Google and Yahoo search results in the same window at the same time

If you've ever searched for the same phrase at both Google and Yahoo!, you've probably noticed that the results can be surprisingly different. That's because Google and Yahoo! have different ways of determining which sites are relevant for a particular phrase.

Though we might never know exactly why results are different between the two search engines, at least we can have some fun spotting the differences and end up with more search results than either one of the sites would have offered on their own.

One way to compare results is to simply open each site in separate browser windows and manually scan for differences. But viewing both sets of results in different windows is a bit tedious, and a clever Norwegian developer named Asgeir S. Nilsen has made the task easier, at a site called Twingine. It contains a blank search form into which you can type any search query. When you click Search, the site brings up the results pages for that query from both Yahoo! and Google, side by side. To be fair, the sides on which Google and Yahoo! appear change at random, so people who prefer one side of the screen to the other won't be biased.

Clicking Next or Previous in the top frame at Twingine takes you to the next or previous page in the search results at both sites.

Surfing the pages in the search results at Twingine can be a bit tricky. You'll probably want to open linked search results in a new window or tab, so that you can keep your place in the search results at both Yahoo! and Google. You can open links in a new window by right-clicking the link (Ctrl-click on a Mac) and choosing Open Link in New Window from the menu. You can also set your search preference at either search engine to automatically open links in a new window when you click a search result.

Looking for Definitions!

In Google you can use the 'define' search syntax, if you are looking for definitions on the web. Simply write the word(s) you need the definition with the special syntax keyword 'define', like shown below:

define google juice
define julienne
define 42

Google tells you that these are defined as "power of a website to turn up in Google," "cut food into thin sticks," and "being two more than forty," thanks to Wikipedia, Low Carb Luxury, and WordNet at Princeton, respectively.



Click the "Web definitions for..." link or prefix the word you're defining with 'define:' (note the addition of a colon) in the first place, and you'll net a full page of definitions drawn from all manner of places. for example, 'define:TLA' finds turns up a large number of definitions (all about the same).

Here one thing to be kept in mind that The 'define word' syntax is still subject to spelling suggestions, so you don't have to worry too much about misspelling. The 'define:word' form, however, doesn't perform a web search at all, so it returns no results or spelling suggestions whatsoever if it finds no definitions to offer you.

Visual display of Information in Google

If you're the type that appreciates visual displays of information, you're bound to like the TouchGraph Google Browser. This Java applet allows you to start with pages that are similar to one URL, and then expand outward to pages that are similar to the first set of pages, on and on, until you have a giant map of nodes (a.k.a. URLs) on your screen.



Start your journey by entering a URL on the TouchGraph home page and clicking the Graph It link. Your browser will launch the TouchGraph Java applet, covering your window with a large mass of linked nodes, as shown in fig above.
Hold your mouse over one of the items in the group of pages. A little box labeled info pops up. Click on that, and a box of information about that particular node appears, as shown in fig below.



The box of information contains title, snippet, and URLpretty much everything you'd get from a regular search result. Click on the URL in the box to open that URL's web page itself in another browser window.
TouchGraph does two rather useful things. First, it allows you to see at a glance the similarity relationship between large groups of URLs. You can't do this with several flat results to similar URL queries. Second, if you do some exploring, you can sometimes get a list of companies in the same industry or area. This comes in handy when you're researching a particular industry or topic.
For a look at all the ways you can customize the TouchGraph Google browser, be sure to check out the Full Instructions page at http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGB_FullInstructions.html.

Gather a Snapshot of Google in time

Google Zeitgeist provides a weekly, monthly, and yearly overview of what the Web was interested in. Turning to Google itself for a definition of zeitgeist (define:zeitgeist), there's consensus that it refers to "the spirit of the times."
And Google Zeitgeist is just that: a mirror that the Web (according to Google) holds up to us, providing a snapshot of the week, month, or year that was.

A typical weekly Google Zeitgeist, shown in fig lists the top 15 gaining queries.

(http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html)

It takes only a few moments of visiting Google Zeitgeist before you're itching to go back a little further in time: the week your second child was born, the month during which the Olympics were held, the year you graduated from high school. Click the Archive link to choose any year from the Google Zeitgeist Archive and display links for every week, month, and year .

Speed up Mozilla Firefox

Sometimes Mozilla Firefox browser takes a long time to open a page, but this problem can be fixed by following few easy steps mentioned below:

1.Type "about :config" in the adress field.

2. Set the value of network.http.pipelining to "true".

3. Set the value of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to "100".

4. Set the value of network.http.proxy.pipelining to "true"

5. Set the value of nglayout.initialpaint.delay to "0" (not availible in newer versions).

This will increase the speed of Mozilla Firefox to load the page immediately with any delay.

Search ebooks by Google

Google has some fantastic potential for you to find whatever you are after on the internet.

To search for a book / program / file perhaps try the following.

Go to Google's search page and use the following criteria in the search dialog

intitle:index.of? file extension Name of item

e.g. intitle:index.of? chm syngress

This will hopefully give you a listing of all websites that google has cached that contain references to files in CHM format that are published by SYNGRESS.

Where CHM is a file format used by Microsoft Compiled HTML Help that is a proprietary format for online help files, developed by Microsoft and first released in 1997 as a successor to the Microsoft WinHelp format. It was first introduced with the release of Windows 98, and is still supported and distributed through Windows XP and Vista platforms.

A CHM help file has a ".chm" extension. It has a set of web pages written in a subset of HTML and a hyperlinked table of contents. CHM format is optimized for reading, as files are heavily indexed. All files are compressed together with LZX Compression. Most CHM browsers have the capability to display a table of contents outside of the body text of the help file.

As another example I use the following keywords in Google to search ebooks:

+("index of") +("/ebooks"|"/book") +(chm|pdf|zip|rar) +syngress

Colourful Gmail Labels

After Gmail IMAP feature, now Google launched a new feature for Gmail — Colored labels. Now you can set color for each Gmail label. The labeled email messages will be marked by the label text and color.

Image: Gmail colored labels

With colored labels, it is easier to spot the messages you want among tons of other messages in Inbox.

Besides the colored labels, Gmail also added group chat and emoticons in chat.

The Gmail new features, including colored labels, only work in the newest version of Gmail, which available for IE7 and Firefox 2.

Mastering Gmail

Tips and tricks to make Google's Gmail work harder for you.

So you've jumped on the Gmail bandwagon? Good for you! Abandoning POP mail for Google's mail service and app gains you many interesting perks, such as never having to download your mail again, using a powerful mail search that doesn't seem like an afterthought, and having a nearly infinite amount of online storage space.

That said, after the initial excitement of webmail wears off, you may start missing a few old-school features of Microsoft Outlook, such as personal folders and the ability to organize your mail any way you want. We say "old-school" because there really are better ways to handle your mail—they just require a little change in perspective.

Use labels, not folders

First off, creating a personal folder in Outlook for every project or topic under the sun is more like a chain around your neck than a legitimate productivity enhancer. Instead, Gmail provides a way to label your messages so they are automatically organized into groups, without using folders.

When a message arrives, just click the More Options drop-down and click New Label. Name the label and you're done. Now, that entire message thread will be categorized for you with the new label, which you can access along the left side of the screen. When you don't need that label anymore (if for example, the project has ended), you can remove it. Or just edit it and leave it active. Click the Edit Labels link on the left and put a "z" or a number in front of the label. You can use any letter or number scheme to organize unused labels, although you can't create "sublabels" that mimic Outlook's handy subfolder hierarchy.

Put a filter on it

You can label messages automatically, however. And you can use filters for all kinds of handy tasks, including auto-forwarding messages and deleting them without reading them. To create a filter, click the Create a Filter link—it's located near the search box. Enter the data you want, such as the message sender or text, in the fields. For example, you can filter all messages related to neurology by entering neurology in the "has the words" filter. Click Next. To set up a label filter, click the checkbox next to Apply the label and select one of your labels from the menu. The prospect of automatically organizing all messages from your boss or that relate to a project you're working on seems almost too good to be true, but the system works quite well.

Gmail helpfully suggests applying the filter to existing messages; check that option if you want. Otherwise, just click Create Filter to use the new filter. You can also auto-archive messages, mark them as read, star them, and forward the message automatically using the new filter rules. Delete all messages from your ex-girlfriend without even reading them? Yes, you can do that, too.

Get the syntax

Gmail emphasizes power over a stellar user interface. (In fact, Sundar Pichai, the director of Google Labs, says the company actually debates how every small interface element, especially icons, may slow down the app.) Tapping into that power is not always intuitive. And there are some things you still can't do, such as grouping all e-mails from the same person regardless of thread. However, what Gmail does provide is an easy, effective way to search for e-mails based on labels, who sent the message, the subject, and other factors.

In fact, for those with a vast e-mail archive, searching is really the way to go—we all have too many messages to keep them organized. Think of it this way: In Outlook, you can click on the Deleted folder and group by sender to see all messages from Uncle Hal. In Gmail, you can just type his e-mail address in the search field, and all the messages he sent you will appear in the results box. With all due respect to Uncle Hal, he is easier to find by searching than by categorizing.

Editor's tip If you get an e-mail that seems ripe for filtering, select the drop-down next to Reply and choose Filter messages like this to create an automatic filter that is, say, from your sister or to your coworkers.

Searching goes far beyond just typing an e-mail or a portion of a message, although one of the most powerful searches you can perform is when you remember a particular phrase, such as "get grandma for christmas." The key is learning the Gmail "operators" that you can type in the search box. Use "subject:" to search only e-mail headers. Use "from:bob" to find messages that your pal Bob sent you, and not the ones you sent to him. Instead of clicking on a label, you can type "label:" and the name to find messages with that label.

Advanced syntax

If you grok the basic syntax like "from:" or "label:" you are ready for more advanced search modifiers. For example, you can search for messages that were sent between a period of time. Just type "after:x before: x," where you replace the x with a date, in the format year/month/day or month/day/year.

Another great trick is to use parentheses to control your mail search. Let's say you'd been working on a project related to golf. You were making diagrams of several golf courses, including Pebble Beach and Stonebridge. If you wanted to find only the messages related to those two courses, you could use the syntax "golf (pebble beach and stonebridge)." This search weeds out a lot of superfluous messages. For those who receive hundreds or thousands of messages per month, it means a lot less hunting around for a few particular messages and homing in on just a few.

by John Brandon

20 Great Google Secrets

Google is clearly the best general-purpose search engine on the Web but most people don't use it to its best advantage. Do you just plug in a keyword or two and hope for the best? That may be the quickest way to search, but with more than 3 billion pages in Google's index, it's still a struggle to pare results to a manageable number. But Google is a remarkably powerful tool that can ease and enhance your Internet exploration. Google's search options go beyond simple keywords, the Web, and even its own programmers. Let's look at some of Google's lesser-known options.

Syntax Search Tricks

Using a special syntax is a way to tell Google that you want to restrict your searches to certain elements or characteristics of Web pages. Google has a fairly complete list of its syntax elements at

www.google.com/help/operators.html

Here are some advanced operators that can help narrow down your search results.

Intitle: at the beginning of a query word or phrase (intitle:"Three Blind Mice") restricts your search results to just the titles of Web pages.

Intext: does the opposite of intitle:, searching only the body text, ignoring titles, links, and so forth. Intext: is perfect when what you're searching for might commonly appear in URLs. If you're looking for the term HTML, for example, and you don't want to get results such as

www.mysite.com/index.html

you can enter intext:html.

Link: lets you see which pages are linking to your Web page or to another page you're interested in.

Try using site: (which restricts results to top-level domains) with intitle: to find certain types of pages. For example, get scholarly pages about Mark Twain by searching for intitle:"Mark Twain"site:edu. Experiment with mixing various elements; you'll develop several strategies for finding the stuff you want more effectively. The site: command is very helpful as an alternative to the mediocre search engines built into many sites.

Swiss Army Google

Google has a number of services that can help you accomplish tasks you may never have thought to use Google for. For example, the new calculator feature

(www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator)

lets you do both math and a variety of conversions from the search box. For extra fun, try the query "Answer to life the universe and everything."

Let Google help you figure out whether you've got the right spelling—and the right word—for your search. Enter a misspelled word or phrase into the query box (try "thre blund mise") and Google may suggest a proper spelling. This doesn't always succeed; it works best when the word you're searching for can be found in a dictionary. Once you search for a properly spelled word, look at the results page, which repeats your query. (If you're searching for "three blind mice," underneath the search window will appear a statement such as Searched the web for "three blind mice.") You'll discover that you can click on each word in your search phrase and get a definition from a dictionary.

Suppose you want to contact someone and don't have his phone number handy. Google can help you with that, too. Just enter a name, city, and state. (The city is optional, but you must enter a state.) If a phone number matches the listing, you'll see it at the top of the search results along with a map link to the address. If you'd rather restrict your results, use rphonebook: for residential listings or bphonebook: for business listings. If you'd rather use a search form for business phone listings, try Yellow Search

(www.buzztoolbox.com/google/yellowsearch.shtml)

Extended Googling

Google offers several services that give you a head start in focusing your search. Google Groups

(http://groups.google.com)

indexes literally millions of messages from decades of discussion on Usenet.

Google even helps you with your shopping via two tools: Froogle

(http://froogle.google.com),

which indexes products from online stores, and Google Catalogs

(http://catalogs.google.com),

which features products from more 6,000 paper catalogs in a searchable index. And this only scratches the surface.

You can get a complete list of Google's tools and services at

www.google.com/options/index.html

You're probably used to using Google in your browser. But have you ever thought of using Google outside your browser?

Google Alert

(www.googlealert.com)

monitors your search terms and e-mails you information about new additions to Google's Web index. (Google Alert is not affiliated with Google; it uses Google's Web services API to perform its searches.) If you're more interested in news stories than general Web content, check out the beta version of Google News Alerts

(www.google.com/newsalerts).

This service (which is affiliated with Google) will monitor up to 50 news queries per e-mail address and send you information about news stories that match your query. (Hint: Use the intitle: and source: syntax elements with Google News to limit the number of alerts you get.)

Daterange: (start date–end date). You can restrict your searches to pages that were indexed within a certain time period. Daterange: searches by when Google indexed a page, not when the page itself was created. This operator can help you ensure that results will have fresh content (by using recent dates), or you can use it to avoid a topic's current-news blizzard and concentrate only on older results. Daterange: is actually more useful if you go elsewhere to take advantage of it, because daterange: requires Julian dates, not standard Gregorian dates.

Thanks to its many different search properties, Google goes far beyond a regular search engine. Give the tricks in this article a try. You'll be amazed at how many different ways Google can improve your Internet searching.