Go to shell

I recently read an article in PC world about things that are missing in windows and how to add them in. I was reminded of on of the most glaring things missing from Windows that has always made me angry. Remember in Windows 3.1 there was a thing called the macro recorder. With this primitive utility you could record basic key presses and mouse click. It was no great solution because things like loops were not supported and mouse clicking was not reliable because windows often change form and position.
Just today at work I was had to do something that should be easy to automate but because windows does not have a built in macro recorder is not easy to do. I needed to take an Excel file and output it to a tab delimited file and then open the file in a text edit and remove any quotes. This should be a piece of cake to do but Windows does not have the built in capacity to do this. When I had to do something similar I wrote a macro in Excel to take the contents from the cells and out put them to a file directly with no quote but since I only have to do this a few time at this job I didn't feel it necessary to build this same program again and couldn't find the source from before. In Unix this is the type of thing you would do with a shell script. and in the back in the dos days batch files could do some basic processes like this and I am told the command has some added functions now but in a modern operating system like Windows it is astonishing that the you must rely on third party software for any complex macro gui processing. Apple has a scripting language built in that can be used across programs and it is unbelievable to me that Microsoft doesn't have anything nearly equivalent.
I the future I am going to look for some free macro programs for Windows and review this here.

Smart email

Recently Gmail had a couple of hours during the middle of the day. This would have meant hours without access to my email. For me this is only my personal email so it would not have been devastating but what if I really needed my email for something that day? This is why I always have a backup plan.
I pay about 6.99 for my own domain I have had for about 10 years. My internet provider has changed in that time from AOL to AT&T to two or three cable companies but I have retained the same email the entire time. Now because I have my own domain I can forward my email to a number of other addresses. This way I have two different web mail accounts. I also routinely download my email to Thunderbird though POP 3 or Imap. This way I never have to trust one company with my email. I use the web host 1 and 1 but I am sure there are another of other hosts that offer similar packages.
I know that the odds of Gmail or Yahoo not being around are slim but the chances that both would go away at one time are almost impossible. I don't think being prepared for the worst is a bad idea.

The best web mail. Yahoo vs Google.

I use both Google mail and Yahoo mail and I thought I would comment on some on the things I like and hate about both products. I am including the contact manager and calendar in my review.

Feature	Google	Yahoo Classic	Yahoo Ajax	Notes
Speed	Very good	Very good	Ok	Google streamline design and simple interface is
Pop/Imap	Good	Not available	Not available	Google has simple and free support for both imap and POP 3. Yahoo costs 19.95 per year for these features
Organization Tools	Great	OK	OK	Google’s labels are simple but efficient. Allowing for multitaging of messages. Yahoo’s folder system is outdated and limiting. Yahoo is limited to 15 rules while google allows forwarding with rules and actions retroactive on already received mail.
Search	Good	Great	Great	Yahoo’s search allows for step by step filtering by multiple characteristics.
Contact Management	Good	Good	Great	Both allow for simple contact management. Both have similar integration of instant messaging. Yahoo has SMS messaging built in.Simple mailing groups are supported.
Mobile Support	Good	Very Good	Very Good	Yahoo GO allows for pulled email on up to half hour intervals. Contact integration is complete unlike Google’s.
Calendar	Very Good	Good	Good	Google allows for easy sharing and viewing of calendars on a single screen but mobile support is incomplete. Yahoo allows for only very basic sharing. And does not offer the number of public calendars Google has.
Spam filter	Great	OK	OK	I get a few spams a day in my inbox in Yahoo. Google lets one slip by maybe once per month
Overall	Great	Very Good	Very Good	Overall I like Gmail slightly more however the mobile support of Yahoo is fantastic. Overall I use Gmail on my computer Yahoo on my phone and Google calendar for my schedule.

I would love to know what you think. Take our survey or leave comments.
Next time I will discuss how I use both Yahoo and Gmail simultaneously.

Privacy in Firefox 3 and Chrome

One of the things that is recommended for privacy is to block third party cookies. Third party cookes are used by companies like DoubleClick and others to track users with adds on other sites. Blocking these cookies prevents adds embedded on other sites from tracking your movements around the web.

I thought I would see how easy it is to set this preference in both of these new browsers. I was happy to see that the process was very easy in both of these browsers.

Firefox 3.0
In Firefox I found the setting under the menu
Tools->Options-> privacy

There is a box on this screen called cookies
uncheck the box marked "Accept third party-cookies"

Chrome
In Google Chrome there is a customize and control Google Chrome button on the top right corner of the page. Press it and choose "Options"

On the tab "Under the hood" Scroll to the bottom of the page and under cookies choose the setting "Restrict how third-party cookies can be used" choose close to save the settings

This is one of many things you can do to help protect your privacy on line.