Ask DACS
May 2008

by Jim Scheef

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: What is a blog?

A: The Wikipedia definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) summarizes the first responses offered at the meeting. From Wikipedia: A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

The collection of all blogs and their interconnections is referred to as the "blogosphere", although this term seems to have fallen out of favor of late.

A blog can be on any topic of interest to the author; I will not repeat the examples offered.

The information in a blog is stored on the blog website. Space is typically limited by the service provider. It is not difficult to host your own blog. There are many websites that offer blogs as a service, both free and not. Different blogging software offers varying feature sets. Many blogs accept anonymous comments while others require that a commenter authenticate him and/or herself in some way.

While there is no single index of all of the blogosphere, Technorati.com bills itself as "blogger central." Since they are websites, many blogs are indexed by the various search engines. Blogs often offer an RSS subscription to make it easy to keep up to date.

Blogs are used increasingly by corporations as a means to communicate with customers, the press and the public. My Circuit Writer blog is at http://circuitwriter.spaces.live.com/.

Q: I have finally switched my ISP from dial-up to broadband with Verizon DSL, but I am still using AT&T WorldNet for my email. I am using Eudora for my email software and I am having trouble accessing my email account over my broadband connection. The behavior seen is that Eudora will activate the old AT&T dial-up when sending email.

A: Solutions were offered on several levels. First, AT&T has changed their security settings making their email service incompatible with older versions of Eudora. The required authentication uses SSL which is not supported by the version of Eudora used by the member.

The discussion morphed into a discussion of how the newest Eudora is based on Mozilla Thunderbird which has resulted in changes to the user interface. This is one solution to the SSL authentication issue but will not address the dial-up versus network issue. We'll get to that below.

Another point was that sending email may or may not require authentication based on whether or not you are connected directly to an ISP's network. While true, this also does not address the fact that the member needed to send and receive by way of the Verizon connection, not AT&T.

The solution to the networking issue is to make some changes in the Internet Options applet in Control Panel. You can also reach this by selecting Internet Options in the Tools menu of Internet Explorer. When it opens, click the "Connections" tab and then click the "Never dial a connection" radio button near the middle of the dialog. Assuming a conventional home network and router, click the "LAN Settings…" button and make sure that none of the options are checked. Click OK and OK. Now when you tell your email client to send or receive it will do so using the local area network's connection to the Internet.

The authentication problem may require a new email client. Mozilla Thunderbird seems to be the preferred non-Microsoft email client. In my column I have often recommended using an email service that is not dependent on any particular Internet service provider. Examples are Yahoo Mail, G-Mail, and AOL/AIM email.

Q: I am running into a problem upgrading from IE 6 to IE 7 using Windows Update, can anyone help me out with this?

A: It sounds like the update to IE 7 failed to complete successfully. Several people recommended installing a second browser such as Firefox, Opera or Apple Safari (now available for Windows) as a safeguard to provide web browsing should IE fail. Personally I suggest using Firefox as the primary browser. No definitive solution was offered beyond trying to uninstall the failed install of IE 7. The Microsoft IE 7 Solution Center (http://support.microsoft.com/ph/8722) probably has an answer, assuming you can get past the catch-22 of no web access. Apparently enough people have this or similar problems that Microsoft offers free telephone support for IE 7 installation and set-up. The number is 1-866-234-6020.

Q: I have installed a legacy program on my Windows Vista PC that I would now like to remove. I am not able to uninstall the program or remove the directory where it was installed. I am getting the message that I am not the owner of the program.

A: The problem seems to revolve around having administrator privileges while uninstalling the program. One suggestion was to use the "take ownership" function in Windows Explorer to resolve the ownership of the directory in question.

 

Submit any question to: askdacs@dacs.org.

 


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