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ZooNews has reached an exciting
milestone this month. It was one short year ago that Montreal
Web site design company Zoonini Web
Services launched its monthly newsletter... so Happy
First Birthday to us! If you
did not yet receive a birthday treat to commemorate this
auspicious occasion, it means either (1) the mail to your
town is slow, or (2) we did not have a postal address for
you. To make sure you receive future goodies, please add
a mailing address to your ZooNews subscription by clicking
the "update preferences" link provided at
the end of this message.
This month I'd like to elucidate two bits of Web miscellany
that may have had you scratching your head and wondering... What
Is This?
Ever
come to a form to be filled out on a Web page and notice
that some of the fields are yellow? Welcome to Google's "autofill." A
feature of the Google
toolbar – a
handy browser gizmo that comprises a search box and a pop-up
blocker, among other tools – autofill is active by
default and tries to make form-filling easier by turning
yellow any fields it can help you fill out with stored personal
information. Yellow fields driving you nuts? Turn it off
by selecting "Options" in
the Google toolbar menu and unchecking it. Learn
more about autofill here.
 Ever notice a tiny little icon to the left of a URL in your
browser's address bar? That minuscule graphic (a mere 16
by 16 pixels) is called a favicon, short
for favourites icon, because it also shows up in your favourites/bookmarks
list. While these cuties only used to be visible in Internet
Explorer, they are now a standard feature of many popular
browsers, including Firefox and Safari, and can be easily
created in a number of popular graphics programs.
Ever seen someone surfing the Web on a laptop while sitting
on a park bench, a train, or in a cafe? Whether you knew
it or not, you were witnessing WiFi in
action. WiFi (pronounced Why-Fie) is a method – or "protocol" to
use the geekier term – of wirelessly connecting computers
to the Internet or a network. (The Wi stands for Wireless,
while the origin of the "Fi" part is more debatable.)
If you crave more technical details, check out the WiFi Wikipedia
entry.
A WiFi hotspot is a public
or private "access
point" where a WiFi signal is made available, either
freely or commercially. According to Wikipedia, "Some
smaller countries and municipalities already provide free
Wi-Fi hotspots and residential Wi-Fi Internet access to everyone.
Examples include the Kingdom
of Tonga or Estonia which
have already a large number of free Wi-Fi hotspots throughout
their countries." Here in Canada, Via Rail now offers
WiFi on its first-class train cars, while many cafes around
the globe offer either free or paying WiFi for customers
who want to send email or surf the Web while sipping their
lattes. There is even a controversial
plan in the works to
make all of downtown Toronto a giant WiFi hotspot.
To find a WiFi hotspot near you or on the road, check out
one of the myriad WiFi hotspot directories, including:
- Wi-fiHotspotlist.com– offers a handy
search-by-postal-code feature
- Wi-Fi-FreeSpot
Directory – lists free hotspots
around the world
- Wi-Fi
411 – gives lots of results,
lists the type of venue (i.e. restaurant, hotel, etc.),
lets you locate only free or commercial hotspots
Got a technology term you'd like
demystified in ZooNews?
Send it to questions@zoonini.com.
Hot of the virtual presses comes our bilingual site for Travel-Buggy/Bébés-en-voyage,
an innovative baby-equipment rental service
launched by Lisa Knight to help out visitors to the Montreal
area who want to avoid shlepping all their baby gear while
travelling. An integrated, searchable blog will
allow Lisa to regularly post up-to-date news and events of
interest to visitors in a section entitled What's
On In Town.
The site features a fresh, fun logo from AR
Design Solutions and search-engine optimized Web content from A.C.
Riley.
We wish Lisa much success in her new venture!
We recently launched a blog called Possibility
Virus
on our site for Canadian Coach of the Year Michael Bungay
Stanier. Since its debut last
week, it has already begun to foster an appreciative online
community with comments by visitors from around the globe.
Apple recently announced
with much hullabaloo that its
new Intel-chip Macs will be able to run Windows XP natively
using its Boot Camp software. But with an ominous caveat: "Windows running on
a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same
attacks that plague the Windows world," Apple warns. "So be sure
to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes."
With a sales pitch like that, I think I'll take a pass...!
À la prochaine,
kp
aka Kathryn Presner |
