Make sure your XP firewall is working

If you use Windows XP on your computer, you have a built in firewall, which is the first line of defence against the various viruses and other nasties that the internet can throw at you.  Everyone should be using a firewall.

But it only works if it's turned on and updated, so you need to check that it is. Full details (with easy to follow pictures) are on the Microsoft Website (click here), but in short this is what you do:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 
2. From the Control Panel, click Security Center.

• If Windows Firewall shows ON, all is well.
• If Windows Firewall shows OFF, it has been disabled. If you have another firewall installed, this is probably OK. If you don’t have another firewall installed, you will need to re-enable the Windows Firewall like this.

1. Click Recommendations.
2. Click Enable Now.
3. Click Close
4. Click OK.

That's it.

Laptop explodes

At a conference in Japan, a Dell laptop suddenly exploded into flames, fortunately, its owner had the thing on a table and not in his lap. An onlooker reported that the notebook continued to burn, producing several more explosions over the course of about five minutes.

Digital photographs

More and more of us have digital cameras, or cameras on our phones;
once you get to grips with them you need to teach yourself how to
use one of the online picture storage sites. One of the smartest
(and newest) of these sites is www.flickr.com which is rapidly
becoming the industry standard and is, it is rumoured, about to be
bought by Yahoo. 

It is free, within limits, you send your pictures to the site and
you can allow other people (or no one) to view them. Thus you only
have to send the pictures once and then email your friends and family
(via the site) to see them for themselves, and print them if they want to.

There's a lot to learn, but it's well worth the effort.

Who you gonna call?

This is a fairly well known site, but I would hate to think of any Oldie readers not having it in their list.

It is more and more common for companies to give their telephone number as one that starts '0870'.  This means that if you ring it during the day, you are likely to be paying almost 9 pence per minute (that's not a misprint) and, to rub salt in the wound, the company gets a slice of that 9p.

However, all companies have a real telephone number as well, which is considerably cheaper to call (many have an 0800 number too, which is free), and www.saynoto0870.com is a growing list of those numbers.

You enter the company name, or their 0870 number, and if they have it on the list, up pops the alternative. Marvellous.

The site charges nothing and relies on sponsorship, donations and advertising to survive. 

Puzzles galore

Here is a great site for keeping the mind stretched whilst passing the time.

www.brainbashers.com  is a terrific collection of thousands puzzles, games and optical illusions. It claims to be the world's most popular puzzle website, and who am I to disagree? It is regularly updated with illusions and games and has five new puzzles added each week.

What's more, it's British; it is run by Kevin Stone, a puzzle enthusiast and theoretical mathematician at Keele University. 
He started it in 1997; initially it was as an exercise to see how much interest there was in an Internet based puzzle site, and it has grown since then.

It is now one of the busiest sites on the Internet, perhaps because he charges nothing to view the whole site. He does
gather some income from advertising, but uniquely (in my experience) you can turn the adverts off. Fantastic.

If you enjoy solving puzzles, crosswords and the like, you'll like this site. You can subscribe to a daily puzzle, too.