Enhance Windows Search with the Free Microsoft Filter Pack

Enhance Windows Search with the Free Microsoft Filter Pack.

If you’re using the new Windows Search function in Vista or later (or you’ve gotten it for XP), this will let you cover more types of Windows files.

Plagium: Online Plagiarism Tracker

MakeUseOf has a post on Plagium which is an Online Plagiarism Tracker.

Worried that your work is being used without giving you proper credit?  Enter a block of text into Plagium to check for its use anywhere on the web.

Wakoopa – Discover software & games

Wakoopa helps you Discover software & games.  Free and pay software used and reviewed by users.

Vunky Search for Photoshop tutorials

Vunky Search is a search engine for Adobe Photoshop tutorials.

If you want to use Photoshop effectively, use Vunky Search to find tutorials on how to improve.

Vunky Search for GIMP

(That may well be the most bizarre title for a post on Computer Helpers!)

Vunky Search is a search engine for GIMP tutorials.

GIMP is the open-source freeware graphics creation/editing software, often compared to Adobe Photoshop.

To learn to use GIMP effectively, use Vunky Search.

Vattoz: Music Search Engine

MakeUseOf has a post on Vattoz: Music Search Engine with a Playlist Support.

Vattoz “searches for songs based on artist name or the song name and displays the results in a clean interface where you have two options – play the song or add to playlist.

The playlist is a box which could be dragged and dropped anywhere on the web page and maintains the list of your favorite songs and plays them. The site uses cookies to remember your playlist. You can also share your playlist with friends.”

You Can Speed Up Your Search Function in Windows XP.

Internet Fixes advises XP owners that You Can Speed Up Your Search Function in Windows XP..

You just need to download the new, free Windows Desktop Search for XP, the one that comes with Vista.

Good tip!

Big.com: The Most Readable Results on the Web

Big.com: The Most Readable Results on the Web is a search engine which displays in large fonts, for low vision users.

Finding drivers

Smart Computing has an article (January 2009) on resources for finding that latest or hard-to-find driver for your hardware.

Along with the manufacturers’ sites and the operating system’s maker, you might try:

• DriverAgent.com, which has a scan for good and bad drivers, but requires payment if you get the updated driver through them.  Uses a scan you download to your computer.
• DriverSearch.com is a search engine specifically for drivers.
• WinDrivers.com requires a free Internet.com account and covers a wide variety of drivers.

Keep Office 2007 Documents Readily Available

Mysticgeek has a post on how toKeep Your Office 2007 Documents Readily Available the Easy Way .

“How many times have you been looking or a Word of Excel document and what should be an quick retrieval takes several minutes? Sure, you can always search, but for frequently used documents that’s not the best solution.

Today we will look at an easy way to keep your most important documents readily available within Office 2007. This trick works with Word, Excel and PowerPoint just the same… there’s a push pin icon next to each item in the recent documents list.”

“Everything” desktop search for NTFS drives

freewaregenius has a post on“Everything”: small, lightning fast desktop search for NTFS drives

“Description: “Everything” is a free, lightning fast file and folder name search program that offers right-click context menu integration. It works with NTFS filesystem hard drives only because it does not scan your hard drive but rather uses the Master File Table of the NTFS volume to build its database.  If your hard drive(s) is NTFS formatted and if you are looking for a super-fast program for searching file and folder names that beats the pants off of Windows’ default search function, this program may be it. It may be, in fact, the fastest desktop search program (for files and folder names) that I have ever seen.”

NTFS is normally found on Windows XP and Vista systems.

Everything.exe search tool

ZDNet offers Everything exe, from voidtools, a search engine for Windows that replaces the normal Windows search with a much faster one. Unlike Windows search, Everything initially displays every file and folder on your computer. You can type in a search filter to limit what files and folders are displayed. Everything only uses file and folder names and generally takes a few seconds to build its database. 1,000,000 files will take about 1 minute.Version 1.1.4.301 adds -search command line option, improved status of servers under the tool menu, and other fixes.

Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista, NTFS file system.  Freeware.

Search for Discount Deals

MakeUseOf.com has a post on DealsLook, a search engine that searches over 100 top deal sites.

Another they suggest is called FreshBargains which covers 15 major deal sites.

Google a single site

To use Google to search just one site, enter your search and follow it with site: and the url of the web site.

For example, to search the UA Fort Smith web site for anything on football, try football site:uafortsmith.edu

Skreemer hunts for MP3s

MakeUseOf has a post on Skreemer, the search engine for MP3s.

• Search and stream MP3s for free.
• Advanced Search: Filter MP3s by length, bitrate, title, album, artist or genre.
• Option to download any listed MP3 using ‘right-click’ -> ‘Save Link As’ option.
• Share and embed MP3s on your Blog or social networking profile (Facebook, Myspace, …).
• Add SkreemR search to Firefox Search bar (incl. auto suggestion).
• For each song view related YouTube videos, Flickr images, and Wikipedia entries.
• Songbird users: search SkreemR right from the Songbird media player.

This is for “DRM-free music, podcasts, speeches and much more”.

Songza – find and listen to music

Songza is “the music search engine & internet jukebox”

“Unlike KaZaa or Bit Torrent, Songza users can only listen to songs, not download them. And unlike Last.fm or Rhapsody, Songza permits users to choose exactly the song or artist they want to hear, and does not require them to subscribe or pay for its services.”  “Songza pays for licenses from all the major performing-rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), who then pay the publishers and writers in proportion to the number of plays they get on Songza.”

There’s also a Firefox add-on here to allow you to search Songza.

Songerize for trying out music

MakeUseOf has a review of Songerize.

The founders refer to Songerize “as SeeqPod’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. And that’s exactly what it is, you just enter the name of your artist and let Songerize choose and play one of his/her tracks. Apart from that, Songerize also allows you to search for by title and (if found) listen to them. You can’t do much here, there are no playlists or add to favorites options.

Windows Desktop Search for XP

Windows Vista has a new instant search for your computer, but XP is stuck with an older, slower version… or is it?

You can download the Desktop Search for XP and have the same advantage.  Internet Fixes has advice and the link for an XP version of it.

Who knows?

Some experts are born, some are made… and some are self-appointed.

Still, if you feel that you’re an expert — or you find you need an expert — you can try the free help services, such as Qunu.

“Qunu was originally dreamt up as a way for people to get free, live chat tech support for products, direct from those who were most passionate about those products — the users themselves. The concept has resonated hugely, and since launch in July 2006 we have amassed thousands of experts donating help sessions in tens of thousands of topic areas, which suggests that Qunu has grown beyond just tech support.

In fact, examination of search and usage patterns suggests that Qunu is reinventing Search itself. Think of Qunu like a search engine that returns people instead of documents — a mashup of search and instant messaging.”

Another service is Yedda.

“At Yedda, we carefully select for you, based on your preferences, the questions and answers that are likely to be of interest to you. And, the more you use Yedda, the better we get at understanding your interests.”

Or you could Ask MetaFilter your question — about your sick cat, where to find an opera teacher near you, or all sorts of questions.  This is not exactly an expert service, but you might get something useful here.

Use at your own risk, but you might find somebody with just the answer you needed — or you might be able to provide it for someone else.

Google Custom Search Engine for your site(s)

Google offers the use of a customized version of their searches that you can use just for your own or selected sites, and then put a search box on your home page or wherever you like.

Google Custom Search Engine basically lets you select what URLs you want to be able to search, and then uses that search box like a limited search of Google’s database.

For example, there is a search box for the Boreham Library. You’ll find it on all of the catalog pages near the bottom (right under the lower gray bar) and it lets you search JUST the catalog pages and the library pages of the main campus site.

Now, it’s not perfect on the Library’s site — if there is already a search on the page (keyword, title, etc.), you may get sent to that instead [and we're working on solving that]. On the other pages, however, it works fine. And since most web pages you’re likely to write won’t have other search functions, it should work fine for you.

This is a free service, at least while it is in Beta version. If you have a large web site with no other search function, this will let people search just your site without wandering off to everything else that turns up in a standard Google search.