Free Technology Zone

This is it.  The last post that will complete the 101 websites that may be worth seeing before you die.  Here you go:

1. http://savethewords.org/ - Yes.  An interesting site which looks like a massive board with thousands of words posted on it.  The idea is to save words that no longer are used by adopting a word and spreading the word.
2. http://notpron.org/notpron/levelone.htm - No. This is just a remake of some adventure game or something similar using the power of the Internet.
3. http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html - No.  This is just another video game.  Video games generally can suck precious time from your life.  So, go on…skip this on.
4. http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/play/index.html - No.  If you like playing checkers against a computer, then maybe “yes.”
5. http://enigmasand.com/ - Yes.  Neat experiment on sand dynamics.
6. http://inception.davepedu.com/ - No.  Useless.
7. http://www.xrez.com/yose_proj/yose_deepzoom/index.html -  Yes.  A good way to check out Yosemite.
8. http://www.dearjohn.com/generate.php - No.  Simplistic.  Don’t need it.
9. http://www.phonespell.org/phonespell.html - No.  Don’t need this site to come up with words for your phone number.
10. http://stereomood.com/ - Yes.  An easy way to find music to your mood.
11. http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/ - Yes.  Another way to help find the right music and image mood.
12. http://lab.wx3.com/defender/ - Yes.  Neat little game and good background music to boot.
13. http://www.asdfjklsemicolon.com/ - No.  This is a totally useless site.  It is as good as the previous site–twocansandstring.com (also made by the same person.  I’m not sure how it even made it to the Maximum PC article.  Go figure.
14. http://www.twocansandstring.com/ - No.  Looks boring.  It’s a way to chat anonymously.  You can ask questions and answer people’s questions.
15. http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl - Yes, if you are into cats and Hitler.
16. http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/ - Yes.  You need to see this one so that you know that if we actually had a zombie infection, how fast that infection would spread.  Fortunately there is no such thing as “zombies.”
17. http://www.dontevenreply.com/ - No.  If you are like me, you have enough emails to read.  This site has email thread archives of some communication exchange.  I suppose it is supposed to be humorous and entertaining, but not in this format.  It feels too much like reading email for work.
18. http://alpha61.com/primenumbershittingbear/ - No.  Absolutely no.  Don’t even waste your time clicking the link.
19. http://marriedtothesea.com/ - No.  It is somewhat entertaining, but you could probably live not even visiting this site.  They seem to be focusing in selling you their merchandise.
20. http://theoatmeal.com/ - Yes.  Very entertaining.  Some pages are explicit, so it may not be good for kids to see.
21. http://www.wordle.net/ - Yes.  You need this site to get the gist of the underlying message of any written communication.  This site will create a world cloud from an input of text.  Try doing this on President Obama’s job plan speech (last 9/8/2011) and you’ll see that what stands out are the following words:  right, now, tax, jobs, Americans.
22. http://htwins.net/scale/ - Yes.  Absolutely yes.  This site gives you a good perspective on how insignificant we are in the universe, and how massive it is.  If this doesn’t prove there is a god, nothing will.  This site has a slider that allows you to zoom in or out to see various objects with their relative size and scale.
23. http://www.sealandgov.org/ - No.  This is just a web site for Sea Land.  If you are into royalty, this may be the site for you, but definitely not me.
24. http://graphjam.memebase.com/ - No.  No big deal.  The site seems a bit busy.  It does have some interesting graphs.
25. http://bit.ly/eBk8rq - shows all of the above links.  If you wish to save time trying to find all the links, this is definitely a site to see before you die.

source: Salvatore Vuono, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is part 3 of a 4 part post regarding the February 2011 issue of Maximum PC which touts 101 websites you need to see before you die.  In this article, I will continue to post my opinion regarding another 25 websites.

1. http://hatsproductions.com/organtrail.html - No.  I would only recommend this site if you have time to kill, because this website page is basically a video game using graphics and technology based on 1970′s technology.
2. http://machinarium.net/demo - Yes.  Even if you aren’t a computer game aficionado, you’ll at least appreciate the artwork and interesting puzzles here.
3. http://www.playauditorium.com - Yes.  Great eye and ear candy for a different angle on puzzle games.
4. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ - Yes.  This is a site which promotes data visualization, especially ones that look beautiful.
5. http://tokyoplastic.com/dm.html - Yes.  Awesome animation and sound!
6. http://experiments.instrum3nt.com/markmahoney/ball/# - Yes (just once though).  This is another Chrome experiment.  It illustrates how multiple browser windows can inter operate through the use of a bouncing ball.
7. http://www.chromeexperiments.com - Yes.  You’ll need WebGL capable display card to view these visual array of artwork.
8. http://www.kokogiak.com- Yes.  This guys has some interesting projects.  I won’t mention what they are.  Just go and check it out.
9. http://seaquence.org  - Yes.  This is an interesting way of composing and presenting music.
10. http://failblog.org - Yes.  This is one of the most well known sites (especially on YouTube).  It is very entertaining because it is so much like America’s Funniest Videos.
11. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements - Yes.  This ought to help you decide which vitamins to get at Costco.  The visual data representation and the ability to filter on areas of concern make it easy to determine which one really is snake-oil.
12. http://www.verbatim.jp/senshuken/ - Yes.  Very addicting game!!! Be careful.
13. http://virtual-bubblewrap.com - No.  Not quite as good as the real thing.
14. http://www.youtube.com/trivialpursuit - No.  Unfortunately I don’t speak Spanish.  So, this site is a definite NO.
15. http://www.kongregate.com/games/pastelgames/the-trader-of-stories - Yes.  This is like reading an interactive comic book.  The game is an adventure.  There is no real time graphics, but between the sound and the awesome artwork, it makes for an entertaining play.
16. http://www.yourethemannowdog.com/ - No.  Useless.
17. http://www.willitblend.com/ - Yes.  This is an interesting way to promote an awesome blender.  I could use a blender like that.
18. http://www.icanhascheezburger.com - Maybe.  If you like cats and burgers, just maybe you’ll love this site.
19. http://amzn.to/7whhld - No.  This link appears to be dead.
20. http://armorgames.com/play/4309/this-is-the-only-level - Yes.  You’ll be entertained by the game at this site for a little bit, but you’ll soon realize there is only one level in this game.
21. http://periodictable.com/ - Yes.  I wish they had this when I was taking chemistry during college.  It sure would have given me a better sense of what all these elements were.
22. http://firstpersontetris.com/ - No.  This is just a tetris game where rotating the falling block isn’t what you do.  Instead, you rotate everything else to make the block or shape land the way it needs to be.  It makes you feel like you are in space doing tetris in zero gravity.  This is very disorienting.
23. http://www.kongregate.com/games/icylime/multitask - No.  This is a waste of time.  If you like to torture yourself with useless multitasking activities, go for it.  At the end of the day, it changes nothing, except maybe that you may think how uncoordinated you might be.
24. http://www.conveythis.com/translation.php - No.  This site is a translation site.  You don’t need this.  Google has its own translation function.
25. http://www.amiblind.com/ - No.  Totally useless.

This is a continuation of a posting (101 Websites worth seeing before you die.  Really? (part 1 of 4)) regarding an article I read on the February issue of Maximum PC.  In the article, it listed 101 websites that they say you ought to see before you die.  I beg to differ on some of the ones listed.  What do you think?

1. http://demoscene.tv - No.  For some reason the videos on this site would not play.  I tried three different browsers.  If it actually worked for me, I might have a different opinion.
2. http://www.pbfcomics.com - Yes.  Good entertaining short comic strips.  Look at a few and you’ll get a quick laugh.  A little laugh here and there is always a good thing.
3. http://handdrawngames.com - Maybe.  If you like tower-defense like video games, you’ll like this.  WARNING!  This game can get addicting; you can end up wasting precious time playing this game.
4. http://zombo.com - No, absolutely not.  A waste of time.  It seems just babble on and on about you being able to do anything at their site, when in fact, you can do nothing at their site.
5. http://lparchive.org - No.  Seems to be an archive of old games, information about the, and some videos that show the look and feel of the game.
6. http://tvtropes.org - Maybe.  If you are a fiction writer, this could be a good resource for you.  This is a wiki site, and it definitely has tons of information to spark writing ideas.
7. http://autotopsy.ca - Yes.  Gives one a very good idea of circumstances anyone of us can be in before an unexpected collision.  The visuals and video are knit together to form a very cohesive presentation.
8. http://web.mit.edu/~jmcmicha/www/globegenie - Yes.  You don’t have to physically travel to see the world.  This Google map-based web application allows you to virtually teleport and view the world.
9. http://games.sticky.tv/cyrkam_airtos - No.  Lots of novelty here, but not enough to hold my attention.
10. http://www.fasco-csc.com/works/crimson/crimson_e.php - Yes.  If you aren’t from the generation that was fortunate enough to see the birth of the personal computer age, this site will give you an appreciation for how that generation of programmers created mysteries, puzzle, and adventure games.
11. http://www.tomscott.com/weather/starwars - Yes.  If you are a Star Wars fan, this is definitely where you will want to tune in for weather.  The site provides weather and temperature information that it tries to associate with the weather at a comparable location or planet.
12. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwh/buildingmaker.html - Yes.  This allows you to see buildings from models created on Google maps by fellow browsers.
13. http://maddox.xmission.com - Yes.  This is an entertaining blog of someone who claims he’s got the best web page in the universe.  If you are a sensitive or very politically correct, you can skip this site.
14. http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver - Yes.  This is an interesting blog by a caver.  If you read the logs and look at the pictures and images, you will almost feel claustrophobic.  If you don’t like tight places, I don’t recommend this.  The bad this about this log was that it was never finished.  Could it be that the caver perished?
15. http://www.thefuckingweather.com - No.  I wouldn’t waste my time trying to get weather information from this site.
16. http://www.ilovebees.com - NO.  The site is supposedly about some person who loves bees.  However, the site appears to be messed up. I hope it isn’t infected with some sort of mal-ware; and I hope my computer didn’t get infected.
17. http://www.ugo.com/games/superhero-generator-heromachine-2-5 - Yes.  If you have ever thought of designing your own super hero, this site has templates and parts you can put together to create your very own super hero.
18. http://www.photosynth.net/ - Yes.  This is actually a Microsoft site.  It allows you to get a 360 degree view of locations and objects.  The content are actually a synthesis of multiple photos to give one a panoramic view of the subject matter.  It is awesome, and it allows you the opportunity to contribute to the content.
19.  http://recordtripping.com - No.  This site is a game.  I’m not quite sure what its objectives are, but the animation and audio sound pretty good.  Nevertheless, it felt like a waste of time.
20. http://www.incredibox.fr - Yes.  This is an interesting way of composing a virtual church choir.
21. http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com - Yes.  It is a good site to visit one time.  After the novelty wears out, you’ll just get tired watching the firm it automatically generated for your using the address you provided.
22. http://balldroppings.com/js - Yes.  This is an interesting play on physics and sound.  Here you can control the rate at which the balls drop, the gravity, and the walls that the balls will encounter as they drop and bounce.
23. http://doritoslatenight.com - This site is now closed.
24. http://gettheglass.com - Yes.  It’s about milk.  The 3D animation board game can get addicting.  The kids will surely love playing this game.
25. http://hotel626.com - Yes.  Check in to Hotel 626.  As the name implies, they are only open from 6pm to 6am.

credit: Salvatore Vuono

The February 2011 issue of Maximum PC has an article touting 101 websites you need to see before you die.  In this article, I will post the 101 links along with my opinion about whether it is really worth seeing.  This will be part 1 of 4 parts since there are 101 sites after all.

1. http://ww.wechoosethemoon.org - Yes.  Make sure to see this site before you die.  The Apollo 11 mission to the moon is probably one of “the” greatest human accomplishments of the 20th century.  This site shows you the various stages Apollo 11 had to go through to land on the moon and return to earth.  The combination of animation and real footage gives you a good feel for that event.
2. http://personas.media.mit.edu/ - Maybe.  It scours the Internet for information about the name you enter at the site.  When done it comes up with a graphical representation of your known persona.  You might as well see what kind of legacy online you will leave behind when you die.
3.  http://www.wefeelfine.org - No.  It is a very visually luring site.  I’m not sure how it figures out the various information it is showing, but I imagine it has done some web searches on the web and has consolidated that information for visual representation.  Its content is definitely visually entertaining.
4. http://soytuaire.labuat.com - No.  This site shows another way at listening to music…by doodling on the screen as various visual effects overlay on our doodle.  Interesting but not enough to waste your time on.
5. http://false.jp - No.  Good eye candy, but could be just a waste of time.
6. http://www.shapethehive.com - No.  It is one way to leave your mark on line; but I wouldn’t say it is really something to see before you die.  It is one interesting asynchronous collaboration site with visual effects, but I don’t see the point.
7. http://us.akinator.com - Yes.  This is an amazing site.  I imagine it uses the power of the Internet to figure out who you are thinking of.  When I started playing it, I thought it would not guess who I was thinking of.  To my surprise, it guessed it and it even showed a picture of the character!
8. http://www.dionaea-house.com - No.  This site is like reading other people’s email.  As with anything, it is hard to get interested in the site since it doesn’t give you a clue about what it is about, nor does it try to tell you what story it is trying to convey.  It’s like watching a movie from somewhere in the middle.  You don’t have a point of reference and can’t really tell where the story may be going.  So, I would skip this site, for sure.
9. http://www.linerider.com - Maybe…if you like drawing and animation.  This site provides you with interesting drawing tools to create a path for the line rider.  In some of the sample works, some users have gone through some length to create the most elaborate line path for the line rider.  Interesting, but can be a time sink if you start tinkering with it.
10. http://prettyloaded.com - No, absolutely no–unless maybe you like watching grass grow.  This site provides you a collection of “Loading” animations.  “Loading” animations are typically shown to show that something is loading.  This is typically what you watch, when you are waiting for something to load.
11. http://anasomnia.com - Maybe.  Interesting animation of someone’s dream representation.  Turn off the light and see what happens.  It seems to just keep going on; but if you press the arrow on the top left, you’ll wake up the girl who is supposedly dreaming.   The images are basically line drawn images of some very abstract shapes and figures.
12. http://www.stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net - Yes.  This site gives you a different perspective of the various state of the union speeches given by all presidents.  It can give insight into what the focus was of that time.  It even rates the president’s grade level for the speech given.
13. http://hubblesite.org - Yes.  This site shows you some of the most amazing pictures of heavenly bodies as seen through the eyes of the Hubble telescope.  The pictures here will make you realize how seemingly insignificant we are in the big scheme of things.
14. http://www.eyezmaze.com - No.  There are better things to do on the web than play games.  These games are time sinks.
15. http://www.mcdlr.com/bsod - Yes.  You need to use this site to at least play a joke on someone at work.  If they are a techie and they happen to be running Windows 7, they’ll probably scratch their head.  Windows 7 doesn’t do BSOD!  If you play this trick on a non-techie, they won’t know any better regardless of which operating system they are using.  They will know, however, that something might have gone wrong.
16. http://atom.smasher.org/error - Yes, if you like playing practical jokes on tech support, this site would be a good one to visit.
17. http://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/ie6 - No.  Nothing seems to show–just white space.  What a waste.
18. http://www.lmgtfy.com - No.  This is just an extra shell that will record what you typed and then transfer it to google’s search.
19. http://blublu.org - Maybe.  This is an interesting site.  Viewing the site is like viewing someone’s scrap book.  The presentation is pretty easy to follow.
20. http://www.mrwong.de/myhouse - Yes.  It’s probably a good idea to check out the world’s tallest virtual building before you die.  The author was pretty creative in creating such a site.  The project has since been closed, but apparently the site is still getting lots of visits.
21. http://www.360cities.net/london-photo-en.html - Yes.  If you’ve never been to London, you can see a lot with this very high resolution (80 gigapixel) image!
22. http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com - No.  It is however a very interesting work of animated art.
23. http://milliondollarhomepage.com - Yes, absolutely.  This is an example of how anyone can make it big on the Internet.  Just the right idea, and” BAM!!!” money rolls in.  The originator of this site made a million dollars selling pixels from his pixelated homepage.
24. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php - Yes.  If you have time, you can see how the Internet has evolved through the web pages that have been archived here.
25. http://www.cleverbot.com - No.  This is a site that looks like a search engine, but it is really an example of an online artificial intelligence (AI).  This reminds me of an old AI-like program, the name which escapes me, that existed way back in the late 1970s.  You can ask it questions, it responds.  It asks you questions, and you respond.  The program looks intelligent, but after a couple of exchanges, it isn’t.
26. http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com - Yes.  This has some over 500 snippets of wisdom.

Look for the next 25 on my next posting.

Can’t afford to subscribe or buy technology magazines? Guess what, if you have Internet access and you don’t mind reading PDF files, and you don’t mind your content being about 2 to 3 months old, then you can get them for free!

Maximum PC is one such magazine who provides archives of issues from their web site. Just head on down to their PDF archive page and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve been hoping to get invited to beta test Google’s new online application called “Wave”.  Well, after submitting two requests over a period of a month, I finally got an invitation!

I am now one of the lucky few who will get a chance to test drive what could be one of the most paradigm changing revolutions in our Internet times.

As I go through the use of Wave I will post my opinion of it and it possible applications, and how this new communications medium can possibly impact the way we do things online or with our daily lives.

Introduction

Most people with very minimal computer background use their web browser without thinking about web safety. They just expect their computer to do its job. Well, there is more than meets the eye when surfing the Internet, especially if you are using someone elses computer or a computer shared by many other people. Here’s what I mean.

When you are browsing the Internet, your web browser leaves a trail of where you’ve been, what you’ve typed, what you’ve seen, and the various information you’ve been entering in web forms. In Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), it even remembers the state of you browser so that if it crashes, you can be restored to the last state of your browsing activity.

Now think about who could potentially see this if you are using a public computer or a shared computer! This is an identity theft scenario just waiting to happen.

IE8's Safety

This is where IE8 Safety feature comes into play.  Microsoft has updated IE8 with Internet safety as a major change.  As an example, one of the key things you will notice is that IE8 has an InPrivate Browsing feature–a way for you to browse without leaving a trace.  Note that IE8 has no Phishing Filter as it has been replace by SmartScreen Filter.

Delete Browsing History

Clicking this menu item will bring up the Delete Browsing History dialog box where you can select the specific items in your browsing history you want to delete.  The options include:

• Preserve Favorite website data:  to keep cookies and temporary Internet files that enable your favorite websites to retain site preferences and display faster
• Temporary Internet files:  copies of web pages, images, and media that are temporarily saved by IE8 for faster viewing
• Cookies:  files stored on your computer by websites to save preferences such as your login information
• History:  list of websites you’ve visited
• Form Data:  information you typed into web forms
• Passwords:  saved passwords that are automatically filled in when you login to a website you’ve previously logged in
• InPrivate Filtering data:  Saved data used by InPrivate Filtering to detect where websites may be automatically sharing details about your visit

If you are paranoid like me, you’ll want to make sure that any trace of your browsing history is truly deleted by making sure you check all of the above and uncheck the first one–Preserve Favorite Website Data.

InPrivate Browsing

InPrivate Browsing

Selecting this menu item or pressing CTRL-SHIFT-P, will open a new IE8 window running in ”InPrivate” browsing mode.  This means that your browsing activity isn’t leaving any trails behind.  Be advised that this InPrivate protection is only in effect for this window.  By default, IE8 will open in its normal mode.

You should use this mode when using public or shared computers to prevent others from finding information about your web activity.

Web Page Privacy Policy

This is basically a report of which sites you’ve visited showing if cookies were accepted or blocked.  Depending on your browser’s privacy policy setting, you may or may not have any reports of cookies being accepted by your system.

Privacy Report

If you select one of the sites in your privacy report, you will notice that the Summary button becomes enabled, and if you click it you will get the following dialog box:

Privacy Report Summary

If you decide that the current browser privacy policy isn’t sufficient or you simply wish to change it, you can click the Settings button Privacy Report dialog box.  When you do you get this:

Privacy Policy Settings

As you can see, it can get pretty involved just trying to make heads or tails of Privacy Policy.  Suffice it to say that in this window you can control how cookies are allowed or disallowed on your computer.  You can also control the pop-up blocker  and control InPrivate browsing settings.  I’ll cover this area in more detail in another article.

InPrivate Filtering and Settings

When you select Safety then InPrivate Filtering from the command bar, you toggle on and off this feature.  What exactly is InPrivate Filtering?  It is a feature that allows you to block the sharing of information about the sites you visit to third party content providers.  This information can be used to generate a profile about you which then can be used for targetted advertisements.

You can choose to automatically block, choose which ones to block/allow, or to simply have it off by selecting the InPrivate Filtering Settings menu item from the Safety command bar drop down menu.  The window for InPrivate Settings is shown below.

InPrivate Filtering Settings

Security Report

The feature activates when the site you are visiting is secure–meaning it is using HTTPS in the URL.  When you select this from the menu (under Safety in the command bar), IE8 will bring up a little pop up window that provides information about the site.  The example below show what I got when I went to the logon page of gmail.

Security Report on gmail

As you can see, it provides information about who the certificate of authority (CA)  is and other information related to the site’s certificates.   Typically, the CA is the one vouching for the sites identity.  In this case the CA is Verisign–a very reputable CA company.

International Website Address

There isn’t really much information about this function in IE8.  The closest thing on this I can find from Microsoft is an article on “What are International Domain Names?”

This item appears to be disabled or grayed out all the time.  So there was no way to determine exactly what it does.  Although, I’m guessing that if a site is an international site where the domain name can be shown in its native language, then this feature might allow you to show it in its original form or standard text encoding.

This appears to be a security feature because it is possible for text encoding to look like a legitimate looking domain when, in fact, it is a foreign site!

You’ll probably not even use this, but it is good to know what it may be used for.

SmartScreen Filter

This is IE8′s replacement for the Phishing Filter that was introduced in IE7.  When it is on, IE8 will send the website you are visiting to Microsoft to check to see if it is in the list of phishing or malicious software distribution sites.  It it is, you will get an RED background in the address bar and you will get a block message from IE8.  You can ignore the message and continue to the bad site or you can go to your home page (recommended).

If you suspect a site is a suspicious or potentially malicious site, you can submit a site to Microsoft for review by selecting Check This Website from the SmartScreen Filter submenu.

Although it isn’t recommended, you can turn off this feature by selecting Turn Off SmartScreen Filter from the submenu.

If you visit a site that is obviously a malicious one, you can simply report this abuse by selecting Report Unsafe Website from the SmartScreen Filter submenu.

As you can see, this is a very powerful feature of IE8 to help protect users from malicious sites that are there to potentially steal your identity or to spread malware to your computer.

Windows Update

This feature will navigate you out of the page you are currently viewing to Microsoft’s update site.  There Microsoft will assess what updates your computer needs and you can opt to install them.

I recommend installing critical security updates at the very minimum as these will close any vulnerabilities your computer might have from hackers who will exploit them.

Conclusion

IE8 is a major change from the previous versions due to heavy focus on security.  The Safety feature of IE8 is a testament to that.

Overview

The Page function of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is probably where most action takes place for web page related functions the user will take.  It has the following basic menu items

• Cut, copy, and paste
• Accelerators (links to sites)
• Edit, Save As, Send page or link by E-mail
• Compatibility viewing options (enable it or configure it)
• Page displaying options like Zoom, Text size, Style, Encoding, Caret browsing
• Properties
• View Source

Most of the items here are common knowledge to the general user population; so we will only cover those functions that are more obscure to the most casual user.  We’ll cover those that are in bold above:  compatibility viewing options, style, encoding, caret browsing, and view source.

Compatibility Viewing Options

Previous versions of Internet Explorer have the reputation of not following web standards, as it relates to how web page mark up codes are interpreted. In addition, they were known to use their own unique mark up code–forcing web masters to create various hacks just to make sure their pages work in IE6 or IE7.

Well, after many years, Microsoft finally saw the light and have come to adopt web standards–resutling in the release of IE8. Now, what happens to the pages that were designed to be best viewed in IE6 or IE7? In some cases, they might not look right. This is where the compatibility option comes in.

If you enable the Compatibility View option, IE8 will allow you to run in a sort of IE6 or IE7 mode.  So if you ever find a site that may have been designed for the older Internet Explorers, you’ll want to enable this option, and add the site to the list of sites you wish to view in compatible mode.  You can add them by selecting Compatibility View Settings.

Bottom line…if a page doesn’t look right, try enabling the Compatbility View option.

Style

The Style menu item has two submenu items–no style and default style.  As some people know, web pages may have styles associated with it.  Styles can be embedded in a page or it can be included using CSS (cascading style sheets).

Styles control how content is displayed.  So by default, IE8 uses styles.  You can disable Style by selecting No Style.  When you do, IE8 will simply show you content in a linear fashion–pretty much in the order they appear in the page, with no style.

When would you use “No Style”?  Probably if you want to keep the view to the content plain.

Encoding

Encoding is the language and character set to use when displaying a web page. Most people don’t have to mess with this because the default setting is “Auto” and most pages have information to tell the browser what language encoding to use.

However, if for some reason the page does not include that information, and you have the Language Encoding Auto-Select feature on, IE8 can probably determine the correct encoding. For the case it cannot, the Encoding feature allows you to choose.

Caret Browsing

No. This isn’t some new browsing trend where you eat carrots while you browse. It is an accessibility feature on IE8 that allows one to browse using the keyboard.

When it is on, a movable cursor will become visible. Using the keyboard, a user can navigate the browser with that cursor. That same cursor can be used to select and copy snippets of the page being viewed.

This feature can be applied on a per tab basis. Pressing F7 toggles it on or off.

View Source

Most people would probably not care about using this feature, but if for some reason you want to see how a web page is coded in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), then this is how you would see it.

Closing Remarks

By getting yourself familiar with these features, you will become more knowledgeable about IE8 than probably 99% of the population! As a result, you can be more productive in how you deal with a web page.

Basic Google Search

Almost everyone uses Google to search the Internet; but not everyone really knows how to take advantage of some of Google’s basic search capabilities.  Knowing how to use Google’s basic search capabilities can narrow down your seach quickly from several hundred millions down to a few thousands relevant results.

Open your web browser to google.com.  This should open up to google’s simple, yet effective home page–the search page.  At this point, you can search the WEB, look for IMAGES, find some VIDEOS, or search for NEWS.  Most of the time, the default–WEB–will suffice.  Regardless, click the type of seach you wish to do.

In the search field, you can type relevant words that simply describe what you are looking for.  Say for example you are looking for an article on basket weaving.  If you simply type the words “basket” and “weaving” in the seach field, Google will come back with 1,150,000 results.  This is because google will look for articles that contain “basket weaving”, “basket”, or “weaving”.  Now, do you have time to look over that many articles?  Probably not.

To narrow down your results to more relevant searches, you can begin by using the “+” operator.  You can enter “+basket” and “+weaving”.  This will force Google to only return articles with both “basket” and “weaving”.  This approach narrows down the search to 704,000.  Better than the original 1,150,000 results earlier, but still too many.

To further narrow down the search, you can enclose your search criteria with quotes–i.e. use “basket weaving” including the quotes.  This forces Google to only return articles with the term “basket weaving”.  This narrows down the search to 370,000.  This is a significant improvement to the original result of 1,150,000.

Several hundred thousand articles are still too much to search through.  Think about what is unique about your search.  Say for example that you are only interested in nylon basket weaving techniques.  You can update your search to use ‘+nylon +”basket weaving”‘. This asks Google to find web articles that have the terms “nylon” and “basket weaving”.  This narrows down the search to 3,190!  This is definitely orders of magnitude less than the original 1,150,000 search result.  Most people will probably continue to get results of this magnitude; however, you now know basic Google search capabilities and should be able to limit search results to a few relevant thousands.