Inspiring ...
Last week, while going through some blogs I came across this blog on Google Blogs which was very interesting to read.
I liked Chiles' article there and found it inspiring enough to use Google in a still better way. I liked the way this 12 year old girl has described her usage of Google. I even learnt some more new things from her site :-) ... Definately, learning is a never ending process !!!
One good thing was to get the weather of your city. Just type in "weather bangalore" to get to know the present temperature and also the forecast for the coming 5 days. Infact, I found it is even more helpful in combination with firefox since by typing those words in the url finder, firefox directly takes you to the "I'm feeling lucky" site found by Google. Saves me one more click :-)
Another very helpful one, which I use a lot, is "define: typethewordyoudontunderstand". This takes you to all the references of the usage and meanings of this word. I extended this to fit into the firefox features. I dont like typing long words. So, i wanted a shortcut for "define", something like "def". I first did a search for "define: hello". Then saved the link in the url finder. Created a new bookmark, gave it a name and pasted this link for this bookmark. Later on, I removed all the extra info at the end of this URL, and just leaving the following part ... "http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+hello". Then, replaced "hello" with "%s", [ and yeah you can replace %3A+ with a simple ':' too ]. So, the final url looked something like, "http://www.google.com/search?q=define:%s" Then, I gave this bookmark a keyword like "def", and save this bookmark. Then onwards, in firefox I just have to type "def thewordidontunderstand" and it takes me directly to the page with the meanings for this word. Thanks Chiles :-)
I have been using Google notebook too, but it seriously lacks an auto-save feature :-( which is so helpful as in the GMail drafts. Looks like the team working on Google Notebook, never used GMail drafts as notes ;-) and didnt realise the value of having an autosave feature, which even the Google Spreadsheets have !!! Oh yeah, I used Google spreadsheets for keeping a tab on the team scores and statistics for the football World Cup. It is a bit slow, but great none-the-less. I now use it for keeping a tab on my petrol expenses :p. Planning to expand its scope to monthly expenditure chart sheet. The best benefit of these online tools, is that I dont have to carry the copies of these docs when I need to modify them at home and at work.
Another inspiration, was to use Google Analytics to figure out the amount of crowd actually visiting by blog :D I created an account for myself there and updated my blog with the javascript that counts the visitors. Within 10 days of this analyser being enabled, I am some very interesting information gathered. In the past 10 days, I have had 20 visitors visiting my blog, with the highest visits in a single day being 5 and that was on the previous Saturday, 21st. 50% of the visitors are new, and 50% of them have revisited my site. Thats something to cheer about :-)
Another interesting statistic is the names of the places from where people have visited my blog. I have had people visiting from Bangalore, New Delhi, West Hills [ US ], Winnetka [ US ], Mountain View [ US ], Mumbai and even El Recreo, a place in Peru, South America !!! This really is some amazing statistic and if I could relate these visits to money, I am sure I can do a very good market survey of my blog, and find out its monetary value :D
I liked Chiles' article there and found it inspiring enough to use Google in a still better way. I liked the way this 12 year old girl has described her usage of Google. I even learnt some more new things from her site :-) ... Definately, learning is a never ending process !!!
One good thing was to get the weather of your city. Just type in "weather bangalore" to get to know the present temperature and also the forecast for the coming 5 days. Infact, I found it is even more helpful in combination with firefox since by typing those words in the url finder, firefox directly takes you to the "I'm feeling lucky" site found by Google. Saves me one more click :-)
Another very helpful one, which I use a lot, is "define: typethewordyoudontunderstand". This takes you to all the references of the usage and meanings of this word. I extended this to fit into the firefox features. I dont like typing long words. So, i wanted a shortcut for "define", something like "def". I first did a search for "define: hello". Then saved the link in the url finder. Created a new bookmark, gave it a name and pasted this link for this bookmark. Later on, I removed all the extra info at the end of this URL, and just leaving the following part ... "http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+hello". Then, replaced "hello" with "%s", [ and yeah you can replace %3A+ with a simple ':' too ]. So, the final url looked something like, "http://www.google.com/search?q=define:%s" Then, I gave this bookmark a keyword like "def", and save this bookmark. Then onwards, in firefox I just have to type "def thewordidontunderstand" and it takes me directly to the page with the meanings for this word. Thanks Chiles :-)
I have been using Google notebook too, but it seriously lacks an auto-save feature :-( which is so helpful as in the GMail drafts. Looks like the team working on Google Notebook, never used GMail drafts as notes ;-) and didnt realise the value of having an autosave feature, which even the Google Spreadsheets have !!! Oh yeah, I used Google spreadsheets for keeping a tab on the team scores and statistics for the football World Cup. It is a bit slow, but great none-the-less. I now use it for keeping a tab on my petrol expenses :p. Planning to expand its scope to monthly expenditure chart sheet. The best benefit of these online tools, is that I dont have to carry the copies of these docs when I need to modify them at home and at work.
Another inspiration, was to use Google Analytics to figure out the amount of crowd actually visiting by blog :D I created an account for myself there and updated my blog with the javascript that counts the visitors. Within 10 days of this analyser being enabled, I am some very interesting information gathered. In the past 10 days, I have had 20 visitors visiting my blog, with the highest visits in a single day being 5 and that was on the previous Saturday, 21st. 50% of the visitors are new, and 50% of them have revisited my site. Thats something to cheer about :-)
Another interesting statistic is the names of the places from where people have visited my blog. I have had people visiting from Bangalore, New Delhi, West Hills [ US ], Winnetka [ US ], Mountain View [ US ], Mumbai and even El Recreo, a place in Peru, South America !!! This really is some amazing statistic and if I could relate these visits to money, I am sure I can do a very good market survey of my blog, and find out its monetary value :D
well, thr's also da 'time in ' feature, which is very handy when u r interacting with ppl across continents...helps u add tht li'l extra touch 'n wow 'em... :)
ReplyDelete'n Analytics is something which i dint know abt...sounds cool...will try it asap... :)