Preferably one relating to café society subjects. Here’s mine: In Google, when looking for a book, use the advanced search screen. Put the name of the book in the exact phrase search line. Then right in front of the title put this phrase “find in a library”. When you click and this result comes up, click on it; you can type in your zip code. The site will bring back names of libraries in your region which have that book. Nifty.
And I’ll begin by hijacking this thread to request a tip.
There is a command you can type into your address bar that will show you what sites contain links to another site. For example, if I wanted to know who is linking to www.straightdope.com, I would put in:
THECOMMANDICAN’TREMEMBER www.straightdope.com
…and it would give me a list of sites that link here. But damnit, I can’t remember the command. I thought it was LINKTO or something like that, but I can’t seem to put it together. Any ideas?
The backspace key is usually the same a clicking on the “back” button.
Use Bill H.'s link, or just type link:www.somesortofurl.com with no space after the “link:”
There’s also site:www.anotherurl.com to search only within a particular domain.
Something CS related? www.imdb.com has information on pretty much any movie, actor, or director you could possibly want to know about.
I think people generally know that if you only know a phrase or two of a song, you type it into Google, in quotes, and you’ll usually get the complete lyrics, and the name of the song and the band/artist.
Similar to the backspace shortcut, ctrl+n opens up a new IE window with the same contents and history as the one you’re in.
Also, the spacebar usually works as a page down command when reading long pages.
To find out who owns a domain name, use Sam Spade. If you don’t get any results there, use Ripe.net.
You can also trace where an email came from. Choose ‘View all headers’ on the email, and look through the header to find the originating domain. If this is an IP address, copy it and paste it into the “IP whois” box on the Sam Spade site.
To limit Google results to a certain kind of site, e.g. to UK only addresses, use site:.uk in addition to your search terms.
Google allows the use of OR between two search terms.
I should add: at the Whois pages, enter the domain in the form straightdope.com, missing out the first bit. An IP address is a set of four numbers separated by periods: 69.20.125.245. In an email header, these are shown in reverse order. The last one is the originating address.
Also, you can limit search results a specific site using Google - e.g. Cecil Adams site:straightdope.com.
If you go to a webpage and it’s not found, copy the link and take it to The WayBack Machine . Odds are even or better you’ll be able to access it from there.
To do a Google search in Firefox, type “google [your search terms]” in the address bar. In Opera it’s even easier: “g [search terms]” (without the quotes in both instances). I think you can also do other kinds of searches, but Google is the only one I ever use.
You can type a math problem directly into Google. The search engine itself will give you the answer. Example.
I can’t believe I didn’t know that. Thanks!
Any cell phone with SMS can now access some basic features of Google, such as the calculator and directory listings. http://www.google.com/sms/howtouse.html
When browsing the web, you can hold down ALT and press the Left arrow key instead of clicking on Back. If you hold down ALT and press the Right arrow key, you’ll go Forward a page.
(This works in at least IE and Firefox.)
I find this usefull for when I’ve done a Google search, then followed a few links. Hold down ALT, press Left a few times, and I’m back at the search page without having to bother with the mouse.
Unless you have an operating system / browser that’s pre-1998, you usually don’t have to type www at the beginning of a URL anymore. Just type straightdope.com, the computer will fill in the www for you.
Along the same vein, you can just type in the middle part and hit CTRL+Enter and the www. and .com will automatically be appended. SHIFT+Enter will append www. and .net.
I don’t know if there are keys for .org and .edu.
Holding the Ctrl key down and moving the scroll wheel on the mouse forwards or backwards will increase or decrease the text of a webpage.
Typing the main part of a url, like “straightdope” and then hitting CTRL-Enter will transform it into "http://www.straightdope.com
It only works for sites whose addresses follow that format (or have redirects setup for that format).
I’m a dingbat. I completely did not see Garfield226’s post.
One of my favorite uses of Google is to search for a filetype. For example, entering
global warming filetype:ppt
finds Power Points about global warming. (filetype:doc and filetype:publisher are other examples.
Very widely known but I’ll mention them as just in cases:
The CTRL + N feature opens a new window
The CTRL + F feature finds a particular word or phrase on a site
These features allow you to make foreign or non alphabet characters