SquirrelNet

How to filter results in Google

I'd like to highlight how to filter results in Google.  Let's say you are interested in finding websites for Vista Lakes, which is a new up and coming community in Southeast Orlando.  When I do a search in Google for Vista Lakes in Google, I get unwanted results that include Val Vista Lakes, which is a new up and coming community in Gilbert, Arizona.  Since I want to omit these results, the search phrase I enter into Google is:

"Vista Lakes" -"Val Vista Lakes"

Putting quotes around "Vista Lakes" and "Val Vista Lakes" makes sure that the words appear next to each other in exactly the same order.  The minus sign before "Val Vista Lakes" tells Google that I don't want to see any pages containing the exact phrase "Val Vista Lakes".

This process of restricting results is called "filtering".

Squirrel University will contain most recent posts from Squirrel News

By the way, we've updated our Squirrel University page on SquirrelNet to always contain the latest posts from a squirrel news blog, which we creatively call Squirrel News.

Google Movies now does movie trailers + other good movie sites

Google quietly unveiled a new feature this week in that they now show movie trailers on the Movies section.  Didn't know Google has a movies section?  Well, they do and although it doesn't have a formal name, please allow me to call it Google Movies.  It's a concise list of current movies with trailer links and a link to the Internet Movie Database for each movie.  You will also be able to sort by distance to theater, movie popularity, movie rating and movie title.

But my favorite movies site is Yahoo Movies while many others say they like Movies.com, which is owned by Disney.

Searching for 'how long to soak beans'

I thought I'd kick off a new category in this blog and that is tips on doing specific searches.  While it's often nice to have a general tutorial on how to search, sometimes practical examples are those that help the most.

My first lesson is related to my interest in cooking some beans.  Specifically, I know from prior experience that pre-soaking beans and water can cut down the cooking time, so here's a search I will try on Google:

beans "how to" soak OR soaking

I chose this search over a general 'beans' search because the extra words help refine my search.  The quotes around "how to" tell Google that the words 'how' and 'to' should appear next to each other.  The OR used in 'soak OR soaking' tell Google that I'll accept pages that have either 'soak' or 'soaking' in them.

This worked like a charm and I found a good result on the first result Google provided on a site called CentralBean.com.  You can give it a try in the search box above if you like.

AOL launches StudyBuddy.com, a free homework and learning site

AOL has just launched StudyBuddy.com, a FREE site designed to help students and their parents with homework and learning.  The site is focused on grades K-12 with splits K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.  The site has links to 1,000,000 pages of content, all of which are educator-approved, and includes websites, books, journals, articles, newspapers, encyclopedias and maps among other types of content.

One nice advanced feature for those interested is the ability to save search results and websites to "backpacks" that can be shared with parents and friends.  This is a nice feature for those wishing to use the web for "search projects".

Also, a feature the folks at StudyBuddy.com are building is the ability for teachers to create their own "backpacks" which they can use in their classrooms or share with students and parents.  This is a great idea that many teachers may like.

Flags of the World (fotw.net)

Flags of the World is a great resource containing information on hundreds of countries, the flags they have, and background/history on the flags themselves.  The Bahamian flag (or flag from the Bahamas) I'm showing in this post was sourced from the FOTW Bahamas page.  Also from the site:

The golden sands of the 700 Bahamian islands are reflected in the centre of the flag, while the aquamarine stripes bring to mind the various shades of ocean waters around those islands.  The black triangle indicates the unity of the Bahamian people in their determination to develop the resources of both land and sea.

I highly recommend Flags of the World for anyone interested in flags, geography, history or travel.

American Librarian Association's list of great websites for kids

Here is the American Librarian Association's list of great websites for kids.  You'll find great links about animals, the arts, history & biography, literature & languages, sciences, mathematics & computers, social sciences and reference desk.  Enjoy!

SquirrelNet webmaster starts Squirrel News blog

Some of you may wonder why this search engine focused site is called SquirrelNet.  As we wrote back in September 1999 in About SquirrelNet:

SquirrelNet is dedicated to helping people gather their internet information (much like squirrels gather food for the Winter). We value simplicity and usefulness over quantity.

Of course, you probably notice there are some informational pages on the site about squirrels.  This is because our webmaster Mike Reynolds really loves squirrels.  In order to allow him a forum for venting his love of squirrels without flooding this blog with squirrel posts, we've created a new blog for him called Squirrel News.  If you love squirrels, you may want to visit that blog.  It's still in it's infancy but being a blog will allow him to post new articles much more frequently than on this blog.

Time to install Microsoft security updates

I thought I'd begin to take on a new topic for this SquirrelNet.com blog given that Microsoft just released a handful of updates that fixes 23 vulnerability flaws in Windows.  As Information Week indicates in Experts Ratched Up Windows Worm Warnings:

As the spotlight on a dangerous Windows vulnerability grows brighter by the hour, security analysts Thursday said that it's not hype driving the alarms, but genuine fear that a major worm attack is just days away.  "This is no drill," said Mike Murray, director of research at vulnerability management vendor nCircle. "And no, this isn't an overreaction. We've always said that some day there would be another big, serious vulnerability.  Well, this is the one."

I'm not sure if Mike Murray is crying "chicken little", but the security updates can be obtained from Microsoft Update.  If you happen to know if you have "automatic updates" turned on, then you may not need to update anything.  Otherwise, visit the Microsoft site and it should automatically give you the updates.   You can also turn your automatic updates on or off on the Microsoft link above.

By the way, I have automatic updates turned off because keeping it turned on rendered my machine useless - I kept running into weird problems.  So I'll visit the Microsoft Update site from time to time to see what I should update and also try to pay attention to what the computer security experts are concerned about.

Little Drummer Baby: A 2-year old who can play drums

Julian Pavone is a 2-year old, nicknamed The Little Drummer Baby, who can play the drums very, very well.  In fact, if you click on the link and listen to how well he can play, you might think he's a high school student.  Nope, just a 2 year old.  Amazing!