Misc. Update of the Week: Jason Brewer's Blog

In one of last month's timeforcake articles, I noted that Jason Brewer of SnowHome properties was offering free “Featured Business” blog posts to companies in Summit County. His contact information was provided but his blog's URL was not; my apologies. You can visit Jason's blog at http://news.snowhome.com — and if you're interested in having your Summit County business featured on the site, just drop Jason an email at Jason@snowhome.com.

Thanks to Summit County's Bill French for the heads up on the missing blog address.

Web Tip of the Week: Use Google Images for Visual Search Results

Your friend is sitting across the table from you, chatting away about the amazing new dish she made using kohlrabi last week. You smile and nod your head knowingly while you think, “Now wait a second, I know I've heard of kohlrabi before, but what in the world does it look like??”

Upon returning home you sit down at your computer, fire up Google, type “kohlrabi” into the search box, and hit the “Google Search” button. You click the first result and are taken to a webpage that has a description and one photo of the root vegetable. 

You hit your back button. You click search result #2 and see another photo of the vegetable, then click the back button again to return to your search results once more. You're starting to remember what the veggie looks like, but can't remember if it comes in different colors or what it looks like when baked or fried. So you keep laboriously clicking through the results on the page, hoping one of the sites listed will have a variety of photos for you to look at.

Okay, stop. There's a much better way to look for a variety of kohlrabi photos.

Let's start over. Go back to www.Google.com. Now, in the upper left-hand corner, click the “Images” link. Done? Good work. Now back to business as usual — go ahead and type “kohlrabi” into the search box, then hit the “Search Images” button that's appeared.

Boom. There you have it. Thousands upon thousands of photos of kohlrabi, lined up nice and neat for your viewing pleasure.

And so: whenever you want to look at images and photos of something in particular, using Google Images instead of Google's standard search is the way to go. Have fun!

Grab Bag: Your Five Links of the Week

1. http://lifehacker.com/5205629 — And here we have Lifehacker's “Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition” post. Enjoy.

2. http://tinyurl.com/5q86qh — Mac users: Work faster and more efficiently with these helpful Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts.

3. http://tinyurl.com/yzemy82 — The complete guide to avoiding online scams for the not-so-tech-savvy people out there. If you regularly experience difficulty discerning what's real and what's fake out there on the web, I recommend setting aside a few minutes of your time and reading through this excellent blog post.

4. http://tinyurl.com/ybtmy4e — Check the ergonomic fitness of your workstation with this useful checklist.

5. http://tinyurl.com/yg9wwnv — Whoa. Neural networks + artificial intelligence = pressure sensitive keyboard password authentication technology. Now let's say I had this fancy keyboard technology installed in my office keyboard. And let's say you somehow overheard me telling a friend what my computer's password is. If you typed that password out using my keyboard, this fancy new technology would be able to tell, based on HOW you typed that password, that it wasn't me trying to login. And you'd be shut out. COOL.

eRin pheiL is the primary creative force behind timeforcake (www.timeforcake.com), a web design and development studio in Frisco. She can be reached via email at erin@timeforcake.com.