The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Google Pocket Guide - For the bookshelf Major Keary |
This inexpensive, notebook-size title is designed for users who want a concise guide to the features of Google. Most Web users are satisfied to choose a search facility from an ISP's pick list, which is sufficient for simple searches. Even those bare-bones search forms can be used to better effect. However, for best results Google offers an `advanced' search page as well as defined search areas: Web, images, groups, directory, and news. The images area contains some 400 million images; 'groups' means newsgroups; the 'directory' is a searchable subject index based on sites instead of pages; and 'news' is the kind one finds in newspapers.
The advanced search page enables users to build complex searches that provide for filtering, specific file formats, date boundaries, particular language(s) (including slang), specialised vocabularies, and an 'occurrences' feature that enables a user to specify where query words should occur (including anywhere in a page, the URL, or link anchors).
Google also enables searches to be further honed by the use of its special syntax, which is described in the Pocket Guide.
This is both a tutorial and reference for the use of simple and advanced searches as well as an introduction to Google's various services. It also includes a where-do-I-go-now guide to finding specialised stuff that Google doesn't turn up.
For scripting-savvy users a companion volume, Google Hacks, has even more powerful ways of using Google. For the rest of us the Pocket Guide is an essential companion. Students and anyone involved in research should make sure they have this very portable resource close at hand while connected to the Web. Great value.
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Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest, and D J Adams: Google Pocket Guide ISBN 0-596-00550-4 Published by O'Reilly, 129 pp., |
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Reprinted from the December 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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