Access Job Centre Plus vacancies with Firefox

When it's your responsibility to keep your nearest and dearest's computers free from spyware and other minacious garbage, getting them to ditch Internet Explorer should be your number one priority. This is easier said than done if one of the sites they visit most frequently happens to be the official, UK job centre home page - because the search engine only works with Internet Explorer. I wouldn't let it needle me so much if the site was spectacularly difficult to rework to make it standards compliant, but we're only talking about a series of poxy text selection boxes!

To keep him safe from internet nasties I tell my dad - who is a total computer novice - that he should use Firefox for day to day browsing, and only revert to IE when viewing sites designed by lazy, stuck-in-the-past Microsoft puppets. This will remain good advice until Firefox and other alternative browsers eclipse IE's share of the market.

For now Worktrain makes my life a bit easier at least as it taps into the Job Centre Plus database without forcing users to navigate through the defective main site.

He has yet to come across another site he visits regularly which doesn't get on with Firefox. This is great news all round because he is gradually forgetting that IE exists at all, and I'm finding that the time it takes for me to cleanse his PC has plummeted.

I make no apologies for being a browser Nazi.

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Disposable email take two

Not so long ago I recommended submitting a 'throw-away' email address whenever you suspect that the recipient of your contact information may use it to foist adverts for blue, diamond-shaped pills and other organ-enhancing doodars upon you.

I hereby take back my advice. Not because pumping up your delicate parts with legally dubious devices and pills has all of a sudden become a great idea, but because I've found a more convenient junk email address provider I want to share with you.

Mailinator allows you to create any username you like @mailinator.com simply by arranging for an email to be sent to your desired address. After submitting your anti-spam email address via a web form you can login to your new inbox to verify your account or respond to any messages sent there... all without the hassle of setting up an account with Mailinator.

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How to read your Yahoo email in Mozilla Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Outlook Express et al

If you've got an e-mail account at Yahoo and would rather not have to return to their home page each time you wish to check for new mail, you can configure your e-mail client to download your messages instead. In future, all your Yahoo web mail will be conveniently downloaded to your inbox alongside your regular pop 3 e-mail.

To the dismay of a great many life-long Yahoo users, in April 2002 Yahoo decided to begin charging for this feature (known as pop 3 access). If you subscribe to their premium service it'll be business as usual for you, though even if you're not a VIP Yahooligan, this shouldn't spell the end for your Yahoo-email client relationship. With Yahoo Pops (or the Mozilla Thunderbird WebMail extension) you can continue to access your email through many of the most popular email clients, and reassuringly, as it emulates a pop 3 server rather than operating as an exploit of any kind, using it does not represent an infringement of Yahoo's terms and conditions. As a result you can continue to enjoy the convenience of pop 3 without worrying about having your account terminated.

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Disposable email

Once the spammers become aware of your email address it could be doomed to electronic bombardment for life - responding to spam in order to have your address removed from mailing lists often has the opposite effect as it demonstrates that yours is an active account and makes it a target for further junk mail. Shying away from submitting your email address to online services or giving it to people you meet online isn't the solution.

A more viable alternative is to register an account with Sneak Email and use it to create and terminate randomly generated email addresses as and when the need arises. If you wish to sign up for a web service which requires email verification, but suspect that your details may be passed onto spammers, you can provide a throwaway Sneak Email address and have any email sent to it forwarded to your real address. If the resultant spam becomes unmanageable you can delete the temporary address and create a new one.

Sneak Email can also be used to send anonymous emails - how would anyone know that djd485ds@sneakemail.com is really Jane Doe from California? To make your correspondence seem more credible you can have this address substituted for a name label which will appear in the 'from' line. Anonymous doesn't necessarily have to equate with malice. For instance, you may wish to tell your boss how you imagine the work place would benefit from certain changes without risking repercussions. No I mean it, really - see, no tongue in cheek here. The possibilities are endless.

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Shocking news just in - programmers find a use for Internet Explorer!

Hate them or hate them, we all hate viruses. Regardless, far too many people throw caution to the wind, refusing to use a virus scanner on the basis that they are too resource intensive, or because they feel they are somehow immune to being caught out - "I'm a careful surfer", they'll tell you. Careful or not, viruses can come from all kinds of unexpected sources, not just the more murky areas of the web, which is why you shouldn't rely on other people to be vigilant for you.

If you're one of those people who avoids installing a dedicated anti-virus suite because you would rather keep your computer running at peak performance, an excellent compromise is to use an online anti-virus tool and conduct regular manual scans via your web browser. As these make use of ActiveX components, and Internet Explorer is the only browser that supports them, you are forced to use the spawn of Satan to keep your system free from the scourge of viruses. That grumble aside, online virus scanners are an ingenious innovation even if you only plan to use them as a 'catch-all' backup to your usual integrated scanner.

Some of the most adept online virus slayers include eTrust AV Web Scanner, Bit Defender Online Scanner System, RAV Anti-Virus Scan Online, Panda Active Scan and Symantec Security Check.

The first time you opt to have your system scanned you will be asked to install a plugin ...of sorts (don't go getting all technical on me you nitpickers :p); these will be in the region of 1.5mb per scanner. That task out of the way, scanning will commence - note that you don't have to remain connected to the internet in order to maintain the virus hunt, but you do need to be online to get the results. This I'm sure will be a relief for those of you who are subjected to regular hard cut-offs by your ISP.

Now you have no excuses not to take precautions, so get scanning now ...if not sooner!

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Forum Googleism

If you're looking for quick answers, the best place to find them is on web forums because the questions to those answers are likely to have already been asked a multitude of times. We all have our favourite forums bookmarked and get into the habit of returning to the same ones for information, though being this selective severely limits the scope of the resources available.

Typing the same query into the search box of each one sequentially isn't practical, which is why Board Reader is such a miraculous web widget. Board Reader's spiders tirelessly crawl the web looking for vBulletin and UBB forums. Forums of all shapes and sizes are unearthed, their contents are indexed and then made available to visitors of the Board Reader web site via the search box. Relevant hits are displayed in an easy to read, uniform fashion as with more traditional search engines, and it even provides cached versions of the pages in case the original sources have been moved, deleted or are temporarily unavailable.

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How do I make payments online without disclosing my credit card details to each retailer?

The most convenient and secure way would be to use a service such as Pay Pal (currently the most widely used online payment system). The idea is that you create a free account, register your credit or debit card with them and then whenever you wish to purchase something online, you provide the retailer with your Pay Pal ID rather than your credit card details. Obviously the less people who have a record of your credit card details, the less likely you are to become a victim of credit card fraud.

Furthermore, you can use your account to pay individuals who do not have access to an online credit card transaction system - eBay members who are not selling goods on behalf of a registered commercial enterprise for instance.

Although I've only ever had good experiences with Pay Pal, lots of other people haven't been so lucky, so make sure you do your research before signing up. For more information refer to No Pay Pal or Pay Pal Warning.

Other companies offering similar services include: Fire Pay, No Chex, Instabill, CC Now and Amazon. I can't personally endorse or admonish any of these unfortunately since I've never used them, however, a good place to find impartial reviews would be the online bill payment section of Epinions.

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Dude, where's my DLL?

How often have you tried to run an application only to be told you're out of luck because some obscure DLL file is missing from your system? These messages can arise as a result of faulty installations, because you've accidentally deleted an essential component yourself, or even if the software author has forgotten to include the file altogether. Rather than re-install the troublesome application to resolve the problem, or abandon it completely, you can locate the pesky absentee by tapping an online DLL resource such as DLLme or DLL Files.

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What's the deal with all those pay as your surf programs?

Well, for those of you who have been living on the planet Zog for the last few years, pay as you surf companies offer you the opportunity to earn money simply for viewing adverts displayed in an 'adbar'. The premise is that these banner ads will captivate your attention to such an extent that you will feel compelled to visit various web sites and buy whatever unmissable offer is available at the time. Nevertheless, it isn't compulsory that you purchase anything at all if you don't want to.

Since many people do visit and spend money at these sites, all sorts of people are willing to pay companies such as Valuepay and Cash Surfers in order to have their adverts displayed. A small chunk of the income generated from affiliated advertisers is shared with the members as a reward for keeping the adbar visible on their desktop.

In addition to being paid for the hours that you surf, you also have the opportunity to refer other people to sign up using your ID reference so that you can earn money while they surf.

...Or at least this is how the pay as you surf system used to work before the bottom fell out of the internet advertising model and the dot com bubble burst. These days you'd be lucky to see a single penny in return for the time you invest in these programs. If you want my advice, give them a wide berth; they're not worth the hassle.

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Virtual disk drives

The mystery of eternally dwindling hard drive space, in terms of unfathomability, ranks alongside such conundrums as why certain people insist on responding to each and every question with a drawling "what?" or "eh?" when they've heard you perfectly well, or why some people insist on facing the wrong way when waiting for their bus (surely I'm not the only one to have noticed this phenomenon?). I can't help you get to the bottom of the latter two enigmas, but you'll be pleased to know that help is close at hand where sourcing extra storage space is concerned.

One possible solution is to employ virtual storage areas on the web. While this is no substitute for having files stored on your own local hard drive they can help to lighten the load when you find yourself struggling to find a home for your latest digital acquisition or you need a place to store backup copies of your irreplaceable documents. Access to these virtual drives is restricted using a personal username and password to ensure that your data is stored away securely. It is then up to you to decide whether to use this space for your own personal storage requirements, or to pass on the login details to your friends so that they can access your files as well.

The emergence of web drives is clearly good news for file sharers since anywhere between 20 and 500 megabytes of data can be stored on each new account (depending on which company you choose to host your files). Furthermore, you can create as many new accounts as you like as long as you use a different contact e-mail address each time.

Much like free web site hosts the companies who offer web drive services set up business and fold in the blink of an eye, so to keep up you're going to need a well maintained list of what's hot and what's not. Well actually, in the land of virtual drives it's more like a comparison of what's hanging onto life by a thread and what's deader than the proverbial dodo. Nevertheless, Drive Seek fits the bill very nicely. This site provides up to date listings of all the web drive services currently available, reviews, FAQs, a very comprehensive customisation virtual drive search engine and an informative newsletter. If that doesn't quench your thirst for knowledge the online storage section of Epinions.com is also home to a number of enlightening appraisals.

A particularly useful feature proffered by virtual drives is that you can simply copy and paste files straight from the web to your virtual drive to be downloaded at a later date. Over at Freediskspace this function is known as a 'Web Clipper', Freedrive incorporates a similar tool known as 'Surf N' Save', and you can expect the other companies to follow suit in the near future. To make use of these tools you will need to either install a browser plugin or a small desktop application. Virtual drive browser plugins aim to integrate the new 'copy to web drive' option with your current web browser, while virtual drive desktop applications coexist alongside your existing data storage devices (accessed via 'My Computer') and purport to emulate your local hard drive as accurately as possible.

In effect all you have to do to upload data to your virtual drive is drag the files you wish to upload onto the icon representing your virtual drive. Note that some of these browser add-ons utilize javascript, so make sure your browser and/or internet security options are set to allow javascript to run.

One question I am frequently asked is "can I use Getright or Gozilla with web drives?". The quick answer is yes in most cases, but there are several caveats you must familiarize yourself with first. To begin with, some web drive services will require you to be logged into your account while downloading. If the server detects a lack of activity it often kicks you out so that you can no longer access your files. Also, if you are using Freediskspace, currently the most popular web drive, you will find that the links to your files are changed every so often (roughly about once an hour), so be prepared for your links to go dead in the middle of a transfer.

Allowing people to use download managers in conjunction with web drives clearly poses a conflict of interests for the web drive providers. Web drive companies are funded by pay-per-click, rotating ad banners or similar forms of advertising - assuming people actually click on them while they are downloading. If you are visiting the home page of a web drive service merely to import direct links into your download manager the opportunity of viewing these ads is drastically reduced. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the people at Freediskspace et al aren't exactly ecstatic about this proposition and so will do everything within their power to make life difficult for you.

The master plan then is that if you can't get your download manager to cooperate, as a last resort you will be forced to make use of their file manager instead and thus be coerced into viewing their ads. It is a constant arms race between the two parties. The file sharing community devises a way to use a download manager with a specific web drive, and this method works very well for a short period of time. When the web drive administrators realise what is going on they put a stop to it by changing the way file requests are sent to their servers so that we the downloaders have to go back to the drawing board and think of a new solution. This tit for tat battle goes on until the web drive people get so sick of toiling in vain that they decide to start charging for their services to deter people from exploiting them, or they throw in the towel and discontinue their services altogether.

The growing pains don't end there unfortunately. Those of you with fast connections may be limited to downloading at much slower rates than your modem is capable of, and some web drive companies set a limit on the maximum amount of data you are permitted to transfer in a single day. Although the situation is improving all the time, certain web drives do not support the resume function. Another threat to the future of web drives is the role they predictably have played in hosting illegal copyright protected media. If the powers that be deem the web drive companies to be wilfully facilitating piracy they could well pull the plug - that is if the people running these servers don't engage in virtual harikari first.

If all that hasn't put you off, here's an example to demonstrate how you can get your download manager to communicate effectively with web drives (in this case we'll be using Freediskspace). Once you have logged into your account the first thing you must do is uncheck the 'enable multiple up/downloads option' and hit the refresh button. Now if you hover your cursor over one of the files you wish to download you will notice that rather than a javascript link, a real web address will appear in your browser's status bar. All you have to do now is drag the files into your download manager and select a place to store them in the usual way.

Alternatively you could right-click on the files, select properties from the context menu and using the copy and paste function tell your download manager where the files you wish to download are located. If you plan to try this I would suggest downloading one file at a time and refreshing the window periodically so that you receive the latest file locations, even if this necessitates babysitting your PC until the task is complete. One technique that seems to work quite well is to use the Freediskspace file manager to download the largest file in a set whilst using Flashget, Getright or Gozilla to transfer the rest. This will prevent you from being logged out and the file locations from being altered.

The mechanisms used to allow you to transfer files from web drives using a download manager are very diverse so a different set of instructions will be necessary in each case. To find out how to use your download manager with other web drive services try searching my blog using the name of the web drive in question as the keyword.

Is it really worth all the hassle though? Probably not; if you can get your files elsewhere I would give web drives a miss. Nevertheless, there may come a time when the files you require are only available on a web drive and you do not have the luxury of an alternative source. For times like this it helps if you are familiar with all the various web drive workarounds, and in any case, it never hurts to have a few more tricks up your sleeve.

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I want to get a rough idea of how long it's going to take to download a particular file. How would I go about doing that?

Pop along to Martindale's file download time calculator, enter the file size of whatever it is you wish to download and click on either the 'KB' or the 'MB' button, obviously dependent on the way in which you specified your file size (whether it was in kilobytes or megabytes). Now scroll down the table of time estimates until you reach the entry which correlates to the speed of your internet connection to discover how long you're going to have to sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for your data to touch down. Give the man a cigar, he's a genius! :D

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How do I bypass the Yahoo Briefcase download limit?

Numerous different methods have been used in the past to bypass these limits, with varying degrees of success. Many of them involve a lot of frustrating and fiddly URL editing, and since these tend to be very hit and miss I'd recommend using a Yahoo download manager instead. One such program is Yahoo Hack, a great little tool, which in addition to allowing you to get around the download limits will also fix the CRC errors caused by the infamous 'extra bytes bug'.

Alternatively, you can grab 'Yahoo Leecher', which does the job just as well whilst helping you to increase the number of simultaneous transfers permitted by the Yahoo servers. On the other hand, if you speak German you might be more comfortable using 'Yahoo Mage'. The instructions for this one look like complete gibberish to me - if only I'd known those German lessons would come in handy one day I would have paid more attention!

So where do you find these programs? Well, any sites using Yahoo to host their files will probably provide them for you in their tools section. If not, Google should be able to point you in the right direction.

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Using download managers with virtual drives

Can I use Getright to download files from Idrive?

Note that subsequent to writing this entry Idrive have gone bust.

Yes, but it doesn't support resuming. First of all you will have to make a few alterations to your Getright configuration. To do this, first locate the 'Tools' menu, followed by the 'Getright Configuration', 'Advanced' and 'More' options. Now change the 'User Agent' to 'Mozilla/4.0 (Compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)', make sure the 'Send referrer in HTTP requests' and the 'Generated from the download URL' options are ticked and finally drag and drop whatever it is you wish to download into your Getright window.

If the above solution doesn't seem to be working out for you, have a look at the URL of the file you are trying to download. If the prefix of the address reads https:// instead of http:// you can try the following procedure: right-click on the file and select 'copy shortcut'. Now open Getright and select 'enter new URL' from the 'file' menu and paste the URL into the dialog box. The final step is to remove the 's' from the prefix, click on the OK button and proceed to download in the usual manner.

If none of that works, use this as a contingency plan: surf over to PCWorld.com and download the Naviscope web accelerator. Install the program and run it - the program should tack itself onto the top of your web browser. Login into your Idrive account and click on the file you wish to download whilst holding down the shift key (this prevents your download manager from attempting to download the file).

As soon as your browser begins downloading the file, its location should appear in the Naviscope window above your browser. Highlight the URL of the file, right-click and select 'copy to clipboard'. Now close the file transfer window, open your download manager, select the 'new URL' option and paste the link into the box which appears. Before clicking on the OK button, tack the http:// prefix onto the beginning of the URL. Once this task is complete, your download manager will take care of the transfer for you.

Just one quick point to note before you dash off to give this a whirl: some download managers get confused if you enter an URL which contains a port number after the .com portion of the URL. Under these circumstances simply omit the port number and carry on as usual.

Is it possible to use Getright with Freediskspace?

Yes, I've already covered this in detail in the 'tools of the trade' tutorial, but if you want the official word on the matter have a look here.

Can I use Getright to download from JustOn accounts?

Note that all JustOn file storage services were discontinued on 31st January 2001. The JustOn technology used to power its file sharing services have now been acquired by Novell, who are currently developing new ways to implement it into future applications.

Yes, with a bit of assistance from a program called 'JustGrx' this is straightforward enough. This works in conjunction with Getright by generating a download list of any number of files stored on JustOn accounts which are linked to from a given web page. Once this list has been imported into Getright you can download whatever you choose in the usual manner.

So what's the URL? Well that, you see, is the problem. JustGrx seems to have vaporised into the ether. You may still be able to find a copy of it, however, using Google.

Another method which works for some people is simpler still and merely involves making a few amendments to your Getright settings. First of all go to the advanced configuration tab and click on the 'more' button. Subsequently make sure the 'send referrer in http requests' and 'calculated from open web browser page' options are checked. Now the tricky part has been taken of, just hold down your shift key whenever you click on a JustOn link, wait for a new window to pop up and release it. If everything goes according to plan, Getright should take care of the rest, but keep in mind that this approach produces somewhat hit and miss results.

Is it possible to use Getright in conjunction with Freedrive accounts?

More changes are afoot: Freedrive has now been acquired by Xdrive.

Yes, where there's a will, there's a way. Log into your Freedrive account, click on the 'administration' tab and select the 'edit my profile' option. Now de-select the 'auto-download' check box in your profile and re-login to your account. Whenever you wish to download a file in future, click on the 'download now' link whilst holding down the control and alt keys. At this juncture Getright will take charge of the reins making the whole process much simpler.

Method two involves getting hold of a copy of DL Tools, which includes the 'Freedrive Leech Tool'. This will log into your Freedrive account and then generate a file list consisting of the real URLs of your files, which can then be opened in your download manager. It supports Flashget, Getright, Reget and Download Accelerator - see the program's help file for more specific instructions.

How do I bypass the download limit using Yahoo Briefcase?

Imagine you're trying to download a file from the following location:

http://i11.yimg.com/14/2d655c/f/45761/family-photos.zip

...but every time you click on the link, you receive the message, "maximum access limit has been reached for this file, please come back later." Obviously the people at Yahoo are talking nonsense, so ignore them for a start and change the '14' after the .com in the URL to a '15' and try again. If it still refuses to download, try one number higher and so on and so forth until the file agrees to cooperate.
Sometimes, to confuse matters further, Yahoo use letters in their URLs instead of numbers. So on the rare occasions that you run out of numbers to try, you can replace the number with a letter instead. A good one to start with is 'a', followed by 'b', followed by... I think you can probably guess where this is leading. Most of the time, however, one or two number changes will suffice.

How do I use my download manager to transfer files from Homestead accounts?

If you haven't already got a copy of DL Tools, go to the homepage now and download it. Run the program and click on the 'Easy Homestead' tab, put a tick in the 'capture links from clipboard' box and visit the HTML page where the file you wish to download is located. Right-click on the file and select 'copy shortcut' - this URL will then automatically be inserted into DL Tools. Now click on the 'get the real links' button followed by the 'create a html file with the real links' button and choose a location to copy this file to. Finally, open this web page and click on the links - your download manager will automatically take charge of the files and begin downloading.

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I am attempting to download some files from an I-drive account, but the maximum daily download limit has been exceeded. What can I do?

Note that subsequent to writing this entry Idrive have gone bust.

If you have your own Idrive account you can save the files to that instead and then download from the new location. Because fewer people are likely to be downloading from your own personal account compared with a public one, the chances are that you will get a much better transfer rate.

First of all you will need to download the 'Filo Web Clipping Tool' from the Idrive home page, which will allow you to 'side load' your files. Once this is installed, Filo will be integrated with your web browser allowing you to save files to your Idrive account on the fly to be downloaded at your leisure. Now whenever you come across a file you wish to transfer to your Idrive account (whether it is on another Idrive account or elsewhere on the web), all you have to do is right-click on it and select the 'save target to Idrive' option.

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