Cozahost Newsletter Archive

Newsletter Archive

Googling is an essential skill that will save you countless hours.  We help you improve your skills - even if the GPS will stay lost.
 

The more skilled you are at using Google, the more useful the web will be to you.  Fortunately learning to search effectively is a skill easily mastered, and I will give you a few good, simple and very effective tips a bit later in the newsletter.

You can skip directly to that, or keep reading for a little vaguely related story: 

I love gadgets.  The coolness of a gadget is inversely proportional to the number of people who own them.

For instance, iPods with their narly little white earphones were so cool they were "sick" (cool kid speak) a few years ago.  Now every Tom, Koos and Shabalala has one.  iPods are still useful (you`ll have to pry mine from my cold dead fingers) but they are not so cool anymore.

The same thing was true about handheld GPS receivers a few years back. Very few people owned one and even fewer understood how they work or how to use them.  The perfect, shiny, deliciously clever, toy.  Of course I got myself one.  The excuse?  I hike.  In the mountains I mean.  Do you know how dangerous it can be if you get lost?  What price can you put on your life and safety?  The GPS is a bargain at any price.

My wife accepted the argument, but in hindsight I don`t think I really convinced her.  She probably gave in because she could not stand the whining.

Anyway.  I got my GPS and promptly went on a hike - the otter.  Beautiful.  My first 5 day hike.  I was carrying about 4 kg in gadgets and batteries, plus another 22kg clothes and equipment...and a few liters of brandy for the medical kit (in case of extreme cold).  Every 10 meters or so I`d check the GPS for elevation, distance travelled, average speed, ETA, and so on.  In the beginning I announced every kilometer or so to the rest of the team plus our estimated arrival time.  My favorite was (after taking 5 minutest to regain my breath): "And that was another 120 uphill, now let`s do the 120m downhill before we get to the next hill!"  I was soon told to shut up.  Infidels.

But I did.  Shut up I mean.  From then on they had to positively beg me to get any kind of GPS information from me.

End of day one we all knew we had to shed some weight if we were to survive the hike.  We considered several options, but the simplest and most effective was to reduce the brandy we were all carrying.  One liter is approximately one kilogram.  The weather looked fine,  and there seemed to be no chance to be snowed in on the coast of the eastern cape, so we took the chance: we drank about a liter each.

We think we were assaulted in our sleep that night, because the next morning we all had headaches that can only be explained if someone dropped you on your head from two floors up, and then stuffed a cat`s tail in your mouth and rounded off the assault by injecting battery acid into your stomach and rubbing chilies into your eyes.  The rest of the day was quiet.

It was the middle of day three when we crossed a big river.  When I say "crossed" I don`t mean walk over it. Oh no.  I mean strip down to your shorts, pack your stuff in your backpack, put the backpack in an emergency bag and float that baby over the river while you swim next to it.  Hard core, man stuff.

I don`t know if it was the fact that my bag was too heavy or the very cold water, but while swimming I suddenly experienced a very sharp and extremely painful spike in my knee.  When I made it to the other side of the river, I could hardly get out.  The pain was overwhelming.

It took about 15 minutes to semi-recover.  I wanted to check the GPS for how far still to go.  It was gone.  It floated out of my pocket while I crossed the river. 

My announcement that the receiver was lost was the source of extreme mirth to my philistine hiking "friends".  The rest of the hike the favorite topic of discussion was speculation on the "position" (geddit?) of the GPS.

"How many snoek do you have to eat to find your GPS", "At least it floats well", "Swim little GPS, swim", ad nauseum.

For the next several years, I have had to hear the story about the "lost GPS". The unwashed hooligans.

When I thought about finding stuff it made me think about losing stuff.  It is off my chest now.  Let`s get on with business.
    

Googling is an essential skill.  ("Googling" is the words the cool kids use to mean searching for something with Google.  Don`t worry if you didn`t know - you do now).

First of all we need to understand that Internet search engines are software programs and as such are brilliant idiots. 

They cannot "understand" meaning or intention - you have to talk to them the way you would to a dimwitted child or a hiker even.

The second thing we need to understand is that there are many, many, many millions of web pages on the internet.  Any search you run using a single (English) word will probably yield tens of thousands of pages - and most of them will useless.

Here are the top techniques on how to find stuff faster and easier with Google:

Be verbose
The longer your search query, the better results you will get.  Instead of searching for "cheese", search for "mature cheddar cheese".

Where you are looking for a specific name (consisting of two words) enclose them in quotes, so: "Cape Town" - this will eliminate all other towns close to a cape.

Loose the noise words: "a", "the", "he", "it", etc - they just dilute your query.

Be geographically specific
No sense in looking at garden service companies on the other side of the world, or booking a guest house in a town you are not visiting.

Consider if the service or product you are looking for is geographically specific and include that in your search.  For instance, "self catering cape town" will yield better results than "self catering"

Also use google.co.za instead of google.com when searching for more relevant South African information.

Don`t worry about capitals and punctuation
Most search engines ignore capitals and punctuation.

Exclude noise words or include alternatives
Let`s say you want to find out about studies or discussions about nuclear reactors in cape town.  If you search for "nuclear reactor cape town", most of the hits will be about Koeberg.  If you are looking to information NOT related to Koeberg, you can exclude it like this "nuclear reactor cape town -koeberg": in other words add "-" and the noise word you want to exclude.

You can also include an alternate term, like so: nuclear reactor cape OR "pebble bed" will tell Google to include all pages with either of the two search terms. (Note "OR" must be in capitals else it will be ignored)

We can further refine the search by adding additional alternates like this: nuclear reactor cape OR "pebble bed" (study or review) to tell the engine we are interested in either studies or reviews.

Use wildcards to complete phrases
If you are searching for a phrase, but you can`t remember exactly how it goes, you can use wildcards to get Google to complete it for you.  For instance: "And suddenly the penny ????" What?  Fell?  Melted? Levitated? 

Ask Google, so: "and suddenly the penny *" Note the quotes and the wildcard character "*".

Another example, google: Better the devil you know: try searching for: "better the devil you * than *"

Improved search any web site
On many big web sites it can be very difficult to find what you are looking for - because they either do not have a search function, or it sucks.  Easy solution: use Google to search the site.  For instance, lets say you want to search the Microsoft site for outlook errors - just slap this into Google: "outlook error" site:microsoft.com.  Only pages from the Microsoft site will be returned.

Use expert engines
If you are looking for news stories, don`t use the general Google engine, use the one dedicated to news: news.google.com.  If you are looking for pictures, use the picture search engine: images.google.com. 

Use more than one page quick scan
Before you commit to the results returned, scan the first and second page of google results.  Note sites or content that you do not want, or alternatives you do want.  Improve and repeat your search so that the entire first and second page returns relevant, quality results.

Now you can start looking at the sites...but...open each link in a new window or tab so that your original Google search stays open.  That way you can keep on refining your search as you home in on that little nugget of information-gold.  (Right click on the link and select "open in new tab")

Synonym search
A problem one often faces when searching for technical information is that you may not know all the terminology / jargon.  For instance if I search for nuclear ~reaction, I will get hits on "nuclear fission" too. 

When in doubt and you need a little help, click the "Advanced search" link in Google for a page to help you build complex queries.  (It won`t help you find the floating GPS though)

Happy mining!

Comment on this article...