Directory scam?
I got an email from John Kennedy asking me to check my website's listing at www.top--sites.net. I want to increase traffic to my site, but am not sure if this is genuine.
Peter Hampton

Jack Schofield replies: You can read about Kennedy and Top-Sites at Dynamoo and Zincweb Internet. Kennedy responded to the Dynamoo attack, saying that his company was selling listings on the "TopSites Auto Search tool" for $5 per month. Free listings can be very valuable on the right site, such as Yahoo, but may not be worth much on other sites. Paid placements are a different matter. You should always be careful not to click anything that agrees to making any payments, and never give a credit card number, unless you are happy to be charged.

Photo store
I am planning a four-month trip to South America, and will be taking a digital camera. Can anyone recommend a storage solution to which I can transfer photos from a CompactFlash card? Kathryn Hampson

JS: The Archos Jukebox Multimedia 20 is a handheld video (MPeg 4) and MP3 music player with a built-in 20GB hard drive - enough to store up to 200,000 photos. Archos also sells a €40 CompactFlash reader that will enable you to transfer photos from the camera to the jukebox. See www.archos.com/products/prw_500561.html.

RSS easy
We are looking at the potential of setting up RSS feeds for our members and the wider engineering community. I know about free RSS readers but I also want to cater for those who may not be allowed to download files on to their PC, and I understand it's possible to receive RSS feeds via Microsoft Outlook. Martin Pratt
Institution of Mechanical Engineers

JS: NewsGator is a "news aggregator" that lets you subscribe to syndicated news feeds and have the results delivered to Microsoft Outlook folders. It requires Outlook 2000 or later (not Outlook Express), and Windows 98 or later. However, it costs $29. Microsoft is building a news aggregator into the Longhorn version of Windows to deliver RSS feeds to the desktop.

Unwanted dial
For some unknown reason my desktop PC has begun throwing up a dial-up connection screen about every 10 minutes. David France

JS: You can try running Internet Explorer, going to Tools|Internet Options, selecting the Connections tab, and ticking Never Dial a Connection. However, it is probably not Internet Explorer that is trying to dial out, so this will not help. The problem is finding the program that is doing it. It could be one you installed, which wants to look online for updates - a virus checker or messaging program, perhaps. It could be a program you did not install - a dialler or Trojan or similar parasite. (Diallers often phone premium rate phone lines and run up large bills, with a proportion going to the scammer.) It could be a virus that is trying to propagate itself, or send spam emails, and so on. Start by installing a free firewall such as Zone Alarm.

This should tell you which program is trying to dial out, so you can find it and stop it. If that doesn't work, restart your PC, press Ctrl-Alt-Del and make sure you know the identity of all the programs running in the background. Pac's Portal will help. Next, download and run SpyBot Search & Destroy to find and delete any unwanted parasites. Finally, run an online check at Trend Micro's Housecall, which may involve a long download. If these approaches fail, you may have to go through all your programs one by one to find the culprit.

Backchat

· Last week, Margaret White (whose name I omitted by mistake) asked about synchronising her PC with a reliable clock. Frank Shackleton says he uses TClock, "which, as well as keeping the clock adjusted correctly, allows you to modify the time display and several other functions".

· Several people wrote about keystroke shortcuts, and Bev Pease says: "Yoji Hagiya's little package CtrlPlus implements in Windows a stripped down version of WordStar's famous 'diamond cursor' commands. The Caps Lock and Ctrl keys are swapped over.". Others mentioned commands using the special Windows key. Generally, I am against shortcuts that don't work on any keyboard, particularly the IBM 101-key keyboard.

· On the topic of sending video files, Ian Davies says he doesn't have to re-encode video: "My Panasonic camcorder - an NVGS50 - has the capacity to record direct to Windows Media Video". Iain Fraser says I "overlooked DivX". I support the use of the open source XviD instead.