How you can use the Google Search?

One of the things that find most attractive about Google is that they know how to add some flavor to what they do daily, making it fun for them and their users. From my perspective one of the best examples are the famous Doodles. However, something as trivial as the basic search is by no means the exception.

I take the chance to share you here some useful and unexpected ways in which you can use the search engine. Something that calls the attention is that at least in a superficial manner these features don't seem to be documented in Google's support pages (if you know this is wrong, please share the information!). Which from my point of view adds even more interest to the matter.

Some of them are well known, others are less known and they are mentioned in other blogs and websites. If you know any that is not listed here, please tell us about it so we can update this article.

1. World Time: If you want to know the current hour in any place of the world, just enter "time" followed by the name of the Country or the City. If the country has different time zones, the search will return the hours in all its different regions. It is excellent if you want to be sure about the time differences between your location and someplace else.

2. Weather: You can also get up to date weather information for a place by entering Weather followed by the name of your place of interest.

3. Calculator: Search has built in a calc function. You just need to add the formula that you wish to resolve. As a matter of fact I found that lately not only the operation is solved, but the feature was enhanced to show a fully functional calculator. Similar to the one available in the operating systems.

4. Package Tracking: You can track your packages shipped with USPS, UPS or Fedex. you just need to enter the tracking code and voilá!

5. Exchange Rate: Search has also a built in function to calculate money conversions. You just need to enter the amount and currency you want to convert followed by the currency you want it converted to. Result shows the conversion according to the current exchange rate.

6. Metric Conversions: You can convert several different types of measures like height, weight, volume, etc.

7. Stock Exchange Information: Once you enter the ticker of a company publicly traded, a graph showing the behavior of the stock, as well as relevant financial metrics will be shown. Including of course the price at any given time.

8. Sports Results: When you enter names of sports teams you will get a table summarizing the last games and scores of the team. As long as I tried not every league nor division shows up. Surprisingly enough NBA results are not shown either.

9. Graphing Functions: Probably this is one of the coolest features and that also has improved recently, adding excellent visual effects (graphing capabilities, strictly speaking).

10. Flight Schedules: I found this one a few days after I originally made this post. If you enter a flight number (try for example DL 414), you will get all flight details for its upcoming departure or arrival.