surf

Teaching your search engine to return results more focused on your online habits and preferences is a bit easier with this Internet Explorer add-on. By clicking on its results, Surf Canyon "learns" your preferences and focuses subsequent searches accordingly.

Surf Canyon loads into the IE search field at the right end of the URL bar along the top of IE's window. Accessing it is simply a matter of selecting it from the drop-down list of search engines built into the field. It functioned well in our tests, returning results quickly. We liked that by clicking the icon … Read more

Digg's release of a pervasive, software-free toolbar last week brought with it a sweet little surprise: the capability to jump to a random site or story that was recommended by other Digg users. For a site that's run entirely by its community, this puts the power of browsing in the hands of an algorithm that does the deciding for you. Digg wasn't the first site to do this, though. So what are some other tools that let you randomly explore the Web? I've put together a few of my favorites below.

StumbleUpon: Calling StumbleUpon just a random site generator may not be fair. While it does a great job of taking you to random sites, most of its links have been vetted by a large user base of people who go through and weed out some of the bad or outdated stuff. It's also got a built-in recommendation engine that will tune its "stumbles" to your tastes as you give sites a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

In addition to being able to use the site with a special toolbar that remains no matter what site you're on, you can get a similar experience right from StumbleUpon's site, which brings with it a software-free toolbar. You can also access StumbleUpon for sites, and video on various gaming consoles, including the Nintendo Wii, for which StumbleUpon coded a special version of the site to work with the Wii's remote and your living room's TV set.

Mangle: Next to StumbleUpon, Mangle is one of the oldest sites on this list, having launched in early 2002. While it's not much to look at, it does a good job of letting you randomly hop to big sites, personal pages, images, and even maps. You can access all these verticals either through bookmarks, or by installing Mangle's browser toolbar, which also throws in the option to show random sites that match up with keywords you've entered. Worth noting, however, is that the toolbar hasn't been updated in a while, so it won't work with the latest version of Firefox.

Delicious Randomizer: Delicious may be all about organization (which some people take to an obsessive compulsive level), but it's also got a wild side. It has a random links feature that will take you to a link that's either recently been created or bookmarked by another Delicious user. You can click on it again and again, and it will give you random results based on the pulse of the site. To do it, just save this link to your bookmarks toolbar or bookmarks list.

DiggBar: Digg's software-free toolbar has a large, orange random button, which as you might guess, takes you to a random page. Where Digg differs from some of the other services on this list though, is that all stories or sites it takes you to have been featured on the front page of Digg.com. This may keep you from finding some real undiscovered gems, but for the casual user you at least know you're being taken to something worthy of a quick look.… Read more

Here's some good news that you should forward to your boss.

A study conducted in Australia found that people who engage in "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing" (WILB) are more productive than those who don't. Workers who "surf the Internet for fun at work--within a reasonable limit of less than 20 percent of their total time in the office--are more productive by about 9 percent,"* according to the study's author, Professor Brent Coker, from the University of Melbourne's Department of Management and Marketing.… Read more

No matter where you go, there you are. And that's always obvious from your surfing history. This password-protected app provides a private browser that hides your surfing history from other apps and hides your IP address while you're browsing.

ArmorSurf launches an attractive, easy-to-use interface with tabbed navigation. The left pane, called the Library, categorizes items you've saved and some preloaded links, like Software, Gaming, Shopping, and Dating. This free app performed well in our tests. We liked that we could change its desktop shortcut icon and name to disguise it from other users, adding another layer … Read more

If you had previously been using Videosurf's Greasemonkey script to preview videos from search engine results, the company has released a new Firefox add-on that does a bit more--and without the need for Greasemonkey.

Once installed in your browser, the add-on still lets you see previews of videos from search results on Google and Yahoo. However it now throws in video previews on FriendFeed pages, and adds a neat timeline view in YouTube that lets you skip to later parts of a video just like DVD chapter markers.

I had the Greasemonkey script installed on my machine last November, … Read more

I stumbled upon a useful site earlier today that's worth sharing. Called SimilarWeb, this small Firefox (and soon Internet Explorer) add-on sits on the side of your browser and pulls up sites that are similar to the one you're currently on.

It works remarkably well--at least with major sites. For example, visiting YouTube brings up a long list of other video hosts. The same went for social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. You can scroll through these and open them up in new tabs, or pick from one of the tags SimilarWeb believes to be related … Read more

If you're worried that potentially pornographic images are lurking in your system's drives, this program promised to scan and find them. Although we encountered several false hits, the bigger problem was how many features are disabled in the demo version.

This install for this app is a 175MB file. It is made to be portable for thumbdrive use, and carries all fonts and such files for that purpose. It also carries files to run the app on Linux and Mac. It would have been nice for the publisher to separate the operating system packages.

On each run the … Read more

Save time when you surf with this smart add-on that offers further recommendations based on your searches. We found its recommendations very helpful.

The program's Options menu allows you to enable specific search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Craigslist. You can also choose the maximum number of recommendations (up to five) for the program to fetch. A tiny bull's-eye icon appears next to each search result and it leads to a list of recommendations. Each recommendation was valid and relevant to the test searches we conducted. We could even drill down within the recommendations to keep … Read more

Anyone who's used Windows Mobile knows it's not the prettiest smartphone operating system around. A few manufacturers have attempted to make the OS more intuitive by adding deeper levels of personalization, but the results can be hit or miss. Fortunately, Motorola's new Surf A3100 accomplishes its goal.

Though the Surf uses Windows Mobile 6.1 it offers a series of customizable menu pages that sit on top of the OS. Not only are the pages convenient, but also they're easy on the eyes. You can cycle through them by swiping your finger across the bottom of … Read more