You can drill down through millions of search results for popular Google search terms by mastering advanced search operators. Enclose phrases and proper names in quotes (as in "Don't tase me bro" or "Michael Phelps") to bring up exact-phrase matches. Use the + and - signs to specify meaning, especially for words that have more than one definition (for example, salsa -dance), and use the filetype: operator to find certain kinds of documents (as with budget filetype:xls).

If you need help figuring out what to have for dinner tonight, you can even search for all the ingredients in your fridge, preceded by the word recipe. Then, take your search chops to your desktop, where you'll find that organizing files in an elaborate folder scheme is no longer necessary. Use Windows Vista's Saved Search folders to build a dynamic store of all the files containing the term "NYC," for instance, or all the digital photos taken on your birthday.

Gmail's built-in e-mail search capabilities are Simply outstanding. Just use the from to and subject: operators to retrieve a specific message you want, as in from:"Bill Gates" subject:"dinner date".