Oodles of Google Tips

A national newspaper referred to Google recently as "the most intriguing company in the world," and twists and turns in the stock market have caused it to be valued (at least intermittently) as the U.S.'s largest media firm--even if some folks aren't sure it is a media firm. For their part, the Duo find themselves turning to its resources for everything from e-mail to shopping advice to, well, search. So why not a closer look at exactly what Google's got in its bag of tricks?

Virtually all Web users are familiar with Google's home page, but not everyone looks above the search box. If you do, you'll see links to a bunch of special selections you've probably at least experimented with. Images delivers images; Groups searches so-called newsgroups (both Usenet and the site's own Google Groups). News gives you an automatically edited roundup of current headlines, and Froogle lets you shop your little dot-commerce heart out.

Off to the right, though, is an option marked "more." If you click on that, you suddenly find yourself presented with a whole lot of things that Google can do that we'll bet you've never seen before. Angela's fond of Google Alerts, which skims the news for words of her choosing and lets her know when there's fresh coverage--not so useful for, say, watching an oft-used term such as computers, but prosopagnosia delivers just fine.

Google does mapping, too, and though there are plenty of sites that'll oblige your need for terrestrial elucidation, there's a nice feature tucked away on Google Maps that can really change your (ahem) view of the topic. "Satellite" presents mapped areas as seen by various commercial and military craft whirling overhead. Angela, demonstrating with a map search on her hometown, could easily pick out her house, the municipal airport, her high school, and other points of interest. You don't get spy-sat-resolution images, and the ones you do get may be a couple of years old (the snapshot of her brother's neighborhood showed most of the subdivision under construction), but all in all it's fascinating stuff.

Shoppers are already for the most part friendly with Froogle, but not everyone knows about Google Catalogs, where those who enjoy mail-order catalogs (but not the process of herding the printed versions into the recycling bin) can flip virtual pages to their hearts' content. It's particularly useful, remarks Steve, for finding goods from well-established companies.

But if you really want to learn how much power Google can have, he continues, click on the link labeled "Web search features" on Google's "more" page. You'll discover a whole bunch of things that you can do right from Google--and in some cases do better than you could in other ways. The Duo enumerate a few, including search by number, which can parse everything from delivery-service tracking numbers to vehicle ID numbers and area codes (no special syntax is needed--just type the number into the usual search blank), and site search, which lets you focus your attentions on just one locale--e.g., searching for site:pcworld.com "digital duo" will get you strictly Duo mentions made here at the mother ship.