Last-minute Halloween costume tips

By Tom Mighell on October 30, 2002

Still can’t find that perfect Halloween costume? Forbes has a page of printable masks of this year’s scariest characters: Ken Lay, Martha Stewart, Bernie Ebbers, and more.

New report on employer monitoring of e-mail and Internet use

By Tom Mighell on October 30, 2002

Posted in Email, Privacy

The GAO released a report yesterday showing the results of a survey of the e-mail/Internet use policies of 14 employers. Interestingly, the report shows that while most of the companies surveyed have implemented procedures to protect their networks from outside attack, none changed their computer use policies in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Study on web credibility released

By Tom Mighell on October 30, 2002

Posted in Web and Online Culture

Consumer Web Watch has released the results of a study it commissioned on How Consumers and Experts Rate Credibility on the Web. Not surprisingly, the report shows that while many Internet users know what to look for in determining whether a website is credible, few actually take the trouble to do so. It’s a…

Finally, annotations for couch potatoes

By Tom Mighell on October 30, 2002

Posted in Fun Stuff

If you watch shows like the West Wing, Law and Order, and Saturday Night Live, often you will see references to political and cultural issues that need a bit more explaining. Enter FootnoteTV, a site that provides background information on the issues included in each episode of these shows, as well as JAG, The…

Has Google stopped frequent crawling?

By Tom Mighell on October 30, 2002

Posted in Search Engines

The Google Weblog reports that Google has apparently fallen down a bit in its policy of crawling certain sites every other day, and that the cached pages from sites that get this treatment are dated September 4. I guess that means that the new pages found in Search Engine Showdown’s Freshness Update aren’t the

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Do you own your e-mail?

By Tom Mighell on October 30, 2002

Posted in Email

When the U.S. Post office cannot deliver a letter to you, it returns the mail to the original sender, assuming a valid return address. But what about e-mail? This CNet article reports on how an ISP suspended a user’s Internet account, but continued to accumulate e-mail without notifying the user or the senders of the…

A Pop-up Free Portal?

By Tom Mighell on October 29, 2002

Posted in Miscellaneous

Tired of pop-ups at Yahoo! or whatever portal you use? The people who brought you the pop-up monster iWon introduce MyWay, an ad and pop-up free environment. The site uses Google as its search engine. Gee, it looks like Yahoo! did when that site first debuted.

A not-so-Friendly Greeting

By Tom Mighell on October 29, 2002

Posted in Security

Have you received an e-mail inviting you to download an E-Card from FriendGreetings.com? If so, don’t. When you attempt to download the e-card, the site tells you that you must first download a small program — but included in the licensing agreement is acknowledgement that you are consenting to e-mail all the Contacts in your…