Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, September 12, 2008

iSearch a Better Way to Find People Online [People Search]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389899173/isearch-a-better-way-to-find-people-online

New addition to the people search engine scene iSearch is a powerful tool for hunting down anyone online that offers better results than plain old Google in some cases. Search by name and location, screen name, phone number, school or company, and iSearch returns results from social networks as well as regular old web pages. My test searches for my co-bloggers were very detailed, and displayed many personal facts right within the results page. As with most people search engines, folks who don't have as much of an online presence don't show up as much (or just have multiple results from the same old company or school web page). For more on finding that someone, check out our full feature on how to track down anyone online.

iSearch [via Webware]

Back Up Your Files to Google Docs Automatically [Backup]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389950762/back-up-your-files-to-google-docs-automatically

Right now there's no easy way to sync your office documents back and forth to Google Docs (uh, hello Google?!), but if you're comfortable at the command line, developer site Webmonkey details how to automatically back up your files to Google Docs using a Python script. The universal Google data backup and sync app is a long time in coming—someone build it, please!

Gmail Labs Adds Three New Reply Features [Gmail]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/390015748/gmail-labs-adds-three-new-reply-features

Gmail Labs has rolled out three new features to beef up the popular email client's Reply feature. How can you improve something as simple as Reply, you ask? Well, in at least three ways: Quote selected text, Default 'Reply to all,' and Vacation time. First, the simple Quote selected text feature generates a reply with the currently selected text. Just select the text you want to quote and then hit 'r' (the keyboard shortcut for Reply). This one seems like the most buggy, and the Official Gmail Blog admits it doesn't work in Chrome or Safari yet. (I even had a little trouble getting it to work in Firefox.) The other worked much better.

The next one is simple: Default 'Reply to all' does exactly what it sounds like: replaces the Reply button in the top right of emails with Reply to all by default. The idea behind it:

When we're working on features for Gmail, the email etiquette on the team is to reply all so everyone involved is kept in the loop. Mark was an intern here this past summer who got frustrated when he'd reply to an email only to realize that he forgot to reply all and had to resend the message. Thus, this Labs feature, which makes reply all your default selection.

It doesn't change the keyboard shortcuts, so 'r' still does a single reply and 'a' will reply to all.

Finally, the Vacation time feature adds something tremendous to the vacation auto-responder: It allows you to schedule your vacation so you don't have to do it manually when your vacation starts—and you don't forget to turn it off once you get b! ack. It' s simple, smart, and fills a need. Doesn't get much better than that.

New in Labs: Reply add-ons [Official Gmail Blog]

Monitor Your Monthly Bandwidth with Your Router [Bandwidth]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389962223/monitor-your-monthly-bandwidth-with-your-router

In the face of internet service providers like Comcast instituting bandwidth-capping, the Simple Help weblog details how to use a router running the open-source DD-WRT firmware to monitor your bandwidth. It's actually very simple to do, requiring no work on your part aside from installing DD-WRT on your router. DD-WRT automatically tracks bandwidth, so from there it's a matter of knowing where to look. If you're running the user-friendly Tomato firmware (we also showed you how to install Tomato), you can easily access your daily, weekly, or monthly bandwidth as well.

Like DD-WRT, Tomato automatically tracks bandwidth usage for you, so all you need to know is where to look. Just log into the Tomato interface, and then click on the Monthly link under Bandwidth in the sidebar (or, if you're using a default configuration, just follow this link). You'll get a simple table displaying your bandwidth stats for the month. Tomato also displays bandwidth use by week, day, and even in real-time if you're interested.

I've used DD-WRT and Tomato exclusively over the past few years, so I'm not really sure what the status is for bandwidth monitoring on most default router firmware. If your router supports bandwidth monitoring, let's hear about it in the comments.

How to use the DD-WRT firmware to monitor your bandwidth [Simple Help]