Find out how much your neighbors contributed to the campaign

From Kim Komando's daily hot site:

If you're curious how much your neighbors, boss or relatives are donating, go to Fundrace. Enter an address or name to find how who is donating to whom. You can also see how much each candidate spends in hotel and airline bills.

New virus uses your webcam to spy on you

This is just unbelievable. CNet is reporting that new virus takes over your webcam and uses it to watch and listen to you. This almost seems in the realm of hoax, yet CNet is a reputable news organization.

Gmail invitations available

If you've been wanting to set up an account on Gmail, Google's new e-mail service with 1GB of free storage, let me know (jkarpen@lisco.com). The service isn't yet available to the public, but I've been allotted six invitations. I can send you an invitation via e-mail that contains a link that you can use to create an account.

UPDATE: I had a deluge of requests over the past two days and have given out all my invitations. If I get some more, I'll post a note here.

Unprotected PCs get infected in 20 minutes

A new PC connected to the Internet without installing the patches will take about 20 minutes to get a virus, according to this article on CNet.

Nigerian scammer gets scammed

This fun BBC article tells about a guy who actually scammed one of the Nigerian scammers.

More free blogging

I was just looking at LiveJournal.com, which offers free blogging. Looks good. Apparently it's really easy to use. AND it includes RSS, which Blogger doesn't.

Kim Komando's site

Sounds like a stage name to me. If you listen to the radio, you've probably heard Kim Komando's show at some point. She talks about computers, giving tips and news and helping solve problems.

Her Komando.com web site has lots of resources, incluidng web-related resources. Just the sort of thing that I do.

Microsoft releases major security update

Microsoft has released a major upgrade to its Windows XP operating system in an attempt to fix the serious security problems that are wreaking havoc.

Called Service Pack 2, it helps to deal with issues such as popup ads, viruses, and vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.

The Service Pack isn't immediately available to everyone. A news story on Yahoo News gives a good overview.

Internet's largest news site

In a recent post I mentioned Google News and Microsoft's MSNBC Newsbot.

Somewhat similar is Topix.net, which bills itself as the world's largest news site. It has 150,000 categories and carries every major story from over 7,000 sources.

A neat feature is the Local News search. You type in your Zip Code, and it offers local and regional news. It also shows the 10 most popular books being read in your area.