Blog Posts About: google

As you may know, the Google search box can take you directly to some resources, based on the words you use to search. These are called look-ups. A couple of basics:

• define: (insert word) will take you to a page of definitions
• link: (insert domain) will list all the pages linking to that site
• Entering an address (street and city) will provide Yahoo!/Mapquest Maps at the top of the page.

Aaron Swartz recently posted a list of new look-ups. These are pretty handy, in my opinion...

Google has added more search by number features:

• Area Codes, e.g. 650, bring up maps.

   

• UPC codes, e.g. 073333531084 or 036000250015, bring up some information about the product.

   

   

• Flight numbers, e.g. usair 50, provide links to flight tracking

   

   

• Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, e.g. JH4NA1157MT001832, link to a CARFAX report on what kind of car and its status.

   

   

• U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers link to package status.

Via: BoingBoing

What's Your Google Number

While I'm on this Google stuff, I wanted to post this article by Valdis Krebs. Valdis created InFlow, which is a social network analysis tool.

Basically, go to Google and search for your name in double quotation marks. In the blue bar, you'll see a number that represents the results that include your name.

Of course, there are false positives and people with popular names have issues, but it's fun to do. Valdis even provides this scale for understanding your number:

100 or less – keep your day job and start publishing - HR.com may be a good place to start! 400 – do a nice web site and publish more 800 – it is probably safe to hang out your shingle 1,000 – you are getting some real attention 2,000 – you are well known in your field 5,000 – you are an often quoted expert in your field – a thought-leader 10,000 – Dave Ulrich 50,000 – Tom Peters 100,000 – Peter Drucker

My number is 1800. Woohoo. Although, my Dad is a daylily hibridizer and he created a daylily called "Forsyth Lee LeFever" that comes up a bunch too.