NOISES FROM THE BASEMENT

1) Timely Tips - "Metadata"
2) File Find! - "Comparisonics Audio Player"
3) Sites-Seeing - "Zippotricks"
4) Email Funny - "Not a Clue"
5) They Said It - quotes to give one pause
6) Hodgepodge - that what fits no where else

Once again a big hello and welcome back to you, Faithful Reader. Thanks for joining me for a little fun in The Basement!

Growing pains! I'm looking for a new home (web server) for Noises and expect to have things changed over by the time the next edition hits your Inbox, but I want you to know that there may be some disruption of service to the BasementNoises site (and consequently, to some of the graphics and file downloads that appear in these newsletters) during this time. It may take several days for DNS information to propagate through the net; if you get an error message in connecting or are missing pictures, please check back in a day or so.

As always, feel free to drop me a comment on what you liked, disliked, or would like to see in the future! - Dave
 

Do you know what your Office documents are saying about you? I'm not talking about your writing style or the creativity you exhibit in your PowerPoint presentations - I'm talking about the "hidden" information that is stored in every document created in the Microsoft Office environment.

Here's what Microsoft says about metadata: "Whenever you create, open, or save a document in Microsoft [Office products], the document may contain content that you may not want to share with others when you distribute the document electronically. This information is known as 'metadata'. Metadata is used for a variety of purposes to enhance the editing, viewing, filing, and retrieval of Office documents.

Some metadata is easily accessible through the user interface; other metadata is only accessible through extraordinary means, such as opening a document in a low-level binary file editor. Here are some examples of metadata that may be stored in your documents:

• Your name
• Your initials
• Your company or organization name
• The name of your computer
• The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document
• Other file properties and summary information
• Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects
• The names of previous document authors
• Document revisions
• Document versions
• Template information
• Hidden text
• Comments

Because metadata is created through a number of different ways, there's no quick and easy way to "turn off" all of storage of information at once. Each element must be addressed differently, and procedures do differ depending on your version of MS Office. There are some elements of metadata that you may not be able to eliminate.

If you would like to know how to remove metadata from your Office documents, please choose from the following links to the appropriate MS Knowledgebase articles for your version of Office. While the articles are specific to Word, the procedures should work with the other products when the same metadata is included:

• Click here if you have Office 2002 (XP)
• Or this link if you have Office 2000
• Or here for Office '97

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2) File Find! - "Comparisonics Audio Player"

This week's File Find is a unique utility that allows you to search the 'Net for audio files - based on the way they sound!

Using a microphone and a program like Microsoft Sound Recorder, you can record your own sounds. Using props or your voice, mimic a desired sound into the microphone, record it and save it to a file. Then open the file using the Comparisonics Audio Player, select the desired sound, and find the best matches on the Web! You can play any audio file while viewing its waveform display, in a unique color display.

This utility will search FindSounds.com for up to 200 matches of your sound. (You can also perform text searches for a particular sound at FindSounds.com, but note that almost 50% of the sounds indexed by FindSounds.com are unlabelled and can be retrieved only by a sounds-like search.

Next time you're looking for this kind of sound or this kind of sound for a PowerPoint presentation, you'll be sure to hear this after using our File Find!

Click here to download Comparisonics Audio Player!

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I've loaded up Hodgepodge (below) this week, so we only have one Site to See:

Everyone knows you shouldn't play with fire; the folks at Zippotricks.com obviously weren't listening the day that particular lesson was taught! This site, home of the "Trickheads", contains over 275 different tricks one might play with that stalwart flame producer - the Zippo lighter. There's hundreds of WMV and Real videoclips of tricks, tutorials, contests, and a Hall of Fame. NFTB not responsible for any infernos that may be created through your use of this link:

Click here for Zippotricks!

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From the Unclear on the Subject Files - This one came to me entitled "World's Dumbest Man". I don't know if I'd go that far (there's a tremendous amount of competition for that particular award) but he is definitely having some problems using a rather common device in this week's Email Funny video:

Click here to download No Clue [238 KB\Zipped WMV]

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"It is natural for men, who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure, to tell us, it is now a crisis - now is the critical moment which must be seized or all will be lost; and to shut the door against free enquiry, whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover. This has been the custom of tyrants, and their dependents in all ages." - Richard Henry Lee

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< * > Have a teenager still looking for that part-time job? Meet a real life Lucy Van Pelt < * > The sense of unease among privacy advocates was ratcheted up another notch with the recent announcement Operation TIPS, an effort to recruit citizen informants. Even before the government has its system set up, thanks to the ingenuity of an enterprising citizen, there's now Operation TIPS-TIPS: Report TIPS Informants... and be sure to check out Hobo Signs, too! < * > NFTB first introduced you to the concept of video entertainment for your cat a year ago - now a cat food manufacturer has announced a "Discovery Channel for cats"  < * > Anti-spam services are a nice idea, but don't fool yourself into thinking that there's a great solution out there, yet. Most throw the baby out with the bathwater. < * >

G'nite, and thanks for reading!

Dave Gretz

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 Dave Gretz,
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