Ask DACS
March 2008

by Richard Corzo

We welcome questions from the floor at the start of our General Meetings. In addition, members who are not able to attend the General Meeting may submit questions to askdacs@dacs.org. We will ask the question for you and post the reply in DACS.ORG. Please provide as much information as possible since we can’t probe during the session.

Q. I am planning to subscribe to DSL for my ISP and was wondering if it was possible to use the telephone wiring in my house to network my two computers.

A. Although there have been a very limited number of networking products that used phone wiring, they seem to be very unpopular. I couldn't find any such products currently listed on either Linksys', D-Link's, or Netgear's Web site. The speeds that were available with such products were slower than available with other alternatives. I did find some options that use home power lines. Of course, the most popular technology for home networking is wireless. You mentioned that you have two desktop computers, but wireless networking is not limited to laptops. You can either install a PCI wireless adapter, if you're willing to open up the computer, or you can get a wireless USB adapter, which gives you more flexibility on where to place the antenna. You will need a wireless router to connect to the DSL modem, unless your DSL provider offers an option where a wireless router is built into the DSL modem. It's recommended that you connect the computer closest to the DSL modem using a wired (Ethernet cable) connection.

Q. I am using Firefox for my browser and when I drag a link to my desktop the custom icon from the link is replaced with the Firefox icon. Is there a way to change the Firefox icon to the custom icon for the website being opened?

A. When you drag a link to the desktop the icon is no longer under the control of the browser, but of the operating system. Windows associates with Internet shortcuts the icon of the browser you have set as the system default.

Q. What is the easiest way to share two iCal calendars without a .Mac account?

A. It sounds like you would like to publish each calendar and subscribe to the other computer's calendar so that you can see both calendars on each computer. iCal will show the two calendars in different colors. To do this you need some space on the Internet where the published calendars can reside. If you don't have a .Mac account, you can use a different online storage service if it offers WebDAV access. WebDAV uses the same http protocol used by Web browsers, to access a remote disk, so you can specify a URL to access the disk. Try doing a Web search for "WebDAV online storage" to see what you can find. My own search turned up BingoDisk and OmniDrive as services that offer WebDAV access at a lower price than a .Mac account. Once you have a service, go to the iCal menu Calendar > Publish... and choose Publish on: a Private Server. Then specify the URL that gives you access to a folder on your online disk storage. On the second computer, go to the iCal menu Calendar > Subscribe... and specify the URL of your published calendar. Do the same thing going from the second Mac to the first.

Submit any question to: askdacs@dacs.org.