Google search tool collections

Google indexes and searches billions of webpages and is the premier search engine on the internet. A quick analysis of the search page essentials of Google Search and remember to set your preferences. is helpful to understand and analyze the search results.

Official Google Search Tools

• Google - The Search Engine.
• Google Advanced Search - search google based on specific parameters
• Google Suggest - As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time.
• Google Trends - Graphically see and compare what the world is searching for.
• Google Personalized Search - make your search experience more relevant to you.
• Google Search History - Keeps a record of all searches and clicked results while a user is logged into a Google Account
• Google Blog search - Google search technology focused on blogs
• Blogger Blog Search - Search for blogs all over the web
• Google Directory - Search the web organized by topic into categories.
• Google Alerts - sends emails automatically when there are new Google results for your search terms.

Special Searches

• Google Video - Search TV programs and videos
• Google Image Search - comprehensive image search on the web
• Google Music Search - search for music
• Google Book Search - Search the full text of books (and discover new ones).
• Google Catalogs - helps you browse and search merchant-provided catalogs
• Froogle - Google's shopping search engine
• Google News - Search and browse 4,500 news sources
• Google Scholar - search for the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
• Google Maps - View maps, get driving directions, and search for local businesses and services.
• Google Public Service Search - offers educational institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide free SiteSearch, which enables users to search your website, and free WebSearch, which enables users to search the Internet.
• Google's University Search - enables you to narrow your search to a specific school website for things like admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news.
• Google Ride Finder - view taxi or shuttle locations in several cities.
• Google Base - submit all types of online and offline content that is hosted and made searchable online.

Google Topic Specific Search

• Google's Special Searches - enable you to narrow your search to a specific topic.
• Google Apple/Macintosh Search - Search for Apple/Macintosh-related sites using Google
• Google Microsoft Search - Search Microsoft-related sites using Google
• Google Linux Search - Search all penguin-friendly pages
• Google U.S. Government Search - Search all .gov and .mil sites
• BSD Unix - Search web pages about the BSD operating system

Google For Webmasters

• Google AdSense for search - Opportunity to earn money by Google whenever your users click on the targeted Google adsense ads on search results pages.
• Google Free - provide Google search results to users who want to search the web or just your website.
• Site-flavored Google search - delivers web search results that are customized to individual websites.
• Customizable Google Search - you can customize your results display to include background, text and link colors you select.
• Google Search Appliance - is a hardware and software product designed to offer large businesses the productivity-enhancing power of Google search.
• Google Mini â€" Google search for your website and intranet

Google Desktop Search Tools

• Google Deskbar - Search using Google without opening your browser
• Google Desktop - a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you've viewed.

Google Mobile Search Services

• Google SMS - Send a text message wiht your search query, and receive text message with search results
• Google SMS UK - enables you to send queries as text messages from your mobile phone or device and easily get precise answers to your questions.
• Google Mobile : Web Search - Google Web Search results on your phone or mobile device
• Google Mobile : Mobile Web Search - search for sites that have already been designed to fit the screen of your phone or device
• Google Mobile : Image Search - Google Image Search results on your phone or mobile device
• Google Mobile : Local Search - get local listings, maps and driving directions on your mobile phone or device

Google Search Toolbars

• Google Toolbar - Add a search box to your browser
• Google Toolbar Beta - Test the latest version on IE.
• Google Toolbar for Firefox - Add a search box to your browser
• Google Toolbar for Enterprise - provides powerful productivity features including easy access to Google, customized search buttons, instant search suggestions, and a pop-up blocker.
• Google Browser Buttons - add to a personal toolbar giving you access to Google search technology without taking up extra screen space.

Third party Google Search Tools

Search Google with Firefox Extensions

• CustomizeGoogle - enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).
• Googlebar Lite - A light-weight Google search toolbar for Firefox.
• GoogleTabs - Adds a context menu option to open Google search results in tabs.
• Advanced Dork - Highlight a word or phrase, right click, and choose from over 15 Advanced Google Operators, A google search page is opened in either the same tab or a new tab, the results contained in the search will contain the highlighted text inside the chosen Operator.
• GooglePreview - Inserts preview images (thumbnails) of web sites and Amazon products into the Google and Yahoo search results pages.
• Feeling Lucky - Performs Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" search with any selected text and opens the result in new a tab.
• Aggregate Yahoo! and Google - Search Yahoo and Google simultaneously
• GooglebarL10N - is the localized version of Googlebar with Menues & Texts in German, Italian or Spanish.
• Google Advanced Operations Toolbar - provides a shortcut to some of Google's advanced search functions.

Google Page Modules / Scripts / Widgets / Bookmarklets

• Search History - View your search history. Google Personal Module.
• Random Site Image - Displays a random image from a given website (via Google Images site search). Google Personal Module.
• Google Search Greasemonkey Scripts - use the power of greasemonkey to modify the web.
• Google Search Yahoo Widgets - collection of Google search widgets in various formats
• Milly's Bookmarklets - Bookmarklets that use the Google search engine to search for stuff.

Multi Search Tools

• Simply Google - search all Google services on one page. Lots of forms.
• HotDaddy - search all Google services on one page. Lots of icons.
• Google Total - search all Google services on one page. Drop down menu.
• GahooYoogle - search multiple Google and Yahoo services together side by side.
• Twingine - Google and Yahoo search side by side.
• Soople - performs all advanced search functions of google in separate forms

Miscellaneous Google Search Tools

• Google Cloud - displays search results as a tag cloud
• Babelplex - enables users to search Google's web index across two languages.
• Google Current - airs every half hour on Current TV and provides a look at what the world is searching for on Google.
• Googlewhack - a query consisting of two words (without quotation marks) entered into Google's search page that returns a single result.
• Cookin' With Google - allows you to provide a list of ingredients and get back a list of recipes that Google finds for you.
• Goofresh - is a way to search for sites added today, yesterday, within the last seven days, or last 30 days.
• Google Fight - Compare the number of results for two competing keywords.
• GoogleDuel - a popularity contest using the Google search engine.
• Random Web Search - it generates a random word, then searches that word on the web using Google.
• Googlematic - Enables searching of Google via AIM or MSN Messenger.
• Googlism - will find out what Google.com thinks of you
• Google Tool - Search multiple google datacenters simultaneously.
• elgooG - a mirror image of Google
• LostGoggles - adds search site preview images, Amazon pricing, site info links and the Open-in-New-Window-button. Formerly "More Google".

In the end, this amazing list of Google Web Search Features lists the many special features to help you to find exactly what you're looking for. Google Zeitgeist lists the current Google Search patterns, trends, and surprises.

On a quest to get a 3D desktop

I'm very excited with 3D desktop after watching AIGLX and XGL in action with beryl or compiz window manager. I haven't been able to get it run on my computer with my video card since it is not supported composite extension and DRI simultaneously. The ATI's proprietary driver (fglrx) I use, doesn't support dri and composite extension simultaneously. I downloaded kororaa live CD to try it out and I was amazed.

At one point, I downloaded xorg, compiz and Mesa from cvs and I managed to get Xorg compiled with Xgl enabled but I couldn't get compiz to run because there was no composite extension.

Picture above is a screenshot of my desktop running dropline GNOME on Slackware and Xgl running in a window with KDE as the window manager. It's like running X in X or nested X.

However, I'm still trying... :)

Other links:
Xgl,compiz and Mesa - http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXgl
Dropline GNOME - http://www.droplinegnome.org/

Upgrading dbmail

Last week, I upgraded my production imap server from dbmail 2.0.9 to the latest stable 2.2.1. I need to upgrade because there are features I need to use. They are:

1. server-side sorting (fixed after 2.1.7)
2. sieve server-side filter (using dbmail-timsieved daemon)

The upgrade was a risky one. It was a leapfrog from 2.0.x to 2.2.1 by skipping 2.1.x. Many changes since 2.0. Since I did not have a test server so it was important to backup all emails. After too much thought, I decided to give it a go.

Stopping the mail server

These stops all necessary mail-related services. You may not want to stop httpd services to make announcement to users on the website. You have to stop services in order to migrate your system smoothly without bothering emails coming in and out and slow down the whole process.

service postfix stop
service dbmail-imapd stop
service dbmail-lmtpd stop


Backing up all emails
It is important to backup all emails before upgrading process. At least you can revert to previous dbmail if something go wrong.

mysql -u dbmail -p dbmail > dbmail-2.0.9.sql

Source
Download the source from dbmail.org and untar it.

tar xzvf dbmail-2.2.1.tar.gz
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --with-mysql --with-sieve

Note: If you want to use sieve filter (--with-sieve), you have to download libsieve at http://libsieve.sourceforge.net/. Compile it and install.

make
make install

Migrate the database
Use the provided script in sql dir to migrate dbmail tables to make it suitable for 2.2.x

mysql -u dbmail -p dbmail <>

Fix the header

/usr/sbin/dbmail-util -by

If you do not run this command, you will get unknown (for sender) and (no subject) (for subject) for all mails in mail header. Please make sure it is the latest binary you're running by issuing dbmail-util -V.

Please watch any error coming out of the upgrade process. If any, you should consult dbmail mailing list.

That's all there is to it. Restart all the process (or you may want to restart your server). Make sure all the related services start during startup with chkconfig.

dbmail-timsieved init-script
This is a script I make for dbmail-timsieved by modifying dbmail-imapd script. Clever huh? :P

#!/bin/bash
#
# Startup script for the DBMail TimSieve Server
#
# chkconfig: - 81 19
# description: DBMail is a mail server with a database backend. Unlike \
#              WUimapd it does not run through inetd.
# processname: dbmail-timsieved
# pidfile: /var/run/dbmail-timsieved.pid
# config: /etc/dbmail.conf

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/dbmail ]; then
     . /etc/sysconfig/dbmail
fi

# Path to the dbmail script.
dbmail=/usr/sbin/dbmail-timsieved
prog=dbmail-timsieved
RETVAL=0

start() {
     pid=`pidof $prog`
     if [ -n "$pid" ]
     then
             echo "dbmail timsieved daemon is already running, PID $pid"
     else
             echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
             daemon $dbmail
             RETVAL=$?
             echo
             [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/$prog
             return $RETVAL
     fi
}
stop() {
     echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
     killproc $dbmail
     RETVAL=$?
     echo
     [ $RETVAL = 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/$prog /var/run/$prog.pid
}
reload() {                                                       
     echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
     killproc $dbmail -HUP
     RETVAL=$?
     echo
}

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
     start
     ;;
stop)
     stop
     ;;
status)
     status $dbmail
     RETVAL=$?
     ;;
restart)
     stop
     start
     ;;
condrestart)
     if [ -f /var/run/$prog.pid ] ; then
             stop
             start
     fi
     ;;
reload)
     reload
     ;;
*)
     echo $"Usage: $prog {start|stop|restart|condrestart|reload|status}"
     exit 1
esac

exit $RETVAL

How to make VCD with K3B using Linux

If you have a video file ie .avi, or .mp3 and you would like to burn to CD in VCD format so that you can play it with your vcd player. This is how I did it.

avi file

Let's say you have a .avi video file named myvideo.avi. You have to convert it
to mpg.

ffmpeg -i myvideo.avi -target pal-vcd myvideo.mpg

(Note: the -target command requires at least version 0.4.9 of ffmpeg)

Burn it!

Using k3b, a KDE burning software, you can burn it to cd in vcd format by selecting File -> New -> New Project -> New Video CD Project menu. Please make sure the file size does not exceed the storage size of the CD. If there is an error indicating vcdxbuild binary not found, you need to install vcdimager package.

Problem: There is no vcdimager package for Slackware as I know of. After searching high and low (even using slapt-get was no help), I opted to download sources: vcdimager, libpopt and libcdio source packages.

For all this source,

./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var

and as usual,

make; make install

After compiling and installing all of these packages, k3b should be able to find vcdxbuild binary and successfully burn the file to cd in vcd format.

Links
vcdimager : http://www.vcdimager.org
popt library : http://directory.fsf.org/libs/popt.html
libcdio : http://www.gnu.org/software/libcdio/

Happy New Year 2007

We are now in 2007. Happy New Year for everybody. The time seems running fast.

Let us hope this year will bring us happiness and success.