Are you curious?

Just tell Google "I'm feeling curious" and you'll never know what you'll learn.

Google Knowledge Graph Adds Movie Reviews

You can search Google for [minions reviews], [reviews for ex machina] or ask Google: "did Fantastic Four get bad reviews?" and you'll see a list of reviews. Critic reviews are also displayed in the regular cards for movies and Google plans to expand this feature to books and TV shows.

More @ Google Operating System

Google Card for Software Downloads

Sometimes you're trying to download a desktop software and you're searching Google for things like [chrome download], [latest java], [install itunes], [get skype]. The top result is usually the official download page, but there are various other download sites. Some of them might offer outdated versions, others might install their own software and even download adware or malware.

Google now shows a special card for software downloads. There's a big logo, the name of the organization that develops the application, the download URL and a link: "go to download". 

More details @ Google Operating System

Hello again...

Sorry that it's been so long since our last post but I've left the Nebraska Library Commission for Do Space and Christa has changed positions within the Commission so our ability to focus on outside projects has been severely limited. But, we wanted to let you know we're still here, we've got some posts queued up, and we've not fallen off the face of the Earth.
--Michael

Google knows where your phone is...

...assuming you have an Android phone, just Google "find my phone" and as long as it's on, and logged into the same Google account you'll get a map and the ability to make your phone ring for five minutes so you can find it.

Google can identify your photos

Assuming you upload your photos into Google Photos, you can search your pictures by keyword as long as you start your search with "my photos of". What makes this super interesting is that you don't have to have previously identified the content of your photos; Google is figuring it out all on it's own.

For example, all of the photos of license plates it found in my account, were taken with my phone and have dates and times as filenames. I've added no additional metadata yet it still identified the images correctly.

It is important to note that this only works when you're signed in to Google and only you can get your results.

Measure distance in Google Maps

No, not directions, distance...


Source: Free Technology for Teachers

Google Knows Bartending

If you're not sure how, just ask Google how to make your guest a cocktail.

Find In-Depth Articles on Google by editing the URL

Sometimes you want to find more about a topic and you find a lot of superficial news articles and blog posts that keep rehashing the same information. Google shows a list of in-depth articles for some queries, but this feature seems to be restricted to the US and it's only displayed for some queries.

How to manually trigger Google's in-depth section? Just add &tbs=ida:1&gl=us to a Google search URL and you'll see a list of 10 in-depth articles from sites like Wall Street Journal, New York Times‎, Wired, New Yorker, Slate and more. Some examples: [Google], [Daft Punk], [robots], [Russia], [happy].

However, I have noticed that this works only for URLs returned from searches initiated at Google directly. For example, the Daft Punk example above, when searched directly at Google.com gets us the URL https://www.google.com/search?q=daft+punk, which, when adding the suggested text to the end of the URL, the results are as described.

However, when I start the search from Chrome's address bar, the results URL is https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=daft%20punk. If I add the suggested text to the end of this URL I do not receive the in-depth results.

via Google Operating System

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