KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for May 10, 2003

Page Zone - Solinas

I needed to find another web host for solinas.com. My provider was overpriced - $25 a month for an account. It was OK at the time, but prices have come down, diskspace has gone up, and my provider didn't keep competitive.

Page Zone had an account - same disk space (200 meg), more bandwidth, and a TON of extras for $20 LESS than I was paying ($4.95 a month). Need only 100 meg? They have an account for $3.48 a month. Same extras. A FEW of the coolest extras are:

It has a great control panel to make everything easy.

My real problem was I have 2 other websites active, and have ordered 2 more domains. I wanted to consolidate everything. I got a "reseller account": I can host 101 domains, I have 2 gig of disk space at my disposal, and I'm paying only $19.64 a month.

Support is great. I get quick email answers, there are forums, etc.

It's been easy to use, and I've had no problems accessing my sire or email.

At $3.48 a month, there's really no reason to use freebie accounts with annoying popups.

Check it out.

Research Buzz's Google Hacks - Solinas

I mentioned Research Buzz last week. While poking around their site, I found their Google Hacks.

The hacks are:

Fun stuff. Check it out.

BlowSearch - Charles in San Francisco

Charles in San Francisco found this nice metasearch engine.

From the site: " BlowSearch has been a concept that has started back in 1999 to only recently be realized. Our mission is to offer you a one-stop location for your entire search needs. No longer will you need to research several search engines. Simply use our engine, and let us pull data from top search engines across the Internet and provide you with a simple and concise report with all of your results.When you click on one of the results we open a new window for you to maintain your report so that if the first one you clicked on was not correct you can close that window and select another result quickly without wasting any time.We will consistently add more features and data to our engine to help improve results. We have purposefully kept the graphics small on our site so that the page loads fast; after all, you want data, not graphics."

Hits are very relevent.

Worth a bookmark. Thanks, Charles!

Melissa Data - BimrJim

BimrJim says: "Here is one I've been using all day. Tons of useful stuff. I've been using the "U.S. Addresses" to find the ZIP+4 for street addresses. It also shows area code, time zone, county, county demographics, House Representative and LOTS of info on them, etc. etc." There is also:

I checked out my ranch street address. Good information. I found campaign contributions (Individuals that have contributed $200 or more to federal campaigns by ZIP Code) information here (2 democrats, 1 republican). Searching my San Jose address gave many more hits - the owner of a local restaurant, name and address - plus the fact that he contributed to a certain congressman's election. Scary, really.

Well worth a browse. Check it out!

Jan's Illustrated Computer Literacy 101 - Paesano

Paesano found this introduction to computers site.

The site is written simply - language OK for school kids. It's a good introduction.

The site is also OK for adults - there are plenty of good links for the topics to keep adults interested.

Well worth a browse. Thanks, Paesano!

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.

MSGTAG - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve says: "Here's a MSGTAG update announcement clipped from the May MSGTAG Newsletter. I am using the free version and find it very useful.

From the newsletter: "MSGTAG 1.4.0 has recently been released, and boasts a much simplified installation and account setup process. We understand that the old installation and account setup process was very long and arduous indeed. It's an unknown but relatively amusing fact that for the past several months we've had screenshots of the entire process obscuring the view through several large office windows. We're pleased to announce that the new process will block only one window (much to the delight of many office inhabitants), and solves many problems users were having with the setup procedure. Incredimail users, in particular, will appreciate the new automatic importing of mail settings from Incredimail. If you're an Incredimail user and you've had difficulty getting MSGTAG to work, check that you have downloaded the latest version.

Msgtag features:

Now - Msgtag WILL change your email program settings, making it NECESSARY to run msgtag if you want to send email.

I got VERY messed up with this. I misunderstood the warning about exiting the program. I can't send email now. Uninstalling the program DID NOT restore my smtp servers, so I can't send email until I fix it manually.

THIS IS NOT FOR BEGINNING COMPUTER USERS!!

Still - you might like it. Try it if you know what you are doing, and really know your way around machines.

Font Paradise - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve found "Font Paradise - Your Source for FREE Fonts". Steve says: "Font Paradise is a very easy to use website with free fonts that are really, really free."

About Font Paradise (from the site): "Font Paradise was created because there was no site that presents fonts in an easily accessible way and allows people to avoid the extra work associated with font downloading, unzipping and installation. With our innovative ActiveFont technology, people can just click on a font they like and let their web browser download and install the selected font for them so they can start to use it immediately. Since many people don't even know how to install fonts, this technology allows everyone to add new fonts directly from our web site by just a click of the mouse."

"Our site contains only Windows TrueType fonts in ZIP archives that are completely free for personal, non-commercial use ... - no shareware or commercial fonts are found here. Many fonts that are available from the Internet may look free at first sight, but a lot of these are actually distributed as shareware, that means they are free for testing, but if you want to use them in your designs/documents, the author wants to get some money (so read the text files that come with fonts you have downloaded elsewhere)."

Font categories are:

Each category has LOTS of fonts.

You can preview the fonts, then download the ones you want, or install them directly.

Great stuff. Thanks, Steve!

Math Mistakes Website - Ron in San Bruno

Ron in San Bruno says this about the "Math Mistakes Website": "The homepage of this site says it all: 'A site dedicated to the listing of mathematical mistakes made over and over by advertisers, the media, reporters, politicians, activists, and in general many non-math people.'."

"Inside is a collection of information about common math related errors we commonly see every day. The glossary of mathematical mistakes categorizes a number of common errors giving them names: 'Conspiratorial Coincidence'--the source of most conspiracies (like the similarities between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations), 'Gambler's Ruin'--why the house always wins, 'Looks Like' Geometry--the tendency to find significance in insignificant geometric patterns (remember the picture of Mars that looked like a face?), etc."

"Each month there is an essay on the Mistake of the Month with an archive of articles back to 1998. For example - one topic, Spam Wars, is about the e-mail plague we are all familiar with. In includes reviews of several anti-spam filter programs with an optional discussion about applying Bayesian statistics to the problem."

"There are also collections of news stories (with math errors in them) and links to other interesting sites."

Fun stuff! Thanks, Ron!

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This page, and all contents, are Copyright (C) 2003 by Michael A. Solinas.