Favorite Hidden Google Features?

fredtheshingle asks: "Google now seems to allow you the option to track your FedEx and UPS shipments! Search using the tracking number for either carrier and a page that offers to track the package appears. Simply follow that link and the carrier's current status report is displayed. Nice! So what's your favorite hidden Google feature?"

Re:Calculator and spell checker

[iota]

A list of some of the google features available:
http://www.google.com/help/features.ht ml

Features List

[Zorton]

Google also has a list of the "hidden features" here [google.com]

Travel information

[Bombcar]

This seems pretty cool.... [google.com]

Google knows all, ask the google, google will know....

non-hidden features

[SkewlD00d]

the non hidden features i use alot are quoting "some phrase like this" and excluding TLD's like -site:com -site:edu etc.

~stuff

[outlier]

It's amazing how helpful the "~" can be when doing searches. Prefixing a word with a tilde will search for that word and many of its synonyms. Very helpful when doing things like:

linux ~tutorial [google.com]

Also, I think this list of google tricks [pcmag.com] was listed on /. a while ago.

Re:Features List

[aquasheep]

Actually, this is the link to Google's features. [google.com]

Re:Fave "hidden" feature

[orthogonal]

Yeah, but that means letting them use cookies. No thanks

I, too, prefer not to let Google set cookies. So far Google has been -- so far as I know -- a good respecter of privacy, but their insistence on recording all searches, along with the requesting IP address, gives me serious pause.

It's not that Google is evil, but that reposing that much information in any hands is a temptation to evil -- either on Google's part, or on the part of whomever ends up controlling it when and if Google goes public, or on the part of whatever government can issue subpoenas, or whatever lawyer can get subpoenas issued.

I'd feel much more comfortable if Google would purge its records of searches, or at least remove the IP addresses, but I suppose they have their reasons. I'll let you guess what those reasons might be.

Imagine Microsoft subpoenaing Google for the IP of whomever searched for "leaked Microsoft source" and then using that to allege an open source project is built on top of proprietary Microsoft code.

This is why I won't use the Google toolbar, and why for especially sensitive searches, e.g., "STD symptom" or "John Ashcroft calico cat" [snopes.com], I go through an anonymizing proxy.

But while the easiest and permanent way to set image search SafeSearch off is through a cookie, I believe it can also be set per individual search using a check box that is sent to Google in the http GET as a parameter, bypassing cookies.

Pity the Google Calculator has a bug, though.

[RockyMountain]

Pity it's buggy,:
Try this...
16 hertz in radians per second [google.com]

Notice that the answer is off by a factor of 2*pi.

I reported it to them months ago, but they haven't fixed it.

feature preview

[LoganEkz]

And don't forget Google Labs [google.com] for a taste of things to come.

Reverse Phone Lookups

[arrow]

If you have caller ID, or hit Star 69, and do not immediately recognize the number, punch it into google [google.com]. Bonus: maps to the street address on file for that number.

It's a little picky on format (you have to do [phone], not 5555554444 or 555-555-4444), but in general very awesome.

Froogle for the frugal.

[Futurepower(R)]

Froogle [google.com], for those who like to be careful with money.

Re:Fave "hidden" feature

[J'raxis]

You can turn SafeSearch off by adding "safe=off", by hand, to the URL. "filter=0" is also useful; this prevents Google from hiding multiple images originating from the same host.

Here's what I use. If you use Mozilla, make a bookmark out of the following (fix the spaces Slashdot inserted):

http://images.google.com/images?q=%s&filter=0&hl=e n&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off

Give the bookmark a keyword such as "gis". Now, when you type "gis foo" into the address bar, it goes to this URL, replacing the "%s" in the URL with "foo".

[Those other parameters are language, input encoding, and output encoding, respectively.]

UPC barcode lookup...

[TeddyR]

Google also allows you to do a lookup on a UPC code.. (it actually uses the database from www.upcdatabase.com [upcdatabase.com])

works great if you have one of those modified cue cats [ebay.com]

Re:Pity the Google Calculator has a bug, though.

[d99-sbr]

No, it inteprets "in" as inches, and the output defaults to SI. So it's correct.

AAA-PPP-NNNN *is* valid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Googling for 225-922-5400 works, so I don't follow your comment about not being able to use that style.

http://www.google.com/search?q=225-922-5400

Google Wireless

[Laverne]

I found out that google offers a wireless search engine [google.com]. Just go to that URL with your mobile, enter your search query and google will convert any site it returns to WAP format that your mobile can handle.

Wildcard searches

[grungeKid]

The * character works as a wildcard when searching for strings. Try this one [google.com] for some variations of a famous quote.

Google ~Guide

[Frambooz]

Here [googleguide.com] is a page that lists a bunch of features. Handy dandy.

Re:My favorite Google Feature

[damiam]

That's not a Google feature. It's just some guy who googlebombed this [albinoblacksheep.com] page. Google had nothing to do with it.

Re:Google Calculator

[Chess_the_cat]

Ask Jeeves. [ask.com]

Re:My favorite Google Feature

[stienman]

Doesn't work anymore. Here's the google watch link to an article about the prank [google-watch.org].

-Adam

Re:What people think of you

[Minam]

Well, there's Googlism [googlism.com] -- just type in a name or a place it does a Google search, extracting the relevant results to give a summary of what was returned. Quite amusing, really.

It's not really a feature, per se...

[josh glaser]

...but if you type in your search terms twice (monkeys monkeys) you tend to get better results, because that (I believe) only looks for sites with "monkeys" written twice, removing sites just linking to the topic (and the glut of link directory things). It's cool.

Re:My favorite Google Feature

[His name cannot be s]

Uh, Whatever buddy.

The "French Military Victories" +I'm feeling lucky does too work.

Check it out for yourself: Here [google.ca]

Pity you can't fact check before looking like a complete idiot.(but that's slashdot eh?)

Re:Searching in Klingon, Swedish Chef, or Elmer Fu

[X-wes]

And for our "elite"-feeling friends... 1337 h4x0r [google.com]

Re:# of cubic inches in one gallon?!!?

[Lao-Tzu]

2(pi)rh would give you the circumference. (pi)r^2 would give you the area.

Set preferences without using Google's cookie

[whovian]

I, too, prefer not to let Google set cookies.

1. Enable cookies. 2. Go to http://www.google.com/ 3. Click on "Preferences" on the right side of the search box. 4. Set your preferences and click "Save Preferences." You're back to the search box. 5. Click on "Advanced Search" on the right side of the search box. 6. Do not fill out anything, but just click on "Google Search." 7. Bookmark this new search page. 8. Delete your Google cookie. 9. Disable all cookies, or at least your cookies for Google. Now when you use your new bookmark for Google searches, your preferences are passed to Google in the URL, without a cookie.

(Reference: http://www.searchguild.com/printer/fm1/792)

Re:The Standards

[napoleonin]

Turns out that it's a numeric variable built into Calculator!

Google counts the number of characters in your string, and uses that value to perform the math.

Top level directories narrowing searches

[John Q. Public]

Instead of searching with site=microsoft for Windows fixes, you can get a search of many many things related to MS by using http://google.com/microsoft [google.com] which turns up a ton more answers than the MS KB or any other search I've found.

Also works with /linux [google.com] and Macintosh [google.com]...

Turns out they're on the instruction pages [googleguide.com], more's the pity. I thought they were unpublished.

Re:for finding wares

[irokitt]

If you want to restrict to servers and not just pr0n sites that include "parent directory" in their site, try using apache as a search term as well.

Re:This "hidden" category...

[justMichael]

It's just dmoz [dmoz.org], so these people:

ettore, ffabris, gigi, hotpink, hudson, jezebel, peterrobson, seepatrick, susies, wilky

Although they don't get paid ;-)

Re:Define:

[rowanxmas]

The best is "santorum", which was an effort on the part of lots of Savage Love readers to defile the name of Senator Rick Santorum.

Re:Define:

[TobySmurf]

You are now my personal savior - I didn't know about that one at all! For everyone else: Here is the link to the main google capabilities - I'm sure there is something new for nearly everyone: http://www.google.com/help/features.html

Google Toolbar and View PDF as HTML

[aldridge]

The Google Toolbar. Not very hidden but its amazing. http://toolbar.google.com/ Has a built in popup blocker search box and best of all its free and no spyware. Also the View PDF as HTML http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:xWrqav2j1Y8J:w ww.boston.com/globe/acrobat/today.pdf+&hl=en&ie=UT F-8 Lets just I dont like AdobePDF files.