7th January 2002

It took me a while, but I've finally come around to believing that Google is a million times better than any other search engine today. Sure, its raw speed is something to admire, but its functionality is most admirable (and untapped). David Weinberger from HYPERORG.COM pointed out that most search terms are automatically hyperlinked in the top navigation bar. Click on one of them for a dictionary definition! Search for 'lord of the rings' and you'll see each word underlined, waiting to be clicked. Need a quick map? Enter a street address, city, and state (sans commas). Voila! Quite possibly the best "hidden" feature of Google is its ability to index and query against non-HTML pages: Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Adobe PostScript (PS), Microsoft Office (XLS, PPT, DOC), etc. To narrow the search to a specific type, enter: [terms] -filetype:EXT (with EXT being the appropriate file extension). When it finds a non-HTML file, Google still gives you the option to view it as an HTML document!