Here’s a neato little tip if you want to go back in time through the news. Type this into your web browser’s address bar:

http://www.cbc.ca/news_archives/YYYYMMDD.jhtml

Be sure to substitute the “YYYYMMDD” with the actual year, month, and day you’d like to look up. For instance:

http://www.cbc.ca/news_archives/20010911.jhtml

There’s even a shortcut to this on the CBC News page — it’s near the very bottom-right of the page. Pretty nice touch, considering nearly all other national news outlets charge you to read content older than a month or so.

The page you see in the news archive is just a “snapshot” of what www.cbc.ca/news/ looked like at some point during that day. If you want to see all of the news that was published on a particular day, you can use the searge engine: type the follwing search query in: “inurl:story/2001/09/11″ (without the quotes) This will return all news stories written on September 11, 2001.

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	Email this	Posted at 12:36 pm (30 Jan 2007)

Let’s face it, sometimes after work you want to catch up with some of those web sites you’re not allowed to at the office. Lest your spouse catch you surfing the latest gossip about Paris Hilton or Donald Trump, may I direct you to www.workfriendly.net. Its operation will become obvious; its applications universal.

Before	After

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	Email this	Posted at 11:25 am (16 Jan 2007)

Shelly Sorochuk, a CBC Radio AP in Vancouver, asks:

I was wondering if you knew of any way to search the internet–ie. using Google–to find stories specifically relating to Canada and Cdn things? Is there an easy way to search international papers for stories that talk about things that are Cdn?

There are a couple of ways to restrict your search in Google to Canada. The easiest way is to add

     site:.ca

to your search term (remember both the colon and the period). So, for instance, if you wanted to search for articles about shampoo but only wanted to get a list of pages within Canada, you’d type this into Google:

     shampoo site:.ca

You can restrict your search to specific web sites, too, by adding the domain name after site:. For instance “shampoo site:cbc.ca” will get you pages on the CBC.ca site with shampoo on them.

One other way, if you’re looking for more newsy items, is to do your search at http://news.google.ca and add the word “canada” to your search term. For instance, on that site:

     shampoo canada

Are you a CBC employee with a nerdy question? Ask me!

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	Email this	Posted at 3:20 pm (05 Jan 2007)

It’s another screencast — this episode is about using Google Notebook to quickly take notes on the fly while surfing the web, then accessing your notes from the studio, someone else’s workstation, or at home.

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	Email this	Posted at 12:02 am (18 Dec 2006)

In this penultimate episode, Advanced Ninja Search Tips! (Numchucks and throwing stars optional.)

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	Email this	Posted at 3:30 am (07 Dec 2006)

This series continues today with a look at the Results Screen, using Search History to find sites you’ve looked at before, and using Google Groups to find potential interview subjects.

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	Email this	Posted at 1:01 am (06 Dec 2006)

Whether you’re a journalist, associate producer, researcher, host, or really anyone at the CBC, these quick tips should help you become a lot better at finding things using Google (as opposed to spending your time just searching for them).
     This is Day One of a week-long series. The videos will each be less than 10 minutes long, so they’re a great way to do your own personal Learn At Lunch!

Let me know if this kind of thing is helpful.

P.S. These facts are not, in fact, a secret. That was a cheap ploy to get you to read this.

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	Email this	Posted at 4:49 pm (03 Dec 2006)

Q Hi Tod, here’s my question: I keep Groupwise open all day and every time someone sends me an email, it pops up a stupid little message telling me who it’s from. I find them really distracting. I know I can turn the Notify program off, but every once in a while it’s helpful. Is there a happy medium? Signed: Ticked-Off by Pop-Ups.

A Dear Ticked-Off, there are a couple of things you can do to help quiet Groupwise down. First, the pop-up function is a separate program from Groupwise itself. It’s called Groupwise Notify and it runs in your “System Tray” (the little region to the left of the time in the lower-right corner of your screen).

Take a look at this picture:

If you right-click on that Groupwise icon, you can click Exit to make Notify go away until you reboot next. If you want it gone for good, remove it from the Startup folder of your Start Menu. But you asked about a happy medium. So instead of clicking Exit, click Options. You’ll get a screen that looks something like this:

Here, you can change how often Notify checks for new mail for you. A lot of people have this thing set for every minute. No wonder they’re going batty! Set it for five minutes. Or 30. You may also want to reduce the amount of time the little window stays open, by changing the number in the box below.

But there’s an even better trick. Here’s how you can keep the pop-ups silent unless you get a high-priority internal email. Click on the “Notify” tab on the top and make sure that only the top two checkboxes are checked, as in below:

If you don’t want the Ding noise, take the checkbox in the second box out. Now, you’ll only get a pop-up from Groupwise when someone from inside CBC sends you a high-priority email. Much easier on the sanity.

Any ideas for secret nerd tips? Email me.

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	Email this	Posted at 10:35 pm (02 Jul 2006)