I just need to install an extension to do this and am wondering if you have a recommendation for a Google Chrome extension that can block advertisement pop-ups, and if so, how to install it?

My husband has been logging in to my Amazon.com account and buying stuff for himself because I have some gift card credit on my account. I don't want to get into a fight with him, I just want to change my password so he can't do it any more. How do I change my Amazon.com account password?

Hi Dave, I've got two email accounts but someone changed my password and security question. Is it possible to recover my emails accounts at all? Many thanks.

How cool would it be to send print jobs to your home or office printer regardless of whether you were in town or halfway around the world? Well, you can't quite do that from any computer yet, but if you've got an Apple iOS device (iPhone or iPad) or if you're one of the very few lucky people who have a Google Chrome-based laptop, you can be the first to experiment with a nifty new service called Google Cloud Print.

I'm a Comcast customer and pay for a digital video recorder (DVR) as part of my service. My understanding is that I can actually remotely program the DVR through the Xfinity.TV Web site. Since I'm addicted to American Idol, Glee and NCIS, I want to make sure I never miss an episode. Are you a Comcast subscriber, and if so, can you show me how to use the Xfinity site to set up a recurring recording program?

I always get the airport early, even when my children's flights end up being late. Makes me crazy, but I hate calling up the airline status update computer because I hate talking to automated systems like that. Blech! Is there some way I can check flight status online?

I'm a huge fan of YouTube and find funny videos there all the time. I email links to my friends, sure, but sometimes I want to actually embed the videos themselves on my blog. Is there some way to do that? Used to be it was pretty easy to figure out...

Okay, I made a short video of my dog chasing his tail and want to upload it to YouTube so I can get millions of views and maybe get a guest shot on Conan or Tosh2.0. How do I upload my movie to YouTube?

I'm skeptical of my Internet provider. They claim that I have a turbo high speed Internet connection and as far as I can tell, it's just as slow as the connection I use at school. That's bogus. How do I tell or test my actual connection speed so I can know whether I have a good deal or whether they're just lying to me?

I like using Yelp and reading people's comments on different restaurants and other venues, but I am constantly baffled by how it shows restaurants ten or more miles away from the area I'm searching and how there's no "sort by ratings" option. How do I just find the best rated restaurants in a given city on Yelp?

I'm a big fan of Twitter, but notice that sometimes when I tweet about certain topics I find that spammers and other people reply to me with @replies, just trying to get me to visit their sites. It's very spammy and stinks. I go to twitter.com in my Web browser: is there any way to report a twitter user as spam on the site?

I've been using Google's Chrome browser, which I like a lot, but am a bit confused about how to check for updates. Is this possible and if so, what's the easiest way to update Google Chrome to the latest version?

How can I cut off a site that keeps sending porn content to me. I have clicked on the unsubscribe link but it still keeps coming. Please help.

I just realized that my daughter has my iTunes account password because I got a receipt for about $25 worth of purchases that I'm sure I didn't make. I don't even like Eminem, Lil Wayne and don't even know who Wisin & Yandel are... ?

I'm dealing with my daughter, but it seems reasonable to also change my iTunes Store password. Except I have absolutely no idea how to do that. Help! How do I change my iTunes account password?

Crazy frustrating. I have a laptop of my own and a desktop computer at work and when I went to my parents house to share some movies on their new AppleTV, it complained that I'd already authorized five computers with my account and wouldn't proceed. Sucks! How do I fix this?

I want to invoice someone for work I did and I prefer to get the money through Paypal. I know that I can "request money" but that doesn't seem too professional. Is there an invoicing service that can help me produce a professional invoice that links right to my Paypal account?

I know that on mobile devices there are all these cool apps that let you search "near you" for different types of restaurants, etc., and I know that Yelp has some slick capabilities, but I'm wondering if I can find local food, say a good pizza place, near me within Google Maps while on my laptop?

I have a very specific question for you, Dave, so I hope that's not a problem? I did a bunch of shopping online and really wanted to keep keep copies of the receipts, but many Web sites have a "Print" button for printing receipts. What I want instead is a copy on my computer, ideally in PDF form, so I can avoid anyone else seeing what's on the printer (and blowing the surprise). Even better, can the PDF files be password protected and secure?? I have a big iMac if that makes a difference.

I recently switched from Safari on my Mac to Google Chrome as my primary Web browser, and I really like the themes and the speed - seems a lot faster! - but Safari has a nice pop-up blocker and Chrome doesn't. Isn't there some way to stop pop-up windows in Google Chrome, maybe through an extension or plug-in?

I'm paranoid about passwords and now that there are more stories of password and account data circulating I want to change everything! But I can't figure out Skype. How do I change my Skype account?

I'm a pro auction seller on eBay and have accumulated a fair amount of money in my Paypal account. I know, I can get a check or transfer it to my account, but it'd be more fun to have it charge my Starbucks card instead, since I basically live at my local 'bucks. Possible?

I use Safari on my MacBook and have noticed something really frustrating with how it handles bookmarks in the "Topsites" area: they don't stick around! When I quit the app and restart it, the pages I've saved as topsite bookmarks have vanished. What's the story and how do I get topsites to work properly, Dave?

After the recent 25+ hour outage on the Tumblr site, thousands of bloggers had a chance to think about what it would be like to lose everything on their site, all their entries, all the comments that others have left, all the effort and work. Gone. Fortunately Tumblr came back up after fixing its database problems, but imagine if it hadn't, or had to back up a few weeks -- or longer! -- to get things working. This leads to the obvious question: Can you backup, save or archive your Tumblr blog? Turns out, you can...

I've been a fan of Limewire for years and have found it a great way to expand my music collection and learn more about bands I otherwise wouldn't find. And an occasional movie and app has been sweet too. But suddenly something's happened and Limewire seems to be broken. What's up with Limewire??

I'm pretty convinced that there's no meaningful difference between a movie that I buy in regular DVD format and one that's in Blu-Ray format, other than the price tag. Seems to me that when I watch them, they both look great and my TV tells me when I play a DVD on my Blu-Ray player that it's getting a 1080p signal. So is Blu-Ray just a huge rip-off?

I'm so psyched, after decades of having a DVD in a red envelope sitting on my AppleTV unit, I can finally switch my subscription to a streaming-only plan and even save a few bucks! Nice, but how do I do that from the Netflix app on my television?

My bridge buddies and I constantly argue over whose turn it is to bring beer and snacks, so I want to create a simple spreadsheet that people can use to sign up for stuff, but I don't really want to have us email it around because we'll lose data. I'm a big fan of Google Docs so I'm thinking that a shared spreadsheet would be the way to go, but I don't want to have a password required. Just a secret URL that they can use instead: if you know the link, you can edit the spreadsheet. Doable?

My teacher has told us to learn how to count in binary but I'm a bit lost. How is 100 only one greater than 11?

I use paperless billing to save on mailing costs, but would really like to have copies of my bills directly on my computer. My concern is that it's a lot of confidential data if I were to ever lose my laptop. Is there a way to save those PDF reports in a way that requires a password to read them?

I was using Google Maps the other day to find a local restaurant and noticed that it now includes reviews. Unfortunately, my favorite restaurant has one review and it's from some crabby customer. I'd like to add a review too. How do I add a review on Google Maps?

Holy cow, I just got an email receipt from Apple's iTunes Store for $250 worth of music downloads that I never bought. I'm freaking out: I can't afford this! What's my recourse? Has someone stolen my credit card info??

I do a lot of business via Skype and often have a chat window open with my partner while we're on the line with a client. We have a backchannel conversation going on so we can ensure we're in agreement on terms, schedules, etc, but what drives me crazy is that each time I get a chat message there's a small "bloop" sound. Can I turn this Skype audio notification off?

This is really bizarre: I'm trying to buy the latest Eminem album, "Recovery", and the "Buy Album" button is grayed out and I can't click on it. What the heck? What does that mean and how do I fix it so I can buy this in iTunes?

I hear that you've got a podcast you record weekly, Dave. How can I find and subscribe to it ( ed note: it's called the Boulder Open Podcast [iTunes link] ) in iTunes? I'd like to give it a shot and find out what you sound like too!

I've read your answer to the question:

"Every so often I get an email attachment and double-click it to open it up on my Mac. It opens up fine, I make edits and save the document, but then when I quit Word I can't find the $#@$# document on my system. What's going on and where are the documents I've edited?"

[ed. note: See (Where is Microsoft Word saving my email attachments?]

I have the exact same problems, but it happens in windows. I'm using Outlook Express for my email. I open an attachments, edit it, save it, close it. But I don't know where it was saved, so I can't open it. I tried to download the same attachment, and save it again, and it add "(1)" after my file name. That means my original file is still somewhere in my computer. Can you help me to locate where is it?

I keep getting email from different organizations claiming that if I join their auction I could buy an iPad for $20 or less, or even win one for the cost of entering the sweepstakes! Tempting, but do ya think it's legit, Dave?

I'm a bit fan of meetup.com and am a member of a bunch of groups but I recently decided to unsubscribe from a particular meetup group as it's not for me. But I can't figure out how! Can you show me how to quit a meetup group, Dave?

I hate spammers! Stupid jerks waste so much of my time and clog up my mailbox with their stupid messages. I think it should justify the death penalty! Now I'm getting spam from Yahoo Groups where people are automatically adding me to their spammy groups without my permission? WTF? Is there some way to prevent Yahoo Groups spam?

I love the fact that when I look at maps on my smartphone (a Droid X) it automatically centers to my current location. That's super useful to me. Is there an equivalent mechanism that works for laptops so that I can click a button and have a map of my current location appear? I prefer Google Maps, if that makes a difference...

On two separate computers, I have tried to change my Search Provider on Internet Explorer 7 by (1) chosing the option on required settings page, (2) right clicking on the search icon to change/add defalt search provider, and (3) using the TEST option. Each time, I get a message at the bottom of the page that says "(!) Error on Page". Please help. I HATE Bing!

I get so much email that I find that sometimes I miss events from my favorite Meetup group. Is there some way to actually just import the calendar events into my iCal calendar? Or, better, subscribe to the group's calendar so that it's always up-to-date? Thanks!

I've got a real problem, Dave. My college-age son had a party in my house while my younger children and I were on a trip and now I find that my house is a venue in Foursquare called "Party House". I don't want that. At all! How can I delete my house as a Foursquare venue??

I want to have a conference call with two colleagues via Skype but while it's pretty straightforward to set up a call between two of us, I am not clear how to add the third person. Do we need to start out with a conference call or chat room for this to work?

I've had a Netflix subscription since I got my iPad so I could gain access to their streaming movie library, but I now realize that I haven't actually launched the Netflix iPad app for over a month. So it's time to quit Netflix. How do I most easily do that, Dave?

The latest upgrade in Windows Hotmail has gone ahead and removed the View Message Source from the right-click context menu in the Inbox! I have always found that to be a valuable and critical tool in filtering out /previewing potentially risky e-mails without ever having to actually open them.

Why on earth would MS disarm their Hotmail account users in this day and age in the battle against scams/spams/phishing and all other sorts of nefarious exploits!?!?

Is this a phishing scam? I just got some email that looks suspicious with a link to "paypal-labs.com" Is it a scam or phishing attempt? Why can't they just make it paypal.com?

I get all sorts of spam from my Microsoft Live.com membership. I just want to keep my Hotmail account active since I've had it since I was in high school, but I don't want to have to weed through all these promo messages, etc. Can I turn these off? I know there used to be a way...

I've had an Apple iPhone since the iPhone 3 was released and now that I have an iPhone 4, I realize that I should be able to pair it via bluetooth with my Toyota GPS navigational system. I have no idea how to proceed, however. Any chance you have a Toyota and can help out?

I want to add a YouTube search box to my Web site. Can it be done?

Just saw a friend who had a Google home page that looks like Bing, with a big photo as the background instead of the boring, boring plain white background. How do I do that too and change the Google background?

I'm working with a new vendor and they want me to generate an invoice via Paypal so I can get paid. They're referring to a request payment but I don't know what that is. Can you help me out here with Paypal, please?

How do I make a copy of a form or a document from Gmail email and then complete the form using the computer? I have tried and have achieved the level of "No Luck". So I wind up printing the form and completing the form manually. Then I scan it and send it to whomever. There has to be an easier way. I thought maybe using HTML might be the answer, but I can't seem to find out how to use it instead of the standard language of Gmail.

I've become a fan of Web-based office tools and am just about ready to jettison the old battleship of Microsoft Office in favor of Google Docs. Since I have been reading about how the next version of Office includes online document sharing, I am curious to try this feature with Google Docs - in particular a project spreadsheet with my colleagues - and am wondering if you can give me some tips on how to share my Google Docs spreadsheet easily?

I've been shopping for a birthday present for my husband and am concerned that he might go to Amazon.com and find out because of the "your recent searches" area. Is there some way to edit the information, delete things or even just turn this off when on Amazon.com?

A friend of mine who is pretty sharp with computer security asked me if I had set a "password recovery question" for my MSN Hotmail live.com account, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Dave, how do I set a secret password recovery question on Hotmail??

I read your earlier article about how to change my password on Hotmail (live.com) but when I went to the site, I found that things had changed in the interim so am still baffled about how to find the password update area on Hotmail. Help?

I'm considering buying a computer on eBay that has a completely empty hard drive. The eBay seller is selling a bunch of these computers and the description says that they are "off-lease." Are off-lease computers okay to buy? Will the computer work if I just install Microsoft Windows on it? How many times am I allowed to install a single copy of Microsoft Windows that I' I own?

In addition to having a ton of music on my Apple iPod, I also have a copy of it all on my laptop, which is great. Any time I want I can plug in my headphones and listen to it while working. Except there are some songs that I just don't want to show up when I'm in "shuffle" mode in iTunes. Can I mark them as not eligible for play during a shuffle?

Hi, my name is Lori and my friend, Pegah, has found out that her hotmail account has sent out emails to all of her contacts without her knowing. The email says: "Hey How are you doing? I ordered a white 3GS Apple iPhone from a good website -- [[link removed]] -- much cheaper but brand new and genuine! You can check it if you would like. Cheers".

What can she do to stop this?

She is scared to use her computer right now and so I am emailing for her. She said that the last time she used her hotmail was Wed, March 10th. She was not asked for her password today when she tried to go into it. Please help - she is really worried. I received the above email from Pegah to my Yahoo account and the date shown was Thurs, March 11th @ 10:28PM.

I'm concerned about an email I just got from Amazon.com saying that an order I'd placed had been cancelled, but I haven't placed an order for months. Did someone break into my account that I got the message "Amazon.com - Your Cancellation (2706-81146-4342895)"

A friend of mine has Boxee running on her computer via a Mac Mini and I was pretty darn impressed. Tons of content, a slick interface, very fun. Problem is, when I got Boxee going on my computer, I found it had a lot less content. Digging around a bit reveals that the extra channels are added by accessing "Boxee content repositories" but I have no clue how to do that. Do you use Boxee? Can you help?

I still use Hotmail because it's what I am familiar with and it's what I've been using for years, but I'm starting to get jealous of my friends on Gmail because of all the cool themes they can apply to their mailbox to make it look cool. Is there any way to skin or otherwise tweak Hotmail to make it look a bit more cool?

I have a writer who produces content for me on a weekly basis, content that includes photographs or other pictures. Very helpful, but he submits his material in Apple Pages format and I have no idea how to get the image out of the document and into a separate file when I want to save it to my blog.

I'm a bit anxious that somehow I've ended up with some sort of weird Google spyware or something: every time I want to just go to the Google home page by typing in http://www.google.com/ I end up on the iGoogle page. What's up with that and how do I fix it?

I just received an email from Facebook telling me about a new login system that they're implementing in a few days, and telling me I need to log in and update my profile. I'm skeptical. Is this legit, Dave, or bogus?

I've been hearing rumors for months about Apple releasing a tablet computer but they give me very odd looks when I ask about it at the Apple Store. Then at Christmas dinner someone told me that it's on the way and it's going to be called the iSlate. What? How could they know, and what's your best information about what an iSlate will be?

I got a very nice card from my grandma that included $10 "to buy some music for my new apple phone". It wasn't a gift card, though, so I figured I'd just buy the music directly in the iTunes Store on my iPhone and drop the $10 in the bank. Did it, but now I'm baffled: how do I copy that purchased music onto my MacBook Pro laptop? Do I need to download it again from the iTunes Store, or can iTunes just pull it from the phone?

I know this is a totally newbie question, but when I'm writing an email to someone in Apple Mail, I see certain words underlined with a squiggly red line, but if I click on them, nothing happens. Looks like it's the spelling system telling me that I have mispelled a word, but not always. What's the story? What can I do at that point?

I'm supposed to meet my friends at a restaurant in Washington DC later in the month but don't want to appear clueless by asking where it is and how to get to it. I have the Internet, right? So how do I use something like Google Maps or Mapquest to get directions from my hotel when I only know the name of the restaurant?

I have an older Toshiba laptop, a Tecra, and I want to change the order of boot devices so that it'll try to boot off a USB drive before it looks at the CDROM because I have a corrupt OS disk stuck in it. Problem is, I press f1, f8, f12, and just about every other function key I can imagine and nothing lets me get to the BIOS. Help!

A number of my friends and business colleagues use Skype and I'd like to be able to chat with them while traveling, but I don't know their Skype account names. Is there some directory of Skype names and/or some best practices about how to search for someone in the Skype universe?

I just noticed that when I start to type in a search query in Google that it pops up with suggestions based on my partial typing fragment. This isn't so useful and actually bugs me because my wife occasionally uses my computer too and, well, I don't want her to see all my random searches. How can I fix it? I'm using Firefox on a Mac, if that makes a difference.

I want to know the IP address that has been assigned to my Microsoft Windows XP computer. How do I find out what my IP address is without going all uber-geek?

I know how to open a command prompt in Microsoft Windows, but the normal methods for cutting and copying and pasting -- like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V -- don't seem to work inside a command prompt window. How can I do copying and pasting with a command prompt?

I have a friend's e-mail address and I want to send them a file from my computer. How do I send it to them by e-mail?

I have a stalker. Some weird guy seems to have nothing better to do in his life than pay attention to when I log in to Google Gmail and then instantly hit me up for a chat. If I don't respond, he keeps sending messages. It's creepy. I don't like him. How can I block him from bugging me?

I've been trying Google Groups but as I've grown more and more frustrated with the inability to turn off threading in Gmail [ed note: see Can I Disable Threading in Gmail?] I've decided to just bail on Google entirely. Bing will work for search, and Yahoo Groups will do just fine for managing my mailing lists. How do I delete a Google group?

I want to set up a Google Group for my local church group, but I know that at least a few people in the group won't be able to deal with invitations that they need to click on the link, etc. So is there any way to directly create a group and then simply indicate who should be on the list, without "inviting" them, per se?

I've made the transition and now am working exclusively with iCal, but my colleagues are still stuck on Google Calendar. How can I subscribe to their calendars so that they show up on iCal rather than me having to log in to Gcal to see what's going on?

I'm becoming a Twitter power user and find it a pretty simple way to broadcast information about my upcoming product sales and related. Problem is, I'm also curious about what information can be gleaned from the shortened URLs I have to use, including ideally some Google Analytics-like geographic data. Is that even possible?

My friend keeps sending messages to my Yahoo Mail account, but I can't even find them. What's the story? He's thinking that maybe they're ending up in the spam folder, but I don't know how to check for that. Can you help me out, please?

I just got email from a domain registration company in China claiming that they've received a request from a local firm to register our domain in their area. They suggest that we register our domain there first, but I'm a bit skeptical. Does it really matter if we have foo.cn and so on, and is someone really trying to register our domain in the first place?

I'm borrowing a colleague's tiny little Verizon wireless cell modem gizmo, the MiFi 2200, and I'm totally impressed with it, except for one huge thing: what the heck do the lights mean?

I registered a domain name through GoDaddy, but recently have been hearing some things about the company that make me want to move the domain elsewhere to ensure I don't get into any sort of trouble with the company. How do I do that?

I'm the Black Eyed Peas biggest fan and love all their work. I'd love to send them some email and tell them how great their songs are: how can I find an email address for the band or of Fergie, their amazing singer?

Hi Dave - I have a MacBook laptop, OS X, 10.5.6 I brought my laptop to work (3 blocks from my apt.) and I wanted to get onto the internet. I found a couple of wireless networks using my built in AirPort that did not require a password. The connections are unreliable and slow, and probably not secure, (it doesnt matter because I'm not doing my banking or anything - just surfing), but I got onto the internet.

Once home, I'm unable to find any none-password networks and can't seem to get back on the ones I found at work. Isn't there such a thing as "free wifi"? E.g. at Starbucks, etc. Where and how can I find a free network? Or, where and how can I find out network passwords (I don't want to invade anyone's privacy - just want to keep myself entertained at a boring job!) Also, how can I create MY OWN network? Even if it's unsecure, I'd like to be able to unplug my ethernet cable at home and bring the laptop into other rooms.

I just got email from my system administrator saying that my Webmail account is out of space. This is really confusing, though, because I don't access my email via the Web. Is this legit or some sort of scam or phishing attempt?

I've just set up a group for my church on Google Groups after having researched a variety of alternatives and so far, it's going well. Except for one thing: whenever anyone responds to a message sent to the group, everyone sees it, not just the person who sent in the original message. This is driving some parishioners crazy. How can I fix it?

Hey Dave! I'm only about twenty years behind here, but I want to start building my own Web site and am kind of drawing a blank on where I should store the files. I think that's called "site hosting" [ed. yeah, it is :-) ] but every single person I talk with is somewhere else, so I'm at a bit of a loss. Where should I host my new Web site? Don't need much, it's probably not going to be too busy...

I used to be into eBay to sell stuff, but now my friends keep telling me that Craigslist is the way to go. Since it lets me side-step the whole shipping issue, and definitely seems to lower the chance that I'll be ripped off if I'm meeting someone locally to do the deal. Do you ever sell stuff on Craigslist, Dave, and if so, can you offer some tips?

I was reading your Tweets the other day on Twitter [ed note: I'm @DaveTaylor on Twitter if you'd like to follow me too] and you mentioned something about listening to a jazz channel on your Comcast cable. I have looked and looked and can't find any music channels at all. How are you getting to them?

I've been reading up on different types of high-end workstations and am a bit puzzled about an expensive drive alternative to the usual SATA: an "SAS" hard disk. What's SAS and why would I want to even consider it?

Dave, you've said in a different article (see Download managers that allow resumption of interrupted downloads) that Apple's Safari browser has that as an option for its download manager. Just right-click on an interrupted download in the "Download Window". I'm a bit confused, because I have Safari on a Mac with OSX tiger. When I control-click there is NO option in the window to resume download. Please clarify as you said Safari can do this. How can i resume an interrupted download?

As a contributing author to a weblog about South Africa's upcoming World Cup 2010 (see The South Africa Project) I was rather surprised the other day when I went to log in to our Wordpress blog, just to see the following warning in my Web browser:

What does it mean? How can we get this sort of warning from our own site, without ever opening up anything or getting any indication that we'd be hacked or compromised?

I've been a member of Netflix for a long time, receiving DVDs, watching them, and sending them back so I can get the next one in my queue. A couple of friends tell me that they're watching movies directly on their computers through Netflix, but since I'm on a Mac I am excluded. Is there some way to hack my Mac OS X system so I can watch 'em on demand, like my buddies?

This is very weird. The SMS messages I get from Google Voice are always from 406 numbers. What's 406 and why is it always from the same place?

I'm just starting to get up to speed with Google's slick Google Voice application and have heard that you can use it to make free or at least pretty darn cheap international calls. I'm psyched! My brother is in Sweden and we rarely talk because of the cost of long distance. How can I gain access to the cheap international calling with Google Voice?

I've been hearing on and off for a while about this slick new answering service I can sign up for called Google Voice. A part of Google, obviously, but I haven't figured out how to sign up for it or even how to learn what it is. Can you enlighten me?

Dave, help! My daughter got an email saying she can make up to $15,000/month doing basic data entry on her computer and when she dug into it, she found that she needed to pay $199 to "register" with the service. I'm super, super skeptical and she thinks I'm just a pessimist. Is this legit or a scam?

For the last few years it seemed like Web browsers were becoming passe commodities and that we were going to end up with a browser from each operating system company and one indie browser, Firefox. Now, though, seems like there are tons of 'em. What's worth checking out and why is there such a resurgence of interest in the Web browser?

I don't know if this is possible, but I'm trying to set up a rendezvous while I'm on a business trip in Denver, Colorado, and want it to be pretty near a hotel I'll be staying at, but not in the hotel itself. How can I do that?

What's the easiest way to do currency conversions online? I've heard that you can do it with Google itself, but I've never had any luck.

I'm really enthused about switching from my existing house phone provider to Vonage, since it seems like it'd be cheaper and much more portable, but I'm afraid that 911 calls won't work, which scares me. Can you use 911 from an Internet phone?

My system administrator is telling me that I need to add a "capcha" [actually, it's "captcha"] system to my site so that I get less spam. What's a captcha system and why would I want it?

This is a kind of mundane question, but I constantly bump into acronyms and jargon that I don't understand, whether it's in group email, Twitter, or on people's blogs or blog comments. Where can I find answers?

Dave I'm a newbie with Mac so bear with me. I learned how to use "Grab" for screen capture and post it into an email and it works great. However when I tried to paste the same picture into a Mac forum to show them an error message paste was grayed out. What did I do wrong?

I'm a German national who lives in the Philippines for more than 17 years. I use Gmail for a long time already and I really like it. No problems so far. Just a couple of days back, though, my brother in Germany who also has a Gmail account told me that he receives more than 100 spams a day whereas I get at the most 2 or 3 a month. Can you please give me some advice on that?

What does an "m" appearing before "www" mean? Seems like here lately, when I get online and go to yahoo, I am seeing the "m" appear... what I am seeing come out of nowhere is: http://m.www.yahoo.com What is that m all about? Where is it coming from? Does it mean anything?

I've been a prolific commentator on YouTube in the entertainment channel and, well, now I regret some of the comments I left. Is there any way to go back and delete any of them?

My name is Daniel Sadownick and I am a jazz artist whose CD "There Will Be A Day" is now up on iTunes as well as other online retailers. I just joined an Indie marketing website where they can promote my record. They provide links that point directly to all of the sites where my CD is up at (i.e., Amazon, CD Baby, etc.). Now, these sites have concrete URL's and yet my promotion site also asks for my iTunes URL. I have had no luck in finding that out and I'm hoping that you can help me.

I like to keep my blog readable and neat, so I fix typos and grammatical errors in comments. Recently I have had a couple of people leave these long comments in all upper-case, which just rubs me the wrong way. Is there some easy way to fix this?

My kids think it's quite a lark to add goofy words to the spelling dictionary in Microsoft Word on my MacBook Pro, which I don't mind except now I find that some of the words that I commonly misspell aren't be flagged as misspelled either. Not good. How can I clean up Microsoft Word on my Mac so that it doesn't have bogus words?

I want to create a new mailing list but rather than use my standard tool of Yahoo Groups, I thought I'd like to try Google Groups. How do I create a mailing list group in Google Groups?

I have a spreadsheet that I created a while back with both an open and modify password but now want to share it with someone without a password blocking access. How do I turn off the password protection in Microsoft Excel for Mac?

I have added quite a few public calendars over the last few years I have been using Google Calendar, and now find that I want to trim things. Problem is, I can't see how to *delete* calendars in Gcal!

I got a message from Paypal with the subject "Help PayPal to avoid any kind of fraud" but I'm a bit suspicious: is this a legitimate way that Paypal is trying to get my help to avoid online scams, or is it a scam itself?

I'm a bit concerned, I got an email message from eNom tech support saying that they'd received a "third party complaint of invalid domain contact information in the Whois database" for one of my domains and that I needed up update the domain info or risk cancellation of the domain. But I logged in to eNom and found that there was nothing registered. So... what do I do?

Starbucks makes a big deal out of the fact that if you get a Starbucks Card you also get free wireless Internet access at Starbucks stores throughout the United States. Nice, but how do you *do it*? When I connect it says I already need an AT&T or T-Mobile account?

In my previous blog entry (see The Most Important Factors When Buying a New Windows PC) I started to talk about what factors to consider when buying a new Windows PC, but only had space to talk about RAM. My advice was "get as much RAM as you possibly can afford, a minimum of 1GB and ideally at least 2GB". Let's pick it up from there...

My computer is tired, old and slow as molasses. I can't even run some of the more modern programs and it takes a few minutes to boot, 30 seconds or longer to launch any programs and frankly fails left and right with Windows Media Player. What should I buy, and what should features should I seek?

I've run various groups on Yahoo Groups for a long time, but looking at it today, I realize there are some that are dead. How do you delete groups on Yahoo Groups?

I got an email from eBay saying that there was a dispute over non-payment of an auction I'd won and I know I paid it, so it's very weird. When I clicked on the "dispute" link, though, instead of going to eBay, I got a big screen saying "Reported Web Forgery!" So has someone hacked eBay, or what??

Every so often I go into Yahoo Groups and sign up for a group. Most of 'em are benign at worst and interesting at best. But sometimes I quickly realize I want to leave a group. I just don't see how to do that! How do I unsubscribe from a Yahoo Group?

I have been using Google Calendar for a long time and have a lot of entries. I mean, thousands of them over the last few years. I'd like to search for events that are in a specific location, Mike's Bar, but the problem is that I also have a couple of friends named Mike so I need to search just the location field. How do I do that in Gcal?

In preparation for a trip early next year, I want to start reading up on the news and contemporary events in South Africa. Now, is there some general approach to doing this with online tools?

I'm having fun with Google Chrome but am wondering: how the heck do you get an update to it when there's a new version? Do you just wait until the social networks are abuzz, or does the program automatically check?

I read your earlier article about how to download Google Chrome so I did so and installed it on my Vista box. Nice! Now, any fun things you can do with it?

This may seem like a weird question, but how do I download audio files when they appear as links on Web pages? If I click on the link, a mini-audio player starts up in my Web browser, but I want to copy the info onto my iPod, not listen on the computer. What's the trick?

I was visiting a friend's Livejournal blog and to leave a comment I needed an "OpenID". But I have no idea what that is and where one registers for an Open ID. Does it cost money?

I got this question via Twitter, rather appropriately:

How do you block someone from following you or even sending you @replies in Twitter?

Just downloaded Firefox 3 and it's awesome and I'm having fun customizing it. My quesiton for today: is there some way to have my "home" button take me to more than one page at a time? That is, I want to have the browser launch with a few tabs already set, for my email, schedule, and favorite news site. Doable?

I'm not just a big fan of Google Calendar, I also have a number of additional organizational calendars I occasionally view too. Sometimes, though, I want to copy events from a shared calendar to my private calendar. Is there any way to do this in Google Calendar?

My computer desktop is driving me crazy, Dave! Whatever I do to organize things, I find that I have so many icons and files that I lose track of important documents on a daily basis. Surely there's some way to tame this chaos?

Q: My Dad just gave me his old laptop. That's good, but, um, it's broken, which is bad. Is it possible to fix my own laptop, and if so, how do I go about it?

Dave, any tips on how to get the best possible search results from Google? I spend a lot of time using Google and seem to have a hard time finding just what I want...

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?

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 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 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?

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 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 been running Memeo LifeAgent on my computer for a few months with very good results, but recently wanted to add a specific folder to the existing network backup and was stumped. How do you add or change an existing backup schedule?

I checked out your Twitter page, Dave (see: Dave on Twitter), and it looks really nice. How'd you do that?

My local newspaper's computer guru recently said that it was possible for a hacker to read what you have just copied into memory. The example he used was copying your password from a text file into a password box on a website. Is this true?

I think we're kindred spirits, Dave. I spend way too much of my time on the Internet Movie DB and would like to cut out a step: is there any way in Firefox that I can have the little search box on the address bar go directly to IMDB?

I'm using Powerpoint 2007. WHY CAN'T I CHANGE ONE SLIDE COLOR BACKGROUND WITHOUT IT CHANGING ALL THE REST??? Sorry, I'm just a little frustrated. I've looked online at everyone's comments, done the tutorials online and no one is commenting on 2007. If you right click to change background colors the ONLY option is Apply to All. Am I missing something. Please help!!!

Today I tried to use Mail to send an e-mail to someone. Everything looked fine until I got an alert saying CANNOT SEND MESSAGE USING THE SERVER SMTP.MAC.COM. I have the option to choose another server, however, the drop-box does not have my account as one of the options. What the heck?

Don't tell anyone, but I've started downloading music and video files from peer to peer bittorrent networks, but the words that they use are baffling me. Most importantly, what does "nuking" a download mean?

Hi Dave. I'm an inventor and I want to do some research on competing patents without paying major bucks for a lawyer. Is there some sort of site where I can poke around and identify potentially conflicting or competitive patents here in the US?

I've read about "Google Profiles" and am definitely interested in figuring out how to set up my own profile. I'm still not entirely sure why I'd bother, but can you at least tell me where I'd set one up within the Google empire?

I've moved into a new position at work and am now responsible for editing press releases to ensure they have proper grammar prior to their release. In the past, I've seen people work with Microsoft Word such that any changes they make are highlighted on the screen, easily tracked, but I have no idea how to do that. How do I turn it on?

I want to download an mp3 recording that a company has put online at the site 4shared.com, but every time I click on the "download" link, it actually opens up another window and plays the $#@$@# file with no download possible!

Hey Dave! There are all these great deals on computers this Christmas season. How do I know which computer I should buy?

Saw your note about Yahoo IM "spim" and I too have a couple of jerks who are sending me this junk. Can you tell me how to block them so I don't hear from them again? Thanks!

I got a request to have someone connect with me via Yahoo Messenger, and though I didn't recognize the email address, I said "yes". Next thing I know there's a message from them that's full of sequences like <#43243>. What does it mean?

Over on your business blog I listened to your recent audio recording with Rob McNealy of Startup Story Radio and was quite impressed with how cleanly you chopped out about 20 minutes of the original audio to present a version that's more tightly focused. How the heck did you do that?

I need to get a multi-user chat going for a project I'm involved with but we all dislike Yahoo and its IM client. I heard that Google just introduced group chat within gchat, a tool I do like. How can I add two more people into my chat window so that we can all see what each other types?

I read your article about whether Limewire is legal or not and think I understand what you're saying. My follow-on question: how can you tell if a file is legal or illegal?

Now that I've gotten into the world of Twittering, short one-line status updates on what I'm doing and where I am for my friends, I am curious if there are any additional secret capabilities in Twitter that I should know about?

Dave, I bought the Canon PIXMA Pro9000 color printer about two months ago and am still trying to decide whether I like pigment inks.  Not my first try with a pigment printer as I've also got an Epson 2200.  I'm okay with the Canon, but I do think it's slower.  The color accuracy I've seen is better on matte papers like photo rag than on the semi-gloss papers.  I've been a little less than impressed with the Mac OS X drivers and would really like to know about other people's experiences with the Canon printer so I can compare my own results. Do you know any other PIXMA owners?

I have read lots of articles about how to constrain search results on Google by domain, by site, and even how to group words and include "negative" keywords to ensure that I don't get spurious matches. What I haven't figured out is whether there's any way to constrain my searches by date. For example, to just find material that's been updated or indexed in the last week. Doable?

I have just set up a wireless connection at home - whenever I log on it says that the connection is unsecure - how do I secure it? I have a new Toshiba Laptop and a Phillips Router. I saw something about a WEP key....where do I enter this?

I remember a snippet of a song from years and years ago, but have no idea who sang it, what song it was, or even what "genre" of music or era. Can I dig it up with Google or some other tool? The phrase was "wrapped up like a deuce", I think.

I am concerned regarding eMail that I send to a variety of people. I know that they ARE receiving my letters or information....However, I receive eMails telling me that the messages failed. I know for sure that they have not. What is going on?

Even though I use a variety of calendar programs, I still forget events! Darn it! Since my boss wants me to use Google Calendar instead of my current solution, I'm wondering, is there any way to get Google Calendar to send me event notifications via SMS text messages? That'd be cool...

This is weird: I think I got some spam from Picasa, the popular photo hosting service from Google. Is that something you've heard of before, Dave? And what can I do about ?

I am anxious that I've been a victim of identity fraud: I just got an email from some mortgage broker indicating that I'd been approved for a refinance of our home, but I didn't apply for anything like that! I figure it's some scam, but they showed the amount of our original home loan and that's made me jumpy. Am I a victim or what?

I think that Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is great fun and want to have that feature on my site, but before I start digging into any sort of coding, can you tell me, how does it work?

I use AOL occasionally to test things, but refuse to download the AOL software as it's bloatware and always seems to screw up my PC. So I go in through AOL.com. But using that, how the $#@$@ do I change my account password?

I'm a big fan of Google Calendar except I am a bit stumped about how to create a monthly event that repeats based on the day of the week. My parenting group meets the first Thursday of each month, but I can't see how to capture that in Google Calendar. Is it possible?

Hey Dave! How does secure SSL actually work and if all these sites are using this much vaunted https/SSL security, how come they still get customer data ripped off?

i have an issue. My daughter is getting im'ed by someone not on her buddy list. How do i stop people not on her buddy list from joining a chat she is part of and how do i find out the identity of thi person?

Recently I asked a friend if I could have a copy of a cartoon graphic on his site. He asked me if I wanted it in "vector or bitmap format". I thought the formats were things like .gif and .jpg. What do "vector" and "bitmap" mean?

I've been running in Hotmail for a long time, but just recently saw a friend log in and was amazed to see that he has a three-pane view, with a preview of the message on the same page as the list of incoming messages! I want! How do I switch?

I'm wondering if there is a way to save the google safesearch preferences for users in a mac os x server environment. We have kids that we would love to have search using only the "strict" filtering. Is there a way to set that preference in os x server? Thank you very much!

I've been reading about the newest wireless standard called 802.11n and am unclear whether it's a smart upgrade or not. My geek friend tells me that it's not an "approved" standard and that there's a risk that what I buy might not be compatible too. Is that true?

I need a better way to help my friends gain visibility when they blog about something cool that I think is of general interest. I've heard Digg is cool for this but don't know how to "dig" an article?

A few pals have told me that they've "friended" me on the bookmarking site Digg, but I have no idea what they're talking about. Since they've listed me as a friend, I figure I should list them as my friends too, but I don't know how to do it. Dave? Can you help me out?

Every so often I get an email attachment and double-click it to open it up on my Mac. It opens up fine, I make edits and save the document, but then when I quit Word I can't find the $#@$# document on my system. What's going on and where are the documents I've edited?

This is baffling me: I have accounts on quite a few different Web sites and most of them just ask me for my account and password. Some of them, however, have a handy checkbox labeled "remember me" but now I just signed up for one that has a checkbox for "public terminal". What does that mean?

I dunno if this is legit or not, but I recently bumped into a note from someone claiming that there's a secret email address at Yahoo.com that lets you sneak into a backdoor and recover any account password for any account on Yahoo. The address was "[[ omitted ]] @yahoo.com" and it sounds too good to be true. Is it?

I've been trying various proxy servers to get to MySpace from school and sometimes they work for a while but other times they don't work at all because they're banned or blocked. What is a MySpace proxy server, how does it work and why would they work for a while and then stop?

I simply want to forward a joke to several people in Gmail, but can't figure out how! If I click on the drop down by reply, then it opens up the TO: In regular email, you click on the TO and it opens up the address book and you can then select whom you want it to go to.

How do I get my address book open, select the people I want this to go to
and have them appear in the to window. I have been reading on the internet and talking to people, and we are all having the same problem. This does not seem to be a user friendly email. I generally don't have problems adapting to new software.

This is such a simple question I can't believe I'm asking it! Being a huge gmail fan since switching from hotmail I can't find out how to save the sender's address to my contcats list other than copying and pasting the address having gone to contaxts and create a new contact. Surely the good people at google have a one click solution for me that I just can't find! Your help is greatly appreciated.

I have high speed Internet through my cable provider and am about to buy a palm pda, not one that has a phone in it though, anyway it says it can get on the internet with a wi-fi connection and has the wi-fi stuff installed on it. I want to know if you can use wifi with high speed wireless cable internet or what. and what is wifi, and where can you find it??? Thanks

I've been starting to delve into peer to peer (p2p) networking and am trying to figure out what the difference is between Limewire, Kazaa, BitTorrent and similar. Can you explain how they work?

What if you accidentally download something illegally? I think I may have and as soon as I found out that I may have, I deleted it, but what can happen to me? I'm a minor and I'm not experienced in computer usage. I assumed that the filters would keep out anything illegal, but one of my friends told me otherwise. I'm worried that I may have done something wrong, but I really don't know. I really don't want to get into trouble because it was an accident and I tried to correct it. I just don't know what to do. Please respond.

How do I protect a microsoft file with a password on my Mac? The purpose is, i don't want word to open up my file without asking for a password.. every time i'll open my file i want that it will ask always a password...

I want to sign up for a really busy group on Yahoo groups, but I don't want to get tons of email in my mailbox, so I figured I'd just subscribe Web only. My question, though, is whether I can actually post messages to the group and participate even if I don't get everyone's message as actual email?

I've had an MSN Hotmail account for a while and have suddenly become paranoid that I might have had my password intercepted by a key sniffer. How do I change my password in Hotmail?

This is a pretty basic question, but is there some way that I can actually get to Google's Gmail service via SSL and be able to connect with and use Gmail on open wifi networks without worrying about others tapping into and sniffing my information?

I know that Yahoo and Google's Gmail are probably more trendy, but I'm interested in getting an MSN Hotmail account. How do I do that and what should I consider when I'm signing up?

I have a document on my computer that I need to fax to someone. But I don't have a fax machine, and really don't want to figure out how to configure my fax modem. Is there a reliable way to fax a document over the Internet?

My family has a two story house and just recieved a new computer to put in the downstairs and want to put internet on it. We have a computer upstairs that is a Mac OS X with a mediacom cable internet connection. The new computer downstairs is a Window XP. So my question is, is it possible to get internet on the XP from the Mac OS X upstairs. And if so could I do it wirelessly? Please Help!

I need to have a weekly conference call with my sales team, scattered throughout the United States, and since not all of them can join us each time, I need to be able to record it and make that recording easily accessible for later download. Is this possible, and if so, how much would it cost for me to set things up for these conference calls?

My wife found an email from my spam box in my gmail account that was a reply from an email that was sent from my email address. The problem is I never wrote the email. The address reply is my email address! I have never seen the address before in my life and the message that was sent from my email address is not even anything I can understand. This is very odd. What's going on?

I travel a lot and often find myself needing to chat with colleagues back at the office via instant message (usually MSN but sometimes Yahoo). Problem is, I really don't want everyone else in the café using the open wireless network from sniffing the discussion. Is there some secure solution that's easy and portable?

I know you can setup Google's Gmail service so that when you send mail it appears to be from an account other than your Gmail account, but I don't know how to do that. What I want is to be able to use Gmail from the road and send messages that look like they're from my office, not a public service. A tutorial would be greatly appreciated.

Giving a loved one a laptop can be a great experience. As with any gift, the impulse comes from generosity and a wish to improve someone's life; but unfortunately, there are times when any well-intentioned gift can go badly wrong. With laptops, in particular, it is easy to make a small mistake that can be remedied only by outright exchanging the laptop; and that can mean some hassles at best, and at worst it might cost you a big restocking fee. Frankly, as with any Father's day gift -- or any other gift -- sometimes the intention can produce a result that's, well, less than optimal.

Follow these ten tips and you can be sure that your gift will be the hit of the Holidays this year!

I've been using Google's Gmail program for quite a while and recently went to invite a friend to get a Gmail account. Much to my surprise, the Gmail invitation box has changed! Is it only me, or do you see it too? What do you think it means?

I'm a happy subscriber to your splendid Blogsmart News newsletter and was glad to get a link to the amazing results with adwords lecture you did with Joy in the latest news. But I can't save it? How the heck do I save an mp3 file when the link is in an email message?

In the past 3 days I've received dozens of returned e-mails that appear to be sent by my domain name but that are not valid email addresses. For example I received a returned e-mail today that was "sent" from nvsnx@mydomainname.com but there is no user "nvsnx". Where did this come from, how do I stop it, and what risk am I at from this happening?

I've been working with Google Calendar and having good success, but I can't figure out how to add recurring events to my calendar. Can you help?

I've just heard that there's a technology that's going to replace Bluetooth called Wibree. What's the story with it and do you really think it's a good replacement for Bluetooth?

Since you seem to be a big fan of Google's Calendar service, Dave, perhaps you can tell me how a pal of mine has a tiny weather icon on his calendar that gives you a weather forecast for his area when the cursor hovers over it? It's darn cool and I want it! Now!

Okay, I'm a bit puzzled. I just got an email from a Web site I've never heard of before asking me for my birthday so my "friend" can complete "their horoscope", but I have no idea who "they" are. Is this legit email or should I be suspicious of this sort of solicitation for personal information?

I'm quite interested in having some photos and images on my blog and on MySpace, but it seems to me that I need to host them somewhere else on the Web, not on those free sites. Is there somewhere I can host images, and if so, how do I do it?

I have no idea how to get a free screen name on AOL. I tried aim and now aol and it's still not working for me. Dave, what do i do, i just cant figure it out?

I've hooked up with Google Calendar and am finding it a very pleasant alternative to a computer-based calendar management system. I've heard that I can add public holidays and am wondering if you can show me how to do that?

I'm shopping for a new digital camera and can't decide between a little pocket camera that can fit in my backpack, or a bigger digital SLR camera. I bumped into your terrific Colorado Portraits.com site and am dying to know: what gear do you use?

Okay, so I knew it was just a matter of time before someone came out with downloadable movies, but I never thought Amazon would be first out of the starting gate! However, I just read about the new Amazon Unbox video store, and darned if they haven't jumped! Can you tell me a bit about how it works and whether it's worth checking out?

I have no idea how to get a free screen name on AOL. I tried aim and now aol and it's still not working for me. Dave, what do i do, i just cant figure it out?

Now that I've moved from iCal to Google Calendar (see Import iCal to Google Calendar) I now need to figure out the second step: how do I mark this calendar shareable so that the rest of the people in my office can view it and add events, as needed?

I just bought a Palm Treo 650 and am pretty happy with it, but I can't help wondering about what different ways I could connect to the Internet with it. I know I can pay through the nose for a data service from my cellular provider, but I'm wondering if there are any ways to connect via bluetooth or wifi. Any tips for me?

I just attended a "barcamp" event in Denver [see BarCamp Denver] and was a bit baffled by one thing that they started talking about: what the heck is 'wikispam'?

I've been a long-time fan of Google's Gmail and have particularly enjoyed how it pops up with possible email addresses when you type in the first few characters. I'm now finding that I frequently email a half-dozen people, however, and it's rather a pain to type in each name. Is there some way to make a simple alias that will include all of these folk when I send mail in Gmail?

I get a lot of music from friends via email and it's a huge pain to have to download them from Yahoo Mail, save them on my computer, then launch a player to hear them. I heard that Google's Gmail service has a better solution. Do they, and if so, how does that work?

I have been trying to change my darn security question at America Online for weeks now, and every time I get to that area in AOL, it just says "temporarily unavailable. Please try later." What's up with that? isn't there some way I can use the AOL Web interface to change my security question before I get hacked again? Thanx.

I really don't want to have AOL software on my new Sony Vaio laptop, but I do occasionally need to get to my AOL account to check mail, etc. I can do that via their web site, no worries, but here's what I'm wondering: can I actually change my password and do all that other administrative stuff through their Web site, or does that require the actual AOL software package?

I've been a hotmail user for over a decade, and want to remain so. Lately my emails have been auto-organizing in weird ways -- sometimes by size of the email, sometimes by attachments vs. no attachments, etc. I just want the email to stay organized by date both in my inbox as well as my files (most recent at the top), but I can't seem to find how to do that.

Do you have any idea how to set a document in Microsoft Word to have exactly 25 lines per page? That's what the agents and publishers I'm approaching want as a standard format, (1" margins and 25 lines) but every attempt I've made to do that has fallen short one way or another -- the occasional 24 or 26 lines. Any ideas? I've queried a lot of my other writer friends, but their solutions don't quite work. They may not be Mac folks. Help! If you don't have an answer I'm going to be doing a lot of line counting and eyeballing of pages.

I've been getting plugged into the world of Firefox, and man, it rocks. I really like it, and I especially like that there's a huge library of different extensions that can make Firefox just about jump through flaming hoops. As I keep adding more and more, however, I'm starting to worry about whether it's possible that some of these extensions are actually spyware or viruses. Is that even possible? And if so, how do I avoid being suckered?

I'm in charge of my company's market communication and am getting stuck trying to figure out how to ensure that our email newsletter is actually being delivered to our customers and, more importantly, what changes I could make to my newsletter to increase its chance of being delivered, it's "deliverability". Do you have any advice?

I just have one question to ask you and i dont know if you know but you are the only site that talked about this subject that was close enough and had a part where i could write a question. Is the Limewire an illegal website? My cousin tells me that he has downloaded limewire but this was over a year ago and he says it is illegal but I have told him that it would have been shut down if it is illegal and it has been around that long. If you download this you can get free music,videos and etc. So is it illegal??? The website were you can download it is www.limewire.com

I really want a Gmail account from Google but can't find anyone that has an invitation! So I'm looking at the Gmail home page and notice that it indicates I can sign up by just having a mobile phone. Well, I have one of those, so I'm hoping you can tell me how to get a Gmail account through my cellphone?

I travel to a lot of conferences and often find myself in hotel rooms that have Internet connectivity, but it's hardwired only. If I have a colleague or friend sharing my room, we end up having to pay for each computer that hooks up to the network, which stinks. Stay at a place for a week and it's an extra $70-$100 so we can both be plugged in. Surely there's a better solution?

It's World Cup time and this year my mates and I want to use a spreadsheet to keep track of the games and our wagers (uh, all in fun, of course!) so I thought it'd be cool to use the new Google Spreadsheets program to do this. But I have no bloody idea how to get started. Can you help us out while we're busy rooting for our team in the games?

I just ditched my old dial-up and got high speed internet. While enjoying this glorious experience, I've had dial-up for a LONG time, my friends and I got into an argument. My friends said that instead of paying $100 dollars every month, I just got out of college you see, I could save up money to pay for the high speed internet while using one of those free AOL disks. I truly pondered on that thought for a while. Why would I go back to dial-up when I already have high speed internet? They then told me that I could still have high speed internet with one of those free AOL disk. I don't know if that's true or not, so here's my question. Can you use high speed internet with an AOL free trial disk?

A friend sent me email on the Google Gmail service and it had his picture included. Cool! I want to know, how can I include a picture of myself in my own Gmail profile?

I read your interesting article on producing effective Powerpoint presentations and one thing you said caught my eye: "slides that contain one word or quote, against a dramatic, colorful background" So, Dave, how do I get a different color background on each slide of a Powerpoint presentation?

I run a mailing list and only people who are members of the list can send out a message. Nonetheless, I find that there are sometimes spammers who join the list, send out their junk, then resign (or get kicked out). What's the scoop? How do I avoid these people messing up my list?

I have over 100 domain names registered. Most of them are in my industry, some are not. Some get a lot of inquiries, some do not. How do I begin in the world of "domaineering"? I'd like to use the more popular domain names and create traffic for other topics... like credit cards, mortgages, male enhancement, etc. Thanks Dave!

I am Ben C. Wilson and I want to have my pass word be keyed in automatically. How do I do it?

A friend of mine has been talking about "geolocation" and tells me that I simply must know my latitude and longitude. I have absolutely no idea how to do that, and figure that there must be some solution on the Web, but I haven't found it. Can you help?

Here's the deal. I'm currently at the University of Stirling behing a VPN which is blocking the ports I need to play World of Warcraft. I have a macintosh... a G4 Powerbook that is setup (by the university's system) to connect to their VPN in order to reach the internet. Now I'm not a complete noob with this stuff... just for macs. This is what I want to know. I've heard of httptunnel and programs like it being used to play World of Warcraft through VPNs with pcs. I want to know how to do it with a macintosh. Basically I want to play WoW and I don't know exactly how to do it. If you need more info concerning the VPN please let me know.

I have to admit it, I'm new to the mp3 game, heck I didn't leave my room for a week when the Xbox 360 came out. I just got an iPod Nano and it came with a 25 dollar itunes card. I downloaded itunes and I haven't used it yet. The problem is that I also decided to download limewire. I haven't downloaded limewire yet ,but I want to know if it is illegal. If it isn't, could you help me decide if I should stick with itunes or get limewire? Thanks Dave.

I recently came across one of these sites, and thought it looked legit: Notebooks4free.com

Is it legit? And is there any catch? Any way to avoid paying for an offer you pay for? Thanks Dave!

I've been looking for a good online calendar program for a while so I was happy to read that Google's introduced its own calendar program, but I'm hoping you can give me some help on getting started with it? Thanks, Dave!

I would like to transfer my Yahoo email address account to a new yahoo email address account. I've done it twice before but can't figure it out this time. I'm running OS X.

A friend of mine who was visiting saw me using Firefox as my web browser and said that I was putting myself at risk because anyone could easily snag all my site passwords due to the way that Firefox saves account passwords. Is it true? If so, how do I avoid this danger?

Dave can you explain what Vog Orbis is. I now it has to do with playing audio files. How is it different from mp3's? Is it just an audio player or is it an audio format?

I'm pretty clued into computing, but when I read your weblog, I have to admit that I'm a bit baffled by some of the things you talk about. Specifically, can you please tell me two basic things: what's a URL and what's a blog, and then explain to me both what "spillover pagerank" is and what a subdomain is too? Thanks!!

I suppose I should be able to figure this out directly on the AOL site, but I can't, so perhaps you can tell me: how do you take time limitations off of a screename on America Online (AOL)?

I've been getting into Netflix, but am finding that having my wife also log in occasionally and both rate her favorite movies and add new films to our shared queue is really messing up the recommendation system. But the recommendations are one reason we signed up in the first place. Is there some solution?

Hey Dave! I have a Sony PSP and was wondering if I buy a wireless base station how do you set it up and are there any programs that i have to install?

Dave, I use Incredimail and was wondering if there's any way I can use both Google Gmail and Incredimail together with two different email addresses?

Hey Mr. Dave. In Burma Yahoo mail cannot be used and the ISP is banning access from their centers. So how can I use my yahoo mail accounts? Plz help......

A friend told me that Amazon.com is going to start offering disk space to customers, just like Xdrive and other companies, but I don't believe her. Can it be true? If so, how does that tie into the Amazon vision of "world's biggest bookstore"?

I've become increasingly paranoid in the last few years and have long since lost any sense of innocence or even optimism regarding email. I trust noone and am leery of using any Web-based email service, but I have been exploring Google's Gmail service. My question to you: if someone emails me a virus will Gmail even recognize it, or do I just see it as a regular attachment? Also, how does Gmail filter spam out, if at all?

I'm not using Aol, i'm using Aim. How do I delete my AIM screenname from the AIM program and system?

How can I create a "Rule" in Gmail that will forwards any E-mail received to another E-mail account. I went to the filter section However I did not know what to do next. Would appreciate your help

In Gmail what does the following mean in the Inbox:

Dave,me(2)

Where can I change the setting?

I've been using AOL's Instant Messenger for a while, but I really want to create a new AIM screenname. How the $#@$# do I do that??

Partially thanks to your tutorial on getting started with linkedin I've become somewhat of a convert. What bugs me, though, is that people who aren't part of my extended network can't see my profile. Surely there's some slick way to do this?

One thing I find really irritating about Gmail is that once you have used an email address (as recipient for your message), this address is stored forever, in some place where you cannot access it. I.e., it does not show up in your contacs. But whenever I start typing an email address as recipient, this list with addresses I once used keeps being showed. I want rid of these old addresses! Do you know how to do that?

Two questions, from different people:

1. plz send me my friends yahoo messenger password?

2. Hi Dave, i really hope u can help me here.. i had an account in Hotmail and some one hacked my email ID.It was really bad cause the bloody hacker had apparently forwarded all my private emails to my other contacts... its been so shattering and beyond explanations..to add to the misery my secret question has also been changes.. ive lost contact with so many of my friends as i have lost their ID's :(.. Plzzzzzz can you help me and tell me if anything can be done at all in this case ?? I would be looking forward to your email desperately.

I'm trying to figure out if an email I got from my cellular provider, Verizon Wireless, is some sort of cunning phishing attempt or a real message from the company. It references an account number, but I don't think it's mine?

I know that Google has quite a bit of reach in the Internet world, but I'm a bit surprised and anxious to see that "Chats" is now a new category in my regular old Gmail account. What's up with that?

My son and I are in an argument about cable modems .I say you have to have a subscription to something, like AOL or Charter, for cable modems to work. My son says you can get them to work by just plugging the cable in to the modem when you have digital cable service. Could you tell us which one of us is right, or tell us we're both wrong and help us with this problem.

I had a friend visit and while he was here he changed my America Online (AOL) settings so that it now automatically logs in to his account every time I turn the system on. This is bad! How do I turn this feature off?

I'm really interested in the Asterisk open source PBX system, but am not sure whether it'll work with the two VOIP systems I've been working with, Vbuzzer and Net2Phone. Can you help me out?

I'm planning on traveling through Mexico and Central America for a few weeks in the spring and am wondering about the availability of wireless Internet connections in the major cities. Do you have any tips for me?

Dave, you wrote earlier about getting spam through the Plaxo system [see Can I get Plaxo Spam?], but I'm wondering if other systems could also be used to generate spam, and if so, how?

A bunch of buddies and I want to set up a wireless network for our apartment building, but the wifi systems we've experimented with seem not to have sufficient range. We'd like to have it cover a few blocks, rather than just a few rooms in the building. I've heard about WiMAX but know nothing about it. Can you enlighten me?

I have a Sony PSP and have been trying to connect to the Internet with my wireless base station, but it keeps asking for a "WEP" and I don't have a clue what that is or how I get it. Help!

Dave, I have a great idea for a company that I'm calling "Hot Times Hawaii" and my uncle just suggested to me that I need to check and ensure that the name isn't already a trademark of some other company or organization. I know that there's a database of trademarks, but I keep hearing that I have to pay a lawyer to do the search? What's the real scoop?

A colleague and I are working on a proposal together and I'm wondering if there's a smarter way to pull it together than incessantly emailing Microsoft Word documents back and forth?

I want to change my account password on America Online (AOL) but am pretty clueless about how to do that. Can you show me? Thanks, Dave.

Hi Dave, I just got a brand new Samsung D500 and I want to put music onto it via USB cable, but it won't work. How do I do it?

I have a few questions about Yahoo! messenger (YIM), since they don't supply customer support. When I add someone to my 'buddies' list, I have one of two scenarios to play out afterwards.

1) The other person logs online and decides to either "accept and allow me" to add them, or to "not accept and not allow me" to add them in which case they disappear from my buddies list, or

2) The other person logs online, but appears to never make the choice about allowing me to add them or not, and they just remain in my buddies list forever.

So my first question is how can #2 happen? Doesn't everyone who has YIM get forced on the screen to make the choice between allowing or not allowing someone to be on the buddies list?

My second question that flows from this, is let's say that I have allowed someone to put me on their buddies list - what if I want to stop that at some point? there is the command that says 'delete friend', but that seems to apply to someone I made a friend from my end, no someone who made *me* a friend from their end....there is also the 'ignore friend' option, but doesn't that just block their message from reaching me (and hence I don't know they are sending it), rather than actually preventing them from knowing when I am on line (as a buddy).

So in other words, once you allow someone to add you as a buddy, how can you ever *disallow that*?

I realize that I'm working with one of the less popular email clients, but I really like Mozilla's Thunderbird application, not the least of which is because it's free! My question, though: how do I set it up so I can access more than one email account in the program? Thanks.

I'm a big fan of Google's Gmail service, but I really wish there was a way for me to organize groups of people together into a mailing list or group, so I could type, say, "family" and have it go to my Mom, sister, brother, and so on. Is that doable and I just don't know about it, or is this still a capability beyond Gmail?

I am wondering what your thoughts are on how PC's stack up against Mac's for early education. I know that Mac's are in many schools but I do not know what the "big" differentiators are for Mac's that make them well or better suited for early education.

I've been working with hotmail for a long time and all my pals have my Hotmail address, so I am not interested in leaving for another web-based email service. I am, however, interested in learning how to organize my huge mailbox a bit better, and was hoping you could explain how to create and use a folder?

Dave, I just logged in to my Google Gmail account and am rather confused by this new Customize Clips feature that's atop my mailbox now. What's the story with that, what does it do, and how do I use it effectively?

Dave, I'm interested in selling lots of very small information products from my Web site, but I haven't found a really good solution for transaction that are less than five dollars. I heard that Paypal is introducing micropayments, though, and am wondering if you know anything about it?

Dave, on my gmail account on my page there are no words which say export contacts and i have seen a picture on google of where abouts it is supposed to be on the page but it simply isnt there. i no u can also export doing excel and stuff but that is so much easier and its quite fustrating. thanks

Dave, I have been a gmail member for almost a year now and in the last month I have been unable to access my gmail account it run through both loading screens and then stops with a blank white page. No error message just a white page. I recently found a bloodhound flash virus on my computer and promptly removed it. My software is unchanged I use Windows XP Home - my PC is a custom built Athalon 1Ghz processor 512 Mb ram 30 plus gig hd with half still free space the only thing new is my DVD/CDRW combo and I have even gone so far as to disconnect it and uninstall the software and it made no difference. I'm not very good with code but hardware and computers in general I am fairly literate. Help please.

I have a friend staying over at my house for a few days and she'd like to check her AOL email. But I don't want to lose my own AOL settings. How do I let her log in as guest without messing things up?

I have a "friend" that has an embarrassing problem... his network is too large and he's running out of IP addresses. He has a 192.168.1.x network, and I understand that he could put some machines on a 192.168.2.x network but he would need a router between the two... however, I also believe that through subnet masking he can make all the machines (on both networks) communicate as if on the same network, so that they can still use network printers, and one password authentication server, etc. How do you make subnet masks work?

Dave, I signed up recently for Google's Gmail service, got an invitation from someone I otherwise didn't know, and now all of a sudden the people in my address book are complaining that I'm spamming them and I can't log in to my account any more. What's going on?

What is the difference between analog telephony and digital telephony, also known as VOIP also as IP telephony? Do you have a VOIP system, and if so, what one and what's it like?

Not to ask a terribly obvious question, but what the heck is "bluetooth"? I keep hearing about it in relationship to computers, laptops, cellphones and even cars, but I don't really understand what it is and whether it's just some special version of Wifi or something?

Based on your earlier article on web-based conferencing systems (What's the Best Web-based Conferencing System?) I've just tried running an informal half-dozen person conference using Hotconference and I'm impressed. It's inexpensive and works pretty smoothly. My only question is: what are all the different "moderator" modes available?

I was listening to your teleseminar on blogging and was intriguied by something you said: you mentioned that you use Google News to keep track of specific industry news with custom searches. How do you do that?

Hello, I've read your comments on recovering passwords or accounts like on Yahoo. I started investigating this when I suddenly found my own password was not working and the secret question had been changed by whoever hijacked the account. Do you have any advice for me aside from creating a new ID? I hate to say it but I'm considering trying to hijack it back.

Dave, I need to run a monthly online conference with some of my investors, something where I can talk them through some PowerPoint slides and show off a Web-based demo or two, all computer-based. The options I've seen are pretty darn expensive, however: what's your recommendation?

I want to know in a nutshell how I can get to install and use Ruby on Rails. I have been to rubyonrails.org but the download procedure is not clear cut. I'm basically a C++ and .NET developer. I am interested to use RubyOnRails for my web apps. Please give a straightforward and clear cut way to install start developing with RubyOnRails. Thanks a lot.

Dear Dave, I wrote to Yahoo previously asking about my mail I believe had been hacked because my password is suddenly rejected. I am so disappointed no help has been given. What can I do to ask for a new password and retrieve my mail when I can't remember the zip code I entered previously?

It is such a disgrace if Yahoo! does not provide alternatives to handle such cases.
In my country, unlike the US, zip code aint popular at all. We don't use such data often. I was about to register full service by credit card, for Yahoo! with no ads, but now I am so disturbed and highly disappointed!

Pleeeeeeeeeeease HELP?

Is it possible for someone to know when I get on my Yahoo account? I don't have messenger.. I do have some Yahoo groups.. is there a way they can see that I'm on? It seems this person sends some junk to me the minute I sign off.. how can i block anyone from knowing I'm on Yahoo?

I'm about to start thinking about buying printer and computer supplies for my family, my standard geeky Christmas presents (what can I say?) and I'm wondering if some of the new 'non-compete' hardware shrink wrap agreements, where I promise not to buy a competitors product, yadda yadda, really is legally binding, or if it's all some sort of intimidation tactic? It all seems weird to me, frankly.

I have been hearing some buzz about a new service called Tagyu and am wondering what it's all about, how it works, and whether you think I should be paying attention to it?

How do I change my child's AOL (America Online) screen name password when I'm signed onto my own screen name?

Dave, I've created several web sites and I'm worried about other sites stealing my content. How can I copyright my sites and will doing that actually help me?

Problem: Setting up my Gmail to download to my computer (using either of Incredimail, Outlook, Outlook Express). I have followed Google's directions very explicitly (+/- 10 attempts) and still cannot successfully download my mail. I keep getting the message that the Gmail server is not responding. I cannot find a way to communicate with Google for assistance. Any assistance you can render will be sincerely appreciated.

I've become addicted to Gmail thanks to your writeups and based on my intense dissatisfaction with Hotmail. Now, however, I find that I'd like to export my address book from Gmail so I can import it into a different email program as a backup. Is that doable?

I'm building a site that has pages with confidential information, and because of that, I use SSL to encrypt the information. But when the user enters the SSL environment (https), an annoying window appears with a security alert saying: "The certificate was issued by an organization, which you haven't selected as trustworthy" How do I get rid of this message?

I'm an artist who is trying to translate my skill with a canvas onto the computer, and I'm a bit baffled by all the options on the market. If I can, I'd like to stick with Linux as my brother is a Linux expert, but I've also heard lots of good things about Mac systems too. What do you recommend, Dave?

Dave, I'm very tempted to move from Yahoo Mail to Google's Gmail, but I'm still unsure whether Gmail does a good job of filtering spam or not. I get lots of spam - darn it - and would love to hear that Gmail does a great job of filtering out all of this junk from my mailbox. What's your opinion?

Dave, I'm very excited! Finally, Google's unveiled its blog search system, called, ingeniously enough Google Blog Search, and I want to learn all about how to use it. You ready to take on that challenge?

Dave, I've read through your previous Q&A about how to create an AOL screen name, but it doesn't apply to the new AOL 9.0 Security Edition. Can you help me figure out how to add a screen name with this latest Windows application?

I've just heard from some friends that MSN Search now lets me look through RSS feeds to find information, in addition to its regular search capabilities? Very cool, but how do I do it?

When I use the Google link: feature and I type a URL immediately after the colon (no space), I get far fewer results than when I separate the colon and the URL with one space or multiple spaces.

I also seem to get many more relevant results on the first set of page results when I type a space after the colon.

I just was curious as to why their is a discrepancy.

I've used Yahoo! services for a long time, but now that I'm using it for email and blogging (through Yahoo 360), the every hour prompting for my password on my home computer is driving me positively insane! How do I change it?

A pal just told me that Google's released Google Desktop 2 and that I should definitely download it and check it out. But, um, what is Google Desktop and why should I care?

Dave, this is driving me crazy! I've been on Gmail for almost a month now, but I still don't have an invitation box: how can I invite my friends to get their own Gmail accounts?

Is there a way to disable profile locking in Firefox ? We are using Firefox as a front end to our application, but every time a new instance get's launched it prompts for a new profile. We would like to open new browsers under one profile all the time.

Help! I loaded my digital camera pictures at Wal-Mart to view them and now I can't locate them anywhere and I deleted the pictures already by mistake on the disk. I was hoping I could find them on my hard drive. What would you recommend? Please let me know as soon as possible, I'm sick about it because I had some memorable pictures.

Dave, I just joined a new mailing list and am finding it really weird that while most members have the regular 2-3 line email signatures with their name, company, Web site URL, or similar, a few people have these incredibly long signatures that are some sort of legal disclaimer about the advice they give, whether they can be quoted in other venues. etc. What's the story here?

I'm a long-time member of Netflix and have rated hundreds of movies, even those I didn't actually rent from Netflix itself. Is there any way for me to review my ratings list and see, for example, those films I rated with five stars?

Hi Mr. Dave, I've tried to reformat the PowerBook G4, but when I hold down the C button, it froze, just a light gray screen with a dark gray apple, and nothing happen. Can you please help, don't remember the username or the password.

Dave, I have been trying to access a picture from the google images but all I get is The requested URL /20041126/oruro/oruro02.htm was not found on this server. What can I do?

Dave, you're plugged in, can you tell me what's new at Google? I try to keep track of everything they're doing, but it's just about impossible what with all the news about Google the company out there...

My family just recently installed DSL Broadband, we live in a 2 story house and we have 1 computer downstairs and 1 upstairs. The internet connection is connected the the downstairs computer and I was wondering how to get the broadband to go upstairs as well as downstairs. We're considering a wireless network but I am unsure if the connection will work on two computers at the same time?

I want to set up a new America Online (AOL) screen name for myself, but the system's telling me that I already have the maximum number of screen names. How do I delete one so I can create a new one?

I know I am stupid but I hate the Google thing by which when you enter a word a window drops open to show all the words you might type at that point! How can I get rid of this unwanted prompt that is such a nuisance?

I need a manual for an Olympus c-3030 zoom camera. How can I obtain one? Also, how do I turn the flash off when taking pictures?

Dave, I just bumped into the phrase "typosquatting" and have absolutely no idea what it is. Can you enlighten me, please?

I need to create a new screen name in AOL but am not sure how to do so. Can you help me out?

Can you please tell me how can I label my Gmail messages coz I'm not getting the New Label option from the drop down box?

I want to buy a website on Afternic.com but am put off by the agreement that they will own all the content of the website. I plan to offer creative works as well as health info - I'm a physician and want this domain because it has a "good feel" to it. And I'm reluctant to put out $1800 and have a non-exclusive license to use the website after I construct it. I've already applied for the website AcmeDoc.med.pro and await approval. I want AcmeDoc.com. Please advise as I want to purchase this immediately. My interest has already raised the price $100. I put a bid it for $717 and it expired after 7 days. I then put in a 24hr bid for $1050 which just got the asking price raised to $1788. Please advise ASAP.

I am trying to export my AOL e-mail addresses to Kodak Easyshare address book. Doesn't work. Help!

Dave, our IT people just sent out a note warning about "dictionary attacks" on our server, but I really have no idea what a dictionary attack is. Can you enlighten me?

Dave, here's a weird one: when I look at my photographs via my Web browser in Safari, Internet Explorer or any other browser, they are shown huge, as I expect them to be (I like to pan around to view them), but when I look at the exact same image in Firefox, it's automatically shrunken so that it'll fit in the browser window. But I don't want it to do that. What's Firefox doing and how do I turn this feature off??

Dave, I'd like to buy a domain, but I discovered that it's already registered by a bulk domain buying company (just check negres.com). I tried to contact them but I have received no answer.

Do you know how much these companies charge in average for a domain? Or are they focused on the traffic and clicks and will not let it go?

Any recommended approach to bid for the domain?

Dave, I get tons of email that looks like it's from Paypal, asking me to update my account record, check that things are configured alright, or even to "notify" me that a new email address has been "added" to my account. Sheesh! How can I recognize real Paypal email and separate it out from all the phishing and fake messages in my inbox?

Dave, I have an email account in gmail as myaddr@gmail.com but I'm still confused.
How can I forward gmail invitations to my friends?

Hey Dave, I was looking at information on the Mirc website and I happened to come across a link called ircnick.com. Since the link came from an official website, I clicked on the link only to be redirected to a site called eta.us. Ever since hearing about phishing and malicious websites (e.g. Googkle) I was concerned as to whether or not the site I was redirected to was insidious in any kind of way (whether or not I had spyware, adware, trojans, etc.). I scanned my computer using various virus and adware scanners (everything was clean). Still feeling uneasy, I need advice, therefore I'm asking you.

Dave, how do I get rid of or uninstall MSN.com home page? I want Yahoo but everytime I change it to Yahoo.com that darn MSN.COM home page comes back. It's a pain.

Dave, I know that you're a fan of Google, but I've been trying to work with MSN Search instead, just to see how they're trying to crack the search nut. It's pretty darn cool, but, of course, their search language is totally different to what Google has. On the other hand, they have this way cool, but confusing 'Search Builder'. Can you step me through how to use Search Builder, please?

Alright, Dave, you've convinced me to sign up and use Google's Gmail Service and I now have an ever-growing pile of archived messages. I know that I can just type in a word or two to the search engine and find messages, but being Google, I'm wondering if there are more sophisticated searches I can use?

Dave, I see that you are an expert on Microsoft's MSN Hotmail service. Can you tell me whether there's any way I can configure my Hotmail account so that when I send mail from that account, it has a different 'reply to' address? That'd be super helpful and keep me with Hotmail!

Just for fun, I recently signed up for an AOL account through one of those ubiquitous free CDROMS, and now that I've poked around a bit, I've decided to shut it down. It's time to return to the real Internet. But I'm a bit stymied. How do I cancel my AOL account?

Dave, can I use America Online (AOL) as my Internet Service Provider, but actually use a different web browser -- Firefox -- rather than the browser that's included with the AOL software suite? Also, how about email programs?

Dave, I just bumped into something called AOL Coach that came with my AOL installation and I'm wondering what it is. Can you figure it out?

Dave, I think I finally figured out what phishing is, and who the phish are, but I just bumped into another term, pharming, and was hoping you could explain it so I could figure out how they differ?

Dave, I heard today that you can now customize your news headlines page at Google's Gnews service, but I can't see how to do it. Can you illuminate this for me, please?

Dave, I was wondering, if you cancel your msn account and get DSL, will you still have your msn e-mail account???

Dave, perhaps you can enlighten me. I recently sent email to a colleague and got a message back telling me that if I wanted to have my message delivered, I had to click on a specific button indicating how many windmills were in a given picture. What's that all about?

Dave, I've really been enjoying learning more about Google's Gmail system, and have found your Q&A articles invaluable assistance (especially the one about forwarding messages and the one about Gmail phishing notifications) but I'm still a bit puzzled about one thing: how do I see the headers to messages I receive?

Dave, does anyone make a car charger for DELL Inspirion laptop 5150?

Dave, I was reading a message from Paypal on my new Gmail account and it had this big red warning on the top saying "Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information." What does that mean and why am I seeing it?

Dave, You say Firefox has "elegant built-in RSS capabilities but I can not find it in any menu or help. How do I get Firefox to function as an RSS 'browser' or aggregator?

Hello Dave, I work on Mac OS X and I have been trying to add a favicon.ico to my website's address bar, only to find that it only shows when I open it with Netscape or Firefox, all the other browsers like Safari and Explorer don't seem to recognize it.... Can you help?? It is driving me mad...

Dave, I was talking with my ISP and he suggested that I use an "ssh tunnnel" when I use my email program, Microsoft Entourage, on any public wireless networks to avoid exposing my account and password to anyone who might be sniffing the wi-fi network. Problem is, I have no idea what they're talking about, but I'm definitely paranoid about security and the idea of point-to-point encryption sounds wonderful. Can you tell me how to set this up?

Dave, I've noticed that you write about Gmail a lot, but I'm hoping you can help me out with an MSN Hotmail question too: I've had an account on Hotmail for a long time and would like to be able to have messages from specific mailing lists automatically filed in different folders, rather than jammed into my inbox. Is that doable, and if so, how?

Dave, I get a lot of spam each day and have noticed that a lot of it is not even addressed to my email address. How am I getting it?

Dave, you've convinced me! I want a Gmail account so I can use a web-based email system that integrates smoothly into my regular mailbox. But how do I get an account? Can you just give me one, please? :-)

Dave, now that I have my Wi-Fi network working I would like to know how to keep it secure. I know that I have to enable WEP encryption. But how? I'm running WinXP as a "server" (with a PCI Wi-Fi Card), and Win98 and PalmOS as clients.

Dave, I've been using Firefox for a few months and really like it, but I just heard that there are some tweaks you can make to the program that actually speed it up quite a bit. Can you tell me how to make those adjustments and help me get the fastest possible Web surfing experience?

Dave, I've been experimenting with a Google Gmail account and am wondering if there's a way that I can forward specific messages sent to that account to my regular mailbox? And if so, is there a fee or membership cost associated with it?

Dave, I'm surrounded by strange jargon and I feel like an extra in a B-grade horror movie. One mailing list I'm on has "trolls", and the latest virus can turn my computer into a "zombie", and my ISP keeps talking about "demons"! Egads! Do I need some sort of exorcist to use my computer now??

Dave, kind of a basic question, but when was the floppy disk invented, and how big was the first floppy disk, both in terms of size and storage capacity?

Dave, I have just installed a new DVD burner in my computer (a Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105 internal drive) and am trying to figure out what kind of blank disks I should be using. There are apparently five different blank DVD formats. Do I want DVD-R? DVD-RW? or ??

Also, if I just want to burn lots of data onto a DVD disk, can I use my Roxio Toast Titanium to do so, or do I need to use a special DVD-friendly app like iDVD?

Dave, I hate to be the last one to the party, but what's podcasting, and why aren't you offering podcasts on your site?

Dave, I'm trying to get my local network set up and can't figure out whether one wireless router will pick up a signal from the other so, say, you could stretch the distance a wireless signal reaches? And if they do talk to each other, would it speed up or slow down things?

And a related question: does the distance a signal travels matter, whether the indoors signal has to travel up from a basement onto a second floor of the house, vs. having the router on the same floor with computers using it?