From Yahoo to Altavista to Google, all these tools have one thing in common. They make finding things easier. Whether it’s a curated list of high-quality resource links or fast searches, search tools rule. Want to find things faster? Take advantage of these search tool suggestions. You won’t regret changing your habits and finding what you need, sooner.
Tool #1: YouTube All-In-One Advanced Search
The All-In-One Advanced Search for YouTube makes it easy to find what you are looking for on YouTube. When I search YouTube, I often get a list of results that may or may not do what I need. For example, I wanted to find school surveillance videos that focused on tornadoes. That is, tornado damage school surveillance video cameras have recorded. And I wanted to avoid certain results. To get that, I relied on the search parameters below:
Tool #2: Cheatography
If you’re looking for quick reference guides and cheat sheets for your favorite software, then Cheatography is the web directory for you.
Here are a few that jumped out at me:
- Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts
- Google Documents Shortcut Keys
- VBA for Excel Cheat Sheet
- CMD Utilities Cheat Sheet
All sheets display the development date and when it was last updated. You can also search by operating systems, browsers, and/or keywords. For example, if you wanted to learn science or math terminology, you could search for keywords.
Tool #3: Find Sounds
Need a quick way to find sounds for use in a podcast or as part of a presentation? FindSounds takes the trouble out of locating a repository of copyright-fee sounds. Use it to find sounds for anything from a dog barking to a blue whale. Besides a single search box you can use “à la Google”, you can find sounds by type.
But wait, there’s more! Have you heard of Musgle? It’s a search engine that enables you to find music. Type the title of the sound effect or music you want to find (e.g. Beethoven, Mozart) and wait for it to pop up.
Tool #4: Reverse Image Search
You may know about Google’s Reverse Image Search. To access it, you can go to Google Images, then click on the camera icon to bring up a screen like the one below. Then, upload the image you want to find on the web. This is a great way to find images students (or staff) have saved off the internet but failed to cite properly.
Another tool you may be unfamiliar with is the TinEye Reverse Image Search. Sporting a fancy robot icon, TinEye assists you in a similar way that Google’s Reverse Image Search does. It also offers a browser add-on for Chrome/Chromium or Firefox browsers.
Tool #5: Wiki Search
Wikis abound on the web. When you search for a special movie character based on a comic book character, you’ll find the bio in an online wiki. Have a question about how to do something? A wiki page articulates the steps. Looking for encyclopedic information about anything? Someone has put it into a wiki.
Wiki.com searches ALL wikis. That’s a search that yields more than only popular wikis like Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia). This makes it a handy tool because it focuses on wikified data that is often curated like a web directory.
Bonus Tool: Icon Archive
Need to find an icon to represent something on your device? An image to accent a digital document? Explore the Icon Archive.
Feature Image Source
Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash
