Hiro's helpful tips: Webbits

[gamahiro]

Shhh...Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm huntin` Webbits!

What do you do when you want to find something online? I'd be willing to bet that most people just try a quick seach on Google or Bing. If nothing shows up they quit.

Searching the internet has become almost an art form. There's so much spam and useless garbage it's almost impossible to find what you're looking for, without a good strategy.

Anything that can be digitized probably is, and if it's digitized you can find it online....if you are willing to go beyond the typical search patterns.

This is just a few examples of how to rethink your search strategies. In all of the examples feel free to modify the url's to suit your needs. Experiment. You never know what you'll find.

Please feel free to add to this list in a reply.

Remember your countries copyright laws. This is here for educational purposes.

We can start with a general seach, in Google, for DVD's or media. Let's try these:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...+-md5+-md5sums
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...+-md5+-md5sums

Take a look at the search. Now modify it to suit your needs. If you get a ton of spam, try using a spamkiller. If you do the second search you'll see Ironman2 is showing up for all the spam results. Filter it out with -"ironman2" The negative (-) sign means you don't want that word or phrase included in your search.
When you have some time to kill, try some broad searches:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...pg&btnG=Search

Just change the "fun" to whatever you want.

How about Books?

http://www.google.com/search?q=-inur...utf-8&oe=utf-8
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...22&btnG=Search

Again, just change the keywords to suit your needs.

Need a new Proxy?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...2+&btnG=Search

I doubt anyone reading this hasn't searched for Music.

Google like this -
+"index +of/mp3" +coheed +cambria
"search andromeda" "play all"
"weezer" "powered by Andromeda version"
intitle:"index of/" "last modified" "mp3" afi
intitle:"index of/" "Apr-2009" "mp3" blink182 (Just change the date for more results)
mcr "4.6m * snd" (This one is cool. mcr is the band I'm looking for. 4.6m is a size. Experiment with those two)
intitle:index.of + mp3 + "afi" -html -htm -php -asp apache feb-2009
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index.of" +"last.modified" + "parent.directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "nofx"

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...+-md5+-md5sums
http://www.google.com/search?num=30&...ver+at+%22+mp3 (Just modify the Apache version)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...7ef203418696fc
http://www.google.com/search?client=...7ef203418696fc

Like Games?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ms&btnG=Search

*whew* That seems like a lot, but it's just a small bit of searching technique. There's a lot more to it, and if there's interest, I'll do some more.
Just remember that there are a lot of search engines, for a lot of different types of searches. Some are better than others, depending on what you're looking for.

http://www.altavista.com/web/adv
http://search.yahoo.com/web
http://www.dicy.com/
http://www.mooter.com/
http://www.dmoz.org/
http://www.baidu.com/
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://www.entireweb.com/
http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html (really cool)
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.yauba.com/
http://www.gigablast.com/search
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html (another cool one)
http://www.ask.com/
http://community-powered-web-search-...eurekster.com/
http://rollyo.com/index.html
http://www.bing.com/

Yes, that's quite a long list, but try an easy search in a few different search engines, and you will be surprised at the differences.
That's all for now. Hope this helps.

[gamahiro]

Noone has one webbit to share?

[Astral]

congrats sir

[UzumakiClash]

I webbitted Naruto, and I got a whole bunch of MP3s!! Thanks boss!!

[gamahiro]

"Webbitted." I like that term

[Kappy]

I sooo need this. o_o

[gamahiro]

I sooo need this. o_o

That's nothing. Doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. I should do one on Usenet next.

[Lili-Chwan]

I've a small webbit to share, related to searching for images.

I find myself looking for lots of images now and then, and there are some tricks I employ to get the image exactly as I want.
Google already offers an advanced search engine to look for specific sizes and colours, so I won't develop on that:

http://www.google.pt/advanced_image_search?hl=pt-pt

Ok. So now, for the webbit, imagine you want to look for cute pictures of bunnies. The first thing you can do is start by the original name:

Bunnies

If none of the images suit you, you can add an adjective.

Cute Bunnies, Funny Bunnies, Scary Bunnies, etc

Still, there could be other images that you'd like more. So why not try to differentiate your wording. Things like plural/singular or other grammatical changes result in different images, or even, instead of adjectives use actual nouns.

Bunny, Fun Bunnies, Fun Bunnies, Scary Bunnies, Scared Bunnies, Fear Bunnies, Love Bunny, etc

You can search wikipedia and find different names for the same species of animal you want to search. Or in case of other objects, different names that you can call the object you want. In this case:

Rabbit, Bunny, Hare, Doe (Female Rabbit), Buck (Male Rabbit), Kit, Kitten (Cubs), Tapeti (Brazilian Species), Oryctolagus cuniculus (Scientific Name)

Of course some of those names might trigger more scientific, serious images of rabbits, and not fluffy little cute bunnies. Moving on, even if that doesn't work, there's another great friend of google searches, the google translate.
translate the word you want into different languages, and all the different names will result in different searches.

Coelho, Conejo, Lapin, Coinín, Kuneho, Kanin, Królik, Fenek, Nyúl

And that's pretty much it. You can even mix all the steps up, translate adjectives, add other words, etc etc. the thing is, no matter how you change the wording, even if, at some point, you don't even understand what you wrote there, the fact remains that Google will show you pictures of a rabbit, being it cute, scary, scientific or Norwegian.

Of course, if you look for more artistic and professional pictures, it's a good thing to use actual art sites, like DeviantArt (You guys can add more, it would help me alot), which are sure to give you some better quality pictures, nonetheless, those are my webbits, have fun

[-Yard-]

because of your humor you are now my third favorite member

[gamahiro]

because of your humor you are now my third favorite member

Who's the top 2? I'll have to kill them

[Xentinel]

Personally , I prefer with Google. Does the other search engines really helpful?

[gamahiro]

Personally , I prefer with Google. Does the other search engines really helpful?

I don't use all of those that I listed, but Google even admits it doesn't index more than 40% of the web. I would say 40% is just an educated guess. I think it depends on what you are looking for as well. If what you seek is not exactly legal, chances are that the webmaster/admin will deny all robots at root. Some just deny the more known bots such as Google. That's why you might get better results from other search engines. To be perfectly honest, the best chance you have at finding something is a well written and thought out spider/scraper. But, that's a different HHT

[-Shanks-]

That is a hell of a nice thread..

[gamahiro]

That is a hell of a nice thread..

Why thank you. I have been debating whether or not to do a spider tutorial. Sort of a more advanced version of this. It would be kind of long though.

[-Shanks-]

Why thank you. I have been debating whether or not to do a spider tutorial. Sort of a more advanced version of this. It would be kind of long though.

well, if you have time, u might as well do it

[dbzn]

Thanks gamahiro, you are my top favourite member in NB!!!

[gamahiro]

Thanks gamahiro, you are my top favourite member in NB!!!

Thanks dbzn. I'm here to please.

[sasuke ow]

i would say frostwire but it's become diffucult to use lol