Refresher Courses

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Before I start any serious course in web development, I thought I would first take some refresher courses in HTML and CSS via Code Academy.

It’s quite repetitive, but easy to follow. The repetitiveness does help to make sure what you learn sticks. This is something anyone can learn, and I definitely recommend it, even for homeschooling.

You can see what other links I recommend on my Resources page.

Google Search (Part 2)

Basic tips:

• Search is not case sensitive. WHODUNIT is the same as whodunit and WhOduNit
• All the words in your query will be used
• Most punctuation is ignored (except quotes – more on that below)
• Be specific as possible. You’ll probably get better results with National Crime statistics than with statistics for crime

Google “hacks” at a glance

Using “headache as the original search term

“hack”	Descriptiopn	example search	Results
+	Pages HAVE to have that word:	headache +cure	Most pages will have headache, ALL results will have “cure”
-	Leave that word out	headache -migraine	None of the pages will have “migraine”
“”	Search phrase	“headache cure”	All pages will have “headache cure”
~	find synonyms	headache ~cure	Pages will also have “remedy” and maybe “age” (as in aging food)
filetype:	Find specific filetypes	headache cure filetype:pdf	Will return results of Adobe PDF files that contain  “headache” and “cure”
site:	search within a site	cure site:headache.com	Will return results with “cure”
define:	Get the definithion	define:headache	Will show the definition of “headache”, then return results with “headache”
related:	get all sites related to given page	related:headache.com	Will show the sites that are related to “headache.com” but it isn’t always accurate
link:	Get all sites linked to a given page	link:headache.com	Will show all the sites that link to headache.com

(note: headache.com does not exist – yet)

These are all the search terms I’ve used many times and I thought I would put them up in a way that’s easy to see at once. There are many more terms that I’ve used once or twice but you might find them useful for yourself. A great page to check out is mapelli.info’s “Google Search Tips (Ultimate Google Guide)”.

Related articles

• 10 ways to search Google like a pro (pandia.com)
• 14 Ways to Google Better (penn-olson.com)

Google Search (part 1)

My search adventure

I don’ t know how many times I’ve been asked to look something up for someone. If I had to take a wild guess, it’s because searching with a search engine like Google can be overwhelming, especially if the first page of results have nothing to do with what you are looking for.

So, for part one, I’m going to give a few basic guidelines on how to refine your search so that you get what you are looking for. These tips are for any search engine.

As a matter of fact, the picture above was found using just about every technique I’m about to mention.

First, skim over the first few pages. Sometimes results get buried because of tag abusers (people who put just about every tag imaginable to get hits) and those who just happen to  use the same tag. For instance, my first search was “overwhelmed computer”using the creative commons search engine. However, both computer and overwhelmed both have their own results.

But there was nothing I could use, so the second step is to use synonyms. “Computer” had to stay, but I could change “overwhelmed” and I did to “Stressed”, “stress” (yes, it had different results), and “freaked out”, but still couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but some images came close.

Third step is to click on the links that come close, then skim those pages. Sometimes you realize that was what you were looking for in the first place, and sometimes, like I did with the images, you find another key word that you could use. In my case it was “panic”. Unfortunately, the most I could come up with is this recognizable image:

So, “computer panic” and “panic computer” didn’t work out so well.

The last step is to start to get creative, although, usually I find what I want within the first two steps. So I started considering computer lingo. What do people say when they “virtually” panic? How about “OMG”.

So “OMG computer” turned up the image above  - which leads me to the last step:
Be willing to settle. Like the image above, it may not be exactly what you want. I found the above to be quite humorous, unlike the image I was thinking of: a person in front of the computer, looking stressed out.

Part two will be on Google Search Tips at a Glance

Related articles

• Google aiming to improve search results (thenewstribune.com)
  
• Google Revamps Its Search Engine (online.wsj.com)
  
• Ryan Macnish: Alternative search engines (freakaboutlinux.wordpress.com)

Safer Search with WOT

Image via CrunchBase

WOT stands for “Web of Trust”. This tool, that you install as a plugin into your browsers, allows you to skim across search results and see if they are deemed safe by the WOT community. You can also contribute to the community and rate the website yourself.

The reason why I’m showing you this now, is because in the next (few?) posts, I will be giving you tips and tricks to searching for anything on the internet. Unfortunately, not everything is safe and you can end up with the latest antivirus virus (the worse one I ever had to deal with).

So, all you have to do is go to the WOT website (http://www.mywot.com/) and register for free. Then click on “Download” and scroll down and click on the download for your browser.

Now every time you search Google, you will see a little circle at the end of each link. Green is safe, Red is not safe, yellow is caution and grey is unrated.

Related articles

• Safe Surfing Tool Web of Trust Sued over Community Warnings (prweb.com)
  
• Web of Trust (WOT) brings Web trust, safety, and privacy ratings to Opera (downloadsquad.switched.com)
  
• Browse The Web Safer With WOT Add-on (tesarn.blogspot.com)