Posts Tagged ‘google’

Google’s source:life

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

One of the neatest recent additions to Google search is the LIFE photo archive.

Basically, google images is now indexing a large photo archive owned by the famous Life magazine. Many of these images were also never published before. Talk about a jump back into some of the finest moment in history. Some of these photos date back to around the 1750s.

To search this archive for a specific keyword, simply append the following to your search term(s):  source:life

Try some of the following searches for instance:
BluesTitanicGold rush
You may also browse through the decades-categorized items on the official landing page

Simply, amazing!

Google search tips

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

‘Face’ photos
When searching for images, you could narrow down your search to ‘faces’. Simply, append ‘&imgtype=face’ to the end of the google images search url.
So if you’re searching for Robert De Niro, try doing it with ‘face’ as image type

File Types
You could specify the type of file you’re looking for. Simply append ‘filetype: type’ to your search query. So if you’re looking for an excel file related to subject Foo, then search for: ‘Foo filetype:xsl’

Site limitation
If you’d like to narrow down your search results to those coming from a certain website, you may use the ‘site:’ feature. For instance, if you’re looking for new year related articles on cnn.com, search for: ‘new year site:cnn.com’

Definitions
Are you looking for a quick definition of a certain word, abbreviation, etc? use google’s ‘define:’ criteria. For example, if you’re not sure what AFAIK means, simply search for: ‘define:AFAIK’. A set of definitions from multiple glossary website will be returned.
Note that you may do so for multiple languages

Cached version
Looking for a quick way to see google’s cache of a certain page? simply search for ‘cache:url’. For example, searchfing for ‘cache:cnn.com’ would return google’s latest cached version of the cnn.com page

Conversions
You may easily resort to converting units in google! try searching for some of the following: ’12 feet in meters’, ’10 kilograms in pounds’, ’20 degrees celsius in fahrenheit’.
You may also resort to currency conversions (not lively updated as it seems), e.g. ’24 euros in usd’

Calculations
On a note similar to that of the conversions, you may do simple to medium mathematical calculations using google as well. Try searching for sin(50), cos(39), tan(82)*24/cos(41). Quite neat.

Current time
You can easily find the local time in a given city. Simple use: ‘time in cityname’. For instance, trying ‘time in kuala lumpur’ can return at the time of testing: 10:32am Saturday (MYT) – Time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Weather
Weather forecasts have never been easier. Try searching for ‘Weather in Prague’, ‘Weather in Rio de Janeiro’. You’d get a 4 days forecast (including today), with high, low and cute descriptive icons.

Stocks
Yes, google does help you get quick stock quotes as well! simply search for ‘stocks:stockname’. e.g., searching for ‘stocks:dji’ will return the Dow Jones Industrial Average, along with open, high, low, last update time and simple activity graph!

Movies show times
Google allows you to search for movies show times, by ZIP codes. So for instance, if you reside in Beverly hills 90210, try searching for: ‘showtimes 90210′

Page titles
Looking for web pages that contain a specific set of terms? you may query google using the following method: ‘intitle: “sentence here”‘, e.g. ‘intitle: “dude where’s my car”‘

Synonyms
You may let google search not only for terms you enter, but also their synonyms. For instance, if you’d like to find website that list inspirational quotes, with whatever synonyms inspirational might have (such as motivational), try looking for: ‘~inspiring quotes’ (by adding the tilde as a prefix to the terms in question)