My 2¢ Worth

eb Sm@rts will not be published on Thursday, June 17. I plan to be on the water on that date.

'm going to be canoeing the Crow Wing river for my June vacation this year. I plan on leaving late in the afternoon on Father's day and returning sometime the following Friday.

 plan on going alone this year, although I may find a traveling companion at the last minute. No matter to me — I love the solitude of the river — having other people around just breaks that up. However, company can be nice too, especially when sitting around the camp fire after dark.

 must really need this vacation. I find that I have absolutely no interest in working at the job I love. As far as publishing goes, well let's just say you'll be lucky if I get the issue out next week.

Feature Article

Setting Up a New Office

by: Jan Jasper Jasper Productivity Solutions

Location, location, location!

In setting up a new office, your first decision is where to put your desk. Computer equipment must be close enough to an electrical outlet that you don't need extension cords to plug in that equipment. Ideally, your computer should have its own electrical circuit to shield it from fluctuations caused by other electrical equipment going off and on. At the minimum, don't put the computer on the same electrical circuit as the air conditioner or heater. Also, your computer, monitor, printer, and even the phone line that goes into your modem must be plugged into a top-quality surge protector.

Another consideration is light. Don't place your monitor where light — either natural or artificia — will reflect off the screen. Unfortunately, this may rule out placing your desk right next to a sunny window, but your eyes will thank you. For artificial light, it's better to have several adjustable lamps rather than one bright overhead ceiling fixture.

Avoid putting your CPU on the floor under your desk — it's too easy to bump into it with your foot which can jostle the hard drive. Put it in a more protected area. If your office air is very dry, or you generate static electricity by walking on your carpet, you may get a small shock when you first sit down at your keyboard. Unfortunately, your keyboard is getting shocked too. The solution is to place an anti-static rubber mat underneath the keyboard. You touch this before touching the keyboard to dissipate static charges safely.

Your desk as control central

Now that you've decided where to put your desk, let's look at the details of desk configuration. A poorly designed desk area causes office clutter and wasted time. Ironically, the picture-perfect, minimalist offices you see depicted in magazines — the sleek glass-top table with nothing on it but a laptop computer and no files anywhere to be seen — are the worst clutter magnets. These office set-ups are designed to showcase the furniture. No functioning office can look like this — at least not for long.

The key to working efficiently and avoiding clutter is to make effective use of your immediate desk area. Any space you can reach without getting up from your desk chair is prime real estate and should be used to the maximum.

The ideal desk shape is an L-shape or U-shape. Most modern desks don't contain the traditional "return" that can be pulled out on one side, but if you are stuck with a standard rectangular desk you can improvise: Put a smaller table to one side of your desk, or even a low file cabinet can do double duty as a work area. This gives you extra work space so you can spread out when you need.

The space above your desk is prime real estate too. Your desk should have either shelves above it or a hutch — you need a place to put files currently in use, reference materials, and the supplies you use every day. This frees up enough desk space that you can put your printer at your desk, which will save you time.

Another space extender is a swivel shelf for the phone, which attaches to your desk and can be moved, up, down, left, and right. This keeps your phone handy without wasting valuable desk space. A telephone headset is essential. It takes the pressure off your neck and shoulder and also permits you to walk around while talking, which keep your energy up. If your desk lacks a pencil drawer, you'll need a desktop holder for pencils, stapler, paperclips, etc.

A good chair is one of your most important business tools. You need a wheeled chair of adjustable height with good lower-back support. Lastly an acrylic chair mat increases the maneuverability of your chair.

Filing & Storage

Obtain enough file cabinets to hold your papers. You should have at least one file drawer that you can reach without leaving your desk chair — it can either be under your desk or beside it. If you keep extensive old files saved for legal or historical reasons, save money and space by putting files in bankers' boxes and storing them in a closet, or in an off-site record storage facility.

Filing supplies — purchase hanging folders to keep interior folders standing tall and permit them to slide easily in the drawer. Avoid legal size folders if possible — they take up more space.

You'll need a place to keep supplies. A cabinet or credenza is ideal, but open shelves will suffice. Save time by keeping extras of everything on hand — you don't want to run out of laser toner 30 minutes before that proposal is due! Keep your inventory of paper sealed and dry — many papers will curl and jam during printing if they're exposed to moisture during storage. Tape shut the half-empty paper package or even wrap in a plastic bag.

You need at least one book case, not only for books, but for trade publications and computer manuals.

Phone Lines and Peripherals

If you have DSL, you won't need a second phone line for internet access. But if you have a dial-up connection, you must have that second line — you can't afford not to have one. Giving callers a busy signal when you're downloading your E-mail is unprofessional.

You definitely need a printer and probably a fax and scanner. Fortunately, there are reasonably priced multi-function machines that will do black & white printing, make copies, send and receive faxes, and even scan documents. A multi-function machine is fine for most offices, if most of the copying and scanning you do is from loose sheets. But if you copy often from bound material, you need a flatbed copier. Same goes for scanning — if you want to scan things from books, the scanner in a multi-function machine won't work; you need a flatbed scanner.

Another drawback to a multi-function machine is that if your fax goes down you're also lost your printer and copier and scanner. So there are advantages to buying these machines individually, and it's affordable because prices have dropped dramatically in the past few years. Ditto for color inkjet printers. They're affordable, and the output doesn't smear like their predecessors' did.

Last but not least, in this age of identity theft, you need a paper shredder.

**************

Jan Jasper has been training busy people to work smarter, not harder since 1988. She is the author of "Take Back Your Time: How to Regain Control of Work, Information, & Technology" (St. Martin's Press). Jan helps clients streamline their systems and procedures, form optimum work habits, use technology efficiently, and manage information overload. Find lots of free tips at www.janjasper.com.

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This week's TIP

Nowrap for Tables

Are your tables wrapping text and making some cells taller that others as a result? There's a very simple solution to this problem, an attribute of the <td> tag within your table. It's called nowrap and has no other value than itself. Here's how it works:

<td nowrap>

What this does is preclude text from wrapping inside the cell, but it will have the effect of stretching your tables horizontally. But if you want nice clean tables that don't have cell height variations, it's an effective method of ensuring all text stays on one line.

* Get these syndicated tip feeds for your web site, free. *

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Second Article

Is "Spyware" Watching You?

by: Jim Edwards TheNetRporter.com ezine

Imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from a friend who told me he'd been the victim of a "spyware" attack that left him shaking at his loss of privacy.

I listened to his horror story with a sympathetic ear, but I felt secure since I carry anti-virus software and a firewall (both by Norton).

At his suggestion - and to my surprise - I ran a program called "Spy Sweeper" and found a veritable minefield of dangerous and harmful programs lurking on my computer.

"Spyware" is software that gets onto your computer and literally "spies" on your activities.

The spying can range from relatively harmless use of cookies tracking you across multiple websites... to extremely dangerous "keystroke loggers" which record passwords, credit cards, and other personal data. That data then gets relayed to the person who put the software on your computer.

Three primary types of spyware exist to complicate your online life, including:

1. "cookies"
2. "adware"
3. malicious programs like "keystroke loggers"

Cookies represent mostly a danger of lost privacy.

In theory, someone could use a "cookie" to track you across multiple sites, combine that data with several databases, and figure out a lot more information about you than would make you comfortable.

"Adware" tracks more than just your movement across sites, it spies on your installed software and computer habits to then serve up advertising, modify websites before you see them, and generally do things without your knowledge with the intention of trying to get you to buy things.

"Keystroke loggers" and other malicious programs exist for one purpose: to cause personal mayhem and financial damage.

Spyware gets on your computer in one of several different ways.

First, it rides along with software you download from the 'Net and install on your system.

Second, they come as email attachments (much like viruses) and automatically install themselves on your computer when you open the email message.

Third, hackers find an open port on your computer and use the "back door" to install basically anything they want.

And fourth, the more malicious types, like keystroke loggers, can even get installed by someone with direct physical access to your computer such as an employer, suspicious spouse, business competitor, or someone who wants to know exactly what you're doing.

Now, suppose you carry an up-to-date anti-virus program and a firewall - shouldn't that represent potent protection?

In a word: NO!

I can personally attest that even the most up-to-date anti- virus programs and firewalls will not (repeat, WILL NOT) catch all the spyware that can infest your computer.

You need a program that specifically scans your system for the tens-of-thousands of existing spyware programs along with the new ones appearing daily.

Check out "Spy Sweeper" from webroot.com - this is the program I used to discover the spyware on my computer.

One thing I noticed, however, is that this program is a memory hog, so once I scanned, I turned it off and then use it 2-3 times a week... not the best strategy, but I want to give you the "whole" picture.

I also got the following recommendations from numerous subscribers about 2 programs to specifically help identify and remove spyware from your system (PC):

1. "Ad Aware" from lavasoft.de
2. "Spybot Search & Destroy" from safer-networking.org

The overwhelmingly recommended firewall suggested by readers was Zone Alarm Pro from Zone Labs => http://www.ebookfire.com/zonealarm.html

The bottom line seems pretty simple (but lengthy) if you want to protect yourself against this growing threat.

~ Keep your anti-virus program current ~ Install a firewall ~ Carefully screen software before installing it ~ Scan for specifically for spyware weekly ~ Stay current on this growing threat.

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Author and co-author of several highly successful ebooks, including "How to Write and Publish your own eBook... in as littl as 7 Days" www.7dayebook.com. Writes a syndicated offline Newspaper Column - www.thenetreporter.com - focusing on ebooks, tips, tricks, expert interviews, & more!

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Download of the Week

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