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The two winners in the .TXT Video Challenge No. 23 are Kevin Benson of Spokane and Deanna Dudley of Sagle, Idaho.

Benson was the online winner and Dudley was the offline winner. The challenge: how many times was the U.S. flag represented in a recent Yahoo video created by Sagle resident Dennis Coates?

The answer: seven times.

Jargon 2.0: (n.) upstream.

In networking, the closer one’s computer is to a Web backbone —the main data trunks through which all long-distance Internet traffic travels — the more upstream that machine is.

A small ISP that connects to the Internet through a larger ISP that has its own connection to the backbone is downstream from the larger ISP, and the larger ISP is upstream from the smaller ISP.

 

How do I … snipe auctions online?

Sniping refers to using computer programs that automatically place a bid for you at a site such as eBay. They are popular because you can set the snipe to take place at the very close of an auction, thus grabbing an item from someone else who is simply watching the close of the auction, and who won’t have enough time to outbid the sniper.

Your computer doesn’t even have to be turned on, since many sniping tools are set at a Web site that does the work for you. Three effective options are Snip, eSnipe and Bidrobot.

 

Web count: The Web site Jigsaw.com, which is a popular way to find e-mail or phone numbers of people in business, has more than 2,300 names of Spokane-area business folks (most of them in the central city). The company or group here with the largest number of Jigsaw entries is Spokane’s office of the Bonneville Power Administration. Jigsaw lists 103 BPA contacts – but not all are likely to be current.

 

Security Watch: You may have heard about the infamous DNS vulnerability, the discovery that the original design for the Web’s Domain Name System was flawed and open to hacking. Many systems and ISPs have added the patch to fix that hole. But not all. To check if your ISP is vulnerable, try the TEST MY DNS button at https://www.dns- oarc.net/. A recent media story said only slightly more than 55 percent of all DNS servers have added the patch.

 

Smart Search: Former Googler Anna Patterson has launched a competitor to the Google search engine. It’s called Cuil (pronounced cool). Patterson claims Cuil offers a much wider range of Web pages to search, no tracking of a person’s search history and a more attractive page for results. See it at cuil.com.