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The Top Themes of 2000	Volume 4 Number 10 Dec. 31, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

At this time last year the world was on edge, wondering what havoc the Y2K problem would cause. As it turned out, this computer glitch was a colossal non-starter, for which we should all be very glad. Nevertheless, the Year 2000 brought many exciting new developments in personal computing. In our fourth year of publication, the top themes of 2000 were Napster, Y2K, home networks, digital cameras, and the human genome project.

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by Alan Brown

Over the past year or more I have been able to set up my machines at home so that I can offer a range of webserver and mailserver services. I can register a domain name for less than $10 a year and within a few minutes have the domain name service (DNS) supporting the name to IP address mapping, the domain name serving web pages, and accept mail to someone@ThisDomain.com for forwarding to a remote address or for local access. I now run more than 15 web sites for friends, family, and non-profit organizations, and deliver mail to more than 50 different people at those domain names. Many people have asked me how my systems are set up, how much resources they would need to do the same, and what on-going maintenance is involved. In this article I have tried to capture some of the answers to those questions.

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COMDEX 2000	Volume 4 Number 8 Nov. 19, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

A quick 3 hour and 15 minute dash across the Mojave desert and it's Las Vegas, home to gambling, conventions, and COMDEX. In fact, COMDEX is a weird mix of gambling (for the vendors) and convention (for the attendees and the media) that creates a unique event of interest to geeks everywhere. There was no obvious "killer app" at COMDEX 2000, but in the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center, one theme came across loud and clear: net-centric computing is here.

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Woe is ME	Volume 4 Number 7 Nov. 7, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

Windows Millennium Edition, aka Windows ME, has been out for a few months now. I've installed it on several different computers, explored its new features, and I'm underwhelmed. If you purchase a new PC with Windows ME pre-installed, you have nothing to be concerned about. But if you already have a PC running Windows 98, I can't see any compelling reason to upgrade to Windows ME. If you're running Windows 2000, there's very little reason to try Windows ME, other than for revive programs than ran under Windows 98 but not under Windows 2000. That is, if you can get Windows ME to install at all.

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The Recorder Quest	Volume 4 Number 6 Oct. 18, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

Maybe it's just that Halloween is fast approaching, but lately what should be relatively simple tasks seem to morph into endless adventures with the dark side of computing. In this instance, it was the seemingly innocuous desire to record lectures so that they could be automatically transcribed to text for later use. This led to a two-week quest to find the right recorder, analog or digital, and the right transcription software. It turns out that just getting the right recorder is far more arduous than it should be. Victrola anyone?

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Home-Office Networking Made Complicated	Volume 4 Number 5 Sept. 30, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

Why does it seem that everyone else can get a home-office network going quite smoothly, but mine takes forever to sort out? Actually, it seems like this is the case for most things I do in computing: SCSI adapters, software installations, digital audio, and so on. In the case of my home-office network, the problem ironically turned out to be a piece of software that I had installed to help me deal with nefarious Internet intruders: a personal firewall.

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The Canon Digital ELPH	Volume 4 Number 4 July 31, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

I've been waiting a long time to purchase a digital camera. Until now, I felt that the quality of the images were inferior to old-fashioned print photographs. A few weeks ago, I finally changed my mind and purchased one of the newer models on the market: the Canon PowerShot S100, also known as the Digital ELPH. The camera is a wonder of engineering: so small that it fits in your shirt pocket, so easy to use that it truly is point-and-click, and so good that the pictures it captures rivals -- or betters -- those produced with a high-end non-digital camera. I'm sold: digital photography has officially arrived, and the sooner you make the switch, the better.

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ED-MEDIA'2000	Volume 4 Number 3 July 12, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

This year's ED-MEDIA conference was held in Montréal, Canada. The conference focuses on the use of multimedia technology in education. It's an event that attracts over 1,200 attendees (who come from over 50 countries)  involved in K-12 teaching, university research, or institutional learning.  This was my first time at ED-MEDIA, and I found the sessions to be very interesting. A common thread throughout the conference was distance learning and the many issues surrounding moving instructional material online.

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XML One	Volume 4 Number 2 July 3, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

Attending the XML One conference in Austin a few months ago was very enlightening. Given the huge role XML (and SOAP) plays in Microsoft's recently announced .NET initiative, no one can afford to ignore new developments in the XML world. The XML One conference provides a singular perspective on an important and rapidly developing technology, a perspective that's not really available anywhere else.

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40GB or Bust	Volume 4 Number 1 May 15, 2000	RealAudio

by Scott Tilley

Very large hard drives are now available at reasonable cost for computer owners. I recently had the experience of installing a 40GB drive in a Celeron-based PC. What should have been a simple job involving a screw driver and a few disk formatting commands soon developed into major multi-machine surgery, BIOS upgrades, and jumper woes.

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