One big hint — the more page is where we find all of Google’s really cool stuff!
Some of these items are experimental — the Labs link gets you to neat stuff that Google is still designing and changing.
Do you want Google to search occasionally, say once a week, for some result and email it to you? How about the ability to search and browse mail-order catalogs? Or to search the text of printed books and scholarly papers?
If you want to start your own blog (see my August 1st newsletter) — and do it for free — click on the Blogger link from Google’s “more” page.
You can read about and download Google’s desktop search tool there, or download Google Earth (again, see my August 1st newletter), Picasa (a free picture organizer) is available for download from the “more” page.
Of course, if you are running Internet Explorer — especially IE before WinXP Service Pack 1 — you should be running Google’s Toolbar, which includes a very effective popup blocker.
Many add-on toolbars can block popups; however, Google’s is one of the few that allows you to decide whether you want to share information with Google on where you web-surf — just say “no” (uncheck the two Options boxes, where it says “Page Information” (these are valuable for web developers, but not many other people). The toolbar also provides some limited autofilling capabilities for web forms.
The nondescript “Web Search Features” is anything but nondescript, if you click on it…
If you click on Google’s “more” page’s Web Search Features link, you will find descriptions, along with examples, of the many functions that you do with Google’s search bar — either on a Google Toolbar or on Google’s page.
I mentioned earlier the calculator function. You can see more examples at http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator . There is a similar function for currency conversion on the same page. The definitions function is shown with example; however, the description implies that the “define:word” or “define: word” gives the same answer — it doesn’t, in my experience. The regular define function gives links to definitions. The define: function gives a list of alternative definitions.
I’m learning even more about Google with this article. I didn’t know about the “movie” keyword for a search. Their example searches for “movie red pill blue pill.” Well, looking back on it, this really should link to articles about The Matrix movie, so maybe that’s just a cool example of searching, rather than a cool new function.
An example of a cool function is the “search by number.” You can get results from parts numbers, phone numbers, and patent numbers — basically any kind of numbers that appear on a searched web page. Google also looks at the format of the number that you input. For example, if it looks like a FedEx number, Google will give you a link to check on a FedEx shipmnet with that number. It will also show you any web search results for that number. Google handles UPS and USPS shipment numbers similarly.
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