ISSUE 2 VOLUME 3 February 200 9

ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF PERSONAL COMPUTER USERSsafe

WHO FREQUENT THE INTERNET, WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON GIST SUPPORT GROUP MEMBERS. surfing HEALTH TIPS BYPASS TELEPHONE MENUS SEARCH ENGINES WEB TRICKS

Health Tips I apologize for straying from strictly computer- related and internet- related issues. But, as I encounter important information that might be useful, I feel compelled to share it. And what better way to share than on the internet? So that’s how I justify covering some of these not-strictly-internet-related issues in these pages.

Bottom Line I used to subscribe to a newsletter called Bottom Line. I found it entertaining and very enlightening. So when the publishers started producing a companion newsletter sense of balance to be both one of the best ways called Bottom Line – Health , I subscribed to that too. I to avoid injury through falls and one of the key already had subscriptions to a number of other measures of physical well-being. Balance can be publications such as Consumer Reports, PC Magazine practiced and improved and Yoga is one easy way to do that. You may recall that the WII game system has a WII Fit board and Yoga exercises that make exercising fun. Another way to and Men’s Health, so I soon became inundated and never practice balance is to stand on one foot while caught up. So I dropped virtually all of my subscriptions. moving the other leg around, bent at the knee. But every now and then one of the publishers sends me a Shoot for the best time, trying for a number of flyer trying to get me to subscribe again and I minutes and then try it with your eyes closed. occassionally fall for their scheme. Most recently I heard You won’t be able to go beyond a few seconds at from Bottom Line, so I wanted to share some of their first. But, by doing it several times throughout the “secrets” which, along with others, are also repeated at day for awhile, you’ll find yourself able to reach www.bottomlinesecrets.com . the 28-second mark, the same time the average 30-year-old can achieve! • Balance - During the recovery and therapy phases following my two minor knee surgeries • Amino Acid - Arginine is recommended as an the issue of balance arose. I had been effective natural substitute for Viagra! researching ways to accelerate my recovery and consistently found that the experts consider a

• Strength Keebler and Famous Amos products containing peanut Training - Also butter, and there are at least 16 products recalled by the during my Kellogg Company. Read more here: recovery, I http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html learned that strength training not only Bypass Telephone Menus restores muscle, Are you frustrated by those automated phone systems? but it increases A well-constructed menu tree can be very helpful and bone density, effective, something I but far too found I needed after a bone density test. often they Additionally, it improves mobility and promotes are weight loss and cardiovascular fitness. ineffective, Surprisingly, you don’t have to spend hours a inefficient week to get these benefits from strength training. and Only a half hour a week is needed. Fred Hahn’s downright book, described and advertised at maddening! www.slowburn.typepad.com/ explains the If my “call process in detail. But just knowing the basics -- is very very slow, repetitive lifting of light weights -- is important” pretty helpful. to you, then why are you trying to drive me crazy? Here are two sites that tell you how to get around the • Decontaminate Sponges – You can easily rid companies’ systems when they just seem to be testing your sponges of germs by simply rinsing and your patience: wringing them out, then microwaving them for 30 to 60 seconds. www.get2human.com

• Anti -Inflammatory & Painkiller Substitutes - www.dialahuman.com Here are some simple ways to get the anti- Not only do the site tell inflammation effects similar to Ibuprofen, you, by company name, glucomsamine and even some addictive drugs: how to get around the automated system and o Drink one or two cups of hot or cold tea to a real person, but daily (rich in polyphenols) they also rate the o Take daily vitamin C (500 to 1000 mg) effectiveness of the and vitamin D (400 IUs, which seems to companies’ systems be 10 mcg) supplements based upon their o Try daily willow bark (240 mg) or readers feedback. And boswella (1000 mg) Get2human also rates o Eat grapes (one cup of white or red) for the agents’ the reservatrol antioxident and COX-2 communications skills inhibitor qualities. Purple grape juice and based on impediments red wine also contain reservatrol. such as severe accents.

Peanut Butter Oddly enough, although If you haven’t I too have had horrible heard, a Peanut experiences in many Butter Corporation cases, I do not of America facility necessarily agree with the ratings I scanned at in Blakely, Georgia Get2human . For example, although I agree that Dell has been found to almost exclusively employs customer service reps in India, be the source of I have had great success dealing with them on the many some salmonella- occasions I’ve had to call. Get2human gave them five contaminated “red flags” and I would have given them only about one peanut butter and peanut butter paste. The product has (as a precaution to be especially ready and sensitve to been distributed to 85 companies (only 30 are focused on the accent problem). I have many friends who complain right now) iand 470 people have gotten ill in 43 states (at about Dell and, similarly, AOL (also with five red flags), so least six deaths reported). Throw away your Austin, my positive experience may be anomalous. I noted with some satisfaction though that United Airlines got four red search options. See also BabelFish , the flags. That’s about right from my experience. AltaVista translation service. • AOL Search - engine that defaults to “AND” logic DialaHuman does not have as many features or listings and offers an options template for easy search as Get2Human , but it’s a good resoruce to remember in construction; has an option to view results by case you need help finding a “cheat” for a particular popularity; offers a directory based on the Open company. Directory • Ask.com - general enhanced by a number of specialty Search searches including a dictionary, thesaurus, currency converter, Engines encyclopedia, maps, news and more. The site is I know I’ve raved about Google as the only search a merging of the former search engines Ask engine you’ll ever need, but there are other search Jeeves and Teoma engines out there! And there are reasons you may want • BananaSlug - uses the to use one over another. Google is still my favorite. It’s mechanism and seeds your search with a extremely fast, generally accurate and sometimes even random word from the category of your choice to seems to be thinking just like I am! But other engines return unusual results have some interesting • ChaCha - search characteristics too. engine that offers live human guides to help For example, Clusty.com , in answer queries addition to listing the results of • - searches a very your search like all other large index of Web engines, displays an additional pages and includes list of categories (or “clusters,” thumbnails of sites in its get it?) that show you the search results number of occurences by • Exalead - offers category in parentheses. concept clustering of results, thumbnail URL.com is new to me, and images of retrieved seems very interesting. They sites, and customization rank results based on user options such as voting after similar searches using Google , Yahoo and organization of results by file type, geography or MSN engines. modification date • Factbites - beta engine that searches for full Ask.com and Copernic.com , two old veterans, are still topic matches and returns meaningful, full around and do great jobs, especially for in-depth sentence excerpts of sites in its results list searches. • Google - ranks pages by tracking the links from

pages ranked high by the service. Also check out Here, compliments of InternetTutorials.net , is a pretty EcoSmartSearch.com , a Google -powered complete list and description of search engines you can search engine with a black background display try whenever Google doesn’t seem to fill the bill, or just that saves energy. when you want to see what else is out there. It’d be fun • Hakia - accepts plain English queries; derives to try them all sometime if you have about a year of spare results from the Ask.com index time! • IceRocket - offers searches of the Web, blogs, Independent Search Engines and other sources, creates an RSS feed of search results, tracks search terms cited in blog • Alexa Web Search - returns results from its own postings, and offers a free RSS builder index accompanied by additional information • including traffic ranking, number of links to page, iSEEK Education - offers authoritative resources ownership and links to related pages of interest from university, government, and established noncommercial providers; organizes results into • AllTheWeb - returns results quickly from an concept clusters, and also allows users to extremely large database gathered by the Yahoo recommend and rate sites crawler; offers multimedia and news searches; • has a good advanced search interface KoolTorch - returns results organized by graphical icons into general category clusters that, • AltaVista - searches Web sites and Usenet in turn, generate results within that category newsgroups with advanced Boolean and field • Live Search - Microsoft's search engine that offers searches of the general Web as well as

some deep Web sources and focused search • Don Busca - searches the Web, blogs, news and including health, local, and questions/answers software and offers a variety of options with each • - general search engine that also offers result including concept clusters, a visual searches of a few deep Web content sources thumbnail of the site, a cached version, a link to including people look-up, yellow pages and the site archive in the Wayback Machine , site multimedia info from a variety of sources and various • Quintura - displays a type of tag cloud with bookmark management options keywords related to your search that can be • Fasteagle -offers searches of many types of Web selected to generate new results sites, including the deep Web and the social Web • SearchEdu.com - limits results to • Fazzle - searches the .edu, domain; also offers to search several search well-known dictionaries, services on the Web, encyclopedias, almanacs, etc. and also offers • SearchGov.com - government specialty searches of domain searches downloads, images, • SearchMil.com - military domain video and other topics searches on the deep Web • Ujiko - features a number of results • Findelio - searches a customization tools in a visual handful of popular environment that also offers topic engines and includes a classification for subsequent searches list of related searches • Webbrain - offers results in visual along with each set of layout of related terms for subsequent results searching • FindForward - • Yahoo! - portal with a general Web searches multiple search and many other content sources and offers services numerous search options including chat Meta Search Engines (aggregates or search, tags, wildcard compares other engine results) and grow word search • Cacti Search - search Google , Yahoo , MSN and • iBoogie - offers searches of the Web and Ask, and retrieve a collated results list with an multimedia, and supplies real-time concept option to view results from each engine clustering of results separately • InfoGrid - offers meta and news searching; portal • Chubba - search interface also features the Open Directory , the Web, a topical InfoGrids, with additional customization of dictionary, topics available in a free download thesaurus and • Intelways - offers a search of multiple search encyclopedia engines, content providers and media types with • Clusty - tool from access to results sets from the individual sources the creators of • Ixquick - ranks results based on top ten rankings that from the source sites; allows any type of search clusters results from syntax and will translate and direct your search a variety of surface accordingly and deep Web • Kartoo - categorizes content into relevant sources and concepts and sites and displays results on a organizes them into clusters by topic, site or URL; graphical map; requires Flash or offers an HTML also offers a variety of customization options, version including the creation of a Clusty Cloud • Keotag - type a keyword or phrase and retrieve • Copernic - client software that searches multiple results from the past 30 days of blog postings engines and directories, removes duplicates and from numerous blog aggregators; you can dead links, highlights search terms in your results, subscribe to an RSS feed to track this search and offers a variety of search and retrieval • KillerInfo - retrieves information from the general options Web and various topic-specific sources and • - search 20+ search engines and organizes results into concept clusters based on retrieve results by relevance or separate source Vivisimo's technology engine; also presents concept clusters for • Mamma - retrieve results in relevancy ranked viewing results organized by keywords or topics order; power search offers a user-friendly template for building a query

• MetaCrawler - retrieve results in that retrieves no more than relevancy ranked order; useful power 250 results for any search search available with a template of search • ZapMeta - organizes results options by relevance, popularity, title, • metaEUREKA - sorts results by relevancy source or domain, allows and offers a "Site info" link that returns users to set preferences, and information on the server, date last features a useful advanced modified, size, and descriptive information search interface if available; also links to site history via the • Zuula - searches the Web, Wayback Machine and popularity ratings images, news, blogs and from Alexa jobs postings, • Mnemomap - provides results in a and returns graphical format that provides search results from refinements and draws results from multiple engine Yahoo! , Flickr and YouTube sources. • Monster Crawler - simultaneously searches Google , Yahoo! , LiveSearch and Ask • Mooter - meta engine that presents initial search Web Tricks results in graphical format and organizes results Every now and then PCWorld publishes into concept clusters what they call “Web Tricks.” Among a recent • Own Mine - searches major search engines and collection of tricks were ideas that range offers the option to chat with users conducting from useful and productive, to clever but useless, and all similar searches the way to ideas bordering on cyber terrorism. • Pandia Search Central - searches multiple engines and directories and also offers searches One of the two or three with some actual usefullness and of news, books, music, videos and other specialty that do not challenge my sense of ethics is a little databases; includes a searchable version of the program called “ SlyDial .” Just dial 267-SLYDIAL, enter Open Directory the number you want to leave a voicemail with, and then, • Slurk - searches Google , Yahoo! and MSN , and when prompted, leave your message that will be gives keyword search suggestions and delivered directly to your contacts' voicemail -- whether immediate results as you type they've got their phone turned on or not. When would • Sproose - allows users to comment on and vote you use that? Well, maybe you’re too busy to engage in on its search results a normal conversation, or you don’t want to have to be • SurfWax - offers options to see a quick view of rude to that special friend who is particularly long-winded, sites in the search results list to determine or you’re just too chicken to discuss some sensitive topic. relevancy and choose alternative search terms for a subsequent search from a thesaurus; offers How about a way to monitor your home or office using a personalization options; offers SurfWax simple webcam from any place from which you have web LookAhead with "Dynamic Search Navigation" access? WebCamXP at gives you web streaming that retrieves results from RSS feeds as you type capability for free: various kinds of queries http://www.webcamxp.com/ • Trexy - tracks "trails" of the Web pages visited and therefore valued by other searchers; users Another potentially useful program, DidTheyReadIt, gets can “Add Engine” to extend the range of the you proof of an email recipient having actually opened search engines that Trexy uses your message and tells you how long it was open. You • URL.com - returns the top ten results from may not retain your reputation as “most popular” with this Google , Yahoo! and MSN , and allows users to program, but it probably will cut down on both the number comment and vote on results. of times you hear “I didn’t get that message!” and on your number of friends: • Virtual Learning Resources Center - searches http://www.didtheyreadit.com/ several high quality directories; also offers its own

directory There are several other tricks listed, but, although I can • WhoNu - semantic tool that searches a large see the humor in some of them, most of them have number of resource types, including deep Web absolutely no redeeming value: sources, and http://www.pcworld.com/article/150141- suggests alternate 3/12_sly_web_tricks_that_put_you_in_control.html topics • Yooci - metasearch tool

Barry Codron, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, lives with his wife and doggie, near his children and grandchildren and their doggies, in the Sacramento area. He enjoys writing and consulting in areas including technology and music, among other fields that pique his interest from time to time. He welcomes your questions, comments, ideas or corrections at [email protected].