CHRISdotTODD

You know that Google is popular, right? SearchEngineWatch.com reported a nearly 44% share for July 2006, while Yahoo! and MSN continue to lose market share. ( HitWise reported a 64% U.S. share for March 2007) In January I wrote about a few alternate search engines ( Ms. Dewey , ChaCha , Snap , and Rollyo ), in case you were interested in whether their was a competitor or two on the horizon. If that didn't move you away from Google (it didn't make me change), there are 100 more search engines you might want to try at Read / WriteWeb . Let me know if you find any promising alternatives; right now I'm staying with Google.

I recently ran across a blog posting at The Simple Dollar titled 30 Essential Pieces of Free (and Open) Software for Windows . They are not quite all essential; perhaps 10 are. Many I have heard of, but a few are new to me. Of course it lists popular open source software such as Firefox , Thunderbird , and Audacity , but there are some other good ones including Filezilla (FTP client), Handbrake (watch DVDs locally without the DVD), and FreeMind (mind mapping). Check this blog post and see what you might be paying for that you could get for free and legal.

If you have ever explored Google's advanced search capabilities, you would know that it can be very powerful in finding specific content. For example, you can use it to find web directories with music from your favorite artist. Take this code for example, which you can enter into the Google search box: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Stevie Ray Vaughn” Your results would be something like this: You can even add different file formats and wildcards for the search string: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3| ogg ) "stevie ray vaughn % " How does this apply to Firefox? Well I'm glad you asked! You may recall that by entering a keyword into the field of a bookmark, you can retrieve the bookmark in the Address Box by just entering the keyword. Firefox also supports wildcard parameters, so you can ...

I recently published a blog post on my experience in moving to Skype as my phone service. Since that time, I found an article from VOIP News that has 25 hacks for Skype. This article includes a wealth of information on how you can extend the capabilities of Skype. For example, using a program called AudioID , it will announce the Skype user name on incoming calls. This is a great feature if you're away from your PC. Other hacks include: A DIY security system Recording calls Enhanced voice mail Integrating with last.fm Lip syncing Avatar If you have Skype, this is a must read; if you don't ahve Skype, check out what you're missing.

I found a clever Excel template on the Microsoft site . With this template, it can help you solve Soduko puzzles. You enter the numbers you have, and have it calculate possible answers for the remaining open spots. If it cannot completely solve it, try 1 of the possible numbers and recalculate. Eventually, you will solve the puzzle. Microsoft has other game templates as well.

I have talked about some of my favorite music services in the past, including Pandora and of course the iTunes/iPod combination. I have also used YouTube , Live365 , and other streaming services. Now I have a new favorite, last.fm . With last.fm, I enter my favorite artist, band, or song, and it streams music related to that category. At the surface it sounds just like Pandora, but I believe the music matching algorithm is better, as well as last.fm offers many more features. For example, the module above will play my music recommendations, or you can play it on the last.fm site . These are the songs that match what I have selected. I can also play my recommended songs through a downloadable client . last.fm uses scrobbing to assist in recommending music. Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile. Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm , you can scrobble songs you...

I ran across a cool trick with Firefox, which allows you to open Firefox within Firefox. There's no real purpose behind it, it's just a fun thing to do. Just enter this into the URL line of Firefox: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

Where I live, basic service is about $25 a month; long distance is extra. That's a guaranteed minimum $300 a year if I don't make any long distance calls. I decided to do something about that -- I got setup with Skype . If you're in the US or Canada, all long-distance is free after a one-time $30 fee ( SkypeOut: Skype Unlimited ). In addition, to get an incoming number ( SkypeIn ), I only paid $38 for a year of service, which includes voice mail . You can get your incoming number to have any area code -- so if you have friends or family that have to pay long distance charges to call you, you can get a phone number in their area code. My final expense was an inexpensive Skype phone , $35. So for $103, I have local and long distance for a year. In addition, with just the basic free Skype service, you can talk Skype-to-Skype for no cost. Many Podcasters, such as Leo Laporte , use this service to record guests on their shows; which is cheaper and yields better quality than if ...

Excel is a great program to manipulate your data, perform what-ifs, and graphically display results. But it's not straight forward when you want to know the which Quarter certain activity took place. Fortunately, with a simple formula you can determine the Quarter. =ROUNDUP(MONTH(A1)/3,0) Roundup can be a useful function in other applications as well. The last parameter (0 in this example) is used to change the rounding level. A positive number will add decimal places, while a negative number will round left of the decimal (i.e. -1 rounds to 10s and -2 rounds to 100s).

I recently had a list of items that I wanted to grab from a web page drop-down list. Of course you can't copy a drop-down list, but... you can view the source and get the list. The problem though is, "how do you remove the option tags and the value?" As you may have guessed by the title, you can do it with Word. Here's a sample taken from News.com : Copy the list and paste it into Word. Open the Find and Replace dialog (Edit | Replace... or Ctrl + H). Click the More button and check Use wildcards . Here's the trick, as you need to use special characters. First, paste the string you want to remove in the Find what: field. For each greater than and less than character, place a backslash before it, i.e. becomes \ Replace the contents of the value field with an asterisk. Validate Word will be able to find the code by clicking the Find Next button -- the code should now be highlighted. Go to the Replace with: field and enter ^p . This will replace your code with ...

Do you ever have the experience where your typing away, say in Word, and another program pops-up and takes focus, forcing you to click back on the program you were working in? This happens the most to me when a new IM conversation begins in Trillian . It's not a problem once the conversation is going, just for new ones. Where there are a couple of work-arounds to prevent this from happening. Perhaps the easiest is to get Microsoft's Tweak UI to disable it. Look for Focus in the General section of Tweak UI. You can also do this through a registry setting: Start the Registry Editor: Go to Start | Run and enter regedit [Enter] Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER | Control Panel | Desktop Go to the Edit menu and select New > DWORD value Name the DWORD value "ForegroundLockTimeout" Assign a value of 30d40 Close the Registry Editor While your in the Registry Editor, you can also set how many times the Window seeking your attention flashes in your taskbar. This is another setting ...