photo: running rich
Re-imagined a bit, anyway. Why browse a vertical list of results when you can flip through them like pages in a book (or album covers in iTunes). Searchme on the iPhone and iPod touch does just that.
As you type your search term, icons representing rough categories appear, allowing you to target your search and [...]
OpenSearch is a common way of querying a database for content and returning the results. The idea is that it brings sanity to the proliferation of search APIs, but a realistic view would have to admit that we’ve been trying to do that since before the development of z39.50 in libraries decades ago, and the [...]
A bibliographic instruction quiz we used to use asked students how many of Dan Brown’s books could be found in our catalog. The idea was that attentive students would dutifully search by author for “brown, dan,” get redirected to “Brown, Dan 1964-,” and find three books. Indeed, the expected answer was “three.”
As it turns out, [...]
OpenSearch is a standard way of querying a database for content and returning the results.
The official docs note simply: “Any website that has a search feature can make their results available in OpenSearch format,” then adds: “Publishing your search results in OpenSearch™ format will draw more people to your content, by exposing it to a [...]
“Bagged products” is little better than “cookery.” I’m gonna bet that no customer has ever asked the sales people for “bagged products,” that nobody’s ever checked the yellow pages for “bagged products,” and without context, nobody would come close to answering a question on what the heck “bagged products” are all about.
But we do have [...]
Users want a rich pool from which to search, simplicity, and satisfaction. One does not have to take a 50-minute instruction session to order from Amazon. Why should libraries continue to be so difficult for our users to master?
— from page 8 of the The University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services [...]
I prefaced my point about how the standards we choose in libraries isolate us from the larger stream of progress driving development outside libraries with the note that I was sure to get hanged for it.
It’s true.
I commented that there were over 140,00 registered Amazon API developers and 365 public OpenSearch targets (hey look, there’s [...]
Ryan Eby gets excited over LiveSearch. And who can blame him? I mention the preceding because it explains the following: two links leading to some good examples of livesearch in the wild.
Inquisitor is a livesearch plugin for OS X’s Safari web browser. It gives the top few hits, spelling suggestions where appropriate, and links to [...]
I just received this email from the A9 OpenSearch team:
We have just released OpenSearch 1.1 Draft 2. We hope to declare it the final version shortly, and it is already supported by A9.com. Uprading from a previous version should only take a few minutes…
OpenSearch 1.1 allows you to specify search results in HTML, Atom, or [...]
Sometimes the answer isn’t as interesting as the question. Consider this note from Yahoo Buzz:
On Sunday, the day before the nomination became official, [searches for] Alito sprang up a sudden 320%.
Did searches for Alito spike on tips White House staffers, or were White House Staffers vetting their nominee via the search engines?
tags: buzz, google, judge [...]
