May 5, 2003 Channel Island PC Users Group
Special Interest Group on the topic of
TIPS & TRICKS on finding TIPS & TRICKS on the Internet for your favorite programs.
Google has a number of features that few know about or use regularly. These can help us in many ways:
Almost all of us know how to get to Google. Once there, there is
the very simple opening screen that will load VERY fast (even on slow
dialup connections). The usual way most people use this search
engine is to put their word or combination of words in the dialog box
and hitting the Enter or Return key.
But have you ever used the other buttons?
Typing
Outlook Express Tricks in the box will bring up websites that
give you tips and tricks for that program. But what you happen if
you, instead of clicking the Google Search button (or hitting the
Enter key), you clicked on the Images button:
Amazingly what you will get is images of screen shots that are on web sites that give you Tips and Tricks. Now by clicking on the links by the photos, you'll go to a web site that explains USING PICTURES tips and tricks. Interested?
THERE'S MORE
If
you THEN click on the GROUPS tab, you'll get a list of Usenet News
Group discussion groups that are about the subject. This might be
very helpful in that it is quite likely that someone may have asked
the very question you have about a particular program at some point
in the past and you'll be able to read the question and the many
answers that were given.
INCLUDING the Microsoft sponsored discussion groups.
And it gets even better.
By clicking the Directory tab, you get much more specific sites.
In this case 131 sites were found under the Directory tab compared to 81,500 sites on the general tab.
The last tab of NEWS is for anytime a newspaper article was written about the subject. This might not be helpful in this instance (although you can count on the article being edited and having better grammar and spelling than many web sites)
But this can be VERY interesting if you type your name in and hit the NEWS button. (ever been arrested? Married? ) Now remember, this is not every newpaper ever written, and I'm not sure how far back Google's search of newspapers goes, but I'd bet it depends on each individual newspaper's web site and their decisions for what goes online and what doesn't.
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Other "hidden" features of Google.
You can search ONLY certain sites – for instance US government sites ( .gov) as in the below example:
Something like this is what you would see if you were doing research and wanted to find US Government sites about dolphins.
Want to find a PDF file for the manual for your printer? For that you would type in something like this:
Before the word manual, you would type the model number of your printer.
There is one feature that some people DON'T like and that has to do with telephone numbers. If you type in your own number you will probably see what is listed in the white pages. You can opt out of this and make sure you are unlisted as far as Google goes. This won't do anything for the real white pages or other telephone web sites, but it will get you off of the Google site.
FOR THOSE WHO WERE AT THE SIG, I finally found the font site I was searching for!!! You can click on the image to go there. (BEWARE OF MANY POP-UPS)
See you next month.
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