ObjectSharp Blogs

You are currently viewing

Dave Lloyd's 2 Cents

: 

A .NET Developer's Perspective


Home > Blogs > dave

Google is king

Posted: Thursday, June 10, 2004 1:48 PM by dave
Filed under:

If you open a browser on any of the 6 computers (including an IPAQ)  in my house, you will see www.Google.ca. It's safe to say Google is the official search engine of the Lloyd household. One of them actually defaults to French.

The other day my 10 year old son asked me if I knew that Google could help you shop on the internet.

I said “Yeah it's called Froogle.” "That's it", he said "Can you show me?" So I did.

While we were there I showed him a bunch of other cool features. He was amazed. So I thought maybe I should Blog some of my favorite Google Features.

If you know of others I don't mentioned please tell me. I love a good Google feature.

  1. Spelling: I'm sure people know about this feature. Those of us who can't spell sure do. If you type in something Google doesn't recognize Google will suggest a spelling correction to you. I get a lot of use out of this feature.
  2. Calculator: Did you know you can type a calculation into Google and it will give you an answer. Try typing this into Google: 5 * 5 and hit search. 
  3. More Google Calculator: The coolest thing the calculator does is conversions. If you want to know how many kilometers are in a mile just type into Google km in a mile and hit search, try ounces in a cup or cubits in a meter. Is that cool or what?      More about the Google Calculator.
  4. Define: Google is a dictionary. You can type define: someword and Google will return all the definitions it can find for that word. For fun type in define: Google
  5. Google Sets: I love this, but have not thought of a really useful application for it. Go to Google Sets  and type in a different related word in each textbox then click one of the set buttons below. Google goes out and finds other related items. Try this, enter Ross, Phoebe, Monica and see what you get. Now try DataSet and DataTable. This is really part of Google labs, see below.

There are others I would like to take advantage of but only seem to work in the US like Local search, phone book, maps.  Here is a complete list of Google search features .

Google Labs:

If you go to labs.Google.com you will find other google ideas that are not quite ready for main stream yet. They are ideas in progress.

  1. Personalized Web Search - Get personalized search results based on your interests
  2. Web Alerts - Find out about new web pages on a topic of interest  ( I subscribe to this. Any time ObjectSharp is mentioned on the web I get an email)
  3. Web Quotes - View search results with quotes about them from other sites
  4. Voice Search -Search on Google by voice with a simple telephone call
  5. Google Compute - Donate your computer's idle time to help scientific research
  6. Froogle Wireless - Search for products from your cell phone using Froogle
  7. Google Groups - Create and join searchable discussion groups and mailing lists

Did you notice not an add anywhere. :)

Happy Goggling

Comments

  • dave June 10, 2004 4:57 PM

    Google definitely IS king at my house, too. You forgot one feature that totally changed the way I search: Google Deskbar.

    Since I use FireFox as my default browser, and Google's toolbar only (really) works in IE, the Deskbar makes it easy; especially if the .NET docs have failed me.

    Here's the url: http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html

  • dave June 10, 2004 6:58 PM

    Jason...I haven't tried the deskbar. I may have to give it a try.

  • dave June 10, 2004 10:41 PM

    I wish that their 'define:' feature would suggest those alternative spellings that the other searches provide... =)

  • dave June 16, 2004 8:08 PM

    I downloaded the Google deskbar it is really cool. Nice feature.

  • dave June 17, 2004 7:41 PM

    Don't forget site. Enter the search items followed by site:URL. I find it helpful for msdn.microsoft.com.

  • dave June 18, 2004 9:49 AM

    Oh yeah for sure. And if you want to add search functionality to your own site. Just add a Google search. See the main page of the ObjectSharp Site.

  • dave June 19, 2004 3:55 AM

    Google is definately the king. I have been a solid user for a long time. If only their IPO was before their fame I would have jumped on board. Now every "yahoo" in the world knows about Google - pardon the pun.

    One of the best features is using google to search another website...try it out

    enter: football site:www.sportsline.com

  • TrackBack October 14, 2004 9:44 PM

  • TrackBack October 14, 2004 9:46 PM

  • dave February 17, 2005 12:18 PM

    what is the meaning of an nontenure

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(optional)
(required) 

Comment Notification

If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS