february 2007 MAXIMUMPC 57
how (^2) ImprovIng your pc experIence, one step at a tIme
If you do a lot of work from different PCs,
Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets , an
online office application with a word pro-
cessor and spreadsheet, might be useful.
Go to http://docs.google.com and sign in
to your Google account to use it. You
can save all your documents to Google’s
servers, so if you’re working on the move,
you only need to log in to access your
documents. This also means important
files are safe should you lose your flash
drive or if your hard drive fails. You can
upload work that you’ve created in a vari-
ety of formats, including Word , Excel , and
OpenOffice.org, and download copies
to your PC. It’s perfect for collaborative
work because you can invite others to
edit documents with you and even chat
with them in real time as you work. Recent
edits are saved, so you can roll them back
if you make a mistake.
If you’re looking for a free program to
edit and organize your photos, try Picasa
( http://picasa.google.com ). It’s a standalone
application you install on your PC that
works independently of the Internet. It
automatically finds all the photos on your
PC and has some nifty features to help
you organize them, such as the facility to
add memorable tags. All the most com-
mon visual effects are there, such as red-
eye removal and auto contrast, as well as
some other features—one of our favorites
lets you slice up a picture so that indi-
vidual sheets can be assembled to let you
print a photo that’s up to 10 times larger
than the original image.
Google’s Hidden Tools
Even if you’re on a
machine without a
word processor, you
can use Google’s
Writely editor online.
InsIde The
seARCh bOx
It’s worth remembering a
few basic things about how
Google looks at your search
terms. If you enter more than
one word into the search box,
Google will, by default, search
for pages that contain all the
words; articles, conjunctions,
and prepositions are generally
ignored; however, a plus sign
can be placed in front of such
words to force their inclusion in
the search.
You can improve the rel-
evancy of your results by using
the minus sign to exclude terms
that will appear in irrelevant pages. For
example, you might put “-dancing” in a
search about salsa to get results about
food only. Also remember that Google
isn’t case sensitive, so there’s no need
to worry about capitalization.
These are the most useful Google
modifiers. Use your imagination and then
mix and match for the best results.
site:www.siteyouwanttosearch.com Restricts search to that particular
site.
define:word Brings up a selection of definitions
from various sources.
intitle:word Searches for pages with your word
in the title.
“my phrase”
Searches for a set phrase. If you
don’t put a phrase inside quotes,
Google will look for pages with the
words present in any order.
Like a JV version of Excel, Google
Spreadsheet will let you perform basic
spreadsheet tasks inside your browser.