Another thread got me thinking, and I thought it might be cool for everyone to share their resources and/or techniques that --while not really secret-- are not commonly known by the average internet user, or are in your opinion underutilized. It could be just a method you use to search google, a link to a useful website, resource, whatever.
Mine is WolframAlpha. I’m sure some people here have used it, but there are a lot of people unaware of it’s awesomeness. It looks like just another web search engine, but it’s not like that at all – it’s like an easy to interact with database of everything.
If you haven’t ever used it, try going to their list of example queries by topic. Once you click on a topic, click on one of the example queries to see how it works and what kind of info it returns.
Or, you could just click here for a random example. (But that might be just a simple, mundane example that’s not necessarily impressive or demonstrative.)
So, what are some of your “secret voodoo powers” of the interwebs?
Adblock+ is a plugin for Firefox that blocks 99% of all online ads. When I first installed it, I was amazed by the sheer amount of mental chaos that disappeared when I no longer had ads competing for my attention. The downside is that many of your favorite websites/blogs/forums only exist because of advertising revenue, and when you’re blocking ads you’re effectively cutting off their revenue stream. So use with thoughtfulness.
Edit to add: There’s a version of Adblock that works with Chrome as well.
There’s a setting (under Filter Preferences) in the newest versions of AdBlock Plus that allows you to “Allow some non-intrusive adverting” - I think it’s on by default. So if you want to be thoughtful to some of your favorite websites, you can make sure that’s turned on.
When I’m shopping online, or offline even, I look at http://www.pricegrabber.com/ to find out where’s it cheapest. Also, my state has public access to court records, so you just type in a name and you can see if people have been arrested, married, evicted, or sued- handy!
Unlike Google maps, it pinpoints the exact building, and has virtually all the information about it you could imagine. (Owner, lot area and frontage, square footage, year built, number of stories, zoning, etc.) From that section of the site you can also find out the local parking restrictions for the street it’s on.
And while there’s no street view, you can see zoomable aerial photos from 1924, 1951, 1996, 2006, 2008 and 2010.
Ah, excellent. I wasn’t aware of that. (It must be working!) I know you can disable AdBlock for specific sites, which is sometimes worth it.
I follow a few blogs who have ‘sponsors’ that are carefully selected to be of interest to the people reading the blog, and then their ads are presented as nicely formatted images down one side of the page. AdBlock doesn’t cut those out, I’d assumed that they were hosted by the blog and therefore weren’t tripping the filters. I actually follow those links a lot of the time. It’s worlds better than sites with designated blocks of Google ads.
This is kind of lame, I guess, but I use it most days. It’s a list of upcoming TV shows, with a countdown to the minute. Great for someone who, oh… I don’t know, may need to know international TV schedules for some reason he may not want to share on a public message board.
Where’s the fun in that? Real men snipe the old fashioned way, with two windows open, refreshing one for the time, and the other to pull the trigger at T minus six seconds.
My internet usage is pretty boring (other than SDMB of course) but my secret weapon is link organization. I read a couple dozen web comics and they don’t all update every day so under comics I have a folder for each day and in each is the set of links for that day.
I also have my homepage set to new tab so that I’m not loading a page that I care about once every single time I open a new tab.
RetailMeNot - I check this before I buy anything online. Most of the time the codes are bogus or do not apply to the specific item I’m buying, but every now and then I have gotten some pretty substantial discounts.
Awesome FF hint I got from the boards:
In any search box, right click and select “add a keyword for this search.” Put in a name and a simple keyword (I use two-letter codes related to the page) and from then on, whenever you need to search that page you just put the code and the search terms in the address bar. It’s somewhat similar to adding engines to the search box dropdown but doesn’t crowd that list.