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 […]
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 […]
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.
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. 😂
Five Ways Google Could Improve Search In 2025 That Have Nothing To Do With AI
You might have read that Google is planning to go hard on AI in 2025. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. Google doubling down on AI tech while its search results get less and less useful is frustrating. More frustrating is the fact that there are ALL KINDS of things Google could do to […]
Web Search Where AI Is The Condiment And Not the Main Course
One of the reasons I’m not a big fan of AI search is that it doesn’t seem granular enough to me. That is to say, there’s not a lot of back-and-forth, patron interview type stuff so the AI is left to do a substantial amount of heavy lifting in the form of inferring all the […]
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 […]
Wikipedia Articles As Containers Holding Intra-Wiki Link Elements: Turning Those Into Search Queries
My thinking about Web search and making the most useful query possible has focused a lot recently on the idea of query-as-cloud-of-topics; instead of thinking about George Washington as a singular search terms you might think of him as a structure encompassing every possible way you can contextually describe George Washington – dentures, cherry trees, […]