Circa 2004 and beyond, Planet Earth has been mightily smitten with one search standard: Google. Today you don’t look up anything on the Net, you Google it. Yet we think of it so fixedly as a simple search engine that we have failed to learn some of the nifty shortcuts and useful features that Google encompasses.

Facts at your fingertips
Did you know that Google has a built-in calculator function? The calc resolves math problems involving not just basic arithmetic but also complicated math, units of measure and conversions, and physical constants. Type the calculation you want to perform in Google’s search box — whether it is “5634+54678*55.7” or “4^98” or “sqrt(-12)” — and press Enter to get the answer in a snap.
Need to know in a jiffy the “speed of light in kilometres per hour”? Or the “number of feet in a kilometre”? Or the “current population of Norway”? Or the “currency of Mauritius”? And maybe even the “number of teaspoons in a cup”? You can fire these fact-based searches using a simple, matter of fact syntax — be it the “height of the Great Khali” or the “birthplace of Nero” — in Google’s search box and get the answer in a snap as the very first result.

For travel bugs
Travelling to foreign lands and want to quickly check how much local currency your rupee will fetch? Use Google’s in-built currency convertor — right there in that regular, always-in-your-face search box. So if you find yourself racing to catch the next flight to the UK, US, Europe or Indonesia and are in a funk about what your wallet will be holding on the forex front, you don’t have to scrounge desperately for the day’s business daily to know the score. Open Google and key in: “500 Euro in INR”, or “50,000 INR in Euros”, or “500 pounds in INR”, as the case may be. If you don’t know the currency of the country you’re going to, type “currency of Indonesia in INR”.
Speaking of travel, Google will also tell you the current time in any major city wherever on Planet Earth, in a twinkling. No time zones and GMT arithmetic is necessary. Try “time Miami” or “time Glasgow” to know what the current local time there is. Unsure of the city? Type in the name of the country.
Similarly, you can also get instant weather reports. Type in “London weather” or “Oslo weather” or “Chennai weather”. With the current temperature, you will get the weather conditions (fog, snow, rain, etc.), wind direction and speed, as well as humidity levels. Ah, there’s also a forecast for the next three days for you to see. Unfortunately, this works only with major cities, not with smaller ones.

What’s the score?
Avid cricket buffs in a rush needn’t waste time clicking through Cricinfo.com to know the score. Or curse the sysadmin boys for blocking off cricket sites. Point your browser at Google and type “cricket”. If there’s a match happening, you’ll get an instant update of scores of whatever international match is currently being played in the world. If there is more than one match in progress, you need to type in the names of the countries. So South Africa Bangladesh or India Australia or England New Zea-land will throw up the up-to-date score of the match you’re interested in. If no one is knocking the cherry around anywhere in the world, you won’t get a scorecard.
The writer is a part-time publishing consultant and a full-time devotee of all things tech. Contact him at
ashishone@gmail.com