New search engines
Advanced
searching with Google
The Google Toolbar
Other toolbars
Personalised
searching
Searching the invisible web
Anonymous browsing
Intelligent
Agents
Saving pages
News
aggregators
Weblogs
Monitoring pages
Shortening
URLs
What’s new services
Checking for spyware and viruses
Better use of the browser
Miscellaneous
The following is a list of utilities and ideas on the ways in which you can make your life a great deal easier when it comes to using and searching the Internet.
Exalead Very impressive.
Proximity searching, phonetic search abilities, word stemming, sort by
relevance or date
Icerocket Usual
search, blog search, automatic thumbnails
Snap Good for re-ranking results based
on a number of different criteria
Clusty
Clusters search results into appropriate groups
Izito Multi search engine with
interesting display features
Sirsearch Offers a 'quick peek' service,
but full of adverts
Objectssearch Fairly
basic, but offers clustering and thumbshots
Smealsearch2 Academic business
literature
Accumo Another clustering
search engine
Linkspider UK based
multi search engine
Rocketnews Current business
and news information
Soople at http://www.soople.com/soople_int.php is an easy to use advanced interface that works with Google. It clearly explains how to search and use all of the advanced search features that Google doesn’t clearly explain. Simply choose your options and run the search. You will then be taken to the Google results page and can continue as normal.
Search new additions to Google at Fresh Goo(gle)
http://www.freshgoo.com/index.php
Or
try Goofresh at http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001405.shtml
Google sinkers - more accurate search results http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001403.shtml
Google webquotes - see what sites say about a subject or a person. http://labs.google.com/cgi-bin/webquotes
Google sets - useful if you're not sure of what you're after. Though quite how useful is another matter! http://labs.google.com/sets
Google News Alerts http://www.google.com/newsalerts
Google Alert http://www.googlealert.com/
The Google Scout http://www.google.com/options/winexplorer.html
Google proximity search function http://www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi
The Google Toolbar is a very useful application, and one that makes the lives of many searchers much easier. It is a small utility which can be freely downloaded from http://toolbar.google.com/ (the current version is 2.0) and installed directly without any fuss – in fact it was the quickest and easiest installation of any software that I have ever done. When installed it sits neatly in the browser window. In order to run it your computer needs to be using Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP or 2003 Server with MSIE version 5 or later. One thing that you should be aware of is that to use some of the advanced functions of the toolbar it’s a requirement that you allow the toolbar to ‘talk’ to Google to let the search engine know what pages you’re viewing. It does this anonymously (well, if you want to be pedantic that’s what they say…) but I know that some people get a little freaky about this. You can disallow this function, but it does mean that you won’t be able to use all of the functionality of the toolbar, which seems a shame, but it’s your choice of course.
This is a small search box on the left hand side in which you type your search terms. If you click on the down arrow next to the box you can view the last 20 searches that you ran, and can if necessary click on one of them to re-run it, which I find extremely helpful. There’s also an option which allows you to clear the search history. Useful if you’ve been searching something you shouldn’t and don’t want the boss to know! The search defaults to the Google easy or simple search function, but it’s possible to move directly to any of the other Google search functions such as Advanced, Groups, Images and so on, simply by clicking on the ‘Google’ button on the very extreme left of the toolbar. It’s a nice simple straightforward function that’s always appealed to me
To the right of the search box is the ‘Search web’ button, which you can click when you’ve typed in your search. Alternatively you can use the pull down menu to utilise the ‘I’m Feeling lucky’ option, just search for your term(s) within the site that you happen to be on which has to be useful, though of course limited to those pages that Google is aware of, or you can search Dictionary.com for a particular word.
These functions are of course very useful – they allow you to get to places in Google quicker and easier than remembering URL’s, or following links or even pulling down your list of favorites. There are some interesting new additions though which deserve a mention. Firstly you can now get to the Google Zeitgeist page, which is one that I always forget about, but which is full of interesting titbits relating to popular searches, searches decreasing in popularity, top image queries, international queries and so on. I’m never sure just how useful it is, but it’s fun to browse through now and then. There’s also a link to Blogger.com which is no surprise, given Googles recent acquisition, and is further supplemented by the addition of a ‘Blog it’ icon on the toolbar which allows users of Blogger to quickly and easily add something to their blogs directly from the webpage they happen to be looking at. This feature has been available for some time via Blogger.com but it’s nice to see it included. There’s also an option to save your search preferences, and it was only when I clicked on this that I realised that my preferences weren’t quite what I thought (I had filtering turned to moderate, which I hadn’t realised. No wonder I wasn’t seeing stuff that other people had been complaining about!). Finally there is an ‘Options’ button, which allows you to change just about anything and everything to do with the toolbar. In fact, it’s so comprehensive I’ll return to discuss it later.
Moving along the Toolbar, the next icon up by default in the News icon, which takes you directly to the news page. It would be nice if this had been integrated with the search option; it seems logical to me that I should be able to type a term into the search box and click on the ‘News’ icon, but if I do this my search term is ignored, and I just go directly to the Google News home page. To be fair, I can achieve exactly what I want by choosing a term and then using the pull down menu to chose Google News to run my search that way.
Page Rank is the next icon on the Toolbar. This is a small icon, based on a sliding scale, of how important Google thinks a particular page happens to be. It’s useful for searchers who want a quick indication of authority (though it’s easy enough to misunderstand, so I wouldn’t want to push this too far!), and it’s also used by website developers for relevance ranking purposes. I find it interesting, but I think most people could turn it off without causing any major trauma in their lives.
The next icon which I activated for myself, which is a default in the current version but not in the new beta version is the option to query Google about the site you happen to be on. Simply clicking on the icon gives you the opportunity to see Google’s cached snapshot of the page, similar pages, backwards links and the opportunity to translate the page into English. (As an aside, I’ve never tried to get Google to translate a page already in English into English. It’s got to be an experiment worth trying sometime!) I’ve always liked this particular function since it’s useful for authority checking, and to see what the general internet community thinks about a particular page or site.
A new feature is next, and I think it’s the one that is really going to have them rocking in the aisles. It’s an automatic pop-up killer. I already have a popup killer, which works very well, but I’m always forgetting to turn it on – I don’t have it set as a default, mainly because I run so many applications and don’t have that much free memory to spare. This is delightful though, since it does the job neatly and without any fuss. When it blocks a popup it lets you know by sounding a little chime, the cursor briefly changes and the count on the blocker is increased by one. If you wish to allow popups for a particular site (if for example it uses popups for help screens) it’s easy to turn it off for that site, and then back on again when you leave. What I haven’t been able to find yet though is any way of seeing a list of exactly what I’ve blocked, or a way of unblocking a specific popup that I may have blocked in the past. Consequently, while I think this is a very useful function I’d prefer to see a little more flexibility, but there is no doubt that it’s going to prove a very popular feature with users.
Another new option is ‘Autofill’ which you can use to, well, autofill forms. If you get fed up of typing in your name and address details you can get autofill to do this for you. It can even remember your credit card details and input those as well, though to be honest, having a little utility that can remember all that is just asking for trouble! While you can set a password for this particular application it’s one that I think in the main I’ll leave well alone.
Automatic highlighting of search terms is another icon that I find invaluable. In fact, there are two ways in which this works on the toolbar. The first icon (in the form of a highlighter pen) simply highlights (in various garish colours) all the terms that you’ve searched for on the page. The second approach is that your search terms are temporarily added to the toolbar and you can click on them individually and you’ll be taken to the section of the webpage that the term appears. Both approaches are simple and easily implemented and very useful indeed; I find them invaluable.
Well, that’s the default for the Toolbar, but as I mentioned earlier, there is an ‘Options’ facility, and I’ve done a bit of poking around in it. I have to say, there’s a great deal hidden in there; more options, autofill details and so on. First up is the option of choosing which version of Google you search with. Most people will chose the .com version I should imagine, but there are all the various country versions including .co.uk. So many in fact, that I just gave up counting! Other basic options were the ability to open a new window to display the results every time you search (no thanks Google, I’ve usually got more than enough windows open at any moment in time as it is), options to turn on/off page ranking, page information, and all the other features that I’ve mentioned, such as the Blogger icon, news and popup killer.
The ‘More’ option is truly impressive, giving you the ability to add icons such as ‘I’m feeling lucky’, search images, search groups icons and so on. Of course, you can get these via the pull-down menus, but it’s very nice to have them available as icons. There are also a number of other options that are pretty much hidden; one example being Google Compute, which is a little like the Seti@home project in that it allows your computer to be used to help compute data on a large scale. It’s a nice idea, and in theory I have nothing against it, but I’d rather I kept a little more control over my computer, if it’s all the same. Fortunately it is, since it’s an option that’s turned off by default. Another hidden option is a voting button – you can either vote for or against a particular page.
A useful description of other toolbars is available from http://www.infotoday.com/online/jan04/OnTheNet.shtml
http://www.hotbot.com/tools/The HotBot Quick Search Deskbar allows you to search over 200 search sites, including HotBot, from one searchbox! You can also access a number of useful tools from the same input. Free up browser and folder windows with the HotBot Quick Search Deskbar as it is installed directly into your Windows Explorer Taskbar
This is available as a free download at http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/help/index.html
Complete Planet http://www.completeplanet.com/
Direct
Search http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm
Invisible
Webhttp://www.invisible-web.net/
Profusion
http://www.profusion.com/
Resource
Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
Anonymizer at http://www.anonymizer.com/ has a neat
utility to tell you how much information you're giving away online about
yourself.
Websecure at
http://www.freedom.net/products/websecure/index.html
is a commercial product that can be used to keep who you are private from the
sites you visit.
The Idzap service at http://www.idzap.com/ works by hiding your
identity from remote sites using their servers as a proxy between your machine
and the remote site
Copernic Agent
http://www.copernic.com/en/products/agent/choose.html
FirstStop
Websearch http://www.firststopwebsearch.com/
Protosearch
http://www.npccenterprises.com/products/protosearch2.shtml
Web
Ferret http://www.ferretsoft.com/index.html
The
page at Anonbrowse that you will find located at
http://anonbrowse.cjb.net/ provides a
list of and access to, eleven anonymous browser websites, allowing you to
simply input the URL of the site you wish to visit.
Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal "web page filing cabinet". Once saved, you can effortlessly find any page again later using a powerful full text search tool. With Furl you can forget trying to save and organize dozens of bookmarks, forget saving web pages to your desktop, in fact forget everything except how to find a useful web page again next time you need it.Furl is located at http://www.furl.net/index.jsp
Surfsaver Commercial product,
saves data to your own disk
Onfolio
Commercial product
Content
saver Commercial product
http://www.backflip.com/login.ihtml This utility allows you to store your favourites list on a website, so that it can be accessed from any computer. You can personalise a daily routine, see popular links, look a public folders, browse the pages that other users have added and share your bookmarks with colleagues.
http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_bookmarks.htm
SurfSaver at http://www.surfsaver.com/ SurfSaver Pro is a browser add-on which lets you save and search all the facts, figures, news and research you find on the Web. SurfSaver stores your favorite Web pages directly from your browser into searchable folders. Use SurfSaver to organize and search the information you gather on the Internet. SurfSaver is the perfect tool for anyone doing on-line research.
http://www.netsnippets.com/ Using a friendly drag & drop interface, Net Snippets enables the instant capturing of content from any source and format into one location within the browser. Whether it is a single image or an entire PDF file, every item captured using Net Snippets is saved along with its source information, keywords, personal comments and other meta-data.
Amphetadesk http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/
This is the tool that I used to use a lot, and it's still very good. Desktop
based.
Active Refresh http://www.activerefresh.com/ Website
content monitor, checks news sources and aggregates RSS feeds. Commercial
desktop product.
Abilon http://www.activerefresh.com/abilon.php
From the same company as Active Refresh, this is a free RSS
aggregator.
Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/ is now my
preferred option. Web based.
Feedreader
http://www.feedreader.com/module.php?mod=image&tid=2
Download desktop aggregator. I think it’s free, but it’s difficult to
tell from it’s home page!
Fyuze http://www.fyuze.com/zero/ Online news
aggregator. Free, but you need to register
MyRSS http://myrss.com/ This one is slightly different
because you can create an RSS channel out of any news type page. Easy way to
keep an eye on what the competition is doing.
MyRSS by popular channel
http://myrss.com/catalog/popular.html
Aggregates content from popular channels.
NewsIsFree
http://www.newsisfree.com/ Aggregates
content from 5600+ new sources. Online rather than download. Free and
commercial versions of the product.
Newsgator
http://www.newsgator.com/ An aggregator
that works with MS Outlook. I don’t use Outlook, so can comment no
further.
NewsMonster http://www.newsmonster.org/ Free
download. Works with websites and news sites and weblogs
Wildgrape News desk
http://www.wildgrape.net/ Aggregates
rss feeds. Free, but requests donations.
Syndirella
http://yole.ru/projects/syndirella/
Free download. Another news aggregator.
You can quickly and simply create your own weblog by using a resource such as Blogger at http://www.blogger.com
TrackEngine at http://www.trackengine.com/ Useful
little pull down link that you keep on your toolbar.
Morning Paper
automatically visits your favorite web sites every so often to find out what's
new, and presents a summary of what's new on each page as part of a "newspaper"
which it displays in your web browser.
http://www.boutell.com/morning/
It's a commercial product, at $10.
Tracerlock used to be a free service
that will save your favorite search engine queries and web sites, check them
periodically, and send you email whenever there are new or updated web pages.
It's just moved to a commercial product however.http://www.tracerlock.com/
Change
Detection at http://www.changedetection.com/monitor.html
is a simple and free service, also worth looking at.
Infominder at
http://www.infominder.com/webminder/index.jsp
has received good press.
Watch that page at
http://www.watchthatpage.com/ is a
free service, with daily reports.
Website watcher at
http://www.aignes.com/ It's a commercial
product.
Digbig http://www.digbig.com/
Make a shorter link
http://www.makeashorterlink.com/
TinyURL
http://tinyurl.com/
A nice overview of
some others is at http://notlong.com/links/
El Dorado County Library
http://www.eldoradolibrary.org/thisweek.htm
Internet
Resource Newsletter http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/
Librarians’
Index to the Internet http://lii.org/search/ntw
Neat new
stuff http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
Need
to Know http://www.ntk.net/
ResearchBuzz
http://www.researchbuzz.com/
University
of Queensland http://www.library.uq.edu.au/internet/new/webnew.html
USA
Today http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/front.htm
Yahoo!
http://dir.yahoo.com/new/
AdAware at http://www.lavasoftusa.com Standard is
free for use in the home. Commercial versions also available.
Spybot at
http://security.kolla.de/ identifies
and destroys spyware.
Housecall at
http://housecall.antivirus.com is
a free online virus checker.
Maximise the screen layout with the toggle key F11
Change font size
with [Ctrl] and rotate the wheel on the mouse (if you have one)
Quick way
to enter .com addresses - type in the middle part of the URL (eg philb) and hit
[Ctrl] Enter. You'll get taken straight there
Add webpages to your
favourites with [Ctrl] D Frequently used sites can be put onto your Links bar
in the toolbar by clicking on the URL icon, dragging and dropping
To open a
new window while staying on the same site, just press [Shift] when you click on
the link
Turn graphics off for faster downloading - Tools/Internet
Options/Advanced/Multimedia uncheck Show Pictures
Save a picture on a page
with a right mouse click and Save Picture As
Re-set your wallpaper with a
right click amd Set as Wallpaper.
Check to see how large a print job will
be when you print a page check File/Print Preview first.
Scroll up and down
pages faster by hitting [Spacebar] to go down a screen at a time Shift and
[Spacebar] takes you back up a screen at a time [Ctrl] and [Spacebar] takes you
to the bottom of the page
Finding a term on a page with [Ctrl] F Use a
right mouse click anywhere on a page to see the options that are available to
you
Have two versions of the browser open at once with File/New/Window
Ctrl + N opens a new window
Ctrl + P Prints
Ctrl + E Search
Ctrl + I Favourites
Ctrl + H History
Ctrl + B Bookmark
alt+d -
jump to address bar
Clipmate at http://www.thornsoft.com/ ClipMate saves time and makes you more productive by adding clipboard functions that Windows leaves out - starting with the ability to hold thousands of "clips", instead of just one. ClipMate has functions to edit, re-format, and manage your clips. It can also print, re-format, and even spell-check. Commercial product.
Bookmarklets are free tools to help with repetitive or otherwise impossible tasks in your web browser. http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/ and also http://www.bookmarklets.com/
Free online network utilities http://centralops.net/co/
A list of commercial products is at
http://www.popup-killer.info/
(These are mainly commercial)
A good listing of free products is at
http://www.webattack.com/Freeware/misctools/fwpopblock.shtml
Here's a neat little trick to use in order to find out when a page was last updated. Go to the page that you're interested in and then, in the Address bar, type the following: javascript:alert(document.lastModified) and that'll pop up a little window which tells you.
A good list is available from Download.com at http://download.com.com/3150-2377-0.html though most of them are commercial in nature.
A small list of these is available from Tucows at http://www.tucows.com/cache95_default.html