Product Description

Crafted from our bestselling Google Hacks title, the Google Pocket Guide provides exactly the information you need to make your searches faster and more effective, right from the start. The Google Pocket Guide unleashes the power behind that blinking cursor by delivering:

• A thorough but concise tour of Google's features
• Practical examples to inspire going beyond the basic keyword search
• Secrets for constructing more powerful queries using Google's special syntax
• Advice on how to understand and further refine the results Google provides

Whether you're a student researching a topic for class, a medical or legal professional needing field-specific reference information, or a home user looking for that article on home repair you forgot to bookmark, the Google Pocket Guide will take you from mystified to mastery.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #347755 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-12
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 140 pages

Review
"Less a pocket reference and more a short introduction, this inexpensive book is a good choice for anyone who wants to improve their web searching with a light investment of money and time." - Gavin Inglis, news@UK, March 2004

About the Author
Tara Calishain is the creator of the site, ResearchBuzz. She is an expert on Internet search engines and how they can be used effectively in business situations.

Rael Dornfest is a Researcher at the O'Reilly & Associates focusing on technologies just beyond the pale. He assesses, experiments, programs, and writes for the O'Reilly network and O'Reilly publications. Dornfest is Program Chair of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Chair of the RSS-DEV Working Group, and developer of Meerkat: An Open Wire Service. In his copious free time, he develops bits and bobs of Open Source software and maintains his raelity bytes Weblog.

DJ Adams is an old SAP hacker who still thinks JCL and S/370 assembler are pretty cool. In recent years he's been successfully combining open source software with R/3 to produce hybrid systems that show off the power of free software. He's the author of O'Reilly's Programming Jabber book, contributes articles to O'ReillyNet's P2P site, and has to own up to being responsible for the Jabber::Connection, Jabber::RPC and Jabber::Component::Proxy modules on CPAN.

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Customer Reviews

great reference for some unknown tricks in google
learning how to quote strings, use the minus operator, see which sites link to which, and restrict a search to a specific site are so useful and all covered in this book! Become 10x more productive by learning how to search google!

Remember to Play Your Wild Cards!
Google Pocket Guide, 2003
By Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest, and D.J. Adams
Published by O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 0-596-00550-4
Paperback, 129pp


The search engine Google, born on September 7, 1998, derived its name from a word invented by a nine-year-old child, Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician, Edward Kasner. As with precocious children like Milton or the giant bean stalks of English fairy tales, it is difficult to keep up with Google's rapid development. Until I read the Google Pocket Guide, by Tara Calishain, Rael Dorfest and DJ Adams I was unaware of all the things Google has learned to do. Now, in addition to finding Web pages that contain keywords, Google helps me find telephone numbers, solve mathematical equations and cook -- Google can convert cups to pints or just about anything to anything else. Using google maps, I can look at the crater, Giordano Bruno, on the dark side of the Moon, fly to Mars or see my house and yard in a satellite picture that seems to have been taken from only few hundred feet away. The pocket guide is full of information about how to use features I never knew existed. Did I mention Google Images? After reading Google Pocket Guide, I want to read more books about Google. I would like to read Google Hacks, Google: The Missing Manual and Google Maps Hacks.

In addition to describing all the things Google has learned to do, the Google Pocket Guide explains how to make searches more efficient (Part II), "explains how to interpret Google's results pages and URLs, and set preferences to influence what those pages contain" (Part III), and goes into advanced functionality like Language Tools, Groups, Directories and News (Part IV).

The authors say, "Knowing how to be specific with your search criteria is key. That's what this book is all about." To remember this I think (ASAP=ASAP) the key to getting results ASAP is being As Specific As Possible. For instance, instead of searching every Web site on the Internet, limit your search to educational sites by using special syntax (also referred to as advanced search operators). For example, when I search for "plenoptic camera site:edu" Google will return results from educational sites only. The authors also suggest using basic Boolean operators like NOT, represented by the minus sign, AND and OR. Did you know that Google limits queries to ten words and ignores the rest?

Tara Clishain, Rael Dornfest and DJ Adams have delivered a lot of information in only 129 pages. This book is a great starting point for anyone wanting to know Google better. This is a link you might find useful: http://www.google.com/help/features.html.

Google is fun:)

Michael Morgan

Google Pocket Guide
Book Review: Google Pocket Guide
By Gregory West
Editor, SCUG Report
Sarnia Computer User's Group - www.scug.ca

By Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest, and D.J. Adams
Published by O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
Category: Internet Search Engine.
ISBN: 0-596-00550-4
Format: Paperback, 129pp
U.S. $9.95 / CAN. $15.95

For many, surfing the Net is a matter of going to Google (or any other search engine) and simply typing in a name, a phrase, or any relative brief statement that will hopefully bring them the desired results for their search. However, for a lot of people today, surfing the Net is a very cumbersome job, and nets very few exacting effects. In fact, many surfers will find the results to their search in the millions - yes millions of web pages that are offering the right answer to a desired query. At first, this is fun to see all those pages, but after a few scrolls down the item list of possible correct sights, one soon gets discouraged and the sites that have no real information regarding the initial request.

So, how does the serious surfer get the information they request in Google? How does one eliminate a few million hits down to a more manageable search? It is not easy, yet with the help of Google Pocket Guide you will be able to narrow down and zero in on the item you are searching. As the authors claim, "The Internet is not a library" as many now believe. In fact, the authors point out that "So search engine - not even Google - knows everything." But with the guidance of this easy-to-follow pocket guide, you can certainly target your search to a much more manageable result, thus saving you hours of frustration and possible failure to disclose any relevant information you desire.

The book takes you from a "Simple Example" to an "Advance Search" guiding you along in each step to successful searches. The table of contents is clearly marked out, the main parts are in BOLD text for a quick and easy reference. You are taken on a quick tour of the relevant ways in which Google works, using syntax, wildcards, exacting query wording, phrase searches, basic Boolean, and much more. Part III, "UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU GET", goes into detail about interface language, search language, SafeSearch Filtering and more...this all sounds quite technical, but the Google Pocket Guide explains all this technical stuff in very easy-to-follow language, and it gives you the basics of how and what Google is doing while you surf. Part IV highlights Google's other services and features that can save you even more time and narrow your searches to specific areas, such as News, Images, Browsing Groups, Stock Trading, Searching Article Archives and much more.

For the more adventurous surfer Google Pocket Guide explains how to find Technical Definitions, Consulting Phonebooks, Directories of Information, Finding Weblog Commentary. The Google Toolbar is a great add-on to your web browser and the how-to-install is easily explained herein. Don't forget to check out the "Googling with Bookmarklets". These Bookmarklets "are like bookmarks but with an extra bit of JavaScript magic added. This makes them more interactive than regular bookmarks; they can perform small functions like opening a window, grabbing highlighted text from a web page, or submitting a query to a search engine."

As you can see, surfing the Net is changing and Google is at the forefront of this change. Surfing with the guidance of the Google Pocket Guide is not only extremely efficient, but also it is fun to check out all the various features that make surfing a much more efficient and enjoyable adventure. Happy Googling!

Gregory West is the Editor of SCUG Report www.scug.ca and affiliated with the Association of Personal Computer User Groups www.apcug.net.