Websites that changed your World
Posted by: John Channing on 20 May 2006
When I look back over the last 10 years it's amazing how much my life has changed through
doing things on the web. From simple things like booking a train ticket or viewing my electricity bill to more exciting things like meeting new friends (through this forum) I continue to be amazed by the number of new things I can do. So what am I missing? What do you do on the web that has changed your life? I'll start with a few that I use regularly:
Stumble Upon A new way of finding information on the web based on recommedations by other people with similar interests.
Froogle The best way to find the best price on pretty much anything.
Trip Advisor Invaluable feedback on the quality of hotels anywhere in the World
Posted on: 27 May 2006 by Alexander
I use wikipedia as an entrypoint for a lot of searches. Quite valuable.
Posted on: 28 May 2006 by Derek Wright
EW - thank you for the pointer to Scribus - I have been lusting after a DTP product but as I have no real need for one I was reluctant to spend any money on one. Now all I need to do is to get the documentation onto my machine so that I can avoid the ADSL Max outages that seem to be part of this new high speed often off world.
Posted on: 28 May 2006 by Roy T
quote:
oh and Thunderbird too I suppose
I have installed the Enigmail extention that makes use of OpenPGP, a painless task. The OpenPGP side of things is a joy to use and offers real advantages over the vanilla flavoured TB.
Posted on: 28 May 2006 by garyi
I much prefer word to Abiword or what ever it is called.
Sometimes I thinks its just fashionable to knock Office.
Posted on: 28 May 2006 by Derek Wright
To provide 24 hour monitoring of the availability of your broadband connection go to
http://www.l8nc.com/they provide a ping every second to your ip address and provide graphs and downloaded csv lists of the ping values, total package loss indicates that your router cannot be seen from the network. What do you use it for, as evidence to your ISP that your are on a poor line and then can be used to get support from BT to get your line improved.
Posted on: 28 May 2006 by Earwicker
quote:
Originally posted by Derek Wright:
EW - thank you for the pointer to Scribus - I have been lusting after a DTP product but as I have no real need for one I was reluctant to spend any money on one.
Scribus is still something of a work in progress - albeit a very high quality one. The DTP features of OpenOffice are hard to beat, check it out if you haven't already.
EW
Posted on: 28 May 2006 by Earwicker
quote:
Originally posted by garyi:
I much prefer word to Abiword or what ever it is called.
Abiword is just a simple light-weight word processor. The OpenOffice Writer is comparable and in most respects superior to MS Word. Word has a slightly prettier UI, but Writer works properly.
EW
Posted on: 29 May 2006 by Earwicker
Posted on: 29 May 2006 by garyi
Earwicker I assume you are a 'proper' writer where as I use Word for most most probably do letter, CVs, reports that type of thing.
For 'that type of thing' I fail to see how anything else could do it more properly.
Posted on: 29 May 2006 by Earwicker
quote:
Originally posted by garyi:
Earwicker I assume you are a 'proper' writer where as I use Word for most most probably do letter, CVs, reports that type of thing.
For 'that type of thing' I fail to see how anything else could do it more properly.
Any old piece of tat (modern) word processor is adequate for simple letters and small docs, but you'll find the templates (styles based) features on Writer make even these tasks a lot easier. (If you use inline formatting rather than styles, much of the Writer magic may be lost on you, however.) Huge documents benefit from Writer's compact file format (which are essentially zipped XML docs), and reports and technical documents benefit from Writer's vastly superior contents and indexing generators.
But Word has prettier buttons and things...
EW
Posted on: 30 May 2006 by Alexander
My kids haven't learnt to write yet, but they google and they surf the web. They place the dvd with say, Chicken Little next to the keyboard and type 'het spelletje van(the game of) chicken little' and it works.
