Google Directory – Redefining search

Internet has changed the course of things drastically in the 21st century. With all the information explosion that has occurred due the booming of the internet, there is just so much out there to know and learn. In a way libraries of yesterday have lost importance in today’s world. The internet has successfully replaced all prior sources of information to human beings and established a monopoly of sorts. While there are many aspects in which the internet has affected our lives, we will concentrate on the “information” part for now. There is so much information and data out there, but how does one find it?

Enter Google.

It’s alright to say that internet without Google wouldn’t be that big a deal after all. We have this powerful search engine at our disposal and “searching” about anything just is a matter of seconds. Again when it comes to Google, there are numerous ways in which it has become an unavoidable part of our lives with maps, youtube etc. But again, lets not deviate and stick to “Search”. There are two parts to searching. The first part is played by Google and they are doing a good job by indexing all this wealth of information so that we search it quickly. The second part is where the ball is in our court. Its a fact that not all people know how to use Google to its best. They just don’t know how to search for information in the right way. Knowing that Google is capable of indexing only 3-4% of the information lying out there in spite of being so good, it just makes the scene petty if we can’t find the best links about what we are looking for.

Enter Google. Again.

This time its “Google Directory”. http://directory.google.com/ is the best thing on the web that I recently came across. This was what we needed. A yellow pages for the web. Now a  novice doesn’t need to know all the flashy google tricks find data. Google Directory categorizes data in a very clean manner with subcategories and finally the page that displays results – sorted by pagerank. Now that’s something eh! Since I am into computer science, this link blew me off. Then I played around with it and browsed through other categories and it was perfect. Google is just not finding, but finding the right things.

Technology is advancing, though I’m not sure if it is inversely affecting our grey matter!

Case-sensitivity in Google

Recently i was searching for some stuff on the net and I happened to realize this… The Google search engine, awesome tool and probably the most useful thing made since the bulb was invented had something missing!

I was looking for some stuff, lets assume, “Helloworld” and google gave me results for “helloworld” and “HelloWorld” and “Helloworld”… So i guess the Google Search Engine is not case-sensitive… I think if the engine provides case-sensitivity, the results could be more relevant to the user’s needs.

As far as i tried, i could only conclude that this kinda search cannot be done with google, however i’m not sure, but i’d love to know…

Does anybody know how case-sensitive strings can be searched with google?

lyrics on the fly!

Another great tool for all music fans, this time its a tool that looks for lyrics in such an efficient way! This one’s called lyricsfly and is a search engine dedicated to look for lyrics online!

First of all, i love the interface! Its damn sleek and simple without any complications or jazzy stuff all around, check it out below here…

The best part is that you can look for lyrics by song, artist, album or just put a part of the lyrics.. whats more? the results are so well displayed to give you complete info! You can even correct some lyrics that you find wrong… Plus, a link to the video on youtube! I think this is a great search engine that just gives you what you need without a sidebar full of porno ads or free smileys!

musicmesh.net- a great way to know your music

here i am, with yet another cool site i found. I came across this site called http://www.musicmesh.net/ today. Its a great way to know your music, very interactive, well organized and blah blah blah!

Musicmesh nicely includes youtube into its interface and allows us to first select a band of our choice. Once you select it, it gives a neat graphic display of the band and its albums… like this…

then we just need to click on the album and it displays all the songs for that album… what next?

Click… Listen… Watch… Enjoy!

TouchGraph Google Browser

I found something really amazing while hopping around the net. TouchGraph Google Browser is a graphic enabled search engine. Its actually a java application that works with google search engine and renders the search results in a graphical manner.

The search results are divided into three parts in the window…

1. A graphical map of the search results

2. A text based list of the search results

3. A description of the url the user clicks on

Well its obvious that anyday one would prefer a graphical interface to text based one and a page in the normal google search will not produce all results on the same page. This is one of the advantages of TouchGraph.

Check it out you guys…