In order to create word processing documents and spreadsheets you can buy office for something like $150 (unless one gets the student version which is usually less) and you'll be able to create and receive documents from most other people and read and write them with no compatibility issues (or realistically minimal ones).

There is also the option of using something like Google Docs to do your word processing and spreadsheets. Advantages include:

• it's free
• online and accessible from any computer connected to the internet
• documents can be imported and exported in any format likely needed (like Microsoft Word and Excel)

The disadvantage is that it works a little differently than Office does so it may take a little time to learn if you are used to using Office. There is a tour of Google Docs online.

Labels: google, Microsoft Office, MS Word

There are several ways to to find mp3 files with Google. One way I've found useful to find songs is to put in a song name, and the follwoing string after it, in the google search bar:

-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" "Last modified" mp3

For example the star spangled banner can be found searching for star spangled banner or national anthem, though the first gives slightly better results.

Labels: google, search

When your sitemap is updated, these are the URLs to ping the search engines (replace [your sitemap web address] with your URL):

Google

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap web address]

Yahoo

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=YahooDemo&url=[your sitemap web address]

MSN Live Search

http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=[your sitemap web address]

Ask

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap web address]

moreover

http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=[your sitemap web address]

According to the sitemaps protocol, the URL to submit a sitemap to a search engine is supposed to be:

<searchengine_URL>/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

but many search engines don't seem to actually accept ping submissions this way.

Labels: sitemaps, web coding