KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for August 28, 1999

Recent Earthquakes in California - Wireman

Wireman found this one.

California has earthquakes every day. This site shows a California map, with recent earthquake activity - last week, last day, and last hour. The squares representing a quake are centered at the location of the epicenter, and the size of the box represents the magnitude. The page, at the time of this writing, shows 354 quakes in the last week.

Maps are updated once an hour, or if a quake hits, within 1-5 minutes of an earthquake.

Interesting stuff. Thanks, Wireman!

ProFusion - Andantino

Andantino from the has been checking out ProFusion lately. It's a search engine which gives him pretty good hits.

ProFusion is a Meta Search engine - it searches other search engines. It will search Alta Vista, InfoSeek, LookSmart, Excite, Magellan, WebCrawler, GoTo, Google, and Yahoo. You can search ALL of them, the fastest 3, the best 3, or just the ones you want.

I gave it a shot with "best 3" for the name "Solinas" - my standard benchmark search. It did very well at finding hits.

Search engines are personal things - you want to keep trying different ones until you find one which "thinks" like you. I like this one a lot. Give it a look.

Thanks, Andantino!

Linux Newbie Administrator Guide - Ranman

Ranman says "This is a pretty nice Linux site for the Newbie and the not so newbie which applies to a lot of people. It is listed as the Newbie Administrators Guide. Linux to the layman is a confusing program for the new user and this site cleans up some of the mess. This site contains a Linux start to finish in English, from system requirements and various distributions of Linux to administration and Linux application links. Worth a bookmark for the new and not so new Linux user."

Ranman also found the next site:

The Linux System Administrators Guide - Ranman

Ranman also found this online Linux guide.

Ranman says "This is a more advanced Guide for the more advanced and Power users who want to learn more about the Linux operating system. It is still more gauged for the novice user but has some real good information about Administrative tasks and components of Linux.".

Linux is growing, and these two sites provide a nice resource. If you're into Linux, check them out.

Gooey: Chat while browsing the web - Bayside Bob

Bayside Bob found this interesting site/application.

Gooey is used when you are traveling the web, and visiting web sites. Odds are - you aren't the only one on that site at that time. Odds also are - you have common interests with the other people on the site.

From the site: "Gooey lets you CHAT with people who are visiting the same web site you are. With Gooey, chat is no longer restricted to chat rooms, but instead becomes an integral, natural part of your browsing experience."

If Gooey catches on, it could be pretty cool. Thanks, Bayside Bob!

iFloppy.net: Free file transfer space - Rick

A few weeks back, I featured "My Docs Online". It's a site with 20 meg free web space for you to use to transfer files. You can upload, store, and download many megs of files - for free. iFloppy.net offers a similar service - with some plusses:

When I first joined (on Thursday), ifloppy offered free 10 meg web sites. I emailed them, and said My Docs Online offered 20. I got an email back, saying ifloppy upped their offer to 30 megs, and hoped to have it online right away. I checked - it's there. ifloppy, at the time of this writing, offers the most free file transfer space.

Here's a big plus - you can ftp files to other sites, rather than using HTTP to transfer the files. Faster.

Another plus is the security. If you make too many unsuccessful attempts to get in to your account, it gets locked, and you have to email support.

Also - you can create subaccounts. Say you have different files you want to share with different people. You give them each a subaccount, and move your files around.

There's a "compare us against the competition" page well worth checking out. This is the best service of its type out there.

Digital Cameras - Thom from Orangevale

Thom from Orangevale sent in this interesting page - all you need to know about digital camera technology.

It goes into how cameras work, how images are stored, different media - you name it. Read this page, and you'll sound like an expert on Digital Cameras.

Poking around, I found this page is part of "The PC Technology Guide", which has similar explanations about laser printers, serial devices, components - you name it. This is a site to EXPLORE. Hit that "up" icon, and wander around.

I know a lot about nonvolatile memory - I've worked with them for 10 of my last 15 years in the semiconductor industry.

Free For All!

"Free For All" picks are freeware picks. They have to be useful, cool, or interesting. Most of all - they have to be free.

EasyZip 2000 - Bob the Old Fogey

People use Winzip all the time. Bob the Old Fogey found a freeware equivalent - EasyZip 2000.

It's a "A powerful, easy-to-use zip and unzip utility, EasyZip offers a nice interface and all the bells and whistles of the most popular commercial archive program (WinZip)."

From the site: "It also offers a big advantage over WinZip: It's free! Features integration with Windows (including extracting archives and zipping files directly from Windows Explorer); checking for viruses in archive and drag and drop features. 1.7 megabytes. (For Windows 98/95/NT and 2000)."

I was very pleased to see it handles both Zip and RAR formats.

Download this baby! Thanks, Bob!

Boot Log Analyser - Bob the Old Fogey

From the site: "This program looks at your Windows 95 BOOTLOG.TXT file and calculates the time taken to load each driver and so on, in order to help you locate causes of long boot times. (v1.22, 07/29/99, 234KB, FREE )"

This can help the advanced user figure out what is slowing down the boot up.

Not for everyone, but will help some. If it's your thing, check it out.

Thanks, Bob!

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