Prepared on March 29, 2007

Payam Kabiri, MD. PhD. Epidemiologist

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Google Now a Part of our Culture !

Source: “Google, n." OED Online. June 2006. Oxford University Press. http://dictionary.oed.com (accessed March 26, 2007 through UB libraries).

How Old is Google?

Answer: 8 (9 on September 7, 2007)

In September of 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, CA. (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html#1995)

More About Google

• “Google” is a play on the word “googol” which is the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros and “…reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.”

Number of employees: Worldwide, Google employed 7,942 full-time employees as of 6/30/06

Work Environment:Informal: Lava lamps, door on sawhorses as desks, exercise balls for chairs, and dogs roaming the halls… Google:

●The interface is clear and simple. ●Pages load instantly. ●Placement in search results is never sold to anyone. ●Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction. ●No pop-up ads allowed.

A Unique CompanyGoogle founders

Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html

Sergey Brin

Larry Page

Why do we love Google?

• Size and scope: Now indexing over 20 billion web pages (conservative estimate).

• Relevance of Results: PageRank• Diversity of Search: Image, News, Book

Search, Scholar, Blog Search, Finance, Froogle, Video . . . and much, much more.

• Other Tools: Google Maps, Picasa, Blogger, Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets . . .

Why do people Google?

Google Search Rules

A Close Look at Google Search Results• Excerpt of page with your terms

• Matched terms in bold

• URL, size, date last crawled • Link to Cached copy• Pages supposedly like this one

• 2nd page from same site

• All Google pages from this site

• Which Google database used • Approx. # of hits• Terms actually searched on, as Dictionary links

Don’t believe the number of ResultsThey are approximate, changing, and not comprehensive

Performing Better Google SearchesUse Search Operators

AND not needed; default between termsOR includes either of two terms (OR must be in caps) - (space and a - for NOT) (e.g. Michigan –lake)“ ” search a phrase in quotes (e.g. “search engine”)~ synonym search (e.g. ~pets retrieves cats,

dogs ..).. Number range (e.g. super bowl 1975..1978)* Google does not allow truncation. An * replaces an entire word in a search.

(the color * is my favorite)

Or use Google’s Advanced Search option

Effective Googling

• Need Exact Phrase? Use quotation marks!– “Americans with Disabilities Act”

• Expand Search With Synonym? Use a “tilde”– EX: “~health decisions” finds materials that

contain the phrase “medical decisions” as well

• Exclude words that you don’t want? Use a “minus sign.”– EX: virus –computer

• Find definition of a word or a phrase?– EX: define: heamophilia

Effective Googling

• Google works like a calculator, too!

• Also it will convert all the scales & currency units !

Google as a Calculator

The calculator “Solves math problems involving basic arithmetic,

more complicated math, units of measure and conversions, and physical constants.”

• 5+2*2 (addition, multiplication)• 2^3 (exponent)(shift+6 keys) • Sqrt100 (square root)

Google as a Scale Convertor

Conversions• 13.75 USD in Euro (convert $13.75 in U.S. dollars to Euro)• 220 Euro in JPY (convert 220 Euro in Japanese Yen)• 27 miles in kilometers (convert 27 miles to kilometer)• 2.3 pound in kilogram (convert 2.3 pound to kilogram)

Definitions

Define asthma (provides 1 definition-keyword search result list)Define:asthma (provides a list of definitions-less results)

Google Filetypes

• Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)

• Adobe PostScript (ps) • Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3,

wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku) • Lotus WordPro (lwp)

• MacWrite (mw)

• Microsoft Excel (xls) • Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt) • Microsoft Word (doc) • Microsoft Works (wks, wps,

wdb) • Microsoft Write (wri) • Rich Text Format (rtf) • Text (ans, txt)

OR use Google Advanced Search

Google Translatehttp://google.com/translate_h/

Translate from one language to another

Translate an entire web page

Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com

• Covers: medicine, law, social sciences, arts, humanities, business, & finance.

• Included items: peer-reviewed papers, theses, book excerpts, abstracts & full-text articles

• Sources for items: academic publisher web pages, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, & other scholarly organizations.

It Gives The Document Citations

Also !

It Gives The Document Citations

Also !