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Playing with Google

Posted by Hemos on from the fun-things-for-the-weekend dept.

Chromatic sent over the links to Tara Calishain's Happy Google Hacks page. It's basically a collection of interesting ways to do searching - something fun for the weekend. I'm thinking of preparing dinner Sunday based on the recipe tool.

13 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Google 1000 quota by sydneyfong · · Score: 5, Funny

    Note: If you get a "no search results" message for a search that you'd expect results, this may be because the key has been used up for the day. Sigh. 1000 queries at ten results each isn't a whole lot, is it?

    You gotta love slashdot and it's slashdotting....

    --
    Don't quote me on this.
  2. Sanctioned by Romancer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does google embraces this form of use?
    What about all the legal bs lately about altering the look of a website, does this apply to search results?

    If I wrote software that altered the google search results page to remove the paid listings would they have a legal standing to object, or would the simple fact that it's a search result page and I'm supposed to try and get the information I want, and only what I want(ie: +enhance +performance +car -porn)nullify this legal precedent?

    --


    ) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
    ) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
    1. Re:Sanctioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you look at the site, hes using Google API, using his google API key. Google opened their API to allow stuff like this. It's perfectly legal and he has their permission.

      If he was just parsing a google search result then yeah that would be bad.

      Also google has control over the API because they limit queries per day based on your key, as his site says "Note: If the Google API key has been used up for the day you'll get an error message."

    2. Re:Sanctioned by trotski · · Score: 5, Informative

      Does google embraces this form of use? What about all the legal bs lately about altering the look of a website, does this apply to search results?

      Actually, since google is this free and open company, they do embrace it. Just check out their terms of service.

      Pffff, Google's code is so secure that you wouldn't be able to get rid of Google's ads anyways. Besides, why would you want to hack such a free and open company?

      --

      "Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
    3. Re:Sanctioned by presroi · · Score: 5, Insightful
      If you look at the site, hes using Google API, using his google API key. Google opened their API to allow stuff like this. It's perfectly legal and he has their permission.


      When I went to this site (buzztools) the time I wasn't fully slashdotted, I was prompted for a Google API key.

      Am I just paranoid when mentioning the chance that such a funny tool might just be great for collecting other people's Google API access nummers/codes? Right now, google does not charge you but... Hmm, I am too paranoid.
  3. One of my favorite google easter eggs... by $$$$$exyGal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do a search for "goatsex", with the 'x' at the end, and look at what google recommends ;-).

    --
    Very popular slashdot journal for adul
    1. Re:One of my favorite google easter eggs... by sam_handelman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What's really weird is that when you search for "goatse", you get a pointer to the anti-scientology subtree of google groups.

      The string goatse appears nowhere on the page; goatse.cx certainly isn't there. This was done with blogging, somehow? Does anyone know how that could possibly work? The closest thing I find is a .cx domain: http://lisatrust.freewinds.cx/

      Evidently this is a mirror of something defunct, but it won't server pages to explorer and I can't be bothered to start mozilla.

      --
      The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
    2. Re:One of my favorite google easter eggs... by leviramsey · · Score: 5, Funny
      So, does this count as circular linking, or the first official goatse webring?

      "ring" and "goatse" should never be use near each other!

  4. Slashdotted already... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So...who's got the google cache?

  5. Personal Google Score by presroi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Long time ago, I began to think about graphing someones "impact" in this world by letting google hunt for his/her name.

    The pre-result can be watched at my homepage.

    It's important not just to look at the real number but to watch the number growing and declining.

    Anna Lührmann (age 19) was elected as member of Parliament 09/23/2002 and her google score just doubled within some days.

    Maybe I'm going to reimplement this thing by using the google API and some funny php/lib_gd tools.

    1. Re:Personal Google Score by presroi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The URL is very different to a human name. The Human Name System is crappy. It's not unique, it has not a defined charset and it is subject to chances all the time (Guess what happens when Mary marries Martin). Searching for "Jim Miller" or another popular name will not give you satisfing results. Arabic names for example are very hard to find (thats a phenomenon even the Feds have discovered by now). Does it say AlQuaida, El Kaida, Al Quaeda, ...Al Kiruna?

      The technical approach of PageRank cannot be compared to count the number of results to a given Human Name.

      My name "Mathias Schindler" is not unique and it's often misspelled "Matthias". Since the ordinary human population dislikes the idea of a unique naming system for people. (Another example might be Iceland, where the Surname results from the first name of your father (I heard so, it does not have to be correct)).

      Posting your URL does not help your real name to boost directly. Putting your name under every message might.

      Version 2.0 *could* make use of that by using the google pageRank as an indicator (for what, btw?). for the importance of a search result. This is the future....

  6. Talking of google hacks... by arvindn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Have you seen http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/?

  7. Re:Ah, it's a Google of a problem, damn Google it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well here's giving away the secret of karma-whores everywhere... To find the Google cache of a webpage, you simply search for the URL of the page. For example, this for Slashdot. Unfortunately the Hacking Google site isn't cached. There's no ROBOTS.TXT on the server, but it's probably an expiry-date header in HTTP (can't check because the site is Slashdotted :-)

    Here's something interesting, though... Google's robots.txt.