Blog for "the-enabler" of the letsnet.org network

---

Winn-Dixie to Close or Sell 156 Stores and you & I did it to them. The story That's 10,000 jobs. So who we going to blame for this? US, THAT's WHO.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

If you have a so-called preexisting condition (current or prior medical problems), you have several options to pursue when trying to secure health insurance.

Try health insurance plans that don't discriminate. A few plans — typically Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and some HMO plans, such as Kaiser Permanente — will sometimes take you regardless of your condition.

Find a job with an employer whose health insurer doesn't require a medical exam. Of course, this shouldn't be your only reason for seeking new employment, but it can be an important factor. If you're married, you may also be able to get into an employer group plan if your spouse takes a new job.

Find out if your state offers a plan. A number of states maintain pools that insure people who have preexisting conditions and are unable to find coverage elsewhere. Contact your state's insurance department (see the state government section of your phone book) to see if your state offers such plans. Healthinsuranceinfo.net lists all such state plans.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

Why do we complain about $2 per gallon for gas --
the end product of a complex process of extraction,
transportation and refining -- and willingly pay
$8 a gallon for plain drinking water in plastic bottles? I don't
at those prices I fulter my tap water and have a fulter on my
freg. The fulters cost enough as it is.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

So it only make sence to show you what My Server looks like.




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM
THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2004 (202) 514-2008
WWW.USDOJ.GOV TDD (202) 514-1888

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ANNOUNCES ARRESTS OF
DETROIT-AREA
MEN ON VIOLATIONS OF THE 'CAN-SPAM' ACT

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Assistant Attorney General
Christopher A. Wray of
the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Jeff
Collins of the Eastern
District of Michigan today announced the arrest of
two Detroit-area men
allegedly responsible for sending hundreds of
thousands of commercial
electronic mail messages advertising diet patches
and other devices,
while using false and fraudulent headers to hide
their identities. In a
related matter, the Federal Trade Commission worked
in conjunction with
the U.S. Attorney's Office and has filed a civil
actions against the
defendants.

The criminal charges in this case are the first
under the Controlling
the Assault of Non-Solicited Marketing and
Pornography ("CAN-SPAM") Act,
which was enacted in December 2003 and took effect
on January 1, 2004.
The Act criminalizes, among other things, sending
multiple commercial
electronic mail messages with materially false or
fraudulent return
addresses.

"This prosecution, the first under the CAN-SPAM
Act, clearly
demonstrates the benefits of a concerted effort by
the Department of
Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and Internet
service providers,"
said Assistant Attorney General Wray. "We will not
allow marketers who
barrage the public with unwanted commercial e-mail
to prey on consumers,
businesses and families."

A criminal complaint, unsealed yesterday, charges
Christopher Chung,
Mark Sadek, James J. Lin and Daniel J. Lin, all of
West Bloomfield,
Michigan. Chung and Sadek were arrested in the
Eastern District of
Michigan, and released on bond after making a court
appearance in
Detroit. The Lins have not been arrested at this
time.

According to court documents, the four defendants
named in the
complaint are allegedly responsible for sending out
hundreds of
thousands of messages advertising medical and other
products, which
resulted in over 10,000 complaints to the Federal
Trade Commission's
unsolicited electronic mail database since Jan. 1,
2004. The complaint
also alleges that the defendants were responsible
for devising a scheme
to defraud others by selling these medical devices
via the U.S. Mail by
means of false and fraudulent representations, in
violation of the mail
fraud statute.

Felony violations of the CAN-SPAM Act carry a
penalty of up to three or
five years' imprisonment. Violations of the mail
fraud statute carry a
penalty of up to 20 years' imprisonment.

The charges outlined in the complaint are only
accusations and the
defendants are considered innocent until proven
guilty in a court of law.




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

They were talking of this on CNBC today. It's a marketing thing for the fast food industry. And it's faster for us, so they know we'll byte. StarBuck has been doing it the longest and they've found that people spend more money at the same time. Enough said.
As of the end of ' 04 the % of stores for Wendys will be 80%, Burger King 70%, and McDonald's 50% well be able to do "chargeing".
It's here or coming, yesterday I did it at a Windys and I didn't have to sign a thing and when I question it, I was told that it's not needed.
Visa and M/C and the fast food industry have made it OK for us to charge up to $15 and not have to sign for it. And no one asked me for ID. And there's no charges any more or there won't be as they'd found that we'll buy more this way. And there's a thought, If the people in the stores let us charge over the $15, by mistake, Do we have to pay for the charge at all. I'll try that and get back to ya. What I'll do for ya all and the thing I go though. LOL.
Which your $$ cause now the credit card Companies are making TOO ez for us to NOT hold on to what we NEED to hold on to. OUR MONEY!




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

Filtering software is one of the most popular ways to keep children safe and employees out of mischief on the Internet. By carefully listening to everything that comes and goes across a computer's Internet connection, a filter can intercept and prevent the transmission or receipt of questionable materials — such as profane words, provocative images, and politically incorrect language.

Several filtering programs are available on the Internet and these are all (at least) fairly good at what they do. Here are some of the more popular packages for you to consider:

CyberPatrol: One of the oldest and most respected names in content control is CyberPatrol. One key feature is that it blocks access to certain Internet sites based on lists which are compiled by CyberPatrol themselves and updated daily. The advantage is that CyberPatrol is able to block offensive sites almost as quickly as they pop up. The disadvantage is that you have to pay extra for a subscription to their list service.

ChatNANNY: ChatNANNY is very easy-to-use, inexpensive software that monitors all of the chatting and Web usage that occurs on a given computer. Anything offensive that occurs in any of these contexts is logged for later viewing.

CYBERsitter: CYBERsitter is excellent filtering software. Like CyberPatrol, it features up-to-the-minute blocking lists available and maintained over the Internet. Unlike CyberPatrol, however, it requires no subscription fees.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

Don't invest your emergency money in bond funds -- that's what a money fund is for. You'll get less money from a bond fund (and could even lose money) if you need it in an emergency. Avoid using the check-writing option that comes with many bond funds. Every time you sell shares (which is what you're doing when you write a check) in a bond fund, this transaction must be reported on your annual income tax return. When you write a check on a money market fund, by contrast, that is not a so-called taxable event because a money fund has a fixed share price, so you're not considered to be adding to or subtracting from your income.

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

With so much power to do your own thing with Internet radio, many intrepid DJs have been creating shows that only appear online. Sometimes, these shows are like traditional radio broadcasts: playing songs interspersed with chatty banter. Other times, they are full-blown multimedia Webcasts, mixing everything from chat to message boards, gaming, and video. Here's a sampling to get you started:

KCRW for awesome performances and interviews: KCRW, an eclectic station in Santa Monica, has attracted an online cult following for its show, Morning Becomes Eclectic: an interview program that has featured rare appearances and performances by artists like Tom Waits and P.J. Harvey.

The Womb for Miami-based techno: Home to more than 60 amateur DJs, producers, artists, and writers from around the world, The Womb is something of a perpetual electronica recital -- and you don't even have to endure "Chopsticks."

WRTO for latin music: Craving those Latin beats, check out this site which broadcasts live from Miami -- the center of this pop music explosion. Listen live, take surveys, chat with fans, and keep up on the latest, greatest Latino rhythms.

WWOZ for New Orleans jazz: Live from "Nawlins," WWOZ 90.7 is the place to tune in for your dose of jazz, blues, zydeco, and Cajun rhythms. And, during Mardi Gras, this is the best place to join the party -- without getting crushed by the crowds.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

21 April 2004 You know those CD-Rs that you've trusted your most precious memories to? They could be little more use than coasters after just two years. Michael Pollitt investigates



Are we putting too much faith in the ubiquitous "recordable CD", or CD-R? It is undeniably one of the most useful means of storage around, offering an inexpensive way to save digital photographs, music and files and costing less than 50 pence per disc.

If you check the claims made by some manufacturers of popular CD-R brands, you will see that some make bold claims indeed. Typical boasts include: "100-years archival life", "guaranteed archival lifespan of more than 100 years" and "one million read cycles". One company even says data can be stored "swiftly and permanently", leaving you free to bequeath those backups of your letter to the electricity company to your great-great-grandchildren.

But an investigation by a Dutch personal computer magazine, PC Active, has shown that some CD-Rs are unreadable in as little as two years, because the dyes in the CD's recording layer fade. These dyes replace the aluminium "pits" of a music CD or CD-Rom, and the laser uses that layer to distinguish 0s from 1s. When the CD is written, the writing laser "burns" the dye, which becomes dark, to represent a "1" while a "0" will be left blank so that if the dye fades, there's no difference; it's just a long string of nothing to the playback laser.

So have you already lost those irreplaceable pictures you committed to the silver disc? PC Active suggests we should forget CD-Rs as a durable medium, after its own testing found some with unreadable data after just two years. "Though they looked fine from the outside, they turned out to be completely useless," wrote the technical editor Jeroen Horlings, who had tested 30 brands in 2001, left them in a dark cupboard for two years and then re-tested them in August 2003. Of the brands tested, 10 per cent showed ageing problems. And it wasn't just Horlings. After seeing the results, shocked readers contacted the magazine with their experiences.

Recordable DVDs are not off the hook either. The "dye chemicals" in write-once DVDs are similar to CD-R, though recording density and disk construction differ. "We're in the process of testing DVDs and we're sure that the same problems will occur," said Horlings, who plans to publish his findings soon.

Gordon Stevenson, the managing director of Vogon International - a company specialising in data recovery - is familiar with these shortcomings thanks to the experiences of his customers, one of whom commissioned Vogon to retrieve pictures of his second honeymoon from a failed six-month-old CD-R. "The dye layer was fading," Stevenson says, "but we were able to recover most of the disk. But these claims [of a 100-year archival life] are unhelpful and misleading. If you're spending 20p on something, you probably don't expect it to last 100 years," he says.

In the wrong conditions, such as sunlight, humidity and upper surface damage, your CD-R will slowly turn into a coaster. "CD-Rs should never be left lying in sunlight as there's an element of light sensitivity, certainly in the poor quality media," says Stevenson. "I wouldn't rely on CD-Rs for long-term storage unless you're prepared to deal with them as recommended."

Such views are echoed by the National Archives at Kew. "Generally speaking, we don't recommend CD-Rs for long-term storage," says Jeffrey Darlington, a project manager at the Archives' Digital Preservation Department. "We don't regard CD-Rs as an archival medium. Most of the CD-Rs on the market are not of archival quality." Instead of CD-Rs, therefore, the National Archives tend to use magnetic tape rated for a 30-year life. Also, they are careful to copy, check and re-copy to avoid losing information and this is also a useful strategy for CD-Rs. "If you keep doing that so the CD-R is never more than physically three to five years old, you'll be safe enough. A hundred years sounds pretty unlikely," says Darlington.

Not all optical media is vulnerable. The rewritable variants (RW) use metallic materials that change the phase of the light, rather than light-sensitive dyes. Commercial magneto-optical and ultra-density optical systems are different too. Stewart Vane-Tempest, the optical product director at Plasmon, the archival specialists, has first-hand experience of unreadable CD-R media. "Some dyes are very robust, but others not," Vane-Tempest says. "The one thing they have in common is susceptibility to environmental conditions. I do a lot of digital photography and pay top price for media. If I have anything important, I generally make a couple of copies. I've not used CD-Rs for long-term archiving."

Vane-Tempest also offers a tip. Blank CD-R disks have a code that your CD writer reads to find the best writing strategy. If this isn't in the CD-writer's inbuilt software (its "firmware"), the default may be a poor compromise. Vane-Tempest says that some "less scrupulous" Far East companies have been using other people's codes, with deficient results. However, there is a way around this which is to find out which brands suit your writer and ensure the firmware is up to date.

While such matchmaking is useful, there's no way to assess CD-R longevity at home. All you can do is check periodically. As for whether manufacturers are guilty of using finger-in-the-air methods, Kevin Jefcoate, the marketing and product management director at Verbatim, says: "It's a bit more than guesswork because there's a lot of scientific evidence to back it up."

The answer, Jefcoate says, is to use a climate chamber to accelerate the ageing of the organic dye. Using a relationship between chemical reaction rate and temperature, 100-year lifetimes may be argued for normal conditions. Jefcoate adds that he has never known users to complain of age-related failures? "We haven't had anyone complain that, after three to five years, it hasn't worked." It's easy to blame budget CD-Rs when things go wrong. Novatech's purchasing and product manager, Kriss Pomroy, suggests users buy a small quantity for testing first.

The PC builder sells unbranded CD-Rs sourced from a Far East distributor that buys over-production from well-known factories. Are we saving pennies and taking risks? "No," says Pomroy, "You can get problematic batches, but that's as true with branded media." The company now sells two-and-a-half times more unbranded write-once DVDs than CD-Rs.

The world's No 1 supplier of CD-Rs, Imation, talks of "saving precious digital photo memories" - exactly what many people think they're doing. Semar Majid, its technical marketing executive, hasn't heard of any ageing problems. "Optical media should last between 30 and 200 years," he says, "but it's dependent on storage conditions and how you handle it." He suggests transferring important photos to DVD, and keeping on moving to new formats.

Another big maker, TDK, takes a cautious view with DVDs, claiming only a 70-year lifespan. "This does not mean that DVD is more fragile or unstable in time compared to CD-R; this is only because of the shorter experience that we have in manufacturing and testing this relatively young technology," says the TDK product manager Hartmut Kulessa. There have been no complaints about ageing failures.

As the oldest CD-R is barely a teenager, there are no definitive answers either. But perhaps the last word belongs to Jeroen Horlings at PC Active. "We see a lot of manufacturers and they think that quantity is more important than quality," he says. "The problem will remain."
From http://news.independent.co.uk/



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

Icons are those cute little pictures on your Windows Me desktop that help you identify a program or file. You can easily make your own icons by using MS Paint. Here's how:

Click Start, Programs, Accessories, and Paint.

In the Paint window, choose Image, Attributes.

Make the Height and Width 32 pixels, and click OK.
Click View, Zoom, and then Show Grid.

Click View, Zoom, and Custom.

Choose 800% and click OK.
Create your new icon. Save it as a bitmap (bmp) file.

You can change its extension later to .ico, if you like.
You can now treat this file as a regular icon file.

When you replace a Desktop icon with one you made yourself, you don't need to refer to it by anything other than its filename.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

If both you and your spouse participate in a group health plan, you need to consider several factors when deciding under whose plan the children will be covered. In this situation, you weigh out-of-pocket costs in premiums, copayments, and deductibles against the coverage of each plan. These out-of-pocket costs can be dramatically different.

Choose the plan that covers the following five key ingredients:

A coverage limit high enough that it won't likely ever be exhausted, even for the most catastrophic medical expenses

An annual dollar limit you can live with on your out-of-pocket responsibility

No dollar limits on types of expenses, such as dollar limits on daily room charges or dollar limits for types of surgical procedures

Freedom to see to specialists without a referral

Worldwide coverage

Price should be the least important part of the decision.

When choosing which plan is best, don't minimize how important the ability to choose top specialists will be if one of your precious ones is facing a serious illness or injury.




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

If both you and your spouse participate in a group health plan, you need to consider several factors when deciding under whose plan the children will be covered. In this situation, you weigh out-of-pocket costs in premiums, copayments, and deductibles against the coverage of each plan. These out-of-pocket costs can be dramatically different.

Choose the plan that covers the following five key ingredients:

A coverage limit high enough that it won't likely ever be exhausted, even for the most catastrophic medical expenses

An annual dollar limit you can live with on your out-of-pocket responsibility

No dollar limits on types of expenses, such as dollar limits on daily room charges or dollar limits for types of surgical procedures

Freedom to see to specialists without a referral

Worldwide coverage

Price should be the least important part of the decision.

When choosing which plan is best, don't minimize how important the ability to choose top specialists will be if one of your precious ones is facing a serious illness or injury.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

By Dennis Fisher
April 23, 2004


A persistent new spam campaign that purports to show recipients pictures of Osama bin Laden being captured is in fact a ruse that could lead victims to download a malicious Trojan.

The e-mails have been flooding inboxes all over the Internet since Thursday, carrying a subject line that reads: "Osama bin Laden Captured." The sending address is spoofed, and the messages often appear in tightly grouped batches of eight or 10 e-mails at a time. The text of the message is as follows:

"Just got this from CNN Osama Bin Laden has just been captured! A video and some pictures have been released. Go to the link below for pictures, I will update the page with the video as soon as I can: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/pics/ God Bless America!"

Users who click on the URL in the message are taken to what looks like an ad for Viagra. But the Web page also attempts to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Exlorer to download a file named Exploit.exe, which contains a Trojan called Small.B, according to an analysis of the threat by Panda Software, based in Glendale, Calif.

Once on the user's machine, the Trojan opens a random port and sends the port information to a remote Web server. It then listens on that port for instructions. The Trojan can be used for sending spam, according to McAfee Security, a unit of Network Associates Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

---

Opera Syncs Up with Browser Releases
By Matt Hicks
April 22, 2004

Opera Software ASA, in releasing on Thursday the first beta of its updated Web browser, is giving a boost to Mac OS X users by synchronizing its upgrades across all operating systems while also expanding into new RSS, e-mail and chat areas.

With the Opera 7.50 beta, the Oslo, Norway, company has redesigned the browser's user interface as part of an effort to release updates at the same time across Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Mac, said CEO Jon von Tetzchner.

Opera typically had released updates for Windows first, and Mac releases had lagged the furthest behind. Before Opera 7.50, Mac users were stuck in the 6.0 series while the other platforms had moved into the 7.0 line. Last August, Opera released a version of the browser that supported the latest Mac OS X, named "Panther," and announced plans to step up Mac development.

"We didn't think that this was really optimal, so we had been working hard to make them all in sync," von Tetzchner said.

The revamped user interface provides smaller buttons and reorganizes access to key browser functions into a panel selector that sits across the left panel of the browser. From there, users access bookmarks, notes, the Opera Mail client and a new chat feature.

"We have added functionality while still trying to make [the browser] easy to use," he said. "We're getting a broader base of users and trying to expand on that with 7.50."

The Opera Mail client has added support for Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, letting users subscribe to and read the XML data feeds popular on Weblogs and among other Web publishers, von Tetzchner said. The updated mail client also features faster search capabilities because it now indexes full messages, rather than only indexing the e-mail addresses, he said.

"RSS is something that is gaining a lot of interest, and we thought it would fit well into our product," van Tetzchner said. "We're trying to give people on the client side a one-stop solution if they want to be using other Internet functionality."

To that end, Opera is returning to Web chat, providing a chat feature in 7.50 that supports Internet Relay Chat. Opera had supported ICQ instant messaging on Opera 5, but then dropped support following changes made when America Online Inc. bought the chat service, von Tetzchner said.

The latest chat feature does not integrate into any of the largest consumer instant-messaging networks, such as AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger, but von Tetzchner said Opera plans to consider ways to add support for other IM services. Opera is one of the only active commercial competitors to Microsoft Corp. in the Web browser market. The company last month went public on the Oslo Stock Exchange and has been aggressively pursuing the mobile browser deals. It also is working on a speech-enabled Web browser with speech technology from IBM.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".