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Answering Your Questions

By Cate Eales
Appeared August 6, 2009 on castanet.net
 

This week's column answers some of the RAQ (Recently Asked Questions!) in my email: How to find duplicate photos; how to find a safe download site; how to get your Google back.

How do I find and remove duplicate photos?
"Viv" sent an email with two important questions. She wrote:

Apparently there is a site to download a "duplicate picture scrubber" - there are a lot of sites that come up but I would like to know a "safe one" it would worry me to just download any mentioned site. I seem to have pictures on three different locations.

There are two duplicate photo finder programs that are free and reasonably easy to use:
Dup Detector, available here, and Duplicate Cleaner, available here.

I have used both, and I've installed them for clients. They both do the same thing, the difference is just which one you're more comfortable with. You can try both and see how you like them. (I wrote previously about both those programs, here.)


How do I know a download site is safe?
The second important point in Viv's email was about trying to find a safe place to download those programs. I like Web of Trust to help me with that. It's a free security add-on that works in Firefox and Internet Explorer. WOT will indicate which sites are known or suspected to be malicious, and which are not. Nothing can ever be 100% perfect, but I find it a useful tool in deciding whether to visit a site that comes up in my search results. Web of Trust is available here.


Where is my Google, and what the heck is Bing?
A customer with a brand new computer contacted me last week because her search engine in Internet Explorer was set to Bing and she wanted to change it to Google.

Bing is Microsoft's newest challenge to Google. (More about that here). Not surprisingly, when you buy a new computer these days and fire up Internet Explorer for Vista for the first time, your default search engine is Bing. It takes some getting used to, and many people just want their Google back.

Tutorial
(click graphic to play tutorial)


Of course, you can always browse to google.com or google.ca. But if you want to change the default search engine entirely, it's easier than you might think. I published this step-by-step short video tutorial, here. (Alternate location, YouTube.)

I've been comparing the Bing and Google results, using a search engine called Bing vs Google. Search results from the two searches display side by side. If you watched that little video, you know you can have more than one search engine in that bar, so you can easily add this one!



Links
Dup Detector http://www.keronsoft.com/dupdetector.html

Duplicate Cleaner http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/duplicate-cleaner
Find Duplicate Photos http://rlis.com/columns/column143.htm
Web of Trust http://www.mywot.com/
Microsoft Releases Vista SP2 and Bing http://rlis.com/columns/column199.htm
Bing http://www.bing.com/

Google (USA) http://google.com/
Google (Canada - English) http://google.ca/
How to change your search engine in IE8 http://drop.io/fix_demo/asset/search2-flv
(Alternate location http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNjZRr7Wr8Q)
Bing vs Google http://www.bing-vs-google.com/
Computer Care Kelowna http://computercarekelowna.com
Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archives http://rlis.com/column.htm
Get Cate's column by email http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=20618
RSS Feed: http://rlis.com/rlis.xml

--
Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your computer get along!

Cate Eales runs Computer Care Kelowna, a mobile service helping home users and businesses get along with their computers. To arrange an appointment phone her at 250-764-7043. Cate also welcomes your comments and suggestions. Send email to help@computercarekelowna.com.

You can read previous columns here. If you'd like to subscribe to this column by email, please visit this link It's easy, and free. If you'd prefer the RSS Feed, click here.

© Cate Eales 2009 – All Rights Reserved

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