Editor’s note: the following article is by new Deep Thought staff member Bryan Withay.

Let’s take a look at a typical day in the Age of Search for both beginner Mac users and advanced power users.
Richard Gere, Hollywood star and a famous Buddhist, powers up his beautiful iBook.  He is in the mood for some relaxing music tonight.

Beginners

iTunes Search:

To hear music you enjoy you must be able to find it first.  Mastery of iTunes’ built-in Search feature is key for this experience.  It is easy to use and very powerful.  In fact, it inspired the design of Spotlight and many of the other modern search tools addressed later in this article.

Once your meditation music collection is loaded and ripped onto your Mac, or you have bought iTunes Music Store songs like Mr. Gere, open iTunes and type anywhere in the white space next to the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner.  That area is for you to enter your search.

Quickly re-read Apple’s well-written help file on iTunes search:

“You can usethe search field to quickly locate songs and other audio files in your library or a playlist.
1.Select where you want to search in the Source list.
Note: You cannot search radio listings, because they are not available until you connect to the Internet and retrieve them.
2.Click in the search field in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window, then type the text you want to find. As you type, iTunes displays the items that contain the text you entered.
3.To search only for artists, composers, albums, or song titles, choose an item from the search field pop-up menu.
The artist, composer (or DJ), album title, and genre fields are searched. The comment field is searched only if its column is visible in the library or playlist.
To see all your music again, delete the text from the search field (or press the Escape key).�

Experienced Users

Searching On Your Mac:

On the hunt for something interesting to read, Mr. Gere types “Buddhistâ€? into Spotlight, Tiger’s new desktop search feature.  Spotlight’s invisible detectives comb over 40,000 different files in a matter of seconds, and have found Cliff Notes on “Siddharthaâ€?, the iTunes Music Store songs he bought of Eastern meditation music, and a Word document listing The Five Precepts of Buddhism, the latter of which he clicks.

The Five Precepts of Buddhism show up on screen.  The document says:

…5. Practice mindfulness.
Practice the precepts in your [relationship], and it will be a happy one*.
That is all you need.

Gere is pleased to again view The Five Precepts, which he got interested in after hearing Steve Jobs studied Zen Buddhism at college during the 60’s.

He is reminded of maintaining a life with mindfulness, but has forgotten the word’s precise meaning.

Since his iBook is running OS 10.4, Tiger, upon Ctrl + Clicking the word “mindfulness�, our actor friend has a number of ways to learn more about the term.

He can choose “Look up in Dictionaryâ€? and the computer’s built-in Oxford American Dictionary will define the word for him.  It’s that easy.  Mr. Gere can do a Spotlight search to see if the term comes up elsewhere on his Mac.  Better yet, while still pressing Ctrl + left-click, he can Google the term directly from the Word document.

Googling:

Safari pops open to Google and Mr. Gere is shown results from over 8 billion web pages.  The term “googlingâ€? is so common that it is now included in newer dictionaries as a legitimate verb.  Besides using Google.com system, “googlingâ€? also means doing other computer searches.

UrbanDictionary.com, a slang dictionary where anyone can contribute, has some interesting takes on what googling is.  Frankie Hollywood writes, googling is:

“1. A way to pass the time at work.

2. A method by which one can surruptiously [sic] stalk the hot chick in accounting who is oblvious [sic] to you existence [sic].

3. How I found a Paris Hilton download.
‘Jetson, your googling will cost you your job’â€? 

Anyway, back to the search results. The successful googling returns the top ten best matches for mindfulness.  Displayed in the top right corner is a link for the definition from an online dictionary.

After browsing for a definition, Richard goes back to the search results, one of which is a book on mindfulness at online store Amazon.com.  By clicking to Amazon.com, he is connected to a web page description of the non-fiction book, “Mindfulnessâ€?.  The description, which is many screens long, includes data on the book’s specifications, and notably, a reviews section.

Search Inside Amazon.com Books:

Search Inside is the result of Amazon.com’s effort to scan in every page of many thousands of titles and translate their texts into computer code.  If a book has been scanned there is a button called Search Inside next to the cover art.  Mr. Gere knows Search Inside on Amazon.com makes previewing some of the many thousand of the books in its library possible from the comfort of home.

When you type “New Yorkâ€? at the search bar at the top of the web page for the book “Mindfulnessâ€?, you will find “New Yorkâ€? on page 14, as a reference to a New York College, and on the back cover as the place the book was printed.  With Search Inside, you can search any book inside out.

Finding Within A Web Page:

Richard Gere adds the book to his Wish List and becomes curious about the book’s author, Ellen J. Langer.  To learn more about her needs, he has chosen to search just within the Amazon.com web page on screen.  Two keystrokes and a few seconds later, Gere has succeeded.  He finds an interesting reference to the author that gives him insight into her writing style and interest in Buddhism.  How?

A Find search is a very useful search method.  In Safari, hit command + F and type in “Ellen J. Langerâ€? without quotes.  When you hit enter, the whole page you are viewing will instantly be scanned and you will automatically be taken to the first appearance of the phrase.  If the result is not to your liking, type command + G to go the next match and add the Shift key to go back to the previous result.

Safari’s freeware cousin, Mozilla Firefox, has a slightly different way of searching---the Find tool is inside a long and wide bar at the bottom of the window.  It has a yellow highlighting option that shows you where the search terms appear.  This option also works on PC’s with Firefox.

If you do not use Safari or Firefox’s Find tools, then the Google website has another alternative for searching within a single web page.  Type in what you are searching for and the results will appear.

When you locate the website, click the pale blue “Cachedâ€? link next to “Similar Pagesâ€? to see all of your search terms appear highlighted.  When you Google multiple words you automatically instruct to highlight using the whole rainbow.

Conclusion:

With little effort, Richard Gere has become a master at searching his songs in iTunes.  Pushing further, he is able to explore all of his Mac with Spotlight without leaving the comfort of his desktop, on to the huge and wild world of the Internet with Google, the knowledge of a book with Amazon.com’s Search Inside, and anything in front of him with Find and Cached. 
Command + F, other commands, and even Spotlight also work in Microsoft Word, the System Preferences panel, and all over your Mac.  Soon you will be zipping along faster because you are relying less on the mouse to find things.  This protects your wrist from discomfort and potential injury and gives you cool geek points.

In all this has been a positive, non-stressful experience.  Mr. Gere has a new book, “Mindfulness,â€? that will help increase his spiritual awareness.

All the credit goes to the power of Search.

p.s. Super-Advanced Searchers

Advanced searchers, try the free software goodie, Sogudi, which integrates searching into the address bar of Safari.  You can search individual websites without going to them using commands like “amazon The Boomer Bibleâ€? or “imdb Richard Gere.â€?

In addition to using individuals Dashboard widgets for each of your favorite websites, Sogudi is the best experience in search.  It is 100% customizable and the most efficient way I or Richard Gere have found to search.