Hi Everyone,

Welcome to issue #201 of InfoAve Premium. Thank you all for subscribing. We appreciate it very much.

This newsletter was sent to all subscribers at 8:56AM Eastern Daylight Time on August 24, 2007. If you didn't receive it, make sure your ISP is not censoring and deleting your email because ISP censorship is a pandemic and the number one reason why you didn't receive this edition of Infoave Premium! Call your ISP and insist they stop meddling with your personal email, or you will continue to have problems receiving this and other good email.

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If you're not receiving ALL of your InfoAve Premium newsletters, there's a good chance you're a victim of an ISP who censors, blocks, or deletes your email without your permission or knowledge. Please see http://thundercloud.net/infoave/premium/2007/newsletter/about.htm for more information on how this happens, why this happens, and what you can do about it.

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We appreciate your cooperation. If your question is a general question about Windows, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, software, or computers in general, we will consider it for publication in our newsletter. We always read every comment and suggestion sent to us, although we cannot respond to them all.

This Week's Quote:  -"Fall seven times, get up eight."

Reader's Comments

A Comment From Sherry
(Sherry is commenting on last week's Rant "I Love Sp*am!" )

Dear TC, I am rolling in spasmodic laughter! Lord, did i ever need that viewing; as this incoming crap has nearly abolished my desire to write and give laughter boost to home bounds. Thank You for turning garbage into a laughter venue! You are some kind of guy and a definite asset to the web! Keep it up. Sherry (in) Arkansas

Hi Sherry. Thanks! Imagine my shock to learn that 90% of my sp*am comes from EB. No! I'm just kidding. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I don't know about the "some kind of guy" and it's too bad that not everyone agrees that I'm an "asset to the web". I can think of at least two who disagree. One is EB (don't hit me EB!) and the other is "Duane" whose comments appear in today's newsletter. Other than those two there are probably others. But I would just as soon live on in my little fantasy world and believe I'm a twenty-something partying my little life away. NOT! Thanks, Sherry! TC

A Comment From Bryan
I have subscribed to many newsletters over the years.  Many of these start out useful, but then fall by the way. Yours has kept up the high quality information continuously. I have found that 99.9% of the programs you recommend, have done exactly what you said they would. Your newsletter and advice have become the highlight of my weekly emails, and are always welcomed with excitement to see what I will learn this week.  Keep up the fantastic work, if your newsletter stopped it would leave a big gap for many users.

Thanks very much, Bryan. We appreciate you nice comments and your support. We are very glad you're enjoying our newsletters. TC & EB

A Comment From Alice
I may be getting Vista in a year or two...do you plan to make a book on all your Vista How-to-dos that you post each week?  I can't save them for a year!

Hi Alice, indeed we plan on including all our Vista tips so far, in our InfoAve Premium E-Book Volume IV which will be released in late October or early November of this year. And each subsequent e-book, will include more and more Vista tips. It's only natural as every year more and more people will be using Windows Vista. But we still plan on lots of content for Windows XP too. For a long time into the future we'll be supporting both Windows XP and Windows Vista. We'll let you know when InfoAve Premium E-Book Volume IV hits the 'shelves' :) TC & EB

A Comment From Duane

Hi: I just wanted to say that when you first started up your news letter's we excellent, but over time when you got more established and more people joined which made the cost of operating go up, you turned to more advertising and then to purchasing online access to a lot of you things. Which is still the normal progression of a company, but with these changes over the years you have also slowly removed everything from your online newsletter to the point it has nothing left in it. I am sorry this happened as I always looked forward to going through it, but not of late. Its to the point of why bother as it's all purchase products and online subscriptions. I am holding off canceling the news letter hoping you put a few more interesting articles in it. Don't get me wrong as I think you guys do a fantastic job with everything you do and offer and please keep up the good work.

Hi Duane. First, our newsletters contain more articles, tips, tricks, and information than at anytime in the past. I don't know why you don't find it interesting, but one thing we've learned is no matter how hard you try, you cannot please everyone - it is not possible. Sometimes, when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

As far as the "natural progression" to advertising and subscriptions, we have this comment: The Web started out as a haphazard collection of interconnected servers. In the beginning, it was just for military and education use. Then computer geeks discovered it. Back in those days it was all text. No advertising. No pictures. Just text. As the "World Wide Web" (as it used to be called) was discovered by others, programmers and wannabe publisher-types began putting up Web sites. There was no functionality at that time to collect payments for services or goods. The technology was not advanced enough, so everything on the Web was free. Free, not by design, but because of lack of technology. So, those of us, who were online in 1980's and early 1990's remember the Web as a place where everything was free. Some still think everything on the Web should be free. Times have changed though. The world has changed. Just having our Web sites online, costs us over $50,000.00 a year. We are not rich people and we cannot possibly afford to take $50,000.00 out of our own pockets to operate our Web sites. We had to find some way to cover the costs of being online. The $50,000.00 per year is just one of the expenses we incur - there are many other expenses we have to cover as well.

Still, today, we are doing our part to offer excellent, family-safe, free things to those who come to our sites. We give away over 5000 free downloads - no strings attached. And, that is more free software than we've ever offered before. We do our share to provide many good, spyware-free downloads to the Internet community. But just because they're free to our visitors does not mean we do not incur costs to give them away. To host that many files and the bandwidth used by thousands of downloads a month costs money. Every free download that comes from our site costs us something to give it away free. Still, we feel that we owe our visitors something free for coming to our site. We want to give something back to the Internet community. But, we have to support our site some way - or simply vanish from the Web. And we have no plans to do that. Advertising and promoting good products are ways we support our business and cover our costs. We could have been millionaires if we would have bundled spyware/adware with our software, but we refuse to do that - and we will never do that. (See http://thundercloud.net/infoave/stoopid-rant.htm  for more about this.)

We tried to exist on donations -but it failed miserably. We understand that. Donations are a hard sell in world where everyone is asking for donations. We've tried everything we can think of to survive in a competitive environment and the only combination that has ever worked for us is the one we're using now. And, whether you believe this or not, we're not getting rich from this. It's important to remember that we only recommend programs we feel are great, most often necessary, and programs we ourselves use on our own personal computers. We never recommend programs base on who pays us the most. All the programs we recommend are programs we use on our computers and programs we recommend to family and friends too.

One final thought. Every week we spend several days doing research and writing this newsletter. It is by far the most time-intensive project we have. Two years ago we spent less than one day putting it together. But,, yet we have not increased our subscription price. We're very disappointed to learn there are people out there that think we have "changed" and don't give enough information in this newsletter. The only thing we can say is we give this newsletter everything we have. It is our best effort. If you don't believe anything else about us, please believe that - because it is true. This newsletter remains our number one priority - week in and week out. It really bothers us to know that you feel it isn't good enough. We're sorry you feel this way - especially when we're giving it all we have. TC & EB

This Week's Top Questions & Answers

"IrishImp" Asks What Happened To The Formatting Bar In Windows Mail (Windows Vista)
Hello my friend has just got her new Vista and going well so far. But today in "Windows Mail" she lost her bar that has the Font size, colors, etc. how can she get it back.....it must be hiding somewhere. Thanks for any advice. (IrishImp's question was posted our InfoAve Forum)

Answer
Before we answer this question we have a comment for those of you using Windows XP. When you see "Windows Mail" think "Outlook Express" because Windows Mail is nothing but a new version of Outlook Express with a the new name "Windows Mail". While it is not exactly the same as Outlook Express (it has some different features for the most part, anyone who has used Outlook Express will be immediately familiar with Windows Mail. And, one other thing - as more and more folks start using Windows Vista, you're going to see questions appearing in this newsletter about Vista. It's only natural. This does not mean we're going to cut back on Windows XP or phase our Windows XP. We're not. We're going to try to cover both - for a long time to come.

Now on to IrishImp's question: As far as the formatting bar,  Windows Mail is exactly the same as Outlook Express.  Click "Create new mail" (or File, New message). In the "new message" window, click "View" "Toolbars" and place a checkmark next to "Formatting Bar". See the screen cap below, and you'll see how easy it is:

If Windows ever "forgets" this setting again, simply repeat the steps above to bring the Formatting Bar back.

Prissy Sets Up Her Gmail Account In Outlook  Express And Now Has A Question
I just set up my Outlook Express to receive my email from my Gmail account.  I have had my Gmail account for about 2 years and OE is pulling all 2 years of emails.  Is there a way to set it up to start pulling mail from this point on and not to try and retrieve all 1400 plus emails I have?

Our Answer
Ah, this is good question. For those of you who have been enjoying a Gmail account for quite awhile and subsequently decide to set up your Gmail account in Outlook Express (or Windows Mail, Outlook or another favorite email program). You need to careful that you have your Gmail account on the Web configured correctly or, as you found out, Prissy, you're going to have a deluge of emails begin to download the first time you fire up your Gmail account in Outlook Express.

Luckily, it's easy to configure Gmail correctly in the first place so that the only mail you download is email which was received AFTER you set up Gmail in your email program. If you don't set it up correctly you're going to be downloading email until Christmas :). Why? Because you will download every single email you've ever received in Gmail since the first day you set up your Gmail account on the Web.

Here's how to setup Gmail so you don't download all those old emails - and only download emails received from the time you setup your Gmail account in your email program.

1. Login to your Gmail account on the Web ( www.gmail.com )
2. At the top right of the page you'll see a link called "Settings" (click it)
3. You'll the following Settings Toolbar appear on the Web page:

4. Click "Forwarding and POP"

Make sure you have "Disable Forwarding" selected
Select "Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on"
Make sure you click "Save changes" when you're done.

If you don't configure Gmail exactly the way we showed you, you will be downloading EVERY email you've ever received in your Gmail account since the first day you set it up. If you've had your Gmail account for a couple of years, that could be a lot of email. You must set it up to receive ONLY to receive emails that arrive from now on. And, don't forget to click "Save Changes" when you're done, or guess what? You'll be downloading all 15,000 emails you've received since 2004.

For those of you with Gmail accounts: If you want to get the most from your Gmail account, set it up as a regular account in your favorite email program. It's really easy to do. If you're using Outlook Express or Windows Mail (Vista) see our tutorial on setting up an Gmail account at http://thundercloud.net/infoave/answers/gmail-config.htm .

Diane Has Two "Stuck" Emails In Her Outlook Express Outbox
I know that I've gotten old, but I must've gotten goofy too. I distinctly recall recently reading that one of your subscribers was having problems with her Outlook Express "sent" messages getting stuck. You said that it was a common occurrence. I have Outlook and now have 2 outgoing emails stuck. I've looked all the way back to Issue 194 (twice) and I can't find her question or your solution. Am I imagining things? Thanks, Diane

Answer
Hmmm...let's say it's a relatively common occurrence. It happens to a lot folks often, while others never seem to have this problem. It seems to happen with the Inbox and the Outbox most often. Luckily these are two default folders for Outlook Express (and Windows Mail) so deleting these folders doesn't cause any future problems with Outlook Express -since Outlook Express will create new folders the next time you fire it up.

Since your problem is a corrupt Outbox folder, you're going to need to delete that folder and allow Outlook Express to create a fresh, new, clean Outbox.

First, locate your Outlook Express message store. On the Outlook Express toolbar, click "Tools"--"Options"---"Maintenance" and click the Store Folder button. The file path to your current store folder will be shown. Make a note of that location. Click Cancel to close the Maintenance dialog. Now, close Outlook Express - do not proceed any further unless Outlook Express is closed and not running.

Now click Windows Key + E to open the Windows Explorer then navigate to the location of your Outlook Express message store. Locate the file called Outbox.dbx, right-click it and select "Delete". That's right. Delete your Outbox.dbx (folder). When you restart Outlook Express, a new Outbox.dbx folder will be created automatically (it really will, promise!) and your Outbox will show up in Outlook Express and it will be empty. The files (email) that were corrupt will be gone. And, now, when you send mail, no more stuck messages in Outlook Express Outbox. How about them apples?

Betty Wants To Embed Images and Sounds In Email Without Them Showing As Attachments
How do I add pictures or sound to my emails without having them show up as attachments. Many of my friends are worried about opening attachments. Is there any way to do this?

Answer:
For pictures choose "Insert" then "picture" (from the Outlook Express toolbar). Don't forget the easiest way though! Simply drag and drop the picture from your desktop or windows explorer into your email! For embedding background music or sounds into your email, click "Format" (on the toolbar) then "Background" and choose "Sound". Be careful when you're choosing "Sound". By default Outlook Express does not recognize MIDI. To embed a midi music file (recommended) click the down arrow in the "Files of type" field and you'll see MID, RMI, MIDI. Browse to the midi you want to embed and click to select it, then click "Open".

Keep in mind that not everyone has a high-speed connection. Be considerate. Don't send 5MB embedded WAV files or 2MB embedded images. It takes a person on a dialup connection between 4 and 7 minutes to download one megabyte. Not many people would appreciate you tying up their email program for 35 minutes while your 7 MB email downloaded. Always try to keep your images under 100KB and use MIDI format if you want to include embedded music. Midis are normally between 10 and 50KB. If you would like to see a visual tutorial on embedding music in your mail, please visit this page.

Also keep in mind that not everyone uses Outlook Express or other HTML-capable email programs. If you send embedded files to someone using a plain text email program or who only accepts plain text mail, the files you embedded will come as attachments no matter how you add them.

If you looking for midi files to use in your email, digiknow our Start Page Name That Tune page has over 600 of them? To download them to your computer, right-click on any of the linked titles and choose "Save target as" (Don't left-click the titles unless you just want to listen to them first before you download them.)

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This Week's Rant

(Note: Cody the cat died one year ago on August 26, 2006. This rant from September 22, 2006 was a tribute to a cat who had become one of the family. We are featuring it today one year later. It's funny how many memories a pet can evoke. This "rant" is one of the most popular we've ever published. We hope you enjoy reading it again.)

Farewell To A Friend

On a gloomy, peaceful, August morning, I laid my little friend to rest.

It was raining and that seemed fitting. Like tears from a saddened sky the raindrops fell on me as I carried my little friend to his final resting place. The rain kept falling as I laid him to rest and my thoughts drifted back to happier times.

When my youngest son was nine years old, he was going through a difficult time in his life, as many kids do at that age. He didn't have many friends then, but he was a bright and loving child, who loved people and wanted people to love him. He didn't have a mean bone in his little body.

I thought then, that perhaps a pet would be good for him. Something he could take care of and love. We found a kitten - on a farm - just a little tabby cat. My son fell in love with the little fella. So, we took him home. My son named him "Cody". That was sixteen years ago. Please visit this page to read the rest of this rant.

Reader's Tip Of The Week Submitted By Sharon

Sharon's tip: When you're done reading an email, rather than using your mouse to click the button in the upper-right corner of the window, just press the ESC (escape) key. That will close the currently open email.

Hey cool, Sharon, Thanks! We keep forgetting about the old ESC key. Thanks for reminding us! Do you have a tip or trick you would like to share with our readers? Send it to us by clicking here. If we use your tip, you'll win a great prize!

This Week's Tips and Tricks

Warning! Warning! Another New Scam
Windows All Versions - All Email Programs

The latest, greatest(?), scam to make its way around the Internet (and ferociously, we might add) is the "Your-Membership Info", "Your-Member-Info", "Your Membership Info" or "Thank_You_For_Joining __________". (We added dashes and underscores to lesson the chances that this newsletter gets block by your ISP's sp*am filters. It's a shame we have to obfuscate things just to get around ISP censorship, just to warn you about a dangerous email floating around the Web.

The emails all follow the same pattern. You receive a message with member number, a temporary login and a temporary password, followed by a link (usually numerical) and signs off "Welcome" followed by the name of the site you supposedly sought to join.

Here's an actual copy of one of the hundreds we have received over the past week.

This email isn't from Rin/gtone World, and the numerical link, if clicked, does not lead to a Web site nor does it lead to Rin/gtone World. What it does lead to is a direct download link to a trojan horse. What that means is, if you click it, a download will begin without further action required by you. It will be installed and you'll be sorry. If you don't have updated trojan protection on your computer - guess what? You're in a world of hurt. Because a trojan can do any number of things, include steal passwords from your computer, automatically send personal information from your computer to some pernicious web site, or damage your computer and ruin your Windows installation -possibly causing you to lose important information at the worst, and cause you lots of frustration at the least.

Don't click links in email from people or sites you don't know. If you get an email similar to the one shown above, don't be curious and click the link to see where it goes because we already told you where it goes :)

Be smart. Use common sense. Make sure your anti-virus is updated several times a week. Don't ever let it get outdated. If you don't yet have an anti-virus installed (which we would find hard to believe) get one now. DO NOT WAIT ONE MORE SECOND! Grab one of the two free anti-virus programs listed below. Both are free and both will protect you in case you do make a mistake and click a link that you shouldn't have clicked.

AVG Anti-Virus (free version for personal/home use)  AVG 7.5 version works in Windows Vista.

Search And Replace - Find And Replace
Windows All Versions

Recently, it came to our attention that many folks don't know how to use the "search and replace" feature of many Windows programs (like MS Word, WordPad, Notepad, and many others).

Digiknow, that Search & Replace is a handy dandy little feature that we use all the time. The best way to show you how you can use this to save time is by example.

Let's say you have two neighbors, both of which with irritating, barking dogs. One neighbor's dog is named Gomer, the other's dog is named Barky. Let's say Mr. Finch owns Barky, and Mr. Green owns Barky. You are fired up and ready fire off letters to both of them. You fire up Microsoft Word. You write to Mr. Finch first, as follows:

Dear Mr. Finch,

If you don't keep Gomer from barking, I'm going to call the cops and tell them that you're a drunken idiot and your dog Gomer is barking all night while you lay slumped over the wheel of your parked car snoozing away in your nightly stupor.

I don't care where and how you snooze, Mr. Finch, but I will not tolerate Gomer interrupting my snoozing.

Either keep Gomer quiet, or I will call the cops.

By-the-way, our annual pool party is next week. We hope you and Elizabeth are planning on attending. And, feel free to bring Gomer too!

Best regards,

Eightball

Now instead of going through by hand and changing all the Gomers to Barkys, you could simple use Search & Replace to do all the dirty work for you.

On your word processor or text editor's toolbar, click "Edit" then click "Replace". You'll see a dialog much like the one below. Under Find what: enter the word you want to replace. Under "Replace with:" enter the word you want to replace (DUH!). See?

Now, here's what the letter looks like after we've used Search and Replace to change all the "Gomers" to "Barkys". This way you're sure to get all the Gomers out and make sure it says Barky instead. Nothing would be more embarrassing than to have Mr. Green know you're sending him the same letter you sent to Mr. Finch. A single "Gomer" not replaced by "Barky" would give you away!

Dear Mr. Green,

If you don't keep Barky from barking, I'm going to call the cops and tell them that you're a drunken idiot and your dog Barky is barking all night while you lay slumped over the wheel of your parked car snoozing

I don't care where and how you snooze, Mr. Finch, but I will not tolerate Barky interrupting my snoozing.

Either keep Barky quiet, or I will call the cops.

By-the-way, our annual pool party is next week. We hope you and Gladys are planning on attending. And, feel free to bring Barky too!

Best regards,

Eightball

Now, you've got the gist of how useful Search & Replace (Find or Replace) can be. EB makes me use it all the time now because when I'm typing and my brain is not engaged properly, I tend to leave the "r" off "your", or worse use "you're" for "your" or "your" for "you're"; "they're" for "their" or "there" or vise versa. Anyway, you get the point. You can use Search & Replace to change a repeated word or words to something else quickly and easily and much faster than going through it line by line looking for a certain repeated word. But, if you don't know this feature is there, you wouldn't think to use it. But, now you know it's there and how to use it.

Explore the Stars With Google Earth?
Windows 98, ME, 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista

This tip is a tip that has only a little bit to do with Windows and everything to do with you and the universe in which you live.

For the first time ever, a free program (Google Earth) lets you look above the earth into the skies above your own location, and see the stars, constellations, galaxies, and even the planets. It's such a beautiful universe in which we live it's only fitting that we all take time to admire the wonder and grandeur that is the universe in which we all live.

For more information about new "sky" feature in Google Earth 4.2 see any of the following pages:

http://earth.google.com/earth4.html

http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html

http://earth.google.com/

Google Earth is free and the journey through our amazing universe is priceless.