KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for May 3, 2003

Santa Rosa Steve says: "UPI (United Press International) now has a photo search engine online. This site offers search of 100,000 photos, with more being added at a rate of about 1200 a month."

Search is by simple keyword, with an additional option available for date searching. A search for "wolf" found 197 results, with results including a thumbnail of the picture and an excerpt of the story relevant to the picture. Click on the picture and you'll get additional information on the picture (date, photographer, location, format) as well as news text relevant to the picture. Note however that you will not be able to see a larger version of the picture without a NewsCom account. ...""

Steve found this on ResearchBuzz News.

Google Indicateur - Andantino

Andantino says: "This is a directory of Google things might be useful for Webmasters. It's another ResearchBuzz.com find."

"Here you'll find a searchable subject index... Categories include Google Optimization, Google Tools, Patents, Statistics, and White Papers. There are a variety of subcategories available as well. Annotation is brief but it gets the point across."

All about Google ( 39 ): Corporate information, Google Labs, Google Technology
Google Dance ( 8 ): Google dance definitions, Google dance tools
Google Optimization ( 17 ): Add your site, Advertise with Google, Optimize your pagerank
Google Patents ( 5 ): Issued Patents, Patent applications
Google Tools ( 36 ): Google API, Alert tools, More tools...
Google White Papers ( 12 ): About crawling, About PageRank, Other research articles
News & Information ( 44 ): Google resources sites, Weblogs, Forums
Searching with Google ( 22 ): Search by content, Search by country, Specific Google
Statistics ( 4 ): Index database, Market shares, Zeitgeist
The World of Google ( 30 ): Fan sites, Protesting sites, Funny Google

Lots of interesting stuff for us web-heads. Check some of it out!

Thanks, Andantino!

Research Buzz - Solinas

For quite a while, listeners have been grabbing good stuff from the Research Buzz mailing list. Just this week, the first 2 items I mentioned were found on Research Buzz.

So - I checked out Resarch Buzz itself. Research Buzz has great links. Everything looks pretty cool, and I find most pretty interesting. The stuff I'm not interested in should be interesting to others.

Research Buzz adds a few links every day. You don't have to keep checking the site, because you can subscribe to the newsletter.

I get 300 - 400 emails a day. The last thing I need is more email. Still - I subscribed to this service. The links are that good.

Archaic Apples - Charles in San Francisco

Charles in San Francisco found this interesting MAC site.

From the site: "Archaic Apples was founded in August of 1997. It's primary purpose back then was to host HTML versions of David T. Craig's excellent Lisa Retrospective. Over time it has seen a number of site designs, and it's purpose has morphed into a variety of different things. Presently, it's more of a dumping ground for things I find interesting and items that are hard to find. No longer is it exclusive to Apple as you will find information about BeOS, NeXT, Xerox, and others. However it's primary focus has been, and will continue to be about Apple Computer, Inc. "

The site also says: "Archaic Apples strives to be the largest site on the web regarding Apple's history. Ranging from the Apple I computer of 1976, all the way through the Macintosh SE of 1988, if Apple made it, we hope to cover it!"

You'll find lots of stuff, depending on the machine. For the Apple ][:

Emulators (1 entries)
Hardware Notes (199 entries)
Manuals (2 entries)
Papers (1 entries)
Pascal (15 entries)
Pictures (12 entries)
ROM Images (1 entries)
Technical Info Library (408 entries)

As luck would have it, although the site worked fine yesterday, it's having DNS trouble today. Charles in San Francisco noticed this, and sent me a warning and a tip - that the site http://germany.archaic-apples.com works fine. Use it until the other comes back up.

Thanks Charles - for the site and tip.

MS Word MVP FAQ Site - Ranman

Ranman says: "Long time no submit but I just had to forward this one to you. I found this site the other night while working on a problem with Microsoft Word 2000 crashing on a clients machine while opening and tearing my hair out for a solution."

This site is published by a group of techs that specialize in MS Word all versions. It is an invaluable source of troubleshooting resources, links, downloads and information related to mostly Word but provides some help with other Office applications as the relate to Word.

As the contributors define it "This site is a repository for Frequently Asked Questions pertaining to Microsoft Word. It is maintained by the Microsoft Word MVPs. In the various support areas to which the MVPs contribute, there has been an outcry for a central location of FAQs, tutorials, samples, etc. This site is the answer to those requests. We hope you find it useful.". An absolute bookmark for users, techs and anyone else who uses Word. Hope you enjoy it."

The site is well organized:

Frequently asked questions (We hope you find it easy to find your way around the FAQs section – or you can go straight to the “Search” page to find the article you need.)
Posting to the newsgroups (If you have any questions about Word or Word VBA that aren't answered on this site, please post them to the newsgroups which the Find Help section links to – you'll get great support there! For “newsgroup newbies”, have a look at the “Find Help” section for tips on using the newsgroups, including information about newsgroup netiquette.)
Jargon (BTW, and FWIW, you'll also find a list of definitions of newsgroup jargon in the Find Help Section – HTH!)
Tutorials(Those FAQs which are really tutorials are listed in this section as well as in the FAQs section. There are also links to a host of useful articles from other sites; to on-line books and book reviews; and you'll also find book recommendation from some of the Word MVPs.)
What's new (Keep up with the content which has been added since your last visit.)
Word versions (Unless otherwise stated all articles apply equally to Word 97 and above. Earlier versions of Word, although adequate for many people's needs, are no longer widely used; so it would not be an effective use of our time to cover them specifically.)

Absolutely worth a bookmark for Word users. Check it out.

Thanks, Ranman!

Free For All!

"Free For All" picks are hot, FREE items or services. It can be software, online services, you name it - but it's got to be free, with no strings attached.

Clarify Button - Andantino

Andantino says: "Ever been annoyed by Web page design that puts dark text on a dark background or covers the page with fluttering butterflies or some other annoyance? This little tool makes Web surfing less annoying.

"This is an Internet Explorer toolbar button implementing a Clarify command. The Clarify command renders hard-to-read web pages more visually accessible."

I installed it. Within a few hours, during my normal wanderings, I found 4 sites which were hard to read - yellow text on black, background images, etc. I hit the clarify button in the toolbar - and saw black text on white. VERY easy to read.

Want to see the original? Just refresh the page.

I'm sure I'll use this one a LOT. It's a great tool.

Thanks, Andantino!

PC INSPECTOR File Recovery - Sergeant Gadgets

Sergeant Gadgets says: "I had to share this with you! After a disastrous inadvertent erasure of my entire e-mail store (over 3000 personal AND business e-mails lost!) I Got help from Dave Guess, who goes by "Majik". His specialty is Outlook Express and related problems, quirks, etc. and his web site, under construction but useable, is at http://www.mindspring.com/~majik/.

During the recovery process I ran across "PC Inspector", a free file and data recovery program out of Germany. Using it, I was able to recover most of my deleted mail. I fear that which was lost was due to my inexperience with the program.

I heartily recommend having this tool in the "Emergency tool box" for data recover! The program is available for free download at: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm"

Finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged (does not work with the NTFS file system)
Recovers files with the original time and date stamp
Supports the saving of recovered files on network drives
Recovers files, even when a header entry is no longer available. Competition products cannot recover such files. The "Special Recovery Function" supports the following disk formats: ARJ AVI BMP CDR DOC DXF DBF XLS EXE GIF HLP HTML HTM JPG LZH MID MOV MP3 PDF PNG RTF TAR TIF WAV ZIP.

Cool utility. Thanks, Sergeant Gadgets!

SpywareBlaster - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve submitted SpywareBlaster for Windows 9x/ME/NT4/2000/XP.

From the SpywareBlaster web page: "SpywareBlaster doesn't scan and clean for spyware - it prevents it from ever being installed."

"By setting a 'kill bit' for spyware ActiveX controls, SpywareBlaster can prevent the installation of any spyware ActiveX controls from a webpage. It does this while not interfering with 'friendly' ActiveX controls - so your browser can work correctly and you can have piece of mind!"

"You won't get any more annoying 'Yes/No' boxes popped up, asking you to install a spyware ActiveX control (which can increasingly be found in pop-up ads!). In fact, Internet Explorer will never even download or run the spyware ActiveX control!"

"In addition, SpywareBlaster can prevent many of these spyware ActiveX controls from running, even if they are already installed on your system.* ..."

"... The SpywareBlaster database contains information on these known spyware Active-X controls. Make sure you run the Check For Updates feature frequently to get the latest database! ..."

Requires: Visual Basic runtimes--you probably have them already. If not, there's a download link on the SpywareBlaster web page.

Sounds good to me--hope it blocks Gator and Xupier!

Great stuff - thanks, Steve!