Dave McManus checks out a service which gives helpful details if you're on the move

I found a really interesting site that will be of use to anybody moving to a new area or simply curious to learn more about where they live. At www.upmystreet.com you simply enter a UK postcode to receive bundles of extremely useful and interesting information about the area around it.

As well as property prices (which are then compared with country averages), there is important information about local schools, crime figures, council performances and tax levels etc. It's even tied-in with a directory listing of local services in the area, telling you exactly how far it is to the nearest pubs and pizza takeaways - essential information if you're planning to relocate.

It's an excellent example of how relatively simple ideas, brought together into one area of the Web, can be truly invaluable.

If you're part of a local club, society or charity set-up and you've often fancied the idea of having your own Web site but never really managed to do it, you could do a lot worse than visit www.communigate. co.uk/oxford. Communigate gives non-profit making organisations the opportunity to build and maintain their own sites with little or no technical know-how.

By merely filling out a few simple online forms, you can have your free community-based site up and running in next to no time.

The great advantage of forming one of these sites is that Communigate is divided into organisation types, so you will 'virtually' share your platform with others who have similar interests to you.

There's an understandable tendency towards suspicion with these types of ventures as it's sometimes hard to believe that the service is 100 per cent free - but it is!

Whether you're interested in starting your own community site, or you simply want to find like-minded groups or individuals, get over to www.communigate.co.uk and join in the fun.

This is a tip I featured a long while ago, but it proved very popular at the time and I've had several requests to re-run it. Does that whizzing and whining sound your PC chucks out at you whenever you dial up to the Internet irritate you?

This is actually the sound of your computer sending important information to your Internet Service Provider before you can log on, but I don't know why somebody thought it would be a good idea to subject us to the sound of 100 tortured cats just because we want to check our e-mail.

Go into Control Panel on your PC and open the 'Modems' option. From here, you should see your modem listed and three buttons underneath it. Click the 'Properties' button, then select the 'Connection' tab on the next box that appears.

If you're still keeping up, there will be a button named 'Advanced' on the Connection settings box and you need to click it (scary stuff, eh?).

This final box has a blank text field called 'Extra settings'. In there, type m0 (that's a letter 'm' and the number zero). Click OK to exit and enjoy peaceful dial-ups for ever more.