PostPoints tip: Search for obscurities

Having trouble finding something that you just know is somewhere out on the Web? Rethink your search: Instead of typing in a query that completely describes what you want, try searching for one or two unusual words that you're pretty sure would be found in that document but not in most other ones. Say, for example, you're looking for a story I might have written about how to copy songs from an iPod back to a computer. "Copy from iPod Washington Post" doesn't yield the desired link until several results down, but "copy from iPod Pegoraro" works much better. (Of course, it helps if you're looking for articles by somebody with a last name that's relatively unusual in English-language media. I like to think of this as overdue compensation for all the times substitute teachers in grade school struggled with the pronunciation of my last name.)