Some odds and ends that have kicking around my word processing directory:
Occasionally, I get e-mail from readers who can't seem to get the URLs (the http://. . . addresses for web sites) in this column to work.
They'll read about some wonderful Web page, try to connect and fail. Then they'll e-mail me, complaining.
I first check to make sure the URL was printed correctly in the paper, then recommend they try typing more carefully next time (URLs must be exact, even to proper capitalization of letters). But recently I received a letter from a reader that pointed out a mistake that is probably common among Web newbies.
It seems this gentleman was typing the URLs from this column into Web search engines, such as Yahoo!, Alta Vista or Lycos. The result was literally millions of Web sites, thoroughly confusing the poor man.
Perhaps he so often started his Web browsing at a search page that he never realized that URLs are typed directly into the ''location'' field at the top of the browser (in Netscape Navigator you can also use the ''open location'' command).
Typing a URL into a search engine isn't such a dumb idea, except it doesn't work. One would think that searching Alta Vista for www.nytimes.com would bring up the link to the New York Times. It does, along with 7,933 other links.
So I'm sitting there the other night watching the Letterman show, and Dave is telling Paul about a commercial for Tide detergent he saw on TV, and that the commercial included the address to Tide's Web page.
''Ohhhh, boy,'' Dave mugged as the audience laughed, ''I'll bet people are just flocking to that site!''
This particularly struck me because earlier that day an editor came to me wearing a silk blouse stained with baby vitamins. ''Is there some place on the Internet that will tell me how to get out this stain?'' she asked.
We quickly linked to http://www.clothesline.com - the Tide web site, a k a www.tide.com - and searched the stain database for a step-by-step recipe for removing baby vitamin stains from silk blouses.
Looking through the piles of press releases that arrive at The Enquirer heralding new software and Web sites, interesting trends sometimes emerge.
The latest is the pairing of food companies and kid software. Strange bedfellows? Not really, considering many kids probably spend as much time with computers and video games as television.
LifeSavers candy has a new video game, Chomp! which kids can get with three Gummi Savers wrappers and $2.50 handling charge, or download from the GamePlayers Internet site (http://www.gameplayers.com). In it, kids control a large pair of lips, grabbing LifeSavers while bouncing over hazards. It's predictable, Nintendo-style fare.
Motts Applesauce is offering Mind Castle: The Spell of the Word Wizard, a simple adventure game that requires kids to play word games to escape from a Wizard's castle. The graphics are nicely done, the Motts' commercials are rare and kids might actually improve their spelling and expand their vocabulary.
Even with the educational slant, I found Word Wizard more entertaining than Chomp! Wizard is available from Motts for $2.99 and three Motts labels (look for the promotion in stores).
We're heading into the fall computer-shopping season, when back-to-school and Christmas shoppers buy the majority of computers are sold each year. If you're thinking about a computer, you may want to consider a used one.
Just as the prices of new computers have dropped, so have used and outdated (486 PCs and non-PowerPC Macs) machines, making it very much a buyer's market.
For example, the American Computer Exchange, a broker that matches buyers and sellers in the used-computer market, is advertising Compaq Prolinea 486 - 33 with 8 MB RAM, 200 MB hard drive and a 14-inch monitor for $579.
The exchange also publishes a survey of used computer prices based on sales the previous week. (It's reprinted in leading computer magazines.) The Sept. 16 survey listed 486 PCs in the $500-$800 range and used Mac Quadras in the $500-$1,000 range, with prices dropping from previous weeks.
The survey (http://www.crl.com/~amcoex) is a good starting point before buying - or selling - a used computer.