Tips & Tricks

By Sandra Rosenzweig
     
      Errors were made
      Some of us see an error message come up on a website and just click to go somewhere else. Others wonder why it's a 404 File Not Found error instead of a 401 Unauthorized error. Webopedia offers several quick-reference lists to answer most such questions. They have guides for Well-Known TCP Port Numbers, Server Types (a pretty clear explanation of each), and the subject at hand, Web Server Error Messages, with workarounds to help you get where you want to go. What they don't tell you is why a File Not Found error is number 404. Well, here's the scoop: In the earliest stages of Web development, the engineers assigned each type of bug report to someone who might fix it. So they took File Not Found errors to room 404, where the Not Found guy worked. And 503 Service Unavailable reports went to room 503 (www.webopedia. com/quick_ref/error.asp).
     
      Colored Threads
      I've been obsessed with Microsoft Office Outlook since I recently had to create a new user profile for it (See Rosie's Reviews, page 33). In my wanderings, I discovered how to color-code each reply and counter-reply so I could follow who said what to whom and when. Original text appears in black; my first reply appears in a nice, dark blue; my next reply appears in British racing green letters; and my third appears in, say, dark gray. Even if the order of the replies and forwards turns into a mess, I can follow the thread by moving from one color to the next.
     
      All-aboard Tourbus
      Have we discussed Tourbus lately? This free, old-fashioned email newsletter, with its monospaced typeface (could be Courier), looks about as cool as your granny's chintz curtains. Tourbus has been arriving in my email inbox irregularly since 1995, but now that my glitz meter has prevailed over my Ur-Web outlook, I go straight up to the website at www.InternetTourbus.com. The two Tourbus drivers, Bob Rankin and Patrick Crispen, meticulously cull links, with comments on most of them. Explanations of social bookmarking, MySpace, and who its (possibly) better competitors are. Advice on whether or not to upgrade to Vista. See also www.bobrankin. org (Rankin's site, no duh) and www.netsquirrel.com (Crispen's site). I trust both these guys.
     

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