A Google A Day

A Google A Day looks just like the regular search engine except that it has a trivia question below. It uses Deja Google which is a wormhole-inspired time machine that searches the Internet as it existed before the game began and blocks any social updates to ensure that you won’t run into tweets or blog updates with the answers. This makes sure that you’ll only be using your entire GoogleFu skills to answer those tricky questions.

A Google A Day is a really great brain exercise game but I find it a little depressing sometimes when I need to use all the Hints available just to answer the question.

If the today’s question is not enough for you, you can work your way back into the archives and punish push your brain more. Enjoy and have a happy searching!

Complete your Google quest by checking out: Let Me Google That For You and 10 Amazing Google Tricks

© 2011, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: brain exercise, Google, recommended, search engine, trivia

Like Google, FindIcons is also very simple. You just have to enter your query like “Facebook” then click Search. It will automatically give you the results that matches your query.

I’m sure you don’t want to check all the results up to the last page just to find what you’re really looking for. That’s why you can use the tools beside the results so you can refine your search. You can choose the size and the color of the icons, and etc. to make it easier for you to find the icons you’re searching for.

Once you find the icon that you’re looking for, just click it to see its full details. You can download the icon as PNG, ICNS, ICO, or add to Favorites (must have an account), or convert it. You can also choose other sizes of the icons.

What’s good about FindIcons is that it will also show you the similar icons and other icons from its developer within the page.

FindIcons is not just an ordinary icon search engine, you can also use it to convert images from your hard drive to icons.

You can also contribute to FindIcons by uploading an icon pack.

FindIcons is a really great icon search engine. I know that there are a lot of icon search engines out there but I’m pretty sure that this has the largest icon database on the web so you’re sure that almost all the icons that you need are here.

© 2010, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: convert, download, icon, search engine

Efficient use of a search engine is the most important tool for getting information from the internet. No matter how many good resources there are online, they won’t help you at all if you can’t find them. Here are some of the best tips for enhancing your Google-Fu, using example queries of searches for information on the best hot coffee. Most of them are elaborations on the list from Google’s own tip sheet, located here.

1. Find exact phrases with quotation marks: Searching for a few words will show you websites that include the words anywhere in the web contents. If you need a specific topic or a quote, searching for “best hot coffee” will return results that include exactly that phrase.

2. Use “-” to filter out junk results: A phrase like “hot coffee” will return results about the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. When this kind of unexpected result distracts you from good results, you can search for “hot coffee -”Grand Theft Auto” -GTA -mod” to search only for hot coffee, and direct Google to exclude results about the game.

3. Use Google as a calculator for quick conversions: In addition to the mathematical operations on the cheat sheet, you can convert units with phrases like “10 lbs in ounces” or “300 miles in meters” to get measurements.

4. View old page versions and dead websites using Google’s cache: Underneath most of your search results, you will see an option to view a cached version of a webpage. This will not be the most recent version of the website, but if you need an old version of the website, or the server itself is down, you can access it by using the cached version.

5. Use the “site:” filter to search websites without their own search tool: Many websites do not have built-in search functions. By searching with the “site:” operator, you can search for all mentions of your topic on a specific website. Searching “hot coffee site:www.starbucks.com” will show you results only from www.starbucks.com.

6. Look at related websites to find information you can’t think of keywords for: The “related:” filter has syntax similar to the “site:” filter, but finds webpages related to the named site. A search like “related:www.starbucks.com” will list websites with information relevant to people who browse Starbucks’ website without linking directly to it.

7. Get regional information using your Zip code: Google aggregates information from specialty websites, such as movie times and weather, in a format that’s saves you the step of going to an individual website for each theater or a specific forecaster. By searching for “weather 90210″ or “movie times 90210″ you can get a quick sketch of the weather and movie times near the zip code 90210.

8. Track flights, packages, and stock quotes: By plugging in a flight number (such as American Airlines 4290), a UPS package tracking number, or a stock ticker (such as GOOG) into Google’s search bar to see the flight status, package location, or stock price as the first result. Generally, this is much faster than trying to navigate individual airline sites, the UPS website, or the scattered information of a finance page.

In a world filled with information, having the best, fastest tool at your disposal to ignore all the junk is what really shows that you have search engine savvy. Use these tips and the others on Google’s help page to cut the rubbish, search with refined specificity, and skip the bureaucracy of bloated web pages in favor of Google’s fast, elegant layout.

About the author: James is a full time in-house technology analyst and writer based in the UK where he works with an online print cartridge specialist. Subscribe to their blog for more of his writing.

© 2010, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: cheat sheet, Google search, search engine, tips, tricks

Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look like “Home > Category > Post Title”. Maybe you are wondering now why should you use this and actually, Yoast has an answer to that.

Breadcrumbs are good for two things:

1. They allow your users to easily navigate your site.
2. They allow search engines to determine the structure of your site more easily.

Here is an example of Breadcrumbs on my blog:

Here is the list of Breadcrumbs WordPress Plugins:

1. Yoast Breadcrumbs

2. Breadcrumb Trail

3. Breadcrumb NavXT – the successor to the popular WordPress plugin Breadcrumb Navigation XT.

4. WordPress Breadcrumbs

The instructions on how you can install the plugins are on the website itself. If there’s any problem with the plugins, you can contact their respective authors.

© 2009, The content is copyrighted to The Heat Web blog by Christian Casino. Please refer to the license before using our content.
Permalink | Post tags: breadcrumbs, links, navigate, plugins, posts, search engine, seo, trails, WordPress