Washington - Need to share Microsoft Office files? Forget sending them by e-mail or copying them to a portable hard drive. Instead, turn to Windows Live Skydrive (http://skydrive.live.com), which is free and gives you up to 5 gigabytes of online file storage. You can use the service to create folders for personal, shared, and public access. --------
Washington - Microsoft's Windows Home Server operating system has received its first service pack. Dubbed a "power pack," the upgrade, free to registered users, fixes a serious data corruption issue that rendered the operating system unusable for some. The power pack includes some enhancements as well, mostly targeted at the operating system's core competency, which is backing up your household data.
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Washington - Are you using tape to back up and store important data files? If so, make sure the tapes are not stored near electrical equipment, windows, magnetic fields or close to radiators. Tapes do not last forever, either, so they should be tested every few years to ensure that the data on them is still readable.
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Washington - Do you have your own website? If so, you probably want people to visit it. One of the first things you need to do to ensure that you are listed in the search engines is submit the site to the major players in the search industry. Listing your site in search directories such as Yahoo! and search engines like Google is free and easy. And if you take the time to submit your site to the Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/help/submit.html), lots of other search engines will pick up your site as well.
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Washington - If you have two computers on a network that cannot see each other for sharing files or printers, look first at firewalls as the possible culprit. Disable any firewall software on each machine. If that solves the problem, find the IP address for each machine and enter that into the "exceptions" area of the firewall software. Re-activate the software, and your connection should work again.
