I still remember being an undergrad, student teaching at a local high school. The English department had one computer that the staff shared in the department lounge (*hint* this was over ten years ago). I had always used AltaVista and Yahoo! as my search engines. The default page was set up instead for www.google.com. Here was this page that had just a simple search box across the screen. No flashy gimmicks, no members pages...simple. The results were also more accurate then any of the other sites I had used. I was immediately hooked.
One of my favorite options available on Google is the Google Images search option. It provides you with list of thumbnails of all kinds of images to fit your search needs, which means no scrolling through webpages. If you are looking for images for marketing purposes, you can even tailor your search needs to fit within creative commons attribution requirements.It is very simple to download the images and even to check out the site they came from.
Google Books is another option that I like. Yes, I know those gatekeepers of the copyright holder rights association (I made that up, but I am sure there is probably one out there) are probably cringing right now; That's stealing! Well, no it isn't, it's more like sampling. (Even the courts agree.) You don't get the whole book, you do get most of the book, I will agree. However, it is not like you can read it cover for cover if it is not open sourced or public domain. What you do get is enough of a snippet to see if the book is really worth dishing out your meager funds for. It has also come in handy for some grad classes where the teacher decided weeks after I returned the obscure assigned reading title that we were going to have group discussion about it, very specific group discussions (i.e. "on page 93, the main character says").
Google is always trying to make our lives easier. Go Google!
No comments:
Post a Comment