The findingDulcinea Blog

Be a Better Web Surfer

Maybe you don't totally understand RSS feeds, want to pimp out your Firefox toolbar, or want to be a better social bookmarker. Whatever online skill you're looking to improve upon, there is something for you below.

Lifehacker's "Most Popular Top 10 Lists of 2008" lets you find this how-to blog's best content of the year in one place, including, "Top 10 Things You Forgot Your Mac Can Do" and "Top 10 Firefox 3 Features."

Our Web Guide, "Web Technology: A Primer," features dozens of high-quality Web sites that will help you understand RSS feeds, podcasts, aggregators, media players, online file-sharing and much more.

InfoPirate's "Top 50+ Social Networking Firefox Add-ons" will clue you in to fun tools that you can add to Firefox's toolbar, making it easier to connect with friends, check your e-mail, bookmark favorite links and sync your browser's bookmarks with those you save on sites like Del.icio.us.

PC World's "16 E-Mail and Instant Messaging Boosters" features software and add-ons for mail clients that can help you better manage tasks, create filters, get rid of junk mail and organize all your messages more effectively.

Lifeclever's "How to organize your cluttered desktop and regain your sanity" has a simple philosophy for cleaning up all those files, no matter what operating system you use. The secret: a series of folders with action-specific names.

MakeUseOf has dozens of great posts that can help you improve your computer's performance, remove unwanted browser features, find hidden functionality in your favorite programs and Web tools, and more. Be sure to bookmark this site.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

For general how-tos, offline and on, ReadWriteWeb has a post called "A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff." Here you'll find sites like eHow, Expert Village, TrickLife, SuTree, and explanations of the types of skills these sites specialize in.

April Fool's Day Jokes that Could Have Saved You Time and Money

 Just because yesterday was April Fool’s Day doesn’t mean you had any less work to do. In fact, maybe you were so busy that you jumped at the chance to enlist Gmail’s help in responding to the numerous e-mails you receive every day. With the newly released Autopilot, Gmail takes its service one step further. Now, Google’s Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed Intelligence Entity—otherwise known as CADIE—will assess the tone of the e-mails you receive and respond to them for you.

With the time you save by letting CADIE respond to your e-mails, you’ll have plenty of time to download music. The owners of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay have made it easier for you, too, by selling their site to Warner Bros.

When they faced their last round of legal charges in Sweden this February, they argued that even if they got sued, they wouldn’t have money to pay the damages. Now they’ve got the cash (around $13 billion) and Warner Bros. can deal with the legal complications.

You’ll also save time now that The Guardian plans to eliminate its print version and switch entirely to the Twitter platform. After all, you knew perfectly well that any story worth telling could be expressed in 140 characters or less. Thank goodness that dinosaur newspaper finally caught on after 188 years!

So you’ve streamlined your day. It’s time to sit back, relax and have a good hearty laugh over all the April Fools’ Day jokes that exploded on the Web. Because as it turns out, no matter what is bothering you or causing you stress, laughter is the best medicine. No…really! It’s not a joke!

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer