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 Monday evening Australian (Queensland) time (GMT + 9 hours according to the world clock). Please come back and visit 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.

This week I heard that Microsoft had introduced a service titled the Windows Live Safety Center Free online tool for PC health and safety so I went and had a look and tried it out. I have to say that it is very comprehensive in what it does, which includes scanning your computer for viruses, popups, spyware, etc. and then doing a scandisk and defrag of your hard drive if necessary, all in one easy operation. And, how lovely to see that, at least thus far, it's free. The entire thing will take a bit of time (best to start it running when you're on the way to bed) but it sure is worth the download and the time necessary to let it do it's job. Have a look and I advise giving it a try.

If you're on the Internet hopefully you also have some form of firewall installed on your computer. It's there to ward off attacks through unused ports in your system by viruses and spyware, plus physical attacks by "crackers (bad hackers)". Remember, not all hackers are necessarily bad, but crackers do it normally for financial gain. Anyway, one way to test the vulnerability of your system is to go to the LeakTest -- Firewall Leakage Tester and have it test your connection. I'm pleased to report that my own system seems to almost be bullet proof - and no, that's not a challenge to any hacker reading this. Give the site a try though. Better safe than sorry.

I love innovative and different blogs. I recently found the digg blog which is quite different from most. It's a blog where users submit stories for review and other users (and writers) have a say about whether it's published or not, and if not, offers constructive criticism. Not a bad idea if you're a budding writer. Have a look, and start typing.

I notice that the FoodNetwork has a new website, and being that it deals with food (and the fact that I love good food) I thought I'd update you on their new site. If you click on Cooking Basics, Recipes, Videos & Calorie Calculator Cooking Food Network you'll see what I mean. Loads of useful tools and some pretty wonderful sounding recipes to be found here. Have a look.

One of the mailing lists I belong to is hosted at about.dom by a wonderful researcher by the name of Wendy Boswell. She recently uncovered the Google Search Shortcuts - Google Cheat Sheet and you should have a look for yourself. Wendy writes about search engines and changes, improvements, innovation etc in the search community. Have a look at this and you'll get the general idea what she does. It might pay for you to subscribe to her weekly search bulletin as well. This is a great way to keep up with the play in Internet Search.

You'll no doubt know of the initiative on the net to make books available to everyone online called Project Gutenberg. However another group of people have started a site directed at children's stories, and call it Children's Books Online the Rosetta Project, Inc.. If you have young folk in your home it might pay to have a look and bookmark this one for use when you need something different to read to them. I have. I have 2 grandsons remember, and I know the time will come when I need this site to help with their education process. Great site.

I recently had an email from a wonderful Native American artist by the name of Mike Kabotie about something unrelated to his wonderful work. Mike is an American Hopi Native painter, jeweler, and poet, and in his spare time also is a distributor of a product known as Xango mangosteen juice. The other interesting thing, which to me speaks of him as an artist and man, is that he was awarded the Arizona Indian Living Treasure Award on October 5, 2003 in Phoenix Arizona in the USA. Have a look at his marvelous artwork. It's wonderful and he is such a good man to boot. Enjoy.

Like most of us you probably get an increasing amount of spam email. Even with the best of intentions, some still gets through to My ISP, but I'm in hopes that the POPFile - Automatic Email Classification software will ensure that it's kept to a minimum. POPFile is an automatic mail classification tool. Once properly set up and trained (by you), it will scan all email as it arrives and classify it based on your training. You can give it a simple job, like separating out junk e-mail, or a complicated one, like filing mail into a dozen folders. Think of it as a personal assistant for your inbox. And oh, did I mention it's free? Enjoy.

I recently came across a site called SPEED. which is speed reading techniques by Keith Drury. Speed reading will teach you how to do that and retain the information center. Worth a look.

When you signed up for broadband part of the agreement was that you would surf the net at a faster speed. The question really then is how fast are you moving data in and out of your system by being online. Remember, the faster the better on the net. Enter WUGNET - Speed Test which is a site that helps you find out how fast you actually are online. Great tool, especially when you think you're not going as fast as you could. Have a look.

Have you bought your own domain yet? Better hurry if you are because people and organizations like Google have registered a huge mound of them. Why? *shrugs*. You've got to wonder at some of their choices. Hop over to the Httproxy.net-Google's domains site and have a read. Interesting stuff and I'd be curious about why certain ones on this list were bought.

In the USA there was an act passed by the government called the "Patriot Act". All well and good, but if other orgainzations, like the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) go to your local library and demand to see their logs of anyone who has used their computers, the library has no choice but to hand over those records. Ok, that's a little strange and maybe even a little extreme, but like the ads on TV state "But Wait - There's more". The more which really gets you wondering is that the library is NOT ALLOWED to tell you that the FBI are listening in on their computers. Hmm.. sounds like the librarians, who are patriotic but have to wonder at this ruling of secrecy. Thus, some clever individual librarian came up with a site showing the librarian.net five technically legal signs for your library. Now I know this may sound silly, but if you have the time, it might pay to print this off and hand it to your own library staff, if you live in the USA of course. Scary huh? I think so. Have a look and draw your own conclusions.

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. ;-)