PC World Snippets

September 4, 2007

11 Ways To Search Without Google
i) Technorati (www.technorati.com): blog-search service
ii) ChaCha (www.chacha.com): lets you chat with a real live professional guide who takes your query and returns related results tailor-made to your specifications
iii) Rollyo (www.rollyo.com): roll your own search engine, helps limit the number of sites searched
iv) Kosmix (www.kosmix.com): topical search engine conducts searches by category
v) Ask.com: uses subject-specific popularity
vi) Clusty (www.clusty.com): first aggregates results from several search engines, then arranges them in clusters to help you further refine your search
vii) StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com): gives you thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons in your toolbar and lets you rate pages and sites you come across. It learns your preferences and gets better at directing you to stuff you'll like
viii) Draze MetaSearch (www.draze.com): lets you collect search results quickly from Google, MSN, and Yahoo!
ix) netTrekker (www.nettrekker.com): good one for the kiddies, this is aimed at schools and students and every site listed in the search has been hand-picked by a staff of educators to ensure safe surfing. But it costs $4.95/month.
x) AfterVote (www.aftervote.com): aggregates results from the Big Three and adds a social element by letting users "vote" results up or down
xi) Can't Find On Google (www.cantfindongoogle.com): less search engine than message board, people can post queries that came up empty and wait for others to help out

October 2, 2007

Hack the Wireless
Control things like power, bandwidth use and DHCP reservations with firmware that is more powerful than what the manufacturers supply: DD-WRT (www.dd-wrt.com)