IT Gang - A place for tips and tricks

The first trick I want to speak about is related to Google. Long live Google! Imagine how fun it is to ask Google how to tipGoogle :)

Well, I did that and found some cool tricks. If you're hoping to crash their engine or mess something up...nah, this isn't the case. Instead, you might just find an easier way to do searches or improve your search result.


Trick 1 - Filter your search to find only files that can be downloaded

Enter the following as a search phrase in Google (without the <<>>): <<"intitle:index of" nero>>. So what do you get? Just a list of sites that have the keyword (in our case <>) among their file names. You can use this with any combination of words:

"intitle:index of" bocelli mp3 -> will search for mp3 songs by Andrea Bocelli
"intitle:index of" bud light avi -> you get a lot of Bud Light commercials


Trick 2 - Web cams

Have you ever wanted to spy on people? Well, this is your chance. Ask Google to search for:

inurl:/view/index.shtml

and you will get a list with all the folks out there that have their camera brodcasting on the Internet. Why do they do that? :| ... ask them...


Trick 3 - I'm Feeling lucky

If you're feeling lucky with Google, you might get a lot of fun stuff. Just enter the keywords and press the "I'm feeling lucky" button (instead of the search one):

google l33t
google gothic
google chesse
google easter egg
elgoog
answer to life, the universe and everything else
find Chuck Norris


Trick 4 - THIS IS A REAL SECURITY PROBLEM (please use it cautiously)

“# -FrontPage-” inurl:service.pwd

This search will show you passwords for sites that are not really secured


Trick 5 - Pretend to be Googlebot

Did you ever search for something (most likely a file), and you got the result, but when you tried to access it, you were taken to the login page of that site? So how does Google know about that file? In order to get more traffic and more hits in Google, some sites allow access to their protected zones for the Googlebot (the crawler that "eats" all the keywords from every site). So it seems that if you act as being Googlebot, you should be able to access more resources than usual.

To do just that, open registry editor (Start->Run->regedit *press enter*) and modify this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent

(or you can save the text below in a google.reg file, then double click on it and choose Yes when asked)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
@="Googlebot/2.1"
"Compatible"="+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html"

Now, when you will browse the Internet, all the pages will think you are the Googlebot, so they will allow more access. Have fun.

To put it back as it was, do the same with this code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
@="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"


Trick 6 - Search for PDF or DOC files

Use <> after the keywords you enter and you will get only PDF results for your search:

shackespeare filetype:pdf

Other tricks:

intext:"UAA (MSB)" Lexmark -ext -> shows a list of printers (not sure what to do with them)
inurl:"viewframe?mode=refresh"



Enjoy your Google experience and please place comments if you find other tricks.