….not really.

Actually Google is pretty smart, especially when you give it a little help with finding exactly what you are searching for. But how do you tell it to find things with words or phrases that have multiple meanings?

Well, since Google is a computer (one big gigantic computer), it can accept commands with the words or phrases you are searching for, just like using a command prompt in Windows.

Here's an example. If you searched for the word batter , Google is going to return a whole slew of search results ranging from batter in terms of Baseball, to batter in terms of cooking and so on.

So, to tell Google that you just want search results for batter relating to Baseball, just use a hyphen (minus sign) and the category you want to exclude after the word you are searching for. For example to exclude cooking with the word batter use the following format:

batter -cooking

Google will return search results that are more relevant based on the query you enter and remove items that don't relate specifically to cooking.

Now, you will probably notice that even though you told Google to exclude a certain category, it still not perfect and other type of results will be mixed in. To get better search results, you should try to be more specific and use phrases.

So using the above example, if you used the phrase baseball batter -cooking the results return will be more specific and you will have less non-relevant items to sift through. To get better results, use two, three or even four word phrases.

As you can see, the Internet is huge, and Google does it;s best to find the possible combinations you are looking for, Sometimes it just needs a little help with understanding exactly what you are searching for.

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Being able to list all the sites content on one page allows me to quickly scan headlines and read what interests me.

But one feature that has been visibly missing from Google Reader was the capability to send links to an email account or social bookmark or networking sites that I want to share.

Not any more.

Google has finally incorporated this function while allowing you to add additional sites not displayed in the default list.

To use Send To in Google Reader, you first need to enable it by selecting sites you want to "Send To".

To do this, click on the Manage subscriptions >> link in the left bottom navigation pane (where all your subscriptions are)…

…then click on the Send To link in the menu bar.

From the default list of sites that you want to send articles to, just click the check box next to the site.

When finished, go back to Google Reader main page, and at the end of each article, you will see the Send To link with a drop down arrow that will allow you to select a site for sharing.

You can also use SHIFT+T to display the Send To list.

For any sites not available in the default Send To list, you can add sites by using the Create a Custom Link in the Send To settings.

To add a custom link, you will need to use URL variables provided by Google Reader. The varables are:

${source}The source of the item
${title}The title of the item
${url}The URL of the item
${short-url}A shortened URL that redirects to the item

At first the variables look confusing, but they are actually easy to use.

For example to add a link for your default mail client installed on your computer (MS Outlook, Thunderbird, etc), click on the Create a custom link button (in the Send To settings page) and enter the following information in the appropiate fields:

Name: Outlook
URL: mailto:?subject=${title}&body=%0A<${url}>
Icon URL: http://office.microsoft.com/favicon.ico

When finsihed, click the Save button and the custom link will now be added to the Send To List

Once you get the hang of creating custom links, you can add as many as you like.

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With Google Hot Trends you can find out quickly, and be surprised as to what the heck people are looking for!

Some of the searches are predicable, while others are…well you'll just have draw your own conclusions.

Google Hot Trends displays the top 100 hot searches (search terms) of the past hour in the United States. For each search term, it provides a 24-hour search volume graph as well as blog, news and web search results.

To see what's hot, check out today's hot trends.

As you can see, the page list the 100 hot trends for the day. Each trend is a linked, and when clicked on, will re-direct you to another page displaying a twenty four hour graph with peak times.

Below the graph are links to other sources of information, such as news articles, blogs and web search results referencing more information about the trend.

Another nice feature with Google trends is the capability to select other dates by clicking on the change date link (top right of page)…

…or by searching for a keyword or phrase on the Google Trends home page displaying even more information and dates.

Google Trends is a great tool if your are a student researching news items, or you just want to quickly find out what everyone is talking about today, without needing to sift through multiple web sites separately.

But the one feature that I like most is being able to subscribe to Googel Trends RSS feed, which you can find on today's hot trend page in the upper right side of the page:

Once you have subscribed, you can easily view today's hot trends, using your favorite RSS reader (either Google Reader, Frefox or Internet Explorer feed readers) or add it to Vista's sidebar.

An iGoogle gadget is also available, which means you can easily add it to your iGoogle home page.

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What this cool feature does is move the number of unread messages (count) in parentheses, more towards the left in the browser tab, so you can easily see how many unread messages you have, when the browser is minimized in the  task bar.

Currently, if you have a lot of applications open, and you minimize your browser, the number of unread meesages is chopped off.

After enabling the Title Tweaks option in GMail Labs, the unread message count is now visible:

To enable this feature, just log on to your GMail account and click on the Labs icon at the top right corner of the screen next to the Settings link.

Then scroll down to the Title Tweaks section and click on the Enable radio button followed by clicking on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

Once you have added Title Tweaks, you will notice that the change also effects the title bar (top of your browser as well.

This will come in handy if you have multiple windows open and cascaded.

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What this cool feature does, is allow you to have multiple views of  your tags or a search result of your mailbox using any combination of Gmail search operators by add addional panes to your inbox (up to five panes).

To enable Multiple Inboxes feature, log on to your GMail account and click on the Labs icon at the top right corner of the screen next to the Settings link.

Then scroll down to the Multiple Inboxes section and click on Enable radio button followed by clicking on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

After making the change, you will be taken back to your Inbox and will have additional panes added to your inbox. To configure them,  click on the Settings link….

…followed by selecting the Mutiple Inboxes links. Here you will be able to configure up to five panes.

For setting up tag views, use the "is" operator. For other operators choices, check out Google search operators reference.

Also in this section, you can set the number of message conversation that can be displayed in a panel, along with panel positioning (right side, above or below your inbox).

When finished, click the Save Changes button.

While the Multiple Inboxes feature is a great utility, it does have some limitations such as not being able to resize the panels or minimize a panel.

Overall it's a feature that has a lot of potential for further development.

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But the problem with the language translator add-ons is that they assume you know what language the web page was written, in order to translate it to your language.

Not useful when you can't identify the language. So what's a better alternative? How about Google…

For me, if I can find a solution that won't bloat up Firefox and IE with add-ons any more than needed, all the better. And Google is the perfect solution.

When you come across a web site written in a different language, just copy the URL from the address bar in your browser.

Next, go to google.com and paste the URL in Google's search box. After clicking on the search button, you will notice the Translate this page link next to the search result. Click on it to have Google translate the page.

You will now have a page that is automatically translated into your language. Also, take notice of several items on the page.

At the top of the page, Google will display what language the page was translated from (no more guessing). In the example I used, the page was translated from German language.

If needed, you can also view the original web page by clicking on the link, View original web page.

Also, if you notice text that did not translate very well into your language, just mouse over the text and a pop up box will appear.

Then click on the plus sign next to the link Suggest a better translation . Here you can edit the text and send it back to Google with your suggested correction(s) by clicking on the Contribute button. By doing so, you can help Google improve the Translate service over time.

Another advantage to using Google and this method for translating web pages, is that you can continue to click around the web site and Google will translate the entire site so you can browse the site in your language (links to other sites will also be translated).

Making Sure Google Translate To Your Language

To avoid any problems with Google translating into a different language (than what you prefer), make sure the language preference is set correctly. To verify this setting, go to google.com and click on the the Preference link next to the search box.

Then select your language in the Interface Language section by clicking on the drop down arrow.

What Languages Can Be Translated By Google?

Currently Google can translate into thirty four languages.

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To the casual everyday Internet surfer, domain names and Internet technology to run a web site is probably something that is not easy to understand and may be of no interest to you

But, what should be of interest to you is how the thief was able to easily gain control of their GMail accounts, with out their knowledge, and how you can check your GMAIL account, NOW, for signs that your account settings were altered by the same phisher.

This type of phishing attempt can happen to anybody, including you.

To understand how the phishing scheme worked, Google's Online Security Blog issued this explanation after verifying it was not a security vulnerability in Gmail (such as the one found in 2007):

With help from affected users, we determined that the cause was a phishing scheme, a common method used by malicious actors to trick people into sharing their sensitive information. Attackers sent customized e-mails encouraging web domain owners to visit fraudulent websites such as "google-hosts.com" that they set up purely to harvest usernames and passwords. These fake sites had no affiliation with Google, and the ones we've seen are now offline. Once attackers gained the user credentials, they were free to modify the affected accounts as they desired. In this case, the attacker set up mail filters specifically designed to forward messages from web domain providers.

Basically, the thieves (phishers) sent the web site owners an email, that look legitimate, with a link to a website where they eventually got accessed to their GMail accounts. Once they had access, they set up filters that forward all emails to to the phisher email address, giving them control to intercept emails and deleting them after they were forwarded. The owners had no idea it ever happen, only to find out after their web site domain was stolen.

How To Tell If Your Gmail Account Has Been Hacked.

The first thing you want to do is check to see if there are any filters that you did not create. To do this, access your GMail account and click on Settings link (top right of page).

Then click on the Filter tab and verify there are no filters that were NOT created by you.

If you have no filters, your settings will look like the screen shot below.

If you do have filters, examine them carefully and verify they are yours. If you see anything suspicious, take a screen shot and delete the filters you do not recognize.

Next, you will want to tighten up security on your Gmail account. If you do not use POP or IMAP, click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and disable Pop and IMAP. Also if you have no use for Forwarding, disable it as well.

When finished, make sure you click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.

While these settings won't bullet proof your GMail account from ever being hacked, using common sense will help reduce the risk by following these simple guide lines:

• when accessing your GMail mailbox, always use HTTPS. You can make this the default setting by clicking on Settings \ General tab,  scroll to the bottom and in the Browser connection section, select Always use https (click Save Changes button to save changes).

• verify that no one else has accessed your GMail account by check the latest account activity stat.

• always logoff your account after you are finished checking email. By doing so, you completely eliminate any future unknown script injections when your GMail session is still active while you are surfing the Internet.

• use common sense. Never click on links in emails that you are not sure of, and never open emails when you do not recognize the senders name.

For more information on phishing, check out the article: Tips On Spotting Fake Emails And Phishing Attempts.

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Well if you use Google Maps for all your driving direction needs, you now have two options to send just the link in an email very easily.

Say you wanted to send directions to your friend who is visiting New York City and they want to go to the Statue Of Liberty after first visiting the Empire State Building.

After entering the two locations in Google Maps you will have the directions available. Just above the map you will see three links: Print , Send , and  Link .

If you want to quickly email the link via Google Maps, click on the Send link and enter the To and From email addresses. If you want, you can also add more information in the Message box before sending. When finished, click the Send button to send the message.

If you just want to copy the link to the directions and map, click on the Link link and in the pop up window, click once in the top field to highlight the text and copy (by right clicking and select copy).

Now using your email program, you can just paste the link in the message and send it.

Using these two otions to send directions in an email will save you a lot of time while keeping your message sizes much smaller by not needing to send the entire directions with images via email anymore.

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Instead of sifting through a long list, and viewing them one by one, videos can be searched by playlists. Playlists are a great way to group related videos together, which can be later played one after another. Also, searching by playlists lets you find groups of videos that are more related to your search query.

To search YouTube videos by playlists, just enter your search word or phrase in the search box, then using the pull down arrow (next to the search box), select Playlists . Now, click on the Search button to enter your search.

One thing you will notice is that the search results returned are significantly less than if you just searched for videos instead of playlist.

But you can further target your search and narrow down the number of playlists returned in the search results, by specifying a specific category.

To do this, mouse over the word Categories (shown below) to display the drop down menu. From here you can select the best category in the list that relates to your search.

For my example, "ubuntu' search, if I select the category 'Science & Technologies', the search results are much less and more targeted, allowing me to find exactly what I want faster.

Now that we found exactly what were looking for, we can watch all the videos in the playlist by clicking on the 'Play all videos' link.

I found by searching for videos by playlist, seems to return better search results. I guess YouTube users are much better at organizing videos than what YouTube search can provide in their basic search.

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One of those features in Google Maps is searching locations by distance. By using distance, you can find locations that are several miles or even several feet from your location. Using this feature can be a real time saver, especially when traveling and your looking for a quick bite to eat, going shopping or sight seeing.

To use this feature, just go to Google Maps and and enter your search phrase. It's best to enter it with the area you are located. For example, say your were in the city of Philadelphia and wanted to find a place to eat pizza.

You would enter your search as: pizza center city philadelphia

In the left navigation, Google will list all the pizza places it knows about. To narrow down the locations and search by distance, click on the Distance link at the top of the list.

Google Maps will display the distance, based on the area that you provided, in reference to the closest pizza restaurant (2500 ft), to the furthest (90 miles).

Now that you narrow down the locations to your local area, click on the restaurant that you want to visit, then in the pop up window (on the map) you can map the directions to pin point the exact directions which will also give you the distance.

You can also search locations by distance using your current address. For example if you wanted to find pizza locations, just enter your search as: pizza 234 Main Street, Philadelphia Pa

Google Maps will then display the display the Distance link (as shown in above screen shot) and from there you can find a location that is easily accessible by walking or driving.

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Now that's great if you use Outlook to manage all your email, but many people like to use web based email, such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail instead of downloading their email to their computer.

Fortunately, Firefox makes it very easy to change the default setting so your GMail or Yahoo account will open when clicking on an email link (mailto:) inside web pages.

If you are unsure what an email link is, say you visit a webpage and you are on a page that has information on how to contact the owner of the web site. Typically they will have a text link such as email or the actual email address, which is really a hyperlink to their email address. When you click on it, depending on what the default setting is in Firefox, an email client will open.

To change this setting to use your Gmail or Yahoo email account:

• Open Firefox, then from the menu click on Tools \ Options .

• In the Options window, click on the Applications tab.

• Now, scroll down to you see the mailto option. Click on the drop down arrow and select Use Yahoo! Mail or Use GMail . Click on OK to save your change.

Your done! The next time you click an email link on a web page, either your Yahoo or Gmail mailbox (depending on the setting you chose) will open with the email address in the To: field and your ready to compose the message.

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For me I always seem to forget about setting up my out of office reply. I'll go away and get a ton of email, and it'll hit me. I forgot to set up my out of office reply.

But not anymore. Thanks to GMail, they finally introduced a feature that allows you to schedule your vacation auto reply (A.K.A. Out Of Office Reply) ahead of time before you venture off on vacation.

With out this setting enabled, your current GMail Vacation responder probably looks like this:

There's no setting to pre-schedule it ahead time.

To enable the new feature, called Vacation Time!, just log on to your GMail account and click on the Labs icon at the top right corner of the screen next to the Settings link.

In the Labs screen, scroll down to the Vacation Time! section and click on the Enable radio button.

Then click on the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen. You will then be taken to your inbox

Now, when you need to schedule your auto vacation response, click on the Settings link (next to the Labs icon shown in the first screen shot above) and scroll down to the Vacation responder section.

Then click on the Vacation responder on radio button to enable it and set up the First day: and Last day: dates you want the auto reply to start and end. Don't forget to fill in the Subject and Message fields.

Once you are finished, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.

Now the only thing that is left for you to do….is go on vacation! See Ya Later.

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Lately, I'm noticing that all my messages in Gmail have the wrong time displayed on each message (everything is off by three hours). I checked my PC timezone settings and everything looks correct. I even check my Gmail  settings but there are no configuration settings to change the timezone settings.

Where in the world does Gmail get the time information for email messages to I can set the correct timzone??

Wow I see what you mean. I usually don't pay much attention to my account settings on the Internet (forums, online email accounts, etc…) but when I checked my Gmail messages, I also notice the same results…the time stamp is wrong on my email messages.

NOTE: to see the time stamp, open a message, then click on the show details link next to the date on the message.

You would think that the timezone setting can be changed in the Settings options of your Gmail account, but you can't. Instead, since the timezone information is a global setting, you need to change it at your Google account settings.

• To do this, visit https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount?service=mail&hl=en (log on to your Google account if needed).

• Here, you will see your Google account Personal information with the current time zone setting.

• To change it, click on the Edit link next to Personal information. Then in the account information screen, choose your timezone by clicking on the check box next to Display all timezones followed by change the timezone (using the pull down arrow).

• Once you make the change, click on the Save button at the bottom of the screen, followed by clicking on the Back link in the yellow confirmation notice.

You should now see the correct timezone displayed on the Personal information screen. To go back to your Gmail mailbox, click on the Gmail link on the right. The time stamps on your messages should now be correct.

If the time is still wrong, check the timezone setting of your your PC clock. It's probably needs to be change to the correct timezone setting that you want.

If you ever need to get to your Google account settings from Gmail, click on the Settings link (upper right of screen) , then select the Account tab. Scroll down to Google Account settings section and you will see the link for Google account settings.

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Google does a good job of providing the most relevant information, but sometimes the information can be stale. To make sure the results of the search are recent, you can use Google's advanced search and specify to have the results returned by past week, month, or year.

The easiest way to specify a range of time is to open Google's search page and click on the Advanced Search link.

Then scroll down to the Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more section and click on the plus sign to expand the section.

Here, you can specify (click on drop down arrow) how current you want the search results to be returned by anytime, past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year.

Once you have made your selection, scroll up the Advanced Search page and enter your search word or phrase then click on the Advanced Search button (bottom).

Notice that your search results will be returned with the date next to each result within the time that was specified (in my example, that was the past 24 hours). Also, notice a new drop down box has appeared next to the search field that allows you to modify the time range with out needing to access the Advanced Search page again (shown above).

The addition of the drop down box will continue to be available during that session, until you close the page or browser.

If you want to further controll the date range than what the Advanvced Search page offers, you can append a command to the end of the URL after executing a search. To do this:

• Go to Google and enter your search word or phrase.
• Then in the address field of your browser, append the following command to the end of the URL: &as_qdr=d

To specify the date range, just add the numbers of days at the end of the command. So to search for 3 days, use:

&as_qdr=d3

and press enter. The results will be shown with the range that you specified.

To search for the last 2 weeks replace d with w

&as_qdr=w2

The same can be done with month (m2) or year (y3).

Unfortunately you can't search for hour at this time. But you can probably bet that Google will add this feature to their home (search) page in the future so it's always available, and you won't need to add extra clicks by using the Advanced Search page or special commands.

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Not knowing if someone has access to your email account can be stressful enough just wondering if your personal information has been stolen, or worse your identity.

Up until now, the only defense to keeping your GMail account safe was to change your password frequently. But that has changed. Google, has added another layer of security that let you track recent sessions (activity) by displaying the IP addresses of the computers that accessed you GMail account.

And for those times that you can't remember if you logged off, you can also sign yourself out remotely so you can quickly change your password.

To see this information. log on to your GMail account and scroll to the bottom (footer) of your inbox. Here you will see information about the time of the last activity on your account and whether it's still open in another location.

As you can from my account, it's being accessed in one other location with the IP address displayed and the last time there was account activity.

To see more detailed information of the connections, click on the 'Details ' link.

NOTE: If you do not see this information, it is because Google is in the process of rolling this feature out to the latest version of Gmail, which is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 and you should see it soon.

At the top, under Concurrent session information, indicates all active open sessions along with IP addresses and access type, which refers to how email was retrieved, for example, through iGoogle, POP3 or a mobile phone.

By clicking on the 'Sign out all other sessions ' button, you can disconnect (or logoff) the concurrent session remotely (for example when you forgot to log off from a public or work computer).

NOTE: If you suspect someone has hacked into your GMail account, make sure you write down the IP address' before clicking the ' Sign out all other sessions' button.

The bottom table, under Recent activity, contains recent history along with dates and times of access. I can also view my current IP address at the very bottom of this window, where it says This computer is using IP address...

With this information, you can quickly verify that the Gmail activity was accessed by you or someone else. If you are unsure, take note of the IP addresses and check them with your computer and any computers that you used to access your GMail account.

On Windows computers, IP information can be displayed, by opening up a command prompt (click on Start \ Run and type cmd ) and entering the following command at the prompt…

ipconfig

or if you are connected to a wired or wireless router, you can get the IP address by visiting WhatIsMyIP Address.com.

For any IP addresses that you do not recognize, WhatIsMyIpAddress.com can also look up an IP address and give you detailed location information (click on the IP Lookup link on the navigation menu bar). Just remember, hackers often spoof their IP Addresses, and the information displayed could be false (so don't go crazy with this info).

Keeping your personal information private can be a tough task Thankfully Google has made it a little bit easier with keeping tabs on who is keeping tabs on yourself.

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