Mac's Picks is a collection of family friendly interesting and useful sites, updated weekly. These sites may be search engines, medical resources, household hints, educational resources, recipe sites, sites I call "head scratchers", and/or new sites dealing with all kinds of things of use to the general internet community. To find the criteria I use, simply click on the "Why and How Info" link on the right side of this page.

This page is updated on a weekly basis, each Tuesday evening Australian (Queensland) time (GMT + 9 hours according to the world clock). Please come back and visit us often.

Important Note: If you are returning to my page, welcome back! Please click your "Refresh" or "Reload" button on the top of your Internet browser to ensure you are seeing the current week's page of my "Picks of the Week". Also, I would love for you to make my site your home page. Simply click on Tools - Options in Explorer, or Edit - Preferences in Netscape, and click Use Current and it's done.

NEW SERVICE I am pleased to announce that there is a new service on my site that hopefully will help those who don't have English as their first language to enjoy my site. If you look on the right side of this page you will see a little icon that says . If you do, it will translate the top half of the page into what ever language you select, with a small icon half way down the page that, when clicked, translates the second half of the page. This is a wonderful service and I thank Michael Fagan for providing this service for the net community. Enjoy.

Warning - New Virus doing the rounds There is a new virus doing the rounds called the "W32.Beagle.A@mm" and affects all Windows operating systems but does not affect Macintosh, Linux or Unix based Operating Systems. The virus is spread through e-mail and is identified via a Subject of "Hi" and has a *.exe attachment. If you get it in your email, don't panic. Simply do NOT open the .exe attachment, and delete the email from your system. And, as always, do a antivirus update as often as you can from your antivirus vendor. Stay safe.

If you are as impressed with Michael's service as I am, hop over to his FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM - The best free Translator. Online language translators. site, pick the language you are translating from, the one you wish to translate to, type in the text you wish translated and there it is. Great site with a wonderful service to the net community. This one is particularly worth a bookmark for future reference.

If you are a frequent visitor to my site you'll know that I have a greeting card link on the right side of this page and I am always pleased to have you send as many online greetings to friends and family from there as you wish. However I also found the Care2 Environment Supersite site which not only has some nice cards, it also has free email and ecards that help save animals and endangered species. Now that has to be worth a look. Enjoy.

Being summer out here in the southern hemisphere, it is also cricket time. No, not the animal, the game :-). If you're a cricket fan you will enjoy the Cricket Statistics and Ratings for Test Cricket and One Day International Cricket (ODIs) site. If you don't know the game at all, it will seem simply weird to you, but it does have its moments. If you're a fan of Limited Over matches, or Tests, you'll love the info housed here.

One of the things I am finding that is still happening on the net is that folk find that some software they have just installed has hijacked their browser homepage. If the installation of the software asked you if you would like your home page (the first page that comes up when you open your browser) to be changed to their choice, that would be one thing. Unfortunately some programs simply do it without permission. One site that helps deal with that issue is the Hijacked site by the folk from Geek Girls. This is a great site with good info on how to get rid of programs or websites that do this to you. If this has happened to you, check out this site for some good ways of reversing it.

I love good food. As a diabetic I may not be able to eat all kinds of food, especially in abundance, but the Meals For You site contains thousands of delicious recipes and meals for you to try. There are even ones here for us diabetics. Fabulous collection of recipes.

You know I enjoy showing you blogs (web logs) written by folk in different parts of the globe. The One Canadian Voice is a nice easy reading blog written by, funny enough, a Canadian. This one talks about all kinds of things from the snow to Canadian politics. Interesting read and well worth a look. It night inspire you to try writing your own. ;-)

If you use Microsoft Office you are going to love The Office Experts - Free Downloads site. These folk are experts in making the running of Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, easy, with a lot of downloads to help you solve certain problems. Have a look. Great info.

The term Ascii, in English, means the letters, numbers, and symbols available on most computer systems. You may have seen what is called Ascii art, where artists, using nothing but keyboard characters, create images for us to see. If you thought that was difficult (try it yourself - create a picture using nothing but keyboard characters) then how much work must it have taken for Ascii Movies to be made? Friends, this is nothing short of fantastic to see. The hours it must have taken to make these is incredible. Though the "movies" do take a while to download, the wait is worth it. Have a look and enjoy.

Who made the largest pizza in the world? Who holds the record for the most amount of "get well" cards ever received? The answer to these and other strange world records can be found in the Guinness World Records, and their site is pretty interesting to see to. Hop over and browse around. It's amazing what people will do to make a name for themselves. :-)

New to computers and their use? Want to learn how to tame this beast? Then hop over to the PCShowAndTell site and have a look at what they have on offer. This site now has over 40,000 animated, voiced tutorials, on more than 100 of your favourite software applications. That should be a help to any computer user. Enjoy.

Where my family and I live in Australia is known world wide as a surfer's dream place to live. No, we don't have the giant waves that some places have, but we do have good surfing conditions almost every day of the year. Thus, many surfers here and around the world know the organization called Surfing Australia. This organization is the governing body for the sport of surfing in Australia. They also govern surf competion, surf schools, learning institutions and all manner of things having to do with this sport. Hop over and have a look. Surf's up.

Collectables are something that many folk enjoy. Having a hobby of looking around for new or old pieces of some particular thing can be enjoyable. However, when you consider yourself to be Disney's #1 Fan, and prove that by having 1500 plus tattoos, 15000 collectibles, and a 4000 sq ft house to keep your collection in seems, to me, a little excessive. But, to each their own I guess. Have a look and see if you would go this far for your hobby.

Rebecca Game of "Digital Women - Women with their modems running...", is a graphic designer who is superb to say the least. Rebecca designed this "new look" web site specifically for me, and I can't praise her work enough. Her site, dedicated to women on the net, is worth seeing and bookmarking for future reference. If you are looking for links of interest to women, please visit her site. And if you need the best graphic designer on the planet, I seriously can't recommend her more highly. Oh yes, and when you visit her site, tell her Mac sent you. Thank you Rebecca. I am eternally grateful for your assistance and expertise. ;-)