KSFO's Web Wanderer

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The Links for July 24, 1999

I found "ListBot" via spam. Someone who used to spam me moved his list over to listbot. Not a good idea for him - his account was killed before I had time to unsubscribe. I thought "Well, these guys are anti-spam - I should check out their site."

I'm glad I did. Listbot does mailing lists. You sign up for an account, and can set up your own mailing list. Lists, acutally - there is no limit to the number of lists. You decide if it for announcements (you post, they read), discussion (anyone can post), or moderated (you have approval power before messages get sent to the list.

It's easy to use, and FREE. I set up a few lists in a very few minutes.

There's an archive of messages maintained. You control who has access. Very cool.

My family now has a list. We send an email to ONE address, and the email is broadcast to all. It's simple to remember - "listname@listbot.com", where listname is the name of the list.

As my buddy Jeff asked: "How does this bot thing work? Is it really free? So far, I haven't filled out any marketing data like my favorite kind of socks or how much money I spend each month on Twinkies. I have not seen any ads or banners or marquees. Heck, I haven't gotten any spam yet either. So what gives? How do the people providing this service make their $?"

I don't have a clue. I don't see anything in the messages, I don't notice any increase in junk emails. I don't get it.

This is cool. If you have a regular group of people you email - even your joke list, sign up.

Brain Pop - Kid's Educational Site

Dudley found a site called "Brain Pop". It's a kid's educational site, done so well it will really hold their attention.

Brain Pop uses cartoon movies. There's a bunch of topics in the areas of science and physiology. The "physiology" topics include the brain, blood, cells, hearing, asthma and several others. The "science" topics include the water cycles, electricity, rainbows, the solar system, and several others.

The movies are well done, with good content. For each topic, there's also a quiz to take either while the movie loads, or after you view the movie.

The site also has information for parents and teachers.

Great for kids! Thanks, Dudley!

Dell Auction Web Site

Wine Country Larry (Larryl in the chat) submitted this site. Normally I don't feature commercial sites, but this one is well worth a mention.

Dell makes some good stuff. This site lets you bid on used machines returned to Dell. You can bit on refurbished items, and items returned from leases. Ever wonder where your machine goes after it is returned? Dell computers land here.

You can get powerful systems at a much lower cost.

The site also carries peripherals, accessories, and software - all auction style.

The best part is - there's a "Your Marketplace" area where anyone can sell any computers and computer related items - whether or not Dell made it.

It's a great site for bargain hunters. Thanks, Larry!

The Digital Dude's Knowledge Emporium

Listener Barbara found this site. She said the opening was "a great combination of animated graphics and THX sound". That's an understatement. The opening sequence is "eye candy". And "ear candy."

After watching the show once or twice, you can explore the rest of the site. It has cool links, plus a lot of stuff on "sights" and "sounds".

There's other stuff in the "files" section - like trailers for games.

The one overall theme - it's all with THX.

Very nice stuff. Thanks, Barbara!

A Taxi Mike Tip

Ever get tired of minimizing open windows just to get to your desktop? I find I have to do this all the time. Or - I should say - had to. Taxi Mike found a fix by Stephen V. Ciaglia - his words follow:

"As far as I'm concerned, this should be the Windows 98 Tip of the Year. It makes most things you access on your PC available from a single cascading pop-up menu mounted conveniently as a "button" on the Taskbar. In fact, this idea is so good that Microsoft will offer a similar feature in Windows 2000."

"Think of it as putting your desktop and file system on a menu. When you click the button the tip creates, you'll see everything on your computer mounted on a pop-up menu, and as you pause your mouse pointer over My Documents or My Computer, a cascading submenu appears -- revealing all the drives, files, folders, programs, and other icons at that level. What's more, you can keep delving into lower levels of your PC, so you can reach every single folder and file on your whole computer on every drive, including CDs and Zip drives, even network volumes. There's really only one catch: You have to have Internet Explorer 5.0 installed."

"It's pretty easy to set up. Right-click any empty part of the Taskbar. Select Toolbars, then New Toolbar. Scroll upward, click on the Desktop icon, and click OK. You'll see the new toolbar spread out across your Taskbar, using all the available space. Here's the tricky part. Grab the handle just to the left of the Desktop label and slide it as far to the right as it will go, so all you see is the word "Desktop" followed by the chevron (a double greater-than sign), which indicates there are more items available but not currently visible. To access the powerful pop-up menu, just click the chevron."

"Note: This tip can be used for any folder, drive, or Windows structure you find in the New Toolbar selection dialog, including Control Panel, Printers, My Documents, My Computer, Dial-Up Networking. The two we like best are Desktop and My Documents."

Taxi Mike adds: "The real power of the tip is that it doesn't just allow you to get to you desktop, it allows you to get everywhere!

He continues "Make sure that when you create the new desktop toolbar that you grab it's handle and then pull it all the way to the right until the two forward arrows appear. Then click on these arrows (chevron) to pop up the desktop items. Now point at My Computer, for example, and watch how cascading submenus appear allowing you to access or explore any drive, folder, file. Use it on My Documents to explore them all easily. Play with it, it's killer."

Free For All!

"Free For All" picks are freeware picks. They have to be useful, cool, or interesting. Most of all - they have to be free.

Netscape Bookie - Bob the Old Fogey

The webmaster says "When I uninstalled Internet Explorer 4 a while back, there was only one feature that I missed having around. That was the Favorites menu embedded in my Start menu. The reason that I uninstalled Internet Explorer is that I prefer Netscape. But I was hard-pressed to find any means of obtaining functionality similar to the Favorites menu with Netscape. That is, until I gave birth to Netscape Bookie."

"Netscape Bookie lives in your system tray. Left-click the icon to display your Netscape bookmarks, right-click for a configuration menu. You can choose whether or not to have an icon displayed in the system tray. If you choose not to show the icon and want to access the Options, just run the application again and the Options dialog will appear."

"Netscape Bookie works on all 32-bit versions of Windows, and has been tested with bookmark files from version 4.x of Netscape. But I don't see why it won't work with bookmark files from earlier versions."

Very handy! Thanks, Bob!

New Free Software Daily

This week Nerdly offers us not just ONE freeware pick but a new freeware every day.

This ZDNET page features a new, cool freeware program every day.

Miss a day? No sweat - there are archives of all the past picks, summarized for a quick review. A quick scan shows me lots of cool stuff.

Well worth a bookmark - thanks, Nerdly!