I don't know about you, but I've been dealing with a very frustrating issue with Windows Vista on my notebook computer lately. Here's what happened: I put the computer into sleep mode, closed the lid and then unplugged the network cable. But just a few moments later, the computer woke back up! It happened several times and typically, it did it when my computer was already in my laptop bag, so I didn't notice it until I got to my destination and the battery was nearly dead. What a nightmare!

As it turns out, there's a very easy fix for this problem! All you have to do is disable the "Wake on LAN" feature in Vista. Essentially, the computer is set to automatically wake up from network traffic, which seems to include pulling out the network cable.

To change the setting, type "Device Manager" into the Start menu search box and then browse through the Network Adapters section until you find your network adapter. In this case, mine is "Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet."

Right click on your network adapter and choose cialis review Properties from the menu. In the resulting dialogue box, click on the Power Management tab.

Next, uncheck the box next to "Allow this device to wake the computer" and the problem will be solved! You'll also notice there's a warning about having the option enabled in the first place. I hope this tip helps you!

Q:
One of my friends who sends me e-mails all the time always has a pretty light blue color as her e-mail background. It looks so nice and I was wondering if you could tell me how I could do that for mine as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

A:
That's an excellent question! I mean, who wouldn't want to spruce up their e-mails every once in awhile? Whether you're just sending a fun e-mail off to one of your friends or if you're sending out an e-mail invitation, it's nice to know you have some different options when it comes to how those e-mails will look before you send them off. And the best way to dress up your e-mails is to simply add a little color!

A colored background is a little less extravagant than a personal wallpaper design or even a stationery piece, but it still gives off a nice new feel to the e-mail message. I personally love changing up my e-mail background colors, depending on who I'm sending the e-mail to. My friends and family always compliment me on my choices as well. While some recipients don't like to receive e-mails that are too "busy," others do. And as long as you still make it easy to read, it's just something fun to play around with!

So, by now, I bet you're anxious to know how you can make this happen for your own e-mails. Am I right? Well, that's what this tip is all about, so we might as well get started. I'm going to show you how you can change your e-mail backgrounds for these different e-mail programs: Outlook Express, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL and Thunderbird. Hopefully, the client you use is in there somewhere and you can start to do this as soon as possible!

Outlook Express

First up is OE. Go ahead and click on the Create Mail button, just like you would to compose a brand new e-mail message. From there, go to the Format menu and then click on Background. Next, choose Color and leave your mouse on it for a little bit. A new drop down menu will appear where you can choose which color you'd like to use for your background. There aren't a whole lot of choices in OE, but there are some pretty ones and I'm sure you can find something that will work. Just click on the color you want and the background in your new e-mail message will automatically fill with the new color.

You can then go up to the "A" letter and choose a color for your text. Make sure you choose something that will jive well with your background color. Otherwise, your recipient won't be able to read what you write. Once you've chosen your colors, you can type out your e-mail message, add your recipient's e-mail address and then send it off. Yes!

Yahoo!

Now, Yahoo! does this whole background color thing a little differently, but it will still give off the same effect. Click on the Compose button to start a new message. From there, go down to your toolbar. You'll see all kinds of different things there like the bold, italics and underline buttons, for example. You'll also see one that looks like a highlighter and it has a yellow line underneath it. Click on that to choose your background color, but keep in mind that it will work more like a highlighter, instead of filling your complete background. Next, click on the "T" button and choose your text color. Again, make sure your two colors will look okay together. Then just start typing your e-mail message. Your background color will highlight your text color to make your background look uniform. Once you're done typing, insert your recipient's e-mail address and then send it!

Hotmail

For Hotmail, click on New Message and wait for the new window to come up. Once you're there, go down to your toolbar and look for the little icon of a paint bucket with paint spilling out of it. It will have a yellow line underneath it as well. Click on that and choose your background color. There are tons of colors to choose from in Hotmail! When you're done with that, go over one icon and click on the "A" letter and choose your text color. You can then type your message and send the e-mail off.

Gmail

Once you log in to your Gmail account, click on the Compose Mail link. Find the toolbar and look for the two "T" letters. The first one is for your text color and the second is for the background color. Gmail works a lot like Yahoo! though, because it also does the whole highlighting thing. Choose both of your colors and then just start typing. Again, the color you chose for your background will just highlight the color you chose for your text and it will look like a complete background color when you're finished. Yes, there will be some white area in the e-mail where you don't type, but the rest of the e-mail will look super cool. When you're done, push the Send button and off it will go!

AOL

Go ahead and get into your AOL e-mail area. Click on Mail Options and choose Write, in order to compose a new message. You should then see two "A" buttons in the toolbar. One is for the text and the other is for the background. Click on the first one for your text color and then the second one to choose your background color. AOL also works as a highlighter, so nothing will come up until you start typing. Again, make sure you choose two colors that will accent each other so that your recipient will be able to read it. Type your e-mail message and then send it off. That's all it takes!

Thunderbird

And last, but not least, there's Mozilla Thunderbird. Once you open Thunderbird, click on Write to start a new message. In the toolbar, you'll see two squares overlapping each other. One will probably be black and one will be white. The bottom one is your background color. Click on it to choose the color you'd like to use. The top one is for the text color. Click on it and choose an appropriate color. Once you've made your selections, type your message and send it.

So, as you can see, changing your e-mail background color is a very simple process, no matter which e-mail program you use. If you take the time to do it, your recipients will have something new to look at besides all the same old boring black and cialis rebate white colors that most e-mails have. Again, it's not as far out as a wallpaper or stationery piece, but it does a good job of giving your e-mails a more upbeat feel. You have to love that!

February 17th, 2009

Posted by Sam Diaz

There was some Facebook backlash over the long U.S. weekend that has prompted some calls for boycotts over two sentences that were taken out of the company’s Terms of Services agreement earlier this month. Those sentences once allowed users to delete all of their uploaded content – pics, videos, notes and so on – and walk away from the service with only “archived copies” left behind for Facebook. And one day, that legal language disappeared from the TOS.

That means Facebook can continue to do all the things you allow it to do with your content as a user – stream, publish, copy, store, distribute and, yeah, even sublicense it for promotional purposes – even after you quit. And when the consumer watchdog site, The Consumerist, highlighted the missing language on its blog Sunday evening, the news started to spread.

Users are outraged, so much so that they have started to – yup, you guessed it – form protest groups on Facebook, including one called People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS), which was pushing 16,000 members early Tuesday. But they’re actually getting mad for the wrong reason.

Sure, get upset about how they can use your content if you’d like but that’s not new. We’re just finding out about it – and that’s what’s even more disturbing. But more on that in a minute.

Facebook rightly disrupted the long U.S. holiday weekend and jumped into action to launch some damage control, posting a Monday afternoon blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information. One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

If I’m understanding what Mark is saying, just because one of my friends decides to delete his account doesn’t mean that I suddenly can no longer see the picture that he uploaded and tagged of me and him. So, in that sense, if the user who uploaded it goes away, the picture stays – and my friends are still free to see it.

Of course that makes sense – just like the analogy of sent and received e-mail makes sense. And, sure, it’s probably reasonable for Facebook to clarify this language in an updated TOS. Really, I don’t know that this is worth some sort of widespread boycott effort. But, with that said, let’s jump back to that better reason to be upset and look at two other sentences in the TOS:

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or delete portions of these Terms at any time without further notice. Your continued use of the Facebook Service after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms.

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Whoa! You get to change the rules and you don’t have to tell me about it? And just because I log-in again tomorrow – just like I do at some point pretty much every day – means that i agree to the new rules you’ve put in place? How is that fair? After all, this is a social networking site that has built a huge following based on tools for communicating with other people – and you can’t “communicate” to me that you changed the rules? From Mark’s blog post:

We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps…

Clearly.

In all fairness, the company posted an entry on its corporate blog about the new term when it made the changes, stating that it had “simplified and clarified a lot of information that applies to you, including some things you shouldn’t do when using the site” and then went on to talk about protecting you and your privacy.

Who knows if anyone at Facebook would have foreseen this type of backlash? Still, maybe that post needed some more meat to it – maybe bullet points of all the changes and what they really meant. After all, a link to the new TOS is useless without a copy of the old one for comparison and, absent of those, a line in a blog post that mentions changes to “a lot of information that applies to you” without any explanation does little good.

One last thing: couldn’t the company have also covered its bases by blasting an e-mail to every user? After all, Facebook does have an address for each of its members. And it is the one single thread – the license – that keeps Facebook connected its users. So, in that sense, it’s kind of important.

Whenever my bank makes any changes to a privacy policy or interest rate, they send a copy of the new agreement in the mail. Whether I read it or not is a different story – but at least they’ve reached out to me to notify me of the changes. In this case, from best I can tell, that’s where Facebook dropped the ball.

February 17th, 2009

Posted by Jennifer Leggio

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After much Internet uproar since the weekend over Facebook’s updated terms of service, the social networking site stated tonight that it would revert to its previous terms of service (TOS). In a blog post published late tonight by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder said that the TOS published prior to Feb. 4 would stay in effect until the company resolved user issues and addressed concerns. According to the post:

Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input… Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.

Zuckerberg says that the the next version of the TOS will be “written clearly in language that everyone can understand.” Condescension aside, Zuckerberg also says that this time around, the users will have more input in crafting the TOS, which the company hopes to complete in the next few weeks. This is a follow-up to the polling Facebook did regarding the TOS in the first place.

Anyone interested in participating in the development of the new TOS can join the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group. The group currently has less than 200 members with only 23 questions posted.

February 18th, 2009

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Internet Explorer 8 {IE 8} is nearing the finish line, with a March release to manufacturing looking like a distinct possibility. But is IE 8 — or, more accurately — Web site developers and owners — really ready?

I have been testing IE 8 since the code became available publicly. And one thing that hasn’t changed much over the past several months is the fact that many Web sites still aren’t compatible with IE 8.

I’m not blaming the site owners here. Microsoft officials have known all along that even though the IE team is doing the “right” thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking “breaking the Web” because the vast majority of Web sites still are written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE.

Microsoft has tried to mitigate the effects of moving to a default standards-based view in a few ways. IE 8 comes with a “Compatibility View” button that will “fix” a seemingly broken site if a user knows to press it. Microsoft went a step beyond this with IE 8 Release Candidate 1, issued in January, by adding a downloadable list of sites that would automatically trigger IE 8 to move directly to compatibility mode, rather than standards mode.

(Here is the list of the 2,400 sites that are on Version 1.0 of Microsoft’s Compatibility View list.)

The Compatibility View list includes some major sites — Apple.com, CNN.com, eBay, Facebook, Google.com, NYTimes.com — even Microsoft.com (!) — and lots, lots more. Users also have the option of adding IE-8-incompatible sites they visit that didn’t make it onto the list that will be appended to the schema list they download.

The Compatibility List has made my IE 8 browsing a lot more stable. When I go to the NYTimes.com site now, it just works. The Compatibility View button (the icon for which looks like a broken Web page and is typically located directly to the right of the URL address bar) doesn’t appear at all (as is the case for all sites on the Compatibility List).

That said, there are a lot of sites I visit that aren’t on the list. And more often than not, they fail to render correctly with IE 8. Sometimes I remember that I should try hitting the Compatibility View button to see if there are boxes and buttons and text there that I can’t see because I am using IE 8. Other times, when I am visiting a site with which I’m unfamiliar, I don’t realize what I’m missing.

I’m at the point now — if a site looks weird, is slow or just doesn’t seem to be working right — I simply assume it is IE 8’s fault. Sometimes I’m right (as I discover when I open the same site in Firefox or Chrome and it looks and works fine). Other times, cialis professional vs cialis I’m not — a site just might be down or broken. The bottom line is I’ve come to expect a rocky browsing experience when using IE 8.

I doubt the compatibility experience is going to change much, if at all, between now and the time IE 8 is released. For months, Microsoft has been banging the drum for site owners to update their code — either by adding compatibility tags or redoing sites to take into account the changes in IE 8. Many site admins and developers have said they weren’t willing to take on that task until Microsoft delivered a near-final test release — at least a Release Candidate.

Some critics have said they think Microsoft is doing a disservice to developers by offering compatibility work-arounds. They say Microsoft created its own problems by delivering previous IE releases that flouted standards — which is true. And now Microsoft should bite the bullet and just go the 100-percent-standards route, they reason. That might be a better course in the long run for Web developers tired of having to do separate versions of sites and apps for standards-based browsers and for IE, but it punishes Web users in the interim.

What’s going to happen when IE 8 goes final and non-techie users have it pushed to them or get new PCs with IE 8 preloaded? I wouldn’t be surprised to see further losses in IE market share, as frustrated users find only some of their favorite Web sites displaying correctly but don’t really understand why. Perhaps Opera and its chums won’t need the antitrust courts to get a leg up on Microsoft, after all….

What’s your take? Is Microsoft taking the right course with Compatibility Mode in IE 8?