Tech Tutor Mark

Google search is a wonderful tool for students of all ages, but the search giant takes it a step further with Google’s Wonder Wheel.  This fascinating visual search tool helps students refine searches, and learn about connections between terms.  Using Wonder Wheel is easy!  To begin, go to http://www.google.com and type in your search term(s) as you would on any other search.  Once you click the Search button, your results will be listed.  Above the results list is a small hyperlink that says Show Options.  Click on this link to open a sidebar with more options. Once the sidebar has opened, click on Wonder Wheel under the Standard View menu: Clicking on Wonder Wheel will open up your search term as the center of the ‘wheel’ with related terms branching off: Clicking on one of the related terms opens up a new branch of the wheel, and lists search results for that term along the right side of the screen: You can continue clicking on related term...

Inspired by Gina Trapani's excellent April article in MaximumPC magazine entitled The Power User's Guide to Google Apps , I did a Google Apps demo in May for the Computer Operators of Marysville and Port Huron ( C.O.M.P. ), a computer user group in Port Huron, MI.   Picking out the tips that mainly pertain to Google Maps, GMail and Google Docs, this best-of-the-best tips demo provides a nice focus on the features that are not readily apparent to the typical Google user. 

The Best of Google: It's More Than Just a Search Engine Here is the link to the unabridged version of "The Best of Google: It's More Than Just a Search Engine." Not all of this will be covered in the individual classes. If you are unable to attend any of the classes, you can download the file here . Thanks to Patrick Crispen for his valuable research and unprecedented Google expertise.

All About Google Notebook In my April 1st post about the best advanced Google search features, I mentioned Google Notebook . But today I would like to emphasize the importance of this underrated tool. In the words of the Internet giant themselves, here are all of the things it can do: Clip useful information . You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window. Organize your notes . You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized. Get access from anywhere . You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login. Publish your notebook . You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public. Now you can also get access from your phone . You can now access Google Notebook from your mobile phone by going to http://www.google.com/notebook/m . For a Google Notebook Tour , take a look at this: http://www....

The Best Advanced Google Search Features (and some you didn't even know about) Google's Advanced Search : Right next to the basic Search box, click " Advanced Search " to refine your search by file type, results per page, search within a site or domain, language, etc. At the bottom of the first Advanced Search options, click on Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more to bring up additional advanced search criteria like date range of searches, usage rights like whether a document might be licensed for free use, sharable use, or commercial use, as well as Region of your search, SafeSearch (on or off), and even where the key words will show up on the Web pages you search. How many of you have ever dug deep into these advanced search options? Google Book Search ( books.google.com ): Helps you find what you're looking for inside of a book and shows you where you can find that book in a bookstore or library. -- Full View Books are "complete" books in t...

Pages.Google.com Despite the fact that I am touting Zoho.com as having an even better set of Office tools than Google, there are still many reasons to use the Google Apps. One of these tools is Google Page Creator and I am recommending it as a quick, easy and free method of whipping up a decent Web site and getting it online in seconds. Here is a quick site that I created for a class called "Intro to Google" . I can then put links to Google tutorials or any other site that I wish to include. There are currently 41 different themes (or as Google calls them, "Looks") and 4 different layouts with varying numbers of columns. The newest features include image editing and the ability to create multiple sites. When you first sign in to Google Page Creator, Google automatically gives you a site with the same name as your Gmail address. Now you can create up to five sites with different URLs. For example, you can have joespizza.googlepages.com in addition to joe.googlepage...