Monday, March 21, 2011

MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 20th]” plus 10 more

MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 20th]” plus 10 more

Link to MakeUseOf

Cool Websites and Tools [March 20th]

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 08:31 PM PDT

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. You can make use of them without spending a dime. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here.

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FIT Radio – Workouts are better if there’s loud and, more importantly, energetic music playing in the background. If you are someone who feels that the music being played during your workout session could be better, try out this new tool called FIT Radio. It is a web based and mobile app that streams high energy music. Read more: FIT Radio: Streams A High Energy Music For Working Out

 

Surfboard – With the success of Flipboard as a reading experience for the iPad, many people seem to like the minimalist approach to reading websites rather than load the website’s full version. Surfboard is a cool web app that does exactly this. It converts any website into a flippable format optimized for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Read more: SurfBoard: Converts Sites Into Flippable Pages Optimized For iPhone, iPad & iPod

 

 

IMBY – Solar and wind power are the most popular choices when it comes to renewable energy. If you are planning on using one of these power sources in your home, then In My Backyard will serve as a great tool that estimates solar & wind energy potential. In My Backyard is an online tool offered by the NREL “" National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Read more: IMBY: Estimate Solar & Wind Energy Potential In Your Backyard

 

 

Instalyrics – If you want lyrics to a song quickly, you probably do not want to click on several links before reaching the desired lyrics page. Here to provide an efficient and fast method to search for lyrics is InstaLyrics. It is an instant song lyrics engine that displays results as you type. You need not search only by the song title: you can also search for the artist or specific lyrics. Read more: Instalyrics: Instant Song Lyrics Search

 

 

Google Pagerank Update – Google’s PageRank lets site owners know how popular their website is. If you want to stay informed of when Google updates its PageRank, you should visit the website Google Last PageRank Update, a free and very simple to use website. The site displays the last update date for Google PageRank. Read more: Google Pagerank Update: Find Out When The Last Google Pagerank Update Was

 

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.


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Thank You To MakeUseOf Friends!

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 07:31 PM PDT

It’s time to say thanks to our friends who, once in a while, tip us great articles, help out on projects and in some cases offer their services at discounted prices. Thank you, guys!

    [1] ShrinkTheWeb – Website Screenshot Thumbnail Service

    Ever wanted to add website screenshots to your website? ShrinkTheWeb is one of the best services for that, both in terms of performance and pricing. The free account gets you a whopping 250,000 impressions. See it in action in our daily Cool Websites and Tools series.

     

    [2] LapDawg “" Hands-free Laptop Stands

    Hands free laptop stand
    The hands free laptop stand holds your laptop or books in any position you want with it’s unique 360 degree rotating joints. Perfect for holding them in bed while lying down. Made from anodized aluminum with a beautiful black matte finish.

    [3] Walyou “" Cool Gadgets for Geeks

    new cool gadgets
    Walyou is a fun blog covering all sorts of new cool gadgets and other stuff every geek is likely to find entertaining. Everything from world’s largest Gunny Bears to E-hookah gadgets. Make sure to check them out.

     

    [4] rade | eccles – iPhone Application Development

    The perfect iPhone development team, rade | eccles managed to put our iPhone app together in record time yet exude professionalism and dedication every step of the way. Our collaboration wasn’t happenstance. We would make the same decision all over again. Our only recommendation for an iPhone developer – rade | eccles.

     

    [5] TrueKolor – Affordable Quality Logo and Banner Design

    If you’re looking for a cheap, original and quality logo or banner, check out TrueKolor. We often contact these guys when we need a logo or a banner made, some of the stuff they did for us listed on their portfolio page. Highly recommended.

     

    [6] Mobify – Making the Web a mobile place

    More and more users access websites and read blogs using their mobile phone. Mobify lets you mobilize your blog or website by creating lightweight version of it, which loads much faster and looks great on a mobile screen. MakeUseOf’s mobile site was created by Mobify, and we’re proud of it!

     

    [7] Sendible – The easiest way to market your brand online

    We’re strong believers of the service Sendible provides — we use it on a daily basis and it has never failed us! Sendible is an online marketing service to promote, grow and track brands through the use of social media, email and SMS messaging. It has the ability to post to multiple services at once, schedule social network updates and analyse their success. We love it!

     

    [8] Sourcebits – Android Developement

    Sourcebits did a bang up job of helping us put together our long-awaited Android app. For that, we are eternally grateful!

 

Thank you, guys!


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How Many Computers Do You Have In Your House? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 06:30 PM PDT

Last week we asked readers to tell us their favourite IM chat service. The results show that most MakeUseOf readers prefer Google Talk (Gmail chat) over all other IM services.

The full breakdown of the 386 votes is this: 38% prefer Google Talk/Gmail Chat; 15% prefer Skype; 13% prefer Windows Live Messenger (MSN); 8% prefer Yahoo! Messenger; 5% prefer Facebook Chat; 4% prefer AOL Instant Messenger (AIM); 4% prefer using IRC; 3% prefer XMPP/Jabber (Other than Google Talk/Facebook); 1% prefer ICQ. Another 8% of people marked that they preferred some ‘other’ service. A few good IM chat services were mentioned in the comments, as were many multi-purpose IM chat clients.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.


As you can see Google Talk has the most support from the MakeUseOf community.

This week’s poll question is: How Many Computers Do You Have In Your House?

Let’ see just how computer-obsessed we all are. Include any smartphones and tablets which you think are powerful enough, but don’t get silly and include all of your appliances.

Now that you’ve told us how many computers are in your house, maybe you’d like to explain why they’re all there. Let us know in the comments!


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6+ Sites That Enhance The Instagram Experience

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 03:30 PM PDT

instagram websiteNow that Instagram has released a public API, sites that were formerly shut down, have the chance to re-open, and are competing with the many third party sites that are popping up around one of the most popular iPhone camera apps to hit the iTunes store.

While Instagram’s popularity is undeniable, one of the main drawbacks of Instragram is that the developers have not provided a web interface to comfortably browse the latest images posted or discover new users. It’s all done directly from within the app.

Whether you just want to browse images that are shared, keep up with your feed, create a portfolio of your Instagram images, or even keep up with the most popular tags on Instagram, each of these sites offers different ways of enhancing the Instagram experience.

SnapFinch

One of the most popular Instagram websites, Followgram, has relaunched as SnapFinch, a site that makes it easy to browse and search for photos shared through Instagram, as well as PicPlz, Steply, Burstn and Snapr. SnapFinch’s home page features the most popular photos, as well as the latest tags and users.

instagram website

Clicking on any given photo on the homepage, rather than open the photo up, will open up a page of photos with the same tag. From the tags page, you can then open up individual photos from where you can share the picture through Twitter or Facebook, or add your comments to the photo.

instagram web interface

Inkstagram

Inkstagram provides a more interactive web-based user experience which actually reflects the Instagram user experience, but in order to do so you have to grant the site access to your Instagram account.

instagram web interface

Not only can you browse the most popular photos and search for specific tags, you can also browse your own feed featuring photos of the people that you , and a feed of your own photos, all from a small menu at the top of the page.

instagram web interface

Photos are displayed in a grid, and you can toggle the thumbnail size between small, medium and large.

instagram site

Opening up any given image, you will see how many likes it has received, comments, tags, when it was taken, and be able to like or leave a comment of your own.

instagram site

A great feature of Inkstagram is that you can actually discover and follow new users through the website.

Bajanbot

If your primary interest is to know what the most popular hashtags on Instagram are, in realtime, Bajanbot has you covered. It’s a simple, no frills site which updates itself every 15 minutes, displaying a list of the top 20 hashtags.

instagram site

Clicking on any given hashtag will take you to Snapfinch where you can browse the most popular tags.

Instagram Popular Photos

Instagram Popular Photos is another option for browsing the most popular photos shared on Instagram, as well as providing a way to search for tagged photos. An extra feature that is unique to this site is the ability to filter search results using specific filters.

Social Print Studio Sites

Instawar takes a very different approach to browsing photos taken using the Instagram app. If you have some time to kill, play the tournament-style game, where two photos are pitted against each other and you choose which one is better.

If you think the two photos look good together, click on Make a Pair instead, to create a diptych of the images, where they are then uploaded to the Diptych Tumblr blog

If you want to submit your photos to Instawar, you can do so through the sister site, Instagrid. After granting the site access to your account, Instagrid provides you with an attractive online portfolio of your photos.

Instagrid and Instawar have a third sister site worth mentioning, Printstagr.am, where you can order poster or sticker prints of your Instagram photos.

Instagre.at

Instagre.at is another slick option that allows you to browse the most popular images shared on Instagram, search for specific tags. Granting the site access to your Instagram account allows you to view your own photos and those in your feed, but there do seem to be a few kinks that need ironing out with this feature. Like on Inkstagram, you can follow new users through the Instagre.at web interface.

instagram website

What are your favorite Instagram third party websites? Let us know in the comments.


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Hot Tech Deals [Mar 20th]

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 01:30 PM PDT

If you’re in the market for a new computer, laptop, mobile phone, games and other accessories; don’t waste your time searching online. We’ve taken the liberty of locating the best tech deals and unifying them into a single post for your convenience.

For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.

  1. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX5 10.2MP 4x Digital Camera (Waterproof, Many Colors) $215.99 Free Ship via code RKKHNVVD$0M4V3 (Exp 3/23)
  2. Dell ST2310 23in Widescreen LCD Monitor (1920×1080) $139.99 Free Shipping (24in $159.99) via code 7TXZX6WF05BXWC (Exp 3/24)
  3. Last Day! SlySoft Coupon: 20% off Site Wide + Additional 30% off on Bundles

Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set


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10 Free MP3 Albums To Download [Sound Sunday]

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PDT

It’s a Sound Sunday!

Many of this week’s albums did not provide a widget I could embed. However, almost all of the music can be previewed at the respective download page, please click through. The upside is that few of them require an eMail in exchange for the download. As always, please share with your friends and donate if you find a piece you love.

Questions, suggestions, feedback? Leave a comment or eMail me [tina at makeuseof dot com]. Enjoy the music!

Katie Davis – Terrible, Terrible

Genre: indie, folk, pop

Terrible, Terrible is Katie Davis’ self-released 2004 debut EP, which earned her rave reviews. The album sent her on tour through the US and the Mediterranean during the following years, until 2009 saw her back in her hometown Seattle, Washington.  In the following year she recorded the EP Three Songbirds in Los Angeles, California. Looks like she did go back.

Terrible, Terrible is a free download from Bandcamp.

Katie Davis MySpace and Homepage.

Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra

Genre: rhythm & blues, soul

Nature Feels by Frank Ocean

On his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra Frank Ocean lays his soulful voice over re-mixed songs from artists like MGMT (Electric FeelNature Feels), The Eagles (Hotel CaliforniaAmerican Wedding), and Coldplay (Strawberry Swing). Frank’s own compositions like Songs for Women make this album a well-rounded masterpiece.

Nostalgia, Ultra is a free download from Frank Ocean’s Tumblr.

Frank Ocean SoundCloud and Tumblr.

Sick of Sarah – 2205

Genre: indie, pop, rock

free mp3 Back in February Sick of Sarah partnered with BitTorrent Inc. to release their 2010 album 2205 via the Torrent network. Within 18 days, the album had been shared among one million users worldwide and set an epic record for the most-seeded Torrent ever. They also hold the record for the largest number of active seeders on a music album, currently at over 80,000.

Download 2205 via your favorite Torrent client. The Torrent file is provided by Clearbits.

Sick of Sarah MySpace and Homepage.

Various Artists – Future Architecture

Genre: electro, goa trance

free mp3 Future Architecture is a compilation album from the leading new school Goa trance netlabels Neogoa and Underground Alien Factory Records. The album was released under a Creative Commons license for noncommercial usage and is made available through Ektoplazm.

Future Architecture can be downloaded from the netlabel Ektoplazm.

Ektoplazm Homepage. Neogoa Homepage. Underground Alien Factory Records Homepage.

Reckless Sons – selftitled

Genre: rock

free mp3 From their press page: “Brainchild of Manhattan based writer/musician Matt Butler, Reckless Sons thrive on being one of New York's most versatile and interesting up and coming acts. Inspired by a truly eclectic set of influences, Reckless Sons are the product of Butler's vision of a brand new school of American Rockn'roll.

Preview and download Reckless Sons on their Homepage.

Reckless Sons MySpace and Homepage.

Jhené Aiko – Sailing Soul(s)

Genre: soul, hip hop

free mp3 Singer/songwriter Jhené Aiko calls the mixtape Sailing Soul(s) her “second child, conceived with Los Angeles based producers, Fisticuffs.” It features rapper Drake on the song July and tracks produced by Bei Maejor, namely Higher and You Vs. Them.

Download the mixtape Sailing Soul(s) from Jhené Aiko’s Homepage.

Jhené Aiko MySpace and Homepage.

[adult swim] – Warm & Scratchy

Genre: rock

free mp3 The adult-oriented cable television nework [adult swim] provides several free albums on their website. Warm & Scratchy is rock compilation released in cooperation with Williams Street. [adult swim] was previously featured on Sound Sunday with their electronic compilation Ghostly Swim.

You can preview and download Warm & Scratchy at the [adult swim] Homepage. The URL to the .zip file appears to be broken, but you can download the album one song at a time.

[adult swim] Facebook and Homepage.

The Sovernty – Turning the Page

Genre: alternative, industrial, rock

free mp3 From their Facebook profile: “With a unique blend of sound, evolving melodic harmony, thrashing guitars, and deep rooted lyrics, The Sovernty creates a euphoric experience for the listener to evoke their emotions. With one thing in mind, The Sovernty allows the listener to determine the songs meaning, based on how the song makes them feel… Find out what The Sovernty means to you…

Preview and download Turning the Page on The Sovernty Homepage.

The Sovernty MySpace and Homepage.

Stenobot – Sink or Swim We’ll Go Together

Genre: electronic, pop, chiptune, game music

free mp3 From the album profile: “Come on a beautiful journey through joy and sorrow in this poignant new release from Stenobot. Better known as the musical force behind Seattle’s Supercommuter, Stenobot brings a unique blend of quirky Game Boy sounds and dreamy pop melodies on his first solo album.

Preview and download Sink or Swim We’ll Go Together on CrunchyCo.

Stenobot MySpace and Homepage.

AC/JC – Double Dare

Genre: indie, down tempo, drum & bass, instrumental, hip hop

From their MySpace profile: “AC/JC is a musical colaboration between brothers Andrew Cohn (AKA Anvil) and Jesse Cohn (Sound Syndicate Media). Their EP “Volcanic Message Output,” will be a limited release on 21 Balloons Productions in the spring. The songs on this page are still unfinished.

Double Dare is a free download from Bandcamp.

AC/JC MySpace and Homepage.

New to Sound Sunday? Past editions of Sound Sunday are available here.

Feel free to get in touch with me [tina at makeuseof dot com] to share free material, suggestions, and feedback or simply add your comments below.


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How To Add Rich Snippets for Reviews To Your WordPress Blog

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 10:30 AM PDT

review snippetsI wrote a few weeks ago about how Google was changing search results dramatically by including more and more semantic information – or what Google likes to refer to as Rich Snippets.

Most recently, this was in the form of recipe meta-data, such as ingredients or cooking time. If you’re running a WordPress blog based around reviews of anything then adding semantic markup is easy.

However, you may find your chosen blog theme is throwing a few errors, so let’s take a look at a suitable plugin and how to deal with some of the errors you might see.

GD StarRatings:

If you do any kind of reviews on your blog, GDStarRatings is an absolute must-have plugin, and I’ve been using it right from the start on my iPad Board Games site to allow readers to rate games they’ve played.

review snippets

This plugin has been around along time and the developers were thoughtful enough to include Rich Snippet markup since last year. Unlike the new Recipe micro-format, the markup and rules for reviews has long been established, so the plugin itself produces well formatted review code without any Google validation errors.

Let’s take a quick look at installing and getting the plugin set up, as it can be a little daunting with all the options available to you. First, let’s download it from within the WordPress interface.

rich snippet review

After activation, by default the plugin adds a rating block, a thumbs-up bloc, and comment ratings.

rich snippet review

Let’s disable some of those that we don’t need. Expand the new ratings section on your admin sidebar, and click on Settings. Start by disabling the “thumbs-up” ratings by clicking on the green thumbs-up icon next to the word article (check out the screenshot). Deselect all the options for Auto-insert ratings code, and that should remove them.

rich snippet review

I went ahead and did the same for all other auto-inserted ratings blocks except for the main article star rating which is the only one I want.

Testing With Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool:

Head over to the Google rich snippets testing tool here, and enter the URL of one of your reviews.

how to add blog snippets to a website

After running through the testing tool, you may find some more errors as I did, but these will be related to your individual theme rather than the ratings plugin. For instance, on my theme I found that even such simple semantic information such as “entry-title” wasn’t being added. To fix these, you will need to know a little HTML.

Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.

Warning: Missing required field “updated”.

Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.

Open up the theme folder of your blog, located at wp-content/themes/(name of theme) if you’re going through FTP, or from the WordPress admin screen, expand the Appearance sidebar item and go to Editor.

Open up single.php in your favorite text editor, or just click on the single.php to the left of the editor screen from within WordPress.

First up, Google told us we were missing an entry-title. Hit Find in your browser or editor and look for the_title(). Your can see it’s surrounded by an H2 tag, and in my case with the class=”post_title” applied to it.

how to add blog snippets to a website

We want to add the entry-title class to it too, so in my case I simply added that into the class definition of the H2:

how to add blog snippets to a website

Just below that, Google tells us we are also missing something about when the post was updated. I already have a class=”date” definition, so I simply add “updated” into that one too:

how to add blog snippets to a website

Finally, I’m missing the author information. For now I’ll add it just after the published date. If you already have some code for the_author() somewhere, just surround it with the same span tags as I’ve added below. This tells Google who the author is, their name, and encloses the whole thing in a vcard.

Now, checking the page again I see all the errors have been fixed.

review snippets

As a final step, I’m going to submit my site for Google to start drawing rich snippets from – it won’t necessarily happen automatically, so you need to fill out the form here and Google will consider you for inclusion.

Recipes in WordPress?

There are also a few plugins for adding recipe microformats, however at the time of writing Google had updated their microformat style and neither plugin produced valid results. If you are publishing recipes on your blog, I’d suggest you keep an eye on both hRecipe and RecipeSEO plugins, which I’m sure will be updated soon to reflect the recent format changes.

Conclusion and further reading:

Adding reviews or recipes Rich Snippet data is easy with GDStarRatings, but if your theme isn’t already compatible for the additional author and post meta-data needed, then you may find Google is unwilling to list your site. If you’re getting the same errors as I did, then follow the code tutorial carefully and be sure to make a backup the file in case you make a typo. Next week I’ll begin a series of articles looking in depth at creating a wordpress theme and the structure of themes so you can edit your own a little more, but for now if you’re still getting Rich Snippet errors then feel free to ask a question on the Q&A forum, or post in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to fix them for you.


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Latest Hilarious Picks [MakeUseOf Geeky Fun]

Posted: 20 Mar 2011 04:15 AM PDT

Cool Websites and Tools [March 19th]

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 08:31 PM PDT

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. You can make use of them without spending a dime. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here.

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Listening Room – is a simple yet innovative idea that really has the potential to go viral. What do you do when you have a new music CD and you want to listen to it along with your friend sitting miles away from you? What if you want to play it to a group of friends? Listening Room helps you do just that. Read more: Listening Room: Listen To Music With Friends In Real-Time

 

Make Your Girlfriend Happy – Do you get nervous whenever you don’t know what your girlfriend wants? Maybe you are stuck with finding a nice Valentines Day gift for her? Make Your Girlfriend Happy is a fun app that gives you advice on how to become a “better boyfriend”. This tool helps you fill up a wishlist of gifts for your girlfriend in seconds. Read more: Make Your Girlfriend Happy: Tips To Make Your Girlfriend Happy

 

 

Toshl – A mobile expense tracker is a great tool to have and is probably the best way to track expenses because, whenever you spend anything, you could quickly enter it into your mobile phone. This way, there's no chance of forgetting later. Toshl is a mobile expense tracking app that can help you track your spendings on iPhone, Android, Maemo and Symbian phones. Read more: Toshl: Nice Mobile Expense Tracker

 

 

Minimalist Gmail – Important emails require your attention. If your email client contains distracting banners, links, or ads then it is time to do something about them. Luckily for Gmail users, there are a number of tools that let users declutter their Gmail interface according to their preferences. Minimalist Gmail is one such tool. It lets you strip a number of things from the Gmail interface. Read more: Minimalist Gmail: Easily Declutter Gmail Interface (Chrome)

 

 

Flashing Mirrors – File hosting websites serve us well when our files are too large to email or transfer over instant messaging clients. But with so many file hosting sites to choose from, it becomes difficult to decide which one to go for. Even after you have decided, there is still the risk of a site facing downtime and your file being temporarily unavailable. A solution to all this is Flashing Mirrors. Read more: FlashingMirrors: Upload Files To Multiple Hosts Simultaneously

 

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.


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Two Browser Tools To Hide Your Online Traces From Google

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 06:31 PM PDT

how to hide from googleThere is a wave of paranoia that has been hitting the users of the web in recent years – personal privacy, identity theft and scams. If you are active online, you are likely to have heard those words hundreds of times.

The thing is, if you use the Internet frequently, your personal privacy is a myth. Most of the websites you are visiting store your data, log your behavior and even keep track of what you are doing before and after visiting some particular URL. There’s no escape. But if you want to hide your traces from at least the largest offenders, this post may suggest some existing ways for you to do that.


Here are the two most popular tools used to prevent Google from tracking and recording your search behavior. Please bear in mind that neither of them are perfect – be sure to thoroughly go through the ”Issues” sections.

Track Me Not

(Compatible with: Firefox, Firefox 4, Google Chrome)

Their Explanation

Because the Web has grown into such a crucial repository of information and our search behaviors profoundly reflect who we are, what we care about, and how we live our lives, there is reason to feel they should be off-limits to arbitrary surveillance.

Track Me Not was created as a simple information security software that hides all of your data in plain sight. It doesn’t actually keep search engines from seeing your searches, but instead it creates a large field of ‘ghost’ searches, which overwhelms the trackers. Since your actual search history is lost in a sea of other searches, the engines will find themselves unable to create an accurate profile of your search activity.

How It Works

Track Me Not is on by default. It displays the current query term sent to search engines in the status bar, on the right side of the icon. The icon also allows you to configure the tool settings and see the full list of queries being sent to the search engines.

how to hide from google

The addon is simple to use, and doesn’t need any third-party software or add-ons to work. This already boosts it above most alternatives, which require an additional proxy.

Issues

The problem with products like this is that they don’t have the capabilities of the large search engines. We are talking about some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in the world. They are adaptable, and employ some of the best minds in the industry. It isn’t a leap to think that they can filter TrackMeNot results using a basic analytic tracking code.

You will also have to frequently delete your cache and cookies as it builds more information in simple searches than you ever could on your own. You might also find yourself having to fill in endless CAPTCHA’s (those annoying letter/number boxes on websites) to prove you aren’t a bot, based on how many queries will be flooding the search engine.

Google Sharing

(Compatible with: Firefox 3.0 – 3.6.)

Their Explanation

Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged into a Google account or not, they know everything you’ve ever searched for, what search results you clicked on, what news you read, and every place you’ve ever gotten directions to.

Google Sharing works as a custom proxy that runs in the background of the browser. The idea behind it is interesting. It basically takes all of our information, mixes it together, and then sends it on its way.

In the end, Google will still get all of the search data that it normally would, but because it is all being jammed together, it is next to impossible to create a profile on any individual user. Trends are harder to assess, and so it offers a certain amount of privacy. Everything is filtered through an ‘identity’ created by the proxy, as it watches for Google requests from Firefox.

hide searches from google

How It Works

GoogleSharing is on by default. You can disable it from the status bar. There’s not much to configure in it. You can only add/edit the proxy server used.

how to hide from google

Issues

If you are already concerned with your search behavior being logged by Google, chances are this tool won’t make you feel safer. The idea that all your search history is being saved by a third-party tool and then used in some way is a bit alarming.

Are there any other similar tools that prevent Google from creating a user’s complete profile?  Or do you think tools like these are ultimately pointless? Please share your thoughts!

Image source: stayofsearch


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Hot Tech Deals [Mar 19th]

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 01:30 PM PDT

If you’re in the market for a new computer, laptop, mobile phone, games and other accessories; don’t waste your time searching online. We’ve taken the liberty of locating the best tech deals and unifying them into a single post for your convenience.

For more fresh hot deals, visit our Hot Tech Deals page, which is constantly updated.

  1. Dell Streak 5in Touchscreen Smartphone for $99 w/ Any Purchase at Dell $699+ add Dell Streak under Essential Add-Ons via codes 0CQ6F64K$ZCPV$ and VR9M094JL?RXBK
  2. Sharp LC-26SB28UT 26in LCD HDTV (720p) $229.99 Free Shipping
  3. Garmin nuvi 1390T GPS (4.3in, Text To Speech, Lifetime Traffic Updates) $134.99
  4. Dell Vostro 230 Mini Intel Dual-Core E5800 3.2GHz Desktop (2GB/320GB) w/ 17in LCD $329a
  5. Dell Vostro 230 Slim Intel Dual-Core E5800 3.2GHz Mini Tower Desktop (3GB/250GB) w/ 22in LCD $399
  6. Dell Vostro 230 Mini Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz Desktop (3GB/320GB) w/ Viewsonic 24in LCD $449
  7. Dell Vostro 460 Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge Quad-Core 3.1GHz Desktop w/ 22in LCD, Win7 Pro $759
  8. Hitachi XL Desk 2TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $79.99 Free Shipping
  9. Dell Inspiron 580 Intel Core i3-550 Dual-Core 3.2GHz Desktop Computer (6GB/1TB) w/ 20in LED LCD $579.99
  10. Dell ST2310 23in Widescreen LCD Monitor (1920×1080) $139.99 Free Shipping (24in $159.99) via code 7TXZX6WF05BXWC (Exp 3/24)

Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set


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