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Google Hacks
The book in brief Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest and published by O'Reilly will appeal to an even wider audience, I can imagine buying this for friends who haven't cottoned on to 'net searching at all and friends who complain "Google returns too many sites." People who are afraid to code shouldn't be put off by the "Hacks" in the title: O'Reilly have obviously taken a wider meaning of "hack" than just a neat piece of code. This book is a marvelous compendium of tips and tricks for Google, ranging from simple ways of getting the search results you want, through using Google's newer services such as phone books and image search, all the way to advanced ways of using scrapers and the Google API.
The book demonstrates 100 hacks, of which close to half are useful for everyone -- newbie, programmer and non-programmer alike. The first 35 hacks, in chapters one and two, will educate you about the intricacies of getting the best out of searching both Google's main web catalog and the newer 'Special Services and Collections.' This is the part of the book that should be essential reading for Google users -- in the two days I've had this book these have proved invaluable. The rest are for those who are either looking for extremely advanced search tips, increasing their web site's Google page rank, or programming an application to use the Google data -- all topics well covered in this volume.
What's Good In This Book
To start, it is well written, well laid out with a good contents section, good index, and some appropriate introductory material before getting down to the first hack. Each of the hacks are numbered and a single hack will often cross-reference other hacks that add information relevant to it. The hacks in each chapter nicely add on each other in both complexity and function.
The hacks themselves seem to cover every area of Google that you might want. They range from the downright frivolous (there is a chapter "Google Pranks and Games") to serious ways of improving your search results and excellent examples of good ways to use the Google API.
Most of the code fragments are in Perl, and among the hacks are ways of getting the job done without over extensive use of extra modules such as XML Parsers and SOAP::Lite (including a hack that uses regular expressions to parse the XML).
What's Bad In This Book
It's hard to find anything bad to say, apart from some frustration that a couple of the hacks that interested me used ASP or VB rather than a more portable language.
Oh, another minor quibble, the allied web site O'Reilly Hacks Series has been slow and has none of the code in the book or any of the URLs mentioned listed anywhere -- it seems more geared towards marketing the books than helping the readers.
(DISCLAIMER: I use Rael Dornfest's Blosxom blog software and have contributed a plugin for his software.)
You can purchase Google Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
How is this offtopic? This is exactly what tends to happen with these sorts of 'tricks' - although, admittedly, Google's "don't be evil" policy will probably mitigate this somewhat.
The point is, whenever you utilize these tricks, remember the 'Tragedy of the Commons' lesson, and think Kantian - "What would happen if EVERYBODY did this? Would the system still support us?"
If the answer is "no", realize that you're shitting where you eat, and find a more sustainable endeavor.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
I'll check this one out. Is there an O'Reilly book that isn't useful or somewhat entertaining? Thier hacking series is top notch in my book.
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
I think a book like this has been due for awhile now. Google has more features than even they probably know about, but thankfully they don't try to cram them all into blocks all over the page. When you go to www.google.com you get a very accessible, very simple, yet still powerful site. Many people I know use nothing but the default google search, because it gets the job done. I can find out whatever I want about Linux from a basic google search. I can usually find it easier, however, with www.google.com/linux. I only head about it form word of mouth, I had never actually lookd for it. New services and tools are being added all the time, and I mean all the time :) check here to see some of the new and upcoming features. I think most of you would be suprised to find out all the ways google can make your life easier aside from just by being the best damned web search engine.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
But then again, disuse of the Google API could lead them to ignore development there. Sounds kinda like Goldilocks here...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Unfortunatly sometimes I wish it would work like Ask Jeeves did. Where I could type in a question and it would try and resolve what web site could answer it for me. Of course Ask has gone down hill and I use Google most of the time.
"how to * a cat"
Wild cards in Google. Who knew?
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
If you tweak around with the URL, you can get Google News to display the navigation bar on top (it's better that way, IMHO).
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
googleDorks
I wouldn't call it a must-read, but it's certainly worth adding to your safari bookshelf for a month.
Is a way to do complex boolean queries on Google:
(baquaspa or "baqua spa" or "baquacil") and (plastics or warranty) and bromine
Stemming would also be nice.