Daily Cup of Tech

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/

Everybody and their dog uses Google these days for searching among other things. Their most recent product is Google Co-op. From their website:

Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website.

What this translates into for you as a web user or publisher is simply this. You now have the ability to create your own customized search engine! I have taken the liberty to do just this.

I have created the Daily Cup of Tech Blogroll Search Engine. The concept is pretty simple. Anyone who is in my blogroll will get added to the search engine. People who use the search engine will be able to get results from my website and also from anyone who is in my blogroll!

How do you get on my blogroll? It’s really quite simple. If you have a technology based blog, add me to your blogroll and then send me a link to blogroll@dailycupoftech.com. I will then add you to my blogroll and the blogroll search engine.

If you would like to earn bonus points (I’m not really sure what that means), you could add the Daily Cup of Tech Blogroll Search Engine to your website by copy-and-pasting the following code into your website:

<!-- Google CSE Search Box Begins --></p> <form id="searchbox_006165577526036384760:un0-o1yrrvg" action="http://www.google.com/cse"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="006165577526036384760:un0-o1yrrvg" /> <input name="q" type="text" size="40" /> <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" /> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:1" /> </form> <p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=searchbox_006165577526036384760%3Aun0-o1yrrvg"></script><br /> <!-- Google CSE Search Box Ends --><br />

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