Senior Surf Newsletter - June 2011

OK, I admit it. I have a secret crush on Google. Why? They just keep crankin' out new, interesting, useful and free (yes, free!) tools for we, the public, that make our lives easier, more fun, more interesting, better educated and Google-licious! My crush first began while reading the Google Story (click to read more) a few years back; a very honest portrayal of the internet giant, for better or for worse. Of course some things have changed in their offerings and business model, but the stuff they offer in their virtual studio (definitely click link) just makes me dizzy with delight and makes my crush grow stronger.

Here are a few things coming out of their labs worth checking out:

Google Flight Search

Google just made it a lot easier to quickly look up flight information. Now you can type “flights from [a city] to [another city] in the Google search window, and it’ll quickly display a summary of flight information right there on the results page.

Could it get any easier? We tested this new feature that was announced Friday on Google’s Inside Search blog, and it works beautifully, especially if you’re talking about major cities.

For instance, type “flight LA SF”, and you’ll get a long list of flights when you click on the resulting drop-down list:

Or you can simply type “flights LA” and Google will helpfully show you each flight to Los Angeles from all airports, including numerous airlines and flight durations. Find out what flights originate from your local airport by typing “flights from [your airport here]“.

It works in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Catalan.

Thanks, Google. This is yet another life-enhancing improvement added to your search repertoire.

Google Labs
Here is a list straight from the Google Labs website, a silo of very innovative, creative and useful tools that Google offers the world. Check out the site to see them all.

Art Project powered by Google

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.

Google Body

Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, and navigate to parts that interest you. Click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more. (You may need to upgrade your browser to view properly, but worth it!)

City Tours

Suggests multi-day walking tours of major cities given a starting address. Let Google find nearby points of interest for you or create your own tours from your own and others' "My Maps".

Google Earth Engine
Google Earth Engine brings together the world's satellite imagery—trillions of scientific measurements dating back more than 25 years—and makes it available online with tools for scientists, independent researchers, and nations to mine this massive warehouse of data to detect changes, map trends and quantify differences on the earth's surface.

Using this new Google Labs tool, they've already begun helping scientists develop applications for detecting deforestation and mapping land use trends, and have started working with individual countries to develop their own applications.

View product videos or our Map Gallery to learn more or visit the Data Catalog to get started.

Google Health
Organize your medical records online

SketchUp
Build 3D models quickly and easily

Translate
Instantly translate text, web pages, and files between over 50 languages.

Sites
Create websites and secure group wikis. Get your own website for free! Pretty cool, actually. I have taught this tool several times.

Android
I had an iPhone for two years. The relationship was hot and heavy for a while and we were madly in love until expectations starting getting in the way, and perfectionistic standards began creeping up, and then I met Android who showed me what true love really is. Android is the Google-created "operating system" found within many smart phones (brands vary) and it is just so bloody smart and I have not looked back after leaving my former love. Too many examples to name including voice search EVERYTHING, a "back" button (duh), an options menu, a notification bar and real multitasking are just a few (don't make me go on, cuz I will). And no shortage of apps. Click here to learn more.

Need help with your computer?

Private instruction,
Technical Services/Support,
Project Work (web, graphic design, etc.)
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Senior Surf Newsletter - July 2010

Interested in creating video project for a wedding, life tribute, memorial or life event? Go to multimedia memoirs here.

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are enjoying your summer. As tempting as it was to take this month off, sleep in and watch TV all day, I decided that it just wouldn't be prudent (to quote someone quoting someone else).

So to make it easier for both of us, I decided to bring back an oldie but goodie, with a nice bonus piece at the end (wait for it...). And many of you are new, so this will all be fresh info for you.

Enjoy and read in good health.

Happy Birthday America! :)

Dave
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23 Google search tips

Google can be your phone book.
Type a person’s name, city, and state directly into the search box, and Google will deliver phone and address listings at the top of the results. The feature works for business listings too.

Google can be your calculator.
Type a math problem into the search box and Google will compute it. You can spell out the equation in words (two plus two, twelve divided by three), use numbers and symbols (2+2, 12/3), or type in a combination of both (ten million) *pi, 15% of six).

Longer is better, but shorter is ok.
Google is designed to return high-quality results even for one- or two-word queries, so you can keep your searches short. But adding a few more words often yields better results.

Use quotation marks when precision matters.
Typing “the search is over” into Google will return web pages about the rock song by Survivor – but leaving off the quotes will produce an assortment of unrelated pages. The reason: adding quote marks phrase as it was typed. That makes quote marks especially helpful when searching for song lyrics, people’s names, or expressions such as “to be or not to be” that include very common words.

Google can be your dictionary.
Type define followed by any English word into the search box, and Google will give you a quick definition at the top of the search results.

Capitalization doesn’t matter.
Save yourself time and typos: don’t brother with the SHIFT key. Googling queen Elizabeth II and queen elizabeth ii yields the same results. So whether you enter words in uppercase or Lowercase, Google treats them equally – through the Queen would prefer otherwise.

Forget pluralism.
Google automatically searches for all the stems of a word, so you don’t need to do separate searches for dance, dances, and dancing. Just type one of the words and Google will take care of the rest, giving you results all in one list.

Get the picture.
Looking for a photo of Paris Hilton, or the Paris Hilton Hotel? Click on the “Images” link above the search box, type your query, and Google will provide any photos or graphics in its database of over one billion images that match your terms, with a link to the page where they appear.

Maps, driving, directions, and satellite views are one click away:
The fastest way to finding the fastest way to your destination is to enter a city and state (or just a zip code) into the search box.

Where do you want to go today?
If you know the specific Web site you want to visit, type its name into the Google search box, hit enter, and you will be there in a flash

Browse the world’s bookshelves online.
Search for a topic at print-google.com and you will see information from actual books that Google has scanned and indexed in its database. You can browse or read the entire text of works that are not copyrighted; for others, you can see snippets of pages where your search term appears and learn where to buy a full copy.

Dial GOOGLE when you’re on the go.
Get phone numbers, directions, movie times, stocks quotes, and more delivered to your cell phone, Send a text message with your query to the number 46645 (GOOGLE on most U.S. phones) and the search engine will message you back with instant answers.

I’m Feeling Lucky.
Enter a search term and click this button on the Google homepage to bypass a long list of results and go directly to the top-matching Web page for your term.

Google can be your newscaster.
Google News, reachable via the “News” link above the search box or at news. google.com, provides up-to-the-minute information on politics, business, technology, entertainment, health, sports, and more. Type a topic of interest into the Google News search box to find the most recent stories from more than 4,500 global news sources.

Google can be your weatherman.
Type weather followed by a zip code or the name of a city, and Google will give the current conditions and a four-day forecast at the top of the results page.

Become a researcher.
Google tends to list popular and fresh pages at the top of its results, but dig beyond the first page or two of search results and you will often find older, forgotten pages that have just what you need for a research project. Also check out the “Cached” versions of Web pages that Google collects as it crawls and downloads web, which are available through a blue link at the end of every search result. The cached version of the page, and often has the content you are seeking even if the current version of the page has changed – say, a news site that removed the original story.

Become a scholar.
Serious searchers can tap into thousands of scientific and academic journals with Google Scholar. Enter a query into the search box at scholar.google.com to get abstracts and papers from published sources.

Take a magic ~ ride.
The tilde character “~” in the corner of your keyboard is a handy tool in Google searches. Put it before a word, with no space between, to have Google look for pages with both that term and its synonyms.

Pack more results onto each page.
The “Preferences” link to the right of the search box is your ticket to tweaking various settings for Google searches, including the number of results displayed per page. Increase the number of matches you see per page from the standard set of 10 to 20, 30 or more, to put more answers at your fingertips faster.

Translate into other languages.
The “Language Tools” link, also found to the right of the search box on the homepage, calls up Google’s automated translation service as well as other language options. From this page, you can translate text among numerous language (English to Spanish, French to German, Chinese to English…) or translate a Web page simply by entering its address.

Get an instant stock quote.
Type a stock ticker symbol into the search box to get a stock quote and chart on any public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. American Stock Exchange or NASDAQ.

Get PG-rated results.
A search on a serious topic like sex education might trigger objectionable material, so Google provides an optional Safe Search filter to keep results family-friendly. Click the “Preferences” link next to the search box to view and adjust the Safe Search settings (choose from “strict,” “moderate,” or no filtering).

Peer inside Google.
Click the “more>” link above the search box to find additional Google features and products as well as further tips on how to search effectively. Check out the very handy one-page Google search guide at foofle.com/help/cheatsheet.html.

Senior Surf Newsletter May 2010

Interested in creating video project for a wedding, life tribute, memorial or life event? Go to multimedia memoirs here.

Hello Everyone,

A wise professor once said, "the three most important tenets of education are Review, Review and Review." Regardless of folks' level of "expertise", we can always use a refresher.

I hear it all the time from clients of mine who are expert in say, digital photography, that they would still like a lesson or two on the "basics" (a relative term, it seems).

So that's what this issue is about. Forward thinking back to the beginning of the basics for advanced intermediates. Or something to that effect.

We will present this in the form of FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions). This will be part one. Part two will be determined by YOU and your questions.

Good day,
Dave

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Frequently Asked Questions

What's a browser?
Examples are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. It is the program you use to get on to the internet. You would not be able to get on the web without using your browser. It's like your car to the freeway; your car allows you access to the freeway, and each "exit" is a website. You need to open a browser and type in an address to get on any website. And although each browser may look different (think Chevy vs Ford), they all pretty much accomplish the same thing.

What's a router?
A router, or sometimes referred to as a wireless router, is used to send out internet signals (wirelessly) so you can connect to the internet sans cables (like to your laptop). It usually works in conjunction with your modem (which connects to your wall, where your internet comes from). Popular brands are 2Wire, Linksys, Netgear, and the Apple Airport.

What's an Operating System?
You're using it right now whether you realize it or not. The two main OS (operating systems) that exist are Microsoft's Windows and Apple. And there are varieties of each of these depending on the year you purchased your computer. Your OS is the brains of your computer, essentially. Without your OS, your software applications, your printer, your mouse, etc, would not run. They all depend on your OS for "instructions". Current OS's are Windows 7 and Apple OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

How on earth does Google get all of its information?
They just do. That's why. Let Google do what they want. OK, there's more to it than that. Google (and Yahoo and MSN) have special technology called "crawlers" that travel throughout the internet millions of times a day sucking up all the information (words, images, phrases) from websites, then put this information into a vast database for when you search. Read on...

How is Google so good at searching?
Google plays favorites, that's why. Really. Google has a special algorithm that calculates who are the "popular" websites on the block and based on that formula, Google decides which site to show in the top 10 based on that level of popularity on the web. And they are usually right!

How is all this stuff free?
How is so much of TV free? See those pretty looking flashy animations to right, left and above you? That's called advertising: it's paying for your email and a good deal of many websites. Other websites like wikipedia are donation based and/or volunteer-run (bless their hearts).

What is memory and what is storage?
This is the most common misconception I see. In computer speak, memory is NOT storage. Storage is how much space your computer has to hold your photos, videos, document files, etc. These are stored in your hard drive. Your memory, or RAM (Random Access Memory) affects your computer's speed and performance. Think of RAM as short-term memory for your computer allowing it to "juggle" more tasks without having to stall and freeze up. More RAM, usually more speed. Nowadays, you should have at least 2 gigabytes of RAM.

Do my emails take up space on my computer?
That all depends. If you use web mail like hotmail, yahoo, gmail or comcast where you actually have to open a browser and log in, then the answer is NO. Your email is stored on the email provider's server (i.e., their computers far far away). If you use Outlook, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Mac Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird (even when linked to the email providers mentioned above), then all of your emails are downloaded to your hard drive from your email provider's server and YES, they take up space on your computer.

And finally...Worms, Viruses and Trojan Horses (Oh, my!)

The most common blunder people make when the topic of a computer virus arises is to refer to a worm or Trojan horse as avirus. While the words Trojan, worm and virus are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Viruses, worms and Trojan Horses are all malicious programs that can cause damage to yourcomputer, but there are differences among the three, and knowing those differences can help you to better protect your computer from their often damaging effects.

What are Virus?

A computer virus attaches itself to a program or file so it can spread from one computer to another, leaving infections as it travels. Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file, which means the virus may exist on your computer but it cannot infect your computer unless you run or open the malicious program. It is important to note that a virus cannot be spread without a human action, (such as running an infected program) to keep it going. People continue the spread of a computer virus, mostly unknowingly, by sharing infecting files or sending e-mails with viruses as attachments in the e-mail.

What are Worms?

A worm is similar to a virus by its design, and is considered to be a sub-class of a virus. Worms spread from computer to computer, but unlike a virus, it has the capability to travel without any help from a person. A worm takes advantage of file or information transport features on your system, which allows it to travel unaided. The biggest danger with a worm is its capability to replicate itself on your system, so rather than your computer sending out a single worm, it could send out hundreds or thousands of copies of itself, creating a huge devastating effect.

What are Trojan Horses?

The Trojan Horse, at first glance will appear to be useful software but will actually do damage once installed or run on your computer. Those on the receiving end of a Trojan Horse are usually tricked into opening them because they appear to be receiving legitimate software or files from a legitimate source. When a Trojan is activated on your computer, the results can vary. Some Trojans are designed to be more annoying than malicious (like changing your desktop, adding silly active desktop icons) or they can cause serious damage by deleting files and destroying information on your system.

Send me your questions and we will see about answering them in the next installments. Also, review (ha!) any of the previous newsletters to see if any of your questions can be answered!