Difference between revisions of "Google Hacks"

Revision as of 12:27, 7 March 2008

Alternate Homepages

Mostly these are useless fun, but somebody took the time to put them together.
google l33t
google loco
google gothic
ewmew fudd
xx-piglatin

URL Hacking - Exploit the file system structure

To understand how to get what you want off the Internet you need to understand how URLs are structured and how this structure relates to the files stored on servers off in the world. Here's an example of a typical URL of a hungry donkey: http://www.shadowridgedonkeys.com/images/index.10.jpg

Queries

Definitions

You can use the define: operator in a query to get google to return all the definitions it finds for a word.

[define: racy] [define: exacerbate]

Calculator

Google is nice enough to do lots of basic (and advanced) math for you, if you ask it. It recognizes all the normal operators.

+ or PLUS
- or MINUS
* or TIMES
/ or DIVIDED BY

Exercise: Figure out the number of seconds in a year using google (60 * 60 * 24 * 365):______________________________________

Unit Converter

You can use google to obtain specific conversions between lots of different kinds of units:

[100 dollars in Euros]
[175lbs in kilograms]
[three quarters of a cup in teaspoons]
[MDLVII in decimal]
[1 year in seconds]

You can also use it to find conversion factors:

[american dollars per canadian dollar]
[miles per kilometer]
[ounces per gallon] (?Why is this broken?)

Exercise:

	Grandpa Simpson: "My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"
	Use the unit converter to figure out how many MPG Grandpa's car gets:__________________

Calculator help page - http://www.googleguide.com/help/calculator.html

Finding stuff online

You can exploit sites that auto-index directories to find music, movies, pictures, etc. Try crafting a search using the intitle: query that looks like this:

[intitle:"index of" aerosmith mp3] - Find Aerosmith mp3s [intitle:"index of" kittens mpg] - Find kitten movies in mpeg format

Locating public web cameras

The default configuration of a some brands of web camera publishes images in such a way that they are indexed by google. By typing in a properly formatted google search you can browse images from these webcams from around the world.

http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:"jpg/image.jpg?r="

This is a good one: http://24.227.51.158/jpg/image.jpg?r=

Here's a quick lesson in figuring out who this cam belongs to and where it is. Copy the IP address (24.227.51.158). Now point a web browser at this page: http://ws.arin.net/whois. This page belongs to the American Registry for Internet Numbers. Paste the IP in to the text box on this page and click the "Search WHOIS" button. So, where is this webcam pointed? I'll leave it as a surprise....