March 3rd, 2010
This week we’ve released a new tool that allows Finday users to participate more directly in the development of new features and to improve existing ones.
Finday's new feedback widget.
Starting Monday you’ll see a brand new little red tab on the left side of your browser, called feedback. If you click on it, you’ll be able to rate our website and make any comment you’d like on Finday: Do you find it useful? How do you think we could improve our service? Have we forgotten something? Have you spotted an error on the site? Don’t be shy, we want to hear what you have to say!
This new function has been added to the constant improvements we’re making on Finday so it can deserve a place on your browser’s homepage. And if not, what are you waiting for? Use the feedback tab and tell us what you think of Finday!
Tags: feedback, finday, widget
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February 8th, 2010
To increase the number of useful results you get from your searches, it is best to always keep in mind the 3 golden rules for searches:
1) Restrict, 2) Expand, and 3) Obtain.
Today, we’ll finish this series of 3 entries with the last one:
3) Obtain
Get use to using “boolean” commands (named after George Boole, the 19th-century mathematician who founded the field of symbolic logic) to narrow your search down to reasonable numbers and obtain the best results. The three most commonly used are AND, OR and AND NOT:
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Tags: productivity, search engine, searches, tips, tricks
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February 5th, 2010
For the past few months, the search engine waters have increased their activity and things have reached a boiling point. Microsoft and Yahoo! teamed up to overthrow Google, the reigning King, by renaming the old Live Search, now known as “Bing“. Google included some improvements on its end, by trying out a test version of its own engine called Caffeine, and added some new features to its classic interface. But in the end, as 2009 was leaving us, the fact of the matter is that this year the question remains the same: which of the two is the best?
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Tags: bing, google, search engine
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January 18th, 2010
To increase the number of useful results you get from your searches, it is best to always keep in mind the 3 golden rules for searches:
1) Restrict, 2) Expand, and 3) Obtain.
We continue this series of 3 entries with the second one:
2) Expand
- Do not forget that search engines can differ between languages in terms of locating content. If you want to expand the search to the entire Internet (and therefore get many more results), don’t narrow your search to websites written only in your language.
- Automatic filters are not perfect, and if there are no children using your user account and you don´t mind the occasional explicit or risqué image, you should also deactivate the content filters.
- Searches don’t just come in text form: remember that most browsers also allow you to locate images, videos, news, blogs or forums, so if you can’t find what you want within normal results, stretch the reach of your search to different kinds of sites.
- Some search engines offer the possibility of expanding your results with “related searches“: use it!
More to come
Tags: productivity, search engine, searches, tips, tricks
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December 15th, 2009
In order to obtain a significant increase in obtaining useful results from your searches, it is best to always keep in mind the 3 golden rules of searching the Internet:
1) Restrict. 2) Expand. 3) Obtain.
Let’s see what each rule involves when applied to key word searches and what benefits you’ll get if you apply them to the letter.
1) Restrict
- Avoid terms that are too general and “buzzwords” from the start, and cut the results you get back in half.
- Only use nouns as query keywords. Never use articles (a, the), pronouns (he, it), conjunctions (and, or), or prepositions (to, from).
- Limit your query to no more than 8 keywords.
- Check your word order, spelling, and use lower case letters (certain search engines are “case sensitive” which means they will only take into account words that are spelled correctly).
- Use speech marks where possible if your search contains several words you want it to take into account, e.g. “The Grand Canyon”.
- Use the + sign and fine tune your search, e.g. to look for information that pertains only to homemade chicken soups: homemade+chicken+soup.
More to come
Tags: productivity, search engine, searches, tips, tricks
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December 1st, 2009
Windows 7 contains a handful of improvements, both functional and aesthetic. This last chapter in the Windows’ story provides a new and improved Theme Manager that enhances the way Windows handles desktop themes. Among these enhancements is that it now gives you the opportunity to change your desktop wallpaper at regular intervals.
In order to add some new and cool images to your wallpaper collection, we’ve prepared three cute desktop wallpapers with a theme that we love: Finday! You can choose between two different screen resolutions, 1,600 x 1,200 and 1,920 x 1,200, so you can adapt them to your screen’s proportions.
 Finday & Google
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 Pacman
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 Lego
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To save these images on your computer, choose the design you like best, open the link corresponding to the screen resolution you need, right click on the image and choose Save image as…
Tags: finday, google, lego, pacman, wallpapers
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November 19th, 2009
Google Wave is a combination of chat, e-mail, and bulletin board, all in real time.
Google Wave: you’ve probably already heard about the new Google communications system; what you may not be too clear on is whether or not it implies something you should worry about in the short term. Don’t worry, Google Wave is still under development and only a handful of invitations have been distributed among the thousands and thousands of interested people. However, at Finday we already had the chance to try it out and we’re convinced that it will radically change the way we share information online.
As a collaborative online system, Wave allows us to interact with our contacts using rich format text, photos, videos or maps. A “wave” is simply a conversation in real time – like you would in a chat or, in an asynchronous way, like e-mail- with several people; a cross between e-mail, instant messaging and bulletin board which are managed, like Gmail, from a web interface. Participants in a wave can edit its contents and add more participants at any time. They can also “rewind” the wave to see who said what, and when. Now, thanks to the possibility of creating public waves, you can see and participate directly on the Finday wave. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: colaborative, google wave
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November 16th, 2009
reCAPTCHA is Google´s free CAPTCHA service.
Let’s be clear from the get-go: CAPTCHAs are annoying, a waste of time and in most cases, a strong blow to the mental health of anyone who has the audacity to try to decipher them. They come in all sizes and colors: distorted letters, displaced or crossed out numbers, even pictures of animals dressed up as words. Unfortunately, despite them being a real nuisance, they are also a necessary evil in the current state of the Internet.
As you may know, a CAPTCHA is a test where the user is asked to type in a set of characters shown as a distorted image. This challenge-response test is used to determine whether the user is human or not, since it is assumed that a computer program could not correctly interpret the sequence. In fact, CAPTCHA is an acronym that stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Through this verification system, websites can prevent feared “spambots” from registering as users, participating in surveys or sending spam. Unfortunately, sometimes even Google needs a hand from the dreaded CAPTCHAs to verify whether or not we are “real”. The good news is: with Finday, you’ll never have to see a single CAPTCHA while searching for information. Read the rest of this entry »
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