College Purchases

Looking for a computer for college?

Apple offers student discounts year-round, but often offers a laptop-and-iPod deal in the May - August time frame.  Check it out at http://www.apple.com/store and click on "Education Store" on the left.  (Or just go to http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/education_routing).

Dell offers discounts to college students at http://www.delluniversity.com.

HP offers discounts to students at http://www.shopping.hp.com/academy.

Lots of software can be purchased at http://www.academicsuperstore.com/.  This includes the ever popular Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and others.  These discounts are available to both students and teachers.

Also, keep an eye on deal sites like woot.com, dealnews.com, dealmac.com, and cowboom.com.  You never know when they list a great deal.  You can also check out RetailMeNot.com for coupons.

Lastly, compare prices and read customer reviews of products on sites like Amazon.com, NewEgg.com, Epinions.com, and Google.com/products.

Happy shopping.

Google Search

There are a number of ways to make Google more accurate, some of which are quite easy.  Here are a few examples follow:

Search:  Tiger Woods
Means:  Find Web pages with both of the words 'Tiger' and 'Woods'.  This is the most common way to use Google.

Search:  "Tiger Woods"
Means:  Find pages with these exact words in this exact order.  Good for exact phrases, e.g. finding quotes, verifying a scam, and plagiarism checks.

Search:  Tiger Woods -forest
Means:  Find pages with both of the words 'Tiger' and 'Woods', in any order, that do not include the word 'forest'.  Good for countering the effect of words with two meanings, such as "woods" in this example.

Search:  Tiger Woods site:espn.com
Means:  Find pages with both of the words 'Tiger' and 'Woods', in any order, that are on the espn.com system.  Good for web sites without a search function.


These techniques can be mixed. For example:

Search:  "Tiger Woods" golf -forest site:espn.com
Means:  Find pages with the exact phrase "Tiger Woods", and the word golf, without the word forest, and only on the espn.com site.

Save Paper with "Print What You Like"

For those of you who don't know, there is a way to print parts of web pages without printing the parts that you don't need.  This can save paper, ink, and space on your desk.

Just go to PrintWhatYouLike.com and type (or paste) in the address of the page that you want to print.  Then you can click on the parts of the page that you want to print and they'll highlight. You can highlight as many or as few chunks of the page as you want. Then you can click on "Isolate Selected" and print it.

You can also select the advertisements and click "Remove Selected", if you prefer. Or just click "Remove Background" for a quick way to reduce ink use.

For easier access to this service, you can make a button for it. Part way down the page is a "bookmarklet". If you drag this into Safari's button bar (just below the address bar), you can create a single-click button that loads the current page that you're viewing into the PrintWhatYouLike.com service. This makes it really quick to use.

Email Yourself Blog Updates

Do you read a few web sites that update rarely?  It can be pretty frustrating to visit them often yet only see updates every week or two.  Save yourself time and have the web site's updates emailed directly to you.

This can be done by going to feedmyinbox.com and typing in the website and your email address.  They'll email you a confirmation message.  Click on "Confirm Subscription" in that message and follow the directions.

Feedmyinbox.com is a great way to be notified of a small number of websites that update infrequently.  If you want more than 5 websites sent to you, check out Google Reader instead.  Reader is a simple tool that can consolidate dozens or even hundreds of web sites into a single inbox.  More on that in a future post, though.

Urban Legends

So you've received the latest message about a new form or CPR, rising gas prices, or radioactive cat litter.

Before warning lots of people about it, how do you ask, "Is it true?"  You can actually use Google or Snopes faster than the "Forward" button... and save yourself some embarrassment at the same time.

To use Snopes, go to snopes.com and use the Search line at the top of the page.  Type in a simple phrase, like "gas prices" or "cat litter" for a list of claims about those topics.  Snopes will tell you if its true or not.

To use Google, just copy a relatively unusual line from the message and paste it into Google.  Phrases with numbers or brand names work well.

Personally, I recommend Snopes over Google in this case.  Either one will probably work, but with Google you will have to read through several unrelated items and may even run into more copies of the claim without any real verification.  Snopes, on the other hand, does the research and clearly states if its true, false, or some mix of the two.

Which ever way you go, its worth checking your facts before forwarding a claim.  You can help stop false or even dangerous claims.  It may even save you from identity theft.

Google Sites Sidebar

Use Google Sites to build a website?  Google has some advise on how to improve your sidebar.

Passwords

Worried about your password?  Think you have a good one?  Either way, I recommend spending two minutes checking out the advise from security company ZoneAlarm.  It could save your bank account some day.