Brain Candy #76 - Greatest Hits

I might have written a column on TiVo, eBay or PDAs this month, but the first two need more research and I decided that just because we finally bought a personal digital assistant (a Zire 21), that didn't justify it as an interesting subject for a column - yet. I finally decided to do what many television series do when they get to the end of the season with little money and few ideas. They do a "recap" episode.

This is the 76th Brain Candy, 74 of which I wrote completely, one which I partially wrote (John Schmid wrote much of #5) and one, #17, which was guest written by Brent Dix. In that time, I feel I've written about some things that bear another look, especially from some of the early columns.

In mid-1997, Brain Candy #2 dealt with the Internet Movie Database. It's still there, now at us.imdb.com, and still is much as it ever was. The movie information has been continuously updated, though the interface hasn't changed much. You do have to put up with more ads than in the early days, but such is the price of quality information. It was, and probably still is, my second most frequently visited site on the web. There is no place better on the web if you want to explore movie and television information.

Of course, the site I visit most is Google. I'm a Google fanatic and have been one for several years. The earliest mention I made of it was in Brain Candy #25, in mid-1999. I mentioned it more frequently as the column evolved. By column #58, I called it one of the biggest technical successes on the Web to date, and I think it still is. I suggest you don't just use Google - explore it. It is more than just a search engine for web pages. You can search for images - while I was on the phone with my mom last night, I showed her how she could use it to look up old images of her home town. You can search Usenet newsgroups - indeed, Google absorbed DejaNews, which I wrote about in Brain Candy #3. You can also search recent newsfeeds and read very recent headlines, some only minutes old. Go to Google, at www.google.com, and click on "Services and Tools" to find many other interesting things, like "Google Labs," "Google Translate Tool," "Google in Your Language" and the "Google Toolbar." One of the interesting things you can find in Google Labs is "Google Compute." This offering allows you to donate idle computer time to help researchers study protein folding, a la "SETI@Home."

The biggest suggestion I can make to you about Google is to learn how to use it efficiently. The site documentation is pretty good, but there are other resources, too. If you have the ability to read Microsoft Powerpoint presentations, at Patrick Crispin's netsquirrel.com/classroom/, you can find tutorials called Google 101 and Google 201, and some other interesting technical presentations. If you can't read Powerpoint documents, Patrick's site also describes how to download a viewer. If you like learning from books, there are several really good books available. If you're a normal web user, check out O'Reilly's "Google Pocket Guide" at www.oreilly.com/catalog/googlepg/index.html. It's a very powerful little book that can really enhance your googling. If you're a high-powered programmer type, you'll want to check out O'Reilly's "Google Hacks," which you can also find at the O'Reilly site. Both books have generous example sections posted, so you can get a feel for what the books are about before you buy. They've both been pretty conspicuous recently at the local Borders, so they're not hard to find. By the way, the O'Reilly site itself has many very good books for computerphiles, from advanced beginners to bleeding- edge types. Spend some browsing time there if you like computers.

One more trip down Memory Lane. I mentioned this site in Brain Candy #31, and I wrote a whole column on it in Brain Candy #51. It's Marylaine Block's "Neat New Stuff on the Net." You can still find it at marylaine.com/neatnew.html. Marylaine is our "librarian without walls;" she weekly reviews about a dozen information websites, including one or two "fun" sites. She keeps at least six months of archives, so you don't have to visit it weekly. I generally find a few sites worth investigating each time I visit, including some sites that I've discussed in various "Brain Candy" columns. This week (October 31) includes a government disaster resource portal, an electronic journal mining site, a folk and mythology e-text site, a children's librarian weblog, a shared digital video collection page and more. She also publishes columns on interesting stuff, an e-magazine for librarians, a page on "all things books" and other similar things. This site continues to be a gold mine for most Mensans.

I've been referencing some of my old columns in this article. All but the most recent are posted on the web. You can find them at home.neo.rr.com/catbar/brain_candy/bccentrl.htm. If you want to jump directly to one, go to home.neo.rr.com/catbar/brain_candy/brncdyXX.htm, where "XX" is the column number. Be advised that old columns contain old information. Many sites that I've written about have disappeared or mutated, so you might not find things as I've described them.