Date-searching on Google, you can limit your search to only those pages added or changed within the past [whatever] days. This can be a useful feature if you re-run a search regularly; just limit your search to the pages added or modified since you last ran your search. You can do this not by adding text in the search box but by modifying the search results page URL by adding the following text to the end of the URL and clicking [Search]: &as_qdr=dn (where n is the number of days you want searched) So, for example, to limit my search to the last 18 days, I would add &as_qdr=d18 to the end of the search results page URL. From Mary Ellen Bates: www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html. 

To prevent Explorer Crashes. Go to control panel. Open folder options. Select view, then check Launch Folder Windows in a separate process. This may slow down things, but it prevents common Explorer crashes. You have to reboot for this to take effect, of course.

Reminder Services: AbbyMe.com - Send an SMS broadcast to multiple friends at specified times to remind them of events. BigDates.com - Send yourself reminders to your email or phone for all the big dates in your life. BirthdayAlarm.com - Enter birthdays and holidays and receive email reminders for yourself so you don’t miss any. bitBomb.com - Schedule texts to go to your phone at the appropriate time to remind you of tasks. Braincast.com - Schedule reminders to go to any US based cell phone or regular phone network. Candor.com - A birthday reminder site that you can set to remind you before the date so you don’t forget. Free-Minder.com - Can be set up for events like birthdays and anniversaries as well as every day events. FutureMe.org - Send your future self emails, or just use it as a reminder service. gottakeepup GottaKeepUp.com - Set up reminders for just about any task you can think and receive them at work, home, or on the go. Hallmark.com - The famous Hallmark card company offers you a free reminder service for the important events in your life. HappyBirthday.com - As the name would imply, this is all about reminding you about birthdays. HassleMe.co.uk - Need help sticking to your New Year’s resolutions? Or do you just need random reminders to do things? HassleMe will do just that by sending you random “hassles”. iPing.com - A site to set up phone calls to wake you up, remind you to take medications and more. Does have fees. L8r.nu - Schedule email reminders to be sent for up to five-years from the present day. LaterGator.ca - Set up emails and ecards to be delivered at future dates to yourself or others. Luvup.com - Enter all the important birthdays in your life and receive reminders so you’ll never forget one again. MemoToMe.com - Free and premium versions available from this service that seems to take reminding you very seriously with redundant servers and power supplies. MonkeyOn.com MonkeyOn.com - More of a reminder for other people that you are waiting on them to do something for you. Mosuki.com - Enter calendars with your friends and receive reminders to all ov you of upcoming events. MyMemorizer.com - Enter your calendar and get email or SMS messages reminding you of what you need to do. MyTicklerFile.com - Can group your tasks and reminders by project so you can keep them organized. NeverForget.net - A UK based reminder service for sending notes to your PC or mobile phone. OhDontForget.com - Schedule text message reminders to go to any phone at any time you want. Ownersite.com - A preventive car maintenance service that lets you track your expenses and notify youof when it’s time to change the oil and so on. pcReminder.com - Costs $9.95 a year, will send reminders to numerous styles of devices. rememberthemilk.com RememberTheMilk.com - Create reminders and to-do lists, have it remind you on all the major IM programs, your phone, and now access it via the iPhone or iPod Touch. RemindTime.com - Offers all of the normal reminder services plus… personal visits? ReminderFeed.com - Create an RSS feed you can place in your reader to receive reminders for yourself. rminder.com - Enter your reminder and receive a voice or text message to your phone to remind you. Can sync with iCal, Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar and more. ServiceBeacon.com - Schedule car maintenance reminders so you remember to keep your car tuned up. Snoozester.com - Schedule reminders to go to your phone, including wake-up calls. WakerUpper.com - Set up reminders to go to your phone at pre-set times. Make sure you never forget to do anything again. And they amusingly suggest sending yourself a message to go off during a date so you can escape. Whatbills.com - Set up email reminders when your bills are due to keep you from being overdue.

By default, Gmail uses an unencrypted connection to retrieve user data, encrypting only the connection used for the login page. However, by changing the URL from http://mail.google.com/mail/ to https://mail.google.com/mail/, Gmail can be told to use a secure connection, reducing the risk of third-party eavesdropping on users' information, such as emails and contacts, which are transmitted in plaintext as JavaScript data in the page source code. [Thanks, S.]

If e-mail bounces back to you with a message that you've been blocked, your address may be on a spam blacklist--most likely as a result of being zombified. More than 100 such blacklists exist, and many ISPs use one or more of them to block the IP addresses of known spammers. If you're on one or two such lists, most of your mail will get through, but some will not. Even if your e-mail isn't bouncing, it's a good idea to find out whether you've been blacklisted. First, go to http://checkip.dyndns.org/  To view the IP address you send out to the world--probably your router's. Select the displayed address and choose Edit, Copy to copy it to your clipboard. There are several blacklist reporting sites. My favorite is Robtex. Paste your IP address into the only field on the page, and click Go. Robtex < http://www.robtex.com/rbl.html >will list a great many blacklist sites. If any of them are red, you've got a problem. Use the list's contact information to find out why you're on that list and how to get off of it.

[Recommended for propeller heads, only.] Secure email. Go to http://www.comodo.com/products/certificate_services/email_certificate.html  and get a free, email certificate for your email. You can then send digitally signed email to your correspondents. Fill out the form after you select get FREE certificate. After you fill out the form, they say: Details on how to collect your free Secure Email Certificate will be sent to (your email address that you input on the form.) The next step is to collect and install the certificate. That elusive new ID hides in the tucked-away "certificate store" of the Web browser you used to obtain it. IE and Outlook share a store, but Firefox and Thunderbird each use their own. Check the store for your ID, and export it for a backup right away. To do so with IE, head to Tools, Internet Options, and click the Content tab. Once there, click the Certificates button. You should see your new certificate under the Personal tab; select it and click Export. In the resulting Export Wizard, choose to export the private key, keep the defaults for Export File Format, and come up with a password and file name. For Firefox, go to Tools, Options, and choose the Advanced tab. Click the View Certificates button. In the Certificates Manager, select your new e-mail certificate under the Your Certificates tab and click the Backup button. Save the exported certificate to a USB drive, a trusted online storage service, or some other safe place. Fortunately, IE and Outlook share the certificate store, so you don't need to import it to that mail program. For Thunderbird, go through the same steps listed above for Firefox, but click the Import button instead of Backup, and browse to your exported certificate. If you're using a combination of Firefox and Outlook, go to Tools, Options in Outlook and select the Security tab; then click the Import/Export button at the bottom. Now you're ready to swap certificates with other people so you can send them encrypted e-mail. In Outlook, bring up a new window for composing e-mail, fill in the address of the recipient, and then click the button in the toolbar showing a yellow envelope with a red spot; doing so digitally signs the message and sends your certificate to the addressee. For someone to add your new ID certificate to their version of Outlook, they must open your digitally signed message and then add you as one of their contacts. In Thunderbird, select Security, Digitally Sign This Message as you type an e-mail. Thunderbird automatically adds newly received certificates from digital signatures. Now, at long last, you're ready to send encrypted e-mail. While composing a message in Outlook, click the Encrypt button, a yellow envelope with a blue lock, on the second toolbar. In Thunderbird, select Security, Encrypt This Message. If you don't have the recipient's certificate, you'll see an error when you try to send. But if you've set everything up correctly, your e-mail will be safe from snoops. After I got my certificate from comodo via email, I clicked on a button to install my certificate in my browser (FireFox). After you/they install your certificate in your browser, open your email and import the saved (backed up certificate) to install your certificate. I thought the Thawte site was more secure, so I got my certificate at: http://www.thawte.com/secure-email/personal-email-certificates/index.html?click=main-nav-products-email#  There is a lot of email back and forth, and several pages of instructions to read and follow, but if you haven't turned into a yam yet, you can do this. MY ISP provides secure email for me and other subscribers if email is sent to and subsequently forwarded to my regular, email address.  I use this for private and confidential correspondence, only.  For example, if someone has to send a special password or account information, I call them and ask them to send it to ------at-------.-------

Amic Email Backup is a freeware application designed to backup Outlook and Outlook Express emails. It also supports backing up email from a variety of other email clients such as Eudora, Incredimail, PegasusMail, The Bat, Poco Mail & Opera Mail. If you also want to backup Thunderbird emails you can use MozBackup. Amic Email Backup is well featured with a backup/store option, the ability to choose what parts of a particular account (eg, settings, address book) you want to backup, the ability to setup schedules, password protect the backups, split the backups into volumes so you can burn it to a CD and much more. http://www.amictools.com/download/AmicEmailBackupSetup.exe

Revo Uninstaller is a free utility that is like the Windows “Add/Remove Programs” on steroids. Revo Uninstaller will seek out programs you have installed (including ones that arent in the Add/Remove List) and display them so you can uninstall the applications or remove their entry if they have already been deleted. Revo Uninstaller doesn’t stop there though, it has an option called “Hunter Mode” where you can drag a crosshair over any program and uninstall it from there. You can also use the crosshair to prevent applications from auto-running at bootup. Just drag the crosshair over the offending program in the system tray and it will give you the option to turn off auto-startup. Revo Uninstaller also has a handful of useful Windows tools built in such as a “Junk Files Cleaner” which will seek out junk files with extensions that you pre-define. By default it will seek out .tmp, .temp, .chk, .old, .gid, .$$$, .dmp and many more temporary file extensions. This program is definitely worth adding to the kit of any computer technicians doing system tuneups. http://www.revouninstaller.com/revosetup.exe 

Metasearch engine Ixquick, at http://www.ixquick.com/ , has announced the addition of video search to its metasearch service. Ixquick has teamed up with Blinx to offer this new facet of their service. Ixquick's meta-search therefore now includes Web (of course), images, video, and an international phone directory that allows you to do people, business, and reverse phone lookups.