Google Voice Search

Google Voice Search, an option already available on mobile apps, is now being rolled out for computers. You just need a microphone to speak what you are searching.



Click the microphone symbol in the search bar to speak your search words.

3 Alternative Search Engines

Three search engines, that aren't Google.

The word 'Google' has become completely synonymous with searching on the web. Here are three alternative search engines worth giving a try.

Duck Duck Go


Duck Duck Go is one of the finest alternatives to Google search. It has several features different from Google. It offers specific information much faster, is completely spam and ad-free and does not track users. [More features]

Blekko


Blekko is a search engine that claims to reduce spam, by pioneering a slashtag search. The intention of slashtag search is to offer better results by searching the websites that the user is interested in. The idea is to eliminate what isn't needed and search specifically through slashtags. [More details]

Yebol



Yebol is a unique search engine that offers several forms of search results (actual web results, images, videos, social search, news on your search item) in a single search. It basically branches out your search in these categories.

[If these alternatives don't interest you, do check out our extensive guide to Google Search] 

Discover RSS Feeds With ctrlQ

A search engine for popular RSS feeds.


ctrlQ is a unique search engine. The service finds you the best RSS feeds covering an area of your interest.

Simply type in a topic of your interest, and ctrlQ will show the best RSS feeds along with the website link in the search results.

You can even use advanced Google Search operators.

[Via Digital Inspiration]

(Related: No idea what RSS is? Read the Internet Simplified post on Google Reader)

Google Instant

Search, as you type.


Google’s search engine now brings up results as you type your search terms, called Google Instant. Head to Google Instant and click ‘Try It Now’ to get search results as you are typing any search term.

Next to the search bar, you will find a link to switch on Instant or switch to default search. You can alternatively head to Google’s NCR website to try the service.

[Via Google Blog]

Set A Background In Google Search

You can now set a wallpaper on Google.


Google now gives you an option to convert the white background into a colourful one, with background images.

You can choose from a public gallery, or choose from your Picasa account. Or even upload directly from your computer.

Related Reading: All Things Google

Google’s Colourful New Look

Popular search engine has a brand new search results page.


Google has revamped the look of it’s popular search engine, by adding more colour and a left-sided pane that offers various other searches like videos and images.

The experience of using Google is now more pleasant, and you can get more relevant search results and browse options on the left pane.

[Via Google Blog]

Get More Out Of GMail – A Simple Guide

25+ tips, tricks and more to get the best out of GMail. 

 
Google’s free email service, GMail, is a very useful web-based service you can use as an email client. Here are 27 tips and tricks to help you make the most of GMail.

1. Use GMail as a secondary hard drive with GMail Drive


GMail Drive is an interesting tool that allows you to use that extra space in your account as an online storage drive.

The drive will appear listed in My Computer. When you transfer a file to the drive, it generates an email and posts it to your account.

Filter emails from GMail Drive in a separate category in your GMail account to keep it clean and organized.

2. Check spam with a simple GMail trick

When you register for a new account with a website and would like to check in the future if that website is giving away your email address to irritating spammers, then you can try this simple trick.

When registering on a website say http://www.abc.com, give your email address as username+abccom@gmail.com when asked for an email.

The thing here is that you will still receive mails on your username@gmail.com normally with the plus sign making no difference, but when you search GMail for username+abccom@gmail.com to see any messages received for this particular email address that you registered with, you’ve just found out that abc.com gave away your email address to spammers.

3. Create and use GMail filters effectively

You can filter and categorize the emails you receive everyday automatically by making the best use of GMail Filters, and Labels. Designate certain emails to be of a specific category and set up a filter to automatically have those mails transferred to that label.

You can also create filters to check spam or auto-delete bugging emails.


For example, say abc@xyz.com is a troublesome email sender. Create a filter and provide his email address in the To: field in the filter.


Then select Next Step and choose from the various options provided. You can auto-delete those mails, archive them or apply a label. Select Create Filter and never bother above these emails again.

4. Multiple GMail email addresses - @gmail.com, @googlemail.com

When you register on GMail, you basically get two email addresses. For example, john@gmail.com and john@googlemail.com will send your emails to the same account.

To get the best out of this, you can probably set a filter (as explained above) in GMail to make these two addresses completely specific. For example, give username@gmail.com to your friends while keep username@googlemail.com for your business purposes.

5. The GMail Dot trick

You should also know that GMail completely ignores dots in your email addresses. For example, an email sent to user.name@gmail.com will be received by username@gmail.com. 

Again, you could take advantage of these glitches by using multiple email addresses at multiple places and setting a simple filter in GMail that can categorize your emails.

6. Access GMail when it’s blocked at work or school

There are a few ways to access GMail at places where it might be blocked, like work or school. Learn more here. 

7. Convert your GMail account into a portable online drive

Download gDisk, a free tool that helps you transfer and maintain your files through GMail hence making them accessible everywhere.  

8. Manage multiple GMail accounts and do more easily with the GMail Manager Firefox add-on

The GMail Manager add-on for the Firefox web browser is a simple and smart tool to help you get more out of GMail. Download it here. 

9. Back up your GMail account to your computer with POP and IMAP


You can back up your entire GMail account on your computer by enabling POP in Settings. You can do this without having to pay any money for the service. POP enables one-way communication between GMail and your email client (like Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail). You can also use the IMAP protocol, which allows two-way communication. IMAP is recommended.

To do this, go to Settings and select Enable POP for all mails. Then set up your email client and follow instructions as provided.

All of your emails will now have a backed-up copy on your hard drive, which you can further back up to a secondary disk to never lose your emails.

10. Watch YouTube videos, see Flickr and Picasa picture streams in GMail


You can watch YouTube videos and check Flickr streams right from within GMail itself by enabling the specific Labs features. Select the green Labs image from the top-right corner of your GMail screen. [Shown above]

Do explore tons of other Labs features, provided in GMail.

11. Search Google, Yahoo, Bing or Twitter from GMail Chat

Add the Search Bot as a friend in your GMail Chat to search Google, Bing or Twitter from your mailbox itself. Learn more here.

12. Import existing mail into GMail

You can now import existing mail from any email client by using the Google GMail Loader. To import from web-based services, go to Settings –> Accounts and Import.

13. Upload files from another mailbox into GMail

Try this handy service, GMail Uploader, that allows you to instantly upload files of another mailbox to your GMail account.

14. Be notified of new mails in GMail

Download a simple tool called GMail Notifier that informs you of new emails you might have received in GMail, from your taskbar.

15. Use GMail Offline

Use GMail when you are not connected to the web by enabling the Google Gears option in Labs features in GMail settings. 

16. Set up GMail Voice and Video Chat

You can easily setup GMail Voice and Video Chat in your mail account. Read this to learn how. 

17. Stay Invisible in GMail Chat

To stay invisible in GMail Chat, simply select the Invisible option when you set your status. Note that this feature is not available in the stand-alone chat client Google Talk. 

18. Enable keyboard shortcuts in GMail 

You can use keyboard shortcuts in GMail. Simply enable them from settings and use them. Here’s a list of GMail’s keyboard shortcuts.

19. Set Email Forwarding to receive GMail emails in office


Go to Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP and provide your office email address in the field to have your mails sent there. You can choose to also archive/delete them from GMail.

20. Add a cool signature to outgoing mails in GMail

Automatically add a custom signature to outgoing GMail messages with the WiseStamp Signature Add-On for Firefox. Learn more here.

21. Add a Facebook Profile Badge to your emails

You can put a Facebook account Profile Badge in your GMail messages. Learn how to do that here. 

22. Get things done efficiently in GMail with GTDGmail

GTDGMail is a simple freeware that allows you to change the way you use emails. The tool has unique features that allow you to speed up your daily activities in GMail and also helps you maintain your account. 

23. Create and manage a simple GMail To-Do list

GMail Todo is an open-source application that helps you effectively manage tasks in GMail. Download it now. 

24. Do everything with GMail for Mobile Phones

Enable GMail on your cell phone – download this simple GMail For Mobile client from your mobile phones. 

25. Use GMail’s advanced search operators


GMail has a list of advanced search operators you can do when you browse through your email archives to look for that relevant mail you had received a long time ago. Check out the list of search operators here. 

26. Add a Random Quote to your GMail signature

Read this to learn how a random quote is added to all your outgoing mails in GMail. 

27. Select Contacts from GMail address book

You can select contacts from your address book by simply pressing the To: tab when composing a new mail. Learn more here.

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Google introduces Music Search

Listen to song previews in Google Search’s new feature.


When you search for a music album or a specific song in Google, the search engine will return you results that include an audio preview of the song that you can listen to right on the page.

Google will also provide links to listen to the song on Pandora, imeem or Rhapsody. This search feature helps you discover music more easily and directly.

[Via Google Blog]

Related Reading: The Complete Guide to Google Search

Search Faster By Not Using The Mouse

A search service that helps you keep your hands on the keyboard. 


Keyboardr is a simple search engine that returns results from Google, YouTube and Wikipedia on the same page.

It is basically a mouse-free search service. You can navigate around the results with your keyboard.

The idea is to allow you to search faster by using only the keyboard, instead of both mouse and keyboard.

Search Google And Bing Together

Two websites that help you compare Google and Bing’s search results.


To search and compare on Google and Microsoft’s Bing search engine at the same time and view results side-by-side, visit Bing-versus-Google and Google Bing search engines.

These display results in two frames after searching your desired topic through both search engines.

Bing-versus-Google even provides an option to add the comparative search to your Firefox web browser or Internet Explorer 7 and 8 as search engines.

Search the Web Real-Time

Web search engines that log information and events with real-time updates.


Collecta and OneRiot are two search engines that find you what you want, depending on all the on-going talk around it.

Find results from Twitter, Digg and many other social services to get information that is constantly changing with real-time updates.


Real-time search helps you get the latest on any topic, plus opinions and other talk instantly.

Give real-time search a try to find what you are looking for through normal search engines like Google and Bing.

Other Twitter-based search engines are Twitter Search, Crowdeye and Topsy.

Related Reading: Search from your Instant Messenger

Search Google, Yahoo, Bing or Twitter from your Instant Messenger

Add SBot to your IM Client.

By adding this simple bot as a chat friend on your IM client, you can search Google, Bing or Yahoo from the messenger itself. For the following three messengers, add these email addresses as contacts:

Google Talk – sbot@bot.im
Yahoo Messenger – searchbot@ymail.com
MSN Messenger – searchbot@live.com

To perform a search, all you have to do is specify the letter as mentioned below before the search term and send it as a chat message.

The response from SBot will be search results from the particular search engine:

Google – g ‘search term’
Yahoo – y ‘search term’
Bing - b ‘search term’
Twitter - t ‘search term’

 
For example, searching ‘jaytechtips’ on Google via Google Talk returned me search results for Internet Simplified.

[Via Tech Bangalore]

TinEye – A Unique Image Search Engine

Get all information about images. And find better ones.

 
TinEye is a new image search engine where you can submit an image and find everything about it – it’s origin, how it is being used, whether there are modified versions of the image and also the availability of higher resolution versions of the image.

TinEye finds exact matches of the images, whether they’ve been cropped, edited, resized, modified and returns them as search results.

You simply can upload an image or paste the URL of an image in TinEye. Check out some of their Cool Searches.

If you are using Firefox, get the TinEye add-on and instantly search for image information. Alternatively, get the TinEye bookmarklet (more useful bookmarklets here).

7 Must-Dos You Can Probably Stop Doing Now

Seven internet suggestions to try something new. And possibly, better.

1. Downloading Music

Of course, downloading music is very important for those hard-core music lovers. But a permanent internet connection can save you tons of space on your computer with this simple solution – Listen to Music Online.

There are many websites available today that provide great services in music streaming. Listen to every song you’ve ever wanted to on the internet. And for free. [Read: Listen to Music Online For Free]

2. Using Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 6 is a totally inept browser in the modern Internet age, although most offices and companies function compulsively on it. With features that are getting more stagnant by the day (or have gotten already) and hardly any room for user-contribution or involvement.

Why not give new browsers a try? Browsers like Mozilla Firefox come with tons of add-ons that make them truly special and more importantly, customizable as per your needs and interests. IE addicts should also move on to at least Internet Explorer 8.  [Read: 10+ Alternatives to Internet Explorer]

3. Visiting a search engine’s website to search

Most of today’s best browsers don’t require you to type in a ‘google.com’ or a ‘bing.com’ to search for what you require. Try browsers that come with search engines embedded as part of the browser’s navigation toolbar.

Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome and Firefox are great browsers that have the best search engines in their navigation bar and allow you to add more of your choice. [Read: 7 Must-Dos Before You Start Using Firefox (and even while you are using it)]

4. Depending on Microsoft Office

Depending on Microsoft Office is important from a Microsoft-dependant company’s perspective, but even Microsoft has taken it’s Office applications online. Moreover, there are excellent other sources that provides you Office applications for no cost at all. It’s worth giving them a try. Access your Office needs from the Internet. Basically, from Anywhere. [Read: 3 Alternatives to Microsoft Office]

5. Using Individual IM Clients

Downloading the specific Instant Messaging application of a particular service (like Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger) is a good idea. But, you may want to try all of your favourite chat accounts at one place.

Multi-protocol IM clients are available in plenty over the internet where you can chat with everyone across all messengers. [Read: 3 Instant Messengers You Must Use]

6. Watching TV on TV

This one may be a little farfetched. Television is best watched on a television set, especially with the kind of great products available in the market today. But on the internet, you can probably watch what you like by trying great free streaming services that host a lot of TV channels from all places around the world.

TVU Player and Sopcast are two excellent live streaming players you can try. These are basically peer-to-peer services, which means you make your resources available to someone else over a network and get resources in return. [Similar to a Client-Server Model]

7. Paying to receive cricket scores, horoscopes, joke-of-the-day etc on your Mobile Phone

Don’t pay for SMS services that provide live cricket scores, horoscopes, word-of-the-day etc on your mobile device. Simply use Google Labs’ SMS Channels to subscribe to as many services you like, for free.

Pre-requisite? A Google account. Who doesn’t have that one? [Read: Subscribe to Free SMS Services of Your Choice]

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Bing introduces Visual Search

New and Hot.
Microsoft's Bing search engine has come up with a creative Visual Search feature where you can search through pictures which eventually leads to website links and makes search easier and better. 

Simply head to Bing Visual Search and start searching. Only Bing USA offers visual search as of now.

Learn how to activate Bing Visual Search here.