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Websites that say “hey you typed the address wrong” in a really cool way

We have discussed web searching tricks in the past here. All good search engines and Google in particular offer lots of ways to customise your searches to filter out irrelevant information and hone in on just what you want to know.

I found a YouTube video today (via Digital Inspiration) that explains some of the basics.
(Being YouTube it should work with any connection but will  be slow on Dial Up)

I swiped this post from Jeff Alexander’s blog. Jeff is married to my cousin and is a top bloke. He works for Microsoft and this is a post about the new Windows search software. As I mentioned at our last meeting I have found the upgrade to version 4 has noticeably sped up my Vista machine. If you use Vista then you should definitely download this update.

One of the great features of Windows Vista is it’s integrated search engine which allows you to find all those bits and bytes on your computer.  But in the last week I found this interesting little tidbit.  Windows Search 4.0

was quietly released for free download for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003.  This one kind of came under the radar a bit so I thought I would give it a go and install.  Well to my surprise my machine seems to be faster!  And of course search is a whole lot faster.  But in a nutshell this is what the new version has to offer.

• Improvements in performance and stability of the indexer
• Fuller complement of Group Policy settings, available on all supported operating systems
• Fast sorting and grouping of results in Windows Explorer
• Indexing improvements in online e-mail
• Ability to index delegate mailboxes for online e-mail
• Support for indexing (local file system) encrypted documents
• Expanded ability to perform fast remote queries of file shares, including those on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. This includes automatic indexing of shared folders.
• Item previews in Windows Explorer for Windows XP

So this is one of those things that kind of sits under the covers quietly plugging away but it’s nice to see the search team has made such an improvement.

Check out the download today!

  I’ve put it on all my machines!

Have you ever lost a user manual or instructions for an item? Of course you have – I know I have!

It could be a TV or a DVD player, a food processor, an air conditioner or some other complicated piece of equipment. Or maybe you bought it second hand and the booklet didn’t come with it. And the frustration mounts!

There are a number of places on the web you can look for a copy of the user manual. An educated Google search can often turn one up and of course try the manufacturers own site too. But there are also some places on the net that accumulate the manuals for you and one of these is SafeManuals.com. Apparently they have over 800,000 guides saved and growing.

I have included their search function in this post – click the buttons below and give it a try. You might just find something you are missing!

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://mesnotices.fr/partners/partners.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">SafeManuals("eng","","multi","pop","0x000033","0x000099","0x000000","0xFFFFFF","","#FFFFFF");</script>

G'day all. Ross and I agree that Thursday night was a really good Mullies meeting for those who braved the cold windy night! Note from Ross:

Hi Matt
thanks for the help and for bringing along your laptops...great stuff.
I was wondering do you still have the article on how to repair XP without having to lose all the info on your hard drive?
I think it was on one of those newsletters that you get?
Can you help, thanks.
What shall we do next month, someone suggested SL ?
Oh and your Mulligroup email address is not working?
Regards Ross Johnson

To answer the questions in reverse, yes the old email address for the group changed slightly when the website address changed. The details were sent through but for those who missed it the new address is:

mulligrubs@miltonulladulla.com

 

You should receive an email of this post from the above address and now the website is all set up it shouldn't change again. Please update your address book and if necessary add the address to you 'whitelist' so it doesn't get blocked as spam. Remember if you ever want to subscribe to our emails, change your email address or :( unsubscribe then please just send a note to the same address.

What does everyone think about a topic for next month's discussion? Ross suggests a discussion of Second Life game. Does anyone have any other ideas, suggestions or requests?

I am an early apology for next month's meeting as I will be on stage at "The Entertainers" that night. If you have never been to Entertainers before do yourself a favour. It's a great live show with a 2 course dinner for less than $40 with all proceeds going to charity - not much wrong with that.

OK now on to Ross's question - yes we have discussed a few ways of repairing Windows XP. All the questions and stuff we write is posted to the website which is at:

http://www.mulligrubs.miltonulladulla.com

There are 2 ways to find information on our website.

Website search

I use Blogger to host our page and Blogger is owned by Google. So it is no surprise that the default Blogger page includes an integrated search component. The search box is in the banner at the top of the page - refer the picture below. Type something in the search box and you can quickly see if we have discussed it before.

So for example if we type in Ross's query "repair XP" and this page comes up.

If we look down the list we can see that back in November 2006 we posted some details about Four ways to repair Windows XP. One of the ways referred to here in the article is the The No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option which is probably what Ross is after.

The other thing you may have noticed is the "Topic Index" on our Blog page (refer the picture above again). Recently I have been using Blogger's ability to 'tag' each post with topics or details of what it is about. Blogger tallies all these up and keeps the Topic Index. As I have only been doing this for a few months it doesn't link to all the posts but I hope to go back and tag the older posts too. So if you would like to catch up on any particular topic just click on the topic in the list and away you go.

Last but not least there is a Blog Archive link at the bottom of the page that lists all the posts by the month. So if you want to search by date this is your best bet. It's really amazing how easy all of this stuff is. I just write the details and send it to Blogger and the rest takes care of itself.

So please take the time to look back on where we have been. We have already touched on a lot of worthwhile information. And remember this is a group effort -  I will gladly post anyone else's writing -  and Ross and I will and all our members will try to answer any question or help with any problem you may have. So send 'em in!

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