Boing Boing pointed me toward this crazy search engine for animal heads. From the brief writeup: “x6udpngx’s x6ud is a single-purpose search engine that offers high-quality animal photographs for use by artists seeking reference material.” This is a wow. First you pick a species (not all species are available.) Then you pick a skull type underneath and click and drag the skull to orient it in the position you want to find. For example, I pick hawk species, and the chicken skull. I click and drag the skull so I’m looking at it in profile. I click search and the search results I will get will be for hawk heads in profile. It doesn’t work as well for weird positions like the top or bottom of the skull, but still. Go play with it.
specialty search
Make Tech Easier: How to Search Ngram More Effectively with Google Ngram Viewer
Make Tech Easier: How to Search Ngram More Effectively with Google Ngram Viewer. “Google maintains a multilingual database of published language. By scanning books en masse, Google is able to process the text and provided statistical data-based frequency of word appearance. With the Google Ngram Viewer search tool, you can search through that voluminous statistical data rapidly and effectively. By comparing the relative popularity of words, you can map how language and culture have changed over time. Ngram can do much more than simply report word frequency within Google’s vast textual corpus, however.”
Navigating Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP: How Google Is Quietly Making Blockchains Searchable (Forbes Africa)
Forbes Africa: Navigating Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP: How Google Is Quietly Making Blockchains Searchable. “It’s a balmy 80 degrees on a mid-December day in Singapore, and something is puzzling Allen Day, a 41-year-old data scientist. Using the tools he has developed at Google, he can see a mysterious concerted usage of artificial intelligence on the blockchain for Ethereum. Ether is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency (after bitcoin and XRP), and it still sports a market cap of some $11 billion despite losing 83% of its value in 2018. Peering into its blockchain—the distributed database of transactions underpinning the cryptocurrency—Day detects a ‘whole bunch’ of ‘autonomous agents’ moving funds around ‘in an automated fashion.'”
MakeUseOf: How to Find Videos on Facebook
MakeUseOf: How to Find Videos on Facebook. “It isn’t always easy to find what you’re looking for on Facebook. Confusing menu items and poor search results hide some of the stuff worth looking at. Videos are one of the biggest victims. With that in mind, here’s how to find videos on Facebook.”
The Next Web: Facebook lets you search for pictures of your female friends, but not your male ones
The Next Web: Facebook lets you search for pictures of your female friends, but not your male ones. “A Belgian security researcher has found an unusual quirk in Facebook’s search function. Facebook lets you search for photos of your female friends, but refuses to play dice if you want to look up pictures of your male friends. The bizarre find was discovered this weekend by notorious Belgian white-hat hacker Inti De Ceukelaire.”
Variety: Telescope Launches Search Engine for Foreign Films in U.S.
Variety: Telescope Launches Search Engine for Foreign Films in U.S.. “New search-engine website Telescope launches in Berlin this week with the mission of helping American audiences find online the kind of foreign titles pitched at the Berlin Film Festival and its related European Film Market.” I couldn’t find an URL for the search engine in the story; it’s at https://telescopefilm.com .
Social Media Today: How to Use Boolean Search for Social Media Monitoring (and Why You Want to)
Social Media Today: How to Use Boolean Search for Social Media Monitoring (and Why You Want to). “Social media monitoring is fast becoming a requirement for modern brands who looking to support their customers on social media platforms, keep an eye on competitors, and/or find relevant influencers. But it can also be a daunting task – with so much discussion happening online, you can easily get swamped by irrelevant mentions, which not only waste your time but can also impact your analytics in a negative way. One way to address this is by utilizing a monitoring tool with Boolean search capacity, which will enable you to hone in your search terms and focus on more specific mentions.”
