Tips for searching using Google

The Google search engine syntax offers a number of options for getting better results. You can search for a specific phrase, search only on a particular site, or exclude pages with certain words. You can use the advanced search page to make use of these or you can use these simple rules of syntax in the normal search field or on Google Toolbar.

To search for a specific phrase
Simply put the words in quotation marks. For example, "Lady Gaga"

To search on a particular site
Type in the keywords that you wish to sort with 'site:' followed by the address of the web pages that you wish to search. For example, if you wished to search this blog for the word Firefox you would enter firefox site:bloodycomputer.blogspot.com

You can also search particular classes of site. If you enter site:.co.uk football, Google will return only pages on sites that end .co.uk that contain the word football.

To omit pages containing certain words
If you preface a word with - then Google will not list pages that contain that word. For example, if you enter the terms linux -ubuntu, you will get a list of pages that contain the word 'linux' but not the word 'ubuntu'

You can use all of these options in a single search. If you wanted to search the BBC news site for all pages that contain the phrase 'Barrack Obama' but not 'Clinton' then you would enter site:bbc.co.uk/news "barack obama" -clinton

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Link to Bloody Computer!

Even though I redesigned this blog some time ago, I still only offered my old link image rather than use the nice new one that my brother designed for me. I have decided that I should make available some new code for anyone who wished to link to this blog.

Simply paste the following code onto your blog or other website. If you need any help, or advice with this then please leave a comment.

<a href="http://bloodycomputer.blogspot.com"><img src="http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh148/stepterix/bcsign.png" border="0" /></a>

The link will look like this:

If you wish to use the old 'ransom note' style image click here.

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Dropbox: Internet File Storage

There are a number of sites that offer you storage space to back up or share your files over the Internet. Many of them have a limit on the size of file that can be stored, but this is not the case with Dropbox. Dropbox offers 2gb of storage space for free. This capacity can be increased if you upgrade to one of the payment options.

Dropbox provide software that enables you to access your storage space as if it were a drive on your computer. This software is available for Windows, OSX, Linux and a variety of mobile devices. Alternatively you can use the Dropbox web site to upload and download files.

Files can be placed in a 'Public' folder so that other Dropbox users may access them, or they can be stored in your private area, in which you can create new folders. Dropbox also records any activity on your account. Just follow the simple registration procedure and you will have enough space to back up your essential files.

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Top Three Web Based Image Editors

If you are using a computer that doesn't have a decent image editor program, then you can make use of a variety of web-based image editors. Having surveyed those that are freely available, I present a list of the top three. Each of these alows you to perform a variety of simple tasks upon an image, such as cropping and resizing. Each also includes the usual drawing tools as well as supporting layers. Please try them out and leave a comment to share your experiences.

Editor by pixlr.com
Editor enables you to create new images or open image files from your computer or from the web in the following formats: bmp, gif, jpg, png, psd and pxd (Editor's own format). You can save images as bmp, jpg, png or pxd to your computer or to Facebook. It offers a good selection of tools and filters.


Sumo Paint 2.0
Sumo Paint also lets you create new images and open files from your computer or the web. You can open files in gif, jpg, png and its own sumo format, and you can save as jpg, png and sumo. It has the best selection of filters and tools of the three here.


Splashup
Splashup will open bmp, gif, jpg and png files not only from your computer and the web, but also from Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa. You can save files back to each of these in jpg, png, and the somewhat obscure fxo format. It has the most limited selection of tools and filters of those listed here.

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Weekend Website: PortableApps.com

I have not run this feature in ages, but I decided to bring it out of retirement to feature an excellent site: PortableApps.com. With the increasing popularity of USB flash drives and memory cards many software producers are creating versions of their software tailored to run from these devices. This means that you can carry your favourite applications round with you on your portable drives and use them on whatever Windows computer you like.

PortableApps.com not only provide links to download free portable software but also have packaged the most popular software, which can be executed using their own menu. Applications available on the site include GIMP, Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and even a portable version of the antivirus software ClamWin. The site also offers support for all the available applications and has forums where you can join in discussions about portable computing.

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Five free file conversion sites

There is already a bewildering selection of different files types and this will only get more confusing as more innovative file formats become available. You may be able to install conversion utilities for some applications such as Microsoft Word and you can download various freeware file conversion tools, but there is a third option: web-based file conversion services.


Media Convert - I have mentioned this site before on this blog. It can cope with a greater variety of file types than the other sites listed here, but the amount of advertising makes the interface rather ugly and far from intuitive. The maximum file size is 150Mb, although, the larger the file the more likely that there will be a conversion error. You can download the converted file directly from the website.

YouConvertIt - This site supports nearly as many file formats as Media Convert, but it is till in Beta testing. It has a clean and intuitive interface and - like most of the other pages in this list - it enables you to download video files from sites like YouTube. File conversions are received by email, so check the maximum email size that you can receive.

Media Converter - This service also has an easy-to-use interface and it supports many popular file types and on-line video sources. It also offers a Firefox add-on to simplify the process of downloading and converting videos from sites like YouTube, MetaCafe, etc. For the free service the maximum file size is 100Mb and each user is limited to ten conversions per day.

Zamzar - Zamzar is probably the most well known of the file conversion sites. Again it supports the most popular file types and video sites, but the maximum file size that can be converted for free is 100Mb. File conversions are received by email, so check the maximum email size you can receive.


Primo Online - This is a specialist file conversion site that offers a pdf creation service. It enables you to create a pdf document from over 300 different file types as long as they are no bigger than 5Mb. You receive the converted pdf file via email.


All-in-all the variety of supported file types and the convenience of being able to download the converted file mean that my file conversion site of choice is still Media Convert.

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Keyboard shortcut of the week: Quickly Open Link in New Tab

This tip should be of interest to all the Entrecard chain-droppers out there (you know who you are). It works in Internet Explorer (version 7 and later), Firefox, and Safari.

If you hold down the Ctrl key when you click on a link on a website the browser will open the linked page on a new tab, saving you having to right-click on the link and selecting 'Open Link in New Tab' (or 'Open in New Tab' on IE).

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Tag those audio files and show them to the World

If you have a large collection of MP3s, WMAs and other audio files, you probably have quite a few where the tag information isn't set up properly. In other words, they don't come up with the correct track name or artist in your media player.


Editing these tags manually can be a laborious task, but fear not, the contributers at MusicBrainz offer a solution to your problem. As they say themselves:
MusicBrainz is a community music metadatabase that attempts to create a comprehensive music information site. You can use the MusicBrainz data either by browsing this web site, or you can access the data from a client program — for example, a CD player program can use MusicBrainz to identify CDs and provide information about the CD, about the artist or about related information. You can also use the MusicBrainz Tagger to automatically identify and clean up the metadata tags in your digital music collections.

The website has a number of applications that you can download which access the database. The one I found most useful was Picard, which provides an interface to search the database and use the information to rename and tag the audio files with the correct information. I didn't find Picard particularly intuitive to use; however, the authors have provided some quality documentation to instruct users on how the application works. Here are a few images of the software in action. If anyone struggles with the software after reading the instructions, leave a comment on this post and I will record and post a video of how to use it.

Here is that list of badly tagged mp3 files in Picard.

Using the search facility on Picard opens up a listing of matching information on the MusicBrainz website. I navigated to the appropriate album listing, and pressed the green 'Tagger' button.

Picard presented the information in the right pane. I selected the files in the left pane, pressed the 'Scan' button, and when the list in the left pane was empty I pressed 'Save' to make the changes.

Here is the file listing with the correct tag information in place.

I finally decided that I needed to create and correct the tag information on my audio files after becoming sick and tired of some of them not registering with Audioscrobbler, which is the software used on the music based social-networking site LastFM. The software records all the music you play on your computer, and even some portable audio players, and creates charts from the information. You can see my page here. The site enables you to create fancy widgets to put on your blogs, social networking pages and other websites too, like this one:



So get those audio files tagged and let the World that you are obsessed with prog rock.

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Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

I have decided to start a blog carnival to provide a monthly digest of the best blog articles that offer computer help and advice, preferably those that are written in novice-friendly language.

This carnival will be published on the 27th of each month.

The submission deadline for new articles is the 20th of each month.

Like all blog carnivals, this is a community effort. If you wish to host a carnival you can leave a comment on this article or click here, and if you wish to submit an article for inclusion please click here. The carnival's website can be found here.

[Edit 03/02/08]
As with other blog carnivals the host each month will choose which articles to include.

To be clear, this is not a general technology blog carnival, nor is it a carnival of blogging tips. It is a collection of articles offering help and advice for using computers, which may include articles about free applications but not commercial software.
[End edit]

So without further ado, may I present...

The First Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

To get the ball rolling I have trawled the web for some useful blog articles as examples of what would be suitable for future carnivals.

Jim at Simple PC Talk provides some good advice on How to Update to Office 2007. Speaking of installing software, on the IT Guys blog, CodeWizard has posted a fix for those of you getting Error code 2738 When Installing iTunes + Quicktime on Windows Vista.

Alex Jose's blog offers Tips And Tricks For A Healthy PC, as well as other advice such as how to Remove Security Alerts From System Tray and save us from annoying messages. Nothing is more annoying than a slow PC, Ajith offers advice on making to changes to Windows so that it runs faster at Tweaking Made Easy, such as Stopping Unneeded Startup Services and Making XP boot faster!

Lastly this month, a quality freeware product found by nicky81 at Tips, Tricks & Practice: a freeware Audio Ripper and Converter application that will let you convert audio files using all the most popular formats.

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Weekend website: What is this file?

So here is the scenario: you have been sent a file attached to an email. You double click on it - after making sure that it is not a virus or some other malicious file - and you are told that it is an 'unknown file type'. You need to find out what type of file it is, and what programs will open it.

To do this you look at the last few letters after the last '.', e.g. word documents will end with '.doc' (you may not see these extensions for file types that your installation of Windows recognises - to see them: double click on 'My Computer'; select 'Options' from the 'Tools' menu; select the 'View' tab and deselect 'Hide extensions for known file types'.)

So you know what extension the file has, but still don't know how to open it. There are a number of web sites that provide lists of know file extensions. All offer a search tool, so you can just type in a file's extension and find out what programs you need to open it. So here are a few such sites:

• Wotsit.org (my personal favourite)
• FILExt
• file-extensions.org

Check out this post for details of a website that will convert files to a type that you may be able to open with your existing software.

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Weekend website: More anwers than questions

Yahoo Answers offers you the chance to ask questions in a user-friendly open forum. The forum is broken down into various categories such as 'Pets', 'Health' and, of course, 'Computers & Internet'.

CNET provide various forums (or is that 'fora'?) where you can ask computer-based questions; including one aimed at 'Computer Newbies' in particular.

Both sites require registration to submit and respond to questions. I check both regularly for opportunities to share my *ahem* sagely advice.

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Weekend website: Media Convert

Anyone who has used Windows for a while knows there are a dazzling array of file types. Maybe the word processor you use at home is different from the one you use at college; maybe your job requires all reports to be submitted as pdf files; or maybe someone has sent you an audio file in Ogg Vorbis format and you are completely nonplussed. As not all applications support all file types you need an easy way to convert some files into a format you can use.

The Media Convert site enables you to quickly convert files from one format to another whether office documents or video files. I have used it a number of times and have found it a lifesaver. Media Convert supports dozens of file types and is definitely worth bookmarking.

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Weekend website: Google Groups

I doubt that anyone visiting this page hasn't heard of Google, however, some of you may not be aware of Google Groups. From this site you can search a variety of Usenet newsgroups (a forum/BBS system that predates the web), as well as Google's own groups. This page can be exceptionally useful when you are searching for help and advice about computer problems - after you have checked for help on this page, of course. The chances are you are not the only one with a particular problem. Someone has probably asked for help with it before and maybe received an answer on Usenet.

Students should also be interested Google Scholar, which can be used to search for academic books and journal articles.

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Weekend website: Netvibes

It took me a while but at last I found it. The personal start-page that suits me best: Netvibes (www.netvibes.com). It may not be as quick as iGoogle, but it has all the features that I need: access to my emails, my web feeds; my del.icio.us bookmarks; and many useful widgets to add. To set up your own Netvibes start-page visit the site and click on the 'Register now' link.

Many of the websites that you regularly visit will have associated web feeds. Some of these may have a button that you can click to add the site's feed to Netvibes, like this one...

If not, you can ask Netvibes to check whether your favourite site has feeds.

• Copy the URL (web address) of your favourite webpage, e.g. 'http://bloodycomputer.blogspot.com'
  
• If you don't see 'Browse content' bar on the left of your Netvibes page, click the 'Add content' link (top left hand of page).
• Click 'Add a feed'.
• Paste the URL into the space after 'Link' and click 'Add'.
• Repeat this process for all your favourite pages.
  

You can then edit the settings for that feed, or for any of the widgets you have added, by hovering over the title bar of the widget and clicking 'Edit'. I tend to set my feeds to 'Open directly on the site', so that when I click on them, I am taken to the original article. Have a play around and see what you think. If you like Netvibes, set it as your start page and enjoy a personalised newspaper of the information you want.

If you find Netvibes to be too slow for your purposes try iGoogle. For advice on using it see Aidan Henry's excellent article iGoogle: The Epitome of Google Personalization.

There are many other personalised start pages on the web. If you want to learn more read 14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature on Mashable, which is the best source of social networking news and views - definitely worth adding to your Netvibes page.

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