Do you ever feel that if you could only tell Google a bit more about what you’re trying to find, the search results would be much better? Well, as you probably know, Google has some advanced search operators that help to refine search queries. You can use them to better focus your queries by specifying things like which sites to search, use placeholders, search for exact matches, and more. Here is a quick guide to Google’s advanced search operators.

Starting with advancead operators

Double quotation marks (” “) for exact much: When you enclose a phrase in quotation marks, Google returns only pages that contain that exact phrase. The results have to contain all the words and in the exact same order as you wrote them. Search for “The first Twitter user”, for example, and you’ll only get back pages that contain exactly that phrase. This advanced search feature is one of the most useful in my opinion.

Asterisk (*) is a placeholder for one or more words: adding * replaces any number of words in your query. Example: let’s say you want to find articles that teach Google search practices, like this one. You could use the following query for that task:

“how to Search * with Google”

The quotation marks will make sure that you’ll get back pages with that sentence in them. But since there’s Asterisk in the query, you’ll find different versions of it. So, you might get back this sentence: How to Search Faces with Google, this one: How to SearchEffectively with google, or any other variation that matches the query. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.

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Google reader is probably the best RSS reader available today. Here are some tips and practices for power users (hopefully, you) to help you better manage your RSS reading time and leverage it, tweak Google Reader to use first and second level categorization, and optimize you RSS subscription list.

Use folders to prioritize your reading

At a certain point you’ve probably realize that it is just not possible to read all of the new items you get. One possible solution is to use folders to categorize your feeds. Once you categorized all your feeds, you can read prioritize your reading by urgency level.

For example, I use a folder called ‘Immediate‘ where I put feeds that I want to read the moment they publish something new because it is important for me to know about them as soon as possible. These could be work related or new trends, usually things that if no read within day or two (sometimes less), they became irrelevant.

Other folders I use are ‘friends‘, ‘Podcasts‘, ‘Premier Blogs‘, and some more. I also use a ‘must read‘ folder for things that I want to read sometime, but it doesn’t really matter when (such as family blogs or new WordPress plugins).

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Do you get tens of pages out, with some of the columns standing by themselves in an unknown page every time you print out an Excel worksheet? Tired of wasting paper time and time again?

It’s time to get things straight. Let’s see how to print an Excel sheet the right way.

This is an excerpt of a post I wrote on MakeUseOf. To read the full post visit Excel Secrets Discovered – 6 Steps For Perfect Printing.

When people are searching for you on Facebook, the first thing they do is run a search on your name. But what if they only know you by your maiden name or your name is just hard to spell? And what about the nickname you use on Skype, Google talk and AIM, Are they associated with your account?

Facebook has a solution for these situations. In this post, we’ll learn how to add an alternate name and IM screen names to your Facebook account, thus making you easier to find.

Alternate name on Facebook

As Facebook explain, the alternate name in your account “is only used to help people find you in search and will not show up in your profile“. Use it “for a former name or a name in another language.”

Here is how to add an alternate name to your Facebook account:

1. When logged in, choose “Account Settings” under “Settings” (you’ll see it in the top right corner of the screen).
2. Next to “Name,” click “change.“
3. Enter a full name in the “Full Alternate Name” filed, and click the “Change Former Name” button below.

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Having needed to clean a Word file from tag extensions in order to submit a guest post, I found the following solution.

Word to HTML

1. (Optionally) remove pictures from the document.
2. Send the document as an attachment to yourself via Gmail.
3. Open the email and click “View as HTML“.
   (Notice: use Firefox for the next step)
4. Right click inside the new page and choose “save page as“. In the dialog, Change “save as type” to “html only“, and save the file on your desktop.
5. Upload the saved file to Textism, which converts Word files to HTML for free (providing they’re under 20KB).

Update 14 August 2009: You may also want to try using Doc To HTML Converter (Via AddictiveTips)

Ever read a post or article and wanted to email it to others? Use The following bookmarklet to ease things up.

How to use it

To use the bookmarklet (which is a piece of code saved as a bookmark), simply add it to your bookmarks bar. Right click the button below and choose “Bookmark This Link” or just drag and drop it to the bookmarks bar:

Right click the button and choose “Bookmark This Link”

What it does

Whenever you click the bookmarklet, it’ll do the following actions:

1. Create a new email message (in a new window).

2. Set the title of the webpage as the subject.

3. Add a link to the webpage in the body of the message.

4. Copy all the text that was selected when you clicked the bookmarklet into the body of the message (see images below).

While you’re at it, you might also want to configure an new-email keyboard shortcut.

Having the same username across websites, and especially social media websites, has several advantages. People who know you in one place can find you in others, you don’t have to remember different usernames for different websites, and you can easily tell others how to find you (”look me up on Digg, delicious and FriendFeed under eyalsela”).

CheckUserNames is a service that can help you choose this single username. CheckUserNames goes through tens of social media websites to check if the username you chose ia available [Update 4/1/2009: Namechk is a similar service, you can also use it].

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Every MS word document is based on a certain template. The template determines how headlines look, the size, color, font of text, page layout and margins and so on.

By customizing the default template you can save a whole lot of time spent on formatting and also you can insert your brand characteristics so that they will automatically appear in each document you write. The best thing is that it is really easy to do, so let’s get started.

This is an excerpt of a guest post I wrote. To read the full post visit Edit MS Word default template to save time and get better branding on Online Tech Tips.

When adding a new bookmark (favorite) to the bookmarks bar, leave the “name” field empty. That way, the bookmark will be saved only as the favicon (short for favorites icon) of the website, allowing you to save space in the bookmarks bar and make more bookmarks visible.