Did you know your mouse could do this?

Some of you already know this, and some of you may have discovered it by accident one time. It's a feature of the scroll button on your mouse.

Right now, try clicking on that scroller button - just push it down like a regular mouse button. Do you see something appear on the screen? Now move the cursor up, then back down. When that special icon is on the screen, you have enabled automatic scrolling. To scroll down a web page (or a text document), all you have to do is move the mouse down - no clicking required!

To go back to "normal" mode, just click the scroller button again and the scrolling icon disappears.

Stop that printer!

A couple of items this week...

Ever had this happen? You have a long text document on your computer - perhaps it is 20 pages, or even more. You send it to the printer, and just as you click "Print", you realize that there is an important change you need to make first. But it's already printing! Panic! How do you quickly stop the printer from printing all 20 or more pages?

This may seem like a rather primitive and non-technical way of solving this problem, but the quickest way is to just remove the paper from the printer. The printer will discover that it is out of paper, and will send an error message to your screen. That gives you time to go to the lower right corner of the screen and double-click on the printer icon. Find your document in the print queue, and cancel it. Then re-load the paper in the printer, and you can print whenever you are ready.

I found a website this week that I found interesting. It is a photography blog. Each blog entry shows a photograph from somewhere in the US in the last 100 years. From the site: "Shorpy is a photo blog about what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating". Check it here.

This week's video is some pretty amazing female gymnastics/acrobatics:

Take your phone number out of Google

Concerned about your privacy? One proactive step you can take is to remove your phone number from Google PhoneBook.

As you may know, typing a residential phone number into a Google Search bar (though not the Google Toolbar) performs a reverse lookup that lists your name, address and even a link to a Google Map of your address. Fortunately, Google gives you the option of removing all your residential listing information--all you have to do is fill out a short form and wait 48 hours. Granted, there are countless other services out there that offer reverse phone lookups, but Google is a household name and therefore a good place to start.

Some people are concerned about having their information available on the internet. Is this concern valid? To a degree, yes. Try this: type your full phone number in as a Google search (include the area code). For most people with a published phone number, Google will come back with your name, address, and even a link that will show a map of where you live. That link can even display a satellite image of your house.

If you don't like being that "exposed", there is a small step you can take. Just click on the link that says "Phonebook results for". On the next page you will see an option that says, "Request to have your name removed from this list". On the next page, here is what Google will tell you:

"To remove your residential listing information from the Google phonebook, please fill out the form below, entering all information exactly as it appears in your phonebook entry. Doing so will mean your residential listing does not appear in Google for any phonebook search, even searches conducted on your name instead of your phone number. Please note that this removal is permanent and that it's not possible to add your phone number again in the future."

Removal can take 48 hours. Of course, you should realize that this is not exactly the equivalent of the Witness Protection Program. There are multitudes of other ways that people can find you on the net. But it's a step in the right direction if you are concerned about too much information being made public.

Switch users more quickly in XP

Switch users fast. If you're working on a PC with multiple user accounts, you can bypass the welcome screen when you switch users. Open the Task Manager (click a blank spot in the taskbar and select Task Manager from the pop-up menu), click on the Users tab, right-click on a user name, and choose Connect.

Many families still have one computer that is used by several people. Each user can have his or her own desktop. When Windows XP starts up, you just click on the user name that applies, and you get all of your own "stuff" (icons, programs, wallpaper, etc.).

The normal procedure to switch users is to click Start - Log Off - and then either log off completely and log in as the other user, or you can click the "Switch Users" option. But there is even a quicker way.

Hit Ctrl - Alt - Delete. In the window that pops up, click on the Users tab. Right-click on a user name, and choose Connect. Now you are logged on as that user (although you might have to enter the password if the user account is configured that way).

I don't know why weathermen seem to be funny, but this week's video shows what happens when a cockroach happens to show up while a weatherman is trying to do his job. He doesn't like cockroaches. Not at all.