How To Get More Useful Results From Your Google Searches

Have you been following the discussions on the interwebs lately about problems with Google’s search algorithims and spammers? The basic argument is (and has been for a while) that SEO people and content factories are creating content at such high rates these days that, for any keyword that is worth monetizing, it is nearly worthless to even bother doing a Google search because all of the top results will be overtaken with spam.

So, what happens is, say you want to do a search on something like laundry machines or whatever, to figure out what laundry machine you should buy. The contention is that entering the information into Google is worthless because here’s what you get:

But . . . if you filter these results by selecting “Discussions from the “more” sidebar, you can get better information:

The results you get this way will be culled from discussions throughout the web about the topic. And at least for the time being, this is still going to be the best way we have of performing things like product review searches, short of going from site to site to perform a search, even if one of those sites happens to be Facebook.

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Scribefire Blog Editor for Chrome

As time goes on, the list of extension dealbreakers for users pondering the jump from Firefox to Chrome keeps getting shorter. You may soon be able to cross off one of Firefox's most popular extensions for bloggers: Scribefire is now available as a Google Chrome extension.

It's not as full-featured as its FF cousin by any stretch, but this is an alpha build. By the time it's all said and done, there's no doubt that Scribefire on Chrome will be every bit as good as the original. This isn't a port -- it's very nearly a complete re-write. Developer Chris Finke says, "For comparison's sake, the current version of ScribeFire for Firefox has been under development for four years and contains about 17,000 lines of JavaScript. This first version for Chrome is three weeks old and contains 3,000 lines of JavaScript, only 110 of which were taken from the Firefox version."

Right now the essentials are there, and they work well. Plug in your blog's address to set it up (multiple sites are supported), choose an existing entry from the dropdown to edit, or new to post from scratch. Most major blogging platforms are supported, including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Live Spaces, and TypePad. Scribefire will display your existing categories, but not integrate tags -- yet. Hopefully autocomplete/suggestions for tags will be added soon.

As far as writing goes, the extension works beautifully. Where I run into trouble is with the addition of images. You can't drag and drop as you can on FF, nor can you upload inline. That means you've got to deal with the additional step of uploading with another tool, and then adding in the URL to your image. As Scribefire and Chrome's Extension APIs mature, however, that functionality will no doubt be bolted on.

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Set sleep time in Windows 7

Wondering how to set the sleep timer in Windows 7?
Heres a quick guide..

1. Open your Control Panel from the start menu.
2. View your control panel with “Large Icons” which can be changed on top right.
3. Choose Power Options in the Control Panel, which should be somewhere in the middle of fourth column.

4. Click Change plan settings next to the Balanced power plan.

5. Adjust all the 6 drop-down menus to where you feel comfortable with your settings and then click Save changes.

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Turn on Military Time in Windows 7

It’s very easy to turn on the military time Windows 7 or even Vista, but the setting isn’t in an obvious place, so you probably did not find it.

To change this setting, we will need to get to the Regional and Language Options screen. The easiest way to do so is just enter intl.cpl into the Start menu search box and hit enter. Otherwise, type region into the Control Panel.

From the Regional and Language Options dialog, click the “Customize this format” button, and then select the Time tab.

Change the time format dropdown as shown:

You’ll notice from the key that the capital letter H means 24 hour time, and a single letter means that it won’t display the leading zero.

Windows 7 Military Time

It’s even easier in Windows 7 – just change the drop-down as shown:

Hit Apply and then OK, thats it your done! Enjoy Windows 7 Military click.

Thanks HowToGeek for the article.

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Twitter Symbols

Here’s another option for putting symbols into your Twitter stream: just drag the bookmarklet atTwitter Symbols into your browser. When you want to use a symbol, you can click on the link and a window will pop up, then double click on the symbol, control-C (or Command-C on a Mac) to copy, and control-V (Command-V on a Mac) to paste into your Twitter stream.

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