Beyond Google

TIP OF THE DAY
Beyond Google

Excerpted from http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,114725,00.asp

Beyond Google
 
Laurianne McLaughlin
From the April 2004 issue of PC World magazine

As heretical as this may seem to some PC users, Google doesn't know it all. Sure, the paragon of search engines deftly handles most of our search requests. But just as you wouldn't drive miles past the local grocery store to a cavernous warehouse club to buy a dozen eggs, you don't want to slog through pages of search results from Google or another search engine every time you need a bit of information.

Better to rely on a cadre of specialized sites that will swiftly retrieve the nuggets you're looking for. Here are the best data resources on the Web, from the latest business news sites to the most useful addresses for hearth and home.

Reference & News

Online directories: The jam-packed Refdesk.com is full of facts and figures, updated news, and links to sources from phone books to world clocks. The site virtually speed-dials the answers to you. (Warning: If you're a word-of-the-day type, you may get sucked in by its many language goodies.) If Refdesk.com doesn't satisfy your trivia jones, browse to Gary Price's Fast Facts page, where you can consult a directory that covers everything from baseball to plastics.

For another one-stop facts and reference shop, consider Martindale's The Reference Desk, with links to world clocks, boating knots, international copyright information, travel tips, and scientific libraries. Also fast and furiously helpful is the Open Directory Project's reference search. Assembled by volunteers, the site lists diverse categories of information and is ad-free.

Homework helpers: The Yahoo Education page is especially handy for kids' research projects. This site lets you search current reference titles, including world fact books and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and it won't overwhelm young researchers. Or try Wikipedia, a volunteer encyclopedia with a global flavor, for data on topics from math to mythology to the arts.

Education: The Educator's Reference Desk (see FIGURE 1) has resources, answers, articles, and links to organizations for parents and teachers. Topics include peer counseling, safety, and distance learning, among others.

Associations: The American Society of Association Executives' Gateway to Associations Online lets you search more than 6500 associations, using keywords or any word that appears in the association's name. These groups often corral the best, most current information on topics for work and home.

News or magazine articles: All of the major search sites have their own feature-packed news pages. When you can't find a current story or topic at news.google.com, visit Daypop, which searches more than 59,000 news sites plus Web logs. Looksmart's FindArticles allows you to search on a topic, though strangely, not on an author name. To search for magazine articles on a topic or by author name, consult with MagPortal.com (see FIGURE 2), a site that rounds up articles on such subjects as computers, health, business, entertainment, and politics. When you find an article that helps, the site scouts out more like it. To access current opinion pieces from about 600 English-language publications, visit the Opinion-Pages.

Business & Professional

When you need financial filings, information on a business, or referrals to professionals in your area, megasearch sites can bog you down or leave you empty-handed. Particularly with localized information, specialty sites prove their mettle.

Small business and professional practices: MelissaData offers one-stop access to phone directories, zip codes, post office locations, and demographics such as income tax statistics and home sales--valuable goodies for doing your own marketing. Aside from the great freebies, MelissaData sells an array of products and services for small businesses and professionals.

For tips, advice, and case studies involving small businesses, the dragnet cast by a big search engine pulls in some dubious sources. Instead, go to Entrepreneur.com and Inc.com. Despite its sometimes dated articles, the latter covers key topics and questions and helps you with sample contracts and other nitty-gritty jobs. It's just too hard to find this stuff elsewhere.

Initial public offerings and 10K filings: For IPOs and corporations' annual 10K filings with the SEC, see EDGAR Online's IPO Express. For a monthly fee of $6 to $28, the site searches IPO filings by locale, price, or industry. You get e-mail alerts on new IPOs, full reports on companies once they're public, and weekly reports on IPO activity. FreeEDGAR lets you search SEC filings for free once you've registered with the site, but it limits you to 19 document views a month. For a fee of $900 a year, EDGAR Online Pro offers more-complete company data and a wider range of alert tools, including income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and reports about insider trading. For year-end SEC-filed annual 10K reports, 10K Wizard gives you flexible download options and all the current data you need at fees of $25 per month, $75 per quarter, or $175 per year.

Companies, industries, and markets: To get conversant in an industry quickly, or to gain insight into a company or market prior to a job interview or client pitch, go to Gary Price's List of Lists and drill down on banking, insurance, wholesale and retail trade, and other industries. The site provides information drawn from trade magazines on key companies, crucial deals, power players, and important statistics.

Global public company data: The Scannery gives investors the scoop on more than 11,000 companies worldwide (including the S&P 500, Euro 400, and Global 1000) by searching corporate Web sites. The site's flexible search options help you find the company you want even if you're not sure of the name (it allows "sounds like" and synonym searches, for example). The Scannery's consolidation option groups all hits on a company's Web site for your search phrase and ranks the documents according to their relevance to your search.

Professional services: The big search engines have yet to conquer the problem of localized data. Google is trying: Its beta Search by Location program lets you search within a geographic area, but the quality of its results remains hit-or-miss. If you're looking for a networking consultant, interior decorator, civil engineer, or other service provider in your area, yellow-page directories such as B2BYellowPages.com still work faster. When you want the names of companies in a specific industry within a particular area, a good source is the Open Directory Project's Business Resources list. For example, searching for "CPA + Massachusetts" at this site retrieved a link to the state society of CPAs, which was exactly what I was looking for.

Gary Price's List of Lists for Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services features industry and trade-magazine rankings of many different types of firms that you or your business might employ, such as intellectual-property lawyers, advertising firms, and PR agencies. A few of the list's entries are out-of-date, but they're easy to browse.

Industrial products and services: The Thomasnet.com site maintains an extensive list of all types of business goods and services--including engineering, consulting, and contracting work--along with the companies that provide them. Choose the appropriate professional services category to find companies that handle jobs such as billing, direct mail, and translating. The site's solid organization will save you and your business much time and hassle.

Business law: Doug Isenberg's GigaLaw.com (see FIGURE 3) provides tidy, up-to-date, and comprehensive essays on many legal topics written by attorneys practicing in the specific relevant fields. Running a keyword search on this site often produces good analyses of recent or proposed law changes as well. The Small Business Administration's Laws & Regulations Library provides quick access to the text of recent regulations and legislation.

Personal finance: Money advice on the Web reminds me of online personal ads: There's an abundance of wacky information. Rather than wade through the dross, head for a site like MSN Money or Quicken.com for reliable answers and resources on banking, investing, financial planning, and taxes. Whether you like financial advisor Suze Orman or not, her list of Sites to See quickly points to useful resources on such topics as credit card scores and Roth IRA accounts.
Government Information & Public Records

Anyone waiting in line at a government agency knows the sinking feeling of watching grains of sand drop through an hourglass. Don't replicate this experience by looking for up-to-date government information at the search megasites.

Government agencies: To locate the Web site of a particular agency, just type the name into a search engine. But what if you're unsure which agency you need? In that case, take a look at FirstGov.gov, the granddaddy of government sites. It will direct you to federal, state, and local agencies, or to information on government benefits, driver's license applications, employment opportunities, statistics, laws, and contact information for lawmakers. Alternatively, you could try google.com/unclesam or SearchGov.com, but FirstGov's organization and categories often work faster, especially if you know what you want but you don't know who's in charge of it.

Public records: Search Systems is the best resource I've come across for finding information in national and state records. Choose a state and get data on local banks in trouble, court cases, bankruptcy information, and professional licenses. The last feature is especially helpful when you want to check credentials. Access to most of the site's records is free, and its fee-based services are clearly marked.

Statistics: When you need government stats for a presentation or report, hit The White House Economic Statistics Briefing Room for economic numbers from federal agencies, such as current unemployment rates. Also pay a visit to the U.S. Census Bureau's American FactFinder. Need localized census data for your small-business plan or loan application? Consult the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns for county-level business demographics. Then, for the big picture, check out The Population Reference Bureau's AmeriStat to get social-science statistics compiled with the assistance of the University of Michigan's Social Science Data Analysis Network.
Food & Drink

Nobody wants to waste precious personal time on Web searches. But big search engines don't work efficiently for some personal needs, such as cooking advice. I learned my lesson last summer when my husband arrived home with a slew of freshly caught fish and I tried plugging the fish's name plus "recipe" into Google. The results list left me underwater and underwhelmed: There were too many recipes from amateur cooks, and I had no way to judge whether one recipe was better than another.

Recipes: For the dish on gastronomic creations from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, how to make a certain cocktail, or where to dine on an impending trip, Epicurious (FIGURE 5) almost always scores. Its recipes range from restaurant fare to quick meals. The Recipe Power Search at FoodNetwork.com lets you be super-specific. You can search exclusively for recipes that suit a food and meal type, region, occasion, or technique (including "freezes well," "grilled," and "spicy"). For comfort food or directions on how to make a child's birthday cake, visit Betty Crocker online.

Wine: The advanced search page at Wine Spectator lets you do a close-match search--helpful when you aren't sure of a wine's name. The site lets you limit searches to tasting reports, news articles, or other specific categories.
Health Matters

When you research medical topics, who do you trust? These sites have earned their reputations for trustworthiness.

Physicians: Grab basic information about doctors in your area at the American Medical Association's Physician Select, which allows you to research U.S. doctors (almost 700,000 of them) by name, specialty, and location. Consult the site's medical library, or read information supplied by the doctors about their practices (some provide more information than others).

Medical conditions and drugs: The Merck Manual (see FIGURE 6), a service of the pharmaceutical giant, is a concise and useful starting guide for all things medicinal. MayoClinic.com stockpiles current, expert information on diseases and drugs, interactive tools to help you make health decisions, and question-and-answer material from specialists. I prefer both of these sites to the often-cited WebMD, which at times gives too much information (about possible symptoms, for example) without providing enough context, almost convincing me that I have a problem when I don't. The Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research enables you to compare prescription, over-the-counter, and even discontinued drugs by brand name and active ingredient.

Medical research: Citeline.com (free to consumers after registration) lets you search sources including the Medline database (the best-known of its kind in the United States) for information on diseases and conditions, related organizations, current news and articles, and research and trials.
Great Getaways

You know about the big travel sites and how to find bargains on them (visit our February "Web Stars" roundup of the best travel sites). But you can't live by Orbitz or Expedia alone if you want travel tips and deals.

Travel: Journey to the USA Today Travel page and you will find such peripatetic essentials as city guides, hotel deals, and flight trackers. Browse to Whatsonwhen (see FIGURE 7) to hunt for happenings around the world. You can search its events listings by date and topic--if you're looking for a good business reason to travel to Tuscany this summer, for example.

Traveling on a whim? About.com's last-minute travel guide compiles fare discounts offered on major travel sites. Site59 lists last-minute weekend packages on travel to 70-plus cities.

Airlines: InsideFlyer provides tips and news alerts on frequent-flyer and other reward programs. Many of the site's articles are free, and the online one-year subscription for full access to articles is a steal at $12. (Just think of it as an appetizing alternative to one overpriced, dry sandwich from an airport food vendor.) First Class Flyer provides inside tips on how to score upgraded and first-class travel at discount prices, though full access to the advice costs $97 per year.

Suits on eBay

TIP OF THE DAY

Suits on eBay

You already know there is almost nothing you can't buy on eBay.    You can even buy suits.  Since it is hard to gauge the quality of unknown brands, stick to brand names.  You can buy Brooks Brothers, Hugo Boss, Nino Cerutti, etc.  I have not shopped for women's suits, but I'm sure there are similar high-quality brands available.  Some suits are new, but most are used.  However, if you buy only from an experienced seller with a good rating, they sell only suits that are in excellent shape.  I have bought over 10 Brooks Brothers suits on eBay, all used, all in excellent shape, and have never paid over $60.  Add $20 or $30 for alterations, and you have an excellent suit that will last you years for under $100. 

Ebay allows you to search size, style and color.  My suggestion is to create the search that fits your needs, including searching only for particular name brands, "save the search," and ask eBay to send you an email everyday with any new suits that match your criteria.

Netflix

TIP OF THE DAY

NetFlix

Living Room Film Club, a Click Away

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/movies/19NETF.html?ex=1395032400&en=6f2ca0ecf603fb98&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: March 19, 2004

It so happens that I have a perfectly valid excuse for watching "Hercules in the Haunted World." The film, made in 1961, offered brief employment to a slab of beefcake named Reg Park, the British Steve Reeves, and at first glance it would seem to be a two-ton wheel of cheese. But somehow a genuine artist became attached to the project, a director named Mario Bava.

And who is Mario Bava? Why, the seminal influence on Dario Argento, the cult Italian horrormeister. One by one, his stylized, incredibly violent films found their way into my home in a blood-soaked festival organized by my wife, an Argento fan who cannot bring herself to watch the leisurely stabbing scenes that take up about half of every movie. We made our way through "Inferno," "Deep Red," "Suspiria" and "Tenebre." Then it was on to Bava.

Thank you, Netflix.

Netflix, founded in 1998, is an online movie-rental company that could be described as the anti-Blockbuster. It deals only in DVD's, and customers pay a flat monthly fee of $19.95 to rent an unlimited number of films with no late fees. The sole restriction is that subscribers may keep only three movies out at a time. (The company also offers more expensive five-film and eight-film plans.)

As each movie is returned in its self-addressed, prepaid envelope, Netflix sends out the next film on a list that the subscriber maintains online. Since the company has 23 regional distribution centers, most movies arrive the day after they are sent out. In theory a fanatic customer watching three films a day could go through several hundred DVD's each year, whittling down the per-film rental cost to a dollar or less. In practice the average user watches about six movies a month.

I became one of Netflix's nearly 1.8 million users several months ago, and I have never looked back. Overnight, life became much simpler. No longer did I have to make a mad dash to the video store, either to rent a film or to return it by the noon deadline. Late fees vanished and so did the check-out line. I cursed the endless hours spent prowling the aisles in search of misfiled films, or something ? anything ? to watch. Anything that is, except the dead-enders artfully arranged in the section labeled "staff favorites," a euphemism for "films that no one will rent, ever." Best of all, I succumbed to the pure pleasure of browsing endlessly through thousands of movies, making my selections with a click of the mouse and then seeing them slip through my mail slot, in their bright-red envelopes, just a few days later.

Netflix not only changed my routine, it also turned me into a different kind of movie watcher. Culturally, I am no longer the same person.

The flat-fee system elicits two responses: more frequent renting, and more adventurous renting. To justify the cost, you watch more films. But since four films per month averages out to the cost of four films at Blockbuster, every subsequent movie is, in a delusory sense, free, and therefore there is no risk. Why not roll the dice and order, say, "Russian Ark," a bizarre Russian film, part audioguide and part costume drama, that pulls the viewer through the Hermitage Museum in a single, extended camera shot, skipping from century to century. It's even more unwatchable than it sounds. But so what? I dropped it in the mailbox knowing that "Naked City" and "Adaptation" were on their way.

So far I have not been sent any damaged discs, and only one has gone astray after being mailed back. I filed a "missing in action" report on the Netflix Web site, and a day later, it either turned up, or Netflix wrote it off. In any case, it was no longer listed as being out.

A Few Catches

There are a few snakes in this cinematic paradise. For one thing, Netflix cannot accommodate the moviegoer who needs instant gratification. If you simply have to see "Scarface" tonight, then only the video store can help you. Cable systems offer movies on demand, but the pickings tend to be slim. My metabolism doesn't work that way. Browsing through a vast library and clicking as the mood strikes feels plenty spontaneous to me. You see it, you want it, you add it to your queue right then and there.

There are two other weaknesses in the Netflix system, one unavoidable, the other understandable. First, the company does not rent videocassettes, so its library does not include thousands of films, some of them obscure, but many of them recognized classics. Anyone hoping to binge on Barbara Stanwyck will have to do without "Ball of Fire." Preston Sturges fans will look in vain for "Easy Living." Even within the more limited universe of DVD, Netflix is not totally comprehensive. Its mainstream orientation has left an opening for GreenCine (pronounced GreenScene), an online rental company that specializes in art-house films, documentaries, Japanese anime and cult films. It does not have multiple distribution centers, but it does have "Cane Toads," an Australian documentary about, not surprisingly, cane toads. I scanned the first 20 titles listed under "film noir" and found six films not offered by Netflix.

Wal-Mart, which entered the online DVD rental business last June, undercuts Netflix with a three-movie plan priced at $18.76 per month. Its library of about 12,000 titles passed the Dario Argento test with flying colors. Wal-Mart has 10 of his films, compared with five on Netflix. GreenCine 12 Argento films.

Netflix, too, has its niche side. An innovative program called Netflix First makes a small number of independent films available exclusively to Netflix subscribers for a limited period. The program, which started with "Croupier," has grown to include about 20 films.

Netflix executives say their edge over the competition is not their library but the way the library is presented to users, who are asked to rate the films they have seen. By sifting through the ratings, about 400 million of them at present, and analyzing buying patterns, a company program called CineMatch generates rental suggestions specific to each user.

Polishing the Profile

" `Lost in Translation' will outperform most $300 million films for us, and that's because of our ratings and recommendations," said Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix. " `Monster' will be huge for us, and that's not because our subscribers are more sophisticated than the general moviegoing public, but because our merchandising system is much more specific."

My experience of CineMatch makes me an agnostic. Right now my account page tells me that, based on my rentals and ratings, I might like to rent "Aguirre, Wrath of God," "Stagecoach" or "The Vicar of Dibley." I see the logic, and it is primitive. The "Stagecoach" recommendation reflects my rental of John Ford's "Searchers," just about the only western I've seen in my adult life, unless you count "Blazing Saddles." CineMatch got lucky here. I found "The Searchers" riveting, and I put Howard Hawks's "Red River" on my queue. "Stagecoach" is indeed a viable candidate. "The Vicar of Dibley," a gentle and not very funny British comedy series, shows up because I rented two other British series, "Full Bottom" and "Thick as Thieves," both of them a lot less funny even than "The Vicar of Dibley." Three wrongs do not make a right.

In theory, as I generate more ratings, CineMatch will develop a more complex taste profile for me, but I'm doubtful. I think it will just get confused.

I don't blame it. At the moment, a domestic battle rages for control of the Netflix queue, which can be revised and reshuffled at any time. It is disputed territory. My wife likes very fat films or very slow films. It's either nonstop action, with a lot of gunplay, or painstaking, exquisitely nuanced psychological dramas, like the interminable "I Capture the Castle," a British film about an eccentric family living in Wales in the 1930's. My weakness is for pretentious foreign films. At the moment, I feel a creeping urge to rent "Andrei Rublev," a three-hour film about a medieval Russian icon painter.

Frost Warning

We each judge the other's selections harshly. I scored a major victory with "Mon Oncle" by Jacques Tati, a director I once dismissed as tedious, annoying and far too French. He is now a god in our house. But I have had my back against the wall after "L'Atalante," a film I had never seen but knew to be, by expert consensus, a towering masterpiece. Less than 10 minutes after the opening credits rolled, the atmosphere in the living room grew frosty. I lost control of the mouse for a week. At least I had the foresight to sneak off and watch "Russian Ark" on my own.

That's the fun of Netflix. Along with savage recriminations, my home now resonates with high-toned animated discussion of directors, cinematographers and camera angles. Once again I'm the moviegoer I was in college, when Bergman, Fellini and Truffaut were in full stride, and adventure was in the air, and bright-eyed cin顳tes could sit through a film like "El Topo" and not demand their money back. It's not available on Netflix, alas, but the Web site does propose an alternative, a compilation of "Ed Sullivan" shows featuring Topo Gigio. Close enough.

Picture File Formats

TIP OF THE DAY

Picture File Formats

File format refers to a method of structuring data within a computer file. Imaging scientists have developed several formats for storing digital picture data, each of which handles the task slightly differently.
 
Digital cameras typically rely on the following formats:

• JPEG: Say "jay-peg," not "J-P-E-G." This format is named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the committee that developed it. JPEG is the leading digital camera file format and is also the best format to use for online photo sharing. JPEG applies lossy compression, which eliminates some picture data to reduce the size of the image file. A high degree of JPEG compression results in very low picture quality, but a moderate amount of compression usually is acceptable.
• TIFF: Pronounced "tiff," as in a nasty little spat, TIFF stand for Tagged Image File Format. TIFF applies a form of file compression that retains top picture quality, which unfortunately also results in very large picture files. In addition, Web browsers and e-mail programs can't open TIFF files, so you need to make a copy of a TIFF picture in the JPEG format before sharing it online. You can, however, insert a TIFF file directly into a word-processing document, a page-layout program, or other print-publishing program.
• RAW: This format is the only one of the trio that doesn't have an acronym for a name. RAW means raw, as in unbaked, unadulterated, fresh from the farm. This format stores picture files without any of the usual color-correction and other adjustments that are done after you press the shutter button. Those in-camera processing steps typically produce a better-looking picture, so unless you're a purist who wants to do that type of correction yourself in a photo editor, stick with JPEG or TIFF. Be aware, also, that most photo editors and other programs can't open RAW files.

Source: Dummies.com

Eradicating All That Pesky Formatting in Word

TIP OF THE DAY

Eradicating All That Pesky Formatting in Word

 
It's quite possible to junk up your Microsoft Word text with so many formatting commands that undoing them all would be a frustrating exercise. Rather than delete the text and start over, you can use a simple and universal undo-formatting command ? Word's equivalent of the text-formatting eraser. The command is Reset Character, and its shortcut key is Ctrl+Spacebar.

So if you encounter an expanse of ugly and overly formatted text, select it as a block and press Ctrl+Spacebar. This key combination strips the formatting from the text like a powerful and environmentally unsafe industrial-sized can of paint remover.

Source: Dummies.com