Byte of the Week

April 15 is right around the corner. To help prepare you for the inevitable, I thought I’d share some helpful tax web sites.

The IRS
The IRS site is super helpful and easy to use. Popular sections include the File Free online service and the Where’s my Refund page.

Nolo Taxes and Audits
Nolo has a lot of good info online. This page helps with details such as “how long should you keep tax records.”

Yahoo Finance
OK, like many Yahoo sites, this one has plenty of ads – but some of the links are great. I like the tax prep checklist and the tax calculators.

Now I have to quit looking up the cool tools, and actually gather forms…

After last week’s article on web site that seem to have disappeared, Roger in Minneapolis suggested that the Wayback Machine is a good resource too. They archive old web sites. They don’t track all web sites, but they track a lot. If you haven’t visited, you should. It’s fun to see what your favorite web sites looked like last year, or the year before.

We’ve all seen the 404 page as we’ve surfed the web and it makes us sad, “404: Page not Found.” Usually it happens when a page on a site we are visiting has been moved or removed. Often as a user we just leave the site. It’s a missed opportunity for the visitor and the web owner. I have two fixes.

As a visitor, a good re-route is to access the web site’s home page and look for a site map or search tool to search for whatever it is you need. To get to the homepage you want to strip down the web address to its root or http://www.domainname.com. For example if you visit http://www.treacyinfo.com/byte.htm you will get to my “digested bytes” page. Strip that down to http://www.treacyinfo.com and you’ll get to my homepage. Some pages may not use the “www” – so another way to look at it is to delete anything after the third /.

As a web owner, consider adding a customized 404 page. Then when visitors try to access a page on your site that doesn’t exist they will get a more helpful message than “file not found.” The first step is to create the page; include a message such as “sorry this page does not exist” and then point the visitor to your site map, search tool, and/or provide contact information. Second, you want to have your server point to that page whenever a user tries to access a page (file) that does not exist in your domain. To do this, create an .htaccess file. Start by creating a text file in Notepad; it should contain the following:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.htm

where “notfound.htm” is the name of the custom page you just created. Save the document as htaccess.txt. Once it is saved you will want to change the name to .htaccess and upload it (and your new custom page) to your server.

This won’t work with all servers – but it has worked with most that I have tried. Some web hosts (such as Go Daddy) make it even easier. On their administrative pages they let you flag options for 404 errors: use their custom page (which advertises their services); point users to your homepage; or create your own.

Podcasting is making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows software to automatically download the files for listening at the user’s convenience. The term comes from iPod and broadcasting. The podcaster makes a file available online so that the listener can download the file and listen at their convenience.

Winestar’s celler
Really Learn Spanish
Poker Channel
Indymedia

To produce the podcast: there are some resources to walk you through the process:

• Podcasting Thoughts And Tips 008 – an article that outlines the steps towards podcasting
  
• Poor Man’s Podcasting – instruction on how to start podcasting inexpensively

I learned about podcasting doing some research for an international webcasting community. You can find out more about webcasting at the DoWire.org Webcasting Exchange.

Many search engines starting to track web sites by geography – often by MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area). This is helpful if you are looking for a resources in a specific area or if you want to be found by researchers in a specific area.

Here are some of the search engines that are going local:

A9
Ask Jeeves
Google
SuperPages
Yahoo (for search and they have the old directories)

For searchers: You can get access to the local search features through a “local” or “advanced” tab on the search engines. Follow the instructions from there. (Google is working on profile based searching where you sign up and they return sites to you based on a profile you start and they complement with searches you make.)

For web site owners: Now is a good time to get listed with these local search resources because today it’s free – eventually they may charge. In most cases you can register through a link on the local search page. Just look for the “add your site” or related link.

Some search engines (such as Overture) sell keyword ads on their local pages. As an advertiser you can select the areas where you ad is shown. A searcher’s area is determined by her address and/or terms searched. I have tried this with less than impressive results – but I think it may catch on when a web site’s target market are found in particular areas.

Thanks to Jan in Wisconsin for her suggestion for this week’s Byte!

I had a little misfortune this week – I picked up a peeping popup, aka spyware. It was, and still is, kind of sad – but I’m on the road to repair and I’m happy to share my map with you.

What is spyware? It’s a program that monitors your actions online. Hackers can use it to get confidential information as you surf, more often advertisers us it for market research – and then they feed you ads you probably don’t want. Unfortunately those ads often include adult-oriented ads that you really, really don’t want.

I suspected there was a problem when I noticed a lot more popup ads than usual. Once I admitted I had a problem the first step was to quit using Internet Explorer. I downloaded Mozilla’s Firefox. And you know what, I actually like it. Because I do web development, I keep Explorer around to see what sites look like in Explorer – but moving to Firefox has been really easy.

The next step, I ran spyware checker programs. Much like running a virus check, a spyware check will scan your files for spyware. First I tried AdAware from Lavasoft. They have a free trial version and I have been happy with them in the past. Unfortunately it froze up on me. So I tried Spy Sweeper; again they have a free trial. I ran it and it found 100+ suspicious files. So, I just deleted them all, which is easy to do when you use a checker. I could have chosen to save some files – as some were probably innocent cookies to help me remember passwords – but I wanted it gone.

So, there’s my tale. I hope it helps you. Also I have to thank Rick in Minneapolis for helping me. He’s my tech hero! For more information on spyware you can check out the Wikipedia.