Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Introducing Twerq, a new way to search!



I know what your thinking. What the hell is Twerq? Well my friends, let me explain. Twerq is a new unique way to use search engines. It enables us to do what we want. Cut down the amount of time we spend searching! Like many other sites, it allows you to conduct searches from multiple search engines such as Yahoo, Google, MSN Live, etc... at the same time.

Big deal right? Well the fun begins with tabbed searching. That's right, tabbed searching. No more need to open new tabs in Firefox or Explorer. By simply entering n: before your search term you will get your results in a new tab. You can simply close the tab by clicking the red X.

An other set of interesting features are the shortcuts. For example, to search with Google you simply type g: before your search, y: for Yahoo, m: for MSN, and so on. Other special shortcuts include an image search which uses PicSearch and a video search which uses Blinkx.

The most unique feature of Twerq is its ability to do multiple searches at one time using special operators for results. The syntax for these is quite simple once you learn it. An example is using cars++trucks which opens two tabs with search results in tab one for cars and search results in the other tab for trucks. Use // after your main keyword to repeat it in multiple searches. For example, antique//cars++trucks would open two search tabs with Google, first tab being antique cars and second being antique trucks. These are just basic examples. The operators syntax can become quite long and complicated so I will leave the help page and the live chat for further information.

I just found out about this new search myself. Within one day I have found it really is useful. Tabs within a site itself is a great thing. I, myself, can't stand having multiple windows or tabs in Firefox or Internet Explorer. With the right amount of expertise I can see Twerq being one very powerful tool to do automated search queries. So what are you waiting for? Start Twerqing!

Monday, September 10, 2007

Google Co-Op, Find what you want without all the garbage!

Google Co-Op is a platform that allows people with certain expertise and interests to create their own customized mini search engines through Google itself. This allows people to search for specific information without all that extra garbage you usually find in search engines. There are other features like topics. Topics lets the person who creates the custom search engine to show useful keywords in the results page to refine the search even more. This is great for people who don't know exactly what they are looking for. Below I show some Example Google co-op searches. Try them out yourself and see how powerful they really are!

Modders Heaven - Great for Computer modifications such as overclocking and much more.

Hardware Hunter - Great for finding out about specific computer hardware.

Now, for you to try it yourself. Goto http://www.google.com/coop/cse/examples/GooglePicks and type the general topic of what your looking for in the search engine. You'll get a list of results. From that list just select the most relevant one. Now once your on the search engine search away! Try searching for useful things like, "torrents", "overclocking", "windows xp help", "web design", etc...

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Customize Google for you!

Today I want to share some info with you about a great extension for Mozilla Firefox called, CustomizeGoogle. CuztomizeGoogle allows you to remove google ads, makes Google images easier to use by taking you directly to a image when you click on it instead of going to a website first, adds searches for other search engines in your actual google search, and a whole lot more. Below is a screenshot of CustomizeGoogle's settings. Visit http://www.customizegoogle.com/ to download this great extension.

















Just so you know in advance the Google Suggest feature on CustomizeGoogle does not seem to work anymore. After looking the problem up on several problems it seems like the code in googlesuggest isn't valid anymore because Google changed the coding. Hopefully in the next update that will be fixed.

Updated: Sept. 13, 2007

Google Suggest has been upgraded to version .63. The Google Suggest feature now works once again!

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Soople, the Google for lazy people.

www.soople.com is a quick and easy way to use the more advanced features of google without having to know all the extra syntax. Provided below is a screen shot of Soople.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

A couple of guides to start out.

For those of you who don't want to waste time trying to search Google on how to use the search engine, here are a couple of links to get you started. The examples should help you understand how each statement or operator works.

The Ultimate Google Guide Site!

www.googleguide.com

This site really is the greatest when it comes to using anything Google. This baby is about the size of a book, but don't let that scare you away. It has three different modes to view the site in. These are Novices, Experts, and Teens. Also the built in search engine will help you find exactly what your looking for even faster! I recommend this site to everyone and give it an A+.

Quick General References:

http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html
http://websearch.about.com/library/cheatsheet/blgooglecheatsheet.htm


Quick Mathematical References:

http://www.googleguide.com/help/calculator.html
http://www.googleguide.com/calculator.html

(I would like to note that I didn't create any of these references and would like to thank the creator of each one for providing us with this great information.)