This week I’m going to introduce you to two websites that I think you may find of interest starting with the site www.kelkoo.co.uk which I’ve been using quite a lot recently. For those of you unfamiliar with this site, I have been using it to [...]]]>

This week I’m going to introduce you to two websites that I think you may find of interest starting with the site www.kelkoo.co.uk which I’ve been using quite a lot recently. For those of you unfamiliar with this site, I have been using it to compare prices for specific products across a number of different e-commerce sites as to be sure that I’m getting the best value for money whenever I make a purchase. Kelkoo (a play on the French saying ‘quel coup’ which translates to ‘what a bargain’) was founded in 2000 and is now one of Europes largest e-commerce websites and has operations in 10 European countries.

Essentially the idea of Kelkoo is not to sell anything directly to customers but rather to get customers in touch with retailers who can help them get what they need at the best price. It is a search engine that just looks up the price of a given item from the shops located within its database and returns the best of the bunch to the potential customer; think of it as Google but with instead of returning website matches it returns product matches with prices. Let’s say you are looking to buy a new camera and after looking around in town you find a model to suit but you obviously you want to make sure that you’re not getting ripped off so simply make a note of the model, go home, type it into Kelkoo and it will pick up the best prices from all the retailers listed in their database. Obviously the same process can be used when online shopping; you’ve found a product that you want but you need to ensure that you can’t get it for less so you check the prices across a number of difference retailers using Kelkoo.

The downside to the site is that there is still the chance that you will find cheaper prices from stores that aren’t listed in Kelkoo because retailers do have to pay to be included the directory so the majority of them choose not to be listed. This aside it is still a good starting point for any products you are thinking about purchasing and the discount you could get by checking out every e-commerce site online would probably be negligible and not worth the effort.

Finally, Kelkoo offer a free toolbar that you can download and install on your computer to quickly search for items that you want to compare prices on. To be honest, it’s pretty useless as it only saves you having to type in their website address manually and no where near as useful as the fantastic Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) which everyone should have installed on their machines by now.

Next time you see an item that takes your fancy, just head to www.kelkoo.co.uk to see if you can find it cheaper; you may not find it at any less but for the sake of 20 seconds of your time surely it’s worth a look?

I’ll conclude this week by briefly mentioning the second website that I promised you which is www.computerarticles.co.uk. Over the past few weeks I have taken the liberty of putting online every article I have written for the Herald Express over the last three years on to this site. I must be honest, it isn’t Shakespeare but if you have missed a few articles or remember me writing about a specific item and you’ve since binned the copy then take a few minutes to visit!

As many of my readers will know, Google is by far my favourite search engine and a free tool that has been available for all users of Google for some time now certainly deserves a mention in Click. The Google toolbar which is available from http://toolbar.google.com/ is a small utility [...]]]>

As many of my readers will know, Google is by far my favourite search engine and a free tool that has been available for all users of Google for some time now certainly deserves a mention in Click. The Google toolbar which is available from http://toolbar.google.com/ is a small utility which integrates and becomes an add in for Internet Explorer which adds a number of features to your browsing experience. Some of which I’ve highlighted below:

- Pop up blocker: By far my favourite feature; quite simply the Google toolbar sits in the background and prevents websites from popping windows up whilst you’re browsing the Internet. These windows are more than likely to contain adverts and they’re also more than likely to annoy you so this is definitely something worth activating. Of course, if you do want a website to be allowed to pop up a window then you can temporarily disable this blocker by holding down the <CTRL> button.

- Web searcher: Wherever you are on the Internet, whatever page you are on, you can just type a search term into the toolbar, select to search the whole Internet or just the site you’re on and hit go to be taken to a page that displays the results of your search. Any terms you’ve searched for that exists on the page returned by Google can also be easily highlighted so you can determine its relevance.

- Automatic form filling: You can program the toolbar with your name, address, phone number etc and then whenever there is a form on the Internet to fill in you simply click a button and it does it all for you. If you do a lot of shopping online then this becomes extremely helpful.

- Google Page Rank tool: As explained in the last couple of articles, a websites ‘importance’ in Googles eyes can be determined by looking at its page rank. The page rank for every page you visit is clearly displayed in the Google toolbar; this is especially important if you’re looking into optimising your websites search engine ranking and wish to check out your own page or your competitors.

Of course, the features of the Google toolbar are all fully configurable and there are several other features and shortcuts and are accessible. Essentially, it’s a free of charge, small and helpful utility which is certainly worth downloading; if you don’t find it useful then it can always be installed then all you’ve wasted is 30 seconds downloading it!

We’ve all been in the situation; you’re sat down the pub or with at home with the family and the subject of conversation moves towards ‘how this work…..’ or ‘what does happens when…..’ and more often or not it is discovered that no one knows [...]]]>

We’ve all been in the situation; you’re sat down the pub or with at home with the family and the subject of conversation moves towards ‘how this work…..’ or ‘what does happens when…..’ and more often or not it is discovered that no one knows the answer so it is changed just as quickly as it began. Things aren’t that simple however so for the rest of the day you’re left with the nagging feeling that you want to know exactly how a compact disk works, how rainbows are formed or how exactly an Amish guy lives.

Luckily, as we all know the Internet is a vast archive of useful information although it is often hard for the beginner to find exactly what it is they are looking for through a search engine and so finding a good quality unbiased answer to your question can be tedious. Luckily a site that makes things a lot easier for beginners and experienced users alike is one of my favourites, www.howstuffworks.com and by tapping this page into your browser you are instantly taken to a page which is well laid out and very well written, covering a variety of interesting subjects.

The site is primarily split into nine main topics; Computer Stuff, Auto Stuff, Electronics Stuff, Science Stuff, Home Stuff, Entertainment Stuff, Money Stuff, Travel Stuff and People Stuff with each one containing a large amount of interesting information written by a variety of professional editors. Originally founded by Marshall Brain in 1998, the electrical engineer and former teacher started posting his well-organized essays online and to this date the fact that the site is still accurate and well organised is the true reason for its success. Now with half a dozen editors which have all been selected for their knowledge, English and research skills this webpage now also has a warehouse where they dispatch books and CD’s via their Internet sales site which helps keep the content of www.howstuffworks.com free of charge.

The layout of the site is such that you can go online just for a browse as opposed to it being a resource simply to answer specific questions you may have. As soon as the site opened up particular subjects, usually relating to issues of the day instantly intrigue; subjects such as ‘Outbreak – How SARS works’, ‘Radiation Attack – How Dirty Bombs Work’ so although this obviously makes quite depressing reading in the current world climate, in other times it may become slightly more light-hearted. Some of the articles are quite random such as ‘How does grass work’ but again this adds to the comprehensive nature of the site. The adverts that help pay for the sites maintenance are non intrusive and don’t detract from the overall quality of the site which is in most instances quite astounding.

Again, like most good Internet sites www.howstuffworks.com is free of charge so it’s certainly worth a look whether your interest is purely for educational purposes or also for pleasure

Whilst searching for a broad range of search engines on which to promote my website I recently stumbled across a site which I hadn’t seen or heard of in the past which is actually shockingly good. For the last couple of years, Google has been my search engine of choice [...]]]>

Whilst searching for a broad range of search engines on which to promote my website I recently stumbled across a site which I hadn’t seen or heard of in the past which is actually shockingly good. For the last couple of years, Google has been my search engine of choice and is still in the majority of cases the first site that I’ll go to when searching for information on the Internet although the original layout of the site that I’m going to cover today definitely earns it a position as one of my favourites.

Kartoo (www.kartoo.com) is a meta engine which means that it searches more than one database at a time when you look for something on the Internet so that if, for example you typed in ‘houses for sale’ then it may question both AltaVista and Yahoo to bring you the most comprehensive results. In addition it can also intelligently choose which databases to question based on your search phrase so if you were to type in a question such as ‘Where can I view houses for sale?’ then Kartoo would ask a search engine that specialises in recognising natural language such as www.northernlight.com.

The best aspect of this site has to be the interface that it uses as for as long as search engines have been around, their layout has changed very little indeed – You simply type what you want into a box, hit search and then a big list of sites come up for you to choose from. Kartoo on the other hand uses a Macromedia Flash interface which makes things much more graphically intensive which many of you are probably thinking is a stupid idea as surely a graphical search engine will take longer to load and offer no advantages over a tradition engine, right? Whilst it’s true that on the first time using the site it will take a little while to load on a slow connection, repeat visits will be significantly faster and surprisingly the graphics actually help you to navigate your search results quite nicely.

Type in ‘Cheap cartridges in Devon’ into Kartoo and it comes up with a list of possible results all floating on the screen in little balloons and a list of keywords associated with the sites that have been returned focused towards the centre of the page. If you now put your mouse cursor over one of the balloons representing the site you want to go to then the search engine will join together the balloon and all the keywords from the centre of the screen that are associated with that site.

Vice Versa, on that particular search that we just did one of the keywords placed in the centre of the screen was the word ‘canon’ so if you float your mouse over this word then the site will join this word with the balloons of websites using this particular keyword. All of the balloons can be clicked on to open up that particular site or if you click on the top of the balloon then you can search from within that site, search for related sites and so on.

A list of other related searches that you may wish to try is listed down the left hand side of the screen as well as a list of top sites and sponsored links. There is an expert version which offers you greater control over how the results are displayed on your screen as well as more advanced searching options and the ability to save the searches that you’ve performed.

Basically, I recommend that you head to www.kartoo.com and give it a try as it is fairly difficult for me to explain how a graphical interface looks without the aid of pictures; you may hate it, you may love it but at least give it a try.

One of the first articles I wrote for the Herald Express focused on new Anti-Virus software that was available on the market and the benefits that they could provide to the average user. As an alternative to going out and buying the software I briefly mentioned a website I’d recently [...]]]>

One of the first articles I wrote for the Herald Express focused on new Anti-Virus software that was available on the market and the benefits that they could provide to the average user. As an alternative to going out and buying the software I briefly mentioned a website I’d recently discovered that allows you to scan your PC for free over the Internet. This website was put at the back of my mind for the last year or so until last week when I had a customer whose PC had a virus but as a result the machine wouldn’t allow me to run Norton Anti-Virus. Although there are a number of workarounds such as a Norton Rescue Disk I soon remembered this website and so fired up Internet Explorer to try and re-locate it via a search engine.

Once discovered it took around 10 minutes for the software to be loaded up into Internet Explorer but once there it made pretty easy work of checking the hard disk and quite successfully located and deleted the virus present in memory and the copy on the hard disk.

So, what are the advantages of scanning for viruses online rather than buying a piece of software? First off, and probably the one that will carry the most weight for the average user is the fact that it’s completely free of charge; there aren’t even any pop-up adverts to annoy you. Secondly, the list of viruses that the scanner can detect is constantly being updated so as new viruses are released and discovered, the scanner is able to keep up with this. You don’t have to worry about installing these updates yourself as every time you visit their website the latest version is automatically loaded up. Obviously if you were to buy an off the shelf product then you’d have to buy the latest version every year in order to qualify for the virus updates which could prove to become quite costly especially if you work for an organisation with a number of computers.

The only real disadvantages to the website is obviously that you have to be connected to the Internet to use it, although for those of you with free Internet access this shouldn’t be a problem with the other disadvantage being that the software doesn’t run in ‘real-time’. Essentially this means that unlike programs such as Norton Anti-Virus and Mcafee that stay running constantly in the background looking for viruses whenever you receive an e-mail, open a file or look at active content on an Internet, this website can only scan your computer when you ask it to. This would make it possible for you to download a virus one day and have it sat on your computer working away for a number of weeks until next time you do a thorough check online.

To make use of this free service point your browser towards http://housecall.antivirus.com and simply follow the onscreen instructions. The program will ask you which drives you wish to scan and in most instances you will only require to scan your ‘C’ drive (Hard Disk) although if you suspect that another drive has a virus on it; a floppy disk for example then you can specify that the program scan that instead.

With the current rate that viruses seem to be created at the moment and the number of computers that fall every year as a result I find it astonishing that very few users run regular virus checks. Personally I tend to pick up half a dozen or so a year but luckily since I know the tell tale signs of a virus I am able to prevent them from actually being installed on my system. Even if you have a virus checker, it is possible that it is out of date and so will not be able to detect the latest variants and so I recommend that all readers visit the site and get their computers checked out.

It is only if everybody ran these checks on a regular basic that we would be able to eradicate these viruses, some of which have been hanging around for over a decade from the wild once and for all.

This week I’m going to take a break from answering readers’ questions to discuss the most efficient way of searching for material on the Internet over International, National and Local scales. My decision to write an article on this came when I realised that many new starters to the Internet [...]]]>

This week I’m going to take a break from answering readers’ questions to discuss the most efficient way of searching for material on the Internet over International, National and Local scales. My decision to write an article on this came when I realised that many new starters to the Internet did not realise how easy and efficient it is to use a search engine to look for information they are interested in. These search engines are actual sites on the Internet that have a huge directory containing the majority of websites that are registered on the Internet and exactly what information they contain so that the average Internet user only has to type in what he is after and the search engine will return sites that match his or her criteria.

Okay then, first things first, let us assume that you’ve just logged on to the Internet and you want to find some information about Pop Bands. Simple enough – just go to one of the popular search engines such as AltaVista (www.av.com) and type ‘pop bands’ into the search box. When you click on search, the search engine will use the method I detailed above to return a report listing based on the highest ranked sites in its directory containing the words ‘pop’ and ‘bands’. Please just give it a quick try out now so that you understand what is happening before I go any further.

Now, say that you’re looking for pop band details, but not ones that are American in origin. Again, fairly simple, go back to www.av.com and type in ‘pop bands –american’. Please note the minus sign before the word America and that I’m not using capitals in any of these searches as this could limit the results that I get back.

If you wanted to do a search similar to these two above, but only results for UK based websites, then go to the UK version of AltaVista at www.altavista.co.uk and use exactly the same procedures for searching as I explained above.

Further search options include the following –

“pop bands” : Please note that I’m using speech marks around the search phrase, this will only return websites that have the include the words ‘pop’ and ‘bands’ right next to each other, as opposed to having ‘pop’ at the top of the page and ‘bands’ at the bottom.

“pop bands” -american : Please note the use of speech marks around the search phrase and the minus sign before the word America, this will return only websites that have the words ‘pop’ and ‘bands’ together, but not those that contain american anywhere in the text.

It is also possible to phrase questions to AltaVista in plain English, for example ‘Where can I find details of pop bands?’

There are many other sites that you may prefer to use as opposed to AltaVista – Try out some of the following – www.yahoo.com, www.yahoo.co.uk, www.lycos.com, www.ask.com etc. These are all very similar to AltaVista, but everybody as their own tastes and you may find one of these more appropriate.

These search engines are all very good for National and International content, but if you want details of a restaurant in Paignton or an accountant in Torquay then, rather unsurprisingly, will you need to take a look at some of the local search engine directories; for example www.upmystreet.co.uk. Using this site, you can type in any postcode or town and discover a large amount of general information on that town as well as shops and services in the local area. When searching a particular category, all results that are found matching your criteria are ranked in order of distance from the postcode that you entered. Categories on this site include guest houses, hotels, transport, careers, education, eating and drinking, sports facilities, late night shops etc. Once you have found something that interests you, ‘UpMyStreet’ can give you a map of the area.

The one downside I found to this site is that some of the information is out of date or inaccurate, however this isn’t really worthy of any real complaint as the is still a great deal of extremely useful information here; particularly useful for someone moving into or holidaying in an area that is unfamiliar to them. Incidentally, for further local information, another good site to look at can be found at www.koko.com.

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