It seems like all great tricks and tips that make people exclaim "STOP! How did you do that?" never make it into any manual (at least where I can find them).

My father (and co-author of "Turn Words Into Traffic") calls it "reverse oral tradition" of computing, where children teach parents survival skills of PC life.

Well, if you want to look good to your kids or buddies around water cooler, check out following cool web tricks.

~^~ Cool Google Tricks ~^~

Virtually everyone knows that Google.com ranks at top of most people's search engine lists, but it does a lot more than just tell you where to find vitamins or information on George Washington's wooden teeth!

Need a map to a specific location?

Type in address, city and state of virtually any location in US, hit search button, and Google serves up several different map providers across Web.

Want to know what software application a certain file goes with on your computer?

Input file name into Google's search box and a number of reference sites will help you know exactly what purpose a file serves.

I actually used this to feature to identify a piece of "spyware" lurking on my computer.

Want to know who's calling you on phone in US?

You can just input phone number on your caller ID or cell phone display into Google search box and get information on listed numbers before your answering machine can even pick up!

Log on to http://www.google.com/help/features.html for more cool search features that harness search power of Google.

I recently bought a new computer. Mine was getting old, had lost its whistle, and few remaining bells didn't ding a nicely as they had in past. Yep, it was time for a new state-of-the art dream machine with CD burner, DVD player, a bazillion gigabyte drive and more RAM than Rambo has. I whipped out my trusty credit card and told my local CompUSA to ring it up.

Well, needless to say I was enthralled. Blazing speed, working whistles, and bells that were more like Big Ben gong! I could tear through spreadsheets with one CD-ROM tied behind my back. One day, about three months later, my Son came home from college. Having heard all about my new pride and joy, he sat down behind keyboard and fired that puppy up. He put it through its paces for about 30 minutes and then turned and said 'It's nice Dad, but I thought it would be faster'. HE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FASTER? What was he, crazy? This box was so hot that it came with it's own fire department.

Then he started poking around hard drive. 'Dad', he said, 'You need an exterminator. Your PC is infested.' 'Infested with what, bugs?'. 'Nope', he said 'Spyware'. 'Spy What?'. 'Spyware', he replied. And then he explained.

Even thought I had a good virus prevention utility installed, it didn't protect me against Spyware. Spyware, it seeks, are nasty little programs that get downloaded in similar fashion to way a virus does. It can be attached to an email, or even one of those new talking E-Cards. it can hide in one of those 'Click Here to close this window' boxes, or in any of seemingly a hundred other secret ways.