Dennis Faas

Synopsis: Wouldn't it be cool if you could type in a word and have your computer perform a series of functions? With SureType, it's a reality! No matter what you are doing on your computer -- and regardless of which application you're using -- you ... could just type in word\ (for example), and immediately have Microsoft Word load. Similarly, you could type excel\ and Microsoft Excel will open -- or, you could type in address\ and have your full email address typed onto the screen! With SureType, the possibilities are endless. And don't forget: only when you type the special expansion key after a ... (view more)

I've just received wind that Acronis has released Disk Director Suite version 10 -- the perfect companion to the extremely popular Acronis True Image (disk imaging backup software)! Who is Acronis, you ask? Acronis is a leading software company that ... specializes in storage management solutions for mission-critical situations. Acronis provides technically advanced (but simple to use) applications for: disaster recovery, backup and restoration, hard drive partitioning, boot management, data migration and other storage management products. Acronis' line of disk management software has won many ... (view more)

Blogosphere (alternate: BlogSphere or BloggingSphere) is the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in ... their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. The term blogosphere was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke. It was re-coined in 2002 by William Quick (quite seriously) and was quickly adopted and promulgated by the warblog community. Many ... (view more)

Synopsis: What's the ultimate research engine? Answer: MetaProducts Inquiry! If you need a fast and easy way to save and analyze web pages for later offline browsing, then MetaProducts Inquiry is just what the doctor ordered! With MetaProducts ... Inquiry you can collect, organize and view information from the web quickly, easily -- and with little effort. MetaProducts Inquiry comes fully integrated with Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) as a service toolbar, plus it offers right-click context menus for IE, Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera Browsers. Coupled with an unparalelled ability to grab almost ... (view more)

Today's issue of the Gazette is a series of very important announcements. Let me begin by telling you what's been happening in my life. I don't normally write about personal stuff, but this circumstance is different because it directly affects ... infopackets.com. At any rate, here goes: As of November 2nd, 2005, I finalized the deal on my new home. Prior to the 2nd (and beginning October 20th), I was running around like mad trying to get everything settled -- such as: meeting with the builder regularly, the bank, the lawyers, and making tons of phone calls to service providers. All of this ... (view more)

A checksum is a form of redundancy check, a very simple measure for protecting the integrity of data by detecting errors in data that is sent through space (telecommunications) or time (storage). It works by adding up the basic components of a ... message, typically the bytes, and storing the resulting value. Later, anyone can perform the same operation on the data, compare the result to the authentic checksum, and (assuming that the sums match) conclude that the message was probably not corrupted. The simplest form of checksum, which simply adds up the bytes in the data, cannot detect a number ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Michel S. writes: " Dear Dennis, First, thank you for this very informative and welcoming website. My question today is in regard to a corrupt DVD disc. After having burned some of my favorite downloaded files to DVD disc (using ... the 'D-well' brand blank DVD), some files appear to be OK, but part of the DVD disc cannot be accessed at all. ;-( I am using an ASUS DVD writer and Nero 6.0 for my backup. So far, my computer friends haven't been able to help me with this issue. I'd certainly appreciate if you can help me to clarify this mystery. Thank you in advance! " ... (view more)

Synopsis: Add eye candy and extend the functionality of Windows XP (you won't want to miss this one)! AlphaXP is a *very* cool desktop enhancement utility that adds advanced transparency effects to any Windows 2000/XP computer. It has won many ... five-star awards for excellence and is regarded by thousands of users worldwide. Some of the features have been incorporated into AlphaXP include: three direct ways to set transparency, two automatic ways to set transparency, smooth fade effects, menu transparency, tooltip transparency, taskbar transparency, and much more! To get a better idea of what ... (view more)

A mouse is a handheld pointing device for computers, involving a small object fitted with one or more buttons and shaped to sit naturally under the hand. The underside of the mouse houses a device that detects the mouse's motion relative to the flat ... surface on which it sits. The mouse's 2D motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on the display. A mouse is called a 'mouse' primarily because the cord on early models resembled the rodent's tail, and also because the motion of the pointer on the screen can be mouse-like. In popular usage, the plural can be either mice or ' ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jamie T. from the UK writes: " Dear Dennis, When I hover my mouse pointer over a window, it automatically brings that window to the front. I don't understand why this happening all the sudden. I can't seem to find any settings in ... the Control Panel where I can stop the mouse from stealing focus. Can you help? " My response: The mouse focus setting may be the result of a program you recently installed. At any rate, you can adjust mouse focus (enable or disable) it with a freeware Microsoft utility, called TweakUI (a part of the PowerToys collection). A download link ... (view more)