Varinder Taprial & Priya Kanwar Google Beyond google Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 2 Google Beyond google © 2011 Varinder Taprial, Priya Kanwar & Ventus Publishing ApS ISBN 978-87-7681-904-0 Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 3 Google Beyond google Contents Contents Introduction 8 Section I: The Web of Google Search 10 1 Google Search 11 1.1 Customise Your Google Home Page 12 1.2 Make search more effective using Search Options 14 1.3 The Advanced Search 21 360° 1.4 Google Search Special Features 23 1.5 Google Scholar 23 . 1.6 Google Desktop 23 thinking 2 Google Reader 360° 25 2.1 About Google Reader 25 . 2.2 Browse for Stuff 26 thinking 2.3 Adding a Feed 29 3 Google Alerts 31 3.1 Creating an Alert 31 360° . thinking 360° ert v . d a thinking e h k t c cli e s a e Pl Discover the truth at www.deloitte.ca/careers Discover the truth at www.deloitte.ca/careers © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities. Discover the truth at www.deloitte.ca/careers © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities. Download free ebooks at bookboon.com © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities. Discover the truth4 a t www.deloitte.ca/careers © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities. Google Beyond google Contents 4 Google Maps 36 4.1 About Google Maps 36 4.2 The Search Feature in Maps 40 4.3 Getting Directions 42 4.4 Embedding Maps in Blog/Website 43 5 Google Places 45 5.1 About Google Places 45 5.2 Listing Your Business in Google Places 45 6 Google Translate 49 6.1 Google Translated Search 51 6.2 Translate Video, Email and Chat 52 7 Google Scholar 54 7.1 Advanced Scholar Search 56 7.2 Google Scholar Library Links 59 Section II: Moving on to the Cloud 60 8 iGoogle 61 8.1 Setting Up iGoogle 61 8.2 Adding Gadgets 64 Increase your impact with MSM Executive Education ert v d a e h k t c cli e For almost 60 years Maastricht School of Management has been enhancing the management capacity s ea of professionals and organizations around the world through state-of-the-art management education. Pl Our broad range of Open Enrollment Executive Programs offers you a unique interactive, stimulating and multicultural learning experience. Be prepared for tomorrow’s management challenges and apply today. For more information, visit www.msm.nl or contact us at +31 43 38 70 808 or via [email protected] F tohr em ogrel oinbfoarmllaytio nn, evitswit wowrwk.mesdm .mnl aorn coangtaectm use ant t+ 3s1c 4h3 o38o 7l0 808 or via [email protected] Download free ebooks at bookboon.com Executive Education-170x115-B2.indd 1 18-08-11 15:13 5 Google Beyond google Contents 8.3 Editing the Gadgets 64 8.4 Adding Feeds 65 9 Google Calendar 66 9.1 Using the Google Calendar 66 10 Google Docs 69 10.1 Benefits of Working with Google Docs 69 10.2 What You Can Do With Google Docs 70 10.3 Elements of Google Docs 72 10.4 Google Docs Viewer 74 11 Google Picasa 75 11.1 Installing Picasa 75 11.2 Organizing the Photos 76 11.3 Editing Photos 76 11.4 Sharing Photos 77 11.5 Additional Features 77 11.6 Picasa Web Albums 77 11.7 Privacy Settings 78 11.8 Syncing to Web 78 12 Google Picnik 79 See the light! The sooner you realize we are right, the sooner your life will get better! ert A bit over the top? Yes we know! v d a e We are just that sure that we can make your h k t media activities more effective. c cli e s a e Pl Get “Bookboon’s Free Media Advice” Email [email protected] Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 6 Google Beyond google Contents Section III: Social Networking 81 13 Google Plus 82 13.1 What is Different 82 13.2 The Basic Structure 82 13.3 Why Use Google+ 83 ert v d a e h k t c cli e s a e Pl GOT-THE-ENERGY-TO-LEAD.COM We believe that energy suppliers should be renewable, too. We are therefore looking for enthusiastic new colleagues with plenty of ideas who want to join RWE in changing the world. Visit us online to find out what we are offering and how we are working together to ensure the energy of the future. Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 7 Google Beyond google Introduction Introduction Back in 1996, two students at the Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, built a search engine for web pages that they named Backrub. Backrub used the quality and the quantity of the links pointing towards a page to decide on the importance and the relevance of that specific page. By 1998, they had formalised their work and Google was born. Google Search turned out to be a remarkable success and even today Google Search has more than 60% of the market share. Such was the popularity and dominance of the Google Search engine that people started using google as a verb. The American Dialect Society declared it the most useful word of 2002. In 2006, the word was officially included in the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary. The verb google means, “to use the Google Search Engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web.” The use of a brand name as a verb is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it brings glory to the brand for its success, implying acceptance of the company’s product as a standard, on the other it creates trademark complications. But the most significant drawback is that it sends across the message that the company only produces or facilitates what the verb means. It happened to Xerox earlier; Xerox the company is a document management company, which does more than just making photocopiers, but the use of the brand name as a verb somehow restricts the imagination of people. A similar situation is occurring with Google. Google has grown much bigger today. It is a multi-billion dollar company that has dozens of products and services in various languages, but for most people Google is a just a basic search engine, albeit a good one. As a result, they do not even explore the other product offerings from Google. It seems strange because most of these products are free. Google itself has claimed that only five percent of the Google users use the advanced features of the Google Search. Is the basic Google Search so good that users do not need to use the advanced features? Google might flatter itself thinking so, but that is not the case. The reality is that most people are not aware of those functions. For example, did you know that if you have to divide the square of the sum of 97 and 26 by the square root of 24, you don’t need to get a calculator, you just have to type “(97+26)^2/(sqrt 24)” in the Google Search bar and the answer is displayed. There are many features like this one in the Google Search and many more power packed product offerings by Google that most people are unaware or ignorant of. The title of the book, Google Beyond google recognizes this fact and the purpose of this book is to make the reader aware of and introduce the free web applications, besides the basic search, on offer from Google and how they can benefit the regular user. The applications will be introduced as separate chapters and their essential features will be discussed. Like we said earlier, Google has dozens of products on offer and we cannot cover all of them in this book and hence some of the more common Google products like Blogger, Chrome, Gmail, Apps etc. which are better known and have their own following have been excluded from the scope of this book. We have chosen some of the less known and infrequently used products, which (according to us) will not only enhance the regular user’s experience of the Internet but also empower him to exploit the web efficiently. Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 8 Google Beyond google Introduction In this book, we have grouped the various applications of Google according to their utilization into three sections as follows: Section I – The Web of Google Search: Beyond the basic search, which is also provided by other search engines, Google takes search deeper by integrating a lot of other functions with search. This section starts with discussing the advanced features of Google Search and other search related Google applications like Google Maps, Google Places, Google Reader, Google Translate, Google Scholar and Google Alerts. Section II – Moving on to the Cloud: All of us keep hearing of cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). What they essentially mean is the delivery of software or computing as a service rather than as a product. The software and the related resources are centrally hosted on servers and delivered via the Internet. The concept is not entirely new and organizations have been hosting business applications centrally for a long time. However with the advent of Internet the delivery got even simpler making it accessible to more people. Inherently this model offers a host of benefits to the consumers, which include cost benefits, easier scalability, latest software updates, reduced risk of data loss, sharing and collaboration. This section will deal with enhancing your desktop with iGoogle and cloud based office applications like Google Calendar, Google Docs, the photo sharing and editing applications like Google Picasa and Google Picnik. Section III – Social Networking: Online social networking has become a hit with most Internet users. People use these networks extensively to stay connected with their friends and family, share photos / web pages, chat and even find people with similar interests. There are many social networking services existing already but the services are still evolving each one vying to be the best and in turn have the maximum number of users. The latest social networking offer from Google, Google Plus will be introduced in this chapter. So, get ready to be immersed in the world of Google. Discover, at your own peril, how your life is about to be completely taken over by this simple word that has become a verb and has changed the world of the Internet and your computer experience through the years. Ever so subtly, Google has invaded your lives and your computer to such an extent that soon you may become totally dependent on the various tools, applications, gadgets and software that is helping you to organise your life at home and office or business and also providing easy answers to your daily problems in so many ways. How is this happening? This is what you will learn as you proceed through the various chapters, exploring the different ways in which Google can be used to make your life easier with its various products and features that are absolutely free and easily available to all. Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 9 Google Beyond google Section I: The Web of Google Search Download free ebooks at bookboon.com 10