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RAGE BEFORE BEAUTY
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- Bottoms Up!
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- Bing Still Exists
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Free Things
For most folks:
Edit images with The GIMP
Draw with Inkscape
Record and edit sound with Audacity
Make nonsense with JanusNode
Replace Microsoft shit
Here are around 2000 rss feeds for your reader of choice.
For Mac folks:
Edit text with Textwrangler
Everything is easier with Quicksilver
For Windows folks:
Automate everything with AutoHotkey
Use Launchy instead of navigating folders
Edit images with The GIMP
Draw with Inkscape
Record and edit sound with Audacity
Make nonsense with JanusNode
Replace Microsoft shit
Here are around 2000 rss feeds for your reader of choice.
For Mac folks:
Edit text with Textwrangler
Everything is easier with Quicksilver
For Windows folks:
Automate everything with AutoHotkey
Use Launchy instead of navigating folders
15 comments:
I remember the early hype for Bing. They were bragging that they had recruited the genius behind Yahoo and he was going to do amazing things developing a new search engine. I remember thinking that hiring the guy that lost doesn't seem like a very good way to go about winning. What is this, the NFL?
I just don't get it. Sure, as a search engine company you're always looking for ways to improve the quality and performance of both the index and the query algorithm, but at this point a user isn't going to notice a big difference in results. As you rightly point out, the best improvements are those that do a better job of correctly parsing the search query, and in effectively interpreting natural language queries. I don't tend to do a lot of comparative search engine research, but I find google does a fine job of parsing queries, and if I construct a decent coherent detailed query google understands what I want, and their index is just bigger and better than everybody elses.
That said, the search engine I genuinely love the most, and use whenever I can, that is, when my query matches it's particular skills, is Wolfram Alpha. You can't use it for regular searches, because it doesn't return a list of links, but when you want an answer to a specific question, it is frequently brilliant...
I have a teacher that insists on using Bing for some weird reason, and always tries to make it sound like it was just a random "oh, hey, let's try here" thing. Given other things he's said, his generally-weird demeanor, and his background (database-related stuff, query optimization) I suspect ulterior motives.
Not that I care, but the way he's always going out of his way to make it look off the cuff is...weird.
People migrated to Google because the alternatives like Alta Vista had evolved into cash-for-search-position advertising aggregators. Now we are expected to migrate to a Microsoft subsidiary and to trust the objectivity of its responses? HA HA
That said, the search engine I genuinely love the most, and use whenever I can, that is, when my query matches it's particular skills, is Wolfram Alpha.
Good god, you're the first person I've ever known who's managed to get a use out of the thing. What succeeds?
Good god, you're the first person I've ever known who's managed to get a use out of the thing. What succeeds?
My guess is that if you have a question that, in decades past, would have been answered by a traditional encyclopedia, Wolfram Alpha might be for you.
And given Wolfram Research's other major product, Mathematica, my guess is that it's probably pretty good at being a little more dynamic than spitting out facts: some people have gotten a kick out of the unit conversions it can do. For instance, you can ask it "how many calories in a pie the size of planet Earth?" and get an answer that should resemble an accurate answer.
view cookies?
OM NOM NOM NOM
I switched to Google way back when because the front page loaded fast even with dial-up.
view cookies?
OM NOM NOM NOM
I'm doing some web-app testing at work and I have to acquire cookies and clear them over and over and over. Forgot how to do it in IE because I never use it. "View Files" is not a very good way to find the cookies.
Let's see. Things you can use Wolfram Alpha for. Food, as was mentioned. They made a point of giving it a solid food database. The other day I wondered exactly what nutrients were in mushrooms. Not much, it turns out.
It's the easiest way I've found to get the current spot price for gold (just enter 'gold'). Math and conversions. Physics (speed of light, mass of a proton, planck length, stuff that you can never remember). I just LOVE the simple fact that it doesn't say "Oh, yeah, that, sure, look over here, or here, or look, somebody a gawker was talking about that the other day...", it says "sure, here's the answer, what's next?"
Before Bing, MS had a function called Live Search, which incorporated their mapping functions. But You can put in a building address and get a 3-d aerial view, which you can't get with Google. I use it a lot for building research.
I suppose when they fold bing, that will go away. Sigh. Once a decade, Microsoft does something I find useful, and then takes it away.
Are Google Earth's 3D buildings too sucky to serve?
Where is the Drawing-in-P00P post?
Perhaps I should ask Wolfram Alpha.
That one banished all other posts from the front page. Which is funny, but not what I wanted.
Yay! Five more fails for Alpha.
Goggle Eart doesn't do the same thing. As far as I can tell, their 3-d buildings are generated by the users, or else you get street view. Useful, but not the same.
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