I really am trying to not get distracted by the Mojeek API, but people keep saying how bad Web search is right now, and the more they say that the more I think of other options. I very much like the way Mojeek offers the ability to “focus” your search by limiting it to a […]
“Barbie’s Dream Google Alerts”
I’ve spent today, around my visit to Granny, making “Barbie’s Dream Alerts” with Google Apps Script and a Google Sheet. 😂 (No, I’m not going to call them that. I’m going to call them Calishat Snaps.) There’s some functionality I’ve always missed in Google Alerts that I decided I wanted in my version, so my […]
Mojeek Goofery
Over the weekend I got a Google Alert with an ostensibly “new” news story that was actually from 2010, so I’ve moved “find a substitute for Google Alerts” to the top of my to-do list. I already have a news API I like okay, but that won’t monitor new Web pages for me — for […]
Gossip Machine As An Information Trap
Hot diggity! I made my first Web monitoring tool! If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while you’ve heard me talk about Gossip Machine. At its core, Gossip Machine analyzes a Wikipedia article’s page views over a given time period and identifies days with unusually high page views. The idea is that audience attention […]
Temporal Topic Explorer
I’ve been spending the afternoon working on my Temporal Topic Explorer, and wow, I think I’m going to be using this a *lot*. I believe in sharing my toys, so if you want to try it too it’s at https://searchtweaks.com/tte/ . TTE takes advantage of dates in URL patterns. Many blogs and news sites publish […]
Perovskite Plain or Solar?
Experiment time! Go do a Web search for ‘hairstyles “totally tubular”.’ Then do another search ‘hairstyles groovy.’ Of course the search results are VERY different in their content, but they do have something in common: they’re oriented to a particular era. The first search will get you lots of mentions of the 1980s in the […]
Concept Lensing
Being uneducated (I rock a GED) makes me constantly aware that my knowledge is extremely limited. This has shaped much of my search thinking. When I approach a certain kind of search problem I assume there is some kind of higher education classification system I’m completely unfamiliar with and some kind of professional vocabulary I […]
Putting AI on a Leash for Search Experiments
I do believe there might be a place for AI in search, but I don’t think it’s as part of a a black box. If I’m going to use AI as part of my search experience I want to see what it’s doing right in front of me. I’ve been messing around a bit making […]
Rewiring Super Edu Search for Stract
Someone on Mastodon gave me a great idea for a search tool, but I’m having to think my way around some CORS issues so it’s stewing in the back of my brain. In the meantime I’m working on integrating the Stract search API with Super Edu Search. I made Super Edu Search because Google’s site: […]
Tinkering With WikiTwister
I’m using the holiday to work on WikiTwister, which is a utility site with tools designed to extract information from Wikipedia. This will be my SIXTH (!) hand-coded Web site this year (what the heck, Calishain.) Every time I make a site I try to make it one step better than the one before. With […]