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New Google Search Tools

July 28th, 2007 | Comments |

I may be the last person on the planet to learn this stuff, but just in case, I thought I would tell everyone here about two Google search features that I just ran across: view:timeline and view:map.  As is true for almost everything that comes out of Google, I believe that this search functionality is in “beta.”

Say you were interested in the history of Napoleon.  You could go to one of a variety of reference documents on the web and read a load of stuff to get the details of what you’re looking for, or you could type “napoleon view:timeline” into any Google form and you’d get something like this:

Napoleon-Timeline

Or, say you’re a more graphical person and you’d like a picture of Napoleon’s conquests.  You can enter “napoleon view:map” into the Google search form and get something like this:

Napoleon-Map

OK, it’s not perfect.  The push-pins in the US don’t really work, but most of the references were dead-on.

Very cool stuff.  Definitely worth checking out (if you haven’t already) and trying to remember for when you actually need a tool like this.

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July 28th, 2007 | Category: Misc Thoughts | Comments |
  • John
    I would like to plug another Goggle search feature (it is on the drop down menu "more"): Patents.

    I have 5 US (utility) patents, 1 Chinese.

    Years ago (late 80's, early 90's) I was lucky enough to be within an hours driving time of the Sunnyvale, CA patent library and was able to do patent searches there. It was about the mid 90's (as I recall) that on-line patent searches started coming on line. I think IBM had a site, then the USPTO. Being the inventor (ie knowing my own name), you would think I could easily look up my own patents. Typically though, a search just based on my own name would only yield 1 or 2 of my patents and a bunch of other patents by guys with my same name.

    The Google patent search is
    A) way faster than previous
    B) yielded 28 results, 5 of which were mine, and if I put in my middle initial (which is in all my patents) yielded 6 results, the 6th included a patent with multiple inventors (as is typical) one with my same first and last name and one with a different name same middle initial as me (on other sites, adding my middle initial typically made things worse not better).
    C) clicking on a result pulls up the associated patent which can be downloaded in Acrobat form. In the past this cost money.
    D) the wealth of information and layout on this first page is quite good, and again, comes up fast.
    E) you can see all other patents that reference this one and the patents cited by the selected patents.

    Since I don't do patent searches for a living, I can't tell you if it is really optimized for searches, but for lay person, I am pretty impressed.

    -John
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