I've recently started using the google book search engine, and have had a suprising amount of success in the India part of my family. My ancestors were British but lived in India in the 1800's and several generations were born there.
Through google books I have found birth announcements, discovered one of them was a scientist, another a barrister and had submitted stuff to law journals, death and marriage announcements. I also found a repatriation request.
Sometimes I get lucky and can view the full text, other times I get to see a snippet of what has been written, such as in the case of a Connor ancestor, I typed in Connor Poona and found Connor EJ who had corresponded with Darwin of all people.
I have found my gt gt grandmothers birth announced in a paper in India.
My advice though is be flexible with your searches, so I was looking for an Archimedes Connor and I found entries under different search options, e.g. I typed Archimedes Connor and got some results then reversed it to Connor, Archimedes then Connor AWGJ and A W G J Connor, i even typed Connor Poona which was the part of India they were located in. It is worth a try. I found about 15 entries relating to him alone and have probably had about 100 hits to do with 20 or so family members out there. Even snippets of information have proved useful.
I also had some success with Singapore and my ancestors out there.
