Freeze Your Monitor With Google's "Let It Snow" Effect

It's Christmas and Google has always got to share with us in this one of the most celebrated event of the year! We've been flabbergasted by this powerful search engine before by adding cool effects in Google search like the "Do a barrel roll", "Google Sphere", "Google Gravity" and many more and this time, it's time to do the "Let it snow"!

Go to Google.com and key in the words "let it snow" (without the quotes) in the search bar. After the engine displays the result, snowflakes will start to fall on your screen. Your monitor then will start to frost until the display is almost completely covered. You may noticed that the search button before becomes the defrost button which you can click to go back to the normal view. Don't click this yet as there is one last step to enjoy this effect. While your monitor is still frozen, click and drag your mouse on the screen. See what happen. The images below are screenshots of my own trial of this awesome effect!

"Let It Snow" by Google

Click and drag mouse while the whole screen is frozen

Do More With Your Googling Skills

          We use Google search everyday and it is a fact that we won't be getting the best of world wide web without using google! From searching the best place to hangout or related study for your academic research down to looking for images that you could use for your next photoshop image background, Google search is just the right tool that could give you the most comprehensive results.

Google Search Engine

          However powerful, there are still ways on how you could get the best results when using Google search! If you know these simple tricks, the right information is at your hand in just few seconds.

SEARCHING FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION WITHIN A WEBSITE

          To search for a specific information within a website use the following keywords:

• site: followed by the website where the information will be searched.
• ~ followed by a word or phrase to search for related words/phrase.
• " Use quotation marks to search for specific word
• - (dash) followed by the word to exclude in the search.
• .. Use two dots if you will be searching for the information between a given year or to limit search within a time frame for example 2010..2011.

Searching for the list of CPA board passers of 2011 at prcpassers.com

SEARCHING FOR DOCUMENTS

         If you are looking for a document, the easy way is to use the filetype: keyword then the title of the document to search. If you are looking for some references  or papers of academic and scholarly work for your research paper or thesis, it is better to enter the Google scholar then do the search.

Use Google scholar to search for file or documents of academic and scholarly work

• filetype: Search only the file type you designate. example of file types are pdf, doc, txt, jpeg etc.
• intitle: Only shows the result with the exact word in the title. In the given example above the word to search in the title is 'kiosk'.
• * followed by the the word or phrase will replace itself with common or related terms in your search

SEARCHING FOR AN AUTHOR

          Use the author: keyword to search for an author of a particular paper or document.

Author search with Google

          Highlighted in red is the author: keyword followed by the author name then the word or phrase to search related to the work of the author (highlighted in violet). For specific results, you can use quotation marks ("") then the full name or initials of the author (highlighted in green).

SEARCHING FOR A WORD DEFINITION

          You can use Google to search and define a specific word by directly typing it on the search bar and by following this simple syntax (convention): define:<word to find and define>. See this image below.

Searching a word definition

         The keyword define: is a reserved word for Google search that automatically looks for the definition of a word you put just right after it.

GOOGLE SEARCH AS A CALCULATOR

          More than a powerful query search engine, you can also use Google search to compute simple mathematical calculations. Just type simple equations with addition(+), subtraction(-), multiplication(*) and division(/) operators and you'll get the right answer.

Google search as a calculator

GOOGLE SEARCH AS A UNIT CONVERTER

          Worry not if you don't have an application to convert unit from one to the other. Just type it in the Google search bar and the answer is right away.

Using Google search to convert units

OTHER SHORTCUT KEYS YOU CAN USE WITH GOOGLE

         The following are also applicable for browsing other contents within your web browser. Familiarizing these shortcut keys will allow you to efficiently search content within the webpage you are currently viewing.

• Ctrl + F / Command + F - Sometimes when the page content you're viewing is too crowded, words are difficult to find. Just use this shortcut keys then type the words or phrase to look for, then press enter and all the matching words are highlighted!
• Ctrl + L - Highlight the URL in the address bar of the current window.
• Ctrl +, Ctrl - and Ctrl 0 - Use the keystrokes control plus and control minus to zoom in and zoom out into the webpage or document and control zero (Ctrl 0) to go back to the original view size (windows).

For more exciting experience with Google search engine, visit: Google A Day

French Media create Portrait of Person from Info Gathered from Social Networking Sites

Just in time for our discussion on personal branding and online privacy issues, I stumbled upon this intriguing story: Earlier this month, a French magazine called Le Tigre, published an intimate portrait of a randomly chosen Internet user laced with private information the reporter garnered from social networking sites around the web. The idea was to pick a complete stranger and to tell his life story based on the digital footprint that person either voluntarily or involuntarily left behind on the Internet. The magazine thereby tried to call attention to the fact that most people don't think about the bits of private information they share online, but that these pieces of information, once aggregated, draw a cohesive and troublingly intimate picture of our lives.

The point here: when you share information online, you've left the private sphere and shouldn't expect to keep that info protected. A good lesson for us all to learn!

Since publishing the Google portrait of Marc L. (the person featured in this article), the magazine had to change all references to cities, places, etc. The original article only rendered the names of the characters anonymous.

Indeed, Google has a long memory

We ended today's class on blogging and personal brand management discussing the idea that Google has a really good memory. When I came back to my office and opened my RSS reader, I thought what better example to illustrate this point than the United Airlines Bankruptcy story. Granted, this story doesn't pertain to a personal brand, but it definitely shows that information on the Internet lives on long after it isn't news any longer. Here's a timeline of what happened (as I understand it):

2002: The Chicago Tribune publishes an article announcing that United Airlines will be filing for bankruptcy.

Sept. 06, 2008: 

1. The 2002 story reappears on the Florida's Sun-Sentinel's website. According to Gawker, the page also contained a map of hurricane Ike giving the impression that this was a new story
2. According to Google's blog: Google crawler discovered a new link on the Florida Sun-Sentinel website in a section of the most viewed stories labeled "Popular Stories: Business" and followed it to an article on United Airlines filing for bankruptcy. It concluded that the article date was Sept. 7th, 2008, indexed the page and made it available through Google News search

Sept. 8, 2008:

1. A reporter googling bankruptcies on Google's News search picks up the story from the Florida Sun Sentinel and supplies it to the Bloomberg news service
   
2. Bloomberg sends out the story
3. Within minutes United Airlines' shares sink 75% 
4. Oops!

This should go to show that even 6-year-old information can still come to hurt you...

Ps: Steve Rubel just published an interesting post discussing the role of news aggregators in this debacle.

Lively: Google's answer to Second Life

Yesterday Google officially launched Lively - a Google version of Second Life. I just checked it out. Had to switch to a PC to do it though since Lively currently only supports Windows XP or Vista.The avatars remind me a bit of a mixture of Bratz dolls and Pet Shop animals... Anyways, here's the office I created:

Avoiding the Google Netherworld

The fact that Google has an excellent memory and that it rarely forgets big bloopers or faux pas, shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone in this class. After all, we've already examined plenty of examples of "Google Wrath": Vincent Ferrari and his attempt at canceling his AOL account, Jeff Jarvis and his DellHell blog post, the ComCast technician falling asleep on a customer's couch, etc. Today's example of a PR pitch turned ugly (thanks to Dr. Russell's WOM class blog for bringing this to my attention) and of a CEO's fears of entering the Google netherworld as a consequence, is another great reminder of the power of Google. What's particularly interesting in this case is the fact that a Google search of the name of the PR firm tied to the pitch, already returns Odden's blog post among the first 10 search results - regardless of what their true intentions were. And that's a big problem for their online reputation! Especially when considering that Google ranks among the top three news sources opinion leaders rely on most for obtaining information on companies (according to the 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer results).

Google's inner workings explained

Since search engine rankings are equivalent to influence in this Web 2.0 world, it seems like a good idea to take a closer look at the inner workings of the mother of all search engines - Google. More than half of all online searches are currently run by Google!

This page does a great job visualizing what takes place behind the scenes when an Internet user runs a search on Google. This site doesn't discuss Google's search algorithm, but rather focuses on the logistics of running the search.