I heard about this site from a recent DC member.. seems like a useful site run by a nice guy. Tons of useful short little how to articles -- and the author is very willing to answer questions, etc.

Nicely designed site as well - looks like maybe a modified wordpress blog?

Some of the more recent HowTos focus on vista, so the site might be especially useful for those of you running Microsoft Vista.

http://www.howtogeek.com/

Do you have a memory of your father and computers? Or maybe you are a father and have a story to share about you and your kids and computers?  I'd love to hear it.

I started learning how to program a computer a little over 30 years ago when as kid in 1977 my father bought a big old Cromemco Z2d (which looked exactly as it does in that picture).

The computer had no games for it, and I was desperate to play video games on it -- so my father bought me some early books on BASIC and writing basic computer games (for the kids of today you will find it hard to believe that these "games" involved no graphics or action, but were all text based; in those days game listings in basic used to be printed in magazines).  The joke in the family was always that my father deliberately bought the one computer that had no games available for it so i'd have to learn to code myself.

My father was a consistent encouragement in learning how to program for the decades that followed.  He used to give me assignements, talk with me about programs, let me stay home from school if i worked out a plan of something new to learn.  When the IBM PC came out we were on the waiting list and we used to spend hours walking to and visiting the few computer stores that were in manhattan at the time, and browsing the bookstores checking out computer books.  He was always buying great books on computer programming and encouraging me to learn new languages. that's how i discovered my love for programming.

Greetings dear readers! Yes it's time again for another DC newsletter.  June has been a big month at the site, and it's only half over.

If you are a programmer, do not miss the programming contest we are running which ends on July 1st with a giant MS Visual Studio bundle prize (includes all Windows OS's and office tools, worth over $10,000).

I've released a new major version of my Find and Run Robot program which includes a new html view mode that will hopefully be of use to plugin writers, who have been creating some very fun new addons for the program.  If you haven't checked out the program yet, now might be the time.

This has also been a very busy productive month for mini-review writers on the forum, so we've got a section devoted to mini-reviews in this month's newsletter.  And don't miss the interview with the reclusive mysterious DC coder known as Skrommel.

If you've never posted on the forum before, this would be a great time to join us with your first post -- there's even a section of the newsletter below highlighting some threads that we'd love to have people participate in.  If you're a fan of DonationCoder and the way we do things, we'd especially appreciate you checking out the thread about nominating DonationCoder.com to PC Mag's Top 100 Websites.

-mouser, June 13, 2008

This is a really nice roundup, which focuses on profiling tools but includes a little bit of everything..

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

I’ve tried to include a wide variety of tools that are easy to use, and have tried to keep them as OS and technology-independent as possible so that everyone can find a tool or two.

http://sixrevisions....ols/faster_web_page/

A comprehensive list of LiveCDs + download links.

http://www.livecdlist.com/

"Simply Google is is the simple version of google.com that has been de-googlized"

http://www.usability...om/simply_google.htm