Author Archive | Steve Bass

Thirty-Three Web Tools for People Searches

Posted by Steve Bass on October 14, 2009 at 11:12 am

Steve Bass's TechBiteLast week I told you my story about how I found someone on the Internet (see Use the Web to Find Anyone in the World). This week I’ll show you the tools I used, the ones I recommend, and a few of the arrows aimed my way by subscribers. (As it turns out, many of you turned up search engines I hadn’t heard about, so make sure you read “What You Had to Say” below.)

If you attempt a search, don’t feel discouraged when many of the search engines dump you on a fee-based service. You’ll also find yourself heading deep into wild goose territory, with false leads and not-valuable-information. Stay focused on the clues, confirmations, and matches.

Another clue I haven’t talked about — and it’s a biggie — is using an e-mail address to find someone. That’s how I recently found the phone number of a YahooGroup moderator who’d abandoned his post. His e-mail address was on the Net about four times, but one forum showed his name, and the city and state he might have lived in. That was all I needed.

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Use the Web to Find Anyone in the World

Posted by Steve Bass on October 10, 2009 at 1:06 am

Steve Bass's TechBite“You find my long-lost buddy and I’ll paint any room in your house.” I was talking to a couple of friends about how I had tracked down a wayward YahooGroup moderator.

It was a sweet deal (the kitchen has three colors, lots of cabinets, and needs painting) and I was up for the challenge.

Just the Facts, Please

There were no rules: I could use any Internet resource or even social engineering, the art of extracting information from people by e-mail or phone. As in, “Hi, I’m calling to update your free white pages listing. Can you confirm that…”

I used only free sites to do the digging; I also used data I picked up from fee-based services — without paying a thing.

My friend gave me all he knew. “His name is Jan Shepard. The last I heard he was in Corpus Christi, Texas, and he’s a bankruptcy attorney.”

“Are you sure of the spelling,” I asked. The Shepard name does have variations, and the fact that the guy had an ambiguous first name added to the challenge.

He was adamant–and as it turned out, wrong. The last name was actually “Shephard.”

“You have anything else?” I asked, wondering if we wanted to keep the kitchen white or go for another color.

“He was born in Binghamton, New York, but actually lived in Vestal, New York.” I was also told his mother’s maiden name, the name of his brother and sister, and that his birth year was 1944 or maybe 1946.

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Five Killer Microsoft Word Tricks

Posted by Steve Bass on September 30, 2009 at 12:53 pm

Steve Bass's TechBiteMicrosoft Word: I can’t think of another application I’d like to have re-written to meet my needs. I’ll kvetch some more another time. Today, I have five tricks to fire up the way you use Word.

Tabs for Word. Cool!

You know how quickly you got used to opening multiple tabs in browsers? It’s a smart way to quickly move among Web pages; without it, browsing is lots like running applications in DOS.

Office Tab is a freebie that works in 2003 and older versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Double-click on the tab bar to open a new a document in a new tab; double-click a tab to close it. A right-click brings up a useful menu where you can save or close all your documents; the Options menu lets you change the look and color of the tabs.

You can save or close all your docs with one click, or right-click the tab to close

Have multiple tabs any way you’d like in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access

The program is from a Chinese developer (his name might be wangminbai) and the Baidu.com site is confusing even using Google’s translation. The program, however, is entirely in English. Read the product description, browse through the FAQ, and download the Zipped Word tool.

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Eleven Sites for Watching and Downloading Free TV and Movies

Posted by Steve Bass on September 24, 2009 at 10:59 am

Steve Bass's TechBiteLast week I told you about Sling’s MediaCatcher, the device that’s ideal for viewing streaming videos on your TV, as well as MediaGate’s MG-800HD, the other gizmo for watching downloaded movies on your TV. (See “Stream Movies from Your PC to Your TV.”)

This week I’ve got a score of spots where you can watch legal movies and TVs shows, some streamed, others downloaded, and a few sites with illegally pirated movies. I’ll also review MediaGate’s inexpensive, portable media device.

Next week I’ll spend a little time showing you how to capture streaming video.
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PC Annoyances–and a Security Fix

Posted by Steve Bass on September 10, 2009 at 10:15 am

Steve Bass's TechBiteI know you’re not always happy with your PC, so here are three fixes to some of the annoyances you’ve sent to me.

Louder. No, Quieter

The Annoyance: I have lots of MP3s I’ve ripped onto my hard drive from CDs. Nothing seems to play at the same volume level. When I play Copeland’s “Fanfare,” it’s loud enough to make the dog jump, yet all of Dave Brubeck’s music is way too soft.

The Fix: When you use Windows Media Player to burn music into a CD, the trick is to adjust–or normalize–the sound level as you’re burning the MP3s to the CD. Do that from the Burn menu by enabling Apply volume level across tracks on the CD. Normalization doesn’t work in WMP when you’re ripping MP3s from a CD to disk. Unfathomable, I know, but it’s Microsoft’s party. So use FairStars CD Ripper to do the job. The freebie does its job, normalizes the cuts, and handles plenty of file formats, including WAV, MP3, WMA, and more obscure ones, such as APE and VQF.

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Six Useful Things You Can Do With Google

Posted by Steve Bass on August 27, 2009 at 11:21 am

Steve Bass's TechBiteYou use Google, sure, but if all you’re doing are searches, you’re just scratching the surface. Here are a few things you might not know about Google.

Life Magazine’s Old Photos

You might see it as a time waster, but I love digging through Google’s gazillion historic photos from Life magazine. Google lets you use the photos for personal use, so it’s terrific for grabbing an image when you need something cute in an invitation or newsletter.

Search Me a Special Search

Google has a search site specifically for Linux users and another for those of you who can’t get enough of Microsoft. Check out the rest of Google’s special search sites. If you like poking around with Web tools, Experimental Search gives you five new ways to search, each aimed at tightening and focusing on specific results.

Google Squared is another exciting experimental search tool. Stick in a couple of words, or a short phrase, and watch Google try to create a spreadsheet of results. For instance, try entering California dog parks or earthquake and volcano types.

Alert me!

Google sends me an e-mail every time it sees a new occurrence of “steve bass,” “earthquakes,” and keywords about my various hobbies and interests. If you haven’t tried Google Alerts, you’re missing out on a terrific service.

Thematic Google

I have a Google home page and the color scheme used to be white bread. I just switched to a very cool Jackie Chan theme and amazingly, my productivity soared (wife, please take note). Choose from truckloads of themes (click on Newest and Hottest for more). [Thanks, DolphinWoman.]


Number, Please?

It used to be easy to remember area codes. (“212” is New York, “312” Chicago, and “213” Los Angeles.) That’s history because area codes are added frequently, like every 20 minutes or so. Next time you’re stuck trying to figure out an area code’s location, give it to Google. Just type the three-digit code and you’ll get a top of the search answer.

There’s more: You can track FedEx, UPS, and U.S. postal service shipments just by sticking the tracking number into Google’s search field; do the same with ZIP and area codes, vehicle IDs, patent numbers, airplane registration numbers, and even UPC codes found on products.

Calculate this

You can use Google Calculator to crunch numbers and figure out conversions. Try entering 12*12 and see what happens; you can also run more complex equations, like G*(6e24 kg)/(4000 miles)^2. Google Calculator handles conversions of all types, such as ounces into tablespoons, dollars into euros, or GB to MB.

[This post is excerpted from Steve’s TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up–it’s delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it’s free.]

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Save Ink (and Money) When You Print

Posted by Steve Bass on August 14, 2009 at 2:47 pm

Steve Bass's TechBiteAre you replacing printer cartridges faster than Citibank is raising credit card interest rates? Aggravating, and no surprise–inkjets have a voracious appetite.

Have a glass of warm milk and relax — I have a few solutions that can make you happy.
The biggest waste of inkjet cartridges is printing in color when good old black and white will do.

I say to you: Turn off the color. Yep, it’s that simple. Unless color is crucial for your document, you’re wasting ink if you output in color. Try this experiment: Print a color page, then print it again in gray scale. To do this, go to Start, Settings, Printers and right-click on the printer’s icon. Go to Properties and find the tab that lets you change from color to gray scale. Save the settings, then print the page again.

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Five Net Tricks to Save You Money

Posted by Steve Bass on August 5, 2009 at 9:02 am

Steve Bass's TechBite“You’re a bargain hunter,” one of my more polite friends says. My wife’s more to the point: She calls me a cheapskate. I like being frugal, but what do I know? Call me whatever you want (you will anyway), I don’t like paying retail and I’m always looking for a deal, especially when shopping online.

The Internet gives me the chance to comparison shop, see how shipping figures into the price, look over specifications, and feel confident I’ve found the best buy. Here are some of the sites I use.

* You can pick up a decent amount of background info on an assortment of activities and projects at WhatItCosts. Some of it’s fluffy — what it costs to become a stuntman or to buy a Diane Von Furstenberg dress. Other topics are worth a look: buying a hearing aid or contact lenses, hiring a landscape architect, or learning how to fly fish. [Thanks, Mike.]

* The showstopper when I’m shopping online is the cost of shipping. I’ll find something that looks like a bargain, say, a $3 chew bone for Popcorn, TechBite’s HR specialist. When I get to the checkout page, I discover shipping’s $11. I want to smack the site’s owner on the back of the head. That’s why I’ve added FreeShipping to my shopping arsenal. Sure, not everything’s a good match and I often get the same info if I go directly to the site. Yet I got lucky recently when I spotted dog.com’s $5 flat-rate shipping and ended up placing a $25 order. (And yes, prices were actually lower than competitors on the Water Hole water dish I was looking for.)

* I discovered AntiRebate a couple of months ago and now I get its daily RSS feed. AntiRebate finds bargains — coupons, discounts, and deals — that don’t require a rebate. For instance, I spotted a 2GB microSD card for $5, including shipping, and last year I picked up a $10 Office Max gift card for filling out a short, one-minute survey for DHL. The site has mostly high-tech offers, yet I’ve seen occasional glassware, cookware, and furniture deals.

* I hate it when I get to the end of the checkout process and I see an annoying “Enter your Coupon Code” field. So I kill 40 minutes Googling around, searching for a code, one that sometimes doesn’t exist. (Yeah, sure, like you don’t do it? Right.) Try CurrentCodes, a handy spot for looking up, well, the current codes for tons of online stores. Like these other sites, sometimes it’s a terrific resource, other times, as Jon Stewart says, not so much.

* If you clip supermarket coupons, take a look at Shortcuts, MyCoupons, CouponCabin, and CouponMom.

[This post is excerpted from Steve’s TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up–it’s delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it’s free.]

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Ten More Super-Duper Firefox Add-Ons

Posted by Steve Bass on July 30, 2009 at 4:58 pm

Steve Bass's TechBiteI love it when you write and pass along handy ideas. After I wrote about my favorite Firefox enhancers,  I received hundreds of messages (okay, 50, but who’s counting) sharing other Firefox add-ons, extensions, and tips–and I’m successfully using many of them. Here are some of the most useful of the bunch.

But first some advice.

The day after I wrote about my Firefox favorites, the world almost ended for Firefox fanatics: A major security hole was discovered in Firefox. Great timing, no? Not to fret, if you upgrade to Firefox 3.51, the world will be okay again.

You’ll be happy to know if you’re still using Firefox 3.06 or so, all of the add-ons I mention will work. But if you’re a worrier, and already upgraded to 3.51, you’ll find a few won’t install. My guess is that individual add-on developers are working overtime to satisfy your overwhelming need for updates. If you continue feeling stressed, just up the meds for a week.

Most important is that you experiment with these add-ons and extensions one at a time. I don’t want to hear any whining (you will anyway, I know it) if you enable them all at once, cause new sunspots, and feel faint.

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