Multipleplatforms

Feeding Frenzy
In an ironic twist and somewhat like sharks in a feeding frenzy, adware (AKA spyware) competitors are working to knock each other out in the ever-increasing process of tracking computer surfer’s habits. According to CNET, the rivals are even including code to eliminate the other company’s ads as the battle escalates.

Spyware Killer
If you have tried everything and the kitchen sink to rid your PC of spyware, PC World has an article with advice and links for a free removal tool, HijackThis. Make sure you read this article before attempting to use this tool to avoid making a bad situation worse.

More Reasons to try Thunderbird
Mozilla.org has released their email client, Thunderbird 1.0 and MacWorld lists several good reasons to switch to the latest open source offering including the better security and HTML is rendered by Mozilla rather the Internet Explorer, making your mail viewing safer.

Open Source Tip: Slackware
Slackware is another open source choice available at LinuxISO.org and they have this to say about the distro: “Description: Since its first release in April of 1993, the Slackware Linux Project has aimed at producing the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there.”

PC Tip of the Day: Background Change
You can change the desktop background on your Windows PC via the control panel. To learn the secrets of changing the background, visit Microsoft’s Support site.

Apple Tip of the Day: Dock Your Favorite Web Site
You favorite web site can be a click away if you place it in your dock. Open your web browser and surf to the site you would like to save, like Multiple Platforms.com, then triple-click on the URL and drag it to your Dock on the Trash side of the dividing line. When you want to visit the site next time, you can just click on that icon in the Dock and surf away.

What is a Network Port?
Yesterday we featured a hardware port and today the spotlight is on the definition of a network port, and Wikipedia has this on that, “A network port is an interface for communicating with a computer program over a network. Network ports are usually numbered and a network implementation like TCP or UDP will attach a port number to data it sends; the receiving implementation will use the attached port number to figure out which computer program to send the data to. In TCP and UDP the combination of a port and a network address (IP-number) is called a socket: e.g. the list of well-known ports (computing)