Quickbrowse patches your favorite pages together into one (or more big pages). If you have a set of sites that you visit frequently, why not use Quickbrowse to stitch them together into a single page. It speeds up surfing. You can also set up several different virtual pages if you wish. This concept is a step beyond the Yahoo (and others) idea for personalized home pages. In my limited testing, Quickbrowse did have some trouble with sites that required a login and/or a password.
Here is another one of those "why didn't I think of that" ideas: online bookmarks. Many web surfers would be lost without their bookmark lists of favorite places. Their utility is often lost if you switch computers frequently, use a laptop and a desktop or use more than one browser. The answer to all these problems is online bookmarks. As you might expect, this idea has occurred to more than one person. You might check out the following sites: Blink.com, Clickmarks.com, HotLinks.com, and BookmarkCity.com.
I wrote last month about shopping bots. Here is some additional information on comparison shopping:
- ClickTheButton.com installs software on your computer that puts a "button" in your system tray. When buying online you are supposed to "click on the button" when you get ready to purchase. ClicktheButton will pop up a list of comparison prices so you can be sure you are getting a good deal. They also allow you to select a basket of items and comparison check for the best total price û including shipping according to them. ZDNet thinks highly of this service. I think the concept is great but the execution was lacking in my very limited trials. Try it yourself and see what you think.
- RUSure.com serves both as a price comparison tool and as a shopping portal, containing thousands of links to related sites, including product reviews, shop reviews, popular shops, auctions, classifieds, users' opinions, catalogs, shopping guides, freebies and much more. In addition, they offer a downloadable application that sounds very much like the one offered by ClickTheButton.
- EvenBetter.com is similar to both of the above. For me, its current downside is that it concentrates on books, CDs movies and DVDs but not electronic and computer items. However, it may be just right for your needs.
As I do more and more surfing I find myself getting on more and more online mailing lists. I now get almost daily e-mails from perhaps a dozen different web sites. The good news is that these sites make it very simple to get off their lists should I wish to do so. If you don't get enough e-mail, you might look into TopicA.com. This site provides access to some 40,000 mailing lists covering almost every topic imaginable.
Wayne Fulton has put together ScanTips.com, one of the best sites for information about scanners and scanning that I have found on the web. The material here is appropriate for beginners but knowledgeable folks will learn much as well. For those interested, Wayne has put this all in a real book which is available at the site for $21.95.
If you are looking for sources of news from far-away places, this list of media links may be the place to start. There are thousands of links to newspaper, radio, T.V, magazine and other sites around the world.
WN.com stands for World News and they have that. More than just news-news, you can zero in on topics like www.earthquakenews.com, www.solarpower.com, or www.gm1.com (which covers the currently-hot topic of genetically-modified foods).
Alan G. Kalman makes this tax portal site available as a public service. Its purpose is to provide a portal for users to access tax assistance, education and resources that are available on the World Wide Web for individual and small business taxpayers. One of the nicest features of this site is the fact that Alan keeps his links up-to-date. He even posts the following statement on his home page: All links are verified at least once a month. Last test: 2/17/00.
Come to Newsletters.com to browse a slew on investment and legal newsletters, from the Buyback Letter to Investech. You can search by title or author, plus areas like finance have 16 subtopics useful in narrowing your searching. Keep in mind there is a lot of marketing going on at this site. Also available are bios and links to the letters. To buy you simply add to your cart and give them your credit card number.
This article has been brought to you by the Association of Computer User Groups (APCUG), of which this group is a member.
Bio info- Mike Alcorn has been a user group member for over 15 years. He has been Newsletter Editor of the Connecticut PC Users Group (CTPC) for just over a year.
EDITORS!
Please request that editors advise me of publication of the article at MikeAlcorn@AOL.com. If electronically published, I would like to be advised of the appropriate URL. Editors wishing to send a paper copy can do so to our user group's P.O. box - P.O. Box 291, New Canaan, CT 06840.
