Have you ever wanted to search for more than one specific file at the same time based on the file extension? For example, Word Documents and Excel Spreadsheets only or .JPEG and .BMP files. Windows 7’s Search and Organization tools makes this very easy. Here is how you search for multiple file types at one time.

You will need to use what is called a Boolean Syntax or Search Operator, which is a bit of programming lingo. A Boolean operator, if you do not know, is how the computer uses words or symbols to help us find or exclude certain information in our search queries. Say you want a list of all Word documents and Excel spreadsheet, you would type the syntax:

ext:.docx OR ext:.xlsx

Automatically, you will see all files related to the search query listed in the window, see below:

The above search query produced a list of all the Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in the folder.

You can do this with any file type you wish, all you need to know is the file extension, normally a 3 letter abbreviation at the end of a file name. Below is a list of common file types:

.doc, docx, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. .mdb, .accdb, .jpeg .png .psd .gif .mp3

You are not limited by just 2, you can search for 3 or more file types if you want and you can mix file types if you want, so if you want to search for a combination of .jpeg images and Word documents, you can do that too.

In the above screenshot, you can see that I am searching for different file types, which include Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets and Access databases.

When typing in the Boolean operator, you must remember to capitalize the OR. If you use a common ‘or’ you will not get any results. Also remember to add the ext: then the file extension “ext:.jpeg” when entering the query.

It takes a little practice, but it can a definitely boost to your search operations and make you more productive. For a list of other search syntaxes, check out the following article from the Windows Team Blog.

How to Search For Multiple File Types in Windows 7 (Quick Tip) is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.

The biggest determining factor for most notebook shoppers is price. With a new natural language processing feature, Bing is now able to understand how much you want to pay for a notebook and show you a collection of notebooks and laptops in your price range. The new feature is easy to use, and yields a collection of useful results, showing you the best price on each notebook it finds from a wide array of retailers.

To find a notebook in your budget on Bing Shopping, just search for “Notebooks under $500“, “Notebooks Under $1000” or whatever price you want to see. You can sort your results by price, consumer ratings or expert ratings and you can even narrow by brand by searching for “HP Notebooks Under $500“.

This feature also works in the Bing for Mobile app so you’ll be able to pull up “Notebooks under $700″ on your phone while you are looking around at Best Buy, for a wider comparison.

The search isn’t perfect yet and you’ll find some notebook parts or accessories mixed in for some searches, but it is still an easy way to look for a notebook that fit’s your price range. The Natural language processing keys in on the price part of your query and can also be used to search for other gadgets or items in your price range.

We had good luck searching for Laptop bags under a certain price as well as looking for monitors and other notebook accessories that we could afford.

Learn more about how Bing uses natural language processing to figure out what you want at the Bing Shopping Blog.

Find a Notebook or Laptop in Your Price Range with Bing Shopping is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Many of us rely on Google search results to find the answers to dozens of questions every day, but sometimes the answers are as puzzling as Watson’s answer on Jeopardy! If you find that your top Google Search results commonly link to a website that doesn’t provide an answer, you can block that website from your search results with a browser extension.

Currently the Personal BlockList extension is only available on Google’s Chrome Browser. Chrome is a free browser that offers syncing of options and bookmarks between computers and much more. If you don’t have Chrome installed you will need to download and install if before proceeding.

Step 1: Install the Chrome Personal Blocklist extension by clicking on the link and then clicking Install.

Step 2: After installing the extension, do a search on Google and look at the  search results. You should see a small text link that will allow you to block specific websites as shown in the image below.

Step 3: After you click the Block Link your future searches will no longer show results from those websites. You can click on the Personal BlockList logo in the upper right of your browser to edit or remove blocks as shown below.

Step 4: If you temporarily want to see blocked results you can scroll to the bottom of the search page and click show as highlighted in the image below.

Over time you will remove the sites from your search results and improve the speed of finding what you want with Google.

How to Use a Personal Blocklist to Clean up Your Google Search Results is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Whiteboards are great because they draw us to them for idea sharing. But they are fairly limited in size and location and can be erased, losing all of your info, by the brush of a cloth. Enter IdeaPaint and Evernote.

IdeaPaint is a whiteboard paint that with a single coat can transform a wall, desk or hard surface into a whiteboard and Evernote can store the pictures you take of that wall and make the text searchable so that you never lose that great idea.

IdeaPaint is pretty pricey at $175 for 50 square feet of coverage, but you do get a 50 square foot whiteboard wherever you want, and right now if you purchase 50 square feet you get 3 months of Evernote Premium.

This video shows how you can get your ideas from your IdeaPaint whiteboard, or any whiteboard, into Evernote with your smartphone or a digital camera.

If you are interested in IdeaPaint, head over to the Evernote blog for your chance to win an iPad with an IdeaPaint back for real iPad inking and the chance to also win one of 10 50 square foot IdeaPaint bundles! You can enter on Twitter or with a comment at Evernote or IdeaPad.

IdeaPaint and Evernote Partner for WhiteBoards that Never Forget is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s own Big Think event for search in San Francisco, California, rival Google has released the results of its own sting operations which may cast a shadow on Microsoft’s efforts in the search space. According to search giant Google, Microsoft’s Bing search has been copying Google’s search results, which Google is claiming as cheating.

Details of the operations are explained in-depth at Search Engine Land, but essentially Google has been monitoring Bing search results and found that their Redmond, Washington-based rival was returning an unusually high number of similar sites as Google for incorrectly spelled search terms.

In the example that was presented at Search Engine Land, a user types in ‘torsoraphy,’ which is a mis-spelled word. Google’s search results shows that ‘tarsorrhaphy’ was the intended word and displays results for the correctly spelled word, displaying a Wikipedia entry for the correct spelling as the top search result.

On the other hand, Bing just displays results for the correctly spelled word without showing the spelling correction, and the same Wikipedia entry, sending red flags to Google’s search engineers.

Across a wide range of searches, Bing was showing a much greater overlap with Google’s top 10 results than in preceding months. In addition, there was an increase in the percentage of times both Google and Bing listed exactly the same page in the number one spot.

By no means did Bing have exactly the same search results as Google. There were plenty of queries where the listings had major differences. However, the increases were indicative that Bing had made some change to its search algorithm which was causing its results to be more Google-like.

Google thought Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser was part of the equation. Somehow, IE users might have been sending back data of what they were doing on Google to Bing. In particular, Google told me it suspected either the Suggested Sites feature in IE or the Bing toolbar might be doing this.

To see if its claims were valid, Google had set up a Sting operation, which essentially involved setting up a one-time code, which would be removed. The code would force search results that had little or no relevance to certain key words–mainly irrelevant gibberish–when searched. If those same results were to appear in Bing later, Microsoft would have its hand caught in the cookie jar:

To verify its suspicions, Google set up a sting operation. For the first time in its history, Google crafted one-time code that would allow it to manually rank a page for a certain term (code that will soon be removed, as described further below). It then created about 100 of what it calls “synthetic” searches, queries that few people, if anyone, would ever enter into Google.

These searches returned no matches on Google or Bing — or a tiny number of poor quality matches, in a few cases — before the experiment went live. With the code enabled, Google placed a honeypot page to show up at the top of each synthetic search.

The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there. There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches. If they started to appeared at Bing after Google, that would mean that Bing took Google’s bait and copied its results.

The results began appearing on Bing in late December, suggesting that Microsoft had been mimicking Google in the search space.

Though Bing may be using user activity at Google to help improve its search results and algorithms, there are enough differences between the results of the two search engines that suggests that Microsoft may be incorporating other factors into results:

Google’s test suggests that when Bing has many of the traditional signals, as is likely for popular search topics, it relies mostly on those. But in cases where Bing has fewer trustworthy signals, such as “long tail” searches that bring up fewer matches, then Bing might lean more on how Google ranks pages for those searches.

For now, though, Microsoft reps are flatly denying copying Google. Google’s sting operation in the search space is an interesting read and you should head to Search Engine Land to learn more.

Via: Gizmodo

Google’s Bing Sting Operation Has Microsoft Stung is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Notebooks.com.

Today Google announced Google Instant, no they haven’t entered the instant coffee business, but if you go to Google.com and perform a search you’ll now see the search results unfold instantly in front of you – changing as you type.

The new Google Instant search function displays the search results, and suggestions, as you type which allows you to change your search instantly based on what has been presented and according to Google will save 2-5 seconds per search; even more for the individuals that Google has observed taking 30-90 seconds to type a search query!

Google Instant is live right now, though you’ll need to visit the Google homepage to experience Google Instant to try it out. At the announcement in response to a question from Robert Scoble, a Google employee said that we can expect similar technology to come to the search bar in our browsers within a few months. Google will also be rolling out a mobile version of Google Instant in the coming months.

Image Via ReadWriteWeb

“How do I turn off Google Instant?” you may ask. Well, there is a simple switch to turn it off on the right hand side of your search box.

According to Google, the new Instant search will not affect how website’s are ranked by the search engine. That said, as user can instantly change their search terms to find what they are really looking for we wouldn’t be surprised to see more users finding what they want faster, and hopefully reaching higher quality websites.

More on Google Instant in the video below and full live coverage from ReadWriteWeb.

Google Instant Search — Your Searches Now Faster and Smarter is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Searching with Google is simple, but searching a single site requires either that the site include a search box or the user remembering a special search command. For example to search Notebooks.com for the words Google Search” you would type the following:

site:notebooks.com google search

That is simple enough, but for some reason I can never seem to remember if you put the site:notebooks.com first or last. Now Google is trying to make this even simpler. Now all you have to do is put the word at” and the site name after your search string like the following:

google search at notebooks.com

You will notice that when doing the search the two different ways it does not produce the same results. See the below the first image is using the old way putting site:notebooks.com before the string.

The image below is using the new method of putting at notebooks.com after the search.

If you compare the two you will see that the new method really doesn’t work that well. It includes too many other sites because it doesn’t seem to recognize notebooks.com as a web site but just another search string. In my tests it works fine with very well-known sites like Microsoft.com or hp.com. But unless the site is one of the extremely large web sites, it doesn’t seem to recognize the website name. I even tried entering the http://www part of the address and that didn’t even work. So until this works better, you will still have to remember the site:notebooks.com method.

Here are two more examples that show this new search method is of limited value.

As you can see I searched for my favorite football team the Green Bay Packers at NFL, as in http://www.nfl.com. Only a few of the top results are at that site.

Here is a search for Apple iPad at Amazon, as in http://www.amazon.com.

Again, there are only a couple of hits that are actually at the Amazon web site.

This shows it is still best to use the site:www.yourdomain.com string before your search string to find things at that site consistently.

Google’s New Site Specific Search String Not Really Working is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Milo.com has always been a great way to find an iPad at a local store but a new feature launched this morning makes it an even better tool for finding an iPad, or any other gadget, at a local store — in stock email alerts.

The new tool is called Milo.com In Stock alerts and this service checks the stock of over 3 million items at a wide array of stores about every 10 minutes and sends an alert when your local store has the item you’re looking for. In this case, instead of calling or driving to a bunch of stores, I simply signed up to be alerted when my local Best Buy had an iPad in stock and received the following email.

To use the tool, search Milo.com or an item and if it is not in stock you will see a small button to click to sign up for in-stock alerts. Click this and enter your email address. That’s all, no calling the store every 30 minutes or running around town. You just have to wait for an email letting you know it that your local store has an iPad in stock.

The tool is free to use and you don’t need to sign up for service. Simply visit Milo.com, search for the specific iPad you want and if it is out of stock enter your email address. Soon Milo.com will also offer text message alerts. You can also use Milo.com to find other gadgets, games and items in stock at local stores. If you visit Milo.com you can check the stock and pricing on your mobile phone and there will soon be apps for the iPhone and Android devices.

Milo.com Alerts You When Your Local Store Has an iPad in Stock is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Taking a cue from Bing, Google has just made what might seem like a minor change to their basic search page. When you think about it, the change is actually a significant difference. And I think it is a good one.

For as long as Google has been around, they have presented a simple mostly white search site. The philosophy seemed to be “less is more” with Google. But when Microsoft introduced Bing, they also had a very simple search page but presented some very beautiful images as backgrounds. Now Google is doing the same as you can see from the screen capture below.

Is Bing having an effect on Google? Seems like it. Google doesn’t have the popup hotspots that give info about the image like Bing. If they add the feature then you will know for sure that Google is paying attention to the competition. Now that Bing has nearly 10 percent of the search market in the US, it seems like a good idea for Google to keep tabs on them.

Bing doesn’t have one thing Google’s search background does. With Google you can customize the background. In Bing you can just scroll through the most recent default images.

It is hard to see in the above image, but in the lower left corner is a link that says, “Change Background Image”. Click it and a box pops up with many more to choose from.

As you can see form the above screen shot you are not tied to just their chosen images. You can also pick from images on your computer, your Picasa Web Albums, if you have one, and the special Editor’s picks. After you select your new image, if you do not like it, just select “Remove Background Image” from the same area that the “Change Background Image” link was found.

Having a background image showing is apparently temporary. When I tried to find out how to totally remove it for this article I found a link that said the following:

… Google’s homepage has a series of photos on it to celebrate our new Change background image link. Please be assured these images will only be displayed today, and the homepage will return to its regular white background tomorrow.

So starting tomorrow, if you like the new background image feature, you can turn it on. But it seems that it will be off by default. If you can’t wait till tomorrow, and want to change to a single color which may be less distracting, follow these instructions:

1. Click the Add background image link in the Google homepage’s lower-left corner

2. Sign in to your Google Account (if you aren’t already signed in)

3. Select Editor’s picks

4. Scroll to the bottom of the list and choose your favorite color

5. Click Select

Doing this will change the print on the Google home page to white so that it shows up on the new background color. So pick a color that will display white text well.

I personally welcome the change. I really like the images offered and may upload one of my own. Until I do, here is the one I picked from the Editor’s Picks list.

Which one do you like the best? Will you turn it on or stay with the default white background when it returns tomorrow?

Google Introduces Customizable Background Images on Home Page is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

At the Microsoft Keynote Steve Balmer, who opened with “We Bing, We Bing!”, announced a partnership with HP that will make Bing the default search engine on all HP computers as well as additional partnerships to show Microsoft pages as the default home page on new HP computer purchases.

While users will be free to change the home screen and search engine away from Bing this partnership will put Bing in front of more users; many who won’t ever change those default settings. There’s no doubt that the partnership will lead to more market share for Bing as these new computers penetrate the market; especially since the new partnership includes business machines which may not give users the ability to change.

Most of the Notebooks.com crew prefers Google Search over Bing, with my dissenting vote for Bing’s shopping site which offers cashback and decent research capabilities for making a purchase.

Bing is the New Default Search Engine on HP Computers is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.