Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with searching

Google search with exact phrase and multiple variables?

Mrs. Buck Turgidson — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:20:25 -0800

Is it possible to run a google search with an exact phrase and multiple variables? I'd like to see if a fixed search term (an exact phrase) returns any results when paired with a number of variables. I have approximately 200 variables and rather than run 200 seperate searches, would it be possible to run the search in one go? Something along the lines of "exact phrase" AND ( n1 OR n2 OR n3...). The variables will be exact phrases as well.

Easy birth and death dates?

prior — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:57:36 -0800

Is there a simple, free way of searching the birth and death dates of a wide variety of people? I'm editing an encyclopedia that has a mix of entries for historical figures (the venerable bede) and people alive today (jeff belanger, a writer/journalist who studies "the unexplained"). Only half the entries have birth and death dates, probably because the author wasn't able to locate a lot of them. What I'm looking for is a fairly quick way of finding this info--doesn't have to be just one source, but I want to come up with a reasonable methodology or checklist for per-person searching.

Suggestions for search engines/web sites/library books/etc. I can try?

What are your lesser-known or weird ways of looking for new music?

querty — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:05:21 -0800

What are your lesser-known or weird ways of looking for new music? Besides friends' recommendations, mix tapes, last.fm, review sites/blogs, TV/film song features, and late night talk show musical guests, what are some of your lesser-known or weird ways of searching for new music that others may not know about?

A few of mine:

- Sometimes I search for "recent favourite band + cover" on Youtube and sort them by views to find other new artists who very few people know. Those artists will usually have some of their own original songs available

- Search by lyrics to look for other bands/artists who have written similar words/lines/phrases, example

- Talk to touring bands after their shows and ask some of the band members what they're listening to on the road

I hated my job, but now that I got let go, I feel even worse.

greatalleycat — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:42:04 -0800

How to deal with unemployment + feeling like crap? Just got let go last week from crap job I hated, but now feeling more miserable than ever. I am the girl in this question that got a DUI a few weeks back and said my life is over. Due to this and me not being able to give definite answer about getting occupational privileges (in OH, where draconian laws just got worse) I was fired on Friday at 4 after busting my ass all day. They can go to hell, I was still doing my job. They were just looking for people to drop I guess, was convenient excuse for them.
How do people who were abruptly laid off/fired structure their days? I can't spend all day job-searching, how do you fill time?

My firing came after a several-months long bout of depression related to seeing everything fall apart at work. I should have dealt with it earlier, perhaps my life would not suck now.
However, I thought I would be happy to be gone from work, but I feel even worse. Before, I was just angry, now I am just miserable and have problems going to sleep because I am thinking my life is ruined forever and I am a total failure who should be really successful because I came from good family and went to good schools.

I would like to get this addressed medically since I don't know how else to feel better. I used to think job was what made me miserable, but I guess it wasn't all of it because I am just sad now instead of angry constantly like before.
I am delaying help because I don't know how to seek out a therapist (who would be best for me and not really $$) and a doc to give me meds. I'm also waiting to see if I can afford COBRA. I also have to rely on getting rides from family as I probably won't be able to get driving privileges since I don't work. I am in the Cleveland area in a place where I cannot walk or bike to work easily, especially as winter comes on.

I believe I was not let go with "just cause" so I believe I can get unemployment benefits in OH.
I know I sound like a whiny brat, but I would like to feel for one day I haven't completely ruined my life.

How to refined geocoding of searches

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:59:33 -0800

What is the best way of getting data from a search engine in a form that it can be parsed into addresses? The end goal is to geocode it. I am interested in geocoding the results of businesses and services that I get as a result of a search. I've experimented with yahoo pipes, but I am unable to get a large number of results, and am not sure if this is the best way to go about it. I imagine people do this quite a bit, so I was wondering what the best strategy was.

I'm quite new to this, so all suggestions welcome.

Once I have addresses, I can bulk-geocode them without a problem, I just need to get to that step.

Resume distribution services: good use of money or a bad idea?

rybreadmed — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:45:31 -0800

Is it worth it to pay for a "targeted" resume distribution service? I'm trying to find a new job. Through some of the big job sites, I find links to these resume distribution services. It's not too incredibly expensive, and the job search is wearing me thin. Of course, I don't want to waste the 50 bucks or so if it's not going to work. They promise not to be resume blasters that blast out your resume to 50,000,000 email addresses; supposedly, they're targeted.

There's this service through Monster: https://www.myresumeagent.com/?ch=monster_fromea. Does anybody have any experience with this? Does it work?

Also, I found this list of resume distribution services: http://www.jobgoround.com/resume_distribution.php. Is it all garbage?

I already know that finding a job depends on who you know. I've gone through my personal contacts, applied to many places, but I'm looking for new channels. I can't find any information (such as consumer reviews) on any of these sites. Even if the ones listed above don't work, can you suggest any that do?

Is it just a scam, though? Is it for people who reach a point so far into their job search that they're desperate for some magic bullet? Will my resume actually end up in the hands of somebody who could actually do something?

Go back for more school or take a meh first job?

sleazy_e — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:07:09 -0800

Recent Graduate: Work towards 2nd Bachelors, Masters, or take a lower paying position I hope will lead to the job I want? I'm from Texas and and a May grad with a BS in Econ (minors in math and writing) from a known State U. Currently I've been searching for job opportunities in fields Junior Financial Analysis or Market Research Analysis, Data Analytics (or really any kind of analysis that requires lots of math, data mining, and forecasting), but these jobs are very hard to find for my (entry? - I've worked every year since high school, but maybe not in relevant jobs) level in Texas (right now, everyone wants senior/experienced applicants) and I am frustrated by the impossibility to get an interview with my ~2.75 GPA (or for reasons companies refuse to inform me of). I am aware that grades are vital to get into the door of these positions.

I believe I am 2 semesters (30 hours) shy of a BS in Applied Mathematics (Finance track) and I can try to raise my grades above a 3.0, but I have already spent 5 years in school and racked up some debt. Now, I was once an Applied Math major before becoming Econ, but I switched due to pressure from paying for school on my own, dealing with an abusive relationship (that ended after the degree change), and constant insane familial problems/drama (think Arrested Development). I want to say that now those distractions could dissipate (except for paying for school on my own), but any future incidents are probable. Let's just say, I'm eager to pursue/finish the degree, but I'm afraid that I fall back into the depression/fear of not successfully getting the high marks needed to make this elusive degree worth while.

Another option is to start an online MS Finance or MS Math/Stat degree from an accredited (not UPhoenix), but not well known University that would take about 2 years to finish while working/searching for employment. I've been told that Bachelors are more available today, so getting a Masters is becoming more necessary to differentiate yourself from the competition.

I've read on MeFi that people recommend taking the CFA Level 1 to differentiate themselves, but I doubt it would help for the jobs outside of Financial Analysis (Data Analytics and Market Research).

Another factor in my decision: I've been offered a position as a cost analyst at a small firm. It sounds okay, but my responsibilities aren't more than data entry (at least at first) and product updating, the salary isn't as reasonable to live on, and it requires 100 miles of round trip commuting from living with my family (moving out makes the job even less economical). The job is well, a job, I suppose and it offers me the ability to pocket a little bit of money after paying all my debts.

My question is given the current state of our US economy, call it a recession or a fearful voting year with tons of graduates and less amount of entry jobs, would it be best to A) try and finish my math degree, B) enter an MS Finance degree, or C) take a left-field-ish job and try to work my way into my desired job?

Change searching in windows in Firefox

Mo Nickels — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:25:56 -0800

How can I change the behavior of searching in windows in Firefox? The Firefox search-in-browser bar is, and has always has been, awful. [I posted this to the Firefox forums and got no response.]

I am not referring to searches done using URL shortcuts nor am I referring to searches done using search box in the upper right corner of the browser window.

The search-in-browser bar is what I am calling the bar that appears at the bottom of the browser window when you search for content inside of the page that is currently loaded by hitting ctrl-F on Windows or command-F on Mac. I use Firefox 3.0 for both platforms.

The search-in-browser bar is broken (or, if you prefer, intentionally coded in such a way that it behaves in a broken fashion) in that it:

a. Continues to appear on the screen even long after it has last been used.

b. Continues to appear on the screen when a link is clicked and a new page is loaded.

c. "Match case" seems to be arbitrarily selected in between searches.

d. Takes up an inordinate amount of screen real estate, especially in a browser window that fills the monitor. This is particularly problematic on a laptop with a small screen.

What I would like to find is a way to change this behavior. I have looked for things to change in about:config and for an appropriate extension but found no joy.

What I'd like to have happen in Firefox:

1. The search-in-browser bar should disappear in user-settable amount of time after it has last been used, either X amount of time after the last search is made or after the last time a related search key command is entered. I know that you can sometimes hit escape to get the search-in-browser bar to disappear, but that doesn't always work either--it sometimes stupidly requires that you click back into the search field and *then* hit escape--not even rehitting ctrl-F/command-F and then hitting escape works.

2. The search-in-browser bar should disappear when a link is clicked and a new page is loaded.

3. "Match case" should never be selected by default or at the start of a search; or, it should be a user preference as to whether it is a default or not.

4. Ideally, the search-in-browser bar should be able to be turned off. It should return to being a pop-up window as it was on previous versions of Firefox, or it should be a user preference as to whether it should be attached to the window or should be a free-standing pop-up window.

How do you deal w. all that old email?

ManInSuit — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:20:31 -0800

I'm curious how people deal w. their old email. (esp those using Outlook and IMAP, but others, too...) Hi. I’ve asked a related question here before, and seen others who have asked related stuff, too. But I still haven’t found an answer that quite works for me, so I thought I’d try again.

I assume I’m not particularly unusual in how I handle my email:

- I send and receive tons of mail
- I like to spend as little time as possible filing/sorting it. (Most of my mail just goes into a giant “done” folder when I’m finished with it)
- I like to be able to search it, fast. I do this a lot. My email history is kind of my life and my filing system.
- I keep more or less everything
- I like to be able to access my mail when I’m offline on my laptop (though I guess, really, I do this less and less often, as net access is more ubiquitous)
- I also like to be able to access archives of my email from the web when I’m away from my computer.

What I use now is:
- MS-Outlook 2003 (about to upgrade to 2007): I like it pretty well, and would rather not change, though I would if there were some perfect do-everything other solution.
- Lookout to search my email. (Which I’m guessing I might not need when I switch to Outlook 2007).
- I use fastmail.fm as an IMAP server, and occasionally use their web interface to get at my mail when away from my computer.

Things mostly work pretty well.

The problem is that dealing with old email is a hassle. The biggest problem is that Outlook gets slow and unreliable as my PST file gets enormous. A less-pressing problem is that eventually I may run of space on fastmail (a 4 GB limit).

I figure I shouldn’t have to make Outlook open my Entire Mail History From Forever every time I open it up. Most of the time, I only need immediate access to, say, email from the past year or two. But once in a while, I need to be able to get at the older stuff. When I do, I’d like to be able to do a reasonably quick, powerful search.

There must be some useful way to keep my older mail separate, in a reasonably searchable form, but I haven’t figure it out.

I’m really curious: How do other people deal with this?

Is there an easy way to use multiple outlook psts and have them all be searchable?

Is there an easy way to remove folder/messages from an outlook PST while leaving them on the IMAP server? (I’d just as soon leave those old messages up there. There's tons of space on the server…)

Am I foolish to be using outlook for all this? Mostly, I like it well, but its crappiness in the face of large PST’s is really annoying.

Thanks, Green, for any ideas!

Open source XML web searching?

Mo Nickels — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:48:57 -0800

I'm looking for suggestions for open source software that will allow me to take a large amount of XML, do searches of it through a web interface (especially allowing selecting trees or tags for narrowing searches), and return HTML-formatted results. Have you used any open source software like that? It needs to run as out-of-the-box as possible. This question was helpful but it wasn't sufficiently the same and the answers require more programming than I have skill or time for. The XML would have to be invisible to the user: the users would not be downloading the XML as files, they would merely be looking at it rendered in styled HTML on the web server. The software would have to pay attention to the DTD and respect parent and child trees and allow inter-record linking.

Help me get my career in order!

PetiePal — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:49:29 -0800

I'm 3 years out of college, and unemployed again. I feel like I should go back to school, but what for??! I majored in Information Studies In Technology at Syracuse University and graduated in 2004. I've been in the IT industry about 6 years now, working in New Jersey. For background sake here's a snippet of my experience clipped from my resume:

Systems Administrator/Change Control Consultant – Merck Pharmaceuticals (9 months)
-PeopleSoft, Remedy and Merckury administrator
-Managed Merck Change Control Request lifecycle
-Trained consolidation companies in Merckury, Peoplesoft and Remedy use

Systems Operations Consultant – Intellisync/Nokia/Pfizer (About a year)
-Managed daily operations of the Pfizer OAI Windows Server environment
-Managed sales reps’ Palm/PC synchronization between local databases with production
-Developed and tested remotely deployed file publications, patches and registry edits to Pfizer field
-Tested and patched hardware for 12,000+ user 2005 Field Force Reorganization rollout
-Responsible for managing 5 help desks (Betsy, Pedagogue, CECLink, OAI-Sync and Stork)
-Trained new hire configuration rollout users
-Developed documentation for all daily operations adhering to SOX standards
-VBScript, Java, SQL, and C++ process development
-Responsible for migrating users between databases and daily maintenance

LAN/Networking Group Contractor – American International Group (Internship for 2 summers, then taken on 3rd summer as contractor)
-Helpdesk analyst – supported NJ and NYC World Headquarters
-Responsible for the training and management of summer interns.
-Hardware Decommission Project Manager-Decommissioned PCs and servers. Inventory documentation for SOX compliance
-Identified and provided solutions to technical issues in the AIG LAN/Networking environment
-Managed vendor relationship with hardware recycling company

Intern Work-Study Employee – A&S Computer Services Group Syracuse University (1 year)
-Responsible for the imaging, upgrading and maintenance of workstations and laptops
-Managed Arts and Sciences technical support helpdesk
-Designed IP, network and system architecture restructure
-Virus patch developer

I don't enjoy programming, nor do I have that much experience with it. I really do like project management, working in teams and process improvement. I've thought about getting into networking more along the lines of VOIP and Cisco work. I've considered technical sales as well. Although I've had a lot of project management experience I'm not PMP or PMI certified and haven't been in charge of huge projects.

Finding an "in" into a project-management track is proving very difficult for me. Heck, finding a contract to full-time position is challenging enough.

I've been considering going back to school for:

-a Masters in IT (unsure where I'd focus)
-Project Management PMP or PMI
-Cisco CCNP/CCNA certifications
-An MBA
-Perhaps finance...I hear a lot of IT backgrounded people work into this.

I feel like I don't know enough about what these certs/majors/programs could open up for me to make a choice.

1.) Can you recommend any paths to take to get into project management?

2.) What can you DO with a masters in IT or an MBA? What kinds of positions are you qualified for as a result?

3.) For someone who doesn't like to program, code and has my background what kind of positions should I be looking for?

I really need some help. I'm tired of a 1 year contract and then having to look for a job again. My job search is stale this time around and I feel like it's time to start working towards something bigger that could open up opportunities for me.

Thanks in advance for all the help :) I'll check this often to answer any questions.

Finding a long lost sibling

smorange — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:40:22 -0800

Seeking out a biological sibling, given up for adoption when she was born. How? Bad idea? First: I know her birth name and her adopted given name. I know she made contact with my mother about 10 years ago, but I don't know the details. Based on this, is it possible to find someone in Canada? Do I have to ask my mother for more details? Second: Is this a bad idea? My reasons for doing so are 1) curiosity; and 2) to let her know about a medical issue that arose subsequent to her meeting with my mother. Honestly, though, I'm motivated by curiosity.

My Spotlight won't shine on me

DiscourseMarker — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:12:32 -0800

How can I search for specific strings of text within multiple individual text files in Mac OSX 10.4? I am trying to search within a very large corpus of text files to look for specific strings of text. One problem is that I don't have all the text files in one folder; there are 150 main folders, and in each of those 150 are on average 25-30 sub-folders, inside which are any number of text files. (note-the data was organized this way when I received it, so it's not my fault!)

I had this idea that Spotlight in Tiger was supposed to make this all very easy, but somehow I can't get it to work. Ideally what I'd like would be for it to look through all the documents in the main folder and return the ones containing the text string, but I'd even settle for going folder-by-folder, as long as I don't have to search each individual file. But I've tried everything, including telling it to search the contents of one specific file that I had already identified as containing the search string, and I still got zero results.

Tell me, oh hive mind, what stupid obvious thing have I somehow forgotten to do?

searching for a file

goethean — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:32:06 -0800

Is there a way to find an excel file on your hard drive that contains a certain sequnce of digits in adjacent cells? Like a file that has "6876" in one cell, and "100" in the next?

Search Engine Ranking

Gankmore — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:33:01 -0800

How does a website get to be ranked on the first page for searching on google, yahoo, etc? What is organic searching based on? How can one manipulate their website to rank higher on search engines? Is it about traffic? Or links? What exactly is it?

I don't understand why some websites are on the first page and others you can't ever find.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks.

How can I prove that a mistake existed on a website six months ago?

roll truck roll — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:32:13 -0800

How can I prove that a mistake existed on a website six months ago? I so apologize if this is a double. I searched and couldn't find anything. It was kind of asked in April, but no one bit.

I'm in a small dispute with a student records department, and this small dispute is currently keeping me from getting my Master's degree that I earned.

The specifics are convoluted and obnoxious, but the crux is this: in August of 2006, there was a glaring error in the course schedule page. The error was corrected (I'm guessing) sometime in late September.

Here's the page in question. The class at the bottom of the list had only the Tuesday session listed, as opposed to Tuesday and Thursday.

I've checked the Internet Archive. Every version they have is either too old or too new. Google Cache only has the corrected version. And of course, our quaint little art school doesn't have printed schedules.

Am I missing something in how I'm searching? Is there any way, aside from Internet Archive and Google Cache, to find an old version of a page? If you find it, I'll be your best friend.

excluding terms on google

goethean — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 07:37:04 -0800

why does excluding terms on google give me more hits? I was searching on the phrase "Mission accomplished". It got 1,730,000 hits. Then I decided to remove wikipedia hits from my search. I normally do this by entering the term "-wiki". But that got 25,500,000 hits. Shouldn't excluding the term "wiki" give you fewer hits?

Inhibiting fuzzy search possible?

Rash — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:17:16 -0800

How can I force many sites' search functions to not treat the entry in the Title: field as a keyword? For example, on Amazon, Abebooks, and my local library, if I enter a title of a book that's a single word (like Snoopy) the results are any title containing that word (and sometimes, not even). But there IS a book with that one-word title, published in 1958 -- how to restrict the results returned to what I entered? Is there perhaps some magic control character one can use, to force an exact search?

Please note that I'm not looking for Snoopy, it's just an example that demonstrates this ~~annoyance~~ feature.

seeking search engine

sswiller — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:05:22 -0800

why are MSN, Yahoo & Google the only decent search engines nowadays? Are there any search engines made by organizations that don't enable the oppression of billions or aren't conspiring to hurt the Chinese?

What's your favorite Google feature, trick, or hack?

cosmicbandito — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:00:21 -0800

Stupid Google tricks: I'm teaching a class on internet searching. Help me impress and inform by sharing your favorite Google or other search tool feature, trick, or hack. Class will be adults with varying levels of internet savvy and varied interests. I'm set for basic course content, but I want to have plenty of "wow, that's cool" tricks up my sleeve.

Hacking Amazon searches

TheRaven — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:27:13 -0800

Amazon-fu. How do I get Amazon, a) to show e.g. 100 hits per page; b) show just author/title and not the other crap? By default, Amazon displays 10 hits per page in a book search. You can increase that to 25 if you change the docid-ve&sz= parameter in the search result url. However, if you change it to more than 25, you still get 25 hits per page. In addition, I don't want to see user rating, other editions, jpg of cover, etc. Can I just get:

Franz Kafka: The Trial
James Joyce: Ulysses
etc. etc.

and nothing else.

Greasemonkey script? (though Greasemonkey scripts are having problem with Firefox 1.5)

Thanks.

Gmail for my old mail?

bonaldi — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 12:00:01 -0800

Gmail-like interface for my old emails? I have tons (GBs) of old emails, going back to 1992. I've pretty much got them consolidated now into mbox format and I'd like to have some sort of searchable web interface for them, much like gmails. I know Mail.app does searching, but that ties me to one machine, which is boo.

As far as the interface goes, I love gmail's searching and especially the conversation view.

Is there anything that will do what I want? At my disposal I've got an OS X server, a Sun server, and hosting space on Dreamhost.

(PS: I know about uploading scripts for gmail, but they a) get the date wrong and b) will take a very long time with this amount of email)

Restricting web searches to specific sites?

aiko — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 12:50:33 -0800

Is there a way to utilize a whitelist of specific sites in either Google or another search engine? The "site:" operator seems either too restrictive (one website) or too expansive (e.g., edu, gov). A non-working solution to what I want to do would be "query site:website1 site:website2 site:website3". Afterward, I could make a keyword in firefox so that I could avoid having to add in the list of sites every time.

Can't find an old post.

gummo — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:35:38 -0800

There was a post a while back about a new people-finder website. It was linked with a search on Matt's name (I believe). It worked pretty good. I need to use it today, and can't find the post. Any help? Or suggestions of good alternatives? The one's I tried by searching google were all pretty lousy.

Adopted person searching for biological parents - give me your anecdotes

exlotuseater — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 20:09:57 -0800

I am an adoptee, and this AskMe post motivated me to ask- to any of you who are A) adopted and searching, or B) adopted and have found Bparents or siblings or C) have anecdotes on how friends have found parents or siblings.... How did You/They eventually find their kin?
I am all over message boards, registries, etc. I'm looking for other options. Any input appreciated.