Caffeine

No, not the kind we drink to stay awake, this is a program for your computer. (Specifically this is the windows version, but there is a version for the mac as well)

Caffeine is an innovative program that will temporarily suspend your screen saver / power saver settings.  Why is this useful?  Suppose you are snuggling up next to your loved one and watching Rudolph on your laptop and slowly sipping a nice cappuccino.  You notice your beloved has finished off her hot chocolate so you, being the good husband that you are, get up and go to the kitchen to make her some more;

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Computers are like cars: They can crash at any time.

So, let’s talk portable storage. It is affordable and very useful for backing up important data. I just bought a Free Agent “GO” 320 GB portable hard drive for under $100 this past weekend. It was able to hold everything on my laptop no problem.

Having had several computers crash on me I believe in backing up data often, and I encourage you to do so as well. So perhaps you should check out some portable storage this weekend.

Another option is an external hard drive. This is very similar to a portable hard drive, minus the portable part. One the plus side, you can get more for less. One terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) worth of space in an external drive costs the same as 500 Gigabytes in a portable hard drive. It really depends on your needs and how much space you have as to what is the best option for you.

I hope this has been helpful to you. And remember to back up your data, you never know when your computer can cra…………

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Your favorite search engine just got a shot of Caffeine.

06:59PM

So, if you want to find something on the web, what do you do? Most users will answer “Google it”. Google, for the majority of surfers, is the preferred search engine. It has a catchy logo, minimalistic design, and provides the user easy to understand search results. Recently Microsoft has thrown a lot more weight, a.k.a. money, into the mix by promoting their own search engine: Bing.

Not to be outdone, Google is in the midst of testing a brand new version of their search engine codenamed “Caffeine”. (Since this blog is aimed at novice users, not power ones, I am not going to enter into great detail. For more in depth info, you can visit Mashable.) I will say is that this new “Caffeine” boost for Google should provided the average user with three noticeable improvements: Time, Relevance, and Quantity

Time: You should notice that when you do a search it should contain more timely information from the webpage. If a webmaster updates his website, it should be picked up and indexed by Google quicker than before.

Relevance: Results should be even more relevant to your query than ever before.

Quantity: My own test showed that when doing a search for the word “Test”, Google gave me 712,000,000 results. The same search in Caffeine gave me over 840,000,000 results. Over 100 million more webpages. That’s a lot of new information to be at your fingertips.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a Microsoft Live Account (now known as Bing), a Yahoo Account and a Google Account. When I started browsing the web, I used AltaVista as my primary search engine, hotmail as my primary email, AIM as my primary IM program and Yahoo has my primary cam to cam software. I never used Google. Today, my primary email and primary search engine are Google; Blogger (a Google Program) is what I use to host my blog, and I use Skype or Google Talk when I cam or IM. Now, go enjoy your caffeine.

Currently listening to: Blind Melon– No Rain

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This post marks the start of a new series on my blog "Wired Weekends" in which I will discuss computing, technology, and other interesting tid-bits I pick up in the field of electronics

 

Greetings, fellow fans of dilatory discourse.  For the maiden voyage of “Wired Weekend” I want to concentrate on browsing the internet (You know that thing Al Gore invented-Video).

 

If you are reading this, chances are you are doing it through either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. (perhaps a few of you are even using Google Chrome or Opera or even Safari as well).  While I don’t want to leave any of you out, I am a Firefox user; therefore, I will be concentrating on it today.

 

Mozilla Firefox, in my opinion, is a great browser; it allows you to add custom plug-ins to both enhance and protect your browsing experience.  Since my current daily series is on porn, I wanted to focus on a few plug-ins that can help you avoid unwanted images and videos on your screen.

 

“AdBlock Plus” is a great plug-in to help you avoid unwanted images; not only does it allow you to automatically block advertisements on websites, it also allows you to block all images of a domain or sub-domain. (Screenshot)  Let’s get practical:

 

During my research, one of the websites I frequented was “Adult Video News: Industry Business”. (caution-explicit)  Before I went, however, I opened up my handy-dandy AdBlock Plus filter and added the following  “http://www.avn.com-Block All Images”.  That way, no dirty pictures showed up on my screen. Yay!

 

Another handy tool to have is one called NoScript.  NoScript allows you to control what scripts are allowed to run when you visit a webpage. (Screenshot)  Let’s take the pragmatic path:

 

Using the aforementioned example, if I visit the AVN website without NoScript, a video will begin playing because the website used a “script” to tell your browser to play the video; however, if I do have NoScript, I have to give the website permission to start the video before it plays. 

 

The final plug-in that I want to mention today is ProCon.  ProCon (sometimes called ProCon Latee)  is a filter that can block or filter out explicit content.  It has several filters, including a profanity filter.  It also allows you to put in a personalized message for the content filter.  You can check it out, it is a pretty good tool. 

 

I hope these tools help you delete some of the frustration out of your browsing experience. Please note that the aforementioned tools also block out more than just porn, including annoying-ads, spyware, script viruses and more.  Imagine browsing MySpace or Facebook with no ads.  

 

Well, that wraps up this edition of “Wired Weekend”, Monday and Tuesday I will wrap my series on pornography.  See you then.