Today, I was wondering how I could ever search for something if Google didn’t exist and I asked myself, “How do I look for answers without using Google?”
I certainly wanted to answer my own question really bad so I dug up a few worthy search engines out there that can be my alternative to Google search.
Here are some of my early favorites (in no order):
No introduction is needed for the 3rd largest website in the world.
I’ve recently needed to get longitude and latitude coordinates for several locations. I first went about it by getting the values from http://www.geonames.org/. This was difficult because it requires you convert degrees, minutes and seconds to the wgs84 format. This is no treat.
After some googling I discovered that it’s pretty simple to make a Google map with a pin on it which tells you the coordinates of the pin in the wgs84 format.
Here’s the code:
<p id="coords"></p> <div id="map_canvas" style="height: 600px"></div>
function gogmap() { var map, marker, point = new GLatLng(52.482780222078205, -102.65625); // default position var posChange = function() { point = marker.getLatLng(); document.getElementById('coords').innerHTML = "lat: " + point.lat() + "<br>lng: " + point.lng(); }; map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas")); map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl()); map.addControl(new GNavLabelControl()); map.setCenter(point, 4); marker = new GMarker(point, {draggable: true}); GEvent.addListener(marker, "dragend", posChange); map.addOverlay(marker); posChange(); } gogmap();
When you drag the pin to a new location the longitude and latitude below will update.
I attended a presentation at the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Marketing Association luncheon last week and the presenter was a marketing executive from Canwest Global. He was discussing the important elements they use in their marketing strategy:
If you want your news and you like to get them online, but don’t have enough time to check all the news websites and blogs, there is a cool experiment from Google Labs called Google Fast Flip.
Google Fast Flip captures images of articles on their partner’s websites and displays them in an easy-to-read format. It’s really cool to view these images in a widescreen monitor because you are able to quickly scan on popular articles with the website’s template using all your screen real estate. I’m a quick skimmer and I really love how they are laid out. And because not all of us reads all those web news/blog content, skimming through headlines and pictures is serious time-saver.
It’s been speculated for sometime that Google will do SOMETHING to compete with the massive social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. After some attempts like Friend Feed and Wave, Google’s attempting it again with their new product – Buzz.
Buzz is actually pretty invasive and is causing serious concerns about privacy. It is a part of Gmail, a link below your Inbox on the left-hand side. It is updated with status updates (done manually), RSS entries, shared RSS posts, Tweets and more from your friends.
It really floors me when I hear that certain people from certain industries still think that a website has no affect on their sales process. I was speaking to an accounting firm the other day and he was adamant that companies do not consider a website when they are looking for an accounting firm. He said it is all done by referrals. I agreed with the referral part, there are certain industries like financial planners, lawyers and accountants where there is no doubt that the initial interest comes from a referral. However, prior to 1994 potential customers did not have another means to research further and do some due diligence on the supplier they were considering. Now there is this little online library of information called the Internet where no company can hide and where prospective clients are definitely going to want to research your company. I met with a financial planning company and I explained how I felt the decision process would go:
A plain desktop can really kill creativity, and there is nothing good about that. This is why I have made this list of 10 websites to search for some killer desktop graphics to get your creative juices flowing!
Quick reminder: Avoid being a victim of an e-mail phishing scam.
A good practice to save you from these e-mail hoaxes and fraudulent links (phising) is to always check (double-check then re-check) the link that you are about to click. It may save you from viruses, malwares, spywares or even save you lots of money. Especially if the link involved grabbing your personal information.
Take this phising email I recently received:
The email looked unsuspecting for a regular user at first. But after I hovered into that link “Click here to verify your account”.
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