Lately it is kind of popular to trash Google. Very much like Microsoft, people love to complain about companies that take an important part of their daily life. Google is now an integral part of our life not only for search but for many other things. A good friend saw me convert foreign exchange on Google search and was very surprised you can do that. So here is a list of things I do in Google search which are not search related.

Looking up What’s the Time in Other Places Around the World

Living in a far away island in the pacific with friends in Europe and America, this tool is a great help.


Here is how you Google search for time in Seattle for example:

Type in Google search “time in Seattle”

Here is the direct link to the Google search

http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=time+in+Seattle

Here is what you get (at the time of the search): 3:19pm Thursday (PST) – Time in Seattle, Washington

Make Foreign Exchange Conversion Calculation

Want to convert from any currency to any other? There is an easy way to do that.

Here is how you use Google search to convert 100 New Zealand Dollars to US Dollars:

Type in Google search “convert 100 NZD to USD”

Here is the direct link to the Google search

http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=convert+100+NZD+to+USD

Here is what you get (at the time of the search): 100 New Zealand dollars = 69.95 U.S. dollars

Lookup Word Definition

In this search Google gathers definitions from different dictionaries.

Here is how you use Google search to define open source:

Type in Google search “define: open source”

Here is the direct link to the Google search

http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+open+source

Here is what you get (at the time of the search): “Definitions of open source on the Web: of or relating to or being computer software for which the source code is freely available….”

Do Quick Calculations

I use this when I am on the web and too lazy to use the OS calculator, I just type in the simple calculation in the search bar and there you go.

Here is how you use Google search to multiply 1574 by 3425:

Type in Google search “1574 times 3425″

Here is the direct link to the Google search

http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&q=1574+times+3425

Here is what you get: 1574 times 3425 = 5 390 950

Spell Checker

I do this all the time, use Google search to check my spelling on single words. Because Google gives you the closest statistical correctly spelled word, I find it very helpful to combine the word I am looking for with other related words to tell Google what word I am looking for.

Get Weather Forecast

In New Zealand the weather changes every hour.

Here is how you use Google search to find the weather in Wellington NZ:

Type in Google search “weather wellington new zealand”
Here is the direct link to the Google search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=weather+wellington+new+zealand

Other Uses

These are the tools I use most commonly – for a full list of the tools visit http://www.google.co.nz/intl/en/help/features.html

I get spam comments all the time, it drives me crazy and make me wish I didn’t have a web site at all. Spam really bring the evil side of most site owners.

Yesterday, I finally had enough, I got 300 spam comments and only 4 real ones – I had to go over 3 pages and read bogus comments like:

• “I have a question [link to gambling site]“
• or “nice post [link to viagra]“
• and the ho-so-known “dgsdgsdghsdfhdf [link to a SEO company]“.

I went to drupal and looked for the most popular anti-spam module they listed and found Mollom.

Mollom is a web service that helps you identify content quality and, more importantly, helps you stop spam on your blog, social network or community website. When site moderation becomes easier, you have more time and energy to interact with your community.

Mollom is actually developed and maintain by the guys developing drupal, the module is not open source but has a free version (and that is what most people love in open source anyway).

To make the long story short, I am a happier, more productive and a better person altogether. After using Mollom for over the last 24 hours (and 185 spam comments filtered by Mollon) I highly recommend it as a spam fillers.

Where do my visitors come from? That is always a question bloggers, site owners and advertisers want to know. Knowing who has referred the visitor to my site tells you a lot about that visitor. This information might help you drive better, more finely tuned content to this user.

Demo

Code

<script type="text/javascript">
        if(document.referrer){
           document.write("Hello, Thank you for arriving from: "
                                                   + document.referrer);
         }else{
           document.write("Hello,
                  Thank you for arriving directly to this page");
}
    </script>

This topic is covered in detailed in this interesting article.

I have recently upgraded my cats idol site to Drupal 6 and enhanced its functionality. I have also created several other sites (including this site) using the following set of useful Drupal modules.

Here is my list of useful (AKA Best IMHO) Drupal modules:

Content Construction Kit (CCK)

The Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to nodes using a web browser. It is really useful if you want to create custom content types and added functionality to your existing content types.

Example of such fields would be:

• computed field: lets you add a PHP-driven “computed field” to CCK node types
• date: creates an ISO or unix timestamp date field
• image field: an image field
• link: a URL field

I used the image, link and File fields and found them useful.

Views 2

The Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and tables of content are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted.

This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes.

Among other things, Views can be used to generate reports, create summaries, and display collections of images and other content.

Views are very useful in combination with the Panels module. Also works well with blocks, I use it to create the left and right blocks in Cats Idol

Panels

The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout.

Integration with other systems allows you to create nodes that use this, landing pages that use this, and even override system pages such as taxonomy and the node page so that you can customize the layout of your site with very fine grained permissions.

I use it to create Cats Idol cool front page.

Pathauto

Provides a mechanism for modules to automatically generate aliases for the content they manage. Very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) this module automagically generates proper URLs for your content, helping search engines and users find your content more easily.

Voting API and FiveStar

VotingAPI helps developers who want to use a standardized API and schema for storing, retrieving, and tabulating votes for Drupal content. The Five Star voting module adds a clean, attractive voting widget to nodes.

Very useful if you want to provide voting functionality and also sort and view content according to popularity.

AddThis or ShareThis

These are two social network linking modules allowing user to link to content on your site in social networks such as facebook or twitter. At the time this article is written this is a “must have” for every site.

I user ShareThis in Spacebug and AddThis in Cats Idol.

Image module

Usefull if you want to have an out-of-the-box image content types allowing user/yourself to add image base nodes. Integrates with views, voting, blocks and CCK.

Tagadelic

Tagadelic creates a tag cloud for your site taxonomy.

Google CSE

Google CSE replaces the default Drupal search with Google search, Requires Google account.

Token actions

I use this module to provide the functionality of sending notifications to my administrator email about new comments and content added to my sites

I hope you find this list useful. Let me know if I missed anything.

Apache is one of the most popular web servers in the market today. It usually runs on Linux-based machines but lately there are more and more deployments, for development as well as other reasons, of Apache on Windows. Nowadays, running Apache web server on Windows is very common for PHP developers. Many developers develop their PHP application on their home windows or Mac and deploy to a remote Linux server.

The problem

I often find that Apache has a higher probability to crash (right at startup) in home windows than it has on Linux servers. It happens to me several times a week and also to a lot of my friends.
If you check the logs of the apache you find that 9 times out of 10 you get very little out of it, the Apache does not leave any log when it crashes on initialization.

The root of the problem is that your dev windows is usually also your personal desktop – with lots of applications, such as Instant Messengers and email clients, that connect to the internet on a regular basis.

The solution

Well, 9 times out of 10 the problem is that the Apache cannot listen/bind to the required port (port 80 or 8080) on the machine, and as a result the Apache crashes. It is what you would call in technical terms a Binding Exception.
Closing the application that has already bound to that port is the best way to solve this issue. I do it all the time with Skype – I tend to close my Skype when I startup my Apache and then re-run my Skype and let it find another port to work on.
Another solution would be to change the port of the Apache, but it is more complex and mandates that you alter your URLs, so just stopping the application that “stole the Apache’s port” is the best course of action.

₁