I’ll admit it: I’m a frequent Googler. I Google from the office, when I need to research new terms for WhatIs. I Google from home, when I need information about events, people, tide charts or news. These days, I’m Googling from the car and train as well, enabled by the handheld attached to my belt on an o-so-slow GPRS connection, using my MDA as a sort of primitive Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That’s rather useful, of course, when I need to determine the number from which the meaning of life, the universe, and everything could be derived.

Some time ago, however, I started to be considerably smarter about my Googling, as I realized that with just a bit of syntax ahead of my search terms, I could make much better use of the search field. These additional words are called “operators,” for my semantically-obsessed fellow travelers. They make life easier. Following is my short list of favorite Google search field hacks. If you have some of your own that I missed, please let me know in the comments so that we all can become more efficient Googlers too.

Google Phonebook: I particularly love this one. I stopped using the white pages because of this very feature. Just type in “phonebook: ” and then a name, comma, zipcode. I’m a “victim” of fixed-mobile substititution, so there’s no danger of revealing my digits to the world here in an example. If I did have a landline, however, you’d find it that way. It’s also possible to reverse engineer the lookup by entering a phone number, revealing the attached adress. For those a bit freaked out by this ability, it’s worth noting that you can request that your name be removed ,

Google Weatherman: While I look to NOAA.gov for all-things-meteorogical, if I just want to know whether to grab a jacket, sweater or shorts, typing in weather: zipcode is perfectly effective. For instance, here’s the weather in lovely Needham Heights, Massachussetts today.

Google Movies: I adore this feature. Just enter “movie: zipcode” to get a list of theaters and showtimes near you, with links to showtimes with available tickets and reviews. This stripped down, entirely textual results page is especially useful and usable when I’m mobile.

Google Dictionary: This is spectacularly relevant to my work, given that I write definitions for WhatIs.com. If you’d like to see all of the entries for a term, simply type “define: term” and you’ll be presented with a list of hyperlinks and short summaries. Try define: blog for a comparison of takes on that hotly contested term, for instance.

Google Site Search: While searching the entire Web is undeniably useful, sometimes you just want to look through one Web site, like, say, WhatIs.com. Just type in site: domain name search term (like site: WhatIs.com geek) and you’re off and running.

Google University: Just as you can restrict search to a specific site, you can also focus on certain domain names, like .edu. If you’re a developer, for instance, you could enter [ruby tutorial site:.edu] Of course, these days you can also just use Google Scholar.

Google for Media: Looking for ebooks on Java? Paste the following syntax into your search field:

-inurl: (htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(.pdf) “Java”

If you replace .pdf with other extensions and Java with a different keyword, you can also find all kinds of other media out there too, though it’s worth noting that relevant intellectual property laws still apply to your actions.

As I wrote initially, this is only a short list the tweaks that I actually use with any frequency. For more information, see Google Blogoscoped’s post about using special syntax or Google’s list of operators, including a printable search cheatsheet.

Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to meet one of our readers in person, outside of comment sections, forums, email, IM or other virtual interactions.

It’s always a pleasure to get such direct feedback. When I asked what she liked (and didn’t like) about this blog, she mentioned that she appreciated past posts about free online education resources. (Just click on our learning tag to see them all to date.)

A simple search for other similar resources turns up many other hits, of course, notably for OER. OER stands for “Open Education Resources,” an effort to create a free, globally accessible commons for educational materials. In a spirit much like that of Professor Lessig’s Creative Commons, UNESCO’s 2002 initiative encourages educators to publish learning content and the tools to create that content online, free of intellectual property considerations. You can learn more at the Open Education Conference’s Web site, if you’re interested in the movement.

As Wendy Boswell details in Technophilia, her typically brilliant column on Lifehacker, such free resources easily available online — if you know where to look. Wendy ends with where I’d begin, however, by suggesting using Google to uncover different kinds of learning content.

As Wendy points out, simply by using the right keywords, you can unearth course syllabi (insert your own subject), lectures, tutorials, notes, podcasts and online books , all through the magic of the Google search field.

When you’re done Googling, the Feds may be able to provide some help: Check out free.ed.gov for an index of different subject areas. The National Education Association also has a page full of free course materials for teachers and students.

Still want more?

FreebiesList.com has a long list of free educational resources.

Finally, in the spirit of the OER, the OpenCourseWare Consortium provides, according to their Web site, “free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.”

Did we miss any of your favorite resources? Let us know in the comments!

What new thing did you learn today?

[Image credit: MasterNewMedia.org]

Jimmy Ruska has created an outstanding index of free online educational resources, which he’s called the Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts.

An autodidact, in case you’re wondering, is a self-directed learner. Wikipedia has an index of different different autodidacts in different countries.

Jimmy’s selections, which include courses, educational podcasts and much more, make it easier for all of the autodidacts out there to excel in self-directed learning.

Jimmy also has created a “Best of the Internet Today page, similar to popurls.com, and a blog that focuses on rating online video..

Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg when he was granted an account with $100,000,000 of computer time in 1971 by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois.

The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is “to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.”

Only books that have entered the public domain are entered into the database of 19,000 titles, of which nearly 2 million are downloaded every month. That means the database is full of the classics of Western literature, with names like Twain, Doyle, Shakespeare, Dickens, Kleiser, Poe, Wells, Austen and Verne dominating the top 10 most downloaded list.