New to my eyes but not new. I discovered today that moving the mouse over an address in an email sent to a Yahoo! mailbox triggers a map of the location. It doesn't matter if the address is written in a single line or in a block like you would address an envelope. This Yahoo! shortcut is reading my mail.
I scrolled through some of my saved mail to see what shortcuts would jump out at me. I wrote "Friday afternoon" and Yahoo! offers a calendar for me to save the date. Someone wrote "sympathy cards" and Yahoo! offers links to e-greetings websites.
The shortcuts have been around for a couple of years and I am just noticing them. Well, maybe not just noticing them -- I've seen the dotted underlinings but ignored them as some sort of unasked-for Spell Checker -- but finally paying attention to them. Now they are a disconcerting distraction and eventually I suppose they will become anticipated necessities.
Another personal discovery this week was the existence of pipl.com (and really, Blogger, shouldn't you automatically insert a link there?). I love all those "People Finder" search sites, ussearch, zabasearch, peoplelookup, but this pipl is something else again. It digs "deep into the web," looking for whatever it can find on a name you provide. Addresses, phone numbers, blogs, news articles, even 1880 census entries from familysearch.com might show up. And if the name you enter is on myspace or facebook, profile pictures are posted on the results page.
You can't take it back. It's already out there. You'd best be careful what you contribute. It's your curriculum vitae you're offering, whether you know it or not.
I scrolled through some of my saved mail to see what shortcuts would jump out at me. I wrote "Friday afternoon" and Yahoo! offers a calendar for me to save the date. Someone wrote "sympathy cards" and Yahoo! offers links to e-greetings websites.
The shortcuts have been around for a couple of years and I am just noticing them. Well, maybe not just noticing them -- I've seen the dotted underlinings but ignored them as some sort of unasked-for Spell Checker -- but finally paying attention to them. Now they are a disconcerting distraction and eventually I suppose they will become anticipated necessities.
Another personal discovery this week was the existence of pipl.com (and really, Blogger, shouldn't you automatically insert a link there?). I love all those "People Finder" search sites, ussearch, zabasearch, peoplelookup, but this pipl is something else again. It digs "deep into the web," looking for whatever it can find on a name you provide. Addresses, phone numbers, blogs, news articles, even 1880 census entries from familysearch.com might show up. And if the name you enter is on myspace or facebook, profile pictures are posted on the results page.
You can't take it back. It's already out there. You'd best be careful what you contribute. It's your curriculum vitae you're offering, whether you know it or not.