Android launchers are a topic of constant fascination here at MakeUseOf: We’re always on the lookout for unique new ways to control and customize our phones and tablets. From well-known behemoths like Nova Launcher to more experimental newcomers such as Atom Launcher, we’ve shown you just about every major launcher out there today. But launchers usually compete in the customization and tweaking arena: Whichever launcher gets you the most unique home screen, wins. Sometimes, though, we just want to quickly launch some app, rather than marvel at the beauty of our painfully-customized home screen. There’s a whole class of “launcher helpers” — small utilities that don’t even try to offer a full launcher experience. Instead, they help you find what you need as soon as humanly possible, then get out of the way. My long-time favorites Gesture Search and SwipePad are such apps, and today, I’m here with Quad Drawer, a $1 tool that aims to replace your launcher’s built-in app drawer with something simpler, faster, and more elegant.

In a Nutshell

First, a video from LevelUp Studio, Quad Drawer’s developers;

The one-line explanation: Launch any app on your device using a T9 dial-pad.

The concept is simple and compelling, but unsurprisingly, the devil is in the details. Users tend to be very particular about the ways they use their devices, and launching apps is something we all do multiple times every day, so the experience must be flawless. Quad Launcher has to be fast, elegant, and customizable. Fortunately, developer LevelUp Studio has the coding and design prowess needed to deliver the goods: After all, this is the same developer behind the wonderfully polished twitter client, Plume, and the very popular Beautiful Widgets.

Dialing For Apps

The default layout for Quad Drawer looks like this:

No big surprises here: Just an app drawer with a dial pad at the bottom. If you want, you can collapse the dial pad, and end up with something that’s almost identical to what you already have in your browser. The only other notable difference is the tabs laid out on top of the screen letting your sort your apps in the drawer: Most Used, Alphabetical, Recent, and Last Downloaded. Start dialing, though, and the list instantly filters, even if you have hundreds of apps:

The particular prefix I dialed (96) yielded a bunch of apps, with Wolfram Alpha selected by default — but really, I wanted one of the other results, YouTube. When I tapped YouTube in the results list, Quad Launcher learned and adapted. So next time I dialed 96, I got this instead:

Now YouTube was the default. It is this sort of subtle machine learning and adaptability that makes everyday tools fast to use.

Themes, Layouts, and the Floating Mode

My launcher (Nova Prime) uses a dark theme which didn’t mesh so well with Quad Drawer’s default white looks; also, I am not a big fan of the densely populated icon grid format: I find it difficult to hunt for the app I need. Not a problem:

After tweaking a couple of settings, this is what I ended up with. A dark Holo-themed drawer with a list layout, and the same dialer interface at the bottom. Pretty much exactly what I wanted, and the elegant Settings screen made it easy to accomplish:

The only thing you don’t see above is the switch for toggling between an icon grid and a list layout. This is one of the only interface inconsistencies I’ve come across in Quad Launcher: To switch between display modes, you’ll have to use the app’s main menu.

Now that we have the drawer looking just so, wouldn’t it be good if we could quickly launch it from anywhere on the device? This is a problem many “quick launchers” try to solve: Gesture Search utilizes a special motion (a way of flipping your device) which you can use from anywhere to launch it; SwipePad uses a swiping motion from the side of the device; and Quad Drawer uses a floating overlay:

What you see above is my Twitter client of choice, Falcon Pro, with a pale little button on the top-left. That button isn’t part of Falcon Pro: It belongs to Quad Launcher, and tapping it brings up a screen overlay:

This screenshot shows both the floating overlay (you can still see Falcon’s top bar peeking from underneath), and the fact that Quad Drawer lets you opt out of its key feature: You can swap out the T9 dial pad with your own regular keyboard, and just search for apps by typing.

The overlay is neat, but honestly, it’s one of the least elegant parts in the Quad Drawer experience. When it’s enabled, the button is always visible, and will inevitably obscure something you’re trying to read, forcing you to constantly drag it around.

There is another way to quickly access Quad Drawer: It allows you to replace the default search action that happens on Android 4.0 and above when you swipe up from the home button. By default, this starts Google Now — but with Quad Drawer installed, you could start dialing for apps after making that gesture.

A Polished Complement To Your Launcher of Choice

All in all, Quad Drawer demonstrates one thing: Even when it comes to a humble system utility, the details count. With its sane interface sensibilities and flexible configuration, Quad Launcher is sure to please many users looking for a quick way to launch their favorite apps with a minimum of fuss. I think I’ll be keeping it around, to complement Gesture Search and SwipePad on my own phone.

Will you spend a buck to take it for a spin? Or is there another quick-launcher you’re already using?

Android launchers are a topic of constant fascination here at MakeUseOf: We’re always on the lookout for unique new ways to control and customize our phones and tablets. From well-known behemoths like Nova Launcher to more experimental newcomers such as Atom Launcher, we’ve shown you just about every major launcher out there today. But launchers usually compete in the customization and tweaking arena: Whichever launcher gets you the most unique home screen, wins. Sometimes, though, we just want to quickly launch some app, rather than marvel at the beauty of our painfully-customized home screen. There’s a whole class of “launcher helpers” — small utilities that don’t even try to offer a full launcher experience. Instead, they help you find what you need as soon as humanly possible, then get out of the way. My long-time favorites Gesture Search and SwipePad are such apps, and today, I’m here with Quad Drawer, a $1 tool that aims to replace your launcher’s built-in app drawer with something simpler, faster, and more elegant.

In a Nutshell

First, a video from LevelUp Studio, Quad Drawer’s developers;

The one-line explanation: Launch any app on your device using a T9 dial-pad.

The concept is simple and compelling, but unsurprisingly, the devil is in the details. Users tend to be very particular about the ways they use their devices, and launching apps is something we all do multiple times every day, so the experience must be flawless. Quad Launcher has to be fast, elegant, and customizable. Fortunately, developer LevelUp Studio has the coding and design prowess needed to deliver the goods: After all, this is the same developer behind the wonderfully polished twitter client, Plume, and the very popular Beautiful Widgets.

Dialing For Apps

The default layout for Quad Drawer looks like this:

No big surprises here: Just an app drawer with a dial pad at the bottom. If you want, you can collapse the dial pad, and end up with something that’s almost identical to what you already have in your browser. The only other notable difference is the tabs laid out on top of the screen letting your sort your apps in the drawer: Most Used, Alphabetical, Recent, and Last Downloaded. Start dialing, though, and the list instantly filters, even if you have hundreds of apps:

The particular prefix I dialed (96) yielded a bunch of apps, with Wolfram Alpha selected by default — but really, I wanted one of the other results, YouTube. When I tapped YouTube in the results list, Quad Launcher learned and adapted. So next time I dialed 96, I got this instead:

Now YouTube was the default. It is this sort of subtle machine learning and adaptability that makes everyday tools fast to use.

Themes, Layouts, and the Floating Mode

My launcher (Nova Prime) uses a dark theme which didn’t mesh so well with Quad Drawer’s default white looks; also, I am not a big fan of the densely populated icon grid format: I find it difficult to hunt for the app I need. Not a problem:

After tweaking a couple of settings, this is what I ended up with. A dark Holo-themed drawer with a list layout, and the same dialer interface at the bottom. Pretty much exactly what I wanted, and the elegant Settings screen made it easy to accomplish:

The only thing you don’t see above is the switch for toggling between an icon grid and a list layout. This is one of the only interface inconsistencies I’ve come across in Quad Launcher: To switch between display modes, you’ll have to use the app’s main menu.

Now that we have the drawer looking just so, wouldn’t it be good if we could quickly launch it from anywhere on the device? This is a problem many “quick launchers” try to solve: Gesture Search utilizes a special motion (a way of flipping your device) which you can use from anywhere to launch it; SwipePad uses a swiping motion from the side of the device; and Quad Drawer uses a floating overlay:

What you see above is my Twitter client of choice, Falcon Pro, with a pale little button on the top-left. That button isn’t part of Falcon Pro: It belongs to Quad Launcher, and tapping it brings up a screen overlay:

This screenshot shows both the floating overlay (you can still see Falcon’s top bar peeking from underneath), and the fact that Quad Drawer lets you opt out of its key feature: You can swap out the T9 dial pad with your own regular keyboard, and just search for apps by typing.

The overlay is neat, but honestly, it’s one of the least elegant parts in the Quad Drawer experience. When it’s enabled, the button is always visible, and will inevitably obscure something you’re trying to read, forcing you to constantly drag it around.

There is another way to quickly access Quad Drawer: It allows you to replace the default search action that happens on Android 4.0 and above when you swipe up from the home button. By default, this starts Google Now — but with Quad Drawer installed, you could start dialing for apps after making that gesture.

A Polished Complement To Your Launcher of Choice

All in all, Quad Drawer demonstrates one thing: Even when it comes to a humble system utility, the details count. With its sane interface sensibilities and flexible configuration, Quad Launcher is sure to please many users looking for a quick way to launch their favorite apps with a minimum of fuss. I think I’ll be keeping it around, to complement Gesture Search and SwipePad on my own phone.

Will you spend a buck to take it for a spin? Or is there another quick-launcher you’re already using?

The USB flash drive is far from the most exotic hardware most people use, but for many, it’s incredibly important. A fast USB drive can shave minutes of data transfers, and if you use it every day, that can add up. Just one problem; you usually have to pay for the performance.

Or do you? To find out, we set upon the Internet to find not just the fastest USB drives but also the largest, the most affordable, the most rugged, and more. There are plenty of options, but some drives do stand out from the rest.

The Fastest Under $100: SanDisk Extreme

There are plenty of fast USB 3.0 drives in the market, but one stands out from the rest; SanDisk’s Extreme. With transfer speeds of up to 190 MB/s and a 64 GB capacity, this drive blows the doors off rivals and also offers plenty of storage. The $75 price tag (about $1.20 per gigabyte) is more than many will want to pay, however.

SanDisk also sells this drive in 16 GB and 32 GB capacities for about $25 and $45, respectively. They aren’t rated to deliver the 190 MB/s transfer speed of the 64 GB drive, and they cost more per gigabyte of storage.

The Most Expensive, Largest And Fastest: Kingston DataTraveler HyperX Predator

Technically, the most expensive USB drive is probably something like the MiiStore, which is encased in over 400 diamonds. Since this guide is meant to be practical, we’ll instead focus on Kingston’s DataTraveler HyperX Predator.

The bulky Predator is available with a capacity of 512 GB at around $630, which works out to a price-per-gigabyte of about $1.20; not terrible compared to smaller drives. The Predator also boasts insane transfer speeds up to 240 MB/s, beating even the SanDisk Extreme. Of course, the Extreme is actually affordable, while the Predator isn’t.

The Most Rugged: Corsair Flash Survivor

Most USB drives can take a surprising amount of punishment, but few are officially rugged. The Survivor is one of the few among that ground, and it makes impressive claims. According to Corsair, this drive can survive drops, extreme vibration and submersion in up to 200 meters of water.

Performance is reasonable, but not stunning, with reads topping out at 85 MB/s and writes at 70 MB/s for the high-end 64GB model. Smaller drives offer similar read speed, but sacrifice write speed.

These drives comes in 16/32/64 GB capacities that retail for $35/$40/$60, so price-per-gigabyte ranges from $2.18 for the smallest version to about $1.00 for the largest.

The Least Expensive: Whatever’s On Sale

Cheap USB drives, even those offering USB 3.0 speeds, are in no shortage. Every company in the flash drive business offers a cheap introductory version, and most of them retail around $8 for an 8 GB drive. Examples include the SanDisk Cruzer Fit and the Kingston DataTraveler G3.

The drive that is least expensive usually depends on the sale, deal or coupon available. With most of these drives selling under $10, any small discount will make on drive the least expensive. In terms of quality, there’s not much difference; most drives don’t even bother quoting a transfer speed and will fall between 20 and 40 MB/s. In summary, buy whichever best fits your pocket and wallet.

The Smallest: Who Knows?

While all USB drives are small, some are smaller than others, and many users prefer the convenience of a drive so small it can rest unnoticed in a laptop’s USB port. While some may seek the “smallest” drive, this endeavor is pointless because many companies claim to have the smallest drive, yet most fail to offer meaningful information about their product’s measurements. There are also very small drives from off-brand providers that can match the most diminutive brand-name options.

There are some common, reliable choices, however. Among them are the Patriot Tab, SanDisk Fit and Kingston DataTraveler Micro. Small drives are often inexpensive and offer more than one gigabyte per dollar, but the value is often at the cost of performance, as drives in this category are often USB 2.0 only and, if they do support USB 3.0, usually have a transfer rate below 50 MB/s.

The Most Cutting-Edge: Kingston Digital Wi-Drive

USB flash drives may soon be obsolete thanks to the rise of a new device; the wireless drive. These alternatives are in many ways identical to a USB drive, but they include a wireless radio, making it possible to access data on multiple computers without a physical connection.

The best example available thus far is arguably Kingston’s Digital Wi-Drive. Slightly larger than a common USB flash drive, this sleek device can operate on battery power for up to four hours. When the battery goes flat, it can be charged via USB, and files can also be transferred over USB (though only at 2.0 speeds).

Like most new technology, however, the Wi-Drive isn’t cheap. The smallest version, which offers a 32 GB capacity, sells for about $70. The 64 GB and 128 GB versions are $110 and $130, respectively. This works out to a cost-per-gigabyte of over $2 for the 32 GB drive, but the largest 128 GB model is priced at barely more than $1 per gigabyte, which is reasonable for a flash drive.

Conclusion

USB flash drives have come a long way over the last few years. The introduction of USB 3.0 has drastically improved transfer rates and improvements to solid state memory production have slashed both cost and size. Wireless may even one day replace USB. For now, however, flash drives are still important to many users. Which is your favorite?

Even if you hate Facebook, there are some very compelling reasons to have an account. Like, for instance, the fact that most of your friends probably have accounts. It’s tempting to have an account simply so you can see what they’ve been up to and view their photos. But, how can you join Facebook without getting involved? It’s possible.

What we’re aiming to do here is create a Facebook account with minimal information and minimal interaction: Read-only mode. It’s an account used just to look at what other people are up to, not for your own sharing. Even if you don’t intend to create a read-only mode account, read on to see if there are any parts of your Facebook account that are currently more exposed than you’d like.

If you’re looking to make a read-only Facebook account, it may be tempting to use a fake name and birthday with a throw-away email account. While you may get away with this for a while, Facebook also might one day delete your account without warning. My opinion is that it’s best to stick to Facebook’s terms, but to give minimal information outside of that. Also, use an email address you won’t lose access to.

Keep in mind that your name, gender and profile picture will be public no matter what you do. So, perhaps upload a picture of a nice tree as a profile pic to keep your image generic.

When you create your account, Facebook will ask you to sync your email address book with Facebook. If you want privacy and minimal contact, don’t do this. It will be used to suggest friendships to both you and your friends.

Although it’s possible to not enter any information to your timeline, some things are there already, like your email address and birthday. You also generate information for the timeline when you like Pages, updates or photos, and make comments. You may not intend to do any of these things just now, but one day you might. Content is also generated when your friends tag you or write on your Timeline.

There are a number of steps to ensuring your account is really locked down. For starters, head to Privacy Shortcuts > See More Settings. Work through every item and lock things down to “Only Me” or the most private option possible. For instance, “Who can see my stuff?” can be locked down to “Only Me”, while “Who can look me up?” can be locked to “Friends”.

To stop your friends writing on your timeline and tagging you, click on the Timeline And Tagging Settings tab. Change everything to the most limited setting. For instance, “Who can post on your timeline?” can be locked to “Only Me”, and all options to “Review tags” should be ON. If the option for “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” is available to you, limit that as well.

In your settings, click on the Follower Settings tab and ensure Following is turned off (if it is, the headline would be “Turn On Follow”). This will ensure you are not followed by anyone hoping you’ll one day give them some content.

Despite your best intentions, you may find yourself “Liking” content on Facebook, such as photos and comments. These “Likes” are public by default, so you need to change that. Head to your timeline and click on your “About” tab, or head straight to your “Likes“.

Click on the little pencil, choose “Edit Privacy” and then change each item to “Only Me”. You’ll also want to do similar for the rest of the sections, such as Movies, Books, TV Shows, Places, Friends, Photos, Games, Music, Groups, plus each and every little section listed under “About”, including Basic Information, Contact Information, Living, Work & Education. For some of the sections like “Events” and “Groups” you are given the option to “Hide Section”. Do this if you want to keep them private.

If you just want to read what other people have to say, Facebook chat is probably not something you want left on. You can turn it off completely, or you could limit your chat settings to just a few people using their names or a Facebook friends list.

You may be creating a read-only Facebook account specifically to use certain apps, or you may be against them. However, if you are using apps, make sure all of them are set so that any updates they make are restricted to the “Only Me” privacy setting. This can be done when you first authorize the app to access your Facebook account.

Getting Information Out Of Facebook

If you also don’t intend to use Facebook regularly, you might like to use a few tricks to get Facebook information out of its domain and into the real world. For instance, getting Facebook birthdays and Facebook events into your Google Calendar, reading your friends’ updates using your RSS reader, and more.

Deleting Or Hiding Previous Posts

If you have already been using your account socially, you may have a bunch of updates and likes that you want to get rid of. Check out your Activity log to delete everything one-by-one. Otherwise, just limit all your past posts to “Only Me”.

About Read-Only Mode

Yes, this whole idea of read-only mode is not exactly easy. It’s surprising just how many obstacles Facebook has put in the way, despite streamlining their privacy settings. In addition to everything mentioned above, keep in mind that if you’ve had a Facebook account in the past, simple things like the same phone number can provide Facebook with plenty of information, so don’t be surprised if you start getting friends suggestions from your past despite not including any personal information.

Are you planning on having your Facebook account set to read-only mode? Do you think it’s worth it, or is it better to just not have an account at all?

Looking for a more streamlined way to use your favorite social networks? Developer 64 Pixels offers a series of Chrome extensions which let you take three major social networks — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — out of your smartphone and their native websites, and into a slick and easy-to-access window in your browser bar. The extensions give you access to the key features of each social network. You can keep up with what your friends are up to, interact with them the way that you would on the native website (commenting, liking, retweeting etc.), and all from the most convenient place possible: your Chrome toolbar.

Instagram for Chrome brings all the key features you need to keep up with your Instagram friends to your Chrome bookmarks bar. After installing the extension, you’ll find a little Instagram icon next to the address bar. Clicking on it, you’ll instantly see your Instagram feed. You can scroll through the latest photos posted by the people you follow, enlarge the photos, view the original Instagram link, and also like and comment on photos right there in your browser.

From the menu, you can view your own profile, popular photos and tags, and your likes, and also your notifications, although this requires granting the extension extra permissions in order to access that data. You can also search for tags and users.

While you can access your notifications from within the extension, it doesn’t actually notify you when you receive likes and comments, so if you want to stay up to date you’re going to have to check your notifications manually. You can’t post photos through the extension, but this, of course, is due to restrictions on the Instagram API.

Twitter for Chrome offers a slick way to keep up with your Twitter timeline, interact with other users, follow and unfollow users, and, of course, tweet.

Opening up the feed, you’ll see the latest tweets (including embedded rich media), and will be able to reply to, retweet, and favourite individual tweets, as well as click on a user’s profile to view all of their tweets. As new tweets appear in your timeline, a number will appear over the Twitter icon to let you know how many new tweets have appeared since you last checked.

From the menu, you can access your profile, mentions, view your tweets that have been retweeted and see how many retweets they’ve received.

While you can tweet from the app, there are some features that are lacking from the Twitter experience. There’s no way to shorten URLs, and you aren’t notified when you receive replies or DMs. If you’re looking for a better way to post tweets, check out Tweet this Page, or these 5 Chrome extensions to superpower Twitter.

Facebook for Chrome gives you a similar experience as the last two extensions. In fact, this extension is as solid as they come, and made it onto our Best Chrome Extensions list. Here, however, you have to grant access to quite a bit of private information. To use Facebook for Chrome, you are granting the extension access to your public profile, friend list, messages, news feed, status updates, groups, photos and your friends’ birthdays, status updates and photos.

The extension provides a slick and compact Facebook experience. You can view your friends’ updates in your news feed, view posts with photos only, view your notifications, view your inbox (a semi-functional version), your profile and also post updates. You can interact with your friends from the extension by commenting on and liking their posts.

Posting status updates from Facebook for Chrome is probably best limited to text updates, since it is unable to embed links. Any links you share will simply appear as a clickable link next to your text, and not in Facebook’s usual style. If you’re looking for a way to post Facebook updates, check out the Shareaholic extension, which is also available for Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera. To find out more about the Shareaholic Chrome extension, be sure to read our in-depth review.

Read a full review of Facebook for Chrome.

If you use all three social networks, we would highly recommend 64 Pixels’ extensions. Not only are these extensions slick, they’re consistent. The three extensions offer a similar experience across the board. Similarities aside, each extension brings in the key features needed to really get the most out of the social network, as far as that social network will actually allow. With Instagram, for example, it’s not possible to post pictures from any third party apps due to Instagram’s own restrictions on its API. With Twitter, it isn’t possible to view Instagram photos displayed within tweets, due to restrictions. Working within the limitations of each of the social networks, each of these extensions lets you do everything you would need to.

What do you think of 64 Pixels Chrome extensions? Do you have your own favorite social browser extension? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Stephen Shankland

Today in Cool Websites and Tools, we take a look at 5 cool websites, including viewing what a nuclear fallout would look like on your city or town, answering or rejecting calls on your Android phone without using your hands, moving files between cloud storage services, quickly finding what you need in your Gmail account, and faking press coverage for your startup. Read on below!

NukeMap 3D – the one big fear among world governments is that one day a terrorist will acquire a nuclear device and detonate it in a crowded place. So it is important to plan for such eventualities and estimate possible casualties in case of an attack. Using Google Maps, NukeMap 3D allows you to select a destination, size of nuclear device and then watch as the blast radius and casualty rate is calculated.

Mover – Move files between any cloud storage provider. Backup anything to the cloud, including your cloud storage or website. Or are you moving from Dropbox to Box? Google Drive to SkyDrive? Using Mover, make the process much easier. Compatible with all major cloud storage platforms such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive and Box. Create and manage scheduled backups and view detailed logs.

Mikey for Gmail – Find things quickly in your Gmail. Mikey gives you powerful tabs that make it easy to find whatever you are looking for. Trouble finding links? Mikey indexes all the content within the links you send and receive so you can search them. Can’t find an image? Browse all your images visually in a Pinterest-style layout.

Startup Legitimizer – There are so many startups online these days that the vast majority of them struggle to get any kind of meaningful press attention. But when they get some good press, they instantly become credible to potential investors. So what do you do to give the illusion that your startup has been covered by the big names in media? Use the Startup Legitimizer.

Just for fun, let me give you this exercise. Type in something that you want to search today. Use an experimental search engine like Million Short which removes the first million or so Google results from a regular search engine result page. It’s a neat search engine built on top of Google Search you can use to specify how much you want to remove. I bet you will still get quite a few results, and hopefully fresh ones. Making these serendipitous discoveries is the fun part of a search. Though quite often, the incredibly intelligent Google algorithm loses out to SEO practices that push unneeded websites and search results on top.

The Web is a maze and you need more than a few standard operators to wade through it. To come out successfully on the other end, you need to power search. Your weapon of choice – Google Advanced Search. The homepage itself has a lot of Google Search tools which we don’t use much, but if you want to get your hands dirty, you need to know the secrets of Google Advanced Search. Here are a few places where you can learn all about the inner workings of advanced search.

Google Inside Search

Google Inside Search is the land of all search related knowledge. This is your launch pad if you want to teach someone the basics of Google Search. As the name indicates, it is a journey into the heart and soul of search, and thus it is meant to be a warm, friendly place which tries to give the impression that search is fun. And it succeeds because you just have to browse to the page with the search stories to see how people are using it daily. For instance, the story of Morgan is inspiring in how she uses search for education and learning independence above anything else; or, Caroline who discovered a supernova (one of the youngest people to do so) with the help of search. Very promotional on the part of Google, but it also reveals the potential of applying the right search methods for the right ends.

Teaching someone the basic of how search works on the web is easier with the interactive How Search Works. If you are a teacher, you can browse through the lesson plans which Google has designed for the classroom. All lessons are leveled as – Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. All lessons are available under a Creative Commons CC-BY license.

Power Searching With Google

We started out with talk of advanced searching and to learn all the skills we head to a corner of the Inside Search site. The Advanced Power Searching course is a follow up to the Power Searching course, that’s available from the adjacent link on the same page. Both are self-paced courses you can learn on your own time. These are some of the best and condensed ways to become a power searcher in a relatively short time. The Advanced Power Searching course whets your curiosity a sample challenge – a video of a historic location on the rim of The Pacific. Your clues are a famous bridge (not revealed) and a park. Your job is to find that location using just Google Search.

Master searcher Daniel Russell takes you through the challenge, breaking it down into logical steps and using multiple Google Services to solve it. A major takeaway – don’t leap into search. Start broadly and then narrow down. It is beautifully explained and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Learn here and then take on the other challenges, graded from Easy to Hard. For instance, how about this one:

SearchResearch

 

We meet Daniel Russell again on his own personal blog. The self-described “anthropologist of search” works for Google and his insights on how to search with advanced search is as exciting as any “whodunit”. I first bumped into his blog when I came across an article where he described a perplexing situation (as shown in the above screenshot) and then explained the solution. I know I wouldn’t have got it on my own. It alone was a master-class in search tactics. His blog is filled with search challenges like these (how do you discover a book you don’t know the name of?) and little nuggets of information (e.g. how to open a YouTube video with a little URL modifier?).

Google Search Forum

Google Search Forum is the corner shop where everyone who is interested comes to jive over operators, weird results, and everything else. Coffee isn’t served, but you will get more than your share of brain bytes. You will find people asking questions on search personalization, how to avoid biased results, how to search patents by images etc. There is lots of information here if you care to dig. The search engine on top is the thing to use if you want to avoid all that labor.

A Google A Day

All that reading needs a bit of practice, and if you aren’t doing it with anything else, do it here and have a bit of fun. A Google A Day is part of the Inside Search Playground and its here you can test your search skills with daily riddles. Log in with Google+ and start playing. Solve the trivia questions, cheat openly with Google Search, and rack up the points. To get to the answer in the shortest time possible, you have to make efficient use of search operators, and this is where your skill will be tested. Google+ has retired its games, but you can go from one question to the next across the categories and rack up the points.

Launched way back in 1995, Craigslist took the Internet world by storm with its innovative cross of classified ads with the web. With a free account, you could post up items for sale, job openings, apartment vacancies, or just browse around as a potential purchaser. Since then, it has exploded into an international service with millions of active users and tons of popular items being sold every day.

But as with all Internet-based transactions, some users prefer to game the system and scam other users for a quick buck. Fortunately, Craigslist has instated a few deterrents in the system over the years (e.g., a cost for placing ads in certain sections), but scammers continue to find clever ways around them. If you’re on Craigslist, know that scammers are an uncommon but real threat and you should take heed to protect yourself with these simple tips.

Complete Transactions In Person

Two of the most common Craigslist scams you’ll encounter: the I’ll-send-the-item-once-I-receive-payment and the I’ll-pay-you-once-I-receive-the-item. For the naïve or inexperienced, both of these scenarios can result in you losing out on money since it relies solely on the honor system — and behind the guise of the Internet, people quickly lose their sense of honor.

Whenever possible, complete your Craigslist transactions in person. This will guarantee that the item and money — or item and service — exchange hands at the same time, ensuring satisfaction for both buyer and seller. Do not send money for a purchase before you have a guarantee that the item will arrive. Do not ship an item before you have guarantee that the money will come in.

Of course, Craigslist is an Internet service, which means that you won’t be able to deal locally all the time. In this case, you may want to use a third-party escrow service, though it may not be worth the hassle for small-budget purchases (e.g., a pack of pens). If someone recommends a particular escrow service, research it and be very thorough — fake escrow sites will steal your money.

Meet In A Public Place

Even if you deal only in local Craigslist exchanges, you can still be scammed – by being robbed. Depending on your physical build and stature, you may be less prone to physical violence and damage, but it still sucks to walk into a transaction and have your item or money stolen from right under your nose. Thievery is a real risk.

When dealing in person, always meet in a small but public place like a local café. Get there a few minutes before your scheduled meeting time and pick out a spot that’s far from the entrance. Seat yourself in a way that if the robber was to grab and run, he’d have to run past you to escape. The hope is that it buys a bit more time for you, or someone nearby, to react in the case of attempted theft.

If you’re more worried about your personal safety than the integrity of the transaction, you should bring a friend or two, particularly ones who have a physical presence and can defend you if it comes down to that. When in doubt, don’t go alone.

Too Good To Be True

As a general rule of thumb, if a listing on Craigslist feels too good to be true, it most likely is. Whether they’re selling or buying, people want to get the most value for their money. Nobody is going to sell a legitimate $1,000 camera for $25 since they could just as easily sell it for $50, $100, or however much else. Huge differences between asking price and actual worth should be an immediate red flag.

Sometimes scammers will give you a sob story to explain away these red flags. Maybe their grandmother just passed away and the camera belonged to her and they just want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Maybe a buyer will tell you that they’ve fallen on tough times and they want to haggle. Or they’ll try to convince you that something isn’t worth what you’re asking.

Playing with your emotions is Scamming 101. Don’t fall for it. Make sure you do the proper research on value and prices beforehand, then stick with your gut.

Ask Lots of Questions

If a particular listing seems fishy to you, or if the person running the listing feels dodgy, then you should ask questions and ask a lot of them. People who try to scam you will be hiding behind some sort of lie. They succeed when you don’t see the lie or you buy into it. Asking questions is a great way to test the veracity of a scammer’s claims.

For example, if someone is selling a $1,000 camera for $50, you should question the price. Why is it so low? Why not price it higher? Is there something wrong with it? You should also request photos to be taken of the product (if you’re buying a tangible object) to make sure that it’s working as described in the listing.

You’ll eventually find holes in their story or you won’t. However, at the end of the day, if they still feel sketchy to you then don’t go through with the deal. Better to err on the side of caution than take the risk and be scammed.

Craigslist Scammer Blog

My last piece of advice isn’t actually a piece of advice, per se. It’s a blog that consists of user-submitted catches of scammers on Craigslist. Whether the listing itself reeks of a scam or the scammer tries to wiggle his way through you by email, vigilant users who realize a scam before it’s too late can post it here for all to see.

Use this as a resource to train your eyes for what a scam looks like. Notice how most scammers will play on your emotions and make you an offer that seems too good to be true. Notice the little inconsistencies in their stories and how they’ll say whatever it takes to sway you into believing them. Once you’ve seen a few scams in action, it’ll be much easier to catch them when they come your way.

If you don’t gain much from this site, that’s all right. At the very least you can have a laugh at some of the more pathetic attempts mentioned on the site.

Conclusion

Again, I like Craigslist. The purpose of this article isn’t to scare you away from using it but to warn you that you need to be cautious. If you decide that you don’t feel comfortable anymore, there are always alternatives to Craigslist that you can explore. You’ll still find scammers (they’re everywhere, especially on the Internet) but since none of the alternatives are as popular as Craigslist itself, the number of scammers you encounter will be far smaller.

On the other hand, if you decide to stick with Craigslist then check out Aaron’s suggestions for how you can get the most out of Craiglist and learn how you can improve your Craigslist experience within minutes.