You know I have to be interested in an article about high-powered Google search tricks. Some of these I already know and use--the nifty site:[whatever site or domain you want to search in] is one of my favorite things ever--but there are some others I wasn't aware of.
I didn't know you could do proximity searches, for instance, but apparently you can say wine AROUND(3) clothing to find results where 'wine' shows up within three words of 'clothing'. You probably don't need this all that often, but for certain types of searches it could come in handy. I'll have to remember this.*
LISNews told me about this.
*I'll probably have forgotten it by Monday, but my intentions are good.
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Speaking of Privacy...
And as long as we're on the subject, many of you will probably have received Google's friendly email notice about their new, Google-wide privacy policy, covering all Google sites.
Identity Woman has a review, and is not a big fan. I think she makes a good point:
On the other hand, if you are a person who has online interests that are significantly different from your offline life, or different sorts of online interests that you like to keep separate, it could at the very least be something of a hassle to have everything you do online mashed into one easy-to-access package.
Hm.
Identity Woman has a review, and is not a big fan. I think she makes a good point:
I think in one way she is right the people like her - who went to college and have mainstream white collar jobs are on these fora with their real names...and therefore, it won't be a huge deal to a lot of such people (like me).
On the other hand, if you are a person who has online interests that are significantly different from your offline life, or different sorts of online interests that you like to keep separate, it could at the very least be something of a hassle to have everything you do online mashed into one easy-to-access package.
Hm.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Phenomenal Cosmic Laziness
For lo these many days, I have been impatiently saying to Google Chrome, every time I open a new tab, "no, I do not want Angry Birds!"
I know everyone in the world is playing Angry Birds, and I wish them joy of it, but I find it difficult to get really engaged in a game in which you can't regularly throw fireballs at people.
But Chrome kept recommending it, every single time. There would be this image of some angry birds in a shopping bag on every new tab, just waiting for me to download the game.
There's a "hide this" link to make it go away, but I didn't click it for ever so long because I wondered if Chrome would eventually recommend something else that I might find more intriguing.
Angry Wizards, perhaps.
Finally, giving up, I did say "hide this," and now it just shows me the adorable tiny images of my eight most frequently visited sites that were long Chrome's habitual new-tab fare. They're very helpful.
The crucial point I wish to make here is this: inertia is a powerful, powerful thing.
I have never been inclined to actually download Angry Birds, and all I had to do to make the ad go away was click a link, yet I could not be bothered to do so for...I don't know, I think it's been a couple of weeks.
It's somehow easier to think, every time I open a new tab, "no, I do not want Angry Birds!" than it is to move the mouse an inch and click. Irritable thinking is free! Mouse-moving requires precious, precious effort.
Also, of course, there's my general uneasiness at ruling things out. What if I were to click that link and Angry Birds were to go away and then minutes later I suddenly wanted it?
I would obviously never be able to find it on the internet without that helpful link. There's no way to locate things on the internet! Angry Birds will be lost to me forever!
Just at the point where you start being able to throw fireballs at people!
The mind is a strange place.
I know everyone in the world is playing Angry Birds, and I wish them joy of it, but I find it difficult to get really engaged in a game in which you can't regularly throw fireballs at people.
But Chrome kept recommending it, every single time. There would be this image of some angry birds in a shopping bag on every new tab, just waiting for me to download the game.
There's a "hide this" link to make it go away, but I didn't click it for ever so long because I wondered if Chrome would eventually recommend something else that I might find more intriguing.
Angry Wizards, perhaps.
Finally, giving up, I did say "hide this," and now it just shows me the adorable tiny images of my eight most frequently visited sites that were long Chrome's habitual new-tab fare. They're very helpful.
The crucial point I wish to make here is this: inertia is a powerful, powerful thing.
I have never been inclined to actually download Angry Birds, and all I had to do to make the ad go away was click a link, yet I could not be bothered to do so for...I don't know, I think it's been a couple of weeks.
It's somehow easier to think, every time I open a new tab, "no, I do not want Angry Birds!" than it is to move the mouse an inch and click. Irritable thinking is free! Mouse-moving requires precious, precious effort.
Also, of course, there's my general uneasiness at ruling things out. What if I were to click that link and Angry Birds were to go away and then minutes later I suddenly wanted it?
I would obviously never be able to find it on the internet without that helpful link. There's no way to locate things on the internet! Angry Birds will be lost to me forever!
Just at the point where you start being able to throw fireballs at people!
The mind is a strange place.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Unhealthy Records
The Health Care Blog reports that rumors of Google Health's death may not have been greatly exaggerated. Based on investigations, they concludes that it "has been placed in a cryogenic state until the moribund consumer adoption of such tools comes to life."
Hm. I feel a wide range of complex emotions about this.
No, that's a lie, I only feel a narrow range of simple emotions.
Like: 'hm.' ('Hm' is totally an emotion.) A certain vague disappointment, perhaps. That's about it.
Because I did sign up for a Google Health account, and I even updated it a number of times, and I do like the idea of this sort of online health record, but...I haven't updated it recently (not in several months, I don't think), and it never really jumped up and made itself relevant in my life in any significant way, so saying that I'll actively miss it is kind of overstating things.
I am a bit curious what the Personal Genome Project is going to do, since they asked participants to fill out and link a Google Health record. I suppose they'll find some other way to manage this information.
A Matthew Douglass, commenting on the post, notes that Google Health is not HIPAA compliant, meaning the electronic medical records companies would not be interested in using it to update patients' info, and that "patients simply don’t know their own health information well enough to be able to regurgitate it into an online platform like this."
He argues, correctly it seems to me, that it's not that people don't care about this information, it's just that we don't know enough (and/or can't be bothered, at least speaking for myself) to update the records ourselves. For something like this to really be useful to a significant number of people, it will probably have to be automatically updated.
This all seems eerily familiar, and I just realized that's because I concluded pretty much the same thing the last time I saw The Health Care Blog wonder about the viability of Google Health, just about a year ago.
Clearly, I've been right all along. I knew it!
.
Hm. I feel a wide range of complex emotions about this.
No, that's a lie, I only feel a narrow range of simple emotions.
Like: 'hm.' ('Hm' is totally an emotion.) A certain vague disappointment, perhaps. That's about it.
Because I did sign up for a Google Health account, and I even updated it a number of times, and I do like the idea of this sort of online health record, but...I haven't updated it recently (not in several months, I don't think), and it never really jumped up and made itself relevant in my life in any significant way, so saying that I'll actively miss it is kind of overstating things.
I am a bit curious what the Personal Genome Project is going to do, since they asked participants to fill out and link a Google Health record. I suppose they'll find some other way to manage this information.
A Matthew Douglass, commenting on the post, notes that Google Health is not HIPAA compliant, meaning the electronic medical records companies would not be interested in using it to update patients' info, and that "patients simply don’t know their own health information well enough to be able to regurgitate it into an online platform like this."
He argues, correctly it seems to me, that it's not that people don't care about this information, it's just that we don't know enough (and/or can't be bothered, at least speaking for myself) to update the records ourselves. For something like this to really be useful to a significant number of people, it will probably have to be automatically updated.
This all seems eerily familiar, and I just realized that's because I concluded pretty much the same thing the last time I saw The Health Care Blog wonder about the viability of Google Health, just about a year ago.
Clearly, I've been right all along. I knew it!
.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
News
Some takes on the latest in the Google Books Affair.
From Rough Type, Slate, and the ACLU.
Basically, we like books online, but we're leery of letting Google have sole control over them.
Another thing we're leery about--what the hell, they're cutting the Statistical Abstract of the United States? That's like the US classic vital statistics resource! We love it!
I want my tax dollars to be used to fund it!
You cannot turn around these days without some horrible news about something being defunded.
.
From Rough Type, Slate, and the ACLU.
Basically, we like books online, but we're leery of letting Google have sole control over them.
Another thing we're leery about--what the hell, they're cutting the Statistical Abstract of the United States? That's like the US classic vital statistics resource! We love it!
I want my tax dollars to be used to fund it!
You cannot turn around these days without some horrible news about something being defunded.
.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Oh Yeah, Another One
Also, there's this Body Browser from Google. They do streets, museums, and now the human body.
It's an interesting anatomy tool. You can look at muscles, organs, nerves, bones. There are a lot of anatomy tools out there, so I don't know that the students on the medical campus will be relying on Google, but they do bring their massive world-bestriding brand name to the task, so now when people have anatomy questions they'll promptly find a resource.
.
It's an interesting anatomy tool. You can look at muscles, organs, nerves, bones. There are a lot of anatomy tools out there, so I don't know that the students on the medical campus will be relying on Google, but they do bring their massive world-bestriding brand name to the task, so now when people have anatomy questions they'll promptly find a resource.
.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Now if Anyone Wanted to Advertise...
Stephen's Lighthouse has an interesting post on how Google is different from libraries. Well, OK, one of the numerous ways, since there are certainly many that one could discuss.
The particular way he's talking about here is that Google is ad-funded, so they are, essentially, working for advertisers, and whatever value they offer to other users is in the service of advertisers and therefore somewhat incidental.
Whereas libraries do not work for advertisers, and whatever value we offer users is based more on the hope of being valuable to users. Whether or not we always succeed in being valuable, or as valuable as we could be, or as valuable as Google is incidentally, can always be debated, but the intention is to serve the library user, not the advertiser.
It's an interesting way to think about focus.
.
The particular way he's talking about here is that Google is ad-funded, so they are, essentially, working for advertisers, and whatever value they offer to other users is in the service of advertisers and therefore somewhat incidental.
Whereas libraries do not work for advertisers, and whatever value we offer users is based more on the hope of being valuable to users. Whether or not we always succeed in being valuable, or as valuable as we could be, or as valuable as Google is incidentally, can always be debated, but the intention is to serve the library user, not the advertiser.
It's an interesting way to think about focus.
.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Legal Matters of the Day
A couple of things I should probably be paying attention to:
1)
A court in France ruled in favor of a man who sued Google for defamation based on the search results returned for his name (via Staring at Empty Pages). So essentially Google is responsible for passing along what other people say about you in France, if it's not true.
This will probably be appealed, but will obviously have a big, fairly chilling effect on search engine business in general if it stands. If a company has to be aware of the nature of the results returned by a query and make sure none of them are defamatory before allowing them to appear...well, damn, how would you even do that?
Also, what about the people who specifically want the defamatory material? Customer satisfaction among that group goes way down if all they can get is whatever has been approved, and you know that's no good for business. Although it could allow lots of small black market search engines to pop up and thrive, which would be good for that business.
"All the results that aren't fit to print!"
2)
There's a case about electronic reserve reading underway involving Georgia State University that could mean a lot to many in academic fields. Barbara Fister at Inside Higher Ed sums it up nicely, but basically, some journal publishers sued GSU, saying that putting articles on reserve through library e-reserves or course management systems is a violation of copyright.
Now a lot of universities do this (or so I've heard!), so the results of this case will be a pretty big deal.
Copyright is one of those areas that both fascinates and frustrates me, and I do work in an academic library (although we've made the copyright-fear-based decision to stay the heck out of electronic reserves until we know if it's legal), and I will hope to learn and understand more about this in future.
I heard about it this time from Dorothea on Book of Trogool.
.
1)
A court in France ruled in favor of a man who sued Google for defamation based on the search results returned for his name (via Staring at Empty Pages). So essentially Google is responsible for passing along what other people say about you in France, if it's not true.
This will probably be appealed, but will obviously have a big, fairly chilling effect on search engine business in general if it stands. If a company has to be aware of the nature of the results returned by a query and make sure none of them are defamatory before allowing them to appear...well, damn, how would you even do that?
Also, what about the people who specifically want the defamatory material? Customer satisfaction among that group goes way down if all they can get is whatever has been approved, and you know that's no good for business. Although it could allow lots of small black market search engines to pop up and thrive, which would be good for that business.
"All the results that aren't fit to print!"
2)
There's a case about electronic reserve reading underway involving Georgia State University that could mean a lot to many in academic fields. Barbara Fister at Inside Higher Ed sums it up nicely, but basically, some journal publishers sued GSU, saying that putting articles on reserve through library e-reserves or course management systems is a violation of copyright.
Now a lot of universities do this (or so I've heard!), so the results of this case will be a pretty big deal.
Copyright is one of those areas that both fascinates and frustrates me, and I do work in an academic library (although we've made the copyright-fear-based decision to stay the heck out of electronic reserves until we know if it's legal), and I will hope to learn and understand more about this in future.
I heard about it this time from Dorothea on Book of Trogool.
.
Friday, September 10, 2010
We Bear a Heavy Burden
Interesting news on Salon about Google Books, which apparently is riddled with interesting quirks, such as:
Indeed.
Librarians will instantly nod when we learn that this is a metadata problem, where the information in the record representing the item is faulty. Oh, metadata, we meet again. Where did I leave that blog I did in that class?
Hm...it seems to have vanished (serves me right for leaving it unattended on the UA server), although a Bloglines preview has preserved some of my remarks. It just goes to show that the internet is a land of contrasts.
You can't assume that something you put online will just stay out there forever, because many times no one cares about it, servers fail or are cleared, and your not-so-deathless prose vanishes into a digital grave.
At the same time, you can't assume that something you put online won't just stay out there forever, because if anyone does care about it, whether to laud it, deride it, or use it as evidence in a lawsuit, it will be copied, stored in multiple locations (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe!), and become nearly impossible to eradicate.
One must be constantly prepared both for immortal infamy, and for unbroken obscurity.
Anyway, the larger point is, yes, that Google Books needs catalogers. Of course they do. Everyone needs catalogers! When will the world shower us with the adulation, money and chocolate we so richly and obviously deserve?
I got this from Aunt B. at Tiny Cat Pants, who linked it with the astute observation, "Well, Some Librarians Will Have Jobs in the Future."
.
Sigmund Freud is listed as a co-author of a book on the Mosaic Web browser and Henry James is credited with writing "Madame Bovary." Even more puzzling are the many subject misclassifications: an edition of "Moby Dick" categorized under "Computers," and "Jane Eyre" as "Antiques and Collectibles" ("Madame Bovary" got that label, too).
Indeed.
Librarians will instantly nod when we learn that this is a metadata problem, where the information in the record representing the item is faulty. Oh, metadata, we meet again. Where did I leave that blog I did in that class?
Hm...it seems to have vanished (serves me right for leaving it unattended on the UA server), although a Bloglines preview has preserved some of my remarks. It just goes to show that the internet is a land of contrasts.
You can't assume that something you put online will just stay out there forever, because many times no one cares about it, servers fail or are cleared, and your not-so-deathless prose vanishes into a digital grave.
At the same time, you can't assume that something you put online won't just stay out there forever, because if anyone does care about it, whether to laud it, deride it, or use it as evidence in a lawsuit, it will be copied, stored in multiple locations (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe!), and become nearly impossible to eradicate.
One must be constantly prepared both for immortal infamy, and for unbroken obscurity.
Anyway, the larger point is, yes, that Google Books needs catalogers. Of course they do. Everyone needs catalogers! When will the world shower us with the adulation, money and chocolate we so richly and obviously deserve?
I got this from Aunt B. at Tiny Cat Pants, who linked it with the astute observation, "Well, Some Librarians Will Have Jobs in the Future."
.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Google Pulls Back the Curtains
Rather than provide updates about my personal travel-whining situation, which has just become a ghastly failure in every way, I will note that there seem to be some fairly serious privacy concerns about Google Buzz, the latest hot thing from our technological overlords.
Apparently it links all your info from various Google accounts (Picasa, Reader, Gmail, etc.) and shows bits of that to everyone you're linked with.
Clearly a potential problem if you maintain an pseudonymous blog, like Dr. Isis at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, or have an abusive ex-husband like Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus, or if there's any other circumstance in which you might not want every person on your frequent-contact list to see what blogs you read, etc.
Say, you have different contacts in different contexts and don't especially need to merge them all into one big social network soup.
Apparently you don't even have to sign up for Buzz for certain aspects of this to kick in, which means that even though I do not have a Buzz account, I need to worry about this because of my Picasa, Reader, Blogger and Gmail accounts (I have Docs, too--can other people see what documents I'm working on?).
Not cool, Google.
You should fix that.
-----------------------------
Some hours later:
Update from Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus about how Google is working on it.
.
Apparently it links all your info from various Google accounts (Picasa, Reader, Gmail, etc.) and shows bits of that to everyone you're linked with.
Clearly a potential problem if you maintain an pseudonymous blog, like Dr. Isis at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, or have an abusive ex-husband like Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus, or if there's any other circumstance in which you might not want every person on your frequent-contact list to see what blogs you read, etc.
Say, you have different contacts in different contexts and don't especially need to merge them all into one big social network soup.
Apparently you don't even have to sign up for Buzz for certain aspects of this to kick in, which means that even though I do not have a Buzz account, I need to worry about this because of my Picasa, Reader, Blogger and Gmail accounts (I have Docs, too--can other people see what documents I'm working on?).
Not cool, Google.
You should fix that.
-----------------------------
Some hours later:
Update from Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus about how Google is working on it.
.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Taking Health Notes
I'm playing with Google Health, which I had never much gotten around to looking at even though I signed up for it right away (because Google owns everything else in my life, why not this too?).
It's pretty easy, and moderately easy to conceive of as useful.
I put in my Raynaud's phenomenon and my Chickenpox (links to the site's suggested "more info"). Easy as pie.
And those are just two of the hundreds of conditions available! For everyone, I mean, not that I personally need to add hundreds more conditions to get my record up to date.
You can also enter your own text if you want to keep track of a condition that isn't on their list. I like that option--it's nice to be able to add freeform information as well as picking from a list, since it gives you more control over the record as a whole.
Importing information from a provider worked like a charm as well. Makes me wonder if I could still access (and import) my information from my last insurance plan, which used online records.
The main thing that's bugging me right now is the lack of fuzzy dates. If you want to add details for a condition or medication, you have to pick a precise beginning and/or end date if you want to include one at all. And you know what? I really don't remember the precise dates on which I had Chickenpox.
It was well over 20 years ago. I wasn't paying attention at the time, OK? I was probably feverish and cranky. I could ask my mom, but I'm too busy whining. Besides, what if she doesn't remember either? Can't you just let me fuzzily select "Winter 1982" or something?
But no, I have to say "December 1, 1982" or some such exact date, and this unwarranted precision offends my well-developed sense of wanting things to be accurate. I can include a note stating that the date is approximate, which is better than nothing, but it's not completely satisfactory to me.
But overall, I can see that if Google Health continues to operate reliably and to effectively safeguard personal health information, it could be useful to come back to the site over the years to review this history.
For example, if I actually did know the precise dates of my Chickenpox infection, I could check that against historical news reports of outbreaks in the area at the time and gain a fuller understanding of how my own health fit into the larger health portrait of the region!
Or, you know, I could check the date of my last tetanus booster to see if I needed another one, or whatever.
We can generally assume our doctors will tend to have this information on file, but if we move and change doctors (as one often does, in the course of leading an eventful life that goes past the age of eight), stuff could get lost along the way. Especially from Chickenpox infections back in the last century.
Plus, it can be nice to have this sort of thing in one place for yourself.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Party Online, Everyone!
In case you were worried about the carbon footprint of your internet use, the Official Google Blog has helpfully provided this post on Energy and the Internet.
It calculates the amount of electricity used by a Google search and expresses common items, including among others a glass of orange juice, a load of dishes (in an EnergyStar dishwasher, of course!), and a cheeseburger, in terms of the number of searches you could make for the same energy cost.
Quite a few, it turns out. The average monthly electricity use of a U.S. household is equivalent to 3,100,000 Google searches, so internet use is probably among the least of your energy use concerns.
An obvious note is that this calculation (at least explicitly) describes only the energy cost of searching Google on the internet. I'm not going to deny I spend a fair amount of time doing that, but I also spend a lot of online time doing other things.
It is impossible to determine, based merely on this post, whether those other things might use more energy. Watching TV shows, searching databases, downloading articles, uploading attachments, writing blog posts...the amount of energy required for these activities is not noted here.
I'm not really saying it should be, it's Google's blog and they don't have any obligation to break down the details of any activities they don't want to, but this does somewhat limit our ability to point to this as justification for declaring "woo hoo, party online everyone, internet use is completely unproblematic from an environmental standpoint!"
Although we might as well declare it anyway, just because we like to issue grand statements.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Hunting Flu
Practically everyone has been noticing Google's Flu Trends, but I saw it on David Rothman's page first, so he gets my credit. Save that up for exciting prizes!*
It's an interesting project, based on the idea that if a lot of people in a certain region are running searches on flu-related topics, a fair number of people in that area probably actually have the flu.
The site charts flu activity for the entire country, or state by state (it's currently low both nationwide and in my state), and you can mouse over a nice map that's color coded to indicate where things are busiest. Nothing's very busy right now---the whole map is a soothing blue.
It looks like Texas is the place to be, with 'minimal' flu activity, which is the lowest level. I have my plane ticket! Though unfortunately not until late December, by which time things could have changed.
There's also a handy link to the CDC's site, as well as a flu shot locator and recent 'flu in the news' stories.
The site says it can estimate flu activity in an area "up to two weeks faster than traditional systems." Fascinating!
I'm immediately curious whether this would work with other ailments as well. Obviously not every illness lends itself to the kind of on-the-spot searching that would allow for tracking of trends, but might there be some others for which it could apply?
I'm sure that will be forthcoming as soon as the Google folks figure it out.
*Prizes not specified, guaranteed, or probable. But all the more exciting for that!
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Oh Me, Oh My
A colleague just alerted me to Google's soon-to-be-released web browser, Chrome. This should be interesting.
Apparently it will be available this very evening, and it will no doubt inspire a frenzy of downloading the like of which is rarely seen.
Meantime, you can enjoy this comic with the announcement from Google.
-
Apparently it will be available this very evening, and it will no doubt inspire a frenzy of downloading the like of which is rarely seen.
Meantime, you can enjoy this comic with the announcement from Google.
-
Monday, July 28, 2008
Reflections on Search
Stephen's Lighthouse recommended The Google Dilemma several days ago. I finally got around to reading it, and heartily concur with the recommendation.
James Grimmelmann writes a very readable, interesting piece about some of the issues associated with how search engines organize the web for us, looking at some examples, including:
- Google bombing (getting enough people to link to a page using a specific phrase that it becomes one of the top results for that term) and whether these results are legitimate
- Controversial sites and whether they should be allowed to stay on results pages even if they get there through these types of link manipulation (the 'yes' argument is summed up as "the computer did it"---the algorithm that ranks results should not be interfered with, and if enough people are linking with certain terms, Google isn't going to mess with the rankings)
- Link farming, the ways that it can mess up search results, and whether it therefore makes sense for Google to interfere with the rankings in these cases (after all, these are not real people linking to sites)
- How OK we are with it if some sites are kept off results pages in certain countries due to local laws (is it understandable or repellent and cowardly that Google's Chinese site censors search results according to China's laws?)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)