Posts Tagged: tour

Internet Tips — No Comments
31
Mar 06

Directions get even smarter

Finding directions on the Internet has been around since the early days…way back in the mid 90’s. Today, however, the Internet is faster, smarter and more robust than ever. And all that power has translated into some great looking online mapping programs.

Google was one of the last people to come into the online mapping space, but like everything else they do, their mapping program works fast and well. You can search for a place or get door-to-door directions. Once at your destination, you can even get a satellite view of the area. Google also offers an extremely cool free download called Google Earth where you can get birds eye views of most of the planet. You do need to have high speed Internet access to use Google Earth, however.

One of the oldest online mapping programs, Mapquest, still works very well and is pretty reliable. Like the Google maps, you can get destination or directional mapping.

Other good online mapping programs worth exploring are:

Almost all of the maps listed above offer some sort of information about tourist things to do, restaurants, hotels and other useful information near the area that you are studying. Give them a try then call us and tell us which are your favorites!

Internet Tips — No Comments
31
Dec 05

Google Yourself

I enjoy reading my morning newspaper comics. Earlier this week, I laughed and laughed at one that talked about one person "Googling" another person. Although not official yet, I’m sure that "Googling" will become Merriam-Webster’s newest verb. Googling refers to typing your name (or someone else’s name) into the Google search engine and see what comes up. 

Although a somewhat frivolous endeavor, Googling someone can yield some interesting and often times entertaining results. If you have never used the Google search engine, you are missing out on the single best source for researching topics via the Internet. If you are familiar with Google, read on to learn about some of its lesser known but impressive features.

Google News allows you to search nearly 5,000 online and print news sources instantly. If you are looking for an article about Britney Spears’ Japan tour, just type it in the Google News search site and away you go. One great aspect of news searching is that you can read an article about the same topic from three or more sources and almost every article says something different….hmmm.

If you are working on a project and need a picture of the Lithuanian flag, use the Google Images search. Type in the specific name of what you want, and it will grab it for you quickly. Now searching images is not an easy task, so you will see some images that don’t jive with your search. However, it works quite well.

Tedd, our computer bargain guru, has talked in the past about Froogle. Froogle is the comparision shopping side of Google. A good place to start as you are researching a new purchase.

Some answers remain elusive no matter how hard you search. Google has a solution for that as well…for a small price. Google Answers lets you ask your question via the web where it will be routed to a real live ("carefully screened") person. You will typically get an answer within 24 hours for as little as $2.50 and you don’t pay unless you are happy with the answer.

These are but a few of the hundreds of things you can do with Google other than search the web. I will cover more in the future, but if your appetite for more Google tips needs more immediate satisfaction, consider the book Google Hacks covering almost everything possible with Google.

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