I always tease my wife if she’s typing something up. She spends 5 minutes doing the typing and an hour on Google Images looking for good clipart to go with what she is typing. I’m sure many of you are the same. I recently heard about a “hidden” feature of Google Images that might help. It let’s you search for specific sizes of images. For a while now there has been a drop down list where you could choose between small, medium, large, and extra large. Well, along with your search term, if you put in imagesize:1024×768 (or whatever size you want, you’ll only see results of that size. This is particularly useful for finding desktop wallpaper.
For instance, doing a search for…
imagesize:1024×768 Niagara Falls
…brings up hundreds of pictures of Niagara Falls that are that size.
Along with 1024×758, other common desktop wallpaper image sizes are 1680×1050 (widescreen), 1440×900 (laptop widescreen), 1280×1024, and 800×600. Also, icons are generally 32×32 or 64×64. Unfortunately, clipart could be any size, but you might try a small/medium size of 400×400 or 400×300 and see what you get.
Last night I wanted to download a YouTube video. I don’t have any utilities on my computer that will do this. My normal option is to use Zamzar. The one problem with this, is that sometimes it takes a while to get the email notifying you that the download/converstion is done. While I was waiting, I did a simple Google search, and found KeepVid. This is a site that lets you enter a URL at any of the big video sites, and it will then provide you with a link to download the video. I did this and had the video downloaded before Zamzar got back to me. For the video I wanted, I was provided with two links… one for an FLV file, and the other for an MP4 video.
PCWorld.ca had an article about how to do things faster on your computer:
22 smarter, more efficient ways to make short work of common tech tasks–from reinstalling Windows to crushing spyware to setting up a Web site.
security4web has a nice list of suggestions to protect your child online (follow the link to read the entire 19-point list):
- Be aware of cyberspace threats! Learn about all risks children may face while surfing on the Internet and start educating them on how to protect themselves online.
- Talk to your children about dangers they can encounter as long as they are online. Do not be reluctant to subjects such as sexuality, pornography or pedophiles. Do not consider them taboo.
- Make sure your children know that not everything they read on the Internet is true and accurate.
I heard about YouGetSignal.com from Chris…
The best way to learn about the tools is to visit the site and try them. The reason why we came across the site is that we were trying to determine what sites were on a web server (to determine how loaded or overloaded the server is). The tool is the “Reverse IP Domain Check”. For instance, I did a search on my PCIN.net domain, and found that the IP address of my server (66.98.222.18) has 177 different sites hosted (seems excessive to me!).
Google Operating System has a great post about a new layout to iGoogle, the customizable Google portal:
The new version of iGoogle, currently available for a small number of randomly-selected users and for developers, will bring together all the Google services in a single fluid interface. At some point, iGoogle was a part of an initiative called Fusion that allowed users to combine content from across the web. The next major iteration of iGoogle goes further and it lets you actually access the full content, monitor the updates and share them with your friends.
I followed the instructions at the end of that post to use the new interface, and I love the new look!
I heard about e Boo Boos from Pat, a co-worker:
e Boo Boos is a unique search tool used to hunt down misspelled auction items listed on eBay. eBay does not contain a spell checker and many auction items go unnoticed because nobody finds these items when searching using the correctly spelled word.
PC World has an article about neat things you can do with Google:
Every time I turn around, Google’s come up with something new, cool, or innovative. It’s no wonder it has Microsoft on the run.
PC Magazine has a huge collection of tips:
Crafted by our analysts and editors and tested in PC Labs, our vast list of tips starts with the fundamentals of computing and then moves on to multimedia, mobility, business, and online solutions for maximizing your digital life.
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