Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

<gmail.com>: Google’s attempt at free e-mail. Instead of the 2-6 MB of free space that Yahoo and Hotmail used to provide, Gmail gives you 2,600 MB (and growing) of space (this has already caused Hotmail and Yahoo to raise their amounts to 250 MB and more; AOL.com now gives you 2,000 MB free). I have been using it for 1.5 years and it’s terrific and fast. One caveat: Google runs small, text-ads on the side of the screen, based on content of your e-mail messages. That’s scary to a lot of people, though Google promises no human will ever see your messages, just those Google servers (remember, however, that all e-mail can potentially be scanned by various systems). I don’t use it as my primary e-mail. I use it in two ways, with two accounts. One is an account to which I send messages, photos, PDFs, I want to save for future access, including big messages that I don’t want taking up space in my regular inbox - kind of a “greatest hits” collection. The other is an account that get a copy of every e-mail message I get, so that it’s all backed up and available in one place.

<desktop.google.com>: For Windows only - a way to search your computer’s contents faster than any built-in finder function. Works very well when it comes to searching Word documents, AOL IM messages, web searches, etc. You can pause it if you don’t want what you’re doing to be indexed by Google. The information isn’t shared with Google itself (you know this because it works even if you are offline). Be sure to read the FAQ. Mac folks get the same functionality in the Spotlight search built into Tiger, the latest version of OSX.

Google offers several services that give you a head start in focusing your search. Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) indexes literally millions of messages from decades of discussion on Usenet. Google even helps you with your shopping via two tools: Froogle (http://froogle.google.com), which indexes products from online stores, and Google Catalogs (http://catalogs.google.com), which features products from more 6,000 paper catalogs in a searchable index. And this only scratches the surface. You can get a complete list of Google’s tools and services at www.google.com/options/index.html.

You’re probably used to using Google in your browser. But have you ever thought of using Google outside your browser?

Google Alert (www.googlealert.com) monitors your search terms and e-mails you information about new additions to Google’s Web index. (Google Alert is not affiliated with Google; it uses Google’s Web services API to perform its searches.) If you’re more interested in news stories than general Web content, check out the beta version of Google News Alerts (www.google.com/newsalerts). This service (which is affiliated with Google) will monitor up to 50 news queries per e-mail address and send you information about news stories that match your query. (Hint: Use the intitle: and source: syntax elements with Google News to limit the number of alerts you get.)

Google on the telephone? Yup. This service is brought to you by the folks at Google Labs (http://labs.google.com), a place for experimental Google ideas and features (which may come and go, so what’s there at this writing might not be there when you decide to check it out). With Google Voice Search (http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html), you dial the Voice Search phone number, speak your keywords, and then click on the indicated link. Every time you say a new search term, the results page will refresh with your new query (you must have JavaScript enabled for this to work). Remember, this service is still in an experimental phase, so don’t expect 100 percent success.

In 2002, Google released the Google API (application programming interface), a way for programmers to access Google’s search engine results without violating the Google Terms of Service. A lot of people have created useful (and occasionally not-so-useful but interesting) applications not available from Google itself, such as Google Alert. For many applications, you’ll need an API key, which is available free from www.google.com/apis.

Thanks to its many different search properties, Google goes far beyond a regular search engine. Give the tricks in this article a try. You’ll be amazed at how many different ways Google can improve your Internet searching.

It’s been a month or so since Google’s Desktop Search Application was released. My initial reaction when the software was launched was nervousness. We live in a time of daily security breaches and while I trust Google for the most part I am reluctant to install software that indexes too much as far as I’m concerned. Google’s application indexes data files, including word processing files, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mail messages, cached Web pages and chat sessions. What if it searches your cache and finds bank summaries or personal messages? What if it’s a shared machine and it accidentally shows you someone else’s personal information? I understand that Google found a capability that was missing in Microsoft’s OS and decided to fix it, and for that I applaud their efforts. Unfortunately at this time I’m not willing to take the security risks of installing their application.

If Google can work on this application and fix some of the security breaches I would be happy to install this application. Does it really need to index a computers cache, I personally don’t think so. I think this feature should be removed, and the same holds true for searching other machine user accounts.

If anyone has any additional information please let us in on it!