MediaGirl Toolbox

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Fast Internet Surfing

I have a high speed cable connection through Comcast so I probably don't need the Google Web Accelerator. But I couldn't resist making my connection faster so I installed it today on my computer.

Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google's global computer network to make web pages load faster. Their website says that dial-up users may not see much improvement because the Google Web Accelerator is currently optimized to speed up web page loading for broadband connections.

Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make web pages load faster, including:
- Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
- Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
- Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
- Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
- Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
- Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

Filed Under: Tools

Thursday, December 1, 2005

Frappr!

A link for the website Frappr! was posted to an email list that I'm on the other night. The call from the poster was for everyone on the list to map themselves using Frappr!

Frappr was created by Brian, Kun and James at Rising Concepts, who wanted to see where all their high school and college friends went after they graduated.

Frappr (Friend Mapper) lets you see the zip code where your friends live or work, letting you find out who works in the office building next door and who lives in the apartment complex across the street.

It's a great addition to any group list or site!

Filed Under: Tools

Saturday, November 26, 2005

How To Get A Human On The Phone

There is nothing more frustrating then calling an 800 number and getting lost in their automated menu system. How many times have we all just wanted to press 0 to speak to a person?

Enter the Get Human website... Get Human lists instructions that will help you get directly to a human voice for 108 companies.

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Friday, November 25, 2005

Flip A Coin

Well if you need to settle anything with a flip of a coin, this seems to be the place to do it... Flipacoin.net has 78 coins from 27 countries to choose from. And you can flip the coin using your browser.

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Friday, November 25, 2005

The Easy Way to Bypass Web Registration

This is a great website... BugMeNot.com. It's a database of userID and password combinations for websites that require that you login. The website claims 96,990 login combinations. That isn't to say that they all work, but a lot do. Here are the details from their tutorial:

BugMeNot Background
You're browsing the web and you click a link to an article on a site (let's say nytimes.com) but instead of getting the article you get a screen asking you to login or register. Infuriated at the idea of pointlessly registering for yet another site you turn to your good buddy bugmenot.com

Instructions

STEP 1: Make a note of the website address your are trying to access. For example:
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1024_3-5567274.html or even just: www.nytimes.com

STEP 2: Visit http://bugmenot.com

STEP 3: Enter the address from step 1 into the box and press the "Show Logins" button

STEP 4: You should now be presented with a username and password. Make a note of them.

STEP 5: Go back to the site you were originally trying to access in step 1 and proceed to login with the username and password you noted in the previous step.

With any luck you should be able to access your article now!

Important Notes
It's important to note that all of the username/password accounts listed on bugmenot are added by users such as yourself. If you can't find a working login for a site then you are encouraged to register with that site (using fake details of course) and then add the username/password to bugmenot for other users to use. Never enter your real login details into bugmenot- everyone else will be able to see them!

Filed Under: Tools