Daily Cup of Tech

Initially, the Internet was designed to be used as a text only tool. These were the days when telnet was king. Man, have things ever changed!

Today, everything is trying to look pretty. CSS, graphics, flash have all changed how we see the web. The one thing that has not changed is how we search the web. We still rely on the basic old concept of words.

But a company called TouchGraph is out to change that. They have created a search tool that lets you see how different websites are related in a visual format.

How TouchGraph works is actually pretty difficult to explain. Think of planets revolving around a star. Each “star” is a central web page with related website “planets” circling around the “star”.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Check out how TouchGraph displays a search for “Daily Cup of Tech“. Simply click here.

I have come to rely on this tool for a number of things, especially when I am looking for inspiration while blogging. It simply presents me with options that I don’t get with regular search engines.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/08/26/google-visually-and-blog-better/trackback/

News sites have been noting recently that Myspace and Xanga (and their ilk) have been a place for friends and social networks to grieve for those who have passed away - while this is notable and a very cool use of the technology, it was bound to happen.

If you have been online for a time, you have probably posted here or there in various forums, commented to blog entries, or even (if you are old enough) have posted on various UseNet groups and good old newsgroups (which I still love!)…

The point I am making is that the vestiges of our Internet personas will be, for all intents and purposes, immortal - - well, at least the information will be around far beyond our lifetimes. It is the closest we will be (as far as we know so far) to becoming eternal and be able to prove it to those that are still breathing and logging on to the ‘Net…

With that, I suggest you go Google yourself and see what the Internet has to say about you while you are still here.

There are several articles that talk about this and have great tips if you want to limit or do something about your sensitive information on the ‘Net:

• About.com - Google Yourself
• ZDNet - Why you should Google Yourself, and Often
• WindowsNetworking.com - Google Yourself To Identify Security Holes
• Google - and the list goes on…

I’m somewhat hesitant to admit that I do this quite often… Usually, my goal is to see if I can innocently catch up with someone. Is this a new form of stalking?

However, I did Google a person that I was entering into an auction transaction with. The auction was for a set of wheels and tires, and I discovered that this person was in a car accident recently, as stated by his local paper (I searched for the name of the person, and the city he was from). Of course, this brought up the question, was the set from the car? Would this affect the transaction?

If I did this with a person I was paying money to, it doesn’t take a stretch to realize that potential employers can do the same thing…be aware if you are job-hunting!

So, if you do find information on yourself that you don’t like - here is an interesting…work-around: A search tool that can create higher-scoring search results with more favorable information that you specify (you can read about it via this Wired article). Particularly useful for the shadier folks among us.

Now that I’ve fed your paranoia bug, go Google yourself!

Oh, I still went through with the wheels and tires - my car looks sharp!

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/02/23/why-dont-you-just-go-google-yourself/trackback/

I was performing a search on Google. The results were over 300,000 for what I thought was a pretty specify query. Thanks to online glossaries, dictionaries, dungeons and dragons as well as World of Warcraft, I was inundated with copious amounts of useless data. In a bid to reduce the number of results, I started adding terms such as “-Wow”, “-warcraft”, “-game”, -”dictionary”, “-is better because” and so forth. That’s when I hit “The Wall.” There is a limit of 32 words for a Google search query. By the time I hit “The Wall,” I had reduced the search results from just over 300,000 to a little under 79,000. Still too many. Frustrated, I gave up sure that I would never find what I was looking for in a reasonable amount of time.

That’s when it hit me. Google has a calculator. It converts miles. For goodness sakes, it’s written by GEEKS! Could it be? Could I have an interesting idea?

I entered a new search query: “-WoW|Warcraft”. To my amazement, it worked. All sites with “warcraft” or “WoW” were filtered out. This told me that it accepts programming values (in programming, “|” typically means “or”). Curious, I entered a new query using regex. For those that don’t know, regex is short for “regular expressions.” Regular expressions are essentially filters that allow you specify what kind of text to look for by specifying a text pattern. An example would be “Bob” versus “bob”.

As an example for you, I generated a search about our favorite website. The search query uses the regex expression: ^dailycupofte$. This expression looks for “dailycupofte” and only that phrase and the results must contain results that begin and end with exactly that phrase. In other words, sites with “dailycupofte” will be returned but not “dailycupoftech”.

This particular example is only the beginning and only a simple display of the power you now have for searching. Here’s a starting point to learn regex.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/02/20/how-to-create-effective-google-searches/trackback/

Disclaimer:
I want to start this entry by saying that this tool could very easily be used to bypass security measures put in place to protect you and the systems that you are working on. The purpose of this post is to provide people with a way to access information that they have not been able to get because of political sanctions. This is not intended as a way to bypass your work or school’s proxy system.

I was reading an article about using Google as a proxy when it dawned on me that this could be a really useful tool in the fight against censorship. I am thinking of countries like China where the government dictates where you can go on the Internet.

There are three issues with the solution that Jason proposes in his blog:

1. If Google becomes blocked, then you are right back to where you started
2. The information given, while relatively easy to follow, is still too much for the average user to understand and use
3. This information needs to spread across the Internet so that it can be used from several different websites

So, what I have done is create a simple web form. All you need to do is type in the website that is blocked and click on the Protect Freedom of Information button.

Now that the ease of use issue has been addressed, I wanted to address the issue of blocking Google. I have created two different versions of the form. One uses Google but one also uses BabelFish. You end up with the same results but you are using a different website to bounce off.

In order to get this information out to as many people as possible, I have made the code for these tools available to other webmasters so that all you need to do is cut and paste the code into your website.

I am also looking for other translators/websites that will do something like this as well. If you know of other websites, then please let me know in the comments.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/01/04/using-translators-to-fight-censorship/trackback/

I’ve always thought it would be great if I could have an e-mail show up in my inbox whenever someone wrote something about me on the internet. Luckily, with Google Alerts, this is a snap to do!

I have written a complete tutorial on setting up these Google Alerts, selecting proper search items, and managing your alerts.

Now, new links find you!

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2006/11/15/have-new-links-to-your-site-find-you/trackback/