Boycott Microsoft Search

Boycott Microsoft Search!

[copied from IdelWords]
Microsoft is building a Web search engine, and they intend for it to become the industry standard. Given Microsoft’s track record during the browser wars, there is every reason to believe the company will again use its monopoly power to eliminate competition by building a Web search service into the next version of Windows.

June 27, 2003 | Filed Under Thoughts |  

Why would you want to use the Google Toolbar?

First of all, what is the Google Toolbar?
The Google Toolbar is a IE browser plug-in. It appears in the top part of your browser window, right below the navigation and address bar.

So, why would you want to use the Google Toolbar?

There are a few obvious reasons to use it:
1. you don’t have to go to Google.com to perform a search. All you do is type in your query in the search box of the toolbar.
2. you keep your search history. All the searches you do are stored in a drop-down menu. You don’t have to re-type the same query again.
You can (of course) delete the history or set it to not be stored at all or to not be carried over browser sessions.
3. search only within a site. You can restrict your search to only the site you are on. This is often useful when you know something is on a site, but you can’t find it.
4. one click to Google News. I check the news several times every day. The Google News button saves me time.
5. know how important a site (or page) is. The (advanced) Google Toolbar gives you the PageRank of every site as you browse it. The Page Rank is a good indicator of how important and trustworthy a site is.
6. get additional information about a page. You can see a cached version of a page, find related links and even see the incoming links to a page.
7. find the words you searched for on a page. If you want to quickly find the words you searched for, you can a) highlight them or b) find them on a click of a button. This makes navigating long documents a lot easier.
8. drag and drop your search. You can just highlight anything and drag and drop it into the toolbar. This is especially helpful for address information!
You can find directions to any US address by doing this.
9. translate any page into English. You can translate pages on the fly.
10. find out what any word means. You can search any word in the dictionary.

Most of this is old news, the really exciting features are the new Google Toolbar 2.0 features:

11. New! Pop-up blocker. Do you hate useless (mostly advertising) pop-ups? Well, say goodbye to them. One of the features is a smart Pop-up Blocker. You can select which sites you want pop-ups from. You are alerted by a discrete courser change and a tone (optional).

12. New! Form-Filler. How often have you typed your contact information and billing/payment information. Say good bye to that as well. The new Google Toolbar 2.0 highlights the forms that it thinks that it has the information for. On a click of a button everything is filled. You can password protect this feature.

13. New! Blog-this button. If you use Blogger.com to publish information on the web, you can now do this through your toolbar.

If you still think you don’t need the toolbar, you probably do not use the internet a lot ;-). One restriction - MS IE 5.5 and above only :-(

Please comment about the new features or share other things you use the toolbar for.

June 23, 2003 | Filed Under Thoughts |  

Google Toolbar 2.0

Google Toolbar 2.0
The Google Toolbar got a major overhaul - Google Toolbar 2.0 . New features include:
– pop-up blocking
– automated form filling
– blog-this button (works only with blogger.com, sorry mt users)

Please comment about the new functionality!

June 22, 2003 | Filed Under Thoughts |  

ROI Tracker

I launched another site focusing on ROI Tracking. ROI stands for Return on Investment. Find out more at www.ROI-tracker.com

June 12, 2003 | Filed Under Thoughts |