Indika’s Web Log

Every year, we see scores of innovations trickle onto the web — everything from new browser features to cool web apps to entire programming languages. Some of these concepts just make us smile, then we move on. Some completely blow our minds with their utility and ingenuity — and become must-haves.

For this list, we’ve compiled the most truly life-altering nuggets of brilliance to hit center stage in 2008: the ideas, products and enhancements to the web experience so huge that they make us wonder how we got along without them.

Nitpickers will notice that a couple of these technologies arrived two or three years ago. Others aren’t even fully baked yet. But each innovation on our list reached a level of maturity, hit the point of critical mass, or stepped in to fill a burning need during 2008 that resulted in it significantly changing the landscape of the web.

Here’s to the technologies currently making the web a better place than it was 12 months ago.

Identity Management

Few things carry more value than your digital identity, and yet most web users have only a tenuous grasp of it. That’s because on the social web, identity is no longer just who you are. It’s who you know, how you know them and how much you want them to know about you. On the web, your identity is explicitly tied to your relationships, both with your friends and with the websites you visit.

Three great technologies came to fruition this year to help you manage these complex interdependencies: OpenID, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect.

These ID systems all offer a way to take control of your social capital, that cache of “friend data” you carry with you as you sign up for and use different web services. They also all offer a more tangible advantage — an easy way to log in to any website using one set of credentials. You get one virtual ID card that gives you access to hundreds of websites. As a bonus, you don’t have to go through the painful process of filling out a profile and adding or approving friends on every new blog, community or social network you want to join.

The end of 2008 saw a flurry of activity around identity. Facebook Connect, which currently lets you log in to a few dozen high-profile websites using your Facebook ID, went live the first week of December. Google’s Friend Connect and MySpace’s MySpaceID, similar systems that aren’t yet as widely adopted, launched soon after it.

There’s a hitch, though. Facebook Connect, while elegant and easy to use, is built on proprietary code and isn’t compatible with the offerings from Google and MySpace, which are built using OpenID and other open source standards.

We should expect this battle for your personal data play out over the next year, maybe longer. But 2008 will be remembered as the year that identity stepped into the spotlight.

HTML 5

One of the most important technologies on this list doesn’t fully exist yet — HTML 5 — but in 2008, key features started to trickle out.

HTML 5 will eventually replace HTML 4.01, the dominant programming language currently used to build web pages. But the governing bodies in charge of the web are still drafting the details, and nobody expects HTML 5 to fully emerge as the new standard for at least a few more years.

But HTML 5 is no vaporware. Many of the changes to the way the web operates as outlined in early versions of the new specification are already being implemented in the latest browsers, and some of the web’s more adventurous site builders are already incorporating HTML 5’s magic into their pages.

HTML 5 will be great step forward, standardizing things like dragging and dropping elements on web pages, in-line editing of text and images on sites and new ways of drawing animations. There’s also support for audio and video playback without plug-ins, a boon for usability and a worrisome sign for Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight and Apple’s QuickTime. The language will also give a boost to web apps, as there are new controls for storing web data offline on your local machine.

Want Gmail on your desktop? HTML 5 makes it possible. Alas, the blink tag isn’t invited to the party.

Lifestreaming

A new breed of social app has arisen to help us manage the mess of information overload — the lifestream.

Not long ago, keeping track of your friends on the internet was pretty easy. Everyone belonged to Friendster or MySpace and that was it. Now, the web is littered with thousands of social sites, each with its own special purpose — Flickr for photos, Last.fm for music, Twitter for tweeting. Even the most rudimentary services are tied to the social web. Renting a movie, buying a book or writing a blog post? Let all your friends on Netflix, Amazon and Blogger know about it.

Keeping tabs on your friends now is all too easy and all too much, all at once.

Sites like FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse and Digsby serve as social-network-activity aggregators. They’re like virtual funnels. Dump in all the notifications, feeds and updates from your various networks, and the services will bring it all into one master stream, relieving you of the responsibility of visiting a dozen or more sites to learn what your friends are up to, what they’re listening to, who they’re snogging and so on. Controls let you dial back the flow by sorting and filtering the flow, pruning it down to only what matters most.

Many such services have emerged, but FriendFeed, an elegant and simple site designed by a crew of ex-Googlers, is our favorite.

Oh, and don’t expect to be able to add Facebook to your lifestream. The network lets all sorts of data in, but precious little out.

Firefox 3

Firefox has been around since 2004, but when version 3 of Mozilla’s browser arrived in June 2008, it got everything right. Mozilla’s browser is faster and more secure than ever before, and it’s open source, so you get the feel-good factor, too.

One of the most highly anticipated software releases of the year, more than 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 on the first day. Third time’s a charm, indeed.

The genius bit of engineering was bringing search front and center — just type what you’re looking for in the location bar, and FF3 searches your history, bookmarks and the web to bring you the page you want, lightning fast.

Performance enhancements made it one of the web’s fastest browsers — especially for surfing the recent swell of web apps — and improved security features made it one of the safest.

Mozilla continues to build upon the concept with its Ubiquity add-on for Firefox, which lets you search and interact with any number of web services by typing text commands into the browser.

It’s still the second-most-popular browser after Microsoft Internet Explorer by a wide margin, but Firefox 3 is the feisty favorite of the web’s elite.

Google Chrome

Its debut release in September was not expected, nor was it greeted with as much fanfare as the arrival of Firefox 3 a few months prior. But Google’s browser was instantly recognized as a potential game-changer, both among browser-makers and within the world of web apps.

Chrome is a browser built to empower web applications.

Its killer feature is a new approach to page rendering that isolates web applications inside each of the browser’s tabs — a crashing web app might cause a single tab to go south, but that won’t affect anything outside that tab. The rest of the browser remains stable.

When you’re doing mission-critical work in a web app and the browser crashes, it isn’t an annoyance, it’s a deal breaker. E-mails are lost, documents have to be rewritten, web forms need to be filled out again. Chrome’s ability to sidestep a full crash strengthens Google’s bid to replace desktop apps with its own web-based alternatives.

Chrome reached official 1.0 status in December. It’s Windows-only for now, but we should expect official versions for Mac and Linux soon. It’s also still very young. Future releases will have support for add-ons, offline syncing of web data through Google Desktop and — knowing Google — probably a few other bells and whistles nobody’s thought of yet.

Location Awareness

In 2008, location-based information ceased being a fancy add-on and instead became a requirement of any serious, successful web service.

Hit a button on your laptop or phone to tell a web service where you are, and it tells you what restaurants are close by, where the new Bond movie is playing (and when, and if there are tickets left), and which of your friends are within shouting distance if you need a date.

The tipping point arguably came when a wave of GPS-equipped mobile web devices hit the market. The iPhone 3G, the T-Mobile G1 and the latest Nokia N-series devices all have GPS built in. They also all have real web browsers and the tools necessary for access to web APIs, opening the door to more-relevant search and localized mobile services.

On the iPhone, you can use Yelp’s app to get a list of nearby venues, restaurants and hangouts with the touch of a button. Or, in the case of Google’s local-search app, you can simply speak your request and get local results. An app like Say Where queries multiple search sites.

The benefits aren’t limited to mobiles, either. Social networking sites and desktop search apps can take advantage of new technologies like Yahoo’s FireEagle, where users can update and store their location data, or browser plug-ins like Google Gears or Firefox’s Geode, which users can set up to report their location automatically.

Whether they’re using a desktop browser or an iPhone, users now demand the high levels of relevance and convenience on the web that location awareness affords.

The World Wide Web Consortium, the web’s governing body, has stepped up and formed a think tank to develop a set of standards for handling users’ geodata that ensures privacy and interoperability. The W3C Geolocation Working Group hopes to have its first recommendation filed by the end of 2009.

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To get the serial number of the local computer run the following command. 

wmic bios get serialnumber

WMIC extends WMI for operation from several command-line interfaces and through batch scripts. Before WMIC, you used WMI-based applications (such as SMS), the WMI Scripting API, or tools such as CIM Studio to manage WMI-enabled computers. Without a firm grasp on a programming language such as C++ or a scripting language such as VBScript and a basic understanding of the WMI namespace, do-it-yourself systems management with WMI was difficult. WMIC changes this situation by giving you a powerful, user-friendly interface to the WMI namespace.

You can use the command “wmic csproduct get name” to retrieve the local computer model.

wmic only works on the following versions of Microsoft Windows

• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Ultimate
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard x64 Edition
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (32-bit x86)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition for Itanium-based Systems
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
• Windows Server 2008 Datacenter
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
• Windows Server 2008 Datacenter without Hyper-V
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise without Hyper-V
• Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems
• Windows Server 2008 Standard
• Windows Server 2008 Standard without Hyper-V
• Windows Web Server 2008

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Today on the 4th of November 2008, Barack Obama,47, has entered the history books and become the first African/American person to be elected as the 44th President Elect of the United States of America.

The atmosphere was electric in the great hall in Chicago as the crowd took in the enormity of this moment as they awaited their President. This was a monumental and defining moment in the history of America. 100,000 people lined the streets.

There was overwhelming sense of glory in the crowd as they praised and wept tears of joy and felt honoured to witness history in the making, as they awaited the first black president of the United States of America.

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You thought Uhuru Park was jammed? See this! Wow, a picture is truly worth a thousand words……………..

The following pictures really tell a story and they are befitting to the following song. There’s an old song that went like this.

“People get ready there’s a train a coming’, you don’t need no ticket you just get on board.’

Just in case you don`t know who sang that song, it was the late Curtis Mayfield.

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Yahoo released a great tool to optimize the images. And it’s named smushit. Smushit increase web performance easily. Optimizing images by hand is time consuming and painful. Smush it does it for you. It has 3 modes of operation.

1. You can give it the image URL and it will optimize (smush it) and give you the image and the result savings.

2. Upload your image and it will do its trick.

3. Install a browser plug-in. So while you are in a web page you click this icon and smush it will analyze all the images in that page and give you the smushed results. If you have firebug installed the smushit icon will be right next to it.  The smush it browser plug-in currently works in Firefox only.

Smush it will also convert GIFs to PNGs for better optimization. It’s simply great and easy and has made my life much easier. Thanks to Yahoo team.

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Since I came to US there is one car I simply love and thats the Corvette. Of all the models I like Corvette C3 the most. I started reading and lerning about this wonderfull machine. Once I get some time to play with I will go get me one. Back in Sri Lanka I was crazy for Jeeps mainly Old Jeeps but Now its Corvettes.

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Today my computer was acting strange and I have been getting a nag in the notification area always claiming that I have a threat and when I click on it It opens a webpage asking me to buy some anti spyware application. I had Symantec Antivirus, Microsoft Defender and AVG in my computer and tried them to clean the bug but nothing simply worked. Microsoft Defender identified the bug and it claims that it cleaned but when I boot it comes back and Defender says the same thing again.

Also another issue I had was when ever I click on a link it opens some other ad filled website instead of the correct one.

I remembered that some time pack I used a small app from Prevx that did clean threats I had where all other scanners failed so I downloaded the Prevex CSI. It detected 7 threats but to clean now they want me to by the complete version for $26 for a year. So I did and voila  it did the trick and I’m clean again.

 Its surprising why Prevx is not very famous but I can vouch for the fact that its the best Anti spyware out there. Its simply great. Thanks Prevx team.

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Technology is supposed to make life easier, but it doesn’t seem that way when you’re struggling to wrangle 289 new e-mail messages, dealing with a hard-drive crash or suddenly realizing that you left an important file on the office computer. Thankfully, plenty of tools can help. We’ll tell you which ones are worth trying, and we’ll suggest some practices that you can incorporate into your workday to use tech tools more effectively and efficiently.

1. Telecommute by Remotely Controlling Your Office Computer

You can work from home — but use the computer in your office — through remote-control software such as LogMeIn (free version available) or TightVNC (free). You can have a full-screen view of the remote computer, launch and close programs, read e-mail, copy and paste text between PCs, and access any files you left behind. Save money on gas, claim home equipment on your taxes, and convince your boss that you’ll be more productive without leaving your house. Even the iPhone has some VNC clients, such as Mocha VNC and Teleport.

If you don’t need full remote control but you do require access to your office or home files, set up Microsoft Corp.’s free file-syncing tool, FolderShare. Your files will always be up to date, no matter where you’re working or where you last updated them.

2. Schedule Automatic Hard-Drive Backups, Locally and Remotely

Backing up your critical files is as exciting as purchasing home insurance, but it’s just as important. Don’t risk losing your irreplaceable digital photos by making empty promises to yourself to burn a couple of DVDs every few months. Instead, set up software and services to do the job for you while you concentrate on more-exciting projects. First, save yourself from an “OMG my hard drive crashed!” catastrophe with a top backup program. Or get started now with a free copy of SyncBackSE, and schedule regular backup jobs to your external FireWire drive, thumb drive or network drive. (If you have FTP server access, SyncBack can back up to that as well.)

Of course, local backup isn’t enough. To protect your data against fire, lightning, theft or other disasters, you’ll want to back up your data to a remote server over the Internet. Both Carbonite and Mozy Home offer affordable unlimited server space and utilities that quietly back up your data in the background while you work.

3. Work Faster and More Efficiently Without a Mouse

Streamline your computer work by teaching yourself keyboard shortcuts for your common actions, such as Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-T to open a new tab in Firefox, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste (see our list of additional shortcuts). Then, become a keyboard master with the help of a keyboard launcher such as the free Launchy (for Windows) or Quicksilver (for Mac). You can start programs, open documents and even do advanced actions such as resizing images and moving files without moving your hands from the keyboard.

You can also assign key combinations that automatically type out common phrases — such as usernames, passwords, addresses and e-mail signatures — with utilities like TypeItIn (Windows) or TypeIt4Me (Mac OS X).

4. Lose Weight, Get Fit, Save Money, and Increase Your Mileage Online

A new crop of social self-improvement sites help you monitor how much you’ve eaten, exercised and spent, to motivate you and keep you on track.

Web services such as FitDay and Weight Watchers log and guide your diet and fitness regimen.

If Quicken or Microsoft Money has become too complicated to update, you can track your spending, balance your checkbook and run charts on expenditures versus income at personal-finance sites Mint.com and Wesabe.

As for your car, avoid online gas scams. In addition, you can squeeze the last bit of mileage out of every expensive tank of gas with a miles-per-gallon tracker such as Fuelly or MyMileMarker. Entering your information into such sites gets you personalized suggestions, comparisons and a community of like-minded people who can offer support and suggestions.

5. Clear Out Your In-box Every Day

Beat e-mail overload once and for all by emptying your in-box completely — and keeping it that way. The “In-box Zero” philosophy says that e-mail messages are just calls to action — not clutter that we need to hang on to. Create three folders or labels in your e-mail client: Action, Later and Archive. Each day, when you check your e-mail, make a decision and do something with every new message you’ve received until you’ve moved them all out of your in-box and reduced your message count down to zero. Ruthlessly delete the messages you don’t need, on the spot. Respond to the ones that will take under two minutes. File messages that you want to keep for future reference in the Archive folder, those that will take longer than two minutes to reply to in Action (and add those to-do items to your list) and messages you need to follow up on at a subsequent date (such as Amazon shipment notifications) in Later. Then breathe a sigh of relief when you see that glorious declaration: “You have no new mail.”

6. Get Your Cables Under Control

When you have a tangled mess of dust-coated cords knotted into a bundle under your desk, disconnecting a laptop or setting up a new printer can seem impossible. The cords for power, USB, speakers and FireWire all look the same. Simple labels can help you avoid accidentally killing your entire rig by pulling one wrong plug. Print out your own with a label maker, or buy a prefab pack of Pilot ID labels to stick on your home-office or living-room plugs. When the cat knocks one out or it’s time to rearrange, you’ll be glad you did. Then, get cords up off the dusty floor with an under-the-desk cable tray such as this $10 Ikea model. To keep gadget and laptop cords from falling off the back of your desk when they’re not plugged in, affix a simple cable catcher (or a binder clip) to the edge of your desk to hold them. Finally, plug your workstation and your collection of peripherals into a single power strip or uninterruptible power supply to shut down the energy hogs with a single switch when you’re not using them.

7. Stay on Task With the Right To-Do List

The key to staying on track with the stuff you need to get done is writing it down and checking it off — whether you do so online, on your desktop, on your smart phone or in a plain text file. PC World has tried a number of online task manager sites, and our pick is Remember the Milk (RTM). It provides all the bells and whistles you’ll ever need in a to-do list online, on your desktop and on your phone. RTM offers task categories (such as Work and Home), file attachments, notes, priorities, tags, due dates and even “honey do” items (you can send tasks to other RTM users, such as your spouse or assistant). RTM also offers a Firefox extension that integrates the service with your Gmail in-box, so you can turn e-mail into tasks. Of course, no matter how good your software is, nothing can replace the visceral satisfaction of crossing off a line on your paper to-do list with the stroke of a regular old ballpoint pen.

8. Replace Your Laptop With a Thumb Drive or iPod

Instead of lugging a laptop on your next trip, save your aching back by taking your computer’s desktop with you on a thumb drive or iPod. Portable Windows software offerings such as MojoPac and U3 put a full desktop on your USB thumb drive (or disk-use-enabled iPod), letting you run applications like Microsoft Outlook and save documents all on that drive. All you need is a host computer. You can plug the MojoPac drive into your in-laws’ PC or a coffee-shop workstation, for instance, to access your documents and applications without leaving a trace behind. Alternatively, you can save and run free portable applications — like the Firefox browser, Pidgin IM client and Sumatra PDF reader — from your thumb drive. Download those and other programs for free at PortableApps.com.

More: 23 Things to Do With a Thumb Drive

9. Use Your Camera Phone as Your Digital Photographic Memory

Almost every cell phone model now includes a built-in camera, and they’re good for more than just snapping pics of your buddies’ bar shenanigans to blackmail them with later. Use your phone’s camera and memory card to capture the spot where you parked, the label on a bottle of wine your spouse loved, the price on a new gadget to look up online or an amazing meal you’d like to try to cook at home. A new crop of Web services can turn digital photos of whiteboards and documents into searchable PDF documents, too. E-mail your camera-phone shot of a whiteboard or document to Qipit, and the service will recognize the text and e-mail you the resulting searchable PDF.

More: Six Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

10. Create Your Own Price-Protection System

Deal search engines such as RetailMeNot.com or SearchAllDeals.com and social sites like BeatThat are great at finding the best prices before you buy, but PriceProtectr.com and similar services will save you money afterward by monitoring over 130 stores that have price-protection policies. If the price goes down after your purchase, that store might owe you money, but knowing whether the price went down is the trick. You can take advantage of Amazon.com Inc.’s 30-day price guarantee by going to RefundPlease.com or by using the free Amazon Price Watch software. Travel sites like Farecast and Orbitz also have price-protection systems and e-mail alerts for when prices reach a certain low point.

11. Consolidate Multiple E-Mail Addresses With Gmail

You have more e-mail addresses than you do pairs of socks — so it makes sense to keep them all in one drawer. If you have mail coming to your Internet service provider’s account, your work address, your school address and your throwaway Yahoo account from 1998, and you’re having difficulty juggling everything, it’s time to consolidate all those messages into one in-box. Google’s free Web-based Gmail service is both an e-mail host and an e-mail client. Use Gmail’s built-in Mail Fetcher to retrieve messages from up to five external e-mail accounts using the POP3 standard. In Gmail’s Settings area, visit the Accounts tab to set up your external e-mail addresses, and you’ll then receive all your mail in one roomy in-box. You can even send mail from your non-Gmail addresses via Gmail’s Compose screen, too.

More: Get Organized in Gmail

12. Never Forget a Birthday, Teeth Cleaning or Oil Change Again

When you’re tired of scrambling to send Mom flowers at the last minute every year, set up a scheduled e-mail reminder for her birthday — and for any other long-term recurring tasks. Google Calendar can send upcoming-event alerts via SMS (”Pick up the dry cleaning at 3 p.m. today”) or e-mail (”Schedule a hair appointment; it’s been six weeks!”). Most Web-based calendars (like Google Calendar) and task managers (like Remember the Milk), as well as Web sites such as HassleMe and Sandy, support e-mail alerts.

More: 26 Tricks to Help You Tame Google Calendar

13. Never Forget a Password Again

Your Web browser can save your username and password for sites you log into often, but you still have lots of other passwords to remember — Wi-Fi network names and passwords, computer log-ins, personal identification numbers and passphrases, even security questions and answers. Instead of writing everything down on a sticky note tacked onto your computer monitor, lock up your store of sensitive passwords in a secure, encrypted password database. The free KeePass works in Windows, Mac and Linux, and it assigns one master password to your database. Park your passwords, PINs and software serial numbers in your personal secure database, and save yourself the hassle of having to call the IT department for the umpteenth time to reset your password.

More: 15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads

14. Encrypt Your Private Files

Everyone has a folder or two of private files that thieves, children, competitors, co-workers or casual passersby should never see. Whether you want to secure your stealth start-up’s business plan or some personal photos, the free, cross-platform TrueCrypt encryption software (see review or download) is ideal for storing sensitive files in a password-protected virtual container. Only someone with the master password can open that container and read or write the files within. To everyone else, it’s a nondescript single file full of jumbled-up junk. TrueCrypt can secure a single folder on your hard drive or an entire disk — it’s great for a thumb drive carrying precious data that could be exposed if the drive is lost or stolen.

15. Stream Content From Your PC to Your Tivo, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii

You don’t need yet another box under your TV in the living room to enjoy your digital music and videos. If you own a game console or TiVo box, you’re ready to start streaming media from your PC today — no Apple TV or set-top media box needed. Find out how to get started.

Microsoft also recently announced that, by this holiday season, Xbox 360 owners who are also Netflix subscribers will be able to stream “thousands of movies” using just their game consoles. In the meantime, you can stream Netflix movies from your PC to your Xbox 360 with the vmcNetFlix plug-in.

16. Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

Forget basic cable — there’s plenty of free TV available to watch online. If you don’t want to catch your favorite shows at the networks’ own Web sites, hit up sites such as Hulu, Joost or Comcast Corp.’s Fancast to get your full-episode TV fix. Also: Stream music for free to your computer from Last.fm, Pandora (both available on the iPhone), Deezer or Slacker.

If you’re on the road and missing your TiVo, use a place-shifting device such as the Sling Media Slingbox or Sony LocationFree to watch your own DVR content online.

More: The Best TV on the Web

17. Reach Favorite Sites and Searches Faster With Firefox Keywords

You probably hit the same Web sites and search engines several times a day. Why not get to those pages as quickly as possible? Instead of typing out long URLs by hand or hunting down the right search box, use Firefox keyword bookmarks to navigate to your favorite Web haunts instantly. (Here’s how to set them up.)

To search Wikipedia for George Washington, for example, you could key up to Firefox’s address bar (Ctrl-L), type w George Washington, and press Enter to go directly to that topic page. You can use the same technique for Web pages that don’t involve searches, too — for example, try setting the compose keyword to open a new Gmail message. To associate a keyword to a bookmark, enter a short, easy-to-remember keyword in the bookmark’s Properties dialog box. Once you’ve set up a few keywords, you can use your Firefox address bar as a powerful, customized command line.

Bonus tip: Sync your Firefox bookmarks from home to the office to the laptop using the Foxmarks extension; it will keep your keyword vocabulary up to date wherever you’re working.

More: 15 Undocumented Firefox Tips

18. Tweak, Monitor, and Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With a Firmware Upgrade (or Aluminum Foil)

Extend your router’s signal, throttle your bandwidth, and review usage charts and more with an open-source router-firmware upgrade. The free DD-WRT and Tomato firmware each offer advanced features for managing your wireless network, including bandwidth monitors, quality-of-service graphs and even router overclocking to extend your signal.

Want to make your Wi-Fi router’s signal reach the attic and the basement the low-tech way? Some sites say they’ve achieved gains by fashioning a foil “windsurfer” parabola and attaching it to the router antenna.

19. Master Search Techniques to Pinpoint Files or Web Sites

Drill down through millions of search results for popular Google search terms by mastering advanced search operators. Enclose phrases and proper names in quotes (as in “Don’t tase me bro” or “Michael Phelps”) to get exact-phrase matches. Use the plus and minus signs to specify meaning, especially for words that have more than one definition (for example, “salsa - dance”), and use the filetype: operator to find certain kinds of documents (as in “budget filetype:xls”).

You can even search for all the ingredients in your fridge with the word recipe to figure out what to have for dinner tonight.

Then, take your search chops to your desktop, where organizing files in an elaborate folder scheme is no longer necessary. Use Windows Vista’s Saved Search folders to build a dynamic store of all the files that contain the term “NYC,” for instance, or all the digital photos taken on your birthday.

Gmail’s built-in e-mail search capabilities are also killer. Use the “from:,” “to:” and “subject:” operators to find specific messages, as in from:”Bill Gates” subject:”dinner date”.

More: Advanced Google: Search Faster, Find More

20. Print Smart to Reduce Costs

You’ve already paid an arm and a leg to refill your home printer, so get into some smart printing habits to save money on ink and paper. Wherever possible, preview your document before you print, and shrink the selection down to fewer pages, or print only the pages you need in the document. Set your printer to the lowest quality (draft mode) when possible, and opt for double-sided printing or print several pages per physical page, such as when you’re printing out PowerPoint slides. When you’re printing Web pages, use the Aardvark Firefox add-on to delete big colorful advertisements and other unwanted elements before you print. When you don’t really need a hard copy, opt to print to a PDF document instead. Mac users can do this by default; Windows users can download the free CutePDF to print any document to PDF.

More: Six Savvy Ways to Get More Prints for Less Money

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Recently I saw most of my info domain’s domain registrar has changed to Blog.com (Sponsoring Registrar:Blog.com Digital Communications Inc. (R315-LRMS)). This made me panic and contact Directi where I registered thease domains.

Here is what they had to say. 

Preston: Hi!

Preston: How may I assist you?

Indika Jayasekera: Hi some of my domains registered at directi shows blog.com as the sponcering registrar. why is that ?

Preston: Can you give me one of those domain names?

Indika Jayasekera: srilankan.info

Preston: Let me check

Indika Jayasekera: Sponsoring Registrar:Blog.com Digital Communications Inc. (R315-LRMS)

Preston: Give me some time

Preston: Currently, the Registrar for any newly registered .INFO Domain names and freshly transferred-in .INFO Domain names shows as Blog.com Digital Communications, Inc. (and not Public Domain Registry). This was done to avail of a special discounted pricing from the .INFO Registry, which has been passed on to you via the ongoing .INFO promo.

Preston: Please be assured, that these .INFO Domains are completely secured and the change in Registar does not account to any changes in your ResellerClub account nor in your Domain Management Console.

Indika Jayasekera: ok so do you own blog.com ?

Preston: to avail the special pricing for .info domain names, we tied up with blog.com so that we can offer the lowest pricing.

Indika Jayasekera: ok

Preston: Anything else I may assist you with?

Indika Jayasekera: nops thanks for clarifing this. byee

Preston: Have a wonderful day.

Preston: Bye

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Google on Monday unveiled a new Web-based tool, Map Maker, that lets people add roads, lakes, businesses, and other features to unmapped regions of Google Maps.

With the tool, people can using tracing tools to build maps in Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, and Vietnam, according to the Google LatLong blog. Also open for cartographic contributions are several Caribbean nations: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s great that this kind of activity can be crowd-sourced (please excuse the jargon) so the community (please excuse the jargon again) can contribute to a project that reduces the amount of digitally uncharted terrain. Google has given us a way to help make a difference that, while small, could collectively become quite large.

But on the other hand, I can think of worthy causes in greater need of charity or free labor than Google. If we’re all going to be augmenting Google Maps with user-generated content, wouldn’t it be nice if we could do it through a more neutral mechanism that lets others benefit from the work, too? Geotagged entries in Wikipedia show on Google Maps, but not Google Maps alone, at least theoretically.

Overall, I think my first reaction will carry the day for me.

That’s because, fundamentally, Google Maps is a service not just consumed by many but also repackaged by many through the availability of the Google Maps API (application programming interface). So until the day Google flips its Don’t Be Evil switch to the “off” position, Google Maps is in effect a public utility, and many can benefit from contributions to the service.

Google Map Maker looks slick, but it would be slicker with better satellite imagery. Parts of Iceland, one of my favorite places on Earth, are too coarse for any tracing.

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