New web apps often make a lot of claims that just don't hold up under testing. When I decided to put Quarkbase.com through the paces, I fully expected to be underwhelmed. After all, their motto is "Everything About A Website."
Holy information overload Batman, this one really surprised me.
Pick a domain and hit search, then give Quarkbase a chance to dig up its research. They say to wait about 30 seconds, though my successful searches worked more quickly. I did get a few failure notices because of high traffic, but I understand why. Quarkbase finds so much information about your website that it's mindblowing.
What does it find? The domain owner, registrar, creation date, primary language, similar sites (*yawn* so far), traffic rank, blog rank, countries in which it's popular, description and "official" contact info, people involved, incoming links, and more. Unlike the "similar pages" Google search returns, the Quarkbase suggestions were pretty much right on the money.
But wait, there's more. It'll track down numbers on Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Technorati, Reddit, Delicious, and Yahoo Answers. Quarkbase even knows how many times the site have made Digg's front page. It also generates a list of the most popular recent page and five popular pages of all time based on these stats.
Quarkbase is an incredibly informative tool and undeniably useful for anyone working the web.
Google has added a simple language translation option to the normal search bar. Simply type "translate" followed by the word and the language you want to see.
For example "translate download into French" or "translate computer into Spanish." The tool currently works with nine languages including French, Spanish, Italian, German and even Hindi.
This is not a substitute for Google Translator. The tool will only translate one word at a time. If you run into a foreign word you can simply type translate and the word to get a result in English.
It's pretty simple and could come in handy once in awhile. You can at least learn to say hello in all nine languages while you are bored at work some day.
As a longtime Firefox user, I didn't pay too much attention when Microsoft announced the impending release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. Still, after using the first beta and not running into the kind of horrible issues some of our readers reported, it warranted a download.
After a brief test drive, I'm pleasantly surprised by it. Installation was almost totally painless, though I wish Microsoft would figure out how to pull off a reboot-free install. Pages rendered quickly and accurately, the Firefox import worked very well, and my LastPass toolbar worked without asking for an upgrade. The Google toolbar, however, failed to work.
I also appreciate that IE prompted me to disable an addon - the Acrobat toolbar - when I closed it's toolbar. It's a small but useful feature. Slices and accelerators are showing a lot of promise, and the two I tried - Stumbleupon Buzz and send to GMail - worked nicely. You can see the Stumble slice at work in my screenshot.
I'm not sold on SmartScreen yet. I expected Web of Trust-like funcionality, but it's just not there. I ran around several keygen sites that make WOT cringe and didn't get a single alert from IE. That needs adressing. I like the idea of InPrivate as well, but would like to be able to mix tabs instead of running two separate instances of the browser.
If you do install the new version, be sure to check out the IE 8 Gallery, a new website that provides one-stop access to accelerators, slices, search addons, and toolbars. It's much, much less annoying than the IE7 addon site.
Let us know your thoughts if you've demoed the new beta!
If you've ever wanted to drive the Autobahn in Germany, tool around London in an 18-wheeler or do doughnuts in the Googleplex parking lot, the Geoquake 2D driving simulator will help you out. The simulator uses Google Maps for its driving courses.
You can choose to drive through Tokyo Station, London, Las Vegas and several other locations. You don't even have to be a very good driver, since the 2D format allows you to just drive all over everything - quite handy when you keep forgetting which side of the road you should be on in London.
I had the best luck in Tokyo Station. In other locations I had frequent instances of driving over a plain gray screen as the frames per second weren't keeping up. That could be from my old computer or slow internet connection though, and not an issue for those of you with better connections.
It's certainly not a slick video game by any means but it is kind of cool to see what is possible in the future. Grand Theft Auto in your own neighborhood perhaps?
Beginning September 13th you will be able to watch your favorite BBC shows online, all the time. In the past, the BBC would post shows to the iPlayer and keep them up for only 7 days.
The new format will use series stacking, which basically means as each new episode becomes available, it will stack on top of old episodes. All episodes will remain available online so you will have the opportunity to watch entire series in one sitting or, just catch up on a few weeks of missed viewing.
According to the BBC press office, you will be able to catch up on a maximum of 13 episodes. It doesn't state if that's in one sitting or for one series or on the iPlayer overall though. Seems like an important detail to include.
iPlayer use for television shows is limited to those connecting from the UK, though radio programs are available to everyone.
You may have encountered Google Suggest in Google News in the past few months and if you haven't already, you're about to start seeing it in your search box as well.
Google Suggest is movin' on up from Google Labs onto the Google homepage in increments this week. If you haven't seen it yet, you will.
According to Google this should help you:
enter more specific search criteria quickly
reduce the chance of spelling errors
save keystrokes
be annoyed with Google yet again
I guess it might be cool, though it only saved me two keystrokes when I was googling Download Squad. And I think I can type in my search criteria more quickly than I can type part of it and read a list, type some more to see more choices and on and on. But, who knows, maybe I might like it. Like Mikey and his cereal.
In case you are trying to tighten your belt literally and not just by saving money Calorie Lab might be the place for you. It is a database of calories for common restaurant and prepared foods.
While it does not have calorie counts for common foods like an apple, 4 ounces of chicken breast, etc. it does have information on Big Macs, Krispy Kremes, and Cokes -- all of which regularly show up around my office unfortunately.
It's a good place to visit before you go out to lunch if you want to get an idea of how many calories you'll need to work off later. You can also look up how many calories some everyday activities burn and compare that to foods with equivalent calories.
I learned, for example, that 30 minutes of moderate sexual activity burns up the calories contained in a hot dog with pickle relish. Of course, it takes 2 hours to burn off a medium-sized slice of italian bread. You can also read the very funny article on the variations in calories burned for certain sexual activities.
You can also read the newest results in the "How Fat is your State" ranking. I guess this would be a good time to get up and do a few laps around your cube or something.
TypoBuddy, like previously reviewed TypoTracker, helps you find deals by searching for misspelled variations of the items you search for. Why?
Because most people that search for a particular item will try to spell it right - meaning that listings with typos might go unnoticed, and you'll wind up getting a sweet deal just because some seller was careless enough to not check his or her typing.
It's a great concept, but does it work?
I tried submitting a few queries to both sites, first looking for "thinkpad." Although TypoBuddy told me it had found 100 misspelled matches, clicking through to the eBay results netted only 76 - still very respectable. The search automatically homes in on your locale, so you may need to change locations to get more results.
Tabs changed the way we browse the web. No longer do you have to open new browser windows to view additional content. You can just create a new tab and enter a URL or search term. Most browsers even let you right-click on any link you find on a web page and open it in a new tab.
But when you open a new tab the old fashioned way by clicking the "new tab" or Ctrl+T keys, you're presented with a blank screen that honestly doesn't do you much good. So the folks at Mozilla are thinking about ways to make new tabs instantly useful. One idea, which you can see detailed above is to throw a search box onto every blank tab, since there's a good chance you're opening a fresh tab to search for something.
It doesn't stop there though. The conceptual search box would be linked to the Firefox 3 Awesome Bar, which means it has access to your web browsing history and can offer recommendations for sites you've recently visited as you search. And if you highlighted and copied some text on another web site before opening your fresh tab, this concept design would try to detect what kind of text you copied and offer even more useful suggestions. For example, if you copied a date, you might see a box with the option of adding the date to a calendar. If you copy an address, you might be able to map it with the click of a button.
After the jump, check out another concept from another Firefox developer. Either one of these ideas could find their way into future versions of the web browser.
Once upon a time, it looked like MapQuest was on the same path that TiVo, Kleenex, and Xerox had taken before it. If you were looking up directions using any web site, there was a good chance you said you were "mapquesting it." But now the pioneer in online directions faces stiff competition from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and others. But it looks like AOL (the company that owns both MapQuest and this blog) is trying to play catchup by rolling out many of the same features you'll find at those other sites, and a few new ones to boot.
The first thing you'll notice in the new MapQuest beta is that the company has finally added a map to the front page. You no longer have to enter your data and click to a secondary screen. The map will automatically show information based on your preferences or your physical location.
You can do all the things you'd expect with the map, like search for addresses or business, zoom in and out, or view arial images. You can also click on a weather link to overlay weather information, or click a gas link to pull up gas price information for various locations. There's also a traffic button that shows live traffic conditions for more than 85 cities.
Some of these features have been available for months. For example, MapQuest introduced live traffic information back in March. But AOL is really pushing the redesign now, by providing a link to the beta at the top of the main MapQuest page. The plan is to promote the beta for a few months before flipping the switch and killing the older version of the site.
While I know it's no big deal to dump a couple of gigs of music onto my 8GB flash drive, sometimes it's nice to fire up some streaming radio for a change of pace.
Screamer is available both as an installable application and as a portable executable. Go with the portable version, and you'll be able to take your presets with you wherever you can plug in your USB flash drive.
Click on presets, and Screamer will bury you under a mountain of radio streams. Browse by genre, geographical location, network, or language. Once you make a selection, its category heading will automatically be added to the bottom of the preset list for easy channel changing.
I tune in The Edge, and Screamer adds the rest of the Modern Rock category for me. Slick.
Favorite your top feeds and Screamer saves them in a simple XML file - handy for emailing your faves to a buddy, if you feel like sharing.
Recording is supported, though only on streams that provide track information. You'll still need an app like StreamRipper for recording other feeds.
Development is very active, and new streams are added frequently. You can request a specific one by visiting their forums. Screamer is freeware, Windows only.
Ever wonder what former U.S. President George Bush would have looked like as an early-80's high school senior? Well, wonder no more!
A few quick clicks with Yearbook Yourself and you can transform yourself into a horrendously coiffed teenager from 1950 to 2000. FYI before you head over: this one's a marketing gimmick for a group of malls, so the stores you see listed on the yearbook pages take you to badly-designed mall directory web pages.
Still, it's good for a laugh. Center and scale your image, rotate it if you need to, and you're good to go. Images with glasses are particularly amusing, as they tend to appear at a slight angle - giving your photo that hapless, disheveled look. And don't feel limited by the gender selection - go ahead and do the ol' switcheroo for even more photo fun!
I'd like it if the interface allowed you to go back and tweak your photo's position and scale, but you have to start over from scratch for now. The worst part of the whole experience: winding up on a year that actually looks the way you did. Oh, the humanity!
The social bookmarking service Ma.gnolia is announcing a new version at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle today, and the big news is that the whole thing is being rewritten from the ground up. M2, as it's being called, will include all of the features of the current Ma.gnolia, but it's going to be entirely Open Source. A first look at M2 should be available by September.
So, why Open Source, and what does it mean to Ma.gnolia users? Well, you'll be able to download Ma.gnolia and run your own version of it, and that version will be able to interoperate with Ma.gnolia.com and other web services. Standards like OpenID and OAuth will be supported, allowing for maximum portability of your data -- which, in the case of Ma.gnolia, mostly means your bookmarks and tags --- between sites. If you're already thinking of creative uses for an Open Source Ma.gnolia, good! They're looking to make user feedback a big part of building M2, so keep an eye on their blog if you've got input.
You've no doubt learned to take the various claims software developers make about their products with a grain of salt, but the gang at Lastpass may be right on with theirs. Lastpass may just be the last password you'll ever have to remember.
Other DS bloggers have looked at plenty of other options, like Passpack and good ol' Keepass. Lastpass has put together an extremely worthy competitor, and I was impressed with how it performed in my test runs.
Lastpass installs as two parts: the core application and as plugins for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. All data is encrypted on your PC, and only your encrypted file is stored on the Lastpass servers. It's also cross-platform, so you can sync your password data to Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs.
During install, the manager effortlessly captures and imports local passwords from both browsers (which shows you just how much you need an encrypted password store) then gives the option to clear them. It also does imports from RoboForm, Keepass, Password Safe, and MyPasswordSafe.
It's always nice to have a good laugh during an otherwise stressful workday, and what's more fun than laughing at outright supidity?
The Unintelligencer uses an array of sophisticated linguistic algorithms to convert your text from perfectly suitable English into the unrecognizable drivel you've gotten used to seeing on YouTube, Facebook, and all your other favorite sites.
Let's try an example from a favorite movie of mine: "i haved an wonderful girlfriend linda. 2gethr wee drove too small cabin ins da mountains. t seems an archeologist hads kum tew dis remote place 2 translate + study him latess phidn: necronomiconexmortis. thee book uv de ded."
Oh, the good times you'll have with this. Send that important departmental memo as a Moron, or shoot the moon and render it Incomprehensible. Unintelligencer offers 5 subtle shades of idiocy!
It's web based, so users of any operating system can utilize this fantastic - and unbelievably useful - tool. I'd like to see a reverse translation so I can finally understand what the hell some of these lolcat people are talking about.
In case you are trying to tighten your belt literally and not just by saving money 
