Information wants to be free and one of the most horrendous atrocities on the Internet are sites that restrict their content members-only. Heavy surfers have quite likely come across a search result, clicked the link to visit the website, only to be hit face-first with some variance of denial. At best, you are able to view an excerpt of the content in question but the severity of the restrictions can escalate quite quickly. Some sites require a free account registration, which is rather annoying and pervasive if you think about it. However, the worst offenders actually require a paid membership account before any of the information is accessible!

At this point you might be wondering how search engines like Google are able to scrape web content, index it, and serve it in search results yet it remains inaccessible to you? The majority of pay-wall websites actually detect search bots when they access the site and serve their  full articles for indexing purposes. How do the websites know when it’s Google or you? The simplest manner is every access to a website sends a User Agent string that aids in identify where or what the connection is. Your browser typically would identify itself as such – this is the main way browser usage is tracked across the Internet. Google, of course, would identify itself differently – and that’s what the website is keying on. While it’s possible to change the User Agent that your browser reports, it’s a rather drastic approach for situations that are typically one-off in nature.

BeTheBot is a free service that can be utilized to send webpage requests on your behalf, but instead masquerade as a Google (or Yahoo) search bot. The end result is a removal of the members-only or pay-wall and a clean view of the content you are actually seeking. The process couldn’t be more simple – just copy and paste the restricted link into the web site submission form and BeTheBot handles the rest.

The Washington Post is one of the most well known offenders of this practice. Accessing any article off their website results in a membership login form.

Instead, we can right-click on the link in question and copy it to your clipboard.

Paste the link into BeTheBot’s website.

Finally, a few moments later the content will load in a frame within BeTheBot’s website!

While BeTheBot is not perfect, it’s most definitely worth a bookmarking for when the need arises.

The shortening of website addresses is quite handy and useful as you share links across all the social media networks. With limits on the length of your posts wasting 50 characters on a web address just isn’t going to fly. The shortened URL service came about as a solution to communicating long addresses to friends; in email a long address may word-wrap across a few lines which makes a single click and visit problematic and relaying an address verbally can be tedious and prone to errors. It’s only logical that services like bit.ly and tiny.cc made the jump to the Twitter and Facebook realms.

One of the problems when a friend sends you a link that’s been shortened is not knowing where it will take you until you are already there. I discussed previously about a Firefox plugin that will expand the shortened URL to it’s destination address on hover which is helpful if the newly discovered information can clue you in on the linked material before visiting. However, merely knowing the domain may not be enough to protect you from some malicious website. Why would your friend send you to a site like this in the first place? One answer: they may just not know as the site is clever in it’s infection, or it may not even have come from your friend first hand – but rather a trojan acting on their behalf!

Saf.li is a new URL shortening service that will scan the provide web address using the the BitDefender anti-virus software before returning a saf.li shortened URL. The scan ensures that address is free of any malicious software, viruses, phishing attacks, etc. The scan and creation takes mere seconds and the result is peace of mind that the link is clean – whether you’ve created that link or your friend has sent you a saf.li address directly. Better, even if you are sent a shortened URL from another service, Saf.li can still scan that link and verify that it is clean and safe.

After running the scan click the Get stats graphic to obtain the results.

Saf.li is a logical and necessary extension to the crowded market of URL shortening services. It’s certainly worth more than a look or two!

Those of you that are web designers have likely grown a great disdain for Internet Explorer. IE is given, and rightly so, a ton of grief in this area because of Microsoft’s attitude towards following web standards. When a web browser is programmed to obey and render accurately to standards, a web designer can be reasonably sure that their layout and programming will function correctly. Internet Explorer, however, has always ventured slightly off the agreed upon path which often means web developers must typically work around the differences and provide logic exclusively for IE based browsers. Sounds pretty tedious and painful doesn’t it? It gets worse – with each version of Internet Explorer the path continues to diverge. Therefor, it is not uncommon for a web application to have multiple blocks of code to handle each iteration of Internet Explorer!

Ensuring your application works across all the browsers logically requires a good amount of testing. It’s a straightforward testing methodology to support Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera – they all can be installed on the same system without interfering with one another. Likewise, Internet Explorer plays along nicely with the alternative browsers but unfortunately is not overly kind to it’s brethren – that is to say, only one version of Internet Explorer can be installed and maintained in Windows. Testing IE7 vs IE8 metrics typically requires two computers or a somewhat complicated virtualization platform.

IETester is an amazingly free application that aims to simplify testing across different versions of Internet Explorer – all on the same computer without any complicated setup. IETester is able to render and display your design/application in IE5.5-8 simultaneously, without requiring installations of each version.

IETester is a breeze to use; if you are familiar with the Office 2007 ribbon you will be right at home. While it is considered beta-level software I had minimal stability issues on Windows 7. The lone requirement is your installed browser must at least be IE7. If you must deal with the existence of Internet Explorer you owe it to yourself to check out IETester.

Download IETester

I’ve already discussed how an application like Device Doctor can help you maintain up to date device drivers for your hardware but perhaps you were left wondering – is there a similar application for installed software? Even though this is a rhetorical question I’m still going to answer it by saying yes, there are actually quite a few! However, the one I recommend is actually developed by CNET and is aptly titled TechTracker.

CNET’s TechTracker is a free Windows utility that will scan your system for install software and return a listing of anything out of date. The list view easily distinguishes your currently installed version with what is available and includes the relevant download link. It’s a simple concept so I won’t waste any more time describing how it works but rather segue into why maintaining current software releases is important.

Most users are conditioned to download and install Windows Updates that Microsoft provides as they become available. The majority of the updates are security patches, stability improvements, or other general bug fixes – all good things. If Windows is accepted to have bugs and security vulnerabilities – why would not other installed applications suffer the same? Obviously the answer is they do but users, and I’m just a guilty as the next, rarely treat them the same. Typically, we install things like Skype or Acrobat or Flash and don’t give it another thought until a reason arises for a reinstallation, perhaps from a format or system crash. While many of the popular applications already provide update mechanisms, most users end up disabling them or otherwise ignoring the update available dialog. Don’t! In this instance, newer generally is better!

CNET is a name you should respect and trust, which is a blessing because the user of TechTracker requires a free CNET account. Privacy minded individuals should also be aware that the scan results are attached and stored with your account, something I consider minor but your opinion may defer.

Download CNET TechTracker

A high-speed broadband connection is a requirement to get any of the media rich benefits available on the Internet; viewing videos off streaming sites such as YouTube is impossible to enjoy. But what constitutes broadband speed? Oddly, it’s not consistently defined and that leads to a lot of confusion and problems – especially on content intensive sites. Streaming media as a platform and service has matured greatly; for the most part the quality of the experience scales nicely with the speed of the connection. However, things aren’t always perfect; something Google and YouTube have realized.

The YouTube test video is designed to give users feedback to the quality of their Internet connection. While you may pay for a 5MB down connection, that doesn’t give you enough information to truly predict your streaming experience. High latency and packet loss can cause your stream to stutter and drop out – certainly not a pleasurable experience. If you are curious how your existing connection stacks up to users around you, on your ISP, or in the same city, or even country; YouTube provides a graph with that information.

By viewing the test video, feedback is provided for your connection by metrics such as frames per second, dropped frames, and stream speed. You can gather your results by clicking the Show Test Video link.

You can see that even though I feel the quality of my Internet connection is superb, I am still dropping frames. Perhaps a certain percentage of fluctuation is acceptable as I certainly have no complaints when browsing YouTube. How do your results compare? See for yourself on YouTube’s Test Video site.

Probably the only negative to purchasing a new computer is installing the multitude of applications that you require in order to get things done – whatever that entails. Likewise, a fresh install of Windows exhibits the same annoyance. Having recently performed a clean install of Windows 7, I’ve faced the same problem.

Most PC users likely have a downloads folder that contains the installers for any and all applications they use – the installers are likely kept around just for this purpose actually. The irony however, most installers are tied to the particular version of the software available at the time of download. Sure you may have the Firefox installer already on your computer but it’s going to install an old version of the browser that will still need patched and updated. Sound familiar? Furthermore, let’s assume you have the latest installers on hand, you are still looking at executing each one individually, and to be safe, sequentially. The process is very much ok this is done, what’s next?

Windows users all over tend to install the same software, or the same types of software. You likely have a couple browsers, a media player, perhaps a few chat clients, a photo editor, and security software installed. Ninite Easy PC Setup and Multiple App Installer is a mouthful to say but an easy concept to digest. From the Ninite website a user is able to select applications from common categories and then generate a custom installer that will work in the background to download and install the selected applications. Some of the categories include: browsers, media players, image editors, utilities, or security. In literally a 30 seconds a user can tick off everything they wish to install and allow Ninite to do the rest of the heavy lifting!

Ninite included just about every general application I require and even if yours isn’t listed, they do take suggestions for future inclusions. Lastly, the custom installer is intelligent enough to download the 64-bit versions when and where applicable – such as for iTunes.

Ninite is an amazing time saver that worked flawlessly for my latest clean install.

Let me as you a simple question – what is the first thing you do with the user manual when you open a new purchased product? If you are like most, you fall into one of two possibilities. The user manual either goes directly into the trash or the user manual goes onto the bookshelf – where it likely is never looked at again. Me, I’m a bit of both types actually. If a product is of the nature where a manual may be handy I’ll keep it; otherwise it gets pitched. The end result is the same however, the manual is never used!

If you are one that has problems throwing user manuals out because of the off chance they may be needed Manuals Online might be just what you need. The User Manual Site is a user manual repository that hosts over 300,000 manuals in the pdf file format. While most vendors house their manuals on their own website, it generally is only for their recent products. Products that are just 5 years old likely aren’t found on the manufacturer’s website. That’s where having all the user manuals housed in a single searchable repository is golden.

The User Manual Site doesn’t have to be a single hit-and-run website either. With a registered account you are able to maintain your own personal repository of user manuals for just the products you own. Should the user manual be necessary in the future it can easily be referenced rather than having to search the growing manual repository. Not bad for a completely free service I’d say!

How in the TECH does enough traffic where it isn’t feasible to host the site on a server out of my basement but not enough traffic that warrants the costs associated with a dedicated server at a hosting facility. This is a scenario that many websites fall under and the solution for all of us is the idea of shared hosting.

Shared hosting is relatively cheap – as low as a few dollars a month and scales upwards in cost depending on the amount of hard drive space or data transfer necessary, generally. Logically, shared hosting means multiple websites are hosted from the same server, with all of the server’s resources shared amongst the websites hosted. It’s reasonable then to conclude that fewer hosted websites on a server equates to higher performance per user – sharing 101. Furthermore, it is often the case that the cheaper the shared hosting the more sites you can expect on the same server. It’s all about the volume after all.

It’s not hard to see that it may be beneficial to know what other websites are hosted on the same server as yours, or really any website. myIPneighbors.com is a website that lists all the domains associated with a user provided IP address, since, by nature, all shared websites share the same IP. You may be very surprised just how many sites are hosted in parallel to your own!

Bing, Microsoft’s latest shot across Google’s search supremacy bow, has continued to steadily gain market share since it’s launch in June 2009. Last week Microsoft completed a 10-year deal with Yahoo which would replace Yahoo’s search technology with Bing which promptly gave Bing around 20% of the search traffic. Bing is officially a player in the lucrative search marketplace and regardless of your feelings surrounding Microsoft or Google, competition is a great thing.

Human nature causes us to resist change. Typically, for a change to occur in society, the new result must be substantially better then the current situation. Is Bing that much better than Google, if it is better at all? Probably not, at least not yet, but it’s clear that Microsoft has finally gotten their latest offering headed in the correct direction after many failed attempts such as MSN and Live Search. As a technology enthusiast, as you likely are, it is your responsibility to give Bing a fair shake and use it as your exclusive search engine for a week or so. I truly believe that.

But what if you are not ready to leave the comfort of the big G? Bing-vs-Google.com might be a site of interest for you. The site runs a comparative search on your parameters and returns the results in two panes in the browser – Bing on the left and Google on the right. It presents a method that is pretty simple to see which engine returned the best information on your query.

I’ve ate up everything Google for a few years now but even I have to admit at being impressed with Bing.

HD-Trailers is a site that came across my radar the other day as I continued my quest for the perfect 10-foot UI experience via XBMC Media Center. Utilizing the Aeon Stark theme atop XBMC provides a fantastic experience and presentation to my media content. I am very particular with my media; everything is fully tagged and sorted. TV Shows are organized by show and then season, and every movie video has an associated high-resolution poster which is then, in turn, used throughout the media center theme.  Aeon Stark provides the ability to play a movie trailer associated with whatever movie you are currently browsing in your collection. Unfortunately, one of the few things XBMC does not do for you automatically is actually acquiring the trailer.

HD-Trailers is a portal site that allows you to browse and search for trailers and teasers for new and old movies alike. If you are a movie buff and enjoy high quality trailers you are probably already aware that Apple hosts a good deal of them off their Quicktime Movie section. However, it’s not the easiest site to navigate or even download the trailers when you find them. HD-Trailers provides that interface however, both to Apple and Yahoo’s websites.

Once the movie you are looking for is found, you are provided the option to download the trailer in 480/720/1080p as well as formats compatible with the iPod and PS3. Best of all, this is all free without any registration necessary. The site merely provides a collection of links to trailer locations elsewhere on the Internet.

With HD-Trailers I can continue to feed my OCD over my media content with full high-def trailers!