The Consumerist, an online shopper’s blog, recently published a good how-to article on how to spot fake reviews for products online. Among the the things to watch out for, the site points out that variations of a certain reviewer’s name and “glowing” reviews of the product can raise a red flag. Check out the article at this link for more items to watch out for: Spot Fake Online Reviews.
Here are some sites that may provide you with inspiration, help you with projects, and increase your productivity:
Copy and paste text into site for a quick online spell check
Five minute videos that teach a specific skill.
Another interesting how-to site
A general information site about popular topics in the news.
The dependable how stuff works site is a nice resource for projects.
Another site for creative people
http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page
Probably the most popular how-to site!
This site with the unusual name is a site for summaries and reviews about a variety of subjects.
Google Squared, the ambitious project that delivers search results as a table, has received an update that improves both the quality and quantity of the information it presents.
The changes increase the amount of data that can be displayed in a “square” from 30 facts to 120. It also ranks facts based on relevance to the query and the quality of the information Google finds. “Squared returns a ‘square’ (or table) of facts, obtained from across the Internet,” wrote Noah Weiss, Associate Product Manager, and Randy Brown, Software Engineer.
“For example, if you search Squared for [US presidents], each row on the resulting table represents a particular United States President, and the columns include relevant facts about him, such as date of birth, a picture and a short description.
“At launch, your first square could include at most 30 facts. With today’s update, squares display four times as much data – up to 120 facts. For example, instead of seeing only five presidents and three categories, now you’ll see a table with 20 presidents and up to six attributes.”
Google Squared was launched June 3 and is a project of Google Labs, the company’s in-house technology incubator.
Google Squared has received an update that improves both the quality and quantity of the information it presents. The changes increase the amount of data that can be displayed in a “square” from 30 facts to 120. It also ranks facts based on relevance to the query and the quality of the information Google finds.
“Squared returns a ‘square’ (or table) of facts, sourced from across the Internet,” wrote Noah Weiss, Associate Product Manager, and Randy Brown, Software Engineer, in the post. For example, if you search Squared for U.S. presidents, each row on the resulting table represents a particular United States President, and the columns include relevant facts about him, such as date of birth, a picture and a short description.
The update also adds the ability to sort data and export from a Square to a Google Spreadsheet or a CSV file. “For example, you can build a square for [African countries], add more items and columns, and examine the relationship between the literacy rate and GDP per capita. Once you’ve built your square to contain all the information you need, you can export the square to Google Spreadsheets and create a rough scatter plot.”
Google Squared is taking on a very difficult problem–collecting facts from all over the Web and presenting them in a useful form. It doesn’t quite manage that, yet, but the task is enormously complex and it is good to see progress being made.
Google says that much work needs to be done before Squared will leave the experimental stage. In its experimental stage, Squared demonstrates an important future direction in search: understanding structured data from across the web to build new tools for organizing and presenting information.”
Google Squared is not ready to be an everyday part of most people’s lives yet. However, it is worth a look when you have a few extra moments and would like to see a unique view of your search results.
Google Squared was launched June 3 and is a project of Google Labs, the company’s in-house technology incubator.
Click here to try Google Squared.
At JavaOne in San Francisco, California, James Gosling, creator of Java, and Christopher Boone, CEO of Visuvi, demonstrate new image search software powered by Java that analyzes information based on content of the image. The software is currently being used in the medical field. For example, health care professionals are able to compare images that may or may not have cancerous cells and then make a relevant diagnosis.
Click here to see the video.
Here are some interesting and informative websites on a variety of subjects.
This site features news, blogs, interviews with scientists, videos (“Swimming with Sharks,” “The Ring of Fire,” “Surviving a Big Wave Wipeout,” among others), photos, slide shows, including biggest eruptions in history, night sky events for 2009, and strangest beasts to ever die.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics
The prime source of US data on labor-related: inflation and prices, spending and time use, employment, unemployment, pay and benefits, workplace injuries, and more. Other features include sections for specific types of readers (business leaders, consumers, investors, jobseekers, etc.), the “at-a-glance tables,” and sections on demographics, industries, business costs, etc.
Track Recovery Projects in U.S.
This site, created by a company that tracks spending at every level of government, offers detailed information on stimulus spending and projects Click on a state and you will receive mouseover data on number of projects and total allocated amount for each county. Click on a county for descriptions of individual spending projects. The site also offers recent news, info on featured projects (both “recent” and “most expensive”), and What America Is Saying (choose Most Discussed, Most Needed, or Most Unnecessary).
The Federal Governments Recovery web site is Here.
This site allows you to follow legislation important to the middle class, and find out how well your congressional representatives support your interests. You can search for analysis of pending legislation and browse by topics like Medicare, Housing, Corporate Accountability, etc.
Food Law and Policy Blog
This site discusses organic foods, local food movements and recent concerns about food safety, agricultural and food law policy. You can browse by categories like animal welfare, environmental law, food safety, sustainable agriculture, etc.
Fresh Produce Calendar For Different Parts of the country
A calendar guide to what fresh produce is available when in different areas of the country.
Find out what products cost by categories such as Health, Travel, Business, “Going Green,” etc. The wide variety of topics includes the costs of borrowing from a 401k, hiring a personal trainer, installing a solar energy system, hiring a wedding planner, declaring bankruptcy, and more. Each article offers an estimate of costs and an overview of the process.
A great site to visit whenever you want to restore your faith in humans. Its honorees are ordinary people who risked their lives, and sometimes lost them, while attempting to save others from drowning, fire, assault, and other catastrophes. (I have often thought that a truly uplifting TV series could be made from the investigations the Carnegie Fund makes into each nominee.
Search for specific items or browse by category to find the shelf live of food, how to store it, and what warning signs suggest it should not be consumed. The Shelf Talk section includes useful guides to expiration dates, safe defrosting, and how to store fruit.
This site is a portal for rare diseases and orphan drugs and includes a database of rare diseases, searchable by name, gene, or clinical sign (using the provided thesaurus). Also, a database of orphan drugs searchable by drug name or the disease it treats, and a database of diagnostic tests. Other features include an encyclopedia for patients, an encyclopedia for medical professionals, a directory of patient organizations, and a database of research projects and clinical trials.
Check out this site to find locations offering free wi-fi:
As you may already have noticed in the proto.boards, we’ve started placing per-click ads on the external portions of the site. (we’re trying to avoid ads in the main area of the site, and hoping that it does not come to such!)
This is necessary because all protonic.com is volunteer-based; expenses are funded by donations, and hosting costs are quite expensive – we have a large number of clients, and all of the tickets and computer profiles stored adds up to quite a bit of space and database usage! Unfortunately, we’ve received fewer donations lately, and as such, out-of-pocket expenses are increasing… If this continues for too long, we may not be able to keep protonic.com above water!
If you’ve recently received help and made a donation, then a hearfelt thanks! If not, then please do consider making a donation here! Any amount helps keep the site running for a little longer.
You may ask yourself why Protonic is a great tech support site.
1. We provide quality answers.
2. We stay with you until your problem is fixed.
3. We are free, but donations are appreciated.
4. Our techs are knowledgeable, dedicated, and patient.
5. We are “open” 24 hours a day.
6. We have a rating system where a client is able to describe the quality of
service they received from their tech.
7. Even if a ticket is closed, and a problem occurs that is directly related
to that ticket, the client can e-mail the tech for further assistance.
8. Protonic’s Discussion Board is a great place to discuss
not only technical issues, but also there are other categories such as:
Top Programs
Gamer’s corner
PC Tips and Tricks
Hardware Reviews Opinions
Computer Security
Web Development
…..and more!
9. Our Downloads area contains a wide variety of
useful programs.
http://www.protonic.com/techs/index.php?frames=true
10. We have a great editorial section and also some useful information can be
found in our Industry News section on Protonic’s
homepage.
Visit http://www.protonic.com for your tech support needs!
If you have an interest in your computer’s security, check out Malware City
This well-designed web site contains a wealth of information about the latest security threats. You can click on different regions of the world and find out the top 5 viruses for that region and also the percentage of infection.
Please visit Protonic.com for assistance with your computer’s security problems.
Have you ever saved some important work on a USB key and accidentally left it at home or college?
Well….This website by MediaFire will hosts almost anything under 100MB and you can even have your own personal account where you can store it.
Upload it to your account at home or college, login to your account, and then download your work onto your college or home computer…Simple”
This is completely FREE and has a limit of 100MB. If you go over the limit, you will not be charged. MediaFire will let you know about joining as a PRO user where you will unlimited disk space, bandwidth, download, and uploads. MediaFire also supports an unlimited number of simultaneous downloads.
There is currently no time limit on how long uploaded files will be stored as long as you access your account (i.e. login to your account) at least once every 60 days OR at least one of your files is accessed (i.e. downloaded) every 30 days.
As always, we’re here to help you. So if you’re having problems storing data and need a hand. Please login your protonic.com account or register and submit a ticket to us.
Okay, you’ve got to admit that it is rare these days to have a fun day where you can go to the beach and play with sand. Like I kind of said, these days, most people are office workers. But now, a new service has come fourth allowing you (at your desk) to be able to play with good old fashioned sand. But, you can have fun and change the colors and make cool swirly designs over at the free web app known as thisissand.com. And while you’re at it, go ahead ans submit your masterpiece to the gallery by clicking the little square in the top right of your screen. Knock yourself out. Yay.
Have you ever wondered if your firewall has all your ports covered? Does it really repel all invaders? You can test it at http://www.grc.com/intro.htm which is the home of the Gibson Research Corporation. Click on the banner for a utility called “Shields Up” and follow the instructions. Shields Up will try and break into your PC and will give you a report on how secure it is. It is quite safe to run, even if it gets in it will do no harm, but let’s hope it cannot gain access. I dare you not to try it!
A fairly new service called CellFire offers Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian mobile phones to take coupons and use them on their phones, barcode and all. Cellfire has a lot of US stores, including video rental stores, haircut places and other attractions. You can ditch the scissors and simply show the cashier your phone screen with a scanable barcode. More information on cell fire can be found at their website, cellfire.com.
Woot.com is a really popular site. The site provides one item, and only one item everyday at a really good deal. The items are good quality things too, and they are really creative on what they pick. Sometimes, since the item is sooo popular, it is even sold out by 6AM or 7AM the day they put it on. The site will even show you how many people bought the item, and lets you chat about it too.
If you ever are sitting at your computer wondering what site to type into the little address bar, webware.com is a great site to start. They look at all kinds of cool sites around the net, as well as talk about big buyouts and other web news. Run by Cnet.com (who owns computers.com, com.com and news.com) they provide constant updates to their site. Go look around, and take a visit! You just might find the site of your dreams.
Johnny Lee has posted a video on YouTube showing how to make your TV show images and games (I wish!) in 3D. He posted a video on YouTube showing what it looks like, and partly how to do it. It’s a cheap process, too! All you need is a WiiRemote, a TV, a computer and a few other things. No need to open your Wii to do it as well. It seems like a really fun project to do, but it just might require some basic progrmming skills. You can see the YouTube video here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw and see even more neat projects (Like an interactive Wii-remote whiteboard) at Johnny’s website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
Ever wanted free webspace, but don’t know where to start, or don’t want the ads associated with it?
I’ve recently stumbled across (Yes, using StumbleUpon, for the curious 
) a site that offers plenty of free space, doesn’t force ads on your site, and more features than you’ll ever need to create a simple web site.
The only downside is that your site management area contains several ads, but these can be nuked with any good ad blocker.
Build your space in the information age today!
http://www.gigacities.net/
Do you know a person who is new to computers and who has trouble using a mouse? Here is a wonderful site that teaches beginning mouse skills:
http://www.ckls.org/~crippel/computerlab/tutorials/mouse/page1.html
http://www.ckls.org/~crippel/computerlab/tutorials/mouse/page1.html
A spongefish is a curious creature that swims in your bathtub and excretes a delicately scented soap. It has a coarse skin which, as it rubs against your body, gently cleanses you.
OK, I am lying, spongefish is actually the name of a social networking site, a place to share what you know via text, photos, video, webcam capture, office documents, and more. The idea is to share information, by adding what you know to the growing number of articles, hints, tips and general know-how that is growing daily at http://www.spongefish.com/
Even if you don’t feel like contributing, there is a great deal to read and learn from; it’s a kind of Wikipedia for everyday things. Some of the articles I found there today are:
How to start your own website.
Top ten spring break destinations in Texas.
Top Ten Tips To Make Friends At College
How to bluff in poker.
How to keep your shoes dry in the snow.
Spice up your sex life.
Free things to do in London.
Advanced sales techniques.
Those are some of the thousands of pieces of information at http://www.spongefish.com/ some of it is trivial, some serious, and some simply funny. Whatever you are interested in you’ll find something for you at Spongefish. Why not take a look.
Have to go to the cleaners, then over to the supermarket to get milk, then get gas, and, well, my point is that you have too many things to do! But an easy, and free site, called Remember The Milk (Beta) can help you. It features a to-do list with many, many other options, that are very useful! Check it out at http://www.rmilk.com
In case you don’t know, we have a vast library of over 180 downloads- Everything from System Utilities to Imaging Programs. To go to our proto.downloads section, click the ‘proto.downloads’ link to the left. The best part is that all of our downloads are FREE, and don’t cost a thing! Visit proto.downloads today…
Thanks to protonic tech Martin for giving us the information in this post.
If you enjoy watching paint dry you’ll love this:
http://21st.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-to-view-live-webcams-and-security.html
Project Gutenberg is a fantastic resource providing some of the world’s great literature for free. It has 20,000 books for download, all of which can be legally obtained because the copyright has expired. Get Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty and encourage your children to read it. Find out why Thomas Hardy is widely revered and read today. If you are interested in social history, the plight of the working class in England in the 1840′s is graphically described by Friedrich Engels. Great site: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
