Another Five great Google Tips

Google is more helpful than many know. Here are a few more tips to make your life on the web easier. Quotes are used for examples only.
Need a map, type "map tampa fl".
Need a definition, "define beauty".
Lost your calculator and need to do some quick math, "15+15".
Shopping for a new PC, give it a price range, "PC $500..$700".
Looking for a zip code, "75214". This query also offers a map.

Five More Google Goodies

The quotes are only used to show a sample.
To find the time anywhere, type time and the city name, "time Dallas".
To exclude something, type a dash in front of the word, "football -lions".
To find the current currency exchange rate, "usd euro".
To find the weather, "weather, detroit".
To find a number, "phonebook: jones chicago".

YouTube

YouTube has been open for business for five years. Last October, 2009, it stated that it was getting one billion hits a day. Now, Google owned YouTube gets over two billion hits a day on the site. The site said its traffic is more than double the traffic of the top three commercial TV stations combined.

YouTube is no longer just for quick and funny videos, it now has live sports (complete games), news, live music concerts and more. There are twenty four hours of new video content uploaded each minute.  The best part is that Billy Mays commercials are 'on demand' and not 'in your face'.

Six Great Google Tricks

We all know Google is great for searches, but here are a few tips to make your online life simpler.
If you want to track a USPS, UPS, or FedEx package, no need to go to their site, just type in the tracking code to find out where your package is.
How about that flight? Just type in an airline flight number to get its arrival/departure status.
If you need a quick stock quote, just type in the stock symbol.
Are you looking for a movie? Type in movies followed by your city name.
Wondering if it will rain today? Type in weather followed by your zip code.
Last, don't forget to use the quote marks for names, like "chuck norris" or "liberty bell" to get the whole name.
If you want to buy my books, you don't need Google, just click Amazon

Song Stuck in Your Head

I am sure you have had a song in your head for hours, but can't remember the title, or artist. There are a few web sites that can help. Midomi lets you sing or hum the song into your computer or phone mike and it gives you the name and artist. It also plays a clip of the song, just to verify. The best part is that it is free. Wow, there is something that Google doesn't do.

Gigabytes, Terabytes, and Petabytes

One gigabyte of storage cost $228 in 1998 and costs about 88 cents today. A gigabyte holds about 7 minutes of a HD TV movie.

A terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes. The first terabyte hard drive came out in 2007. In May 2009, Yahoo! Groups had 40 terabytes of data to index.

There is an even larger scale these days, petabytes. One petabyte is 1,024 terabytes. A petabyte holds 13.3 years of HD TV movies. To provide more perspective, Google processes an average of about 20 petabytes of data per day. Finally, 50 petabytes is equal to the entire written history of mankind from the beginning of recorded history. What's next? An exabyte is 1024 petabytes.

VPIKE

Want to see a picture of someone's house and don't want to use Google? Here is an alternative. When you enter an address you will see a picture of that place.  You can move up and down the block and magnify, also drag around in a circle to see the other side of the street.. Works like Google  VPIKE

Mircrosoft Maps

Microsoft is trying to get in on the Google action of taking pictures of streets, so you can actually see store fronts on the map as you move down the street. Just tried it at LINK and it has a ways to go before catching up with Google.

If you have not tried the Streetview when using the Google map, just click on the outline of a man on the view bar on the left side of the map and drag him the the street you are looking at. You will see a photograph of the buildings. Google has also done many neighborhoods and I tried my own house and the pictures are reasonable.

To try it, look up your own address on Google maps LINK
Type in your address and zoom in to your house. Then hold down the left mouse button and drag the little man to your street. It will turn the map into a photo. Click on the left or right arrows to move up and down your street.

Google Faces

If you need to find some images for various occasions and find searching for images is too difficult. Google has a parameter in place for images, in situations where you might need an image which describes a face.

Suppose I search for the term “happy” then the Google results page displays smileys, but I would like to use images of happy people. Even if I choose the term as “happy face” the results don’t show images which contain people. For this there is a parameter “imgtype” which you can use with the URL. For this put in the URL as follows:

    http://images.google.co.in/images?q=happy&imgtype=face

Google Tricycle

Google's tricycle-mounted cameras are shooting footage of the 17th century gardens of France's Chateau de Versailles destined for its Street View service by year's end.

The tricycle carries nine cameras set to take automatic shots every six feet, providing footage of some of the most popular spots of the onetime home of Louis XIV, the main courtyard, Grand Canal, and Grand and Petit Trianon.

The palace and gardens on the western edge of Paris are visited by more than three million people a year. The pictures taken by the tricycle will complete those taken by car as it can get to places that aren't accessible to historically interesting pedestrian areas.

Google began its photographic campaign of France and next goes to the northern city of Lille and the Mont Saint-Michel abbey in western France, also a popular tourist site.