Maybe the nicest feature of the Google toolbar is the AutoFill button that fills in forms for you. It causes fields in forms to turn yellow if it can fill them in for you. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work. But it is a tremendous time saver.
The enhanced search box allows you to search Google Images (for pictures) or Froogle where you can find the best deals on anything you want to buy. You can also search Google Maps, Google Groups and your bookmarks (the ones you store on Google with the Bookmark Button). While you could do most of this searching on the Google.com page, this avoids going there and so is quicker.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, April 27, 2007
Google Toolbar Part I
By now, everyone should have the Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com. This is an add-on to Internet Explorer or Firefox that is really hard to live without. It has dozens of features and buttons you can add to do whatever you want. Besides the obligatory enhanced Google Search box, some of my favorites are the Search on This Page button, the Up button (which takes you one level higher in the webpage you’re on), the star button (Bookmark This Page), the News button and the Dictionary (tfd.com) button. Bookmarking here means that Google keeps track of your bookmarks so that you can share them on different computers. The News button takes you to the Google News page http://news.google.com/ which continuously browses 4,500 news sources and is sure to feed any news junkie’s addiction. There, you can customize the page to find stories of interest to you. And Google will keep track of the ones you read to suggest ones you might like.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Straight Dope
The brightest spot in my in-box each Friday is my copy of The Straight Dope. This free email consists of three stories from the nationally-known newspaper column (which has been reprinted in six books). There is one new question-and-answer and two "classics". The topics range from the arcane to the insane and are dealt with in a genuinely witty manner. They include urban legends, science, history and general head-scratching queries from "the teeming millions" to Cecil Adams (a pseudonym) who answers with wisecracks and research. His website http://www.straightdope.com/ says "fighting ignorance since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)". To subscribe go to that site and scroll down to the large heading "Join the Straight Dope Mailing List" and follow the directions there.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Google Voice Local Search
OK this is just about the coolest thing to surface in a long time. It’s free, it’s from Google and it will save you time, money and hassle. It’s called by the unwieldy name of Google Voice Local Search and here’s how it works. You dial 1 800 466-4411 (or 1-800 GOOG 411) and it asks you for your city and state (in the US). You say “Toledo, Ohio” (or wherever) and it says it back to you. Then it asks for the business (or type of business), you answer and it gives you a short list of businesses that match in or near Toledo.
If number 3 on the list interests you, you say “number 3” and it gives more details. You can ask for still more details and it will give you the phone number. If you want, it will connect you to the business for free. Oh, and it can send the details to your phone as a text message. The way I figure it, you can put this phone number in your cell phone, or carry around the Yellow Pages. See more info here: http://labs.google.com/goog411/
I tried it and it worked perfectly. Well, the results were not sorted geographically, so of three hits, the one I wanted was number three even though it was much closer than the other two. But there is no training it to recognize my voice, yet it understood me perfectly. This is going to be huge.
If number 3 on the list interests you, you say “number 3” and it gives more details. You can ask for still more details and it will give you the phone number. If you want, it will connect you to the business for free. Oh, and it can send the details to your phone as a text message. The way I figure it, you can put this phone number in your cell phone, or carry around the Yellow Pages. See more info here: http://labs.google.com/goog411/
I tried it and it worked perfectly. Well, the results were not sorted geographically, so of three hits, the one I wanted was number three even though it was much closer than the other two. But there is no training it to recognize my voice, yet it understood me perfectly. This is going to be huge.
America's Digital Goddess
What could be better than a smart, beautiful girl that sends you emails every day with helpful stuff? Kim Komando is the “digital goddess” and she sends me (and a few thousand others of her closest friends) a tip every day. And a “cool site” – an internet site worth checking out. And the “news of the day” which is always interesting. Go to http://www.komando.com/ and click on Free Newsletters.
Hot Deals
I got a new color TV for $65, a $5 flash drive, a $5 web cam, a 250GB hard drive for $50 and lots of other great deals including a digital camera, a computer monitor and even free stuff. This is new merchandise from well-known vendors. The site is www.hotdlz.com and it is wonderful. It is updated about once an hour (during the day) so there’s always something cool and cheap there. Of course the site is free. Often the deals go really fast, so this is the place to be to find the coolest stuff.
Gmail
Why do I want a Gmail http://gmail.google.com account, you ask? Because:
Plus there are lots of other features like filtering and the way large pictures sent to you appear as thumbnails (which you can then download or view on line in full size). This is great for people with a dial-up connection. If you want to forward a large picture of your grandchild to someone, you can do it without waiting minutes for the picture to move through your modem. Once it’s in your Gmail account, you can forward a large attachment directly from Google’s server to your brother-in-law’s email account.
There are a few down-sides. Attachments are limited to 20 MB (plenty big enough for any MP3 or a very large photo) and executable files are not permitted (but you can simply rename and send them). Since it's web-based, if you can't get on-line, you can't do anything with Gmail. People initially objected to Google’s software “reading” your email and displaying ads with it that matched what the email was about. So if you tell your mother about your new car, a car ad might appear in the margin. If it upsets you, don’t use Gmail, but I don’t view this as an invasion of my privacy. It also works with Google Talk.
- It’s free
- You can keep up to 3 Gigabytes (that’s 3,000 megabytes) of mail there
- Built-in spam blocking, virus protection, spell checking, and search (and Google knows search)
- You can read and send personal email from any computer on the internet.
Plus there are lots of other features like filtering and the way large pictures sent to you appear as thumbnails (which you can then download or view on line in full size). This is great for people with a dial-up connection. If you want to forward a large picture of your grandchild to someone, you can do it without waiting minutes for the picture to move through your modem. Once it’s in your Gmail account, you can forward a large attachment directly from Google’s server to your brother-in-law’s email account.
There are a few down-sides. Attachments are limited to 20 MB (plenty big enough for any MP3 or a very large photo) and executable files are not permitted (but you can simply rename and send them). Since it's web-based, if you can't get on-line, you can't do anything with Gmail. People initially objected to Google’s software “reading” your email and displaying ads with it that matched what the email was about. So if you tell your mother about your new car, a car ad might appear in the margin. If it upsets you, don’t use Gmail, but I don’t view this as an invasion of my privacy. It also works with Google Talk.
How interesting is that?
Want to read something that is damn interesting? Go to (you guessed it) http://www.damninteresting.com/ where you’ll find true and fascinating stories about research into invisibility, super guns, a horse that “did” arithmetic, “cargo cults” that worship US military planes that dropped cargo in WWII and hours and hours of fascinating stuff. This site is updated several times each week. And it really is interesting.
Monday, April 23, 2007
The Best Dictionary Ever
The Free Dictionary www.tfd.com is my favorite reference tool on-line or in print. This is a great site because, besides the usual dictionary features, it has both printed and audio pronunciation help, lots of helpful links and 9 actual dictionaries. The first is the usual English language dictionary/thesaurus and I like it because the definitions I've found tell me what I want to know. How often have you looked up a word and been presented with a definition that wasn't at all what you were looking for?
Should something like that happen here, most likely one of the other eight sections have what you want. These include the following specialty dictionaries: Computer, Medical, Legal and Financial. There are lists of acronyms and idioms and two encyclopedias: Columbia and Wikipedia.
You can even add this site to your Google toolbar so no matter where you are on the web, any word can be defined by a few quick clicks.
Should something like that happen here, most likely one of the other eight sections have what you want. These include the following specialty dictionaries: Computer, Medical, Legal and Financial. There are lists of acronyms and idioms and two encyclopedias: Columbia and Wikipedia.
You can even add this site to your Google toolbar so no matter where you are on the web, any word can be defined by a few quick clicks.
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