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Travel was supposed to become a tiny bit less aggravating. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approved use of carry-on bag designs that allow pass-through of laptops without removing them for X-ray inspection. Plenty of purveyors capitalized on the opportunity for selling new bags, including Belkin, Mobile Edge and Targus, among many others.

The reality of traveling through security checkpoint is different. You still frequently have to remove your laptop from your bag - along with everything else - to prove you’re not a bomb-toting terrorist. And the most troublesome set-back I’ve experienced is cables.

I travel with a huge rats nest of them: laptop cable, mouse with its cable, iPod cable, cell phone charger cable - those are just a few that I can think of right now. The actual pile that amasses before I leave is much larger.

This mass of unruly cables stuffed into my laptop bag is the real red flag, and the reason I’m asked to step aside and pull everything out of my case. Or, at least it was until I decided to wind all the cords up into one pile, stick them into a big zip-topped bag and carry those separately.

The result: security workers picked up my big zip-topped bag, turned it over and waved me through.

There are billions of fonts out there, which makes it darned difficult to identify one by sight. That’s doubly difficult if someone presents you with a graphic of a font. You can’t exactly look that one up in the font drop-down menu in Word.

Instead, you plug it into What the Font?! In their words, “Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly find the closest matches in our database.”

And it works amazingly well for identifying a mysterious typeface.

I recently had to coordinate a series of meetings among a large group of people who live far away. You can probably imagine how frustrating that was.

Enter my new friend Doodle, which lets you create a poll, forward the link to the poll to the participants and let them vote on their choice. It might be anything from what day of the week works best for a meeting, to choose the turkey or veggie sandwich for lunch.

Last week, I found a computer on the curb and felt bad someone was willing to throw out a perfectly functional machine when many people could really use it. I’ve already advised you on how to safely and thoroughly remove all your personal files from your computer. Now here’s why you should keep your computer out of the landfill (thanks BestStuff for your list!).

E-Waste Statistics You Should Know:

1. About 220 million tons of old computers and other tech hardware are trashed in the United States each year (Environmental Protection Agency, 2001).

2. About 63.3 million desktop computers will be taken out of service in the year 2002, and 85 percent of them will end up in landfills across the country, constituting an ever-growing environmental hazard (National Safety Council, 2001).

3. By the year 2005, one computer will become obsolete for every new one put on the market (Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 2001).

4. Fifty percent of computers being recycled are in good working order. They are discarded to make way for the latest technology (Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 2001).

5. Experts estimate that we will have more than 500 million obsolete computers in the United States between 1997 and 2007 (Poison PCs).

6. Five hundred million computers in the world contain 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, and 632,000 pounds of mercury (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

7. The average lifespan of a computer has shrunk from four or five years to two years (National Safety Council, 1999).

8. About 70 percent of heavy metals found in U.S. landfills comes from discarded electronics such as circuit boards, wires, steel casings and other parts (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

9. Only 12.75 million computers, including monitors and keyboards, will be recycled in the United States in 2002 (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

10. Americans are buying more computers than people in any other nations. Currently more than 50 percent of U.S. households own computers, and therefore, generate the most e-waste (The Basel Action Network, 2002).

Yesterday I stressed the importance of scrubbing clean your computer before donating it (or putting it in the trash). Charitable organizations generally don’t remove the data from your computer when you donate it. Consequently, they pass all your private electronic data on to the next owner.

Here’s what to do in order to prep it for donation:

1. Copy everything on your old computer to your new one. Be thorough, you never know what you’ll regret having trashed. Try the SimpleTech Signature Mini, which I wrote about earlier.
2. Remove e-mail contacts and messages. People often remember to delete bank information, but forget these things.
3. Clear out your browser bookmarks/favorites. You might have sensitive information marked for easy retrieval that you forgot was in there.
4. Likewise, clear out your Internet cache. Here’s how to do it in Internet Explorer, and a nice little video on how to do it in Firefox.
5. Remember to delete your photos, journal entries or any stored frequent flyer or credit card information.
6. Delete all your documents, including what’s in the recycle bin or trash folder.

Now that you’re done with that, realize that you’re not done. What happens when you delete a file is that it’s not really gone. It’s just made available to write over. It’s like an Etch-a-Sketch. When you’re done making concentric circles (the only thing I was ever able to do), you don’t throw it away. You shake it so you can draw another picture.

So first step is to call your computer manufacturer’s technical department and ask how they recommend to your personal files. They built it, they should have ideas on how to delete it.

Depending on what they tell you, you might be asked to pick up some disk-cleaning software. There are many free versions available; just type “file shredder” into your favorite search engine and pick one. If you want to spend money, try Symantec’s Norton SystemWorks for about $50. But pick something, and make sure you clean it up.

Sometimes it pays to go for a walk around the neighborhood on trash day. Last week I found a Mac computer sitting on the curb waiting for the garbage guys to take it away. It didn’t look like anything was wrong with it, so I lugged it home, plugged it in and waited for something like an explosion.

Guess what happened. Nothing. Or rather, everything, perfectly, without any errors. The operating system booted up, the anti-virus software checked everything out and had no complaints and I had instant access to a computer that had absolutely no problems other than it was a little slower than the machine I’m used to using at home.

Two things were occurred to me when everything lit up: 1) We live in a rich society that can throw out a high-performance piece of equipment like this with no regrets, and 2) people are very, very stupid about what they leave on their computers when they get rid of them.

What we have revealed in the course of setting up this computer to see how our web projects look on a Mac, we’ve found e-mail, photos, addresses, names, maps, instant message chat transcripts, about $1000-worth of music and a heck of a lot more. Holy moly, in the wrong hands, the teen girls who shared this machine could be in deep trouble.

So I beseech you donate your computers to needy causes, but before you do, make darn sure they’re clean. Deleting files isn’t enough. You need to make sure that stuff is gone before you give it away. I’ll explore a few ways to clean up your computer in this week’s blog postings. I’ll tell you what to remove from your computer, how to make sure it’s really clean, and how to donate it.

Make sure you subscribe in your news reader so you don’t miss anything.

Sometimes, you have to hate them. When your computer stops working, it’s their job to fix it, and pronto. Who can blame you for popping a few capillaries when you’re on hold for countless minutes or waiting for a response to an e-mail you sent last week? The poor wretches whose job it is to listen to your gripes are almost asking for it. Yep, when something’s gone wrong, there’s no better punching bag than the help desk.

I’m somewhere in the middle, because I provide support for Talance’s clients and also have to appeal to our own tech pros for help when I’m having issues myself. So I know what it’s like to start kicking trashcans because you’re not receiving the help you want and also when you’re not receiving the most illuminating questions from someone confounded by technology.

Thankfully, I adore our clients, and there’s never any animosity when they call for help. But that doesn’t mean I can’t hear the frustration. So I thought I’d offer up a few items you can keep in mind when it comes to working with your tech support person. (Note: this goes for the phone company, cable company, internet company, etc.)

Step 1: Take a deep breath

Preparing yourself with the right information before calling the help desk is certainly important, but of greater significance is remaining polite when you’re on the line. As frustrating as it can be to describe a problem you don’t understand, take some deep breaths, get a glass of water, do a couple neck rolls – do whatever it takes, just as long as you are calm when you pick up the phone.

Step 2: Check the cables

Things come unplugged and you might not know about it. If your monitor is black but the computer is humming along nicely, it could be disconnected. Save yourself – and the help desk tech – a load of agony by jiggling the cables to make sure they’re in place.

Step 3: Read the manual

Remember that you can eliminate most problems with a little forethought, thus avoiding the issue altogether. An effortless glance through the manual can end a lot of help desk frustration. You might be surprised that manuals exist for the equipment on your desk. Ask around to see if you can get a copy.

Step 4: Get the serial number

Assuming you’ve read through the manual and found nothing that can help with your problem, flip to the back of it and get the serial number of the product in question. This lets the help desk zero in on the right piece of equipment.

If you’re having problems with software, note what kind of computer you have (PC or Mac), what your operating system is, what kind of browser you’re using and what you were doing when the problem arose.

Step 5: Call the right number

Relax your help desk trigger finger for a minute and make sure you shouldn’t be calling the software maker instead. It works the other way around too. Many people don’t realize that if you bought a Dell computer, that company will provide support for the Microsoft Windows operating system. This is important because Dell tech support comes part and parcel with the computer, while you’ll have to pay for Microsoft’s help (and they don’t have a toll-free number either).

Step 6: Volunteer the correct information

The number one question to answer is, “Has this has ever worked?” Address that question first, then tell the support person what you were doing when the computer broke. With this information, he or she may determine the root of your problem before you even begin explaining it.

Remember, help desks are chronically understaffed. Understand there’s a human on the other end of the line, and they’re probably doing their best to help. Don’t be afraid to just call up when everything is running smoothly and say, “Thanks for all you do.”

[This is the third in a series about e-mail. Read earlier posts under the category e-mail.]

Emoticons, short for “emotion icons,” and also known as smileys, are punctuation combinations that can help soften an informal message. Here are some frequently used emoticons and their definitions. Use them in moderation; too many can make your messages look too doodled-on.

: ) happy

: ( unhappy

; ) wink, jest

: D laughing

: O shocked

: p giving the raspberries, poking out tongue

>: ( mad

: x lips sealed

<:-| dunce

:-\ unsure

[This is the third in a series about e-mail. Read earlier posts under the category e-mail.]

Here are a few easy tips for tidying up messy messages:

Check spelling and grammar before sending. Spell-check goes a long way toward making you sound smarter, but some people surprisingly don’t use it.

Don’t use all caps. I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not. Type the way books read. Otherwise you’ll look like you’re yelling. DON’T DO IT. See? It looks like I’m mad at you.

Don’t use all lower case. You’re not e.e. cummings. Properly capitalize.

Use a descriptive Subject line. Subject lines are summary lines. They should give a good indication of what’s to come. Still, I receive many messages that say things like, “Hi” or nothing at all. Write your message first, then come up with a good summary based on it to use in the Subject field.

Keep your temper. Don’t say anything in e-mail you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. You have to be so, so careful with e-mail. Take extra care not to sound snippy.

Overall, be selective in who you send messages to. If you’re not going to mail something to 150 people, then why would you e-mail it?

[This is the second in a series about e-mail. Read earlier posts under the category e-mail.]

It seems e-mail overload is inevitable as long as people reach for the sometimes sinister “cc” field. By including everyone in your address book, or even a handful of people who you might like to include in a discussion, you can create an overwhelming influx of mail. The cc field also has political issues. Some employees will include a higher up simply to make the main recipient look bad.

Here’s a simple rule to institute in your e-mail policy (your organization does have an e-mail policy, doesn’t it?): If someone needs to know something, then send it. But if it’s just nice to know, don’t cc it.

If you simply must forward a message, make sure it’s readable. This includes deleting all the irrelevant To and From fields and sending it in a usable format, even if it requires copying the contents of message attachments and pasting them into another.