CONTENTS:

1. Welcome & What's been happening
2. Special Deals & News!
3. Ask the Doc
4. Software Review
5. Web Sites of Interest
6. Book Review
7. Jokes/Humor

1. WELCOME & WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING

Hello Friends!

A sad and sorry response rate to the survey in the last newsletter almost had me give up producing it at the end of last year. It takes quite a bit of time and effort for me to put together this information, and after sending the newsletter out less than 1% of people took the time and effort to respond. You know who you are, and I truly thank you for the minute (or so) of your time it took to respond. As a special thanks to them I'll be sending them a little something as a thank you in the mail this week. The rest of you miss out ;-P 

I'm still chewing over the choices for publishing frequency and content, decisions will be made over the coming couple of months. Of course basing decisions on those results alone might not get the best outcome ;-\

Also... a "problem" with the software I use to handle the subscriptions to this newsletter resulted in the main data  file becoming corrupt and unusable. To recover it I had to resort to a previous backup from November last year, and then re-apply all the new subscriptions to that, if I've mucked up, and you don't want to be on this list (SHAME on you :-) just drop me an email and I'll make sure you are permanently removed. I'm working on a replacement system that I hope to have up and working ASAP. One I can rely on <sigh>. 

To add to the burden, last month we moved house and office. Moving is often a stressful time, this was no different ;-) However, to make matters worse, our (not)beloved telecoms company - Telstra - conveniently found a way to stuff up having the phone lines in place for when we moved. Consequently for more than a week after moving, faxes and phone calls were often disappearing into the ether! I've no idea how many people tried to contact us, or order from us, and just couldn't! As I write this I am using an extra long extension from the house, strung up through the gum trees to the office. We're not quite managing to run the business and personal needs on a single phone line (we used to have, and ordered for here as well, 5 lines). Here we are 4.5 months after I first checked to make sure there'd be no problems, and still no extra phone lines!  

This edition was originally scheduled for January, but with all that has been happening, just never got sent. I apologise for that and should be back on schedule from now on... expect an edition towards the end of each month with news, views and reviews... oh, and of course, some free software to give away each month. :-)

Now, on with the fun stuff...

Results of the last monthly free software draw:
Backup Magic 

- Janet Cook
- Debbie Gibbs

Congratulations to both of you! Your packages will be on their way this week. Winners will be contacted soon for shipping details.

If you'd like to be in the running to win a copy of Search &
Replace this month all you have to do is email us with a subject of "freebie" and you're in the running. 

As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions please feel free to drop us a line.

Regards,

Tim Jones
Aquarian Technologies

2. Special Deals & News

[Note: If you have an old copy of TypingMaster and would like to upgrade to the latest TypingMaster, contact me directly for the discounted upgrade price and ordering details.] 

Macro Scheduler V6.0
Save yourself time by allowing your computer to run scripts or record and playback macros to automate any task. Over 140 script commands allow you to send keystrokes to other applications, wait for windows to open and close, make a particular window active, run programs and commands, execute files, read from and write to files, copy, move and delete files, and control applications with DDE or ActiveX automation. I personally use it extensively to help automate this business!

Each Edition we select one of the requests to research and report back to everyone what we recommend. So save yourself some legwork (fingerwork?) and solve some computing ills at the same time - Ask the Doc soon.

3. Ask the Doc

I've often thought the word "career" was just a modern euphemism for slavery...

After appearing in an article in the Age newspaper here in Australia last year, I had several enquiries about various aspects of how I got started running my own business from home, and how other people could do similar. Well, obviously I wasn't about to give away all my secrets<g>, but I did help those I could at the time. Recently I've had a few more people "Ask the Doc" how they too could get started in an online business. This started me searching for viable ideas. No, not those junk Spam emails we all get about how to make ten grand in a month! What I was looking for was a *REAL* way for people to get started. It had to be something they could make uniquely their own, and that would reward them fairly in relation to how much work they were prepared to put in. Most importantly, it had to have all the steps laid out clearly.

Well, let me tell you that that was quite a tall order to try and fill. Especially since I didn't quite know what kind of "thing" it was I was looking for. In the end the answer actually found me!

"Make Your Knowledge Sell" (MKYS) was it's title, and it's title means what it says. Every one of us has a unique set of life experiences, skills, interests and areas of expertise. So it makes sense to look at what we ourselves know that others might be interested in. We can use that to create an information product out of that very unique resource - ourselves.

Now, I've been "playing" with software for a LOT of years, and I know a few tricks to getting the right program to meet a set of needs. So as I started to read MYKS (yes, I actually bought it without hesitation, I knew immediately this was what I was looking for!) I started to come up with far too many ideas to ever be able to find time to write about. There's bound to be plenty of ideas you can think of too. Perhaps you are an expert on fine china, painting water-colours, fixing motor mowers, growing exotic plants, or whatever. MKYS shows how we can unlock that knowledge within all of us, how to get those thoughts into a form that can be packaged electronically, and how to set it up to sell on the web.

It leaves *nothing* to chance, it really covers every aspect of preparing and selling your own products in so much detail that even now I'm still amazed at the detail as I continue to read it. It's authors are so confident about the book, they offer some incredible, but truly sincere, guarantees! Have a look yourself and see.

If you are interested in getting started on some additional income that doesn't involve sleazy spamming, or rip-offs I think you'll be very surprised, and certainly pleased, with this publication. I know I am!

Please let me know what you think of the book. I'm VERY impressed personally, and am recommending it to some of my best friends as I KNOW they have many unique things they could share with others too.

Check it out here

4. Software Review

Search & Replace
by Funduc Software

Search & Replace (S&R) for Windows is a very easy to use tool, that just like its name suggests, enables you to search for, and replace information in files on your computer without having to do it all manually.

S&R is extremely powerful in what it can do for you. For instance, I needed to locate some information I had written a few years ago [note: you can just use the powerful searching facilities on their own, replacement is an optional feature]. I knew I'd saved it on one of my hard disks somewhere, but where!? With more 20GB of data spread over 5 machines on the network it could have been archived off anywhere. AND, it might have been buried inside a ZIP file as well! Not to worry, I was assured S&R would find it.

The keyword I was looking for was something like "Deadline", but I wasn't 100% sure. I also knew that with 13 years of data stored that keyword might appear a few times. So I used the regular expression support in S&R to help limit the matches it found. Boy, this stuff is powerful!

Anyway, off choofed S&R, well maybe "off screamed S&R" would be more accurate! It checked every .txt file, even if they'd been zipped up! It checked on the local machine, across the Network, everywhere I asked it to look, searching for the word "deadline" and "title" somewhere within proximity of one another. Within a couple of minutes it had found 2 files. One of which, zipped up and in a backup folder was the one I thought I wanted. A quick double click on the file in the colour coded list of matches, displayed the context from the file. Yes, that was the one I needed, hidden in a zip file. Potentially *HOURS* of searching saved.

The "Find File" function in Windows's Start Menu hasn't been used since!

S&R can also do Binary search & replace, although that is best left to people who know *why* they're even attempting such a thing - I sure wouldn't be doing it in a hurry.

New to version 3.2 is an "HTML Mode" that makes plain text to html character code substitutions. This is excellent for people who need to do a global replace of information in web pages. e.g. say we needed to change the text "Search & Replace" everywhere it appeared on a web site. Well, many HTML editors would have the written as "Search &amp Replace", so a straight forward search for the literal string would fail. Not S&R though! It understands how HTML works (turn the option on first) and will make sure that those &amp symbols for the "&" character are also changed. Brilliant!

If you need to find and replace text, or just find text, this utility is a must have. It is significantly faster than any other Windows utilities I've tried previously and allows replacing for the same price as those programs which offer only searching capabilities. I just could not imagine searching (and/or replacing) without it, it is that good!

To top it all off the kind people at Funduc Software have offered us two copies of their program to give away to our subscribers this month. One each to a new subscriber, and a person who recommends our newsletter to a friend.

More Details available at

Don't forget to tell Mike & Kenneth I sent you! ;-)

And also, don't forget to enter the freebie contest to win your own personal copy of S&R this month!

5. Websites of Interest

SYDNEY, Australia -- Any data seem different on your computer today?

If you're in Australia, the government has the ability to modify your files. Its cyber spooks have been given legal power not only to monitor private computers around the country, but to change the data they contain.

The Internet Traffic Report monitors the flow of data around the world. It then displays a value between zero and 100. Higher values indicate faster and more reliable connections. 

Shareware Discussion Newsgroups
Don't forget the new Newsgroups setup especially for YOU! These are moderated groups (moderated by a fellow Australian, Scott Kane) so are free from flames, spam and other forms of abuse. For on topic, helpful and prompt help and advice on any matters to do with shareware software you really should consider having a read of the new moderated newsgroups at:

news://comp.software.shareware.users
news://comp.software.shareware.authors
news://comp.software.shareware.announce

6. BOOK REVIEW

During my struggles with phone lines and moving recently I found this to be a timely piece from my friend Don...

STABILIZE STRESS
By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

Stress is a killer.

There are some who would say, "there's good stress and then there's bad stress". That's sort of like saying, "there are good heart attacks and then there are bad heart attacks".

Maybe there is some positive benefit to the stresses that will enhance our performance, but, for the most part, stress is a negative, keeping us from performing at peak levels, damaging our daily productivity, and decreasing the chances of our longevity.

Many blame stress on external forces. "We are living in stressful times." "This is a stressful job." "My boss (husband, wife, co-worker, customer, client, kid, etc.) is really stressing me out."

The world is not really a stressful place and these are not really stressful times. There really are no stressful jobs. If any of these were true, then everyone in that community, job, relationship, etc. would be stressed. Some are. Maybe most are. But some are not.

There are many "stress reduction" programs, seminars, and courses out there. Most are effective. But, rather than treat the symptoms, what if we treated the disease and rid ourselves of the causes of the stress?

Most stress is internal, caused by the ways in which we relate to the world and events and people around ourselves. Stress is caused when there is a disconnect between our expectation and our reality. When reality falls short of an expectation, it creates a disappointment and that causes stress.

For example, let us say you drove your car to work today, your car was parked in the nearby parking lot, and you will leave work today at 5:00 p.m. You probably have an expectation that your car will be right where you left it when you got to the parking lot this afternoon. Well, what if you were to discover at 5:00 p.m. that your car has been stolen? I would imagine most of us would feel some stress from finding out about our stolen car!

But, what if you return to the parking lot this afternoon and there is your car exactly where you left it this morning? You insert the key and drive away. Do you experience stress over finding your car where you left it? No, because expectation and reality match up.

While most of us will experience those larger disappointments in life, they are typically few and far between so that our bodies have a chance to cope and recover. Rather, it is all the little disappointments, which seem inconsequential individually, but when added together throughout a day, will really build up the stress. (Dealing with the morning rush hour, not getting things done on time, tasks piling up, personal errands not attended to, etc.)

The solution? Bring your realities up to your expectations. How? Through effective Daily Planning. Make sure that you plan to do the little things you want and expect should be done in addition to all the things you "have to" do during the day. Build a Daily Action list that incorporates both the "have to's" and the "want to's". Prioritize this list and tackle them in the order of their importance to you.

Our goal will never eliminate stress completely but, with more effective planning, we can reduce and stabilize stress.

Would you like to avoid the Top Five Time Management Mistakes? Request our free follow-up article entitled, "Top Five Time Management Mistakes". Send your request for "mistakes" to:

Don Wetmore-Professional Speaker
Productivity Institute
Time Management Seminars
60 Huntington St. P.O. Box 2126
Shelton, CT 06484
(800) 969-3773
(203) 929-9902
fax: (203) -929-8151
email: ctsem@msn.com
http://www.balancetime.com

7. JOKES/HUMOR

20 Sayings we'd like to see on those office inspirational posters

1. Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings...they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

2. If you can stay calm, while around you is chaos...then you probably haven't completely understood the seriousness of the situation.

3. Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done. Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security.

4. Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

5. Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.

6. A person who smiles in the face of adversity...probably has a scapegoat.

7. Plagiarism saves time.

8. If at first you don't succeed, try management.

9. Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.

10. TEAMWORK...means never having to take all blame yourself.

11. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

12. Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.

13. We waste time, so you won't have to.

14. Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away!

15. Go the extra mile. It makes your boss look like a slacker.

16. A snooze button is a poor substitute for no alarm clock at all.

17. When the going gets tough, the tough take a coffee break.

18. INDECISION is the key to FLEXIBILITY.

19. Succeed in spite of management.

20. Aim Low, Reach Your Goals, Avoid Disappointment