Traffic Circle 2.0

My latest book, The Shot Doctor: The Amateur’s Guide to Taking Great Digital Photos, is now available at your favorite bookstores including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and others.

Find out more by checking out the chapter on Recipes for Better Daytime Digital Photographs or by taking a look at excerpts available at Google Books.

My tenth book, Unleashing Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center, has just been published by Que.

It’s a complete guide to the Windows Media Center feature in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions. Special features include:

- How to connect standard and HDTVs and home theater systems to your PC

- How to watch and record TV and movies

- How to find your favorite actors, directors, and genres

- How to use WMC to help you with fantasy sports

- How to play both casual and high-performance 3D games from your WMC desktop

- How to access media on other PCs through WMC

- How to use an Xbox 360 as a Windows Media Extender

- How to use Windows Media Center, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Movie Maker to make WMC even more powerful

- Where to find the best third-party programs that make WMC even more powerful

- How to watch TV on your WMC PC, even if you don’t have a TV tuner

Hear my interview with Plugged In’s Justin Williams here. Read the Amazon.com reviews here.

Evansville Courier tech columnist and MacOS developer Justin Williams interviewed me for his weekly Plugged In radio show on WNIN-FM88, and you can listen to Episode 3 here. You’ll want to hear the entire show, but if you’re in a hurry, my segment starts at 18:17 into the program.

I’ll be appearing on the show again later this year to introduce my newest book Unleashing Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center after it hits bookstores in November. 

Many thanks to Justin and to WNIN-FM88 for the opportunity.

If you’ve reached this blog via my guest post at The Dawn Patrol, welcome! Many thanks to Ms. Eden for allowing me to speak to her readers. While you’re here, I hope you’ll find useful information to help keep your computer running smoothly.

This blog is primarily about my full-time work as a technology writer and consultant. I do most of my day-to-day blogging at Maximum PC’s newly-remodeled website, and also blog from time to time at Amazon.com (where my current and older books are available for purchase) and my publisher’s developer-oriented website, InformIT.com.

To get a taste of what I think about topics that are more important in the long run than the latest computer or photography gizmo, see the Beyond Technology – Thoughts on Ultimate Issues (God, Life, Right and Wrong) section of this website.

Have a wonderful 4th of July – and beyond.

 

Thanks to the fine men and women of the Southwest Indiana PC Users Group, I’ll be talking about using styles and templates to make your documents easier to edit and better looking. Whether you use MS Word, OpenOffice, or WordPerfect to write your letters, grants, reports, or shopping lists, you’ll want to attend the meeting. Guests are welcome, and memberships are encouraged!

See you this Sunday, February 17, at 2PM at

Evansville Central Library’s Browning Events Room B

 200 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
Evansville, IN 47713

I’ll be signing copies of my latest book, Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed: an Insider’s Guide to Supercharging Windows Vista, and I’ll have copies of this book and others available at attractive prices. I hope to see you there!

The home networking chapter from my book Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed: an Insider’s Guide to Supercharging Windows Vista is now available online.

Windows Vista’s networking features are among the biggest changes compared to Windows XP, and this chapter will help you understand how to master new features like the Network Center, network mapping, setup and management of wireless networks, helping Windows XP and Windows Vista coexist on a single network, and network troubleshooting. Whether you’re already using Windows Vista or planning to take a look at it this year, it’s a must-read.

Many thanks to the men and women who attended my talk on Windows Vista SP1, “What’s In It for Business?” yesterday at Owensboro’s Colby’s Restaurant. The Greater Owensboro Territory Information Technologists (GETIT) asked a lot of great questions about Windows Vista and SP1. Some also purchased my new book Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed – a great gift for Vista users.

Both GOTIT and its sister organization in Evansville, GETIT, sponsor outstanding speakers on technology issues monthly. Check out upcoming events at the GETIT/GOTIT information page hosted by the Evansville Public Library’s website.

I’ve been working hard on a couple of new Windows projects lately:

•  some chapters for the upcoming Second Edition of Upgrading and Repairing Microsoft Windows
• My forthcoming book Unleashing Microsoft Windows Vista Media Center

And, in addition to those, I’ve also been covering the Windows beat at Maximum PC’s website. If you haven’t dropped by lately, here’s what you haven’t seen yet:

• Learn how to protect yourself from Windows Vista’s activation problems
• Find out what reviewers think about Windows Vista’s backup, Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Movie Maker HD utilities
• Discover why your Windows XP system downloaded the performance-robbing Windows Desktop Search, and how to banish it – for good.
• Find out how to protect your Windows XP system from the Mailto URI threat in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.
• Learn how to become an unofficial beta tester of Windows Vista SP1 by making a few simple changes to your system.
• And, on the brighter side, find out how the Atari 2600 VCS (now 30 years old!) inspired today’s booming console and PC gaming industry.

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Discover how Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Photo Gallery work together to make Windows Vista the most compelling multimedia platform for Windows yet. Get Mark’s new book Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed: an Insider’s Guide to Supercharging Windows Vista. It’s available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, BooksaMillion, and other fine bookstores.

I’ll be speaking to the Greater Evansville Territory Information Technologists (GETIT) group on Wednesday, October 3 from 11:30AM to 1:30PM:

Windows Vista: Hardware Hog or Multimedia Maven?

Browning Events Room B
Evansville Vanderburgh Central Library

200 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
Evansville, IN 47713

Discover

• Why Windows Vista needs more powerful hardware than previous Windows versions
• How Windows Vista makes digital photography, music, and video easier to manage and more fun
• The benefits of other new features included in Microsoft’s latest operating system.

If you’ve never seen Windows Vista in action before, it’s the perfect opportunity to see how it works, what makes it different, and how it’s better than previous Windows versions. You don’t need to be an IT “propellorhead” to drop in, and attendance is free. Bring lunch, or stop in the newly reopened library cafe and pick up a meal.

I’ll have copies of my new book Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed: An Insider’s Guide to Supercharging Windows Vista and other recent books available at special prices, and I’ll be signing books too.

I’ve been using Windows Vista daily for over a year and writing about it and other Windows topics for Maximum PC’s website, so I’m ready to answer your questions. I hope to see you there!

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For more information about GETIT and Owensboro’s sister organization, GOTIT, see the GETIT page at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library website.

In several of my recent articles at the Maximum PC website, I’ve put on my investigative journalism cap to find out what’s behind the headlines of some major stories:

• Learn more about how Skype’s VoIP system works – and why it stopped working in August.
• Discover how Sony created yet another potential entry point for malware in the driver software for its USB memory stick/fingerprint reader
• Find out the disadvantages of the new Microsoft Office 2003 SP3 – and how to get around them
• Explore the reasons why Monster.com’s security breach reveals that today’s phishers want to make it ‘personal’ – and thus, harder to stop

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For more no holds barred analysis, see what I think about the new and improved features in Microsoft Windows Vista, and how to use them better, in my book Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed: an Insider’s Guide to Supercharging Windows Vista. It’s now available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, BooksaMillion, and other fine bookstores.