Quick Tips for Finding Stuff Online
Posted on August 8, 2007
As a web developer I spend an inordinate amount of time each day in research and discovery of answers to specific issues. This daily process has helped refine my search habits to provide quick and comprehensive results. Here are some handy tips to find stuff online:
- Open a new instance of FireFox each time you search a word phrase in Google. For each result open a new tab in that instance. The short-cut in Windows is to hold-down the cntrl key when clicking on the link.
- When searching for a specific phrase "put the phrase in quotes" or connect-the-words-with-hyphens which effectively does the same thing.
- Save URLs in a quick online bookmark system with categories. I use Google Bookmarks with the Google toolbar. It is also very handy to recall those bookmarks later from a different machine. Del.icio.us or Digg are other great solutions.
- Store code snippets and other key valuable pieces of information in Gmail. I either email myself the snippet or store longer chunks in Google docs. This is a great utility to essentially search your own knowledge base.
- Join Pownce, Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog or any other Social network and friend developers or other folks who specialize in your area of research. Ask questions and watch feeds for cutting-edge solutions and the latest trends. (I still have a few invites for the asking).
- Find blogs with related information and ask the author for help with an issue. Most of the time folks like myself are more than happy to give tips or even help find solutions to the tougher questions.
- Search specialized engines. Some of my most frequented are:
- Sourceforge.net for free and cheap software.
- Blogsearch.google.com or Bloglines.com for reviews, tips and most current information on topics.
- images.google.com, sxc.hu, flickr.com for photos. What I like about sxc.hu is that it’s a photo index w/ clear license information on each photo. Many are open for use on blogs without getting prior permission.
- Groups.google.com for online discussions most often focused around questions I’m asking.
- flashkit.com or kirupa.com for flash code.
- Technorati.com, Del.icio.us, Digg and other social media sites. These are especially useful when researching the latest online services.
- Other major search engines like Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Ask.com sometimes pull-up very different results.
- Google Reader for subscriptions, Slash dot for uber-geek news, cnet.com for fluff tech products and reviews are some spots for keeping-up w/ latest trends.
- Reference tools include wikipedia.org, conservapedia.com, dictionary.com and freetranslation.com.
What tips, sites, practices do you use for searching? I’m always looking for more efficient and effective sources for information.
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3 Responses to “Quick Tips for Finding Stuff Online”
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Phil, Thanks for sharing this tips for finding stuff online.
BTW, please take note that there is a typo error for the dictionary.com link.
Best Wishes
Sam Chan
Sam, Muchas gracias for spotting the error in the linkage.