Wednesday February 15, 2012
When does a disposable email address come in handy? Mostly, they're good for when you need to give an email address to a website and you'd like to avoid further emails (aka, spam). Basically, they are useful for protecting your privacy on the Web (for more on protecting yourself online, read How to Guard Your Web Privacy). Here are four sites that offer free, disposable email addresses:
- Guerilla Mail: Get a temporary random email address generated by GuerillaMail, or set up your own personalized email address (i.e, john@guerrillamailblock.com). The service expires after sixty minutes; you can read and reply to emails sent to this address at the GuerillaMail website.
- MyTrashMail: Create an account (no sign up required), forward emails to your private account, and protect yourself from spam emails.
- Mailinator: No registration, no sign-ups, just send your mail to a temporary account.
- 10 Minute Mail: For quick email needs, like a confirmation email so you can subscribe to something, this is perfect - only ten minutes worth of email time, but just right for those kind of situations.
More about email
image courtesy sxc.hu
Tuesday February 14, 2012
One of the things I like to do when I'm actually supposed to be doing something else (like chores, or paying bills, or...you get the picture) is check out the fantastic photos at Flickr, the most popular digital photo community on the Web today. There are quite a few ways you can look at Flickr images, but here are my five favorites:
- Seven Day Slideshow: This shows you the most interesting photos for the last seven days in a nice slide show; you don't have to do any clicking, just watch.
- Browse the Tags page: This page has all the most popular tags that Flickr photographers are tagging their photos with. It's an easy way to see what's bubbling up to the top of Flickr.
- Galleries: Galleries are a group of photos (usually around 15-18) focused on a specific theme.
- Flickr Clock: Videos taken at specific times, so, if you want to see a video of the sunrise, click around 5:30 AM or so.
- Flickr Map: Pinpoints images submitted by Flickr users from all over the world on an interactive map.
There are even more ways to explore Flickr, for instance, the Last 7 Days Interesting photos, Most Recent Uploads, or the Explore Page. What's your favorite?
More images on the Web
Monday February 13, 2012
What is an ISBN? Basically, an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a unique number assigned to each published book, usually found right on top of the bar code. If you want to see different prices or information for a particular book, you can use the ISBN number to do that. Here are a couple of ways you can do an easy ISBN search:
- Google: Simply type the ISBN number into Google, and you'll see search results from a variety of different booksellers. For example, my search for a Michael Crichton book: Disclosure.
- Amazon Advanced Search: Amazon is the largest bookseller on the Web, and they make it very easy to search by ISBN. Just type the number into the ISBN field (don't use any dashes), and leave all the other fields blank.
- ISNDB.com: The ISNDB.com site is a database of ISBN information. Type in your number, and you'll get publishing details, similar books, the subject(s) covered in that book, where you can buy it, and libraries the book has an entry in.
- ISBN.nu: Type your ISBN number in here, and you'll get literally dozens of sites where you can buy your book, some as low as .01.
More book resources on the Web
Friday February 10, 2012
You are able to be on the Web today searching for multimedia, books, and music because one savvy scientist saw a problem and decided to fix it. Read about Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web.
More about the beginnings of the Web
Image: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
