Great Googlee Ooglee!

Hi All!

I thought I'd share a few tech tips with you. With so much tricky and screwed-up in the computer world there are some way cool things that are simple and work.

Who'd have thought just a few years ago that there was room in the market for another free search engine? Along came Google and blew everything else away, making gajillionaires out of the developers.

Now, Google is releasing all sorts of better mousetraps. This week I discovered two mind-blowing new applications.

It's an old trick that you can type a ten digit phone number into the normal Google search box and have it do a reverse directory coming up with name and address of the person with that number. But now, you can not only link to a very nice street map pinpointing the address but you can switch from that to a satellite picture of the same map! You can easily zoom in and out and move the mouse around to go anywhere. If you wanted to follow I-35 to Duluth you could do it. Try it and see!

Here is the link to the main mapping site if you want to key in a specific starting location.

Perhaps even niftier is a version of Google that indexes your own computer! It's a small download that puts a search field on your task bar. If you want to find something that has been lost to some obscure sub-sub directory, it will do it instantly. I found some emails and documents that I thought were long gone.

You can painlessly break free of Microsoft IE and Outlook Express by downloading the free Firefox and Thunderbird products from Mozilla.

They can coexist with the MS products but once you are used to them, you ain't nevah goin' back!

If you can't afford MS Office, there is something that, IMHO is better, perfectly compatible and best of all, free. It's called Open Office and it is perfectly compatible and coexistent with Word, Excel, etc.

Finally, there is a digital photo organizer/editor that is lightyears better than anything else I've used. It automatically finds and indexes all your images and is SO easy to use. Try Picasa -- don't cost nothin'.

I know this was off the beaten track, but these applications can really make your life easier, and I want to help because I care.

Almost forgot Wikipedia. An awesome on-line encyclopedia that evolves day by day as contributors from all over the world edit the entries.

Let me know if you try any of these and what you think, and feel free to suggest your own "finds."

Cheers!