It's easy and fun to post photos from cell phones and digital cameras to social networking sites...and maybe a little dangerous. Dangerous?

Believe it or not, thieves can figure out where someone lives from personal photos. How? Geo-Tags.

Some digital devices can add geographical information to images using GPS technology. The latitude, longitude, and even elevation can be embedded in the picture's details. For you, geo-tags are handy because they help you sort and find photos based on where you snapped the original picture.

But by examining this same information in online photos, thieves or other snoops can target in on the embedded location. If images happen to show cool stuff like expensive holiday gifts, the bad guys even know how worthwhile a target you are.

How can you protect yourself? Ultimately you need to decide how big of a risk this is for you. And some social media websites automatically remove geo-tags. Many current digital devices have a camera settings option to turn off geo-tagging. If you've already taken the picture, there are several free programs to remove the tags before you upload them to the web.

Do you need to find specific places in a document? Do you collaborate with others on documents and struggle to be in the same place at the same time during a conference? Understanding the Status Bar along the bottom of the Word window can help you find an exact location and access other useful information.

Word 2010 (default view)

Tools are displayed on the right side of the Status Bar; the left side shows the number of pages and words.

Individual line, word, and section information may be viewed by customizing the bar. To do so, right click in a blank space on the Status Bar, and check the tools you want to display in the Customize Status Bar window. (Word 2010 has new choices relating to number of authors, uploads, and updates.)

 2007 (customized)

Labels show information about the page on the screen and the location of the cursor. Examples:

Section: A simple document has one section, regardless of pages. When special page breaks, column breaks, etc. are added, the number of sections increases. Placement of the cursor determines the section number that displays. (For example, Section: 2 of 3.)

At: The number of inches down from the top of the page, header included.

Line: Counts from the first to the last line on each page.

Column: Each character is in its own column and line. Pressing tab starts a new column, therefore a line with several tab stops will have more columns than a line with just text and spaces. Font size also influences the number of columns in a line.

Words: Total number in the document. Selecting a range of text displays how many words are highlighted plus the total in the document. Example: 55/222 (55 words selected of 222 in the document).

Depending on the choices you make when customizing the Status Bar, you will see other features. For example, Caps Lock displays when it is turned on. In the image below, Caps Lock would display between Track Changes and Insert.