Computer and Web Articles

I’m surprised that people continue to keep sending in such good questions these days–shouldn’t you all be outside in the sun?  I mean . . . think about it! All your computer problems would be solved if you simply turned your darned machines off and spent your days outside lounging in the sun. . . .

HA!  For those of us who don’t have the option of turning our computers off five days a week, let’s take a look at some good questions and answers for today.

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Question: Hello. I use AOL Search, MSN Search, and sometimes Google to look for things on the web.  I wanted to know, though, if there is a good way to actually search for pictures and images on the web as well.  Sometimes I use the Google image search, but I was curious if there is anything else.

Answer: Though I myself tend to be somewhat partial to Google’s image search, many people like using a site called “Ditto.”  Take a peek at www.ditto.com.  Here you can type in a search and all your results will be images!

Even better than ditto.com, in my opinion, is “picsearch.”  Picsearch (www.picsearch.com) seems to be a more accurate image search engine; I can usually find better pictures and photos when searching here than when I’m searching at ditto.com–but that’s just me.  Give them both a shot and see what you can find.

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Question: What is the difference between a “portal” and a “vortal” on the Internet?  Are they basically the same thing?

Answer: A portal is a website that offers a variety of services.  People usually use portals as starting points when looking for information on the Internet–thus, not surprisingly, portals often include search engines.  Examples of popular portals you may have visited yourself include AOL, Yahoo! and Lycos.

A vortal is simply a portal website that provides resources and information for a particular industry.  According to the Webopedia (www.webopedia.com), vortals are “the Internet’s way of catering to consumers’ focused-environment preferences.”  So that’s it; vortals are simply portals with narrower focus.

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Question: I don’t have Microsoft Word, and I do not want to pay for it.  Is there a cheap alternative? I need to be able to open the Word documents people send me and write my own documents as well. Thank you.

Answer: How about this: I know of an absolutely great Word Processing program . . . and it’s free!  TextShield Fusion is a fantastic piece of freeware that comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a more-expensive program, including a search-and-replace function, spellcheck, and a hyperlink editor.

Open up those Word documents you’re getting and save them into rich text format (RTF).  You can even format your documents in a bunch of cool ways–cool 3D effects, anyone?

Go to http://tinyurl.com/ys2pn for more information on TextShield Fusion.