Thursday, April 9, 2009

Challenge #4 - Google

From NYT article, I didn't know about flu Trends and Google Sets.


1. Everyday Essentials - I searched for weather in Cooperstown, NY, since I am going there next week. I got a 10 day forecast.
Local Search - tried the real estate listings, results depend on size of community I searched. My home town just sent me to realtor web sites. A search of "Chicago" got me the "Go" button described in the instructions, but there were too many hits to process. Fortunately, they give you several ways to refine and narrow the search.
Reference Tools - I tried earthquakes since there was a recent quake in Italy. the US Geological Survey did have some information.
Query Refinements - I tried Fill in the Blank - Tiger woods won* and got a nice listing of all the major tournaments he has won.Search by Number - I tried the area code search.
Choosing Keywords - I tried the dictionary definitions search
Trip Planning - I used the map search



2. I searched "breast cancer"- over 48 million hits. First results were news headlines, two ads with .org and .edu extensions.

:gov - 49,000 hits. First hit was rather random - a press release about some initiative started by Gov Blagojevich! Maybe because I put the phrase in quotes? Tried without quotes - over 8 million hits, and they look more like what I would expect.

:edu, without quotes - 136,000,000 hits - got results all over the map - .org, news headlines, .gov

3. The search of the NJ website timed out on me, while the Google search displayed results immediately.


4. It looks to me like the web search yields more information that focuses on Oona, while the book search focuses more on Eugene.

5. I added the Google blog feed to my page.

6. I found this interesting post that shows that you can now limit image searches by color.

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