Power Searching with Google: What I learned!

Wow, these lessons were jam pack full of useful information. When you get to lesson 3, the advanced techniques really teach you things you probably haven’t even thought about, like modifying your search results by domain name, or web address. You can even find data within a site on Google without ever visiting it. Enter your search query like so “betweentwoferns:funnyordie.com” or “search data:site url” then Google will show search results with that site. I’ve used it multiple times already to search gaming forums for information on new releases, without having to go through endless re post. I’ve found that if a site isn’t designed well but has good content, this is the bet method for site navigation. 

One thing I learned when searching forums with Google is how to stack search methods that matter. For instance, a trailer was recently released for a game called Persona 5, which will be released on the ps3. If I wanted to find out all the knowledge there is on say, GameFAQs (a popular game forum) about persona 5, I would go “persona 5:gamefaqs.com/boards”. If I wanted to omit rumors from the search result I could go “persona 5:gamefaqs.com/boards -rumor”. Then bam keywords are removed!

Sometimes when I get a game, I buy it used and when you buy used you often don’t get the default manual that comes with games. Usually these manuals contain very basic information that you intuitively figure out within the game, but sometimes the manuals help with story progression. In case of the latter it is useful to know how to search for that manual efficiently on the internet. While I could just google “dark souls manual” the result I get aren’t that great, I see manuals from unofficial sites like steam, or the xbox marketplace where they want me to pay! But if I search by the filetype like this “filetype:pdf dark souls manual” I find exactly what I want on the 6th link down, here.

A very useful tool from this series allowed me to search and find movie theater times almost instantly. Just type “Movie -insert city name-“ and all major theaters will show up with list of what they are featuring on their vinyl screens. I’m the kind of guy who likes to stay at home and chill, but the ease of this method has made it that much harder to resist my GFs beck and calls to go out. 

The coolest tool that I plan on using for future is googles public data project where you can create custom graphs from the provided data or you own data. I haven’t done it yet but you could use the lesson 5 tips to cross reference the data provided by Google. Say, you look at the fertility rate of countries through public data project. Then you Google fertility rate of Afghanistan. I see an article from USA Today from a reporter who evaluates the data i just got from the world bank, through google public data project. Pretty cool. I’m sure there are more ways to use these tools but these are the five that I found extremely interesting. 

Working with apps in the chrome web store

I began using some apps on the chrome web store since the beginning of the semester. I am back and shall evaluate the ones I used, based on whether or not I kept the app, and how often I used it. Right off the bat, the first apps I installed and kept were ad block, ad block plus, and Ghostery. The first two apps were invaluable to me as a social tool to fend off those sites that are notorious for super intrusive ads. Ghostery is a different story. I like to use it as tool to evaluate data mining companies. Do I know what I’ll do with the knowledge that Quantcast is tracking me? Probably not..but it’s nice to know!

Next, after a few IT lectures I went straight to the productivity section of the web store. There I found wireframe.cc. It’s a cool tool developers use to create mock ups of their sites before they code. There are other options, but since I’m limited to the chrome web store, this was by far and across the superior product of the bunch. When you diddle with an app like this you can’t fully utilize it without the background knowledge  to markup a website. So without that knowledge I was just a kid with some toys, and I got bored. I’ll admit I didn’t spend that much time with this app but I should definitely come back to it cause it’s very nifty if you want create a frame work. 

My favorite app that I chose was an experimental code editor called tailor a fun, simple to use IDE. Although it’s in its beginning, those growing pains are gonna make one feature rich fat baby! The environment supports JavaScript, Html, and CSS – the big client side players in web development. The app is very easy to use with git hub, and gives you the option to use extensions. I haven’t utilized these elements yet but I’m sure their fantastic.