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February 24th, 2007

Mouse Wars: Microsoft vs. Logitech

I try out two wireless mice and have a clear winner.

Continue reading Mouse Wars: Microsoft vs. Logitech

February 23rd, 2007

Excel Alignment Tips

For perfectionists.

One of the things that always bothered me about Excel was the way it handled right alignment in cells with certain types of number formatting applied.

The Problem

For example, in the following illustration you’ll see that some cells containing values have currency formatting and other cells containing values have comma formatting

Continue reading Excel Alignment Tips

February 22nd, 2007

How to Advertise Special Offers with your WordPress Blog

A surprisingly simple solution.

If you operate a blog-based Web site — or even a Web site that includes a separate blog — there’s a good chance that you can use the built-in category and RSS feed features to distribute special offers to site visitors by e-mail.

I set this up on my

Continue reading How to Advertise Special Offers with your WordPress Blog

February 20th, 2007

Web Site vs. Blog

What’s the Difference?

Today I got a phone call from our local newspaper’s “business advocate” — the guy who writes stories about business. He was researching an article about blogging and figured that I was the most active blogger — if not the only blogger — in town, so I might be able

Continue reading Web Site vs. Blog

February 20th, 2007

iPod Microphones: A Review

On the Future Tense Podcast.

One of the other podcasts I really enjoy is American Public Media’s Future Tense. This public radio show has 3 to 5 minute segments on topics related to computing and technology. I highly recommend it for a quick dose of what’s new presented in plain English.

For those

Continue reading iPod Microphones: A Review

February 19th, 2007

On Geniuses

Why I don’t Genius Bar hop and other comments regarding my recent hard disk problem.

One of my jobs as a blogger is to produce at least one blog entry a week. As you may have noticed if you follow this blog, it looks like I’ve been slacking off lately. Well, I just

Continue reading On Geniuses

February 16th, 2007

Security Update 2007-002 Now Availble

Information from Software Update.

Security Update 2007-002 is recommended for all users and improves the security of the following components:

CoreServices iChat UserNotificationCenter

For detailed information on this update, visit http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798

February 15th, 2007

Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 5 Now Available

Information from Software Update.

Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 5 adds support for the latest Daylight Saving Time (DST) and time zone information as of January 8, 2007, and delivers improved reliability and compatibility for Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 and Java 1.4 on Mac OS X 10.4.8 and later.

Continue reading Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 5 Now Available

February 13th, 2007

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.4 Update Now Available

Information from the Microsoft Web site.

This update contains several improvements to enhance security and stability, including fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.

System requirements

Before you install this update, make sure that the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.3

Continue reading Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.4 Update Now Available

February 9th, 2007

More Feed Stuff

Now you can see the extremes I can take this stuff to.

Okay, so I get my category feeds set up and I get them redirected to FeedBurner. But I decide that I don’t like the name of the site feed (Maria Langer, The Official Web Site*) appearing as the name for all of

Continue reading More Feed Stuff

February 9th, 2007

FeedBurner E-Mail Notification Article Now Online

Informit gets around to publishing one of the articles I wrote in December.

Back in December, I added individual RSS feeds on FeedBurner for the book support categories on this site. The main reason I did this was to take advantage of FeedBurner’s e-mail notification feature.

E-mail notification is like RSS feeds for novices.

Continue reading FeedBurner E-Mail Notification Article Now Online

February 9th, 2007

I Need a New Mac

But what I really need is some advice.

As my sick dual G5′s hard disk churns away for the seventh straight day of data recovery efforts using TechTool Pro and I start work on my Leopard book, I have come to realize that I’m going to need a new desktop Mac before year-end. Probably

Continue reading I Need a New Mac

February 8th, 2007

.htaccess Modifications Boost My FeedBurner Numbers

The fruits of my labor.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day updating my site’s .htaccess file to redirect requests for my WordPress-generated feeds to my corresponding FeedBurner feeds. This included the main feed for my site as well as individual category feeds for my Book Support categories.

I discussed why I

Continue reading .htaccess Modifications Boost My FeedBurner Numbers

February 5th, 2007

WordPress Category Feeds

Did you read the article?

If you’re a subscriber or frequent visitor here, you may have caught my how-to article about including category feed links for each post’s category. You can see how this looks on every post on my site — at the top of the post is the category name with a

Continue reading WordPress Category Feeds

February 4th, 2007

Backup at the Touch of a Button?

We’ll see.

The first thing I did when my hard disk failed on Friday (for the fourth time in less than 10 years) was to go online and find an external hard disk that had enough capacity to back up my computer’s entire hard disk. And while I was at it, I’d get one

Continue reading Backup at the Touch of a Button?