Many people will boycott a movie with a certain actor or actress in it who's spouted off on some goofy liberal cause, one that really touched a nerve.
I'm not one of those.
Similarly, I could give a hoot about a company's politics, as long as it has the program or web page or info I'm looking for.
Google is a perfect example of this. Politically, it's firmly in the liberal camp, but some of its programs are so good there's not even a second place.
Update: One of Google's main liberal offenses, not displaying a custom 'doodle' on their page on Memorial Day, has finally been resolved (see 'This day in history' post, below) and when a company displays such a magnificent tribute to our fallen soldiers as they did yesterday, well, I'd say all is forgiven.
Here's a roundup of the Google programs I use:
Google Search
Given that there are currently something like 18.7 billion web sites out there, there are a handful of tricks you can employ to narrow down the search:
— Putting the searched-for item in quotes tells Google to only display pages with that exact phrase.
— Putting a plus sign directly in front of a word (no space between) tells Google that the word has to actually be on the web page, not just part of some 10,000-word keyword file.
— Putting a minus sign directly in front of a keyword will not display any page with that word on it. This is a particularly effective trick as you 'minus out' all of the web sites popping up with a different theme or subject than the one you're interested in.
— If you know which site the item you're looking for is on, use this format:
site:www.domain.com keyword keyword
I've tried the other search engines, like Bing, Duck Duck Go, Ixquick, Shodan and Yandex, but I keep coming back to Google.
But that's in great part because of...
Google Images
The same Google Search tricks apply here. If you're looking for some dude who's said, "Hey, check out my collection of hot Japanese babes!" on his pictorial web site, put "hot japanese babes" in quotes to help narrow down this important search.
To save a pic, click on it, then right-click on the pic that pops up and 'Save Image'. If you want to make sure you're getting the highest quality, click on 'View original image', then do the right-click routine.
To refine your search even more, first do a search for anything, to activate the icons on the upper-right, then click on the icon with the little gear on it to open up the Options and select 'Advanced search'. If you're looking for something with real high quality, kick the 'image size' way up. If you're looking for clip art or line drawings, that's 'type of image'.
There's also a Google Video page which looks across the whole web, rather than the 'YouTube' link at the top of the page, which just goes to YouTube.
Google YouTube
I tried out a 'video download' add-on for Firefox a while back and made an amazing discovery about YouTube. The add-on usually offers a full range of quality, from lo-res for the handheld to a hi-res MP4 for excellent clarity. The standard one that plays is a medium-quality FLV. More info here.
Google Translate
Before this baby hit the scene, I had three commercial translation programs on my system, all in a (usually in vain) attempt to get a decent translation. I used Google Translate once, uninstalled them all and threw the master discs away.
It's easy enough to use. Just type or paste in the English version and then select the language from the 'To:' box. Once it kicks into gear, it should stay up with you in real-time. Use proper capitalization and punctuation in the original version because sometimes it makes a real difference.
Exhibit A:
Translating "Thank you very much." into German:
thank you very much. = ich danke Ihnen sehr.
Thank you very much. = Vielen Dank.
And punctuation:
Thank you very much. = Vielen Dank.
Thank you, very much. = Danke, sehr viel.
I also recently discovered a very neat trick. I'd just never read the fine print below the text box before. Not only does it translate words, but also entire web pages, retaining everything on the page like pics and ads. You simply paste in the URL rather than words.
I have a Cuban buddy who I occasionally send Cuba-related articles to, but he doesn't read English very well so his wife reads them aloud, translating into Spanish. Until this nifty little discovery. I used it just this morning, which inspired this post. Here's the before page, and here's the after. Note how not only all of the page text is in Spanish, even the sidebar blurbs, but even the links go to translated pages. You can then click the 'Home' button, bookmark the page or make a Desktop icon, and it'll act just like its normal self in the future albeit everything's translated. That's about as slick as it gets.
GoogleMaps
The one huge flaw this thing had for years — not having highway 'Exit' numbers — has finally been resolved, so it's now the undisputed king of the heap.
If you want to email a certain location to someone or link to it on a web page, click the little 'Link' button and copy/paste the address into the email program or web editor.
If you want to save it as a Desktop icon, paste the link address into the browser's address box and hit the Enter key. With IE, right-click on the page and 'Create shortcut'. If you're using Firefox, you'll need the Create Shortcut add-on, then do the right-click routine.
To print a page, hit the 'Print' button. If you're using Internet Explorer and the print-out looks weird, try Firefox.
GMail
This is an excellent free online email service. I've been using it for years and don't ever recall an incoming email getting lost or an outgoing one not arriving. If one did, I'd be tempted to blame it on a computer glitch or my ISP, not GMail.
If you use multiple email addresses, there's an option on the site that'll relay your email to the email program on your computer, which can then sort things out. I'm currently using Thunderbird.
Google Analytics
This gives you all of your site's statistics for the past day/week/month/year. It'll do demographic stuff like where people are popping in from, which pages got how many hits, what browser and OS the readers are using, how they're accessing it (desktop, laptop, notebook, etc) and puts the daily/weekly/monthly/yearly stats on a timeline graph so you can spot peaks and valleys.
It does have some semi-serious limitations, though, like not being able to look back very far or combine years or go from one specific date to another, but it's free, so, hard to complain.
If you wanted all of the serious stuff, there are probably freeware programs out there that'll do a nice job. Try a search for something like "sourceforge web site statistics". SourceForge is one of the oldest and best freeware sites around.
Google Earth
This is the real feather in Google's cap. The only thing that even comes close is Bing Maps using Birdeye's View. I've never gotten into Birdseye because when I investigated it a few years ago, it was limited to only the U.S. I just now read an article comparing the two map sites (GoogleMaps with the Google Earth plugin, Bing Maps with the Birdseye plugin), and apparently Birdseye has gone world-wide (but probably mostly cities), so it'll be worth checking out at some point. Unlike Google Earth, it's not an actual program, just a plugin for their map site, so you can't make custom 'tours' and all that. From what I understand, its images are a bit sharper than GE and it gets closer to the ground.
The above header link goes to my Google Earth Project site. You might check out a few of the video tours. The 'Google Goofs' is hilarious and the 'Oddities' pages are a kick. There's some pretty weird stuff out there — albeit only noticed from far above.
And this is just part of Google's many programs. If there's one I've missed that you think I should investigate, let me know in the comments.
