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Favorite Hidden Google Features?
fredtheshingle asks: "Google now seems to allow you the option to track your FedEx and UPS shipments! Search using the tracking number for either carrier and a page that offers to track the package appears. Simply follow that link and the carrier's current status report is displayed. Nice! So what's your favorite hidden Google feature?"
The "define:" clause which comes in very handy... define: PHP
I love those, though they're not really hidden. It always seems faster to open a new tab and run the calculation......
Fellowship 9/11
But then, given the /. debates here, I'm sure you all know that already.
Needle Nardle Noo
I'm not sure if I know of any that aren't pretty much common knowledge. Anyway, it's fun to search for "answer to life the universe and everything". I also like the calculator function: just enter "2 + 2". The ability to search for "definition any-word-you-want" is nice, too.
But of course, the best hidden feature is the ability to search for "litigious b******s" and to have the most relevant link appear first. In fact, you can leave off the word "litigious" and it still works, now that so many people have put links with that phrase on their web pages.
Let's just say Google images. ...with SafeSearch off. ;)
As a physics/physical science lab instructor at the local university, the discovery of the unit conversion feature on Google has been extremely handy. Now when students ask whether their conversion are correct or not, I can point them to a quick easy place where they can check their own work.
In the google search box type "80 calories in joules" and voila.
Ego Surfing!!!
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Not only does it do math, it's also got a bunch of constants built in, and it can convert units on the fly, even to some more esoteric ones. Try entering the following searches
:)
gravitational constant
speed of light in cubits per fortnight
mass of jupiter in stones
radius of earth * 2 * pi in light years
It's enough to keep a science nerd occupied for hours.
Google also has a list of the "hidden features" here
This seems pretty cool....
Google knows all, ask the google, google will know....
Fellowship 9/11
the non hidden features i use alot are quoting "some phrase like this" and excluding TLD's like -site:com -site:edu etc.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I've always liked this gag. Now if we can just find that question...
It's amazing how helpful the "~" can be when doing searches. Prefixing a word with a tilde will search for that word and many of its synonyms. Very helpful when doing things like:
/. a while ago.
linux ~tutorial
Also, I think this list of google tricks was listed on
it's beautiful! did you grow up on the Goon Show too?
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Seerch zee Veb
Pity it's buggy,:
Try this...
16 hertz in radians per second
Notice that the answer is off by a factor of 2*pi.
I reported it to them months ago, but they haven't fixed it.
I know I'm not alone here. Everytime I punch in a commonly misspelled word, dictionary.com, hyperdictionary, etc. is in the first couple links.
It's probably so often used, it's practically overlooked as feature.
And don't forget Google Labs for a taste of things to come.
If you have caller ID, or hit Star 69, and do not immediately recognize the number, punch it into google. Bonus: maps to the street address on file for that number.
It's a little picky on format (you have to do (555) 555-4444, not 5555554444 or 555-555-4444), but in general very awesome.
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
Yesss! I constantly use the NOT operator, the minus sign before keywords or domains etc. You can refine searches to almost anything with AND (the default operator) and NOT.
I used to like AltaVista's old logical operators, which included parentheses for nested operations. I could do things like
((foo AND bar) OR (foo AND baz))
but I don't think Google supports anything like this.
this isn't news, its a 'ask slashdot' question. reread the guys question, 'WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HIDDEN GOOGLE FEATURE".
Try to search for word 'test'. Note links on the right side of the page :)
Froogle, for those who like to be careful with money.
Google also allows you to do a lookup on a UPC code.. (it actually uses the database from www.upcdatabase.com)
works great if you have one of those modified cue cats
--
Time is on my side
These people @ Google really have a sense of humor. My favorite funny feature is the ability to do all your Google searches in your choice of Klingon, Bork Bork Bork! (Swedish chef from the Muppets), or Elmer Fudd.
Dave
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
My favorite feature is the ability to search for items using regular expressions. Just type the string "site:/^[cs].*?edu$/" and BAM! You get jack squat.
Some day our Linux search engine heros will grace us with regular expressions.
Open Source Industrial Music.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
I remember when looking for an old message board comment of mine, I got a suggestion before the results to see what people thought of me. Google presented a page full of Tristan is ... snippets from web pages. One of them was even Tristan is a fat ugly bastard from England, which was suprisingly accurate :)
:/
I can't remember how I got the feature to appear though
This Google Directory Category directly under the toplevel: Adult.
I have no idea, why it is always hidden (even if the content filtering is turned off) or how to reach it from the toplevel.
Google's Britney Spears page?
Googling for 225-922-5400 works, so I don't follow your comment about not being able to use that style.
http://www.google.com/search?q=225-922-5400
I've been having fun converting moles to baker's dozens -- what else ya got?
My deviantArt site
a klingon google or a a l337 google kewl huh!!
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
I found out that google offers a wireless search engine. Just go to that URL with your mobile, enter your search query and google will convert any site it returns to WAP format that your mobile can handle.
The * character works as a wildcard when searching for strings. Try this one for some variations of a famous quote.
Here is a page that lists a bunch of features. Handy dandy.
No encryption can withstand the power of the Lucky Guess.
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
--Jamie Zawinski, in comp.lang.emacs
My father is a blogger.
Google H4xx0r is quite amusing.
the phonebooks of course, searched with rphonebook: for residential and bphonebook: for business, also does reverse lookup for the phone #'s themeselves.
specifying a site to search with site: is awesome
Everyone's already mentioned the calculator
If anyone wants a nice in depth look at some of Google's geekier features I highly recomend the book Google Hacks.
My website after the last update.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
The calculator and the unit conversions are cool. But what I use most are:
1. The Dot. Instead of "search string", search.string works.
2. Search By Location (currently in google labs, hopefully to be released soon). I made a mycroft plugin for it. Download and unzip to your mozilla/firefox searchplugins directory, edit googleloc.src to reflect your zip code, restart browser, and it'll appear in your search dropdown. Just choose it from the dropdown and enter a query, say "pizza hut" or whatever, and bang, you get your nearest pizza huts with map and distances. (It'll stop working when search by location is eventually moved out of labs.google.com, obviously)
type in "weapons of mass destruction" in the search box and click "I'm feeling lucky"
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
...but if you type in your search terms twice (monkeys monkeys) you tend to get better results, because that (I believe) only looks for sites with "monkeys" written twice, removing sites just linking to the topic (and the glut of link directory things). It's cool.
They had a link that would return a random result out of the database. Many a boring night was saved by that link. Does anyone know if google has something similar?
Try 40 rods per hogshead in miles per gallon, and all you get are Simpsons references. Of course, one of the first is Shafe's Simpsons Stuff - Grandpa's Hogshead Converter, so it works. Sort of.
I found it indispensible for take-home finals.
Oh, you don't want anybody keeping track of your activities and transactions? Then you can't use a credit card, you can't write checks, you can't ever show anybody your driver's license or social security card. Which means you can't legally hold a job in the U.S.!
I think cookie-phobia is a sort of an inverse example of what Bruce Schneir calls the Line-Item Fallacy of Security. He's refering to people who think the solution to their security problems is to just buy a bunch of magic technology that will solve their problems for them. But there also seems to be an attitude that some technology is tainted by the evil anti-security/anti-privacy boojum, and by avoiding it you also solve your security problems. Not true. As Schneir keeps saying, security is not a product, it's a process. And of course privacy is an aspect of security.
Cookies are presumed to be evil because they can be used to gather information. But you can't avoid giving out information. The best you can do is avoid giving information to people you don't trust.
What, you don't trust Google? Fine, then configure your browser to only allow cookie settings to trusted sites, and don't add google.com to the list. That way you can at least use Slashdot without logging in.
What, you don't trust Slashdot? Then why are you even using it? They're perfectly capable of tracking your activities on their site without using cookies.
You don't trust your browser to enforce your cookie policy? Then you're already screwed, cause you've been trusting your browser not to not use cookies at all.
It's not about what technology is evil and what isn't. It's about who you trust and who you don't.
naDev
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Miserable failure + I'm feeling lucky.
Weapons of mass destruction + I'm feeling lucky.
The Google calculator/convertor is also very cool.
Just French Military Victories will suffice thank you.
What's really interesting about it is some of the less expected results.
From the top of the "french military defeats" link:
"(***Please note that the Web designer is not American and blaming the Web designer for America's history is illogical. Though you may critisize this oversimplified French history all you wish, blaming or threatening the Web designer is not nice.)" -- http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html
That fact is, that all americans outside of limited american forums hear about that crap nearly constantly. Bitching from ass-clowns from other countries. Yes yes were all evil and it's all our fault whatever it was, and not only did your leaders and forefathers bear no responsability for what's transpired they were on the path to creating a Utopia that ran on dreams and starlight until nasty old US came along and keyed their car, shot their dog and stole their girl.
And for our "elite"-feeling friends... 1337 h4x0r
Once, for the hell of it, I tried www.boogle.com. It's Google with a different quote and a different pretty picture each time you go. So, just for more hell of it, I tried a bunch of other oogles just now. Here are a few:
joogle.com - a directory site. Never used it or heard of it.
koogle.com - same as joogle.com.
moogle.com - Part of Strayer University. Never used it or heard of it.
noogle.com - Part of moogle.com
ooogle.com - sex
roogle.com - not taken
toogle.com - got a casino alert box and then sent to usseek.com
uoogle.com - redirected to sharewareisland.com
voogle.com - get free email addresses and a disturbing picture of a frog in a bikini.
woogle.com - same redirect as toogle.com, to usseek.com
xoogle.com - not taken
yoogle.com - under construction
zoogle.com - Xaraya Content Management Solutions
I thought that a gallon was a measure of area. But I'm really confused. Are there REALLY 231 cubic inches in one US gallon?! I've got a flower pot that is 17 inches high, with a 17.5" (average) diameter. 2(pi)rh should give the area, which would be 2(3.14)8.75*17. Have I done my math wrong? By google's information, that should only be 4 gallons. That flower pot is pretty big.
Google sets (In google labs)
http://labs.google.com/sets
Its amazing, the google engine at its best. If u havnt tried it yet give it a go.
Vinit
Elmer Fudd
Pig Latin
Klingon
And my personal fave, Bork Bork Bork! (swedish chef)
I am NaN
As the subject line indicates, a gallon is a unit of volume. If you're American, I thnk you may even buy your gas and milk in units of a gallon. Also, be careful with the difference between a US gallon and a UK gallon - one is slightly larger.
Maybe you were thinking about acre or hectare for acre?
Cue The Sun...
And don't forget... Ingpay Atinlay.
End of Line.
> Me having sex with my SO is legal. That doesn't mean I want information about it out in the open.
As far as I know, having sex with your Superior Officer is universally illegal.
I, too, prefer not to let Google set cookies.
1. Enable cookies. 2. Go to http://www.google.com/ 3. Click on "Preferences" on the right side of the search box. 4. Set your preferences and click "Save Preferences." You're back to the search box. 5. Click on "Advanced Search" on the right side of the search box. 6. Do not fill out anything, but just click on "Google Search." 7. Bookmark this new search page. 8. Delete your Google cookie. 9. Disable all cookies, or at least your cookies for Google. Now when you use your new bookmark for Google searches, your preferences are passed to Google in the URL, without a cookie.
(Reference: http://www.searchguild.com/printer/fm1/792)
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I use it all the time to convert metric to standard units and vice versa. I mean if america would just get their act together it would be a non issue. But until then, it's Google to the rescue.
I'm not too sure on the spelling of some of my words, and even though I'm geek thin, I fat finger keys a lot. So I really like the "Did you mean:" feature of google.
Another one that I don't think to use as often as I should is the Google Viewer It's like a slide show of your search results.
Hmmm, and me thinking all this time that SO meant "Significant Other".
Instead of searching with site=microsoft for Windows fixes, you can get a search of many many things related to MS by using http://google.com/microsoft which turns up a ton more answers than the MS KB or any other search I've found.
/linux and Macintosh...
Also works with
Turns out they're on the instruction pages, more's the pity. I thought they were unpublished.
UserAdvocate: The voice of the user
Anyone else notice that google now tracks all the links from the main page? Google now knows which links you go to. It has the format http://www.google.com/url?&URL&e=tracking.
I wanted to find information about a low-power ham radio site that would tell me how many miles per watt I was getting, given two locations. I searched for miles per watt and found out that the answer is a constant, 1609.344!
I'm still a newbie to slashdot. I was just wondering why my msg got moded down as 'redundant'. It answered the main topic " What is YOUR fav google feature", Google Sets is fantastic and no one else seems to have mentioned it before. Just wanted to know what was wrong ( feels sort of bad to have your 1st slash dot comment marked 'redundant').
Okay, sure, google is written by geeks... it's cool that it has a numeric constant for 42... but it *also* knows about PI, E, and get this.... hbar... wow!
Kinda neat.
http://random.bounceme.net
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I like the Google Zeitgeist . Interesting stats from Google users around the world. Imagine the marketing potential of this info.
You'll pull through.
Pig latin
google has a neat calculator feature.
try "5+5" or "milliseconds in an hour"
100% Insightful
That's why it didn't work for you earlier today. The grandparent links to google.ca. It still doesn't work on google.com.
For example, tell me who wrote the song "E.V.A.". If I use that in Google, I end up with loads of "Eva Cassidy" links.
I've tried quotes and backslashes but still i don't seem to be able to force punctuation. Any ideas?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
would you SHUT THE FUCK UP about the fucking radians per second thing? Go use Windows Calculator or gcalc or a two-dollar pocket Casio or WHATEVER.
The whole Google Answers service is pretty neat as well. It operates on a freelance basis; anyone can post a question and a bounty for the answer and anyone can post an answer to try to claim it. What's cool is that all the previous questions and answers have been posted online. Lots of interesting stuff, some of the researchers are quite good.
Wifinetnews on Google Labs' experimental Wi-Fi directory. Looks interesting because it derives the list from the web pages scanned.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
As is 2259225400
http://www.google.com/search?q=2259225400
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
The Google Toolbar. Not very hidden but its amazing. http://toolbar.google.com/ Has a built in popup blocker search box and best of all its free and no spyware. Also the View PDF as HTML http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:xWrqav2j1Y8J:w ww.boston.com/globe/acrobat/today.pdf+&hl=en&ie=UT F-8 Lets just I dont like AdobePDF files.
they used to have a feature 'Ask the Expert' See here http://www.websearchguide.ca/netblog/archives/0011 04.html
But doesn't seem to be available anymore
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
Since there are a few comments on how people use Mozilla with Google, here's my tip (Mozilla on RedHat Linux):
/opt/mozilla/searchplugins/
In the preferences set Google to be your search engine. You can then access it by typing directly into the location bar, which drops down to reveal a "Search Google for..." field.
Edit "google.src", usually found in
Any preference that you can set in the URL for Google, you can set in this file. It shouldn't take too long to figure it out.
Bish bash bosh, job's a good'un.
Google gets /.'ed as 1 million frustrated and lonely nerds figure out how to get free pr0n after having Mom's credit card taken away (again) and giving up on that complicated USENET thingy.
I love the feature which lists their features... oh, wait, it's just their features page...
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
Not only am I embarassed because the authour is a fellow Canadian, but because the list of French Military Defeats is incorrect:
France has, at some time in the last thousand years, controlled most of mainland Europe, half of Africa, and some nice places in South East Asia and North America. In comparison the US has controlled, what, the Philippines? Sounds to me like winning wars isn't all it's cracked up to be.
"bretty spheers"?
I'm a big fan of the answer that google gives to a search for "The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything"
A very weak rationalization by Google, in my opinion. It seems to be based upon the "method of dimensions" arguement, i.e. "if the dimensions come out right, the answer must be right". I don't buy it. The method of dimensions is a helpful but non-rigorous technique, and doesn't always correctly handle dimensionless constants.
:-)
Hertz can't just mean "anything" per second.
For starters, consider that minimally it must be restricted to mean "anything dimensionless per second". You can't measure velocity or power in Herz, even though both have units of "anything per second" (metres or joules respectively).
In fact, either by convention or definition, I suspect the former, the "anything" is further restricted to be a cycle of some periodically repeating event. One rotation of a roundabout. One cycle of a sine-wave. etc.
Travel one radian around the roundabout, and you don't end up back where you started. Travel 2*pi radians, and you do -- you've completed a cycle.
If Herz really meant "anything per second", why don't Intel just claim their Xeons are 12.4GHz instead of 2GHz? I hope Intel's marketing folks aren't listening.
Google may have a rationalization for why their answer is "right", but any engineer who has ever worked with filters knows better.
. . .and then they lost it all.