snippets

Create a portable clipboard with QuickClip

There are plenty of utilities that let users save frequently used snippets of text to be inserted when needed; these clipboards on steroids can save you the time and effort of typing the same thing over and over. But what if there were a program that let you access your snippets of text from anywhere, keeping them handy whether you're at home, at work, or somewhere else? That's where QuickClip comes in. This simple program saves your text to the cloud and then copies it to the Windows clipboard whenever you need it.

Our first impression of QuickClip … Read more

Google beefing up its +1 button

Google is enhancing its familiar Google +1 button to give people more control over the content they share and who they share it with.

Found on many a Web site these days, the +1 button lets people signed in to their Google account share and recommend specific content with their friends and contacts that can then appear as recommended pages in Google's search results. But the button has been limited in that users have only been able to share links publicly and couldn't comment on what their were sharing.

Now Google has tweaked the +1 button, says a … Read more

Google search gets answer highlights and events

Google on Friday began rolling out an improved version of its search result highlighting and rich-snippet features.

Both improvements bring more visibility to kinds of data that would otherwise require clicking through to the source site. Google now does much of that work for users by bringing relevant, formatted data directly to its search results pages.

Between the two improvements, the highlighting one is the most interesting. It now highlights what Google calls "answers" within page summaries. These are matches to a user's query, so if a user looks up something like a math problem, or a … Read more

Clean up text quickly

TextSoap is a powerful utility with a single purpose: to quickly clean up text from any source, so that you can reuse it in other applications. A godsend for software developers and Web designers who have to frequently work with a motley variety of text, TextSoap can almost instantly remove extra spaces and "garbage characters" while still maintaining text formatting--and it can also automatically convert formatting like bold and italics into its HTML equivalent by inserting tags.

The app's clean interface looks much like any simple text editor, but you'll find most of its power in … Read more

Google embraces exercise in Semantics

Although Google has traditionally downplayed the importance of the Semantic Web, the company took a noticeable step toward embracing it Tuesday.

Google introduced an enhancement to its search results at Searchology 2009 that uses technologies commonly associated with the Semantic Web, or the concept of making Web pages more discoverable and understandable to computers. Calling it "Rich Snippets," Google's Marissa Mayer and Kavi Goel demonstrated how Google is working with tech publishers (including CNET) to display new types of information in search results such as the number of stars assigned to a particular gadget.

The Semantic Web … Read more

Yahoo Widgets hands-on review

Update 08-11-09: Check out our in-depth looks at the Twitter, YouTube, Yahoo Video, Yahoo Sports, USA Today Sports and games widget reviews.

The variation of Yahoo Widgets designed specifically for TVs debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show last January. Not to be confused with its PC-centric incarnation, the TV-only widget feature will be available on certain HDTVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio shipping this year. The first widget-equipped sets to hit store shelves are members of Samsung's UNB7000 series, and this hands-on review was performed on a UN46B7000--although we expect the widget experience to be similar across brands.

What is a widget? It's basically a gateway on your TV screen to Internet-supplied content in a certain subject area. All TVs with Yahoo Widgets can connect to the Internet, and via that connection can populate the widgets with real-time information and updates. At the time of this review there are only four widgets, all of them available as soon as we turned on the TV, connected the Ethernet cable, and hit a button to activate the feature. The four, namely News, Weather, Finance, and Flickr, were all created by Yahoo.

In the coming weeks and months, more TV widgets will become available. According to Yahoo, more than 300 publishers "are interested in developing" widgets, from individuals to large content publishers, and the company expects TV widgets from Accedo Games, Twitter, Yahoo! Video, eBay, USA Today, Yahoo! Sports, Showtime, CBS Entertainment (CNET Reviews is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS), The New York Times, YouTube, CinemaNow and others. Publishers that have announced plans to develop TV Widgets include Disney/ABC, MySpace, Viacom/MTV, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, Associated Press, and Joost. Yahoo estimates at least 100 widgets will be available by the end of the year, and its TV widgets website teases with some of the big names, like Netflix, whose description reads: "Browse, find and enjoy great movies with the Netflix widget--a personalized, convenient way to rent and watch movies on your TV."

We also expect advertising to appear on the system eventually, which could make the user experience less consumer-friendly. Yahoo says that "some publishers may choose to monetize their content by the end of 2009," and that the widget engine works with Web-compliant advertising system to enable Yahoo and third parties to advertise. For now, however, the widgets are blessedly ad-free. … Read more