KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for October 28, 2006

Google Co-op - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve found Google Co-op - a free custom tool that allow you easily create a custom search engine.

You give it a name, some search terms (to refine the rankings), and specify a list of sites. You can tell it to search only those sites, or the entire web (and emphasize the listed sites).

You specify whether or not how you collaborate the search with others (whether anyone can constribute, or if an invitation from you is necessary).

Check it out!

Wheel Mouse Tricks - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve says: "Ever wonder what happens when you hold down the Shift key on a web page and spin the wheel on your wheel mouse? Or how about a combination of Ctrl key and mouse wheel? With abated breath and giddy anticipation I dared to try these combinations with interesting results. And now you too can know their true power by click here."

Shift and spin goes foward and back for web page navigation.

Control and spin will zoom text larger or smaller.

I didn't know the mouse worked like this. I'll use it often.

Thanks, Steve!

How to get your lost USB drive back - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve found this site that may help you get your USB drive back if you lose it.

"Have you ever considered how you would get your thumbdrive back if you lost it? For most flash drive users it?s probably not he drive you worry about, but the data on the drive."

The site "Daily Cup of Tech" talks you through creating an auto run program that fires up when you insert the drive in a computer. It'll display a program name like "If Found, Run this". The resulting program gives more detail about how to return the drive to you.

Steve says: "The instructions may seem complex, but to make it easy, you can download the files (LostDrive.zip)--the download link is in the last paragraph of the Daily Cup of Tech article."

Worth trying. Thanks, Steve!

Firefox Extension: IE Tab - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve fan IE Tab.

IE Tab is a firefox extension that lets you view IE only pages as a tab in Firefox. Think of it like this - it opens a Firefox tab that contains the IE view of a site.

How IE like is it? Folks have installed Windows Updates, using it on Firefox.

You can specify that certain sites always open in an IE window - quite handy.

Check it out. Thanks, Steve!

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.

Flying Toasters Screensaver - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve heard about this screensaver from our friend Leo Laporte.

I loved the Flying Toasters screen saver - "the classic flying toasters screensaver raised from the ashes, recompiled, and redistributed for your own personal use. Download the retrotastic Flying Toasters screensaver for Mac or PC - FREE!

Steve says: "Thanks to Leo Laporte for the tip. Thanks for the memories".

Defrag - Dyno Don

Dyno Don says: "This from Fred Langa - a free defrag utility."

"I've tried this and it works. My "benchmark" on this stuff is how fast my Quicken data file loads. (It's big.) After Quicken loads the last thing that happens is a progress bar pops up showing the loading of the data file. Before running this defrag I could watch the progress bar not unlike a download progress bar. It was quick but you could watch it. After running the utility the progress bar is almost not there, it's just a flash and the data file is open. A very noticeable improvement."

"This is free. Their other programs are shareware."

"I've run W2K's defrag and noticed no deference."

Thanks, Don!

Pando - Dudley

Dudley sent me a large audio file using Pando.

If you need to get a large file to a a group of family members or friends, how do you do it? Say you have several concerns:

some people on your list are not very technical
you have a slow connection - or some of the other users do
you're online at different times
the data is sensitive, so you'd like encryption

Pando takes care of all of this.

Pando is a program you run on your PC, and it works like this:

Files sent - You select files and/or folders, enter recipient(s) email address(es) and click "send". A copy of the files immediately starts uploading to Pando's secure servers where they are stored for 14 days.
Email received - At the same time, an email containing a small (~10K) .pando attachment is sent to your recipient(s). The .pando attachment contains data about the location of your files.
Files delivered - Recipient(s) open the .pando file to start a direct p2p transfer from your machine, Pando's servers and other recipients. All transfers are encrypted end-to-end.

This is VERY handy.

Very nice find - thanks, Dudley!