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Filed under: Security, Search

Jessica Biel isn't the problem, McAfee's stupid list is

Big news from the folks at McAfee today. Yes, it's time once again to share that most crucial of lists, their annual "top celebrity names being used by malware pushers."

Why? Because it's important to make sure the blogosphere takes time out to warn everyone within earshot that searching for Jessica Biel could instantly give your computer a virus, start sending every keystroke to Russian cybercriminals, upload your bank account information to China, and hijack your browser so that every image is replaced with this one [sfw].

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Filed under: Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Freeware, Social Software, Search, Web

TweetBeep - track Twitter mentions via email

TweetBeepIf your job has you tasked with monitoring your company's online presence, you're probably dealing with Twitter in some way. Running occasional manual searches for your company's name is one way to go, but a better way would be to sign up with a service like TweetBeep.

TweetBeep is a free service that will email you as frequently as once per hour with any Twitter mentions of the search terms of your choice. The service is ad-supported, but if you find that you need it, TweetBeep also offers a premium option for $20US/month that allows you to receive updates as frequently as every 15 minutes, up to 200 different alert searches, and no advertising.

While TweetBeep allows you to set a number of criteria for your alerts, one of the most interesting is the ability to set an "Attitude" criteria. You can choose from three:

  • Positive attitude
  • Negative attitude
  • Asking a question

This appears to be a fantastic way to stay on top of how people are perceiving your company or brand, and gives you the ability to very quickly react to your customers or users. It can also be useful for heavy Twitter users to ensure they don't miss any mentions. I should note that as of the time of this writing I had some difficulty with the email confirmation process - it took multiple requests and over an hour before my email confirmation arrived in my inbox.

[via Stay N' Alive]

Filed under: Web services, Search

Refine your online search terms with SortFix

SortFix
Sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for online. You go to Google, type in your search terms, and a few million results pop up. How are you ever going to find what you're looking for that way? Sure, if your search terms accurately described what you were looking for, the top results should be relevant. But sometimes it's hard to find the right search terms.

That's where SortFix comes in. You can use this site to search Google, Yahoo! or DMOZ. After you enter your search words, SortFix will show your results on the lower half of the screen. On the top you'll see a list of associated words. You can drag words that are relevant to the "Add to Search" box and the words that you want to ignore to the "Remove" box. Click Search again and you should get more accurate results, plus some new terms that you can add or remove.

Overall, you probably spend a little longer looking things up using SortFix than you would if you just went to Google. But in the end you might get more relevant results. Check out a cute little demo video showing how to search for homemade ice cream recipes after the jump.

[via Go2Web2]

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Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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