LSP-Fix "repairs Winsock 2 settings, caused by buggy or improperly-removed Internet software, that result in loss of Internet access." Such problems often occur after removing certain types of spyware/adware.

Every Windows user should have a copy of IrfanView for quick and easy graphics viewing/editing. Even long-time users may find some new ideas in this tutorial. (via Mike Mills)

"If you have a spare PC, Red Hat Linux, and a few odds-and-ends, the book Linux Toys can help you build some cool and useful projects":

* Music Jukebox
* Home Video Archive
* TV Recorder/Player
* Arcade Game Player
* Home Network Server
* Home Broadcast Center
* Temperature Monitor
* Digital Receptionist
* Mini ISP
* Web Hosting Service
* Doghouse Linux/BSD Games
* Toy Car Controller
* Digital Picture Frame

See also the book reviews at ComputerUser and Amazon.

Programmer's File Editor (PFE) [607k] + Programming-oriented text editor capable of opening HUGE files (limited only by the total amount of virtual memory available). Guide | Reviews  

 Calendar 1.34 [13k] + Standard calendar window with several functions including: copy date to clipboard, Always on top, custom formats, more.  

Chris Mallett kindly informs us of his open source AutoHotkey project, "a hotkey (shortcut key) scripting language for Windows, supporting both keyboard and mouse."

Chris writes: "It does write to the registry to associate .ahk script files with the program. On the plus side, it's open source and I believe some of its capabilities are unique both among freeware and payware. The program with its installer, script-to-EXE maker, and help file is only around 550 KB. In addition, its main features are:

- its backward compatibility with AutoIt v2
- its many new features above and beyond v2
- The advanced hotkey features mentioned here, some of which I believe to be unique and possibly very useful to hotkey and/or gaming enthusiasts."

Cows with Guns (via ritilan.com)

Mike kindly sent in this text editor round-up posted to alt.comp.freeware by omega. Three long-time favorites: TheGUN (open HUGE text files), NoteTab Light (Swiss Army knife of text editors - there is also a non-installing version available), and Metapad (great Notepad replacement).

Papers, please.

"One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with 'failure to cooperate' for refusing to show ID on demand. And it's all on video.

"On the 22nd of March 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Dudley and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show 'the papers' whenever a cop demands them." (via Slashdot)

NanoBlogger "is a small weblog engine written in Bash, that uses common unix tools, such as cat, grep and sed. It's free to use and modify under the GNU General Public License." Features include: archiving, category support, permalinks, RSS syndication, no dependency on any javascript, server-side scripting, or server-side includes, no dependency on any external database (uses flat-file), more.

FreeConference.com - "A great dial-in teleconferencing solution for free. You just set up your call as little as 90 minutes in advance and distribute the call-in number to the folks calling. The organizer pays nothing, and participants pay only their usual long distance..." (Quoted from this entry on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site, which attibutes it to Thomas Petzinger)

The Knoppix 3.4 c't edition can write to NTFS partitions (thanks to Captive) and boot from external USB/Firewire devices. For those who cannot purchase the magazine, the ISO can be found on Overnet/eMule/eDonkey:

ed2k://|file|KNOPPIX_V3.4-2004-01-22-DE.iso|719181824|658f08cb71b760b18bae86d6011d481c|

This post was made from an IBM Thinkpad X30 running Knoppix 3.4 c't edition; wireless networking, USB boot, and all the rest work flawlessly. For those who prefer English, type knoppix lang=us at the boot: prompt (you will need to press Shift and 0 to get an equal sign). Much more information can be found in this Slashdot article.

If you are still using Internet Explorer, 13 Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE is a must read. Also, the RSS Reader Panel for Firebird/Firefox mentioned last month now supports Atom feeds!

There have been requests to add RSS feeds in addition to Atom. As if in answer, a kind reader from the Netherlands sent in this link: Atom 0.3 to RSS 1.0 "A simple Web service to convert Atom 0.3 XML feeds into RSS 1.0 ones... With the recent decision of Google/Blogger and LiveJournal to support the Atom project implementing Atom 0.3 feeds for all their users, there has been a sudden increment in XML data available for aggregators. Unfortunately, aggregators are still lagging behind when it comes to Atom support as the spec is currently a work in progress. This service provides people with an easy way to use these new feeds, now. As aggregator support for Atom feeds becomes widespread this service will eventually be made obsolete, so ? please ? don?t rely on it too much as I may take it down without notice."

Firebird has changed its name to Firefox with the release of 0.8. The primary Windows download comes as an installer, but an installer-free ZIP file is also available. (Via Hendikins)

How to Tweak Windows XP for Optimal Performance is especially helpful for folks running this OS on older hardware. The test system in this article is a 350MHz Pentium II with 128MB RAM and a 2GB Hard Drive. Before tweaking, the system used 60MB at startup; that number shrank to 42MB after tweaking. XP users may also appreciate LitePC's XPlite: "The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB and Windows 2000 approaching less than 200 MB (excluding paging file). These sizes are obtained simply by running XPLite/2000Lite on a fresh install of windows. Enterprising developers should easily be able to strip out additional log files, INF files and unused drivers to reduce the footprint by another 50MB or so."

FreeGrid v0.5b [30k] Light spreadsheet for Palm.

Programming from the Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett teaches programming and computer science through assembly language (this approach was also the basis for Jeff Duntemann's Assembly Language Step-by-step). Slashdot has an active thread going on the book, and it can be downloaded free online or purchased in print.

EBCD (Emergency Boot CD) can come in handy when faced with a non-booting/damaged/misconfigured machine. Copy/move files, image drives, recover MBR, change admin password on Windows NT/2000/XP, unerase deleted files, unformat, much more. It is one of the featured solutions in: How can I gain access to a Windows 2000/XP/NT computer if I forgot the administrator's password? UPDATE: The EBCD link seems to be down, here are some mirrors.

Back in September, we mentioned the Radified Guide to Norton Ghost. Folks using or considering Norton Ghost will also want to check out the Guide To Ghost System Recovery which includes loads of great info found nowhere else, and great tips like Don't Install Ghost!. The author offers a clean, minimalist approach, demonstrating that the floppy version of Ghost is all you want or need to make the most of this fine app.