KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for November 11, 2006

Top 20 Tips for Keeping Windows XP Fresh - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve found "TOP 20 TIPS FOR KEEPING WINDOWS XP FRESH".

Steve says: "Vista may be on the way, but XP hasn't outlived its usefulness. These tips will help you keep the older operating system vibrant. We don't want stale Windows!"

I was probably the last person on the planet to leave Win98. I'll probably hold off on Vista for a ver long time. These tips will be a great help - hopefuly you'll find them useful as well.

From the site: "Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system is almost here, but do you really need it? If you don't yet feel the need to invest in a new OS, or if your hardware doesn't meet Vista standards, you'll find that a regular maintenance regimen--along with an occasional checkup--will keep XP rolling along for years to come. In fact, a few simple tweaks can tip the scales in favor of keeping XP around while early-adoption pioneers work the bugs out of Vista."

"These 20 tips will keep your XP system lean and mean by tuning its performance, minimizing some of its bells and whistles, and tweaking the six-year-old OS to bring it up to speed with more recent applications, such as media playback and wireless networking."

Tips include strategies to clean up your system, set up automatic maintenance (cleaning out files, etc), managing large directories of media files, etc.

Thanks, Steve!

Windows Run Commands - Dan in Vancouver, Washington

Dan in Vancouver, Washington found this page of 112 Windows Run Commands.

Sure, you know to get a dos prompt, you click: "Start...Run...cmd".

If you had network troubles at work, you might have been talked through a "Start...Run...ipconfig (something).

Here's 110 others, including stuff like:

add/remove programs
open your fonts folder
on screen keyboard (did you know there was one there?)
launch notepad and wordpad
launch the calculator

If you're a keyboard shortcut type of person, you'll probably love some of these.

Cheeck it out.

Thanks, Dan!

History of Search Engines: From 1945 to Google 2006 - Dan in Vancouver, Washington

Dan in Vancouver, Washington found this one.

The History of Search Engines give a good historical overview:

Scientist Vannaver Bush, back in 1945, expressed the need for collecting massive amounts of data, with indexes to locate things.
Gerard Salton, the father of modern search technology
Archie, Veronica, and Jughead
bots
all of the "modern" search engines

I found it an interesting read. The world's first robot was called "World Wide Web Wanderer" (no relation).

Interesting read for techies. Check it out.

Thanks, Dan!

Book Mooch - Solinas/Marylaine

I found this on Marylaine's email list.

Bookmooch is an online book trading community. Basically, you create an account and...

type in teh books you want to give away
receive requests from others for your books
mail your books and receive points
ask for books from others with your points

I wondered how good the selection of books was. I mean - you get what you pay for, right? Wrong! The books were outstanding - multiple copies of books by my favorite authors.

This looks great for read-a-holics. Check it out.

Jay Leno's Garage - Solinas

Take a trip into Jay Leno's garage.

the garage (17,000 square feet, a quarter of that space is taken up by the machine shop)
the cars (everything from a 1906 Baker electric car and a 1906 Stanley Steamer to a2006 Corvette. The collection also has a number of rare cars, such as a Monteverde, a Bugatti Atlantic, and a turbine motorcycle)
articles
videos

This is a fun site - check it out!

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.

Googlepedia - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve calls Googlepedia his favirute firefox extension, ever.

He says: "I found an extension called Googlepedia that I think is the best thing since the advent of Google and HDTV. Search for something in Google and with Googlepedia you'll not only get the Google result but the Wikipedia result as well."

Some features:

Turns internal Wikipedia links into Google search links
Uses Google's I'm Feeling Lucky(tm) feature to find relevant articles
Links images directly to their full-sized versions
Removes Google AdWords
Can be expanded to take the full width of the page
Uses your local language Wikipedia based on the Google language
Hide button to disable Googlepedia

Very nice - check it out.

Thanks, Steve!

Tarsier - Screensaver Toggle for Windows - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve Found Tarsier. He says: "I've used tarsier for several years with both Windows 98 and XP. It runs as an icon in the system tray and uses little system resources. Handy when you want to temporarily disable the screensaver for video processing, CD burning etc. Description below.

tarsier v1.3 - Screensaver Toggle for Windows: "Tiny application allows you to quickly enable/disable, or activate your screen saver. Tarsier will display a blue plus sign in the system tray if the screensaver is currently activated, otherwise it will display a red minus sign. to toggle the activation status, simply click on the icon. to start your screensaver immediately regardless of whether it is currently activated, simply double-click the system tray icon.

To exit tarsier or access other options, click on the system tray icon with the right mouse button and select an action from the popup menu that will appear.

Very nice - thanks, Steve!