With $33 million in investment capital behind its launch, I never expected the new search engine sensation, Cuil (pronounced “cool”) to show me this on my first use:

Nice. You’d think that a team of PhDs, led by former Google Golden Genius Anna Patterson, would remember to ask, “Hey, shouldn’t we probably buy enough servers to survive a humongous traffic spike, seein’ as how we’ve advertised ourselves as more powerful than Google?” Maybe not. And who am I to judge? Maybe it was bad karma having a roll-out on a Monday.

When I finally did get it to work, the results were interesting — somewhat refreshing and different:

The best part about it - no ads.

(Yet.)

Bag o’ Web Tricks

(This post is basically for Firefox users on a Windows OS, but the tricks are doable on your Mac as well. I just couldn’t tell you exactly how.)

Everyone browses the web differently. Some like several windows open at once, and some like tabbed browsing, where you have one window open and several smaller windows inside. Others don’t care. As much time as I spend online, my priority has always been ease of access. Fortunately, the Firefox browser allows users to customize to the nth degree — which I have done. I thought I’d highlight some tweaks and time-savers in case anyone’s interested. Below are a few of My Favorite Things about Firefox customization.

(And since several of my friends and family label themselves “web-challenged,” I’ve included pretty pictures, too.)

1. The Bookmarks Toolbar. This is by far my favorite tool, because I have a ton of sites that I visit every day, several times a day, and I absolutely hate the 4-step process of select Bookmarks - bring down the list - fly out the menu - find the site. I want one-click simplicity.

In case you can’t see the Bookmarks Toolbar, here’s how to activate it. Right-click in an empty space on the main navigation toolbar (like next to your “Back” button). Then select “Bookmarks Toolbar.”

Then go to your favorite site, grab the favicon (the little graphic next to the “http”) with your mouse button, and drag it to the empty toolbar until a little rectangle appears beneath your cursor:

Et voilá - one-click access to your favorite site. From then on, you can just drag sites to the Toolbar with impunity. Another tip: Once you have the bookmark on the Toolbar, right-click it, select Properties, and you can rename it to whatever you want. As you can see on this screenshot, I have done that with all of mine.

2. The Navigation Toolbar. You can customize this, too. I like a clean look, with only the buttons that I use most often. (I don’t use the nav buttons for Print, History, Cut, Copy, Paste, Bookmarks, etc.) Just right click on the navigation toolbar and select Customize:

On the window that pops up, start dragging the buttons you don’t want into the open space below (click the image):

And there you go. Those are my two biggies. Firefox also can be customized with Add-ons; I use a lot of those, too. You can get:

• Themes - I use Blue Ice, because the buttons are big (which helps my horrendously poor eyesight) and it looks super-clean.
• Extensions - There are a metric ton of them, designed to save you time and increase productivity. There are a bunch at Mozilla, as well as at userscripts.org, after installing the add-on called Greasemonkey. (Geeks will spend hours on that site.)

The best Add-ons, in my opinion and for my purposes, are:

1. Adblock Plus. It does what the name says. It blocks those stupid Flash ads and other annoying popups. You can customize it to not run on certain sites (for instance, my Boston U. class website uses popups for content). As of today, over 21 million people have downloaded it. You need to get it.
2. The Google Toolbar. When you research and write as much as I do, this is a godsend.
3. Handy Xtra Stuff for the Xtra-geeky individual.
4. PDF Download. I open a truckload of these files on a regular basis (ever been to JSTOR?). This extension lets me decide what I want to do with it before I open it. Very handy.
5. Go Up. J’ever want to retrace your steps back to a home page when you’re six miles deep into its subdirectories? It usually involves highlighting part of the URL and pressing delete and all that madness. This extension puts a button right next to the location bar, which, when pressed, will take you, step by step, back to the top-level directory of a website. For instance, if you’re here: http://finkweb.org/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=462&message=4 — pressing the “Up” button takes you here: http://finkweb.org — one level at a time. Nice.

Ok, that’s all for today. But there’s a lot more where this came from…

Finkus outus.

Many of us don’t know what we’d do without our cell phones (Yours Truly included). Since we’re coming up on the 35th anniversary of the cell phone - no joke, it’s been *that* long - I thought I’d perform a little retrospective, just to illustrate how far we’ve come.

Martin Cooper made the first cell phone call in New York City on 3 April, 1973. He recalled in a recent interview:

As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren’t cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.

No kidding - especially considering the weight of the thing. I mean, look at the size of the first wireless phone. The model at left (held by Cooper himself), weighed almost 2 pounds.

The cost to buy one of these babies in ‘73: $3,500.

Wireless contract, anyone?

As the 80s appeared, technology got better, but not necessarily any smaller. Emphasis by the industry was placed on putting phones in people’s cars (a decision many have criticized, even to this day). I remember when they were not called “cell phones,” but “car phones.” This doozy weighed 21 lbs.

The 1990s saw cell phones shrink in both size and cost (thank God). Nokia pioneered the “candy bar” phone - meaning that it doesn’t have a lid or closing panel that must be opened or slid in order to talk. I had one of these back in the 90s. The cost by then: around $300 per phone.

Now, cell phones are lighter, cheaper, faster and more robust than ever before. Mine is a Razr by Motorola (already a dinosaur, but I still like it), weighing in at just over 3 ounces. And I went to skinit.com and designed my own Fabs cover.

So yeah - thanks Marty. You’ve come a long way, baby.

===========================

RtB’s First-Ever Contest!

King size Hershey chocolate bar awarded (or sent through the mail) to the first person who correctly identifies the product whose slogan was “You’ve come a long way, baby.” (My sister Mavis, who knows every entertainment history fact there is to know, is, unfortunately, not eligible for this contest. Heh.) Email your answer to ratfink at finkweb org.

Boot To The Head. Not you, Gracious Visitor/Patient Reader. I’m talking about the goofballs (mostly spammers and strikingly unaware journalists) who continue to hang onto the annoying, outdated web-speak that clearly died a calm and quiet death in 1997. Think Ron Burgundy of the Internet.

Pretty much, nobody looks at something amazing and says, “Aw, radical!” anymore. Just sounds kind of silly, right? Well, so does the following. Please don’t say these words, or even think them.

Phrases That Belong in the Boneyard, or
If I Hear You Say These, You Get a Boot to the Head

1. Prosumers - combination of “professional” and “consumers.” Bad, bad word. Because it’s dumb and lazy. And dumb.
2. Webinar - this is the last time I will ever type that idiotic word.
3. The ‘Net - if you say this, I will hit you.
4. Surfin’ the ‘Net - see #3, except substitute “strangle” for “hit.”
5. E-commerce - Actually, “E” anything should be outlawed. Bring back public floggings - that’s what I say.
6. Information Superhighway - Ooo, yeah. Let’s think up something really 21st century. Meet George Jetson.
7. “Cyber” anything - I mean it. I’ll pound ya.
8. Blogosphere - BTTH.
9. Podcast - yeah, even that one’s getting tiring. Can we just say you uploaded a sound file?
10. Killer app - I say we find the woman who invented this phrase, and killer.

It’s amazing how many modern journalists still use this tripe to describe activities on the web. It makes me wish they’d spill their nonfat sugar-free double marble mocha iced macchiato all over their Blackberry earpieces (and I hate those, too - can you say “unbearably pretentious and ugly?”). Ugh.

And that’s today’s rant. I hate those ridiculous words. They’re almost as annoying as saying, “Boot to the Head” over and over.

Fink out.

Know what?

Your wireless provider can retrieve your text messages – even if they’re deleted.

Oh, you already knew that?

K.

Just checkin’.

Cuz you know…you could end up famous.