13 Awesome Resources For HDR Wallpapers

HDR (high dynamic range) images are photos made up of the same image shot at several different exposures, and when you combine them you get a color-rich, almost surreal image with amazing highlights. They make stunning desktops for your computer, and we’ve found 13 resources for you to grab some of your own to freshen up your dreary work space.

 

Flickr HDR Photos - Quick access to all photos on FlickrFlickr reviews that are a minimum of 1024 x 768 and HDR.

 

 

GetAWallpaper.com - A small selection of landscapes and cityscapes with the HDR style.

 

 

HDRLandscapes.com - Not a huge selection, but a nice collection of landscapes, deserted buildings and nature shots. Images don’t have selectable sizes, but they start off quite large so you can make them the size you need.

 

 

HDWallpapers.net - A site focusing strictly on high definition wallpapers, with a large selection of cityscapes and more in HDR.

 

 

HDRWalls.com - A small selection of for BlackBerrys up to higher resolutions on computer monitors.

 

 

 

Interfacelift.com - Offers extremely high resolution formatted just about everywhere imaginable from iPhones, dual monitor setups, up to HDTVs.

 

 

 

MyBestDesktops.com - A site with daily postings of desktop wallpapers, there is no category or tag for HDR images, but they have several. Numerous categories for nature, city scenes, still life and more.

 

 

 

PictureCorrect.com - HDR backgrounds in numerous sizes focusing on landscapes, nature, sunsets and more.

 

 

 

Raym’s Photo - A photographer from Netherlands with HDR wallpapers of architecture, nature, castles and more.

 

 

 

SDuffyPhotography.com - A personal photographer who not only gives out HDR images for wallpapers, gives you lessons on the technique.

 

 

 

ShiftedReality.com - A mixture of actual HDR photography shots and computer generated 3D wallpapers.

 

 

 

 

WallpaperStock.com - A small selection with a mixture of HDR artwork an actual photographs.

 

 

WPdb.de - A German wallpaper site, but still easy to navigate with nice HDR images.

Five Best Web Browsers.

It's probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer.

Chrome

Windows only (for practical purposes, but soon on Mac and Linux, if we're lucky): Some browsers have roots going back to the early 1990s—Chrome, on the other hand, is the new kid on the block. Although Chrome has a distant relationship to Konqueror and is a cousin to the Safari web browser—both share the speedy WebKit rendering engine—Google's browser is less than a year old. Despite its youth, it's already garnered praise for its minimalist interface and snappy page rendering. Chrome also handles site errors and quirks well, and each individual tab is a unique process, so a crash or lag in one shouldn't pull down or crash the others. In general, though, Chrome has caught attention for running a performance-focused JavaScript engine in a lightweight GUI. Also worth noting, Chrome has been holding its own in the recent Pwn2Own security challenge, with the distinction of being the only browser left standing after the first day of security exploits and attacks.

 

 

 

Opera

Windows/Mac/Linux: Opera is a rock-solid browser with roots stretching back to 1994. Many of the features baked right into Opera are either not implemented in other browsers, or require multiple extensions at the cost of system resources—navigation by mouse gestures is one of the flashier examples. Despite being feature-packed, Opera has a fairly small market share, due largely in part to being trialware up until 2000 and advertisement-supported until 2005—many people were turned off by the expense, if not the ads. Still, Opera proponents have long claimed that Opera beats Internet Explorer and Firefox when it comes to speedy rendering. Another selling point for Opera is the quality of the built-in tools. For many users, the built-in RSS reader, email client, and BitTorrent client do their jobs admirably, cutting down on the number applications they need running at once. Opera is extensible, but the pool of available extensions is radically smaller than that available for Firefox.

 

 

 

 

 

Firefox

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox is the grandchild of the venerable Mosaic browser and free-roaming son of Netscape. Although Firefox has a myriad of user-friendly, forward-thinking features, a decently secure framework, and an open-source ideology, its most prominent is extensibility. When convincing a Firefox user to abandon Firefox for anything else, even temporarily, you won't have to fight them over giving up the AwesomeBar or about:config tweaks—you'll hear a common, understandable refrain: "What about my extensions?" The repository of extensions maintained by Mozilla currently has over 6,000 entries, covering everything from blocking advertisements, to managing your clipboard, to allowing you to further customize your browsing experience with scripts a la Greasemonkey. Combine the passion people have for extensions and the ability to sync those extensions across multiple computers and portable installations, and you've got a force to be contended with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Internet Explorer

Windows only: Internet Explorer still commands a healthy chunk of the browser market, mostly because it ships with the most popular operating system on Earth and fits, if not exactly elegantly, into corporate computer plans. While many or most IE users stick with it for lack of wanting to try something else, Lifehacker readers definitely don't fall into that crowd—the majority of readers who voted in favor of Internet Explorer are sporting Internet Explorer 8. By contrast, nearly 20 percent of those surfing the web right now are using Internet Explorer 6, which had its initial release in 2001. Version 8 could mark a resurgence for the brand, though. It's the first version of Internet Explorer to have a strong focus on web standards compliance, as well as increasing rendering speed. And like Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 maintains a separate process for each tab to increase stability and security. Internet Explorer 8 has also beefed up its security measures from previous versions, including active filtering against malicious cross-site scripting and ActiveX isolation from the core of the browser.

 

 

 

 

 

Safari

Windows/Mac: Safari is Apple's contribution to the web browsing world, built originally to fit snugly inside OS X. Like Chrome, Safari runs the speedy WebKit rendering engine for snappy page loads. In addition to its WebKit core, Safari also has the Nitro JavaScript engine, which lays claim to radically faster JavaScript execution than Internet Explorer and Firefox (in its own testing reports, anyways). Safari sports Apple's Cover Flow browser for perusing your history and bookmarks and an eye-catching display of the top 24 sites you've visited as the default page when Safari is loaded.

View Streets through Google Street View!

Google Street View, a new service by Google

by which you can view the streets of your area! Yeah, I am not joking. Though this service is only available to few countries, most likely Google will soon add this feature for other countries. This feature is a very innovative but on the other hand, it could be also used for bad reasons as you may have heard that there was news that terrorists used  Google Earth in 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. So there is always a dark side of technology and we do have to live with it!

Still wondering what’s Google Street View? This videowill help you understand it better.

Saw the video? Very easy to use, right? Just drag the pegman here and there and click on arrows on streets. For detailed instructions on how to use Google Street View, please visit here. You can view some featured places like Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Sydney Harbour, Sydney, Australia, The Colosseum, Rome, Italy and many more.

Well, unfortunately, this service is not available in India at the moment.

Here is an image where Google Street View is available:

(Click on the image to enlarge it or view the map here)

What are you waiting for? Go to Google Maps (as the feature is merged with Google Maps) and enjoy this feature! Hope you like it!

You can also view the Google Street View FAQ for any queries you have.

Screenshots:

(Click on the Images to enlarge)

Links: Google| Google Earth| Google Maps| Street View

| FAQ| Instructions

Video Credits: Google

The truth about Virtual or Swap Memory

A lot has been said about how virtual memory increases system performance. After RAM, people often suggest the second best way to get a speed boost is to increase the size of pagefile.sys. Its time for debunking some myths about virtual memory.

Here are a few false beliefs about virtual memory

1. More is better.
2. Setting a static swap file size will make virtual memory more effective.
3. Emptying the Pagefile will increase system performance.

All of these are false!!!!

What is virtual memory?

Without turning this into a lecture on Operating Systems, I’ll explain what Virtual memory is all about and keep it brief. Virtual memory is a technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory, while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage.

Now, lets say I have 512MB RAM and running Adobe Photoshop and Firefox simultaneously. On wndows XP, assuming 200MB is already allocated to the kernal, the user applications i.e Photoshop and Firefox are left with 300 MB of space. Firefox will run smoothly while you’ll notice lag while working with photoshop.

This is due to pagefaults which occur when the required amount of RAM is insufficient and data needs to be fetched from the hard disk. Firefox can accomodate itself well within 300MB of RAM but for photoshop it isnt a sweet deal. Thats where virtual memory kicks in, the OS reserves some portion of the hard disk as memory, hence the name virtual. As HDD space is higher than RAM, programs  use virtual address ranges which in total exceed the amount of real memory.

 

Problem with virtual memory

As the memory available for the system increases, you’d expect the performance to increase. To a certain extent it does help but as read/write speeds of electromagnetic HDD are very slow compared to the semiconductor based RAM, it doesnt help even page file increases twice the size of your main memory. Simply put, having over 1.5 GB of pagefile for 512 MB RAM is not benefitial.

Now adays, RAM has become very inexpensive and 4GB RAM in dual channel is very common. I prefer to disable page file as it saves me unnecessary read writes cycles on the HDD while also conserving my laptop battery. 4GB of memory is enough for most people and disabling the page file has given be better results. It even has long term benefits as it prevents undue HDD activity and increases its life.

 

Best way to enable virtual memory

• If you do not plan to upgrade to 4GB memory, then you can still make the best of your page file, by keeping it in a separate Hard drive altogether, the read write headers are spared of the extra overhead as pagefaults are dealt with in the other hard drive.
• Never, keep the pagefile in a different partition than that of Windows in the same HDD. Meaning, if you have only one hard disk then you should keep the pagefile in the same partition as that of Windows and not a different partition of the same hard drive as many people believe. As, doing so results in the read/write heads requiring to travel large distances spanning partitions back and forth!

I hope this mini guide on virtual memory help the readers.

Tumblr: What’s the Best Tumblelog?

Tumblr’s wonderfully simple blogging platform has given birth to untold distractions and oddities, from Upside Down Dogs to Brokers with Hands on their Faces.

 

And yet it’s not just amusing pictures and re-blogged content: Tumblr is also home to original prose, artwork, thought pieces, music and editorial writing; a diversity that inspired graphic designer Matt McInerneyto host the Tumblr Awards. The winners of this unofficial community vote were announced on Friday.

 

The Best Tumblelogs?

Where then, should Tumblr newbies head for the best of the Tumblelogs? The winners are…

 

 

                                    Overall Best Tumblelog
                                    garfieldminusgarfield.net 

 

 

Best Use of Reblogging
soupsoup.tumblr.com

Most Creative Use of Tumblr
domonomnom.tumblr.com

Best Group/Community
bonerparty.tumblr.com

(semi-nsfw content)

Best Audio Posts
songsyouusedtolove.tumblr.com

Best Video Posts
jakeandamir.com

Best Image Posts
garfieldminusgarfield.net

Best Quotes or Conversations
whitewhine.tumblr.com

Best Original Content / Editorials
magicmolly.tumblr.com

Funniest Tumblelog
jakeandamir.com

Best in Art/Design
sarazucker.tumblr.com

Best Tumblelog Design
hrrrthrrr.tumblr.com

Best Tumblr Theme Designer
heather-rivers.com

Best Free Tumblr Theme
penguinclassics.tumblr.com

KooLoader- All in One Free Download Manager

KooLoader is an all-in-one free download manager application which increases your downloading experience by adding an adaptive download accelerator, segmented downloads for acceleration, an astounding number of simultaneous downloads. When you copy any download URL, it will prompt KooLoader to automatically paste it into its window and simply hitting OK will start the download.

KooLoader has a scheduler, which is good feature by which you can download at times you chose and specify. Apart from this you have the ability to establish the maximum number of segments and the maximum number of simultaneous downloads.

It also features resume support which means it can resume broken downloads that had been interrupted on account of  lost connections, network breakdown or system shutdowns saving files you downloaded up to then.

The user interface is very simple making it very easy for use. The program offers support for Internet Explorer, Firefox and other browsers.

Download KooLoader

Microsoft Announces Availability of Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft has announced the availability of final version of Internet Explorer (IE) 8 which includes lots of improvements and is also considered as one of the fastest browsers. It can be downloaded in 25 languages at IE8 website

starting at noon EDT on March 19. Internet Explorer 8 is easier to use, faster and offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people’s increasing concerns about online safety.

 

 

“Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”

 

Some of the features of new version of IE;

• Smart Address Bar
• Group similar tabs
• Redesigned “New Tab” Page
• Reopen Last Browsing Session
• Enhanced Find On Page
• Result count and  Result highlighting
• Accelerators and Web slices
• InPrivate Browsing.
• Crash recovery

Download IE8 [Via Press Release]

Simple Home Remedies To Save Your Expensive Gadgets!

Our life is full of gadgets. We can’t live without them.  There are times when your gadgets stop working because of some faults. Ever thought of some ideas that can help you repair these gadgets with the use of simple home remedies? Well, here are some, but, mind you, none of them come with 100% scientific guarantee. But they work! Take a look!

 

 

Rescue your cell from water

You always try to protect your cell from not going into water, but atleast once in its lifetime, it finds its way into water. That’s a very sad moment. But does this mean that it’s time to abandon your cell phone? No! Especially not if you try this home remedy.

• First of all, take out the phone battery from the cell immediately. This will prevent electrical short circuits within the cell which can even burn the internal parts of your cell.

• 

  Next, gently wipe your cell with a tissue, and bury it into a jar full of uncooked rice. Yes, rice! Remember that the coconut is kept in dry rice to keep moisture away? It’s the same logic that works here too. It has been found that rice has a high chemical affinity for water. In simple words, it attracts water. So, water doesn’t stick to the cold metal of your cell, instead it is soaked by the rice, thus leaving your cell dry (well, almost dry). That’s awesome remedy, isn’t it?

Extend laptop battery

Most common problem with laptops is that that its battery runs out when you need it. So these are simple tricks to improve your laptop’s battery life.

• Remove the battery from your laptop when you are using the AC power. This reduces the constant re-charging of the battery. Maintaining the battery at full charge for extended periods can shorten its life.
• It’s a good idea to remove the charger cord frequently if you are lazy to remove the battery and fix it back into the laptop — at least once a week.
• A similar trick  works for your iPod too. If your iPod’s battery refuses to charge completely, make the battery completely dry. Next, simply take out the battery from the iPod and leave it outside for 24 hours. Plug it back in and notice the difference.

Print with dried cartridge ink

If your printer’s ink dries out just when you are in the middle of printing an important document, simply take out the cartridge from the printer and run a hair dryer for three to four minutes and place it back into the printer and print again while it is still warm. Experts say that the hair dryer melts the thick ink inside the cartridge, thus releasing some extra ink for a page or two. Another good one!

Revive your dead hard drive

If you have been hit by the blue screen of death (on your computer) — and the hard drive just crashed — don’t panic! You might be able to retrieve your precious data. The trick is that simply freeze the hard drive for an entire night.
This might sound silly, but the logic is that, many hard drive failures are caused by worn parts that no longer fit with each other, making it impossible for the computer to read from the drive. If you freeze the drive for an entire night, lowering the temperature causes its metal and plastic internals to contract slightly. Thawing it will cause those parts to expand again, and possibly, they will bind with each other. This might not bring the drive back to its life essentially, but give you enough time to transfer your precious data to a safe place. Worth a try, right?

Source: TOI E-Paper

Create Videos from your Photo Collection

Photo to Video Converter is a free application which helps you to create exciting photo slide show from your digital photo collection. You can create the photo slideshow with background music, subtitles and transition effects. The program’s simplified three-step process enables users of all levels to easily build custom slide shows to view, store and share your pictures.

Key Features;

• Supports BMP, EMF, GIF, J2K, JPEG, PCX, PNG, RAS, TGA, TIFF and WMF Image Files
• Supports background music, with WMA,MP3,WAV,ADPCM,PCM,GSM,OGG audio files
• Supports extracting audio from video files as background music.
• Sets sub-title for each photo–you can define their location on the screen, choose a font size and color.
• Choose from 142 transitional effects (fade, slide, wipe, etc.) for each individual slide.
• Generate Real Media video files, then share your pictures on the Internet easily.
• Generate DivX, XviD video files with high quality but small size.
• Supports AVI, DivX, Xvid, MPEG, WMV and Real Media video files.

Download Photo to Video Converter

25+ Search Engines to Search Files on RapidShare

Rapidshare is undoubtedly one of the most popular file hosting service world wide. Anyone can upload files to Rapidshare, but downloading files is not an easy job as free users need to wait for sometime before they can get download URL. Since RapidShare is the most preferred service for uploading files, you get almost any type of files for downloading. The only problem with RapidShare is that there is no search feature available to find files. You can download any files only if you get the download URL.

So here is a list of top Search Engines to search files on RapidShare.

1. RapidShare Searcher

2. RapidShare 1

3. Share Miner

4. Filez

5. One Click Files

6. Search Files

7. Rapid Share Search Engine

8. Rapidshare Link

9. Search Shared

10. Rapidoogle

11. Rapid O Search

12. RapidSearch

13. Rapid Library

14. Rapid All

15. Rapidor

16. Rapid Search

17. Rapid Share Search

18. RapidWolf

19. Sharing Rapid

20. Digg RapidShare

21. Quick Search

22. Sharing Engines

23. Rapid Burner

24. Rapid Share Data

25. File Crop

26. Files Hunt

27. File Search

28. Mega Download

There are many more search engines to do the searching and if you have any favorite ones, mention it on comments.

Windows 7 Customization Pack for XP

Ever since Windows 7 Beta was released to public, there has been lots of customization packs based on Windows 7 for Vista and XP. The looks and features of Windows 7 were widely accepted. Deviantart user has created a customization pack for Windows XP

which transforms it with the looks of Windows 7. The theme pack will run on Windows XP SP3 English versions only.

Img Credit: Author of theme (Picassa243)

The pack has mostly the improved and revamped versions of my Mods for Windows7. The customization pack includes ;

• Windows Vista System Properties (Sysdm.cpl)
• Windows Automatic Updates Mod
• Windows Security Center Mod
• Windows 7 Gabriola Font for XP
• Windows Seven Calculator for XP
• Excellent Styler Skins from Win7 Build 7000.
• Exclusive and official Windows-7 Wallpapers
• Perfect theme for Windows-7 by Ernasco
• Windows 7 and Vista Findexer Kit for XP

Note from the Author: The pack transforms the major system files bringing a change in the way the GUI looks. The sidebar however is not included in the pack.

Download Customization Pack for XP

Hotmail POP3 Access is Available to Users Worldwide

Previously Hotmail had made available POP3 access

to users in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Now Microsoft has made available

Hotmail POP3 access to users Worldwide. POP3 is a protocol that allows retrieval of your emails in almost any email program that you’ve installed on your mobile phone or PC.

To access Hotmail on your desktop email client or your phone use the configuration mentioned below;

POP server: pop3.live.com(Port 995)

POP SSL required? Yes

User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com

Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live

SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)

Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)

TLS/SSL required? Yes

This is indeed great news to all Hotmail users worldwide, they can now access Hotmail on Outlook without any additional plugins.

Pageboss Gives you Detailed Analysis of Website

Pageboss is a free web service which gives detailed analysis of any website. . With Pageboss websites and blogs are able to access to a variety of their statistical data. These data includes IP address, location, creation date, sitemap and robots.txt availability etc. Apart from these, Pageboss also provides details on Google, Yahoo and Live indexed pages as well as traffic information from Alexa and Quantcast etc.

Pageboss gives details on other parameters like delicious links, Netcraft and Dmoz ranking, Technorati rank, Wayback machine and twitter details. Overall Pageboss looks like a decent service for quick analysis of any website.

Link Here--

Pageboss Home Page

8 Tools To Help You Become Super Orkut User!

If you are an Orkut user then here are 8 tools which will help you in becoming a SUPER ORKUT USER!

Scrap boy : ScrapBoy is the best tool for accessing Orkut in convenient and simples way. You don’t need to use the browser at all and no need to visit Orkut too. It just sends you the updates (scrap, albums, birthday) right on your desktop and lets you scrap easily too.

Orkut Mass Delete Tool: It will do help you for mass deletion of the scraps. It will be very useful for all Orkut users and all the moderators of the communities as they need to delete the most of the spam topics.

Orkut Toolbar : Orkut toolbar helps you to format your posts in orkut. It helps you to create & manage custom signatures, insert & view images and flash movies in Orkut. (FireFox plug-in)

APC Software -Orkut Cute 9.4.27 :Its a account monitoring program available for FREE ,With it you can easily access your account and quickly check your scraps. I guess, its a tool Orkut users simply can’t afford to miss.

Free Orkut Toolbar : This toolbar provides you quick links to the most commonly used features of Orkut. Apart from that it has got Radio, Email notification, RSS feed reader and other handy utilities.

Orkut Alert 0.8 Alpha R2 : Orkut Alert is a tiny application which sits in the system tray and alerts you about new scraps, G-mail messages. You’ll find these functions in GTalk, so its really up to you if you want to use it.

Gladder 1.2.2.1 : Gladder is a FireFox plug-in which is a proxy tool and lets you access Orkut, even where it is blocked by firewalls. Must have for die-hard Orkut users.

Difference Between Intel core 2 duo vs Intel dual core vs Intel Pentium D

Intel core 2 duo, Intel dual core and Intel Pentium D are the 3 type of processors from the chip maker intel. However not many people are sure about the exact difference between the 3.

The confusion of Intel core 2 duo, Intel dual core and Intel Pentium D

The confusion between Intel core 2 duo and Intel dual core primarily resulted from a stupid naming convention by Intel. 2 and dual may be synonyms in English but that does not make Intel core 2 duo vs Intel dual core any more similar. The similarity of names makes even many computer geeks confused when asked to do a comparison of Intel core 2 duo and Intel dual core.

 

Intel Pentium D CPU comprises of two dies, each containing a single core residing next to each other on a multi-chip module package. The Pentium D consumes a relatively high power. It runs very hot and is not a good OverClocker.

 

Intel Dual Core is the first dual-core CPU from Intel. The Dual core makes use of two cores on a single die i.e it has two chips in one package. It solves the problem of overheating of Intel Pentium D without compromising on the performance.

 

 

Intel Core 2 Duo processors are the next gen processors from Intel. It is developed with a new Architecture called Core. The new architecture of Intel core2 duo makes it a lot better processor that runs cool. Most importantly the Intel core2 duo is a super over clocker.

I hope the comparison between Intel core2 duo and Intel dual core has made the decission of choosing a better processor for your laptop comparatively easier. Let me know if you still have any concerns in the comments and I shall answer them after more research.

140+ Search Engines and Directories

Search, the holy grail that pushed Google into global Internet domination, is still coveted by many. The fact that most users don’t even consider switching Google for anything else doesn’t mean that there’s no innovation going on in the field of search. Quite the contrary; which can also be seen from the list below.

 

 

General Information Search Engines

GoogleGoogle reviews – Does it need any explanation? In case you haven’t been online in the last 10 years, this is the largest, most popular and widely used search engine on the planet.

YahooYahoo! reviews – Much like Google above. Also a widely used general information search engine.

DogPile – Compiles results from some of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Windows Live Search.

AltaVista – Search the web, audio, images, videos and news. You can also search WorldWide or narrow your results to U.S. Only.

Windows Live Search - Search the web and get your own personalized page filled with information you love.

Zuula – Search the web with results from all of the major search engines, you can also specify which search engines you want results from. You can also add the Zuula search to your FirefoxFirefox reviews search box.

Mamma.com - A meta search engine. Not only can you search the web for information and videos you can also search the white and yellow pages.

Ask.com – Find whatever you are looking for quickly and easily. You can search the web for images, blogs, news and much more. Ask has recently had a redesign and some reports have been very positive about it.

WebCrawler – Why settle for one search engine when you can have them all. Get your results mixed together from Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and more.

Netscape Search – Search the web for your favorite information with Netscape. Not the best search engine out there by any means, but solid; mostly used by Netscape users.

MetaCrawler – Search the web, yellow pages and white pages from one place.

Clusty – A twist on typical search engines. Clusty not only lists your results like you are used to seeing, but it also breaks them into clusters, or categories, making finding the desired results a little easier.

Excite – A search engine and much more. Get your own customized page with news, horoscopes, local weather and more.

MozDex – A search engine seeded from the Dmoz Directory, it is powered by open source technology.

Kanoodle – This is a pay-per-click sponsored search engine. This means you can pay for inclusion, if you are trying to drive traffic to your site.

ExactSeek – Large online search engine, you can search the web, blogs, news and articles. You can include your site for free or featured/paid inclusion.

AlltheWeb – Search results are provided by Yahoo. You can also search specifically for news, audio and video all in 36 different languages.

Lycos - Lycos search results are powered by Ask.com and much like Excite you can customize the homepage to suit your interests.

ScrubtheWeb – On top of searching the web, this site is also a host to many great web developer tools, like the meta tag builder and analyzer.

LemmeFind – Meta search engine that pulls results from Google. Yahoo and MSN.

KartOO – A fun flash based metasearch engine with a unique visual interface. Rather than displaying long boring lists of results, KartOO displays an interactive map for finding results.

AOL Search – Search the web with AOL. Search results are enhanced by Google.

HotBot - Search the web using Ask.com or MSN and you can create custom filters to block out all of that unwanted information.

SearchMaze – Nice clean search engine, with some useful tools and features like their toolbar with the ability search from over 150 search engines.

IxQuick – A very powerful meta search engine, not only can you find what you want on the web, you can also find phone numbers and addresses through their international phone directory search.

MSN.com - Search the web with MSN, there are so many other resources available.

GigaBlast – Nice search engine with lots of features. You can restrict search results to specific sites, add search features to your own site and more.

Seekz – Meta search engine with site clustering and duplicate removal.

Zippy – Great all around search engine with a special emphasis on webmasters. You can compare top 10 results for SEO purposes, compare two sites against each other and other great features.

Iboogie – Meta search engine that clusters results so they can be broken down into the most relevant information related to your criteria.

Irazoo – Get points which can earn you prizes by simply using the search engine.

WebFetch – Query results from U.K based sites only or search internationally.

 

 

 

 

Human Edited Search Engines and Directories

Mahalo - Jason Calacanis’ baby, a very serious contender with lots of funding, is best described as a cross between WikipediaWikipedia reviews and Google. If a human edit result for your query doesn’t exist, you’ll be transfered to standard Google results.

Dmoz - Probably the most popular and largest human edited search engine directory. All sites must be submitted and approved for placement in the directory.

Sproose – A user powered search engine. Users vote on the results and then the sites are ranked accordingly. This allows them to provide quality results, without all of the junk that you find in a typical search engine.

Directory Hound – Human edited directory modeled after Dmoz. All sites must be submitted and approved before entry. Covers all general categories.

Yoofindit.com – General information directory, all sites are reviewed by staff members.

Best of the Web – Very popular directory, with strict submission guidelines. Also have an award program for the best ranked sites.

10 Directory - Nice, clean looking categorized web directory.

Ajdee.com – All submitted sites are reviewed and approved by editors before inclusion is granted. They cover all general categories and do not allow adult related websites.

Search Turtle – A human edited web directory and search engine. Make claims of having the most rigorous submission guidelines, to allow for the best spam-free results.

GoGuides.org – Community guides review all site submissions for inclusion within the directory. Very clean look, easy to use.

JoeAnt – A very large directory portal operated by volunteer guides. You can find a little bit of everything here and you can apply to become a guide yourself.

ChaCha – Suppose you can’t find what you are searching for. One click on ChaCha will get you in touch with a live guide to help you find what you want.

 

 

 

 

 

Book and Library Search Engines

Librarians Internet Index – A publicly funded search engine and directory of information and resources for librarians.

BookFinder – Searches over 125 million books from several online catalogs. You are sure to find your favorite.

AddAll – Search for your favorite book from over forty different stores and 20,000 different sellers, including Amazon.com.

UsedBookSearch – Search thousands of online shops for used, rare and out of print books.

ComicSeeker.com – If comic books are more your style, search the web for rare and collectible comics here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Business Search Engines and Directories

Bpubs.com – A business search engine and directory for business and trade related publications.

BizEurope – Extensive directory and trade portal for European businesses.

Business.com – Large business search engine and directory.

HongKong Business Directory – Directory of information for over 100,000 HongKong based businesses.

World Trade Search – Search engine and trade directory for businesses in North America, Europe and Asia.

Jayde – Popular business to business search engine. Find businesses in many different markets.

AardvarkBusiness.net – Find thousands of business websites around the web with this search engine.

Cyber TradeZone – Global directory of importers and exporters.

Zibb – A global search engine for finding businesses on the web.

Made-in-China.com – Trade directory of products from Chinese Suppliers.

MasterSeek – Find businesses and contact information from companies in 75 countries. Filter results to specific countries.

BusinesSeek – Global business directory and search engine.

KellySearch.com – Directory of over 2 million businesses and products from around the globe.

SmallBizSearch.com – Small business search engine provided by Entrepreneur.com.

BusinessCrawler – Large business search engine and directory.

BizAhead – International business to business directory.

Alibaba.com – Extensive Global trade directory, many different products and manufacturers available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music and Video Related Search Engines

Project Playlist – Generates results from record labels, artist websites music blogs and other publicly available websites. Search by Artist name, song title or both.

PodNova – A podcast and video blog search engine. You can search the directory or browse by tag, you can also add your own feed for others to find.

Truveo – Searches through millions of videos across the web each day. Purchased by AOL in 2006 this is one of the largest sources for finding videos.

Espew – An Mp3 search engine that aggregates results from around the web. This is a completely free and legal service, they pay a percentage to the record labels every time a song is played.

SkreemR – Search engine that indexes publicly accessible audio files from across the web.

EveryZing – A media search engine for finding audio and video files across multiple channels.

Blinkx – Very large search engine for finding videos across the web. They have millions of results in their database are considered to be one of the largest video search engines in the world.

ScoopVid! - Track down the most popular videos by the hour, day or even month. You can also search the web for video results.

MusicIP – Discover new artists through their digital music search engine. You can also sign-up to include your own recordings in the index.

MusicHits – Find everything from musician homepages to music on sale to music news sites. Very extensive directory.

Mp3Realm – Search for Mp3 files artist, title, genre and album. You can also filter results by duration.

Musicians-Search.net – A user updated directory of music related sites. You can browse by genre or even instruments or search the directory. You can also add your own music site.

MusicSearcher – Search or browse by your favorite artist or music genre. They also aggregate breaking news in the music industry.

Vdoogle – This search engine indexes results from sites like YouTubeYouTube reviews and Google Video, to bring you shared and viral videos.

The Brass Band Portal – If brass bands are your thing, this is a search engine dedicated to finding related information for brass fans.

Artist Direct – A network of music related sites and services. You can find sites that offer multi-media content, music related e-commerce, music news and more.

PodScope – The first of its kind, PodScope is an audio and video search engine that allows you to search and find podcasts by the words that are spoken within them.

MusicRobot – Search the Internet for MIDI files of your favorite music.

Pixsy – Very nice media search engine. You can find plenty of images and videos here to suit your fancy.

Music Crawler – One of the leading U.S. Based search engines. Find your favorite music anywhere on the web.

LyricsPoint.com – Looking for song lyrics? This search engine pulls over 100,000 song lyrics to match your criteria.

Mu-Seek – Search the web for your favorite music, by words in the title or words in the song lyrics. Just in case you can’t remember what the song was called.

Ulinkx – A social video search engine. Browse popular videos by tags or perform a search for your favorites.

MELE.com – A specialty search engine for finding Hawaiian music by artist name, album name or song title.

SeeqPod – Search engine aggregates music from all over the web, and displays the results in a clean interface. You can also play the music right from the search results to see if it is what you are looking for.

MusicVideos4All – Search the web for your favorite music videos or browse through what others are searching for.

VidSea - Beta search engine for video hunters.

 

 

 

 

 

Blog and RSS Search Engines and Directories

BlogSearchEngine – Search engine queries results from over 10 million blogs around the web.

Google Blog Search - Search Google’s index to find blogs on your favorite topic.

Bloogz – Blog search engine.

Total Blog Directory – Categorized directory of blogs.

BritBlog.com – Searchable directory of British based blogs.

Real Estate Blogs – A large directory of blogs affiliated with the real estate market.

Technorati – One of the most popular blog directories, they currently index over 100 million blogs on virtually every topic.

BlogDigger – Search engine for finding blogs and RSS feeds.

BlogHub – Online directory of blogs and resources for bloggers.

Blog-Search – Find your favorite blogs and RSS feeds.

BlogCatalog – Very large social blog directory, find a blog or add your own to the list.

Bloglines – Search or share your favorite news feeds, blogs and rich web content.

BlogExplosion – Directory of blogs covering virtually every category.

Peace Corps Journals – Directory of over 3000 blogs written by Peace Corps volunteers from around the world.

Find That Feed – search the web for feeds by keyword.

Plazoo – Blog and feed search engine. You have the option to search in several different languages.

Othx – Personal blog search engine, human edited for quality results.

SplogSpot – Search engine for finding spam blogs, link farms and more spam related content.

Syndic8 – RSS and Atom news feed search engine.

BlogDumps – Directory of blogs from around the web.

Bloggapedia – Directory of blogs , blog news and more. Add your blog to the directory.

BlogHop – Search through nearly 30,000 blogs in this directory, you can find them by tags or keyword search.

PhotoBlogs.org – Search through more than 26,000 photoblogs in their directory.

Blo.gs – Blog search engine owned by Yahoo. Add your own blog to the directory.

Postami.com – RSS and Atom search engine.

BlogFlux – Extensive directory of blogs, and blogging tools and resources.

Blogarama – Searchable blog directory, can also browse by category.

 

 

 

 

Miscellaneous Search Engines

PoemHunter.com – Search for poets, poems, quotations and music.

DriverSearch.com – Have a device that requires a driver? Here you can search the web for thousands of device drivers.

Hawaii Search – A directory committed to indexing every website with relation to the Hawaiin Islands. You can get hotel accommodations or just check out the local shops.

FindSounds – A free search engine for finding audio clips and sound effects. You can get files in Wave, AU and AIFF formats.

AllofMaine.com – A large search directory of Maine only websites.

AardvarkTravel.net – If you are in the need of a good vacation, you can go here and search through over 20 thousand travel sites from around the world.

First Nations Seeker – Extensive directory of North American Indian websites.

HomePageSeek - Some webmasters just don’t have a knack for being found. This search engine and directory, tries to help you find those sites you wouldn’t ordinarily come across.

Black Business Planet – A directory filled with links to African American related websites and content.

WebWombat – Search through over 20 million results from Australian based websites, and customize the homepage to fit your needs.

Social Work Search – Searchable directory of information in the social worker profession.

Teddy Bear Search – A search engine for finding teddy bears around the world. Searches are customizable and you can search in English or French.

StarLink – Search for Astronomy related information, institutions, and addresses.

Krugle - This is a search engine for open source code, projects and technical information for developers.

Scirus – Search engine for scientists. Searches and indexes over 450 million science related websites, to keep scientific information at your fingertips.

Healia – Search engine for health related information.

EscapeArtist.com – A search engine developed to give you calling codes to and from any country in the world.

SFAHQ – Search for results of related interests to the Special Forces. A non-profit project ran by ex-military.

WorthyLinks – A Christian search engine. Find Christian stores and resources from around the web.

FinderSeeker – A search engine for finding other search engines.

ParaSeek – A search engine and directory for those of you interested in the paranormal.