We all spend some time on a search engine. And, believe it or not, some of that information is gathered.
Back a few years ago, there was a leak of information by AOL. They anonymized the search data of 650,000 AOL users and made the 36,389,629 searches available to academics for research purposes. Paul Boutin from Slate magazine got his hands on the data and very quickly came to realize that there were seven types of searchers. He published his findings in Slate and then they were republished in The Best of Technology Writing 2007 (an excellent book, by the way, that I highly recommend reading).
So, according to Paul (and leaked AOL data), these are the seven types of searchers:
The Pornhound - lookin’ for love in all the wrong places! Dedicated to getting that next hit of nudity and inappropriate adult content.
The Manhunter - trying to find out more about specific people. Could be a headhunter, HR manager, or stalker. (They are, after all, hard to tell apart!)
The Shopper - they’ve got money burning a hole in their pocket (or a credit on PayPal using up database records). Looking to buy the next great thing they absolutely need until the next great thing comes along.
The Obsessive - seriously addicted to one topic. They may look for something else from time to time but they always come back to the same thing.
The Omnivore - they don’t have any specific pattern of searching, they are just searching a lot. They either search for the sake of searching or have an unquenchable thirst to know everything!
The Newbie - often search for website addresses (mistaking the search bar for the address bar) or searching for terms that make no sense (e.g. “a”, “the”, “allthebestboybandsintheentireworld”)
The Basket Case - overly concerned with why they are not perfect. Treat the search engine like a therapyst (e.g. “Why am I so ugly?”, “Why won’t Tim go out with me?”)
So, what type of a searcher are you? Leave us a message in the comments.
If you have ever done a presentation, you know that a remote presenter is an absolute must! The Indy Project outlines how to use your Wii controller as a remote presenter so that you can stand away from your computer and use the remote to control your presentation.
Currently Wii Presenter has two key mappings. One for PowerPoint, and
one for Zoom. Initially the PowerPoint mapping is selected. The current
mapping can be determined by looking at the blue lights at the bottom
of the remote. #1 lit = PowerPoint. #2 lit = Zoom. The Wiimote will
also produce a short rumble whenever changing between mappings.
It is amazing the stuff that people are doing with the Wii remote!
And, if you have been following along, you will note that this is the end of Awesome Find Day. That was a 24 posts in 24 hours marathon. Time for a break!
There are a number of reasons why you would want to hide a text file. You need to keep your passwords somewhere. There is sensitive information.
There is a really neat post on Megaleecher which walks you through hiding your text using nothing more than notepad!
Please be aware that the file needs to be stored on an NTFS filesystem and the data will probably be lost if you transfer it to a different file system. But that can work to your asvantage since most USB sticks are FAT or FAT32, if someone tries to take your file off site using this method, the secret information will automatically be left behind!
There always seems to be less and less time each day to get things done. So, whenever I can, I try to find quicker ways to perform various functions on the computer. One way to do this is to be able to start different applications in Windows from the command line or the run box.
Cyber-Junkie has provided a nice list of applications and how you can launch them from the run box!
Sometimes IT is called in to get information after someone has broken a policy or committed a crime with a computer. It is always important to have a good forensics tool available to you. Plainsight might be the right tool for the job.
PlainSight is a versatile computer forensics environment that allows inexperienced forensic practitioners perform common tasks using powerful open source tools.
We have taken the best open source forensic/security tools, customised them, and combined them with an intuitive user interface to create an incredibly powerful forensic environment.
With PlainSight you can perform operations such as:
Get hard disk and partition information
Extract user and group information
View Internet histories
Examine Windows firewall configuration
Discover recent documents
Recover/Carve over 15 different file types
Discover USB storage information
Examine physical memory dumps
Examine UserAssist information
Extract LanMan password hashes
Preview a system before acquiring it
You can see PlainSight in action in the demo section. However we think that the best way to learn about it is to download the PlainSight iso from the downloads section and boot a computer with it.
If you have ever done a presentation, you know that a remote presenter is an absolute must! The Indy Project outlines how to use your Wii controller as a remote presenter so that you can stand away from your computer and use the remote to control your presentation.
There are a number of reasons why you would want to hide a text file. You need to keep your passwords somewhere. There is sensitive information.
There always seems to be less and less time each day to get things done. So, whenever I can, I try to find quicker ways to perform various functions on the computer. One way to do this is to be able to start different applications in Windows from the command line or the run box.
Sometimes IT is called in to get information after someone has broken a policy or committed a crime with a computer. It is always important to have a good forensics tool available to you. 