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.

(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
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©
Cate Eales 2009 – All Rights Reserved
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