I was staring in frustration at the search results when I thought, “I wish I had some way of marking which of these results are useful and which aren’t, and then have an AI analyze the different sets for language use and give me suggestions for how I can revise my search to get more useful stuff and less crap.” Then I thought, “Oh damn, that sounds like a good idea, I should make that.” So I did.
Analyze Overlapping Public Interest Via Wikipedia With Attention Junction
Attention Junction, what’s your function? To analyze the views of two Wikipedia pages, identify spans of public interest, find overlaps, and turn them into Google / Google News searches. All while being free to use and free of ads. Let me show you how it works.
Local Search America: Search the Web by DMA
Today I finished creating Local Search America, a new way to create specific search spaces for authoritative institutions in American DMAs. Enter a city/state. LSA identifies television stations and government agencies which serve that area as well as institutions of higher education in that area. Up to 25 of those sites can be bundled into a Google search (using Google’s site: operator.)
Introducing MiniGladys for Fast Wikipedia-Based Search and Research
As you might imagine, I do a lot of web search in the course of my day. Often these queries are quick reference lookups; I need to find a company’s social media, for example, or I want to see how to spell someone’s name. Unfortunately these kinds of searches on Google are being met more […]
Using Google Books for Web Search: Concept Compassing
I’ve been spending my weekend playing with how Google Books could guide Web search after someone asked me about #3 in Five Ways Google Could Improve Search In 2025 That Have Nothing To Do With AI. How could Google Books make search better? I had some ideas and I applied JavaScript to them. After a few days of doodling around I’m at that point where I’ve got something that works so well I keep falling down rabbit holes playing with it. 😂
Goofing Around With YouTube’s API (and Throwing In a Little AI)
I discovered the YouTube API this week and I’ve been using it to take out all my frustrations at YouTube’s terrible search offerings. I don’t know mobile, maybe it’s great on mobile, but YouTube’s search is balls on desktop. First I made a new channel search. Then, a video search. THEN, because I wanted a […]
SearchTweaks.com Updated
I’m getting everything ready for my APRA Wisconsin presentation on Wednesday, where I’ll be discussing how to use three of my web sites — SearchTweaks.com, WikiTwister.com, and MegaGladys.com . To that end I spent this morning updating SearchTweaks, changing some things around and killing some bugs. Unfortunately the local news search is going to stay […]
US Local News Search, Now With TV Stations, Newspapers, *and* NPR Member Stations
I’m still working to add new sources to the United States Local News Search ( https://searchtweaks.com/lns/ ). It started with just TV stations and then I added newspapers. I’ve now added a third source: NPR member stations. In addition, I’ve done some cleaning and polishing and the program’s easier to use. US Local News Search […]
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 […]
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 […]