I’ve been following the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni situation. Lately it’s strayed into PR / crisis management. One of the commentary channels I listen to mentioned today that celebrities might put out tons of stories and puff pieces to “push down” less-flattering results in Google searches. But that won’t work with Wikipedia Seismograph! WS […]
What’s Going on With Dick York’s Wikipedia Page?
Wikipedia Hot Topics has handed me a mystery. The site takes one of Wikipedia’s daily top 1000 article lists and reorganizes it by recent increases in page views (as opposed to overall page views). The reordered list provides an overview from Wikipedia, page view information, links to date-bounded Google News searches for the page’s most-visited […]
VibesMasto Gets an Overhaul and a Web Version
Saturday I dug out the VibesMasto News Monitor so I could monitor news about the protests around the country. It was very useful but it also made me cringe. I first made this tool about two years ago when I knew a lot less about JavaScript, and its code is CRUSTY. Uncrusting it became yesterday’s […]
Monitoring Protest Hashtags With VibesMasto
Can’t go to the protests today but you still want to know what’s going on? Check out this tool I made to monitor hashtags at the larger Mastodon instances and aggregate them into a browser tab that refreshes automatically. I set it up because I have a tiny instance and our news flow isn’t great. […]
“Protest” as a Wikipedia Topic for Public Interest
After the protests this weekend, I wondered if there had been a surge in public interest in the general Wikipedia topic of “protest.” So I plugged it into Wikipedia Seismograph to find out. Oh yes, there absolutely was. This also gave me a chance to test Wikipedia Attention Surfer to see what other topics were […]
Grouping Concepts Temporally Instead of Topically, Using Wikipedia Data
There’s been so much talk about “vibes” in programming lately that it gave me an idea for a Wikipedia tool. If you accept the idea that Wikipedia page view data can be used as “fossilized attention” (indicators of public interest in a topic) then you can use information extracted from page view data — like […]
Video: How to Use US Local News Search
If you’ve got two minutes and seventeen seconds to spare, I can teach you how to use the US Local News Search. Enter in a city and state and discover the TV stations which serve that city as well as the newspapers and NPR stations which serve the state. Select up to 25 sources from […]
SearchTweaks.com Updated – 16 Free Tools for Better Web Search
I learned so much overhauling WikiTwister that I immediately came up with several ideas for improving SearchTweaks, my collection of 16 web-based tools for making your web search better/easier/more interesting. After a very busy few days I have uploaded the new version and I’m delighted to share it with you. SearchTweaks is free to use […]
A 3-Minute Video on How to Use Wikipedia Seismograph
EDIT: Someone asked me if this video is on YouTube. It is, right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8XxxvQ6alY . I wanted to make sure I provided it in a format that didn’t automatically come with advertising, which is why I didn’t share that link first. I have a phobia about doing videos because I have a goofy voice […]
Expanding Wikipedia Seismograph Into a Related Concept Explorer
Before, Wikipedia Seismograph used Wikipedia page view spikes to create date-bounded Google News searches, but I added in a bunch of different APIs and functionality. Now it’s a concept-exploring machine and I’ve barely gotten started adding stuff to it.