Automatic notification of items on sale

This is the time of year when everyone is looking for a bargain. Perhaps you were one of the crazy people that stood outside a retail store last Friday at 4 am to get in on the best deals of the season. You definitely would not have found me in one of those lines.

How do you find out about the best deals? You have a few options. The Sunday newspaper is stuffed with them this month, but that is only a once-a-week announcement. There are lots of commercials on television but you might miss the commercial that talks about the product you are looking to buy.

Once again, technology and the internet come to the rescue.Zingsale (www.zingsale.com) is a website that offers this free service. Just go there and type in the name of the product you want to buy on sale (and your email address), and whenever it goes on sale, you will be notified by email. Then you can rush to the store, or you can buy it through a link right there on the Zingsale site.

What is a firewall, and do you need one?

(Thanks to my friend Paul for suggesting this topic. If you have a question that you would like to see answered here, email me at pctutor@gmail.com.)

A firewall is a form of protection for your computer. It prevents unauthorized access to your computer by another computer. When you are on the internet, you are connected to other computers all the time. If you view a website, you are connecting to the server that hosts that website. If you get email, you have to connect to the computer that stores your email.

So, for the question "Do you need a firewall?", the answer is definitely YES.

The next question is, what kind of firewall should you use? There are basically two fundamental choices: a hardware firewall or a software firewall.

The most common hardware firewall is your router. If you have more than one computer in your house and they all use the same internet connection, you are most likely using a router to make that happen. Your router has a firewall built in, and that prevents unauthorized access to your computer when you are on the internet. For most people, this level of protection is sufficient.

If you don't use a router, then you should have a software firewall installed on your computer. Fortunately, Windows comes with one already - you just need to make sure it is turned on. Go to Control Panel and click on "Windows Firewall" to see if it is turned on. You can actually have this turned on even if you do use a router, just for an extra level of protection.

For those that are really concerned about comprehensive protection, you can get a third-party firewall program such as ZoneAlarm (they offer a free version that works fine). If you go this route, be prepared to configure the software so that your normal daily activities (email, web browsing, antivirus updates, etc.) are allowed to access the internet.


Sometime in December you will probably be at a party with friends or family. That's when you can bring out this little trick - a game you are sure to win.

Friday - The Internet Effect

Password strength

What makes a strong password? There are several factors that go into this. When you choose a password, you should use a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and characters. Do you know what the most commonly used password is? It's the 3-digit sequence "123". Lots of sites or programs won't even allow a password that weak.

Here's an example of a strong password: @ElPaso596

Want to see how strong your passwords are? Check out The Password Meter. Just plug in your password and it will immediately give you a percentage score based on specific criteria. Looks like this:

Choose a theme for your Gmail account

As you probably already know, I use Gmail as my email service exclusively. I have several different Gmail accounts that I use for different purposes. There are lots of advantages to the Gmail service, compared to other services such as Hotmail or Yahoo.

Gmail just got better!

Now, if you go to Gmail.com to access your email, you can choose a theme to make the page look more interesting. You can choose from a variety of color themes, or some interesting picture themes such as beach, mountains, planets, etc. There are also a few wacky ones like Ninja, Candy, and Graffiti.

To check out the themes, log into your email account at www.Gmail.com. Then, click on Settings (top right area of the page). Click on the "Themes" tab and then just experiment to see the one you like. If you don't like any of them just click on "Default" and you can go back to your boring, miserable original configuration.


This week's video...little kids always have a thing about playing with frogs. This little girl likes to hide them. Several of them.

Friday fun: a logic-defying optical illusion

I have seen lots of optical illusions - the web is full of them. Usually when I view some on any given website, I have seen most or all of them before. But I recently came across one that had me scratching my head. Take a look at the image below:
Here's the question. Look at the shade of the square labeled "A" and the shade of the square labeled "B". Which one is darker?

Any normal, sane human being would say that obviously square A is darker than square B. I am talking about the color of the square itself, not the letter A or B. Then I read that they are actually the same shade. No way! I said to myself. The maker of this optical "illusion" must have made a mistake, because it was very clear that B was a lighter shade than A.

To prove that I was right, I brought the entire image into Photoshop. I copied square B and dragged it up to square A. Incredibly, they are the same color! See for yourself below. I copied a couple of the B squares in between the two, and as you can see, they are all the same.

The Wayback Machine

Have you ever wondered what the internet looked like10 years ago?

There's a website that has archived internet content back as early as 1996. It's called the Wayback Machine: see it here.

Just plug in the URL of any website, and see what it looked like at a particular point in time. Here are a few examples (you can click on the image to see it full size).

Microsoft.com from the early 2000s:


I actually remember when Yahoo looked like this:


And Google has not changed a whole lot: