Getting to google - the smart-arse way!

Impress your friends and intimidate your enemies! Yes, we all know that to get to just about any popular website you can just type 'google' or 'nytimes' or whatever your site is called into your mozilla browser and POOF! there it appears. No need even to type in a www. or a .com or a .com.au any more. Magic stuff.

However, have you ever noticed after typing in a page name like 'google', at the bottom of the browser a set of 4 numbers and an address quickly flicker and disappear? (if you don't have a bar at the bottom go to 'View' and tick 'Status Bar'). What's happening is that your browser is querying your Domain Name System Server (usually one of your Internet provider's super-powerful computers) and is asking it 'WTF does 'google' mean? I spreken ze numbers, not ze english!' Because every computer on the Internet is identified by an Internet Protocol address - a set of 4 numbers between 1 & 255 separated by a dot - trying to find out and then remember what all your favourite sites' IP addresses are would be a NIGHTMARE. So your DNS server does the work for you and has a database that resolves words like 'google' to the IP address 66.102.11.104 - which is the super-humungus computer where the google web page is kept.

So, you can just be like everyone else and take the easy way and just type in 'google' or 'nymag', but if you REALLY want to show off, try to memorise (or write on your hand) just one or two IP addresses of your favourite sites, and then when EVERYONE is looking, type the numbers into your browser instead of the name and POOF! your page appears!

Here's a couple of my favourite sites:
New York Times - nytimes - 170.149.173.130
New York Magazine - nymag - 64.193.120.126
Michi Girl - michigirl - 70.32.76.41
Delicious - delicious - 76.13.6.175

To find our your favourite site's IP address, go to Start and search for 'cmd' or the Command Prompt program. Type in 'nslookup', leave a space, then type in your favourite site e.g. www.google.com. Press Enter. You'll get 2 addresses - one is of your address, and the second is your site's address.

Easy as pie, and you look cool and clever infront of the school's gorgeous vice-captain...

Sayonara! ^_^