Various tips to expedite info search, create and delete lines
Various tips to expedite info search, create and delete lines
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Well, it has been quite some time since we last
talked about some practical tips for increasing productivity with
the computer. However, if you have been following this column,
you will know that my PC is now connected 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, to the Internet through Kabelnet network. This has
really been a boon to me.
The connection has not been exactly 24 hours a day, though.
Last week, for example, the service was down for a couple of
hours. When I called Kabelnet's technical support, I was told
that a bulldozer had accidentally cut one of their fiber optic
cables. Well, I could still live with that. However, when the
electricity went out a couple of days later, I got irritated with
our PLN. My experience showed that it would take at least three
hours for Kabelnet service to become available again after a
blackout. Besides, a blackout can potentially cause more damage
to all my electronics and electrical appliances than an
interruption in Internet service.
Why am I so happy that I now have the "always-on" connection
to the Internet? First, no matter how much I use the service, I
will have to pay a flat rate of Rp 250,000 (plus the cable TV
service, the cable modem rent and tax). I can select
www.britannica.com as my home page, i.e., the Web site that
Internet Explorer (IE) will automatically access each time I load
it.
Why is this so important to me? As I am not a native speaker
of English, from time to time I need to make sure that I am using
the right expression. Should I write "advanced team" or "advance
team"? Is it "state-of-the-arts" or "state-of-the-art"? Which one
is the correct expression, "a highly discipline management" or "a
highly disciplined management"? Through Britannica's Web sites, I
can quickly access a collection of well-written magazine and
other articles that contain these expressions using the site's
Search facility, and then I can use IE's Find (Ctrl-F) command to
check which of the pairs is the correct one.
We can also download Britannica Dots, a utility that will be
available on your screen and will enable you to access any
article in Britannica's database as well as the well-known
Encyclopedia Britannica. By the way, both the articles and the
encyclopedia are free, and so is Britannica.Dots. But, hold on,
later on I will also tell you another nifty utility to expedite
access to information on the Internet.
Personal Firewall
Incidentally, if you are also a Kabelnet subscriber, or your
PC is continuously connected to the Internet through your office
network, you should know that you are vulnerable to hackers. They
may come sneaking into your PC in the middle of the night when
you are fast asleep. Not only can they steal information that you
store on your hard disk, they can even plant small programs that
will later launch a concerted attack on a particular Web site on
the Internet. As you may still remember, this was exactly what
happened earlier this year, when major Web sites on the Internet
succumbed to the infamous Denial of Service attacks.
To prevent such intrusions, you will need a personal firewall.
In my case, I subscribe to McAfee's service (US$29.95 per year),
which adds this protection to my PC. So far it has never warned
me of any attempt of intrusion, but it does give me a sense of
being secure.
Fortunately, good personal firewalls are also available for
free. One that has received a lot of accolades from online
magazine editors is ZoneAlarm from Zone Labs. ZoneAlarm will
allow you to specify which of your own applications can access
the Internet and which external programs can access your system.
This firewall is free for personal use, but you will have to pay
US$20 if you use it on a business computer. You can download
ZoneAlarm from www.zonelabs.com. If you want a full-fledged
firewall, you can purchase ZoneAlarm Pro for $40.
What is interesting about the company is that one of its
investors is John McAfee, the guy who founded McAfee Associates.
As you may also know, for some time McAfee antivirus and other
security utilities have been the products of Network Associates.
Too bad I read about ZoneAlarm after I had paid my subscription
to McAfee.
Red characters
When typing in Microsoft Word in a hurry, do you sometimes
press a mysterious key combination and suddenly you see red
characters appearing on the screen as you keep on pounding on the
keyboard? When you try to delete them, they will be crossed out
but will not disappear. The more revisions you make, the messier
it becomes. Have you got any idea what has happened?
I have received several panic calls from friends asking me
what to do to solve this, so I did some digging. Here is what I
have found out: If you accidentally press the combination of
Ctrl, Shift and E, you will activate the Track Changes mode in
Word. Anything you type will be considered a revision and will be
displayed in a different format. If you delete a word, it will be
marked as deleted but it will remain on the screen. What you need
to do is press Ctrl-Shift-E one more time to deactivate it. Or
you can click on the Tools menu item and then Track Changes.
Click on Highlight changes, and then deactivate Track changes
while editing. You will still have to erase all the red
characters manually, though.
Now, have you ever typed three dashes in a row and, when you
hit Enter, you get a straight horizontal line across the page?
Yes, that is the shortcut for creating a horizontal border line.
Try also the "`", "#", "*", "-", "=" and the underline symbols,
and you will get different styles of border lines. The problem
is, you can delete all of these lines using the ordinary Delete
or Backspace key except the one that you created using the three
dashes. No matter what you do, it will stay there.
To clear it, you have to click on Format, then Borders and
Shading. When the Borders and Shading dialog box appears, click
on the icon on the left of None. The line will disappear.
Avoiding e-mail addiction
Now, if you still use a dial-up connection to access your
mailbox with Outlook Express, do you find yourself pressing the
Ctrl-M too often? I did, and I was increasingly worried about it.
I was wondering whether I was getting the problem of uncontrolled
thirst for e-mail. Then I found the solution. I no longer pressed
Ctrl-M or clicked on the Send/Recv button on Outlook Express. I
just configured the program to do it automatically for me every
60 minutes. It not only reduced my Internet access charge, it
prevented me from becoming a real e-mail addict.
To set it up, just load Outlook Express, click on Tools, and
then Options. Activate the option Check for new messages every
and specify the time interval. Do not forget to select Connect
only when not working offline. That will make OE connect
automatically to the Internet and check your mailbox for new
messages.
Finally, earlier in this article I promised to show you
another option that will enable you to get the definition -- even
the German, French, Spanish or Italian equivalent -- of a
particular word on any application on the screen. Go to
www.atomica.com. Go to Product Showcase, and download Atomica for
Windows. It works best with an always-on Internet connection such
as Kabelnet. Let me know what you think of it. (zatni@cbn.net.id)