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 like Google Mail, but the threading feature drives me nuts. I don't want my mail threaded and I don't think of conversations that way. The worst is that every time I print, I print the entire thread, rather than just a single email message in the thread. Darn Gmail! Is there a way to print just one message?

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?

I read your note yesterday about how to update my Facebook account password (see: How to change your Facebook password) and want to change my Gmail password, but I can't figure it out: there's no way to do so within Gmail, as far as I can tell?

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 have been figuring out how to work with Google Gmail and it's generally being going well, but I'm wondering if there's any way to save an entire thread of email messages in a file? Plain text would be nice, a PDF would be awesome, but I could handle HTML too, if that's my only option, Dave.

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 have a ton of email in my Gmail archive, and sometimes need to dig through older email. Problem is, if I do a search, it shows me all the most recent matches first when what I really want to do is, say, search for messages more than a year old, or 12-18 months ago or similar. Is there any way to do a more sophisticated search than just by keyword?

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?

I'm becoming quite a convert to Google's Gmail service, but miss one feature of my previous email client: the ability to embed graphics in my email messages. It's a great way to include photos with annotations, and I want it. Can I hack Gmail to embed images??

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?

I am really embarrassed and frustrated that I am SO dumb as to have to ask this question, but I CANNOT FIND WHERE TO FORWARD, NOTHING COMPLICATED, JUST FORWARD SOMETHING TO A FRIEND WHEN I WANT TO? I have looked and the only reference to forwarding in Gmail is in the settings which means it would be an "overall" forwarding request. I just want to do an occasional simple forwarding.

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'm pretty sure that there's a way to do this, but I don't know what it is: how can I tell in Google's Gmail if an email message is addressed to me explicitly or whether it's part of a mailing list? I mean, without checking the mail headers themselves?

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 was just looking over at someone else's computer and noticed that they had a completely different look and feel for their Google Gmail Web pages. I mean, REALLY different look, with ninjas and everything. She said she'd tweaked her "theme" but I don't know about that plug-in. But, damn, it looked cool. How can I tweak the appearance of Gmail?

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?

Hi Dave, I am trying to set my Gmail to "vacation" mode with auto responder then, forward email to another gmail account, is it possible, can I use both Vacation mode w/auto responder and forwarding together in Gmail, so far I cannot make it work.

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 swear someone's logging into my Google Gmail account and reading my email. I know it should be impossible, but I dunno. Is there some way to check and see if that's happening?

After two of my friends had information stolen from them through public wireless networks, I'm completely paranoid. Is there some way to connect to Google's Gmail service securely?

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

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

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

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

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?

I'm a big fan of Google's Gmail service, except there are some things I can't quite figure out. For example, some of my mail is routed into folders (well, label bins, whatever they call them) and I find myself paging through thousands of messages to identify those that are unread. Also, can I search through my chat history to find specific things?

I'm wondering if I can create a group within my google contacts and make these group also available to other google users. I realized on your website that you are a google guru - so I thought I give it a try and ask you!

I often have long, complicated mail threads in my Google Gmail account and get frustrated when I want to respond to the person sending a particular message, but not the rest of the people on the list. Is there some snazzy shortcut for doing just that?

This is weird: my friends are telling me that when I send mail from Gmail, the return address is to googlemail.com, not gmail.com. Have I had my Gmail account hacked or something?

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?

Google makes a big deal about how you should keep all your email when you're a Gmail user, because it's easy to search through your archives, however big they may get. What I can't figure out, however, is how to search my deleted email!

I just noticed that one of the actions I can take on a discussion thread in Google's Gmail service is to "mute" it. What the heck is that? Something to do with audio playback, perhaps?

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 ?

Am currently in the uk and here the domain for gmail account is @googlemail.com. I recently created a gmail account and i was wondering whether theres a way to change my address from username@googlemail.com to username@gmail.com? I know that whether you write username@gmail.com and username@googlemail.com get delivered to the same inbox..but still want to change the domain of my email add! :))

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?

Is it true that it is not secure to subscribing to my Gmail Inbox RSS feed in a RSS reader, say Google Reader or newsgator? I've heard that by doing so everyone can see my e-mails...

Hi, can you please send me the procedure how to redirect the mails from Gmail account to Yahoo account?

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?

Dave! I'm a big fan of Google Gmail - like you are - and have gotten most things figured out, but I'm wondering if you can tell me how to set up a vacation autoresponder so people know when I'm on a trip?

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 know that I can delete entire discussion threads in Gmail, but what I'm wondering is if there's a way to delete individual messages in a thread, not the entire thread? Y'know what I'm talking about: sometimes discussions start out focused and then get sidetracked...

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 "recover_pswd@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. 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?