Q. I’ve used Google for years and notice that sometimes adult-oriented sites wind up in search results. Is there any way to avoid that?

A. Google has a little-known SafeSearch feature that filters Web content thus preventing x-rated or other offensive material from appearing in your search results. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a step in the right direction. To enable SafeSearch in Google, click the Preferences link and scroll down to SafeSearch Filtering. You can select “Strict” filtering, which blocks offensive text and images, “Moderate” filtering, which filters explicit images only, or the “You-disgust-me” filter which blocks nothing.

If, on the other hand, you only want to view content that is deemed inappropriate or offensive, you can do that, also. (Doesn’t it just figure?) Despite what you’re thinking, there actually are legitimate reasons for wanting to view only filtered search results. For example, if you own a Web site it can be helpful to view what content is being filtered and thus not available to users of Google and Yahoo searches. Content filtering is not an exact science by a long shot, so it’s not at all uncommon that legitimate content is inappropriately blocked.

Google’s UnSafeSearch will search Google and return only results that SafeSearch removes. Yahoo! has the same UnSafeSearch option at http://tinyurl.com/4b5e7p.

To use UnSafeSarching, in the Search field, type “site:webaddress.com” (without the quotes) to check a specific Web site. For example, type “site:cnn.com” (without the you-know-whats) to view pages filtered from CNN.

Q. I was visiting a Web page and clicked a button that I didn’t mean to click. I realized it instantly, but I didn’t know how to get out of that virtual pickle. If I do that again, is there some way to escape without completing the action that I accidentally started?

A. What you describe is what we in the industry technically refer to as an “Oops.” The typical scenario is that you’re visiting a Web page and you click a button that will invoke an action. You immediately realize that you didn’t mean to click it. What will you do? WHAT WILL YOU DO? Fortunately, there is a way out of this preclickament:

Making a selection by clicking a graphical button on a Web page actually entails several steps: You press the mouse button while your cursor is positioned on a clickable object, then you have to release the mouse button. If you click the wrong object when making a selection, and if you haven't released your mouse button, all is not lost. Continue holding down the mouse button, press the ESCape key, and very slowly slide the cursor off the graphical button. Lastly, remove your finger from the mouse button. The on-screen selection button will reappear and you can then proceed about your business as if the errant button-press never occurred.

Mr. Modem's Sites of the Week:

Recipe*zaar
An online cooking community that boasts more than 140,000 recipes and 30,000 photographs. Visitors will find cooking tips and recipes for just about every type of food imaginable, from appetizing appetizers, to lip-smacking desserts, to “I-wouldn’t-eat-that-if-you-paid-me” delicacies. The site includes information about exotic cuisines from Africa, Europe and Asia in the Regional Cuisine area. Hint: The Wildebeest Creole is to die for.
www.recipezaar.com

The Story of Bread
Continuing with this week’s food theme, in 1949, the Sunbeam Bread company published a comic book to encourage kids to eat more white bread for its many health benefits and for “extra pep.” (Pep, shmep. Today a kid with “extra pep” would be diagnosed with ADHD. End of story.) The illustrations are amusing and the commentary that appears with the strips is occasionally coarse, but frequently hilarious. Remember, it was 1949.
http://tinyurl.com/4hpfgl

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