This past Wednesday, Google started rolling out the latest evolution of their search engine. “Google Instant,” as they call it, enables you to execute your searches significantly faster. It’s like the existing Suggest feature, only more so. The search results appear as you type, updating as you go.
This video demonstrates it well:
It takes a little time to get used to, but it actually does seem to be quicker. There isn’t a noticeable lag while results load, even on a 1mbps DSL line. The feature does disable itself on slower connections, though.
HootSuite, the “social media dashboard” has just announced their new premium accounts. There is still a free option, though you will need to fork over some cash if you need “team members” (collaborators who can post to your shared social media profiles) or more…
CloudApp is a nifty application that lets you quickly and easily share files. All you have to do is drag a file onto the menu bar. Once the file is uploaded to the “Cloud,” a short URL to the file is automatically copied to…
A somewhat vague post on TechCrunch, linking to a Google blog posting of equal nebulousness, suggests that Google will soon be releasing a browser plugin to enable users to opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Over the past year, we have been exploring…
Dropbox is an excellent little service that I’ve written about on more than one occasion. It’s a nice off-site backup tool, as well as easy way to keep data synced between multiple computers. I imagine it would be nice to get one of their…
Apple recently acquired Lala, an interesting music service that promotes the idea of streaming music. Lala lets you sample music from their catalog, and then offers the choice to download songs for $0.79 apiece or purchase the right to stream it as much as…
I’ve mentioned Dropbox before here, but I didn’t mention this neat trick you could do with it… Anyone in the programming industry will recommend that you use version control software like SVN or Git to save yourself headaches when you make a mistake and…
As long as people have worked with multiple computers, they’ve always had to find ways to transfer files between them. Back in the old days, we used square plastic things called “floppy diskettes” to store data and recall it on any convenient computer. They…
There’s an interesting tutorial up on Net.Tuts+ that caught my attention: Easy Version Control with Git. Git seems like a powerful tool, and one I’d definitely like to look into in the future. It seems like it can do a bit more than SVN,…
According to Mashable, Bit.ly is the most-used URL shortener, having passed up the aging TinyURL in terms of traffic. But didn’t we already know that? They’re the default shortener for Twitter, they’re the least likely to close their doors (for reasons of funding and…
