Thursday, August 03, 2006
Emptying the Trash
Q & A
Emptying the Trash, for Good
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By J. D. BIERSDORFER
Published: August 3, 2006
Emptying the Trash,
For Good
Q. On a Mac, what is the difference between “Empty Trash” and “Secure Empty Trash”?
A. Choosing the “Empty Trash” option under your Mac’s Finder menu tells the computer to delete the files you have dumped in the bin, but it still may be possible to retrieve them by using a data-recovery program or hard-disk utility software. The information itself is still lurking on your drive until other data overwrites it.
When you choose the “Secure Empty Trash” menu option, Mac OS X deletes the files in your Trash, and then overwrites them with garbage data to erase their existence from the hard drive. Dumping the trash by the secure method takes longer, especially if you have a lot of large files to discard, but it is intended to make sure those files are permanently wiped from the hard drive.
A Web Store
Of Your Own
Q. What do you need to set up a Web site to sell things without having to hire someone to do it?
A. Creating your own online store requires a couple of things. First, you need to have a Web site for people to visit. Second, you need to have a way to process customer orders and financial transactions.
If you haven’t set up a Web site before, one easy way to get the site and the e-commerce functions together is to use a Web hosting company that offers templates that let you easily design your own product pages, as well as software to process credit card payments. Most of these companies charge a monthly fee to maintain your site after it is set up on their servers, and may apply a transaction fee for handling orders.
One such company, Homestead Storefronts, (storefront.homestead.com) includes a link to an E-Commerce 101 tutorial that helps explain the process in more detail. You can pick out a professionally designed Web page template for your site, plug in your own images and text and add functions like PayPal or credit card processing with one of Homestead’s Web site packages. Yahoo Small Business (smallbusiness.yahoo.com) also offers design and hosting packages for online stores, along with articles on how to start selling online. There are plenty of other Web hosting companies around the Internet to choose from as well.
Multimedia Tools
On Windows
Q. Is there a set of programs in Windows XP to make movies and photo slide shows the way the iLife programs do on the Mac?
A. Apple Computer includes its own iLife suite of programs on the Macintosh computers it sells, and this multimedia toolbox currently includes iPhoto (for making slide shows, editing photos, ordering prints and other picture-related tasks) and iMovie HD (for importing and editing video and making your own movies). Windows XP includes basic software for working with pictures and video.
The Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, which is usually the default program in Windows XP for looking at images, lets you do simple things like rotating a photo’s orientation or making a minimal slide show from all the pictures in a folder. The Windows XP Task Pane that appears when the My Pictures folder is opened also lists several options for your photos, like ordering prints online or burning them to a CD.
If you want to move beyond these basic tools to more full-featured programs for making musical slide shows and slickly produced movies, there is no shortage of software for Windows. For example, Google’s free Picasa program (picasa.google.com) lets you make slide shows and save them to a CD, and has other photo editing and organization tools.
Adobe’s Photoshop Elements program for Windows ($90 at www.adobe.com/products; a free 30-day tryout is available) lets you create, edit, organize and customize slide shows. The company also makes a $100 movie-editing program, Adobe Premiere Elements; both programs can be bought together for $150.
Photo slide show programs like PhotoParade (www.photoparade.com/index.asp) and PhotoShow (www.simplestar.com) are other options designed for home users, and each costs less than $40. As for editing and producing your own home video, consumer-oriented (and priced) software like Pinnacle Studio (www.pinnaclesys.com) and Ulead VideoStudio (www.ulead.com) let you make movies for less than $100.
Questions about computer-based technology may be sent to QandA @nytimes.com. This weekly column will address questions of general interest, but e-mail and letters cannot be answered individually. ¶ Thursday, August 03, 2006
Emptying the Trash, for Good
Sign In to E-Mail This
Reprints
Save
By J. D. BIERSDORFER
Published: August 3, 2006
Emptying the Trash,
For Good
Q. On a Mac, what is the difference between “Empty Trash” and “Secure Empty Trash”?
A. Choosing the “Empty Trash” option under your Mac’s Finder menu tells the computer to delete the files you have dumped in the bin, but it still may be possible to retrieve them by using a data-recovery program or hard-disk utility software. The information itself is still lurking on your drive until other data overwrites it.
When you choose the “Secure Empty Trash” menu option, Mac OS X deletes the files in your Trash, and then overwrites them with garbage data to erase their existence from the hard drive. Dumping the trash by the secure method takes longer, especially if you have a lot of large files to discard, but it is intended to make sure those files are permanently wiped from the hard drive.
A Web Store
Of Your Own
Q. What do you need to set up a Web site to sell things without having to hire someone to do it?
A. Creating your own online store requires a couple of things. First, you need to have a Web site for people to visit. Second, you need to have a way to process customer orders and financial transactions.
If you haven’t set up a Web site before, one easy way to get the site and the e-commerce functions together is to use a Web hosting company that offers templates that let you easily design your own product pages, as well as software to process credit card payments. Most of these companies charge a monthly fee to maintain your site after it is set up on their servers, and may apply a transaction fee for handling orders.
One such company, Homestead Storefronts, (storefront.homestead.com) includes a link to an E-Commerce 101 tutorial that helps explain the process in more detail. You can pick out a professionally designed Web page template for your site, plug in your own images and text and add functions like PayPal or credit card processing with one of Homestead’s Web site packages. Yahoo Small Business (smallbusiness.yahoo.com) also offers design and hosting packages for online stores, along with articles on how to start selling online. There are plenty of other Web hosting companies around the Internet to choose from as well.
Multimedia Tools
On Windows
Q. Is there a set of programs in Windows XP to make movies and photo slide shows the way the iLife programs do on the Mac?
A. Apple Computer includes its own iLife suite of programs on the Macintosh computers it sells, and this multimedia toolbox currently includes iPhoto (for making slide shows, editing photos, ordering prints and other picture-related tasks) and iMovie HD (for importing and editing video and making your own movies). Windows XP includes basic software for working with pictures and video.
The Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, which is usually the default program in Windows XP for looking at images, lets you do simple things like rotating a photo’s orientation or making a minimal slide show from all the pictures in a folder. The Windows XP Task Pane that appears when the My Pictures folder is opened also lists several options for your photos, like ordering prints online or burning them to a CD.
If you want to move beyond these basic tools to more full-featured programs for making musical slide shows and slickly produced movies, there is no shortage of software for Windows. For example, Google’s free Picasa program (picasa.google.com) lets you make slide shows and save them to a CD, and has other photo editing and organization tools.
Adobe’s Photoshop Elements program for Windows ($90 at www.adobe.com/products; a free 30-day tryout is available) lets you create, edit, organize and customize slide shows. The company also makes a $100 movie-editing program, Adobe Premiere Elements; both programs can be bought together for $150.
Photo slide show programs like PhotoParade (www.photoparade.com/index.asp) and PhotoShow (www.simplestar.com) are other options designed for home users, and each costs less than $40. As for editing and producing your own home video, consumer-oriented (and priced) software like Pinnacle Studio (www.pinnaclesys.com) and Ulead VideoStudio (www.ulead.com) let you make movies for less than $100.
Questions about computer-based technology may be sent to QandA @nytimes.com. This weekly column will address questions of general interest, but e-mail and letters cannot be answered individually. ¶ Thursday, August 03, 2006
