You may be surprised to learn that ‘Google’ is a name with quite a history. ‘Barney Google’ appeared in American comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck back in 1919.
British children’s author Enid Blyton used several ‘google’ phrases and even a Google Clown character in the 1940s. Douglas Adams’ famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had a Googleplex Star Thinker.
There is also another, mathematical strand to the name that comes from the word googol, a word coined in 1920 to represent the unimaginably huge number 10100 – which is mathematical shorthand for a number 1 followed by 100 zeros!
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin had created the first examples of their internet search engine in 1996 it was initially called BackRub, but with their aim to organise the already vast amount of information on the world wide web (‘www’) and knowing the googol term, they decided to rename their creation Google in 1998.
Since then, it has become a common word across the globe and ‘google it’ has even entered dictionaries. So, how can Clarborough and Welham IT Group help you to google it?
Their previous programmes have explored some of the basic Google search facilities such as Filters (images, news, videos, etc), Operators (such as inverted commas, plus and minus signs) and more recent Google facilities such as Translate. Google Translate can not only provide a quick translation of some words that you enter but also translation of whole documents that you upload to the facility. This facility will work across more than 100 languages and can translate between any!
Got some photos but can’t remember what or where they were taken? Once Google Image is activated you simply drop a photo onto the search window and you get a raft of links to web pages showing similar images. Clicking on any of these takes you to the web page concerned which may well include the information you are seeking! All these Google facilities are free.
Clarborough and Welham IT Group aims to run classes on these topics after Easter at Clarborough Village Hall, DN22 9LN on Saturday afternoons between 2.00pm and 3.30pm. The cost is just £30.00 for all five sessions. Bring your own device or borrow one of the group’s laptops.
Contact Greg on 01777 700918 or email clarboroughwelham@gmail.com to enrol or for more information.