Google Unveils New Logos

Google unveiled new logos. They hope the design freshens up their look as well as improves consistency and ease of use across their sites. The product names will now appear in clean, simple blue lowercase type alongside the Google logo as shown here:
They explain the benefits of the new Google logo design on the Google Official Blog:"This should make it easier for you to recognize which site you are on and navigate to wherever you want to go. They are also consistent across all our international domains, which is especially helpful for people using right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.

We are happy with this change since it will help us streamline our user experience. Count on seeing the new logos rolling out to Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs and more over the next few weeks."

Green, greener, Google?

Earlier this year Google blogged about the amount of energy used in one Google search.
Their engineers crunched the numbers and found that an average query uses about 1 kJ of energy and emits about 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide. But those raw numbers don't really put the environmental impact of searching the Internet into perspective. To add some context, below is data about the C02 impact of some everyday activities and items compared to Google searching:

Activity	Google Searches
CO2 emissions of an average daily newspaper (PDF) (100% recycled paper)	850
A glass of orange juice	1,050
One load of dishes in an EnergyStar dishwasher (PDF)	5,100
A five mile trip in the average U.S. automobile	10,000
A cheeseburger	15,000
Electricity consumed by the average U.S. household in one month	3,100,000

Making one cheeseburger uses as much energy as 15 000 web searchers! But I have to say a cheeseburger tastes better. You can read Energy and the Internet on the Official Google Blog.

The green alternative: Goats eat Google's weeds

Image by Paul Esson

Google decided to take a low-carbon approach to mowing some fields that they need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, they rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for them. More info at
Official Google Blog: Mowing with goats

A few Google tips and tricks

Why do I write this? Last week I saw a tweet by Howard Bowling ( @howard74 ) on Twitter asking “Anyone else ever use Google for a quickie spell check.” Wow, I thought it was only me that did that. I replied that I do it all the time and that Google is also a nice dictionary when you put define: before the word. This is just a few other Google features or tips and tricks that I use or know.

Spell checker
Not exactly sure how to spell that word? Type how you thinks it should be spelled in the search box and Google will ask “Did you mean: [correct spelling]?”

Dictionary
For those words that you don't know the meaning use “define: word” for example “define: ululations” ( without the “ ) You will get a list of different definitions for word. You can also use it without : in which case you will get usually get a longer list of results. Try both and see which one you like best.

Time
Very useful in our online world. Enter “time city” in the search box en you will get the time in that city.


If you enter “time country” you will get the different timezones if the country have more than one.



Weather
Works basically the same as time. Enter “weather city” to see weather in that city.


Calculator
You can even use Google as a calculator. Do basic calculations like +, -, *, / or combinations. You also do more advanced calculations for example “8*9+(sqrt 10)^5=”


Conversions
You can do currency conversions for example “100 USD in ZAR”



You can also do unit conversions between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and volume etc. Just enter your conversion into the search box and Google will do the rest for example convert 15 inches in cm.



Stock Quotes
You can also use Google to see current market data for a given company or fund just type the ticker symbol into the search box.



Maps
Looking for a map of a city? Type in the name of the city ( or US zip code ) and "map" and Google will show a of that location. If you click on the map you will get a larger version in Google Maps.


Search within a specific website
You can specify that your search results must come from a specific website by using “site:website” for example searching for “steve hofmeyr” site:huisgenoot.com will give you pages about Steve Hofmeyr but only from huisgenoot.com.


You can also use “site:” to search specific domains for example “archives site:.gov.za” to get result about archives from the .gov.za domains.


Double quotes
In the one example above I used double quotes around a set of words. If you want to search for a specific phrase put the phrase in double quotes for example “steve hofmeyr” By doing that Google will give you result with the exact words in that exact order.

Wild cards
You include * within a query and Google will try to use the star as a placeholder for any unknown terms. For example “edison invented *” will give you results about Edison's inventions. Test it for yourself by searching for “Google” and “Google *” The first one will give you result about Google and the second will give you result about Google's products .

One of the other things that I sometimes do is type a whole question in the search block for example “why is the sky blue?” Google usually ignore words like the, a, for, etc. but I found that by typing the whole question most of the time I get better results.

That's it for now. Do you have any other tips and tricks for using Google?

Google Classic!

Seems Google wasn't always fast!