The Smorgasbord

I haven’t heard much about the fact that Google recently launched encrypted search. It’s pretty easy to use, all you have to do is go to https://www.google.com to encrypt searches (just add the “S” to make it secure to the http part).

What this does is encrypts your searches from prying eyes over public connections, wifi, even at work! Now, some privacy advocates still says “but google has the data” – but short of a court order nobody’s getting that! The nice thing about it is that it also doesn’t archive your searches in history, and your searches won’t appear in the “autofill” of future results on that PC either. I mean, you wouldn’t want your kids typing in “bunny” for the easter bunny – only to have your (previous) search autofill “bunny ranch sex” would you? LMAO.

Google encrypted search – you may have to use it someday!

How ironic that I would find this video in YouTube (it was recommended to me, lol). Everyone knows how embedded google is in our everyday lives from google maps, to gmail, and more – but watch this video and learn how MUCH MORE google is trying to get into your personal lives (and business!). Did you know they want your DNA and health records?! It probably won’t stop me from using google anymore, but this is a REALLY eye opening video!

Google just found another way to enter your life and make it that much more easy (and its free to boot!) Google voice is a (semi) new service offered by, you guessed, the giant that is Google. So when you start off you need an invite (You can request one from Google here http://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/. Once you’re in, by the way my invite took a few days; you need to decide if you want to keep your current number or if you want to have a new number.

The advantages of keep your current number do not need to be expressed, as most people have experienced the pain of getting an all new number, but if you get a new ‘Google number’ then you get several advantages that I personally took advantage of. First off you can set up call forwarding so that your Google number will ring to your cell, home or business phone number. Second you get FREE SMS (text) messaging, with all of them saved online (you can delete them if you so choose). Third you get several calling feature which either you pay extra for on your cell phone plan, or no not get at all. These features include blocking calls, record calls, conference calls and screening callers.

Now this may sound too good to be true, but I guarantee you it is NOT. All of your calls to anywhere in the United States are completely free. International calls will cost you but google does give you 10 cents free to make a international call. I can’t comment on the call quality of international calls as I don’t know many people out of the friendly confines of Michigan, but from the reviews I have read online the call quality is the same as it is from domestic calls, excellent.

Google rarely drops the ball and this is not one of those times. The call quality itself is enough to make you switch from your current VoIP provider, but add the fact that Google voice is nearly completely free and offers free text messaging make joining Google voice a literal no brain.

Ahhh – Google Street View. Remember when it first went online and it freaked everybody out and there were all kinds of privacy concerns? That didn’t seem to last very long did it? Now it seems like when I get directions I always check out street view so I know exactly what my destination will look like when I get there, it makes travel a whole lot easier! But there have been some Google street view fiascos for sure.

Today I was thinking of this because I read the post Angry villagers run Google street view out of town, and it cracked me up. In an affluent suburb in England there had been a few burglaries, and when they say the Google street view car in their neighborhood it freaked them out and pissed them off. So they surrounded the car and made it leave!

You can’t blame them really, but it’s funny how many things the google streetview cams have caught by accident just driving through our neighborhoods taking panorama pics of a “day in the life” or ordinary people. You can check some out at Mashable’s Top 15 Google Streetview Sightings, and here’s a Google Streetview Gallery and Street View gallery – with new things being posted all the time.

I guess google street view is just something we’ve gotten used to since it didn’t go away, and it’s not likely to anytime soon!

You know, just when you thought that google had it’s hands in everything – this one comes up. Google has started their own completely free Directory Assistance phone hotline number 800-GOOG-411. It’s free, it’s quick, and it works. It’s weird too, because the cell companies like Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T are getting $1.75 or more per call for directory assistance. They’re making a killing on that, which is why so many geeks started using 800-FREE-411. But with that service you get 20 seconds of commercial crap and then if the the automated service can’t fetch your number you are SOL, because they no longer have live operators. So, once again – it’s google to the rescue! That number shouldn’t be hard to remember thenext time you need to look a phone number up!

[tags]google, free 411, information, directory assistance, cell phone tips[/tags]

We all use google, and most of us that would consider ourselves “power users” probabaly already know the more popular google ‘shortcuts’ and features. Like you can use google as a calculator and search “8 + 8″ and google will spit back “16″. You can search “100 inches in feet” and google will say “8.3333333 feet”. Google is pretty smart isn’t it? I wrote this guide of advanced google search tips to teach you how to save lots of time and be more productive!

Google Search Shortcuts You should know – but probably don’t

Google Package Tracking

You probably didn’t know though, that you can type in a package tracking number for UPS, Fedex, or United States Postal Service and google will automatically perform the query and the right web site, and give you results on where your package is!! What a time saver – who knew google would track packages? (sorry can’t give an example for this one – I don’t have a package to track!)

Google Vehicle Search

Did you know that you can also type any VIN number in google for any vehicle – and it will give you a carfax vehicle record? Click on the pictured example to try this search example now!

Searching by Price Range Using Google

You can search using a range of numbers. This is a totally brand new one for me…say you want to buy something and you’re willing to play between like amount or another. Like a hard drive, and you want prices between $50 and $100. Your google search would be like this: “seagate 100GB hard drive #$50…$100#”. Just be sure to start and end your range with the # sign and have the 3 dots in the middle. This really helps to get good results on exactly what you are looking for, and in your price range! Click on the picture example below to see this search in action…

Quickly find and search books Using Google

If you looking to buy a book, or find a book – just preface what you’re looking for in your search with the word “book”. For example, search for ‘book unix shell scripting’. Click the pictured example below to see what this looks like. Note I circled in red the options for “Limited Preview” and “Full View”. One is of course looking at part of a book, and full view is when the entire book is available online (for free). For this particular search, there are none available as full view (for free), but it’s good to know that some are. Click the pictured example to see a basic search for a book.

Now click on the first book result. This is really cool – you can see inside the book, the table of contents, a bunch of sample pages…notice my red circle in the bottom right corner where you can “search this book”. Awesome. Just above that you’ll see a list of places you can buy this book. Click the pictured example to see this book search.

The one last thing I wanted to show you (and possibly the coolest), is the link right above the “search this book” box that says “Find this book in a Library”. When you click on that, it figures out your physical location by the IP address on your computer, and finds the closest libraries listed online that may have to book. You can’t beat that. Click the pictured example to see this work live.

How to Use Google as a Phone Book

I use google to look up numbers all the time, and it’s pretty good at it. But I’ve learned that it can be even better. You can use google as a phone book, simply by prefacing your search with either ‘phonebook’, ‘rphonebook’ (residential), or ‘bphonebook’ (business). Click the pictured example below to see this in action!

How to use Google Movie Search

Like other special searches you can do with google – you can also search movies and movie reviews! This is where googles no-nosense clean style comes in handy. I used to look at movie reviews in Yahoo! Movies. But that page is just plagued by ads, garbage, and clutter. Google comes to the rescue again, and all you have do is preface your search with “movie:”. Click on the pictured example below to see this work live…

This is awesome! You get the movies under that name, the year they were made……but wait! There’s more! Click on the title of any movie and you get this example where you can see reviews, the avg review rating, you get frequently mentioned terms (to search by), you can search within the reviews, and you can find theatres by you by zip code! Click the pictured example to view this search now…

Get Historical News with Google News Archive Search

Google News is great for the latest headlines, but what I didn’t know is that google news has an archive you can search…and they have archived news that goes back decades and decades. And once you do a search you can arrange the results in a timeline. This could be very helpful if you’re doing research on just about any topic. Click the pictured example to do this this search…

Look at Dead Tree Catalogs the google web 2.0 way

Google is so big now, there’s just so many things I didn’t know you can do with them now (and I’ve been using google since 1998 – almost 10 years). This is something I simply didn’t know existed. Google has a catalog search, meaning “mail order catalog”. I kinda miss getting catalogs back in the day (some I still get), like Edmund Scientific, and do it yourself electronics catalogs. Google Catalog Search is in “beta”, so your favorite ones might not be available in there yet (but many are). This search is really cool, because they scan the entire catalog in, and you can browse the pages (quickly) as if the catalog were in your hands. You can even browse up to 6 pages at once, and search within a catalog. Click the image below to try the Sharper Image catalog search (6 pages at once)…

Use Google Notebook to organize clips and make notes

This is the last in the series of tips (and perhaps the best). Google has created an extension for the Firefox Web Browser called Notebook that you can download here. This is the firefox extension I’ve been looking for!! I’ve used a few of these clipboard like utilities before, and also ones that were firefox extensions – like ClipMarks. I didn’t like that at all. Notebook (like most google tools) is easy to use, and does exactly what I want. Basically, once installed – you can select text (or pictures), click ‘clip’ and what you selected is saved to your ‘notebook’. But (a feature I always wanted), you can manually add notes and ‘sections’ (categories) as well. I fired it up and added one ‘clip’ (see pic below)…

I was wary about this plugin at first, but then I clicked the “tools” dropdown (from the pic above), and you can click “go to my notebooks homepage”. This is a new part of your ‘google account’. Your google notebook page is where you store you clips, you can setup ‘sections’ to categorize them, and drag and drop arrange them, you make make new notes, you get a rich text editor, you can search your notebooks, you can “share” your notebook with other collaborators, you can share it as a public web page, but most importantly you can “export to google docs”. Woohoo!! This is a major, major time saver for me! Now as I read online and do research I can save all kinds of things for parsing later as I go without the need to have a text editor open. Everything is saved in my google account, and I can walk away and access it from any computer in the world. Out of all the things I learned about google today – THIS was the BEST ONE (for me)!!

How does Google Help You?

In this google tutorial article I keyed in on things I noticed that I never knew about before, things that directly benefited me the most in the ways I work on the web. What didn’t I list that you have learned and can share with me and others? To make this article even better, I would love for you to submit your feedback using the comment links below! If you would like to suggest a new article or guest post – please feel free to use out contact form.

I would also like to tell you about how I came across this information – as it may help you as well. I got all of these golden nuggets of information in a book, brand new for 2007 called The Google Power Tools Bible. This is definitely a very thorough reference of 32+ chapters and over 600+ pages. It covers all kinds of things that I didn’t have time to go into here, like google trends, google desktop, google office, froogle, and tons more! It’s definitely worth the money!

Google Power Tools Bible

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