Beating Google for researching family members

Most people seem to think that if you search Google for someone's name then Google will automatically do its best for you.  Actually I say Google, but these comments go equally well for other search engines, and that includes specialist search engines focusing on people, such as pipl.com, yasni.co.uk, 192.com or whatever.

Essentially to find ancestors you need to be creative and you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the kind of person you are researching and how that plays with search engines.  The best people to research about are people who, in some way are famous, or infamous!  Also ancestors you know some details about, and here we come to a key point - what you will hopefully unearth are unique keywords.

Let me look at unique keywords a bit more closely.  For instance one of my ancestors has a middle name "corderoy".  This is great for research via Google and in context of the full name gets some good hits and some useful web pages and documents.  This person also lived in a house which at the time was called "chetnole", and that again helped find some useful web pages.  These keywords are ideal to help your web research.  Use them to find images, or search the web in general or in special search engines.

Also try to understand about how deep web research works.  What I mean by this is that Google, and other search engines do not index all web pages.  Also the ones they do index do not index them in ways that may seem logical.  For instance I recently searched for one phrase without quotation marks and lo and behold Google correctly highlighted and found one page with that exact phrase.  However after putting that same phrase in quotation marks Google reported, totally incorrectly that no pages existed.

Sometimes Google works better as a search engine that the specialist search engine actually provided by a particular website, and sometimes the opposite is true.  You need to work with both to drill down deeply. So Google is good for giving you a clue that there may be some answers on a website.  Then drill down into the website for more info.  Once inside remember to retry Google with the kind of keywords that work for that website.

Now let me finally turn to searching for people's names you need to try different forms.  Suppose someone's name is Alpha Beta Gamma then try searching the following forms:

• AB Gamma
• Gamma, AB
• Alpha B Gamma
• Beta Gamma
• Mr Gamma
• Mrs Gamma
• Mrs AB Gamma (remember that married women often were referred to by their partner's first names!)
• Mr AB Gamma

There may be other forms as well.    These should be mixed with words such as home, death, born, married, family, mother, father and so forth.  Also when you know dates try adding these to the search, especially years.

Trying out Nokia / Ovi Files

I am exploring more services for my phone as I come across them. One seems to be Nokia/Ovi Files. This is a rebranded Avvenu service allowing an online presence shared across computers for files on your own computer. At $10 per month (after the 3-month trial ends) I don't see it getting many subscribers. These days users need to see a lot of value for money and 3-months is not enough, imo. We will see, however. Perhaps this file sharing service has something to offer that I am not seeing... But when compared with GoogleDocs, with DropBox, with photo sharing specialists such as Flickr this business model seems more than a touch outdated.

Test post from mobile to blog

This post originates from my cell phone.

Adaptxt improves predictive text on mobile phones

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

Are you frustrated with word prediction on your Nokia? Have you ever entered a long word and thought, why doesn't prediction have an auto-complete function! I mean if you enter antidisestablishmentarianism or supercalifragisiticexpialidoshus (and please excuse any spelling mistakes!!!) in your phone then they are not likely to be mixed up with any other words are they?

Adaptxt, available as a beta product and also available from the Nokia Ovi store, makes some sensible improvements to cell phone predictive text entry. As you type it lets you know what the most likely complete word would be, given the letters you have entered so far. Simply press the right button to accept the word, or down arrow to choose from other words. This can greatly speed up typing.

A further feature helps you by predicting not just the current word but also the most likely phrase. This means that you can click further right button keys to accept further words. Of course when the phrase is wrong (which is too often for my liking) you can start entering the correct word and simply use word prediction.

Anyway it is early days for this add-on. First impressions are of a feature that, if I can tame it will become possibly become one of my favourite apps.

Why does Facebook force me to lie?

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook tries to be too clever for its own good. Right now I have tried - several times - to update my home location. Facebook refuses point blank to accept the truth of where I live. Instead it insists that I lie and put in a more generic location, viz Oxford, UK. The truth is that I live in a village just outside Oxford, but will Facebook allow that name? No it will not.

What makes Facebook worse is that is does not let me know that it has ignored my changes - it just continues on its merry way and overwrites them with its own version of where I live.

Come on facebook - stop being so snotty and allow the people to put in true home towns.

Change the menu on your Nokia 6210 Navigator now!

Image by Koluso via Flickr

Changing the menu on Nokia 6210 Navigator is crucial for the power user.

The power user explores new applications and finds ones that work for them. For myself, I probably have around 30 applications loaded onto my phone - and that's on top of ones that are built into the phone.

The problem is that when you have that many apps you will necessarily end up navigating the deep menu system on a daily basis just to start your app that you need to run at that moment.

No longer is that necessary.

Your first step is to clear out the first level of the menu system of all the crud items that you do not need on a daily basis. For example after several months do you ever want to change your settings? No, then create a folder (aka sub-menu), perhaps called OtherItems and move then move Settings to that folder. After that move any other items that you do not use regularly, again to the same folder. For instance my provider is Vodafone and they shove this pricey app at you to find businesses local to you. Well I will use that app once in a blue moon, given that it costs me more money to use it. So off it goes and is moved to OtherItems.

Now that your top-level menu is cleared out your next task is to populate it with your favourite apps. These are buried two levels deep in "Applications, My Own". So move your favourite apps right to the top level, otherwise known as root.

So what we have now is a useful set of apps at your top level, the final bit is for you to know each application's menu number. And this is the sweet bit.

If your application is listed as menu item no 3, to activate it simple press your menu button and the press 3. Yes, will activate it. Snappy, easy & reliably.

Now all your favourite apps are readily available in two key clicks.

Of course you can move your apps around in the root folder so that their numbers are useful to you. Finally if you end up with more than 9 apps you will have to use 3 keyclicks by keying to get the 3rd application.

Do you need a computer at all?

Image via CrunchBase

With increasing sophistication of mobile phone the question has to be asked, do you need a full blown computer anymore?

From your phone you can -

• send and receive email
• use almost all websites
• create and edit word or excel styled office documents
• socialise, eg facebook, myspace, twitter effectively
• listen to music, watch video
  
• take photos and video and share it across with friends.

Okay it is not necessarily quite so easy. But especially if you get a phone with a full keyboard, a touch-screen, satellite navigation and so forth then depending on your needs you might consider simply forgetting full-blown computers ever existed!