A friend asked me tonight if I knew where to find the oom paa paa song from the Matrix spoof, Computer Boy. I had never heard the song, or seen the short film, but started looking anyhow.

I found the MP3 and dropped it into the IM window to transfer the file to my friend. I also found the MOV file and grabbed that for myself, out of curiosity. On a side note, it's pretty fun(ny) to watch.

"How did you find it?" my friend asked. "Google," I said. "Where one finds everything."

He LOL'ed (gotta love all this IM-speak) and then asked me to send him my search string so he could learn. Now that's the right question to ask. Ahhhh, grasshoppa... you are learning...

It's a very simple search, barely more than a basic search - and really it's all about being specific, but for some reason, there are many people who don't know how to do that. Everyone should learn to search and to do it well. Being able to find things on the Internet used to be a nice skill to have, but how it's becoming more and more of a necessity. It's always surprising to me how few people really know how to search using Google or other search tools to find relevant information, especially when you consider you can learn the basics (and then some) in about 5 minutes. Spend an hour learning some more advanced skills and you'll practically be a pro.

Google even has a help page where you can learn about the basics and some more advanced search tricks. And there are any number of third-party articles out there that will help you learn power searching, like this one (See parts one, two and three). Unfortunately, most of the tutorials out there are on poorly formatted web pages with lots of other junk piled on the page, but content is content.

Do you have good places to learn about becoming a search engine power-user? Leave a link in the comments.