From The Tips Box: Site-Specific Googling, Leaf Piles

Readers offer their best tips for searching multiple sites on Google, checking blind spots, and dragging large leaf piles.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons — maybe they’re a bit too niche, maybe we couldn’t find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn’t fit it in — the tip didn’t make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Email it to tips at lifehacker.com.au.

Add Multiple Sites to a Site-Specific Google Search

We’ve shown you how to search a specific site, like Lifehacker, on Google, but Geekgirlbarbie shares a tip for when you want to search a number of trusted sites:

To make things easier when I’m searching for how to do something tech-related or software/a web app that does something, I made a custom search engine of some sites I trust/find helpful/offer tutorials and/or reviews and then bookmarked the search engine.

It’s much faster than searching each of the sites individually and eliminates the problem of crappy/unhelpful/untrustworthy sites showing up when you do a straight Google search.

It’s also perfect for when people who aren’t your grandmother ask you for tech help or advice when you’re in the middle of something. Just send them the link, tell them to search it, and you’re good to go.

Here’s mine as an example. It searches Lifehacker, How-To Geek, MakeUseOf, Make Tech Easier, AddictiveTips and the AppStorm Sites. If you’d prefer to do it with a browser keyword, you can just use something like this as your custom search engine’s URL:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=site:lifehacker.com.au+OR+site:howtogeek.com+OR+site:makeuseof.com+OR+site:maketecheasier.com+OR+site:addictivetips.com+%s

Use a Kiddie Pool to Drag Leaves Instead of a Tarp

Clayton shares another tool for raking up all those leaves in your yard:

This year, instead of using the usual tarp to drag my multiple leaf piles to the curb for city pickup, I discovered that repurposing my daughter’s out-of-season (deflated) inflatable kiddie pool was far superior. Less mess, better handles and just the right size to keep the load manageable for one person.

Watch for Headlights to Keep an Eye on Your Blind Spot

Photo by Kyle Pearce.

KBS shares a little trick for checking your blind spot without turning your head all the way:

Most of the people don’t look at the blind spot while driving unless they want to change the lane. At day time, the blind spot mirror (small convex mirror) will do the job, but at night it does not work too well. One way to figure out if there are any vehicles in your blind spot at night is to look at the ground next to your side mirror. If you have a beam of light on the ground, then you know there is a very high possibility that there is a vehicle in your blind spot.

This note is just to make you more aware of your surrounding while not changing the lane. Obviously, you should look your blind spot before changing the lanes. There are always some people driving without their headlights on or has very low brightness.

Reader TheFu also mentions that we’ve shared a tip to minimise your blind spots before, too.