I’ve invented a game called “Find The Most Unhinged Google Alert”. This is a challenge to discover the phrase that will get you the craziest news stories from your monitoring service of choice. The rules are simple: no proper names, no topics, nothing particularly targeted. A generic phrase descriptive of the most possible chaos, as […]
Local News America Gets Faster Search and Smushed Bugs
Local News America aggregates the RSS feeds of over 1000 local news sources and makes them searchable by keyword and/or browsable by state with links back to the original content. I’ve smushed some bugs and made the search faster.
Adding Two New Tools to SearchTweaks.com
I don’t know about y’all but I am having my usual wild Friday night working on my search tools. I’ve just added two new tools to SearchTweaks.com; if you do any local news searching I think you’ll really like at least one of them. Like all of the site they are free to use and free of ads.
Super Edu Search, Powered By Diffbot
Let me tell you about a search tool of mine I just upgraded using Diffbot’s new Web API. It’s an upgraded version of Super Edu Search that I’m calling Super Edu Search Powered by Diffbot. I bet you have added site:edu to a Google search at some point. It’s an easy way to instantly elevate […]
Upgrading BlogHiking.com: More Results, Site Muting
WordPress blog explorer Blog Hiking has been upgraded with more results and a couple of new features.
Three Search Alternatives to Google’s Brave New AI World
Google has made what I consider to be the terrible decision to go all-in on AI in search and there’s little I can do personally against that decision. Still, I can make alternatives. I can express my ideas in tools that I share with you. I can at least try to hold space for the idea that there are ways to perform queries and create search spaces that Silicon Valley does not offer, and maybe those ways are worth your time (they’re certainly worth mine.) Here are three search tools you might want to try in place of Google’s turn to AI. They are all free and ad-free.
Local Search America Adds Local News Feed, Articles From 1K+ Sources Around the US
Local Search America has a new tool! Local News Feed gathers RSS feed items from 1003 local news sources across the US and aggregates them into one state-browsable, keyword-searchable bundle with associated topic pages.
Upgrading Wikipedia Seismograph
Using Wikipedia Seismograph’s new zoom feature means you can explore over nine years’ worth of public interest data in any Wikipedia topic with one chart and easily turn it into date-bounded Google News searches.
The Calishat Jams of 2025: All Free, All Ad-Free
In 2025 I made 13 new tools for better search and content curation, using Google, Wikipedia, RSS, WordPress, and more. They’re all free and ad-free.
Exploring WordPress Blogs As A Series of Trails: BlogHiking.com
I wanted to search WordPress and find blogs that were more heavily covering the content I was interested in. I wanted to find a way to generate possibly-related keywords so I could build additional searches off the first one. The search offered at WordPress.com did not have all the features I was looking for, so I made my own and wrapped in a hiking metaphor. #WordPress #blogs #OSINT