The Toolbar Wars Have Started

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the companies are mulling a three-year partnership that could bring as much as $1 billion in revenue to the PC maker for letting Google install its software on Dell machines. The Dell representative declined to comment on the future of the relationship between the two companies. A Google representative confirmed the two companies were testing the search giant's products on new Dell PCs, but declined to comment further.

The browser, not the desktop, has become the most sought-after piece of real estate on a new PC, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. Five years ago, PC companies were giddy over the prospect of renting space on their boxes' desktops to the highest bidder, after Microsoft's antitrust settlement with the U.S. Justice Department forced it to open up the Windows desktop to increased competition.

Companies such as America Online and CompuServe rushed to get prominent placement for their dial-up services on new PCs, but the move didn't pay off as they had hoped. PC users simply ignored icons they didn't wish to use, or used cleanup programs to remove all icons from their desktops or start menus, Kay said. However, just about every PC user who's connected to the Internet uses the browser at least once a day, and browser toolbars that contain useful utilities such as Google's search engine will grab a user's attention, he said.

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Find a Human and Bypass Computer Answering Machines

Many people get tired of calling customer support or customer service and getting one of those computer operated answering machines with no clear way of talking to a live person. Fortunately, Paul English has made things easier with his IVR Cheat Sheet website. The Cheat Sheet lists quick ways to get a human on the line for services like banks, cable companies, phone companies, retailers, insurance companies and government agencies. (Via Law Geek)

Posted on January 3, 2006
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Do It All With Glide Effortless

PC World has an article about Glide Effortless, a new multi-purpose publishing and storage web tool.

If there was an award for "Most Ambitious New Web Service of 2005," it might well go to Glide Effortless, which a startup called TransMedia launched on Wednesday. Glide aims to let you manage and share music, videos, photos, presentations, and other items online, transcoding them on the fly so you don't, in theory, have to worry about file formats. It's an e-mail program, a contact database, an RSS reader, a photo-printing service, a blogging tool, and a Web site builder, too. And it says it'll soon be a photo editor, a music store, a ringtone vendor, a videoconferencing system, and a whole lot more. Did I mention that it also plans to sell French chocolates? (Note: The last sentence was a statement of fact, not playful hyperbole.)

Describing Glide briefly is practically impossible. To use the service, you upload documents and media files from your PC; a free version of the service gives you 100MB of space, and you can get a lot more by springing for fee-based options. Once files live within Glide, you can get to them from any PC, use them to construct Web sites, and share them. (Sharing can be done with folks who don't have Glide accounts, and it's done through transcoded, streamed versions of files; among other things, this means that you can distribute them via e-mail, but yank them back after a certain number of viewings or a set timeframe.)

Glide Effortless looks like a combination of a purplish desktop with some of the Web 2.0 launches we have seen lately -- but we agree with PC World that it is difficult to describe. PC World suggests trying the free version and avoiding the fee-based services for now.

Posted on December 2, 2005
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ElfURL Shortens URLs and Provides Stats

ElfURL is a new web tool that shrinks URLs down to a small size (useful for inserting in emails, email newsletters, etc.) and also provides statistics for how many times the URL was visited.

Enter your giant URL and our elves will make it elfin size. These elfin-sized URL will not break in emails, nor will they expire.

ElfURL will compete with other URL shrinking tools like TinyURL, Shorl.com, SnipURL, Notlong.com and MarkaShorterLink.com. Yahoo has a list of more URL shortening tools. There is also a spoof site called HugeURL that makes the URLs bigger. (Via TechCrunch)

Posted on July 22, 2005
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Urban Dictionary is a Slang Goldmine

The Urban Dictionary is a user-edited dictionary that allows people to research, add and edit the words listed in the dictionary. It is best used as a slang dictionary and some of the entries are quite funny like this entry for "I am sparticus."

This is something that is good to use in either a crowded room full of geeks or in an IRC chat.

Originated from sparticus...

You: "I am sparticus!!!!"

Everyone else: "No, I am sparticus!","I am sparticus", "He lies. I am sparticus" and so forth.

Anil Dash lays on the praise for this user-edited slang dictionary and refers to the Urban Dictionary as The Other Wikipedia in a recent post.

Whenever I hear about what a great community-edited, user-contributed site Wikipedia is, I think about the unsung site that's just as much of a success: Urban Dictionary. Where else can you find definitions for meh and cool beans and thousands of obscure sexual practices of varying degrees of debauchery?

Posted on July 18, 2005
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DMOZ Top Listed Domains

Whois.sc provides this list of the most linked domain names on Dmoz.org, the Open Directory Project. The top listed domain by far is CNN.com with over 231,000 entries on Dmoz. A lot of the other top domains like geocities.com, tripod.com and angelfire.com have numerous entries because they provide personal homepage hosting services. (Via Threatwatch.org)

Posted on July 6, 2005
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Password Search and Storage Tool

Search Engine Watch has an article discussing a new search tool called Roboform that also helps you keep track off your passwords. Roboform says it will securely store your online passwords and can automatically log you into passworded websites that you are registered for. Roboform can also create complex passwords with its password generator. You can also store your non-internet passwords like ATM and Call Notes passwords with Roboform.

Posted on June 15, 2005
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