Stay up to date with current affairs
If you have an Android or iOS device,
Google currents delivers magazine-like content and news without you having to
search for it. Download the free app from www.snipca.com/9202
for Android devices or from www.snipca.com/9203
for iPhone and iPad.
Google
Current on iOS
Brilliant new Bing tools
Microsoft has integrated its Bing search
tool even more closely with Internet Explorer 10. You’ll find personalization
tools at www.iegallery.com. One of these
is the ability to ‘pin’ sites you like to your taskbar so they’re immediately
accessible. You can use lump Lists to get to specific sections of a pinned site
too.
Get train info immediately
Pins look similar to Windows 8 apps and
cover areas such as news, travel, games and shopping. To use one, just drag it
to your taskbar. To remove it, right-click it and choose ‘Unpin from taskbar’.
Pin National Rail Enquiries to your taskbar and you can call up the latest
train time times with a click. Enter your station name and Bing will
immediately display a live departure board.
National
Rail Enquiries
Get a quick translation
One of the most useful features of Bing has
always been its web-based instant translation tool - one of its ‘Accelerator’
apps. These apps have now been added to the Pinned section of IE10. To view
Accelerators, click Add-ons and choose ‘Filter by type’, Accelerators. Click
Bing Translator, ‘Add to Internet Explorer’. If you’re not keen to update to
IE10, grab the add-on from www.bing.com/translator.
Get instant restaurant recommendations
Rather than hunting through TripAdvisor or
a restaurant review site for a place to eat, you can get instant
recommendations from your friends. A new Bing tool shows your friends’ Facebook
likes and recommendations whenever you search for restaurants, bars and shops.
Install the Bing Bar (www.bingtoolbar.com/en-GB)
and click Yes to the option to share Facebook details to get in-browser
recommendation alerts from friends.
Install
the Bing Bar
Keep tabs on secret trackers
The London School of Economics is so
concerned about people’s privacy being abused when they search that it’s built
an app for Bing to keep tabs on what’s tracking you online. To install it,
click the Tracking Pruteclion Lists option at www.iegallery.com
and choose Privacy Online, Add.
Quickly find eBay bargains
You can add dedicated site search tools to
IE via the browser’s Add-ons, ‘Search providers’ option. Amazon, eBay and Tesco
have their own add-ons.
Use the Bing Sidebar
Bing Sidebar provides useful details such
as flight arrival times and price lists when you search for ‘airport car
parking’. The idea is that the main search results page is left uncluttered,
but you get snapshots of related information without having to perform an
additional search. It’s US-only at present, but should eventually come to the
UK.
Use Bing to search locally
Bing Desktop (www.bing.com/explore/desktop)
lets you search directly from within Windows. It can be run as a search box on
the Desktop, embedded in the Windows Taskbar, or as a shortcut in the
Notification A183. Click the cog icon to specify these options.
Delve deeper into the web
Ask Everything
To get lots of detail about one place or
subject use Ask (www.ask.com). Type a place
name, for example, and you’ll see travel options, climate and population
details, photos, links to festivals and things to do, and posts that other people
have created – along with the most useful responses. Click the Everything tab
for an overview, Reference to see more web links and statistics, and Images,
YouTube or Videos to see what the place looks like and recent video uploads.
Ask
search
Use Yahoo and Bing plugins
Yahoo Axis provides graphical snapshots of
the most relevant pages related to your search queries. Get the toolbar plug-in
for Chrome, Internet Explore and Firefox at http://axis.yahoo.com.
Explore the deep web
The main search engines are helpful for
general queries, but most online content is hidden. This could be because there
are no links to the page, the site is hidden behind a login or its location
constantly changes. Most such content is academic. Use Google Scholar
(scholar.google.com) to find results in scientific and legal databases.
Discover Google’s hidden search results
Google only ever shows you some results,
but it’s perfectly legal to take a look at the results it doesn’t show you. Go
to the Google Public DNS at www.snipca.com/8391
to see the unfiltered results.
Get scientific answers
There’s a catalogue of specialized search
engines and searchable content databases at http://aip.completeplanet.com. One of
the most useful is Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com).
Scientific queries and statistics are its specialty, so a search for the cost
of petrol in France returns results comparing fuel types, rather than a list of
prices for unleaded fuel. Creating a free Wolfram Alpha ID lets you set
preferences for currency, weight and more.
Zanran (www.zanran.com)
also provides data and statistics, answering queries such as ‘growth Panama
Canal’ with tables of shipping movements. You must register for free to view
the results.
Zanran
search
Search by image
All the main search engines have a section
to search for Images. At Flickr (www.flickr.com/commons)
you’ll find many thousands of photos that can be used non-commercially under
the Creative Commons Licence. You can also identify, tag and describe archive
photos here.
Find historic photos
Use History Pin (www.historypin.com) to search for historic
photos of a town or region. The site presents photos on a map so you click an
image to view photo details and its historic context.
Find out who owns an image
Search at TinEye (www.tineye.com) for details of who owns an
image on the web. The reverse search engine helps uncover the original image
source, ensuring you can get permission and credit it properly.
Find films in any format
At www.findanyfilm.com
you can browse through catalogues of films regardless of whether they made it on
to DVD or even VHS. The site then provides a list of places to buy or rent the
film.
Findanyfilm
search
Get news as it happens
Twitter (www.twitter.com)
often ‘breaks’ news stories, but it isn’t always the most reliable resource, as
far-fetched tales circulating during 2011’s riots proved. To use Twitter to get
details of a story as it develops, go to https://twitter.com/search-home.
Include a hashtag (#) to focus results on an event.
Get the official line
Many news stories come from agencies such
as Reuters (http://uk.reuters.com) and
Associated Press (www.ap.org). Press releases,
government statements and international news will be covered at both these
sites and will include links to where the information originated.
Get the most from private search tools
The main browsers have private surfing modes
and ad-blockers, but they don’t stop you leaving a trail. AVG’s Do Not Track
browser add-on lets you block trackers (www.snipca.com/9213).
You can also use the free Privacyfix browser extension (www.privacyfix.com).
Privacyfix
browser
Search anonymously
Type a search query at www.startpage.com to strip identifying
information from your search before submitting it to Google. Under the search
bar is an option to add Start Page to your browser. IE, Chrome and Firefox
browser add-ons are all available. Ixquick (www.ixquick.com)
does the same using multiple search engines. Neither records data, and both
have proxy servers so you can anonymously visit any site in the results.
Use other people’s search results
DuckDuckGo (www.duckduckgo.com) combines third-party
information and its own web analysis with ‘crowd-sourced’ data from sites such
as Wikipedia. It doesn’t collect or share any personal information which means
that you aren’t presented with friends’ ‘Likes’ or items you’ve seen before.
Use DuckDuckGo ibangs
To search only within a site type ibang!
then the site name and your search term. This is useful for sites that are not
well-indexed or have lots of data.
Slick, subject-based searches
Blekko (www.blekko.com)
uses similar information-gathering methods to DuckDuckGo. Use the site’s
‘slashtags’ feature to specify the type of result you’re interested in. For
example, type ‘Shins/health’ to get health-related information. Blekko gathers
tracking data, but this can be disabled in its privacy settings.
Blekko
search
Get a quick calculation
At www.duckduckgo.com/goodies you’ll
find lots of statistics, facts and conversions. For instant definitions, just
type a word into the search box.
