With the year 2013 ebbing fast you have hopefully enjoyed the past year and filled up on new knowledge at SeniorNet Kapiti as well as had some fun with fellow students on one of many sessions run during the year.

2014 promises to be not just more of the same, as with more topics being added to the learning list and tweaking and updating of existing courses and workshops to ensure best possible outcome for our members SeniorNet Kapiti frankly expects

to be run off their feet with new and returning students.

The headline above will be familiar to Douglas Adams fans, but if you do not know the answer then all you have to do is Google it. Enter the sentence in lower case letters on Google search and it will tell you the answer.

Normally Google search for pages that contain the full content of the search box entry, but sometimes you may want it to search for several of the words separately. To do that you simply put the  line ‘|’ between the words, e.g. ‘dumb|luck’ if you want answers to both. You can also write ‘dumb or luck’ for similar effect.

Using quotation marks around the words will have Google search for the exact phrase and if you just want pages containing ‘Luck’ then you write ‘-dumb luck’, i.e. place a minus sign in front of ‘dumb’.

A common usage is the asterisk * for wild card if you have forgotten the full wording of a saying, e.g ‘money is the * of all evil’, and if you are seeking a definition for something then enter ‘define:xxxx’ for a long list of definitions of the word with links.

Windows has a calculator built-in that will also make many conversions of commonly used measurements and Google can do that even faster for equations and graphing polynomials, just enter the equation in the search box.

Maybe you just want to find the most sought after video for 2013 or the best book between 2005 and 2012 then enter ‘best books 2005..2012’, note you need two full stops between the numbers.

You can search for a particular name or item on a particular website, e.g. ‘site:kapiti.seniornet.co.nz barry’ and Google will list the pages containing the name.

Staying with a more localised search you may want to know which films are playing in Paraparaumu or Waikanae or Otaki so just enter e.g. ‘movies Waikanae’ and you will see Shoreline Cinema coming up. Try also ‘Italian food Paraparaumu’ for local eateries offering Mediterranean cuisine, or if your clock has stopped enter ‘current time Otaki’ for the local time.

These are just some of the many uses for Google search and not forgetting searching for that headline phrase or any other phrase. Have fun, use the many attributes available to you via your computer or computing device, and let 2014 be a stepping stone to a fulfilling year for you and yours.