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Volume 4 ~ Issue 11 ~ May 2002
Award-winning site reviews


Evaluating Vienna

Sviatoslav Moroz, virtuoso violinist and violin teacher
(www.oocities.org/morozacadus)

This simple, elegant site highlights the career of a world-class Russian violinist.

Mr. Moroz has performed and collaborated with many world-renowned artists: Oleg Kagan, Sviatoslav Richter, Natalia Gutman, Claudio Abbado, Yuri Bashmet, Eduard Brunner, Kim Kashkashian, Mstislav Rostropovich, Victor Tretiakov, and Elisso Wirssaladze. The site is well illustrated with photos of Mr. Moroz and many of these exceptional musicians.

Also included in the site are lists of his repertoire, concert performances and information about recordings he has made.

Mr. Moroz has been teaching and giving master classes for over fifteen years, in Russia, Germany, New York and New Jersey.


James Quick, composer
(www.oocities.org/jamesquick.geo)

Mr. Quick holds a B.A. in Music Theory/Composition from the University of New Orleans and an associate degree in Computer Science.

He began composing works for the piano in the 1970's, playing in New Wave bands and writing techno-pop songs in the 1980's. While completing his composition degree during the 1990's, he composed more sophisticated pieces, including the Funhouse Mirror Suite for Strings and Winds, a theme and variations on a German folk song for piano, and an art song for piano and baritone voice, based on a poem by Carl Sandberg.

He has also composed soundtracks for television commercials and served as Chief Engineer at Sound of New Orleans Studio. In addition he has transcribed quite a bit of sheet music for various composers and songwriters.

The site showcases many audio files of his compositions, and also has links to other family, musical, and humorous sites.


There are several site evaluations in progress, so check next time to see if we have any new Vienna Award winners.


Tips, tricks and explications

Get those annoying pop-up and pop-under advertising windows under control

I'm sure everyone has had the experience of clicking on a link to an interesting site and having one or more unwanted windows pop up over, or in some cases, under, the page desired. Most free website hosts and commercial sites are using pop-up advertising to supplement their revenue, even ones that used to be content with just placing a banner on the page. In addition, a pop-up page, or graphic or other file on that page, will often install a little piece of spyware on your computer to help them track your surfing habits.

Although the Terms of Service agreement of many site providers prohibits webmasters from attempting to put code in their pages to prevent the pop-ups from loading, there is no reason why surfers can't install a program to block the pop-ups from their end.

There are now many programs available to block pop-ups, eliminate spyware, and prevent unauthorized intrusion into your system. It would be far beyond the scope of this article to review them all, but in order to improve your Web experience I would like to offer this short list of freeware programs that I personally have found useful.

I'm sure you will agree that one of the most annoying and ubiquitous ads to be found on the Web is the X-10 Spycam pop-under ad. Even the X-10 people recognise that many surfers find their ads annoying, so as a public service they have provided a way to block their ads. This link will take you to a page that will install a cookie that prevents the ads from loading for 30 days. Look about halfway down the page.

If you delete your cookies after each session or don't accept cookies at all then another approach is needed. Panicware, in addition to the many security programs they offer for sale, also offer Pop-up Stopper, which prevents new windows from opening up. In the event that you want the new window to appear all that is necessary is to hold down the shift key while clicking on the link.

Going a step farther, Internet Sweeper from Emery Info-engineering will not only block pop-ups, but includes options to permanently erase index.dat files, Cache, History, Cookies, Addresses, Forms, Passwords, Recent Documents, Find Documents and Search Assistants, Find Computers, and Temporary Files! This frees up otherwise wasted space on your hard drive and keeps your browser from slowing down.

If you would prefer to block only certain specific pop-ups then POW! from AnalogX is the program for you. This one will present you with a list of open pages, which allows you to close any you don't want to see, and you can selectively add or remove those pages from a list of pages that it will block automatically.

You can find and remove spyware files from your computer with Ad-aware from Lavasoft.

And finally, prevent unauthorized intrusion from and access to the Internet with Zone Alarm from Zone Labs. When other programs or processes attempt to access your Internet connection, a window pops up that prompts you to permit or deny access. If an unknown outside source attempts a connection to your computer, the pop-up window alerts you to the intrusion and again prompts you to choose whether or not to grant access. This program detected the SirCam worm on my computer.


Well, that's plenty for now. Next time, I'll talk a little about making graphic link buttons using shadowed text and other cool effects.

I invite my readers to suggest future topics for this segment. If I use your suggestion I'll mention your name (if you wish) and provide a link to your site.


Bill is a pinball wizard, a MIDI orchestrator, and a classically trained amateur musician, who has been building his site in Vienna since January 1998, and having a great time doing it.