This article is from the August 2003 issue of Update.
I have an anchor on my home page, to take a user from the bottom back to the top. It works fine for everyone except me - I get taken to a site called 'commonname'. Any idea what's going on here?
This was an oddity and no mistake. I visited the page, and sure enough, if I clicked on your 'top' anchor, I went to the top of the page. The HTML coding was also absolutely correct, which meant that it was a problem with your machine, not the website. The only slight oddity with your site was that the URL didn't have a 'www' at the front of it. After a little checking within Usenet newsgroups via Google I found references to a utility called 'Browser Agent' that is doing a redirect from *any* website that doesn't start http://www. to commonname.com. It's a tricky little thing, and because the anchor back to the top of your page is pointing to http://yoursite.com (without the www) it's doing the redirect. It doesn't happen to other people because they don't have that utility installed. Browser Agent is apparently auto-installed if you use something called iMesh, which is a file-sharing/Napster-like program. Go to Start/Control_Panel/Add_Remove programmes and delete Browser Agent and that will sort out the problem for you.
I'm looking for an anagram server that helps with crossword puzzles, and will replace the blanks with letters to make up potential words. Is there anywhere on the internet that does it?
Simple answer - yes! Go to: www.amo.qc.ca/cgi-bin/pub/ODico/dico.out? (note: that ? needs to be there) and start solving to your heart's content.
Where has our beloved Librarian Avengers site gone? One week it was there, the next it wasn't. Has it moved to a different address or has Erica just given up on it?
The site Librarian Avengers at www.librarianavengers.com seems to have been taken over by a company based in the far east called Ultimate Search Inc. I tried the Wayback machine to see if I could find any information there, but it didn't have any cached pages that could tell me anything. I found plenty of references to the site, but no references to its demise, other than a request for information similar to yours in a library-related blog. If anyone knows what has happened, send me an email and I'll provide an update in a future column.
This isn't really a 'professional' question, but I'll ask anyway. How can I increase my chances of winning eBay auctions?
I know of several librarians who use eBay professionally to buy items for their libraries, so it's a valid question. The easiest thing to do is to initially put in a bid up to the maximum you want to spend. Or if you're viewing the last few seconds of the auction in browser window A, have another browser window open (B) with another top bid ready to go and just keep reloading window A. If you are outbid, quickly move to window B and put in a new bid Ð but you'll only have seconds to do it. You could consider using a free service such as HammerSnipe (www.hammersnipe.com) which will automate this process for you, though you get better results with their paid version of course!
Site of the month
I was running a course recently and started talking about 'webrings', and it was obvious from the blank faces that people didn't know what they were. I found a nice short but helpful article on webrings and decided that it was worth being my site of the month (though being pedantic it should probably be titled 'article of the month').
You can find it at www.internet-tips.net/Ringmaster/webring_philosophy.htm.
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Phil Bradley is an internet consultant, trainer, web designer and author. Visit www.philb.com for free information on internet introductions, search engine articles, web design tips and a host of other free information. Recently published: Getting and Staying Noticed on the Web. New: visit Phil's Weblog (www.philb.com/blog/blogger.html)! If you have any questions about the internet send an email to philb@philb.com with the subject header 'column query'.