That’s great, but most important of all, it knocks out “key loggers,” which can be installed without your knowledge when you visit a malicious website. For those unfamiliar with this kind of snooping software, what key loggers do is record all your keystrokes. Keyloggers can then collect what you have typed, including your passwords, email messages and any banking or credit card transactions you may have made. In a test run against key logger programs, ForceField blocked ten out of ten.

There are three basic controls in ZoneAlarm’s ForceField:

1. You can click “Protection Activity” to see how many attacks were foiled.

2. Click “Site Status” to find out if the website you’re on is considered dangerous.

3. Click “Private Browser” to destroy all traces of your surfing history. We especially liked the fact that traveling from inside a bubble didn’t noticeably slow down our web surfing.

ForceField sells for $50 and comes with an extra program called Password Manager. This is particularly handy when you are surfing the web under the protection of “Private Browser.” Otherwise you would have to re-enter your passwords every time you go to a website that requires them.

Zone Alarm Force Field reminds us of the “Cone of Silence” in the old “Get Smart” comedies. The program is for PCs only and does not interfere with your other anti-virus or protection programs. There is a free trial available at ZoneAlarm.com.

Okay, enough with the ooh and ah description, there’s something interesting going on here. Because at the same time we started reviewing the Seagate drive we got a tiny USB flash drive from SuperTalent (SuperTalent.com). It’s about the half the size of a stick of chewing gum, sells for less than $48 and holds eight gigabytes of data. Easily fits on a keychain. It’s not hard to do the numbers: The flash drive costs the buyer $6 per gigabyte of storage. The smallest Seagate drive costs 50 cents a gigabyte. That’s a huge difference, and as each side drops it price, it forces the other to do the same. As the hard drive capacity goes up, the cost per gigabyte goes down.

As Bugs Bunny would say: “You know of course that this means war.” On one side is the traditional hard drive, with a spinning disk inside; on the other are memory chips, which don’t do any spinning. Some day the price curves will meet, but that day is a long way off. Meanwhile, we all enjoy the benefits of this commercial battle.

 other over a videophone. Indeed, the first videophone was demonstrated back in 1955. And by the 1960s, AT&T was showing them off at trade shows.

Then as now, few people were interested. In order for video phone calls to come into general use, they have to be easy and they have to be cheap (something that AT&T’s trade show phones were not). The widespread use of computers now makes that possible through the use of web cams. Of course the still unanswered question is “does anybody care?” We think many do.

Microsoft has recently entered the lists with two new desktop web cameras, the “Lifecam VX-5000,” for $50 and the higher resolution “Lifecam Show” for $100. Microsoft doesn’t make many hardware items, so they must think there’s a future in this. We tried out both cameras with phone calls and they were extremely easy to use.

Although the software initially tries to set you up to use Microsoft’s “Windows Live Messenger,” we tried using it with “Skype” and the new “Google Video Chat” and they worked just as well, which is to say the worked beautifully. In all three cases the calls were also free. Joy called a woman in India who was featured in a magazine story she wrote a year ago. They had never seen each other before, but they did now. She next called Lorelle VanFossen, in Oregon, one of the earliest WordPress bloggers. Lorelle noted that young people tend to be blasé about video chatting, but for older people it’s a continuing source of amazement. (The young people will get excited about it when they get their first Dick Tracy video wrist phone.)

Besides video chatting, a webcam can also be used to for blogging. In the early days, we heard a lot about teenage girls setting up a camera in their home and letting voyeurs watch them all day. Today, the users are more main stream.

A business user can stream live video directly to a client to show how a product works. We were recently contacted by a Chicago advertising agency that has a Microsoft web camera on everyone’s desk. A chat window below their picture shows whether they are available for a call right away. Since the cameras were live, as they say, it must also cut down on goofing off or snoozing at work. If you want to see the ad agency setup in use, go to LisaPMaxwell.com.

Microsoft’s web cameras themselves are tiny, about twice the size of a USB flash drive. They have magnetic and standard base mounts and can be moved around easily. You can read the complete specs at Microsoft.com/hardware.

The way to avoid expensive map upgrades is to use Google maps with your GPS device. Garmin and TomTom, the leading makers of GPS devices, both allow you to hook your computer to your GPS device and transfer Google maps. These are all free from “Maps.Google.com” and they are available for locations worldwide.

The collections are all on CDs and the cost is usually $5. The Orson Well collection is their most expensive, at $35, but it takes up seven disks. You can listen to sample broadcasts of up to an hour at no 

charge. Who knew that Dick Powell, the tough guy from a dozen movies in the 1940s, also did 132 radio shows?

 programs, all for the somewhat staggering list price of $1,800. The computer to run them will be cheaper. However, just in case you want to spring for a lifetime hobby, here are a couple of books just out:

• “Adobe Photoshop CS4, One-On-One,” by Deke McClelland; $50, from oreilly.com. The author is a stitch, you might say, and an absolute master of Photoshop. If you go to his website, Deke.com, you can watch his somewhat frenetic rap video titled “101 Photoshop Tips in Five minutes.”
• “Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Photoshop CS4 in 24 Hours,” by Kate Binder; $35 from informit.com/sams. We add this one to your library because she’s good and because Sams is always good.

dangerous to ourselves and everybody around us. The other is that there are lots of ways of getting somewhere, not all of them helpful.

We started with Microsoft’s latest edition of “Streets and Trips,” which costs $79 with the GPS or $35 for the software alone. The software runs off a CD, so you have to take a laptop computer along to use Streets and Trips. The program now calls out street names, instead of having to look at the screen.

Bob says he is left with the nagging feeling that a simple paper map would be enough. Having to bring along a laptop is a nuisance and an added attraction to thieves. The advantage to using the software seems to be locating a restaurant, gas station, golf course, etc. and being able to plan the most efficient route. Streets and Trips has1.5 million locations stored on disk.

We switched to the Navigon 7200T, which has a list price of $450. It also has lot of high praises from users voicing their opinions on the web. Once again, this makes us wonder who’s making the comments and what are their connections to the manufacturer. Because using this thing was funny, as in humorous.

It takes voice directions but it couldn’t understand either of us. It doesn’t seem to understand number sets, as in “sixteen thirty Main Street.” It understood only if each number was spoken separately, as in “one, six, three, zero.” It advised us to turn at every street we passed that seemed to take us in the right direction. This went on for blocks, even for streets that were closed off, didn’t go through or had lots of stop signs. Knowing an area well, which we did, revealed how silly, even stupid, the directions were.

A gentle voice advised us of possible traffic problems along the way. Even though we were only a mile from our destination, the voice advised us there was heavy traffic at a point more than 20 miles beyond. Who cares? Pulling into a parking lot threw everything up for grabs. This is true for many GPS driving aids.The good news is you don’t need to bring along a computer for the Navigon and it showed points of interest many miles ahead, giving you time to think.

– A wrap-up of what’s good and what’s bad:

A reader in Arkansas said his Garmin GPS was invaluable for long trips but went bananas when he crossed into Canada and never worked right after that. They sent him a new one. He noted that GPS maps were really good in cities, not so good in rural areas. At one point his Garmin advised him to turn up a dirt track that was fenced off for a hunting preserve. Don’t go there.

The new “Shotgun” GPS device from TeleNav is only $299 and is an “Internet connected” device. This doesn’t mean you can surf the Internet on it, but it does mean that when you’re on the Internet using some other device, you can send info to your Shotgun. It would probably be something fairly obscure, because the Shotgun already has a database of 11 million points of interest.