Some users have reported a blinking question mark appearing on their monitor screens after installing the new Mac operating system. If the computer is then turned off, there's a chance the data on your hard drive will take a permanent vacation. A fix is now available, called the Apple Drive Setup 1.3.1 and can be applied before or after installing OS 8. If you DO get the blinking question mark, Apple advises that you use the sleep mode and don't turn off the computer until you've applied the patch (you do use a UPS, don't you?). See their Web site for more info: http://www.info.apple.com/.

Help Promoting Your Web Site

The Millennium Web Promotion Spider (WPS) makes it easy, fast, and effective to submit ALL your Web pages to over 300 search engines, online directories, and newsgroups. It's a program you download and run on your Windows95 computer. You enter information about your Website (takes 10 minutes), select the search engines you want to post to from WPS's regularly updated list, and click. Their Artificial Intelligence programming makes changes to the "hidden" descriptions in your pages (those "META" tags) to improve your chances of being near the top of the appropriate search engines for your category. There's also a Visibility feature that allows you to see how many search engines have links back to your site! The Professional Version includes additional features that make it easy to submit multiple pages or sites at one time. To download your free evaluation copy (allows posting to 5 search engines at a time), surf over to: http://beherenow.com/wps2/. Your eval copy can be upgraded to the regular version if you decide to buy, so you won't have to redownload again.

Copyright Protection

In the August issue of the German computer magazine c't was a review of 5 different watermarking systems designed to detect image thievery. They found that Digimarc was the most effective. But they also stated that they tested both watermarked pictures printed in their magazine and output from a PostScript Laser Color Printer. The images were scanned with a Linotype Ultra Scanner. The result: None of the tested systems found the watermark! Note: Copyright is a world issue that affects us all.

BMI

From time to time, we've made comparisons between the sorry state of copyright enforcement and royalty payments for graphic artists (us) and the very well organized Broadcast Music Inc. Well, now BMI is extending its reach to the Internet. Representing over 200,000 musicians, they estimate that about 2% of web pages contain music files. So, they've engineered a "musicbot" to sniff out sites containing such files. Human staff will review the pages looking for BMI artists' sound clips and notify Web owners of the required licensing. Initially targeted at commercial sites, they'll soon be sniffing around smaller ones. Now might be a good time to review YOUR site, and perhaps your neighbor's. We all need to support such efforts at copyright protection.

A Search Engine With a Personal Touch

Most search engines use automated procedures to populate their database, and/or rely on users to provide information. The Mining Company thinks they have a better idea. It recruits "guides"--Web users with a personal attachment to a specific topic. The guide agrees to manage their topic in exchange for a share of advertising revenue. The Mining Company features more than 500 categories, though not all equal in quality or quantity. And their use of frames makes it difficult to see the URL of the site you clicked on. If you're looking for something with a human touch, check it out at http://www.miningco.com.

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