If you find yourself coming across a great article, blog post, etc., and you just don't have time to read it right now, you can save it for later with
Read It Later, a
Firefox extension that you can use to shelve content until you can get to it.
Once you click on the bookmark's Save button, the Web page will be scrubbed of any extraneous content (ads). You can then put it aside for offline reading or online reading, whatever you prefer, and no, you do NOT need an Internet connection, which makes it even more useful if you have a Web-enabled mobile device and have some time to kill. Read It Later is supported not only for Firefox, but also as an app for the iPhone, Twitter, Google Reader, Blackberry, your Desktop, and lots more.
More useful Firefox addons
The Top Ten Best Firefox Extensions: Firefox extensions "are small add-ons that add new functionality to Mozilla applications. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while minimizing the size of the application itself" (from the official Firefox Extensions site). Here are my picks for the Top Ten Best Firefox Extensions for searching the Web.
Doing a recipe search by ingredient is useful, especially if you've got a few food items and no idea how to put them together. You can use any search engine you like to do this; simply input your ingredient, say, "chicken", and then "recipes". Got more than one ingredient? No problem: try chicken+lemon recipes (a little bit of Boolean search there).
There are also a few recipe search engines that let you search for multiple ingredients easily. For example:
Do you have a favorite recipe search tip or recipe search site? Please share in the comments.
More fun with food on the Web
If you're looking for information, government databases are an excellent place to start: the information has already been evaluated, there's usually a lot of it, and the topics you can find this information under are seemingly limitless.
However, these databases can be a bit tricky to find since they are part of the Deep Web, the vast repository of information that search engines and directories either can't access easily (like intranets or internal wikis) without a little bit of extra search kung-fu. First, let's look at a simple search query you can use to find most any subject in a government database:
site:.gov "lemons"
This brings up all information on lemons that resides on the ".gov" domain. Since government databases (in the U.S, mind you) are on the .gov domain, you can hit some good results.
There's also a few stellar "database doorways", or portals, you can use to access all sorts of fun government information. For instance:
- Data.gov: Meant to eventually increase public access to the wonderful information on government databases.
- Ben's Guide to US Government: A kid-friendly (shoot, ANY age friendly) introduction to the nuts and bolts of government.
- GPO Access Database: Official information from all three branches of the Federal government.
Oh, and don't forget USA.gov or the Library of Congress. Both of these sites offer access to literally thousands of government databases on nearly any topic you can think of.
More about government sites
The Top Twenty Essential US Government Websites: There are literally hundreds of thousands of US government and government-related Web sites online today, however, I found that these sites consistently offer the best user experience, helping you to find what you need quickly, easily, and efficiently.
