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By Brian Livingston

For many moons, I've wanted to hold a series of free seminars for Windows Secrets readers in various cities of the world.

I don't really have an entire series worked out yet, but I'm doing kind of a trial run by offering a meeting with newsletter subscribers on June 15 in a single city: Hong Kong.

As you may remember, we gave four lucky readers in 2007 a Fred Langa Housecall — a one-on-one free seminar with our former editor, who wanted to discover the breadth of North America on his motorcycle before retiring from computer writing. We used the locale (country and postal code) that our subscribers had entered on their Windows Secrets preferences page to help decide where on his U.S. and Canada tour Fred would stop.

This year, if I held a free seminar in, say, Manhattan, I don't know whether 10 or 10,000 readers would show up. So I've decided to start small in Hong Kong, a place where we have only about 200 subscribers.

Meeting with Brian Livingston
Sunday, June 15, 2008, 2:00–3:30 p.m.
Excelsior Hotel
281 Gloucester Road (near Causeway Bay metro station)
Hong Kong, PRC
Business Center, 33rd Floor, room number to be announced
(photo courtesy of the Excelsior)

If this little beta test works out, I hope to arrange meetings in future months in California, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, and elsewhere. Let's see how this first one goes.

As a seminar, my June 15 meeting is more like a "listening tour." There won't be any PowerPoint slides and I'm not selling any products or services. My goal is to learn from Windows Secrets subscribers how they use Microsoft's operating system and how we can give you better information. It'll just be me and a few readers, talking.

Considering that Hong Kong can be an expensive place, the Excelsior has offered us a private meeting room at a nominal rate. To guarantee an accurate count, Windows Secrets is collecting for pre-registration just $9 U.S. (about 70 Hong Kong dollars) per person, which is our cost for the tables, chairs, etc.

Yes, I'm sure if I actually knew a soul on the island, I could probably find something cheaper. If I can make future seminars truly free, I will.

Space is limited, and only Windows Secrets Newsletter subscribers may register. (Of course, anyone may subscribe for free to become eligible.) To let me know you're coming, use the following link by 5 p.m. June 10 Pacific Time/8 a.m. June 11 Hong Kong Time:

Use this link to pre-register

Would you like Windows Secrets to hold a free seminar near you one of these days? Be sure your country and ZIP/postal code are correct in your WS preferences, so we can make plans. Visit your preferences page

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Meet Becky Waring, our newest columnist

This week's newsletter marks the arrival of a new columnist with more than 20 years of experience as a tech writer and editor. Becky Waring will alternate with Scott Spanbauer in writing the Best Software column in our paid content.

Becky has been a frequent contributor to PC World, CNET, USAToday.com, Macworld Magazine, and many other tech publications and Web sites. From 2003 until just a couple of months ago, Becky was executive editor of JiWire.com, a leading Wi-Fi directory service. She also served as editor of New Media magazine.

In the Best Software column, Becky will put new freeware, shareware, and Web services to the test. This week, she tackles file-transfer services and identifies two that are a cut above the competition. As you'll soon learn from reading her reviews, Becky has a real knack for finding a program's best and worst features. I know you'll enjoy her work.

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By Scott Dunn The "Safe HTML" filter in Microsoft's Outlook Web Access for Exchange Server deletes code from HTML attachments without warning. Microsoft claims the filtering protects users by removing malicious elements, but the deletions can ruin a collaborative project and the "feature" isn't present in any other Microsoft mail products.

• "The filtering in Outlook Web Access for Exchange Server 2003 is more rigorous than the filtering in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. The reason is that the Outlook Web Access browser interface has more security requirements than the Outlook 2003 interface."
  

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Get your product seen by 275,000 readers Does your company offer a product or service? Now you can place an ad in the Windows Secrets Newsletter and be seen by more than 275,000 active buyers of PC hardware and software. Bid as much or as little as you like to get the ideal ad placement. Windows Secrets Newsletter

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By Susan Bradley The growing list of XP SP3-related glitches being encountered by users should give pause to anyone thinking of downloading and installing the update. If you've kept XP patched from week to week, there's presently no clear advantage to implementing the OS's latest service pack, though you'll want to do so eventually.

• US Support
  
• Canada Support
  
• UK Support
  
• AU Support
  
• Other Locations
  

• "Threatfire caused problems for me. Crashed during the update, but I was able to uninstall it. Tried again without Threatfire and [XP SP3] installed fine. However, when I reinstalled Threatfire, Explorer and Firefox would crash after working for a few minutes, taking the system down and requiring physically pulling the power cord."
  

• "I attempted to install SP3 on a Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop with XP Media Center. Four install [attempts] failed on a fully updated XP SP2. No new software was installed previous to the update, disabled AVG antivirus and Zone Alarm."
  

• "At home, Word would only open part way and no documents could be retrieved. I fought it for a week and finally bought Office 2003, which I had planned to do some time this summer anyway. [I] removed Office 2000, installed Office 2003, and all works fine.
  
  "At work, IE 7 won't close and locks everything up. The only way around it is to minimize [the program] and close down. Task Manager has been no help, as it shows IE is not running when the screen shows a partial image or full page but [is] locked up. I haven't found an answer for that yet."
  

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As exciting television goes, spelling bees aren't more than a notch or two above watching Congressional debates on CSPAN. They may lack the grimaces of mixed-martial-arts contestants, but in recent years the pre-teen contestants of the Scripps National Spelling Bee have supplied some high-level drama — and hilarious bloopers. This year, the 13-year-old champion Sameer Mishra shows just how important it is to ask the word's language of origin. "Can you use that in sentence please?" Play the video

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