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Google Labs Offers Table-Based Search Results

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-want-chair-based-results dept.

blackbearnh writes "Google just released Google Squared into the Google Labs playground. Google Squared lets you get results back in row and column format, and then add more columns to the result set. There's a brief tour of the features over on O'Reilly Radar, where the judgement is that there's lots of rough edges, but a huge amount of potential, especially for quick and dirty table generation for reports."

165 comments

  1. Bible Books by bwalling · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=bible+books Who knew Esther was a babe?

    1. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=bible+books Who knew Esther was a babe?

      Uh, the thing that stuck out at me from that list was that the book of Revelations is apparently published by Ubisoft and is preceded by the book of Devastation. How did it determine that? Why, Wikipedia's list of Xbox games, of course! I don't recall that book of the Bible from the Catholic Masses I attended as a child but it sounds pretty bitching.

      If someone made games out of the books of the Bible, I'd definitely hit up Revelations (and not that Left Behind crap) but I'd assume books like Psalms and Job would be a grind :/

    2. Re:Bible Books by hansamurai · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, she was a concubine of Xerxes (of 300 fame) and later his wife chosen because of her extraordinary beauty (and intelligence, but whatever).

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    3. Re:Bible Books by Deltaspectre · · Score: 0

      Psalms Hero!

      --
      My UID is prime... is yours?
    4. Re:Bible Books by xtracto · · Score: 1

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Linux+distros

      The descriptions are not really useful...

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    5. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're in luck! ...sort of.

    6. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's hilarious, I looked up 'chicks' and it brought up Errors in the King James Bible

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=chicks

    7. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you add the next ten items to the square, the book of Micah has the porn star "Micah Moore" as the associated image.

    8. Re:Bible Books by treeves · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Anyone who read the book. That's who.

      Esther 2:7

      Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. This girl, who was also known as Esther, was lovely in form and features, and Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died.

      Esther 2:17

      Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women, and she won his favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    9. Re:Bible Books by Jurily · · Score: 2, Funny

      Xerxes (of 300 fame)

      I think Herodotos has prior art on that.

    10. Re:Bible Books by mobida2 · · Score: 1

      Well Yes, Google Square is somethng amazing product for webmasters to streamline their SEO Activities. This is going to add a value to their efforts.

    11. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Esther was definitely a babe...but she's barely in the top 10 Babes of the Bible according to...

      http://www.examiner.com/x-8276-Charlotte-Methodist-Examiner~y2009m5d1-Top-10-babes-of-the-Bible

    12. Re:Bible Books by treeves · · Score: 1
      Actually, it's Revelation (or Revelation to John), not Revelations. It's a common mistake.

      Joshua would be pretty cool. Sending in spies to a prostitute's house, blasting horns and tearing down the walls of Jericho, going in to pillage, etc.

      Judges would be a pretty nasty game what with cutting up that woman who was gang-raped and sending her parts all over Israel and what not.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    13. Re:Bible Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=4976024.39+miles+in+kilometers&btnG=Search&cts=1244154613818&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

      http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=50432.0129+kilometers+in+miles&btnG=Search&meta=

    14. Re:Bible Books by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Ask about Google itself and add the column "users".
      You'll learn that gmail has only 6 users. :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    15. Re:Bible Books by Pechkin000 · · Score: 1

      LOL try this http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=hot+porn apparently google^2 doesnt recognize the existence of the genre

  2. How it works by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This actually seems to be a pretty simple concept. It takes the keywords on the y axis (which is the initial search), and then generates popular keywords for the x axis, and then does searches for the combinations to fill in the boxes. What goes in the box is the least amount of the target page that more-or-less fulfills the keyword search. So as near as I can tell, there's no "semantic" analysis here, it's basically a bunch of mini web searches in a grid format. It's an interesting concept, but I don't see it as any sort of world changing function, like the hype seemed to imply.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:How it works by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 1

      I'm a little confused why you would say there is no semantic analysis - perhaps it depends on the hits/searches.

      I typed in "chrome"

      And the result was:
      Item Name: Google Chrome Image: [browser screenshot] Size: A A A (WTF?) Preview Release: No value found License: Freeware

      That doesn't seem like additional search terms to me.

      --
      -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
    2. Re:How it works by pete-wilko · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Have you tried different queries? I think the selection of the column names is actually a very difficult task and it seems to do a decent job of extracting from different pages relevant pieces of information for each column.

      If the column 'types' were known a priori then this wouldn't be that neat, however if its classifying on the fly what columns are to be used then that's pretty cool. Looks like a really nice large scale application of 'wrapper induction'.

      How the columns are determined is the impressive and novel bit tbh.

    3. Re:How it works by jonbryce · · Score: 1

      You can add "OS" as another column, then it will tell you it runs on Windows 2000 and XP.

      Try the same for Konqueror, and it tells you it runs on "No", whatever that is.

    4. Re:How it works by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1

      Do you have evidence it's not just looking for the words that are common to all (or most) of the search results that come up? I'm not saying there aren't some subtleties under the hood that are pretty tricky (I don't want to be "that guy" who thinks everything could be whipped out in a couple of hours), but it seems like looking for common terms that also happen to be popular would give you a fairly good result for auto-generated keywords.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    5. Re:How it works by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 1

      Heh. I tried:
      firefox, safari, internet explorer

      And it returned "Opera"

      Just firefox, safari failed oddly

      I discovered after some experimenting that adding the terms *after* the grid was created seemed to work better.
      For example first typing "firefox"
      Then google chrome

      Using their suggestion list seemed to help too.

      Anyway, my eventual grid gave, for Operating System (using their autosuggest for OS):
      Mozilla Firefox: Mac Google Chrome: [no value] Microsoft Internet Explorer: [no value] Safari: [no value] Konqueror: Linux

      They did a bit better w/ publisher, abysmally w/ system requirements - sooo, yeah. Still not quite up to magical knowledge extraction.

      --
      -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
    6. Re:How it works by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 1

      http://google.com/squared/search?q=pandas%2Cbears

      seems to have determined that they are of the family ursidae and class mammalia w/ reasonable consensus.

      --
      -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
    7. Re:How it works by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 1

      Do you have evidence it's not just looking for the words that are common to all (or most) of the search results that come up?

      Out of curiosity, do you work in NLP?

    8. Re:How it works by pete-wilko · · Score: 1

      No direct evidence at all - but just looking at the different queries.

      For instance, first query I tried was "2.1 speakers" - the columns were: name, manufacturer, description, system components and speaker type (i.e. active, passive).

      Next was "normal distribution" - so not a product type search at all, and I got back: name, description, matrix-valued, degenerate, continuous. Now in fairness most of those columns were not populated, but its interesting that they were generated as they are mostly relevant to the overall query.

      Also deffo dont want to be the other kind of 'that guy' - ie rabid fanboy. I'd imagine there's a large part of query classification going on to help in how to parse candidate pages. I.e. if it looks like a product search we need columns 'price', 'manufacturer' etc - if its another type we need different columns.

      But yeah keyword frequency would be a major component for sure, but would guess its only one part of many being used.

    9. Re:How it works by pete-wilko · · Score: 1

      No, am not masochistic and my natural morphology ability sucks ;) You?

    10. Re:How it works by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      If you do a regular google search for "normal distribution", you can see the pages that come up. That it can find those keywords is not all that surprising.

      Okay, now this is interesting. Compare a regular google search of "black cat" to the Google squared one. The Google squared one pulled a whole slew of Manga results, which is not the dominant search in regular Google. That tells me that Google pulls the first X pages and tries to find pages with some sort of commonality. "Black cat" fireworks was a unique page, so that one got tossed, because there was no commonality. The Manga pages was the first one with a lot of pages on the same general topic.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    11. Re:How it works by pete-wilko · · Score: 1

      Wow, you two have very similar usernames, thought I was reply again to the first guy, my mistake... so assuming not the same person?

    12. Re:How it works by maxume · · Score: 1

      Isn't that semantic analysis? I mean, if your point is that it isn't very sophisticated, then sure, no one is likely to argue with that, but it seems to me that just using a dictionary and 'associating' a word with the words used to define it would still be semantic analysis.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    13. Re:How it works by YourExperiment · · Score: 1

      I think you're missing the point somewhat. Try entering the search term "web browsers".

      Not that I'm claiming it works perfectly or anything. Apart from Firefox (developed by the Mozilla Corporation), there appears to be another web browser named Mozilla, developed by a company called "website".

    14. Re:How it works by Zerth · · Score: 1

      It does an interesting job with just "quote"

    15. Re:How it works by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Sounds like an application of NMF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-negative_matrix_factorization

      --

      "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy

    16. Re:How it works by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Well, there is another web browser named Mozilla. It was quite popular before Firefox replaced it.
      Of course it never was developed by "website" ...

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    17. Re:How it works by YourExperiment · · Score: 1

      Doh! I'd forgotten all about that, I just took one look and assumed the search engine had messed up.

  3. E=MC^2 by Celeste+R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It doesn't take an Einstein to find out that this is good for researching things. It certainly beats going through all of the connecting websites to get to the juicy details.

    --
    There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:E=MC^2 by Jugalator · · Score: 1

      Too bad about its accuracy though. The data is not verified or curated like in Wolfram Alpha, so it's pretty much useless for any purpose other than leisure IMHO. It can also not do anything with the data, unlike WA. It can't even sort it. All it has going for it is that it has a lot of data. But quantity above quality for sure.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    2. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't take an Einstein to find out that this is good for researching things. It certainly beats going through all of the connecting websites to get to the juicy details.

      Except that it doesn't work. Take a simple search, like "cloud types" (no, I'm not just picking something I know doesn't work). The initial display isn't terrible (although, for something that straight forward, the number of gaps is surprising). Now, look at the suggestions for more columns: "homeworld", "affiliation", and "hair color"....What?

    3. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Too bad about its accuracy though.

      Yup. I tested it out with a search on operating systems, and there are a number of hilarious misses within the results.

      For Windows, it's apparently under a free license, and it's date of birth looks like Google scraped the drop boxes for a sign-up form rather than getting the actual creation date of Windows.

      For Linux, it was a bit off course and grabbed a description of Ubuntu, instead. It lists the current version as 2.1 which doesn't make sense for either Ubuntu (9.04) or the Linux kernel (2.6.29.4 or 2.6.30-rc8). I suspect it grabbed the version of a random Linux app.

      Darwin resulted in the biggest miss, as one might suspect. It grabbed the biography and birthday of Charles Darwin.

    4. Re:E=MC^2 by pwfffff · · Score: 1

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=world+of+warcraft+bosses

      Yo, someone warn Sweden, Highlord Kruul is apparently hiding out there.

    5. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When I click the "add columns" box, I get "Altitude", "Abbreviation", "Genus", "Variety", and "Categories" as suggestions.

    6. Re:E=MC^2 by afxgrin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They have a long way to go then as it seems to provide some awfully terrible results. Like check this one out for Roller coasters.

      Apparently there's a roller coaster named GhostRider, it has a length of 4,533 ft, height of 118 ft, and it travels past the speed of sound at 1038 mph!!

      I think I'll just stick to the basic Google search using quotes, +'s, -'s, AND's and OR's.

    7. Re:E=MC^2 by Sethus · · Score: 1

      When RTFA article, the author does a search for gross revenue linked with movies. A decent idea. So I though; hey that's pretty cool, lets modify the search! Attempting my own search, I tried to get a listing of the top 10 grossing movies of all time. Adjusted for inflation.

      Doing this you find out VERY quickly the limitations of their new table based search. A good sort function is what Google needs here. The ability to sort my searched information by specific fields. With this, you could organize the information into a viewable format. But of course this would have to be balanced with search accuracy; it's an extremely difficult line.

      Additionally, the 'inflation' field was woefully incorrect(One number was had gross at 160million and inflation at 60million for a 2005 movie). Perhaps this is my own inexperience with their system; but how amazing would that be to get those sort of results. Finally, removing the inflation field; the search engine was unable to give me the top 10 grossing movies of all time without respect to inflation.

      The new search engine is a good idea in theory, but will need (likely) a few years of modification before it becomes a powerful search tool. Honestly though, I drool at the possibilities.

      --
      Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
    8. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just did that search, and apparently it's been fixed.

      Perhaps it's not as dumbed-down as we thought.

    9. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup. I tested it out with a search on operating systems, and there are a number of hilarious misses within the results.

      Not specific enough. Try computer operating system, works a lot better.

    10. Re:E=MC^2 by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Also design patterns works quite well for the initial columns.
      BTW, click "Add next 10 items" to find out that singletons are sexy :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    11. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should have added the 'Died' column - the first windows entry died in 1927, and a later Microsoft Windows died with Windows XP.

      Alas Linux died with "A modem hung up the phone"

    12. Re:E=MC^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But if you look for best operating systems, it gets smarter as Windows vanishes.

  4. First thoughts by unfasten · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My first thoughts after trying a few of the example searches on the main page are that it seems to be aimed a bit at Wolfram Alpha. It isn't as broad as Wolfram Alpha but it is focused on giving back data sets instead of a list of search results.

    1. Re:First thoughts by leuk_he · · Score: 1

      The main problem is that wolfram alpha does not state it sources, so you cannot fact check. google is closer to the orinal search engine that it points to links.

    2. Re:First thoughts by Jugalator · · Score: 1

      Wolfram Alpha does state its sources involved in generating its answer.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    3. Re:First thoughts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like there are some bugs: http://www.google.com/squared/table/ag0LZjw0-WIatilQAcN8sU9w We all knew that Ann Coulter was packing quite the sausage between those legs, for sure, but Ronald Reagan with a python dick? No way in hell..

    4. Re:First thoughts by DragonWriter · · Score: 1

      Wolfram Alpha does state its sources involved in generating its answer.

      It rather explicitly didn't originally, and still doesn't seem to (though its removed then notice that made it clear that it didn't.) It did, and still seems to, report generic lists of all the sources that may have contributed to the internal tables consulted to generate the results, not the sources of the data actually used for the results. Originally, W|A made it clear that that was what they were doing with a disclaimer in the Source Information box to the effect that the list of sources (other than the W|A internal data listed as the "Primary Source" for every search) was not necessarily related to any particular search result; while they have removed the disclaimer, the long list of sources, some of which clearly have no relevance to the results listed, makes it seem very much that the Source Information remains just as murky as it was when they had the disclaimer, they just don't want to tell people that any more.

      It certainly isn't like Google in providing the sources for particular pieces of information.

      W|A remains nearly useless as a serious research tool for this reason, since you don't know the sources for particular bits of information, and you don't know the methodology they have applied to synthesize the internal database that works as the direct source from the root sources.

  5. Useful for brainstorming by Jarlsberg · · Score: 1

    And just when you thought table-based design was gone! :) I find the idea interesting, but not very practical. It seems to work well for brain storming. With just a few keywords, you get a lot of results that can shed a fresh light on what you were thinking about. Well worth a try.

    1. Re:Useful for brainstorming by Celeste+R · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Unfortunately, it's not quite there for random brainstorming. It's geared toward easy fact generation. The "human" factor is almost completely removed, image linking to entries in the table is inaccurate at best (search "Planets" and you'll find Pluto the dog), and so on.

      I can see that this is a useful tool for people like say... engineers, who need to know a material's composition and properties (facts, again), but this tool is limited by the supporting databases.

      Take, for example, the fact that I can search for a consumer product, but I can't get much more than generic information.

      Links are difficult to follow, it takes more effort than needed to go somewhere. Brainstorming is easier with the vanilla Google.

      Yes, this is a useful tool, but it doesn't compare very well to Wolfram Alpha; this is a spreadsheet data generation tool, where Alpha is an analysis tool.

      --
      There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    2. Re:Useful for brainstorming by Yetihehe · · Score: 1

      Next thing you know, (Apple|Microsoft) will make Bing^3, which will return results in div's.

      --
      Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
    3. Re:Useful for brainstorming by gwbennett · · Score: 0

      Speaking of planets, while you're shopping for Saturn vehicles, we've given you an easy way to keep information for the next time you visit Saturn.com. With My Saved Info! Yes, that was seriously in the "square."

      --
      Where is this free beer everyone on Slashdot keeps talking about?
  6. Google Grid by JensenDied · · Score: 1

    Epic 2014
    Stay tuned for the news wars next year!

    --

    09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0

  7. Already better that Alpha by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In fifteen seconds of playing around with it, I already feel like I'm able to get better data and have better control than I do with Wolfram Alpha.

    1. Re:Already better that Alpha by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The major downside being that this can only do the equivalent of "vs" searches in Wolfram Alpha; i.e. it can't calculate with the information at all. That and the sources often being dubios at best.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    2. Re:Already better that Alpha by swillden · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think it is a competitor to Alpha. I don't know that I'd say it's better, though.

      Alpha operates only on "curated" data, which means that there's a lot more that can be done with the data, since Alpha understands its structure much better. Also, Alpha can do math on it, create graphs, etc.. But with Alpha, you can only use the data that's been made available.

      Google squared can't do as much with the data, but it can use the whole web, so it's data source is much richer.

      Of course, alpha can add data, and Google can add knowledge of relationships and the ability to do calculations and generate graphs. Their capabilities may converge over time. In which case Google will win.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Already better that Alpha by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 1
      Apples and Oranges. Google squared doesn't try to do ANY analysis of the data, it's just a way to do many searches at once in a grid format (see my other post). Alpha takes data and tries to do computations on it (with a terrible input parser, I might add).

      They aren't solving the same problem.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    4. Re:Already better that Alpha by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, I typed in geniuses and it completely failed to mention the wisest human alive, Steven Wolfram. So I think it's pretty darned incomplete, especially compared to such an unprecedented knowledge-processing breakthrough as Wolfram Alpha.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    5. Re:Already better that Alpha by Gulthek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No data analysis! GS and WA are completely different beasts.

      In Google Squared:

      Try getting a square with the five largest countries by area. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for five largest countries by area)

      Try to mathematically manipulate results like, say, dividing power usage of the united states by its population. (In Wolfram|Alpha search for united states electric production / population

      Try to get GS to do anything like growth charts, ISS location calculations, morse code translation, puzzle solving, food calorie counting, differential equations.

      Also the data is much less complete. Check out Google Squared's results for the escape velocities of the moons of Mars. Now check Wolfram|Alpha's. Yeah, there's a reason that WA is citable as a primary source.

    6. Re:Already better that Alpha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The neat part is that, if you search for geniuses, you can add a column IQ, and get the corresponding value for this person.

      It really look promising.

    7. Re:Already better that Alpha by Kadagan+AU · · Score: 1

      and I typed in microsoft and it lists Red Hat as one of the operating systems on the right hand column under Windows.

      --
      This space for rent, inquire within.
    8. Re:Already better that Alpha by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 1

      This will take google bombing to the next level.

    9. Re:Already better that Alpha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can also add a column for "age" and find out Kant is 1724 years old.

    10. Re:Already better that Alpha by unfasten · · Score: 1

      This will take google bombing to the next level.

      But the nice part about Squared is you can add and remove any results you want, as well as columns of information.

      You can also choose from various values for each data point, though at the moment this part seems a little limited. It would be nice to able select from more choices (maybe dynamically added as requested like other parts of the app).

    11. Re:Already better that Alpha by seramar · · Score: 1

      But - it's gotta be rather trivial for google to add the ability to add equation capabilities - IE =sum(A:A+B:B) ala excel...

      --
      australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
    12. Re:Already better that Alpha by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

      Also the data is much less complete. Check out Google Squared's results for the escape velocities of the moons of Mars. Now check Wolfram|Alpha's. Yeah, there's a reason that WA is citable as a primary source.

      You being a blatant shill for Wolfram notwithstanding, WA is not a primary source. Being a primary source means more than just not citing where you get your data (which I'll admit WA is excellent at). It means that you observed the data directly.

      WA is not doing original research. It is no more an original source than a copy of Mathematica is.

    13. Re:Already better that Alpha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dnno. I wanted to see how fast light travls inside glass. It instead tried to convert the speed of light into the amount of stuff small glasses hold: http://www44.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+light+in+glass . At least it failed to do the conversion...

    14. Re:Already better that Alpha by Gulthek · · Score: 1

      Shill? Damn, if only. Just a fanboy.

      From their faq:

      Should I cite Wolfram|Alpha when I use results from it?
      Yes. For academic purposes, Wolfram|Alpha is a primary source.

      Of course, I believe we are using different definitions of "primary source".

      You:
      A primary source could be a first-hand source from the past, such as a diary or artifact. Primary sources have been described as those sources closest to the origin of the information or idea under study.

      Me (and Wolfram|Alpha):
      Primary sources have been said to provide researchers with "direct, unmediated information about the object of study."

  8. Wolfram Alpha by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wolfram Alpha may not be a direct competitor for Google, yet, this is their response.
    Yes, I know, Wolfram takes info from reduced and trusted sources while Google does not. But the semantic database that they are building have the same structure.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    1. Re:Wolfram Alpha by Ant+P. · · Score: 1

      I couldn't help but notice how appropriate your sig is in context.

  9. Just goofing around by CopaceticOpus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yahoo URL: "No value found"
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=search+engines

    Random fun:
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=large+noses
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=lolcat+pictures

    Reply if you find other amusing queries!

    1. Re:Just goofing around by subtr4ct · · Score: 1

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=cosplay+photos

    2. Re:Just goofing around by xtracto · · Score: 1

      Yahoo URL: "No value found"
      http://www.google.com/squared

      What? no Bing?

      btw, In Mexico "bing" is a registered trademark:
      http://images.google.com/images?q=helados+bing

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    3. Re:Just goofing around by softwaredeveloper · · Score: 1

      click us presidents, then add "race", "sexual orientation", "color" complete garbage.

    4. Re:Just goofing around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well "color" certainly gave silly results, but I didn't see anything wrong with the others (beyond some "No value found"s, certainly not enough for it to be "complete garbage).

    5. Re:Just goofing around by DerCed · · Score: 1

      :-)
      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=nerd

    6. Re:Just goofing around by tdvaughan · · Score: 1

      Memes is surprisingly accurate - and, hilariously, it also counts Ron Paul as one. Which, when you come to think about it...

    7. Re:Just goofing around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=slashdot+users

    8. Re:Just goofing around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=fruit

    9. Re:Just goofing around by Alascom · · Score: 1

      http://www.google.com/squared/table/agyxom8lIUS0Ibf2RurpmKnA

      Comparison of hot vehicles in squared!

      You gotta love the MPG value on the Saleen... and the Prelude stats are so dead-on!

    10. Re:Just goofing around by Kadagan+AU · · Score: 1

      I found two interesting things with this search. First off, George Washington's race is listed as "black", ans secondly, if you add "legacy" as a key word, and add barack obama as one of the presidents, it says his legacy is "Driving the State Towards Bankruptcy"

      --
      This space for rent, inquire within.
    11. Re:Just goofing around by apok04 · · Score: 1

      The smartphones query doesn't include the G1. Oops. http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=smartphones

      --
      It's not a bug, it's a feature
    12. Re:Just goofing around by apok04 · · Score: 1

      Axis of Evil: http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=axis+of+evil

      --
      It's not a bug, it's a feature
    13. Re:Just goofing around by dark_panda · · Score: 1

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=internet+memes

      Pay attention to the column headings, especially "Captain".

    14. Re:Just goofing around by st0rmshadow · · Score: 0

      I love the 4 items that come up when you query 'Nerds':

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=nerds

      Provider

      Support

      Are you a Jackass?

      Maybe

    15. Re:Just goofing around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=geico

    16. Re:Just goofing around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but adding goatse to the list turns up the wrong image :-)

    17. Re:Just goofing around by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Interesting things I learned from http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=free+GUI+library

      * Glade is fiction
      * Windows is shareware
      * OpenGL is official GNU software

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  10. wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    it sure provides a ton of information from wikipedia. i wonder what % of wikipedia articles form google's results these days.

  11. Pretty neat but... by keeegan · · Score: 1

    Where's the option to save it to my hard drive as a spreadsheet?

  12. Mixed results by gaspyy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The default result sets are more than useless - are laughable.
    I searched for europe demographics and it automatically created a set of rows that was made of Gibraltar, Isle of Man and Faroe Islands; for columns it created Image, Description, Language, Capital and Currency. The same search on Wolfram Alpha produced clear, concise results.

    Eventually, I could get good results on Squared too by starting with an empty square and adding rows and columns myself. Took about 10 minutes; I could have made a simple search to get the same results.

    I realize Google-bashing is dangerous around here, but they definitely have to improve Squared if they want it to be useful.

    1. Re:Mixed results by Joseph+Lam · · Score: 1

      Remember what Google is good at? Collective knowledge. Over time they will understand more about how people use Squared and what columns people find relevant for certain types of search, and can use that to optimize the engine. It's like the gmail spam filter which performs so well because of collective knowledge.

    2. Re:Mixed results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

      Google Squared returns a table of information about a group of things. You are asking it for information about something that is not a group of things. Unsurprisingly, it is not giving you good results.

    3. Re:Mixed results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Search for Mountains in Germany. You will find the Zugspitze, height 2,962m (fair enough), the black forest (ok, there are some mountains in that area), height 19.5km (huh?) and the baltic sea (WTF?)

    4. Re:Mixed results by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

      If you try "programming languages", "supreme court justices", or "linux distros" you get no results from Alpha, but a reasonable effort from Squared. Then again, these are all topics that are well covered by Wikipedia. It seems that when you do get results from Alpha, they're almost always exactly what you're looking for (unless there's a periodical with the exact phrase you're searching for, e.g. "construction equipment"). On the other hand, Squared takes more of a bad-data-is-better-than-no-data approach. They both serve their purposes, but I wouldn't exactly call them competitors.

    5. Re:Mixed results by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it throws out all kinds of stuff. However, if you click on the 19.5km it'll show you its source a few words to show its context. If you go to the source you'll find the heights of various mountain peaks in that area. You could probably type in the names of those mountain peaks and get some heights. Or you could manually enter heights for the ones that it didn't salvage out of the pdf properly. I still find it useful (though it is very far from perfect). It's certainly better in some cases than just googling it normally.

  13. Not so impressed by foniksonik · · Score: 1

    I get better information from a normal search. This query set is very limited (for now at least). You can only give it a broad set topic and it will only give you back more specific subsets. Nothing related, similar or tangential. Do a search for "javascript" and you get 2 results - the international standard and a link to Mozilla. Nothing about any of the popular libraries, help sites, documentation, blogs, books or history...

    Do a search on Dog breeds however and you get a nice list of those as they are a discrete subset of the query term.

    --
    A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
    1. Re:Not so impressed by foniksonik · · Score: 1

      SO tried again with "javascript library" and got results... but still, requiring 2 keywords to get results is hardly going improve search.

      A stop gap solution would be to suggest queries that do have a lot of results when someone is typing in the query or after a low result set is returned. Yes fewer results seems like it would be better but not for a general query... still needs work (hence why it's in Labs I suppose).

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  14. I squared Microsoft by sveard · · Score: 1

    So I squared Microsoft and lol'd
    http://www.svenarduwie.be/Microsoft%20Google%20Squared.png
    License: GPL, Free ... :)

    1. Re:I squared Microsoft by nschubach · · Score: 1

      Create a new blank squares

      Add Linux, Windows, Mac

      Add column "market share"

      Add column "usage"

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    2. Re:I squared Microsoft by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Also add license, producer and price. You'll learn that Mac is GPLed, the producer of Windows earned $141 and Windows costs nothing. The price of Mac also sounds quite low.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  15. Spider Man = Monkey by Celeste+R · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=monkeys

    I never knew!

    --
    There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:Spider Man = Monkey by Celeste+R · · Score: 1

      And in new news, apparently Africa is a rare animal.

      --
      There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
    2. Re:Spider Man = Monkey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, yes! I do believe you're referring to the rare African Africa. That species can attain a land speed of over 35 kmph, although it's wind speed is is a bit short of an unladen swallow.

  16. Wow. Pretty cool. by sootman · · Score: 5, Informative

    But when I asked for http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=supermodels I couldn't help but notice it was missing a few key columns.

    HOLY CRAP! This post started out as a joke but then I then typed 'measurements' into the 'Add columns' box and it effing worked! Then click in the 'Add items' in the lower left, add the 5 suggestions, do that a few more times, and BAM, you've got a good amount of data. Holy crap, this is neat. There goes the rest of my day. I could see using this for actual work, like bridge lengths and building heights and such.

    And it's FUN! Data appears instantly, as if by magic, complete with pictures. I've never said this in my 10+ years on Slashdot, but everyone, GO RTFA! Actually, skip TFA, just go visit the site!

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    1. Re:Wow. Pretty cool. by hoooocheymomma · · Score: 1

      yeah when i figured out how easily you can tune the results, i was pretty impressed.

      It is of course a little clumsy and lacking in features, but when they get this cleaned up, it will be a very useful tool.

    2. Re:Wow. Pretty cool. by subtr4ct · · Score: 1

      Adding a column "marital status" reveals some of the ladies to be single. Not perfect, though. "No value found" for several rows.

    3. Re:Wow. Pretty cool. by sootman · · Score: 1

      This is super cool and I'm really looking forward to what will come of it, partly because I can see this has miles of potential and partly because the results at the moment can be unintentionally comical. Searching for 'planets' yields 7: Earth, Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn, Mercury, Ceres, and Venus. And in the "description" column for Venus it says "Only at Venus, find the sexiest women's swimwear and clothing. Shop online or request a catalog for sizzling hot clothing." :-) And Pluto, evidently, has a giant sign on it--the pic comes from a random blog. When I created my own list, they all came in better but still not perfect. The "Mercury" and "Saturn" descriptions are for the car companies and Pluto's picture, this time, was the cartoon dog. Still, very cool, and TONS of potential.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    4. Re:Wow. Pretty cool. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, then add Dress Size. Who knew Halle Berry was a 75.88 KB?

    5. Re:Wow. Pretty cool. by JaneTheIgnorantSlut · · Score: 1

      Heidi Klum wears size 10 shoes. Who knew? How cared?

    6. Re:Wow. Pretty cool. by Carnildo · · Score: 1

      Searching for supermodels? Why not search for women who actually look good instead?

      --
      "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
  17. Useless searches without context ... by oneiros27 · · Score: 1

    So I search on "space physics virtual observatory" ... and it prompts me to give 5 examples so I do (VSO, VMO, VHO, ViTMO, ViRBO) ... and well, it populated a grid with the top result for "VSO" which is "VSO Software" not "The Virtual Solar Observatory" (in all fairness, the Virtual Solar Observatory doesn't show up under the search, "Space Physics Virtual Observatory VSO", but it does show up under "Virtual Observatory VSO" ... so I start with the search "Virtual Observatory" (which brings up astronomy VOs, not space physics VOs) and add "VSO" ... and it still gives me "VSO Software".

    So ... it might be useful for some fields, but not all.

    (it _was_ able to tell me the countries of the nighttime VOs, though, which is handy ... although all of the items in the list weren't VOs.)

    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
  18. Not usable at all... by Arrawa · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've tried several searches and found that all searches are completely false, misleading or screwed up.

    Example 1: Dutch provinces. Wolfram accurately lists 12 and has the right names. Google lists dozens results, including Belgium rivers, shows the picture of a soccer player (with the same name as a

    Example 2: Dutch prime ministers. Wolfram shows the current one correctly and some older ones. All the info Wolfram shows is correct. Google lists many. Mostly the names are correct, but there is a picture and description of a car salesman with the same name, among others.

    Example 3: Countries in the EU. Wolfram shows 27 correct names. Google shows lots and lots of names. On the first pages it is ok, but on page threee, Sports is listed as an country (with the capital listed as $9500 ??) as well as Switzerland (not a EU-member) and English.

    So the tables are completely useless, it also sources Wikipedia almost all the time.

    Ergo: do not use it. Not yet in any case.

    1. Re:Not usable at all... by Virak · · Score: 2, Funny

      Obviously that's because you're searching for the wrong things. It simply can't be bothered to gather good information for such trivial matters. If you search for something worthwhile, the superiority of Google Squared quickly becomes apparent.

      Search for "list of pokemon" on Wolfram Alpha, and you get this pathetic sight. On the other hand, if you put the same query into Google Squared, add a couple of suggested columns, and maybe a Pokemon or two you want specific information on, and it gives you something that's actually useful .

    2. Re:Not usable at all... by dargaud · · Score: 1

      Strange, I find it very good. I typed "Antarctic Explorers" and then added a columned for "explored" and it tells me what those guys did explore, even adding multiple extra items. Granted, there are a few that went nowhere near Antarctica.

      --
      Non-Linux Penguins ?
    3. Re:Not usable at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ergo: do not use it. Not yet in any case.

      Your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from your poorly stated propositions.

      (I have tried several searches and google squares returned very appropriate results.)

    4. Re:Not usable at all... by Arrawa · · Score: 1

      The problem is not that some results are correct, the problem is that some results are not correct. So you do not know if google pours out the right answers. It is all about trust. And for now, Google Squared cannot be trusted.

      (And poorly stated propositions? I could use bolean search etc, but very few people do that. These are the questions that a student uses if he/she wanted to make a table for a report)

    5. Re:Not usable at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I googled "greek prime ministers" and I got:

      Google Squared couldn't automatically build a Square about greek prime ministers.
      But don't give up yet!

      Start a Square by entering up to 5 example items below.
      example: Planets
      Venus
      Mercury
      Earth
      Jupiter

      After entering karamanlis, simitis, papandreou, mitsotakis, and kapodistrias in the boxes, I got a table with all five of them plus Khrushchev and Gorbachev!! Well, it needs some work...
      Wikipedia, using "greek prime ministers" returned "No article title matches" but the first hit in the list was "List of Prime Ministers of Greece", which was correct.

    6. Re:Not usable at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google is automated
      Wolfram is human-edited

      which one is inevitably going to be superior?

    7. Re:Not usable at all... by glwtta · · Score: 1

      All your searches are for reference information and Wolfram is pretty good at this, for obvious stuff at least.

      Instead of "countries in eu", try "baltic countries": Wolfram will give you detailed (and correct) information for "baltic states", but nothing for "baltic countries", Google Squared will give you pretty decent results for both (it misses one of the capitals for the "countries" search, it comes up as the second "guess" though).

      That's the thing about W|A, you have to formulate your queries so specifically (and idiosyncratically) that you could've just as easily looked up the information in your reference source of choice, it doesn't really "search" anything.

      I've yet to get back anything but a blank stare from Wolfram for anything that (a) I'm actually interested in and (b) I wouldn't immediately know how to look up. Their examples work great, though.

      The Google thing, on the other hand, actually looks good for doing research: culling search results for structured information. You're not supposed to take the first thing that comes back as gospel.

      Exercise for the reader: see which one will come up with a list of the Knight Sabers first.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    8. Re:Not usable at all... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      None.
      Wolfram will be more reliable, but incomplete.
      Google will be more complete, but unreliable.

      I'd say the best is to have both tools available. So if you are satisfied with Wolfram's results, then great. Otherwise you can just turn to Google and then yourself verify the information you got. Of course there's always Wikipedia to get in the mix, and finally you shouldn't forget about the old-fashioned library. Each one has its own advantages and drawbacks.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  19. George Washington Carver = first president by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I clicked the link on the front of the page for "US Presidents." http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=US presidents&suggest=1 for the lazy. Under full name for George Washington, it lists Mr. George Carver. You'd think for something 1) so common and 2) that they promote on the front of their main site should have 100% accurate and vetted information and not tell us that George Washington Carver, despite his wonderful accomplishments, was the first president of these United States.

    1. Re:George Washington Carver = first president by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it could definitely be better. At least it displayed it in gray (everything in gray is of "Low Confidence").

  20. sarcomere by nassar · · Score: 1

    We've been playing with returning tables for structured data in the datalab project, e.g.: http://www.renci.org/~nassar/datalab/rplot.html Of course, data in tables is a well proven concept :-)

  21. This Google thing will never catch on... by viper34j · · Score: 1

    This Google thing will never catch on...

    1. Re:This Google thing will never catch on... by JayDaddy · · Score: 1

      Nope, cause then that Internet thing would have to catch on first

  22. Accurate informations... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Learn more about Operating Systems

    Ah! Who new Windows was free?

  23. Ordering algorithm for rows? by Odonian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder how they are ordering their table results. If I put in "star trek characters" for instance, I do indeed get a first set of ten that are all from ST.
    #1 is Spock (the Zachary Quinto version, but OK good)
    Kirk however is #6 after Riker, Troi, Picard, and Neelix.
    Neelix? c'mon google, that's a fail.

  24. Best part of that Yahoo entry by xant · · Score: 1

    Revenue: Question mark

    --
    It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
  25. YMMV seems to fit here by JayDaddy · · Score: 1

    Based on playing with the site for a few minutes and reading through posts so far it seems like perception of this feature depends on what you are searching for and how you enter the search terms. Perception of this feature also seems to be dependent upon the user's pre-judgment of Google vs. Wolfram Alpha, but that's probably best left for another discussion. Of course Google will produce some strange and/or invalid results for the search terms since it is searching then entire internet whereas Alpha is only searching a small subset of sites that it has deemed worthy.

  26. no-go w/ w3m by 10am-bedtime · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, this facility does not interoperate with w3m. All you can see is a "preparing" progress-bar thingy.

    1. Re:no-go w/ w3m by Ant+P. · · Score: 1

      I get the same in Firefox, actually.

  27. It May Source Wikipedia... by hax0r_this · · Score: 1

    But it seems very confused about what it is: http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=wikipedia

    1. Re:It May Source Wikipedia... by Virak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's Google Squared, not plain Google. If you search for something the results of which cannot be reasonably be put into a table of things and facts about them, you're not likely to get good results. A lot of people don't seem to be catching onto this. For example, in TFA, the guy searches for "atomic weights of elements", gets results which are half elements and half things like "Melting point", which have nonsense columns that are empty in most cases, and then has to add an "atomic weight" column anyway (he didn't explicitly state this, but the column in his picture is all lowercase, and the ones Google adds aren't like that). The right way to use it is to search for just "elements" and then add an "atomic weight" column to that. Doing it this way gets only actual elements, and default columns that make sense ("Boiling Point", "Melting Point", and "Crystal System" for me) and have information for every row.

  28. Put in your first name and reply mit results... by tyroneking · · Score: 1

    for me ... it said "Heartless"

  29. Curated tables. by orngjce223 · · Score: 1

    I see the promise but would rather that my user-entered values be accessible like the GoogleSearchWiki. This could be described as a "curated table". (Much more useful than the utterly random data given - when I search for Fruit, I want to see a picture of an apple, not an Apple.) Obviously I'm taking half the pages from Wikipedia's book and throwing them at Google, but the idea's there I think.

    --
    Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
  30. I'm Not Seeing It... by tunapez · · Score: 1

    Looks like all the other "progress" bars frozen on mid-load.
    Have tried multiple unique and linked searches and the "Building a Square for..."
    bar fills 90% and stops every time... didn't think Big G was susceptible to the Slashdot Effect.

    Meh, back to the timeline for me.

    --
    Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
  31. Re:Wolfram Alpha...Slashdotted? by LoverOfJoy · · Score: 1

    Is Wolfram Alpha always this slow or has it been slashdotted?

  32. Try this: search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Enter search engine as a term for Google Squared, then add a column titled URL. You will see funny results :)

  33. Literature searches by stei7766 · · Score: 1

    Hmm, a bit clunky now, but I would imagine it could be WTFBBQ for scientific literature searches. Scifinder makes babies cry.

  34. It actually works! by agslashdot · · Score: 1

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=finite+abelian+group#

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=differentiation+rules

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=power+series

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=differential+geometry

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=slashdot

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=pornstars

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=c+compiler

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=probability+distribution

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=cancer

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=spielberg+films

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Gross+domestic+product+countries

    1. Re:It actually works! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      But searching for C++ compiler fails (it always changes the query to C compiler).

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  35. Square? by Saija · · Score: 1

    No semantic searches. Less accuracy than Wolfram. Lame. ;)

    --
    Slashdot ya no es que lo era! ;)
  36. Re:Bible Books (Titus) by Bryan+Gividen · · Score: 1

    Also startling is that Titus appears to be a body-builder in addition to being a proselytizer with St. Paul. -Bryan Gividen

  37. hmph by GregNorc · · Score: 1

    Looks like they're trying to take on Clusty.

  38. You got Astrology in my Java! by pavon · · Score: 1

    Yes, who would have know that among the java data types, short is an Aries and double is a Capricorn:) Explains a lot really.

    Seriously though, it does a good job on populating the Name and Description columns. After that, not so much.

    1. Re:You got Astrology in my Java! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      I also didn't know that Java data types have a result, that Java's has an integer type which is always 3, that Java's float is used to create a left-float element (usually an image), and that Java's double only can contain negative numbers.
      Also I didn't know that operators are a data type in Java, and their result is always FALSE.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  39. A little better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Better results from a typo (european)
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=europian+demographics

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=european+demographics (Nice photo Monaco)

  40. It doesn't rank itself very highly by mr_lizard13 · · Score: 1

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=google+squared
    Oh well!

    --
    "We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
  41. How about a hybrid approach? by noodlesquares · · Score: 1

    Noodle Squares uses a combination of human intelligence and automation to generate better results. Compare:

    Search engines
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=search+engines
    http://noodlesquares.com/SearchEngines.html

    Cameras
    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=cameras
    http://noodlesquares.com/Cameras.html

    [disclaimer: associated with noodlesquares]

  42. Units? by chord.wav · · Score: 1

    Go to: http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=nissan

    Can we have the width in the unit system please? I have inches and millimeters all mixed up. It would be awesome if I can choose the unit. Measuring a car width in millimeters is not very practical from a user perspective.

  43. Some obvious missing functionality by suso · · Score: 1

    Where is the ability to sort the records by columns? I mean duh?!?

  44. interesting and strange and possibly useful by krakround · · Score: 1

    "planets" gives you the results you might expect, but not nine or even eight rows. "english queens" leads off with Edward VII. Poor Edward, I did not truly know ye. On a related note, the above query failed to include Queen Victoria, although I see at the time of posting she now appears in the drop down box. Related queries got Victoria confused with the current Crown Princess of Sweden and Victoria's Secret. A surprisingly complete result is "stargate atlantis characters". I think the way to use this is to not consider the initial result definitive, but as a starting point that can be refined.

  45. 7 wonders by pablodiazgutierrez · · Score: 1

    If done (and used) right, this could be a quantum leap (yes, I work for Intel) in Internet search for semi-structured information search. However, my first search: 7 wonders, gave only partially satisfactory results. Stonehenge 120 yards tall? The Empire State building and Panama channel? Well, it's rightly beta, so I shouldn't complain.

    --

    To do list for Windows
  46. Awesome by nog_lorp · · Score: 1

    Kinda of like Wolfram Alpha except:
    1) less accurate.
    2) actually usable.

    Makes me think I'll be using this.

  47. Dead People by AlastairLynn · · Score: 1

    I asked Google Squared for a list of dead people. One of the first to appear was 'God,' whose date of death was apparently September 2006.

  48. So I decided to try this by visible.frylock · · Score: 1

    And I've been looking around for LAME (the not-the-mp3-encoder) stuff for the past 30 minutes. I've never heard of Google Squared before, so I thought I'd test it out with lame:

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=lame

    Apparently google doesn't like bond movies ... Or it knows where I can dl mp3s of the soundtracks ... I'm not actually sure.

    Then I decided to RTFM, and use a different string, and it was actually pretty cool:

    http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=lame+front+ends

    --
    Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
  49. Google Squared confirms that Linux is dead by Explo · · Score: 1

    I looked at the list of suggested additional columns and chose "Died". Now I know that Linux died as "A modem hung up the phone". Various BSDs seem to still be going strong, though.

    On a more serious note, the concept is quite neat (and as noted, not entirely unlike the comparisons provided by WolframAlpha). However, the quality of the results has to improve a lot before I'll use this for anything else than amusing myself.

    --
    Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.