ResourceShelf: "Google Releases More Shortcuts

1) Area code info

Example: http://www.google.com/search?q=414
You'll get a map of where the area is located. I checked area code 847 (Chicago's northern suburbs) and got a map that showed portions of four states near Chicago. Not very useful.

2) Universal Product Codes (UPC)

Example: http://www.google.com/search?q=073333531084

3) Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers

4) U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers

5) Flight Tracking

Flights to and from the U.S. Note: Many services like those linked from Google exist and have existed for many years. Some of you might also want to take a look at this tracking service. I checked flights from several airlines with this new Google feature and got nothing. Airlines that I didn't find links for included Jet Blue, Southwest, AirTran, Midwest Express, Sun Country, Spirit, ATA, Lufthansa, Virgin, KLM, Aloha, and Hawaiian. It also appears that single digit and some four digit flight numbers do not work. It's surprising that Google didn't check this before releasing this shortcut and making the announcement. SearchDay reports that Yahoo has also added flight tracking shortcut."

Be Careful What You Google
It might just get your mother arrested.: "According to an LA Times story (requires registration) a 17 year old kid in California did a Google search on his own name and found himself on a missing kids list. From Gadgetopia

Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier

Google Co-founders: Who's Behind Google

Larry Page & Sergey Brin brought Google to life in September 1998 at Stanford University.

Google Services & Tools
"Google has many special services and tools to help you to find exactly what you're looking for."

Google Web Search Features:

"In addition to providing easy access to more than 6 billion web pages, Google has many special features to help you to find exactly what you're looking for. Click the title of a specific feature to learn more about it."

Google Help Central

Huge menu of Help for all Google searches, services & tools.

Editorial Observer: Behind the Rise of Google Lies the Rise in Internet Credibility from The New York Times, February 27, 2004. Free registration required.

Google Alert - An Easy Way to Track Your Research Interests on the Web

Google Alert runs daily (or less frequently-you set the options) Google searches for you and e-mails you any new results that appear (you can also access them via a web page). This is NOT sponsored by Google.

ResearchBuzz -- Google Now Offering News Alerts

"Welcome to Power Google, By Robert Harris, a practical, how-to book about using Google to locate information on the Internet. Below you will find a brief description of each chapter's content along with two formats in which they can be viewed (Adobe or HTML)."

Google, Yahoo Add New Search Features by Chris Sherman, Associate Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com. January 13, 2004

Soople-easy expert search-

"Soople is an early English dialect, which means 'to soften, make supple'. That's exactly what I envisioned for this site; a site that softens all the fantastic (advanced) functions Google offers. Initially I made this site for my mother, who, though computer-savvy, still didn't know about all the possibilities Google offers. This site is therefore meant for all those who are not yet familiar with all the functions and required syntaxes. This way Soople enables an 'easy expert search'!

For instance, one can specify a search by one particuliar site or filetype (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF) or an image search by size and type.

Furthermore there are many useful tools Google offers; search in the latest news, look up definitions or use Google as a phonebook.

And last but not least, the Calculator. This amazing tool let's you do all kind of (very advanced) calculations. Soople has added the unit-converter, which is based on this calculator, for the conversion of all the commmon units/measures (meters<--->yards). Quite supple, if you ask me."

Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania!:
The Secret R&D Army
How hackers give Google its wildest ideas.
By Jeffrey M. O'Brien

Froogle. Google News. Google Compute. The Deskbar. The history of Labs.google.com shows that all those PhDs at company headquarters think of search as a starting point, not a destination. But they also know that some of the best ideas for new uses of Google come not from their own big brains but from tens of millions of Google users.

Wired 12.03: The Complete Guide to Googlemania!
How to Kill Google
By Paul Boutin

Want to topple the Web's darling? It's simple - build a trillion-page, ad-free, up-to-the-minute search engine for everything ever put on the Net.

I'm Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian at Eastern Connecticut State University. I'm starting this blog as part of my presentation, Driver's Ed for the Information Superhighway, at the 2004 Teaching Academic Survival Skills Conference.

There's so much noise on the Web right now about Google that the easiest way to keep current is to Blog it.