1
Jun
Live.com, Microsoft’s previous search engine, was never going to penetrate the dominant force of Google. It did things slower, gave less accurate results, and really brought nothing new to the table. Even with Microsoft trying to make it the default search platform through their desktop live applications, they never really went anywhere with Live.com
Bing.com is the successor to Live.com, and its actually quite impressive. The search items page is less cluttered, the ads on the right are less obtrusive. The logo could with a bit of work, but maybe Microsoft may be onto something with this.
Some of its features include:
- A video search that gives a preview of the video (with sound!) in the search engine itself.
- If you cant find what you’re looking for it will give quite relevant search queries that match the current one.
- Find out what search strings are popular with xRank.
- Search images and video be date , length , size etc..
- Categorised Searches
- Gives previews of each search item.
- Inline image search so that you don’t get lost
- Searching for cheap flights is easy with their travel page (which was hidden in the UK version of Bing)
I think Bing is an excellent alternative to Google, it mixes the computational power of Wolfram Alpha, with the search capabilities of Google. Things that are missing are that there’s no localised Bing for Ireland which means many of the useful features that I want, aren’t available to me. It current doesn’t give you an option add the search to Firefox, but this addon will, and it will use their search suggestions
Overall, Bing is surprisingly good search-engine, especially for one that is currently in Beta. Microsoft are currently on a roll, with the Xbox 360, Windows 7, and now this? I want to see how they market this thing, because hopefully they wont use Matthew Perry like they did when introducing Windows 95.
21
May
For the past decade, Google has firmly dominated the seach engine market, with a current majority of about 66%. Yahoo is tripping over itself, Microsft has to assure users thats their search engine isnt an innacurate, feeble excuse of searching on the web, and the others are so miniscule that they arent even worth a mention in this post.
In May 2009, we got glimplse at what might be the most important tool on the interent, something that could trump Wikipedia and Google. WolframAlpha is a computational search engine, which means instead of giving you links for the information you want, it gives you results. There isn’t the problem where you might be searching for Google for hours to ifind what you’re looking for ,because Wolfram Alpha either has the information or it doesnt.
Its an advanced calculator, an accoutant, shows the population of any country in the world. You might think that it is less personal than Google because Google can find you, but you can input your height and weight and it will give you your BMI. It can organise a traning schedule for you, advise you on good eating habits.
It can be used by anyone because it knows what your saying. Lets say you want to find the capital of Andorra. You can either type in “capital andorra” or you can type “what is capital of andorra?” It finds the keywords in your query and gives you the same result.
Wolfram Alpha may be in the early stages of development (even though the engine used to make this, Mathematica, was developed in 1993), there is still alot of information it doesnt have yet so it can only get smarter.
31
Mar
So I hooked up my phone to my laptop and I can now connect portably to the internet wherever I go through my Nokia N95 without the need for a dongle or a third party accessory.
Right now I am travelling a reasonable 70km/h on my way to Clonmel for another day of lectures. This route will be more productive and less tiresome, now that I have a connection.
Nokia are even polite enough to ask what carrier I’m on, so they can retrieve the exact settings I need to connect. O2 Ireland can be seen below, along with Oman Mobile.
My last few phones I’ve attempted in doing this task, and it’s either been unavailable, or extremely difficult to get it to work. Nokia have finally gotten this right, and its been a long time waiting for many of us.
All I had to do is install the Ovi suite and connect my phone via cable and set the mode to “PC Suite”. I haven’t tried bluetooth tethering yet, but it should be the same process.
The speeds aren’t terrible either. They are faster that my secondary school’s download speed when I was there, so I guess I cannot complain!
O2 Ireland Speeds
18
Mar
Firefox is without a doubt one of the best browsers on the market. The customisability options are unmatched, the security is tight, and its blazingly fast too (but not the fastest) . Here are just a few tips to increase your productivity.
1. Ctrl (CMD) + Shift + F5 – Open previously closed tabs.
This is such a handy shortcut its ridiculous. It re-opens tabs you’ve closed. This is especially useful if you thought you were finished on a page, and you need to open it again, or if you closed it by accident. I can’t count the number of hours this simple, yet undeniably useful shortcut has saved me.
2. Less tabs, less memory
Again, pretty straight forward. If you need that extra juice for rendering, or you need to open up several Word documents, close a few tabs. It’s simple, if you don’t need them open, close them.
3. Do you really need all those Add-ons?
The only addon’s I have are Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, Twitterfox, Stumbleupon, and no more. That’s all I need. I don’t need widget that displays the weather in 400 different countries or a addon that connects me to ICQ, MSN, Skype and Yahoo all at the same time.
4. Learn the shortcuts
Ties in with number one, but this is vital if you want to browse with pace. Some of my favourites* are Ctrl + T (Opens a new tab), Ctrl + K (Goes straight to search), and Ctrl + Tab (Toggles between open tabs). You can find a full list here
5. Keywords
This is such a cool little feature, but it’s one of the most unnoticed. When you bookmark something, Firefox gives you the option of letting you assign a keyword to a Bookmark item. Then when you need to access that bookmark in a hurry, all you have to do is type that short word or phrase into the toolbar, press enter, and voila, your bookmark is open! Some of my keywords are ml – mail, rd – reader, and dg for digg.com.
These are just some of the basics. Firefox is such an open browser, there is very little you can’t do in it. Just keep messing around with it, and you’ll be on your way to browsing heaven in no time.
*How nerdy is that? I have favourite shortcuts. Ha!
