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For those of who are users of For Kids: Using Safe Search on Google, I've updated the kids directory section of the page with the most recent site counts from Google. We've increased the kids sites listing to 56,842 sites, an increase of 16,528 kids sites.
Through the years I've focused on providing tips that help people use computers and the internet. My next step is to take a time out and spend some time getting to know more about the 45,000 or so that use SquirrelNet each month. This step is necessary to make better suggestions to my SquirrelNet readership.
While I've been trading private emails with a number of people, my first public finding is that SquirrelNet visitors tend to be age 35+ as estimated by QuantCast:
Given that Google Safe Search for Kids is the most popular page on SquirrelNet.com, I can conclude that many parents and/or teachers visit SquirrelNet with their children or other family members. SquirrelNet also appears to get its fair share of "old school" computer users (the "AOL generation" and even the "pre-AOL generation".
I'd like to hear your opinions about challenges you face in using computers and the internet. You can contact me here.
One of the other sites I run is a video directory called Videos of the World. It's pretty much a directory of videos covering nearly every country in the world.
But now I've extended the site to be both video and country-specific search.
I've just added the ability to do a country-specific Google search for about 150 of those countries. For example, on the Canada page, you can now do a Google Canada search on the Canadian domain www.google.ca. On the results page, if you want to drill down even further to Canada-specific, choose "pages from Canada".
So now you can do country-specific search for 150 countries. Enjoy!
The remaining 70 or so countries do not have their own Google domain. For example, there is no specific Google domain for Yemen.
Screenshots are below.
View pics of this baby panda growing from infant to waddler.
Here's a very sharp (and free) online graphing tool from e-Tutor. I've never seen anything quite like this online. Graph behavior is a lot like Google Maps - you can zoom in/out and pull the graph in different directions. Fun stuff!
Do you hate it when you click on a PDF file that forces
Adobe Reader to load? I do. In fact, I'd say that I waste 2-4 minutes of time each time a PDF file loads due to Adobe (throwing in some penalty time since Adobe Reader sometimes crashes my computer. DownloadSquad calls Adobe Reader the most annoying program on the PC and calls it "the worst of the worst". Adobe Reader is a pain because it is too big, takes too long to load, requires frequent updates, slows computers down (a lot!) and sometimes causes computers to crash. In short, Adobe Reader is bad.
There's a solution: Foxit Reader. Download via this link since it's free (the Foxit website wants to charge you $39). Unlike Adobe Reader, Foxit Readers takes up just 2MB in storage space and it loads in about one second - a massive improvement over Adobe Reader.
Be sure to uninstall Adobe Reader:
In case you decide to go back to Adobe Reader, you can always reinstall later by clicking here, or, in case that page is now longer valid, just visit Adobe.com.
Once you're up and running, here is a sample small PDF file. See how fast
Foxit Reader loads it! Will load in a new tab/window if you use Internet Explorer. If you use Firefox (like me), the reader will open outside of Firefox, which is no big deal really.
Finally, if you're interested but a bit shy on the idea, try Adobe Reader Lite. It's better than Adobe Reader but still takes up too much space.
