Power Searching with Google is a free online course featuring powerful techniques to solve real, everyday problems using Google. Visit the course homepage to learn more. By the end of this course, you’ll know several new techniques that will make you a Google Power Searcher and help you find out information about whatever you can imagine.

Register now. The Google Lessons will be released daily starting on July 10. Work alongside a worldwide community, while you take the lessons on your own schedule during a two-week window.

My first question is, why is this better than using Google tricks for limiting to file type and specific types of sites (filetype:ppt or site:gov)? I was skeptical that this new search engine would be different/better, but there are some features that make it worth checking out.

The site searches the web, FTP, upload services, torrents, emule and usenet. According to their About page, they “search more places than anyone else including 47 file types and 558+ file extensions including over 70 million domains. And, they “open each file, identify its author, title, contents, text extracts and all kinds of goodies that nobody else does.”

FindThatFile also provides searching options to narrow your search by file type, date, and size. You can also sort your results by size, date, ratings, and sources. You can also get email alerts when new files are found based on your search. We Librarians do love the facets and alerts!

Give it a spin at:

• 94% of Word of Mouth still take place face-to-face
• Google was the #1 source for sparking WOM conversations and the #1 place for finding more information after the conversation
• WOM conversations that start with search are more 25% more credible and 17% more likely to lead to a purchase than that those stared with social media sites

You can see the full report here. It’s interesting that vast majority of these brand conversations are still taking place in person. And, it makes sense because I see my closest friends, those that influence me the most,  in person more than online. I’m not surprised that Google is the top site for sparking interest for these conversations, it is the top search engine. According to the study, search (and therefore Google) are still the most referenced sites used before, during, or after a conversation. Social Media is lagging back at 3.2%, do you think this will change in the next few years? Will my friends see where I’m shopping, eating, and what brands I “Like” and make purchase decisions based on that?  Is it still Word of Mouth if we aren’t really talking about it, just doing it and being seen? I still think search will be a huge factor after the WOM conversation for research. We know what Google thinks, what do you think?

Here’s an example of a slide about the US Biodiesel Market that features a graph from Euromonitor International:

The Dear Sophie ad shows a father creating an online scrapbook for his daughter in Gmail by sending her notes, photos from Picasa,  Google mapping their first house, and videos of dance classes and birthday parties. The It Gets Better ad , first aired this week during Glee, shows people using Chrome’s toolbar to record videos for the Dan Savage project of the same name to encourage gay teenagers that they can make it through the tough times.  How can you not tear up during these ads? Makes me want to switch to Chrome right now, so I guess it’s working!

The Lee founded Common Craft in 2003 and now both Lee and Sachi work to create these 3 minute educational videos that seem deceptively simple. Their first video, RSS In Plain English has been viewed 1.6 million times on YouTube. Lee is the voice of the videos. He comes up with the outline and Sachi is the detail oriented part of the team. She fleshes out the script and then Lee begins the sketching and filming and Sachi does the editing.

Common Craft videos are really cute, but the trick is that the LeFevers know how to explain! They are so good that Google hired them in 2007 to explain their newfangled Google Docs product. Google Docs changed the way people thought about sharing documents and they needed Common Craft to explain that new way of thinking. That is exactly what Common Craft does so well. They take a foreign concept and create a story around it so that we understand what it means, and more importantly, what it means for us personally and why we should care. Plus they are memorable – I still think of camping whenever I think of wikis because of their Wikis In Plain English video.

Common Craft still does custom corporate videos and now they are also creating more educational videos and offering subscriptions for libraries and classrooms. So if your library or your company has some ‘splaining to do, look no further than Common Craft.

Don’t worry about spoilers, Google thinks of everything. You play the game on a day old archived version of Google called Deja Google. They describe it as “a wormhole inspired time machine that searches the Internet as it existed before the game began.”

This could be a great teaching tool or just for fun because we like solving puzzles! Take a break today and check it out.

The video below will tell you a bit more about how it works and you can read more about it on Google’s +1 Page. Tell us what you think about +1 in the comments section.