Oh you're right, this is not yet the scale of Minecraft, it's also very different, as you will see when exploring. Every distinct block is hand-drawn by the person, ranging from 19x19 pixels to 38x38 per drawing, with multiple animation cells and sometimes scripts attached to blocks, and numbers indeed don't measure the great things people have built... have a look at this screenshot gallery or explore the world and its many areas a bit to get an impression. Here's the City of Twilight or Green Mountain for instance, which you can add to too.
Thanks for this feedback Reziac. A just-sorted-by-date section does make some sense, I will ponder what is feasible here in terms of navigation (one prototype of the site had a specially colored "Misc." section but I was not yet completely happy with it). Pls note you can already search by year (e.g. [1923], or in combo with a keyword) and you can search by decade by entering e.g. [1920s] or [1930s], and then page through the first 1,000 results.
And you're right, sources are included independent of whether an ad can be bought from there (and if there's a buy link there, it will be independent of whether or not I have an affiliate account with the site... I consider it useful). This is a museum and gallery site that's meant to be enjoyed by people and to be useful, and everything else is secondary to that goal. As you might expect I will run into problems if server costs are making me bankrupt, but other than that, I'm happy if I just cover server costs (if more, I'm very happy too of course, but not in a way that clutters the site or anything).
As the creator of the site, I'm hoping for the best:) For what it's worth, I'm using Amazon S3 for the storage of the images (which needs to be paid by bandwidth, admittedly, so I'll have to watch my costs closely), and due to caching there should be no database connections on any ad page once it has been viewed for a first time (unless I iterate the version of the site or clear the cache... never before searched queries do cause database connections, naturally). But none of this guarantess uptime during slashdotting... again I can just hope for the best!
Thanks for the criticism
on
Google Apps Hacks
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The author here, I enjoyed reading your review and also will pass on (and chew) on your criticism in regards to the word "hack". I'm really happy you got something out of the book!
As of January 20, Wikipedia.de is allowed to redirect to the German Wikipedia once again. While formally the previous court interdiction is still valid, for the time being Wikipedia -- who paid 500 to the court -- are not bound to act on it. Or so Wikipedia.de says at this time.
The Wikipedia quote above is somewhat incorrect. Futurezone says the parents contacted the author, who gave the argument as stated above. They then contacted the publisher but Futurezone did not specifically list why the publisher reject their demand as well.
"What should I do with a good submission from a reader with a reputation?"
I think you should definitely post it if the actual story and its summary is the quality you're looking for. These politics might die on their own, but I don't think it's a submitters fault there are conspiracy theories about him. As soon as you listen to those conspiracies and ignore a submission you otherwise wouldn't have, you are in fact honoring the conspiracy theories.
While most of the comments here seem to focus on the Worker side of this (those getting paid for answering simple questions), there's also the Requester side -- programmers tapping into the power of "fake" (but working!) AI. (Ladies and gentleman, we present you the global brain... it can think for you if you micro-pay!) I think we can implement many new programs/ websites in completely new ways, and there may even be fresh commercial niche programs coming out of this. Maybe in 50 years, we'll include AMT (or similar services) into our software as naturally as we now include, say, SQL.
I wish the site was working better at the moment (even before it has been Slashdotted, it was behaving strangely), and I wish it wouldn't ask me for a US bank account (being from Germany, that kinda hinders me from working with it).
I'm missing the part in his blog post where he speaks about earning $10,000 - $20,000. He only talks about a big paycheck. Only in the comments is this figure mentioned. So I wonder where exactly the figure's coming from...
AltaVista is just showing Yahoo results (as they are owned by them). In other words, AltaVista is dead. But yeah, Yahoo's getting better at search and has results comparable to Google results. Of the big 3 only MSN is really way off at times...
Graphical ads have been around for a while -- everyone with a Google AdSense account knows that. The only new thing is that there's now *animation* as well.
Actually, not linking "online poker" was a conscious decision; I wanted to report on the news and not get into the Googlebombing myself. (On my blog, I did link the phrase "online poker" to Wikipedia.)
Yes, we in Germany are able to bypass the censorshop using Google.com. It will take one trip back to Google.de but then you can click on "English version..." and a cookie will be set. Directly entering Google.com has no effect and will take you to Google.de.
Well, there sometimes is a problem even with historical documents. Like Mein Kampf -- you will have problems googling the full text of this, and German libraries AFAIK for a time only showed annotated versions. I remember one time Corel had to remove swastikas from their clip art collection published in Germany...
It will only be censored in Google.de. The first time you enter Google.com in Germany, you will be automatically forwarded to Google.de. Once you press "English version..." on Google.de, you will get a cookie that lets you stay on Google.com -- you can now view the uncensored results. I *always* go to Google.com, even though I'm in Germany.
Slashdot Mirror
Also try Interactings in Manyland, a way to add behavior to your block: http://manyland.com/info-inter...
Some people are building a continuous airlevator into the sky. I believe I've been as far as 50 kilometers up high. The quest continues!
(Sorry, City of Twilight link should be this)
Oh you're right, this is not yet the scale of Minecraft, it's also very different, as you will see when exploring. Every distinct block is hand-drawn by the person, ranging from 19x19 pixels to 38x38 per drawing, with multiple animation cells and sometimes scripts attached to blocks, and numbers indeed don't measure the great things people have built... have a look at this screenshot gallery or explore the world and its many areas a bit to get an impression. Here's the City of Twilight or Green Mountain for instance, which you can add to too.
So if you search for ads that contain the word "hat" you get every ad that contains the word "that".
Very valid point. I will put this on my todo list to figure out.
Thanks for this feedback Reziac. A just-sorted-by-date section does make some sense, I will ponder what is feasible here in terms of navigation (one prototype of the site had a specially colored "Misc." section but I was not yet completely happy with it). Pls note you can already search by year (e.g. [1923], or in combo with a keyword) and you can search by decade by entering e.g. [1920s] or [1930s], and then page through the first 1,000 results.
And you're right, sources are included independent of whether an ad can be bought from there (and if there's a buy link there, it will be independent of whether or not I have an affiliate account with the site... I consider it useful). This is a museum and gallery site that's meant to be enjoyed by people and to be useful, and everything else is secondary to that goal. As you might expect I will run into problems if server costs are making me bankrupt, but other than that, I'm happy if I just cover server costs (if more, I'm very happy too of course, but not in a way that clutters the site or anything).
There is a search engine, could you tell me what you searched for that didn't yield good hits? Maybe this can be optimized.
I'm aware that unfortunately not all images have zooms going with them. Just some do, when you see the magnifying glass below them.
As the creator of the site, I'm hoping for the best :) For what it's worth, I'm using Amazon S3 for the storage of the images (which needs to be paid by bandwidth, admittedly, so I'll have to watch my costs closely), and due to caching there should be no database connections on any ad page once it has been viewed for a first time (unless I iterate the version of the site or clear the cache... never before searched queries do cause database connections, naturally). But none of this guarantess uptime during slashdotting... again I can just hope for the best!
The author here, I enjoyed reading your review and also will pass on (and chew) on your criticism in regards to the word "hack". I'm really happy you got something out of the book!
> Google have made it easier for Chinese users
> to find uncensored content
No. Because China had (and still has) access to google.com (working around 90% of the time, according to Google).
As of January 20, Wikipedia.de is allowed to redirect to the German Wikipedia once again. While formally the previous court interdiction is still valid, for the time being Wikipedia -- who paid 500 to the court -- are not bound to act on it. Or so Wikipedia.de says at this time.
The Wikipedia quote above is somewhat incorrect. Futurezone says the parents contacted the author, who gave the argument as stated above. They then contacted the publisher but Futurezone did not specifically list why the publisher reject their demand as well.
"What should I do with a good submission from a reader with a reputation?" I think you should definitely post it if the actual story and its summary is the quality you're looking for. These politics might die on their own, but I don't think it's a submitters fault there are conspiracy theories about him. As soon as you listen to those conspiracies and ignore a submission you otherwise wouldn't have, you are in fact honoring the conspiracy theories.
Hey! I predicted this.
I like the Mechanical Turk service. It's just like my CHI proposal from half a year ago made real.3 .html
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-03-25-n4
While most of the comments here seem to focus on the Worker side of this (those getting paid for answering simple questions), there's also the Requester side -- programmers tapping into the power of "fake" (but working!) AI. (Ladies and gentleman, we present you the global brain... it can think for you if you micro-pay!) I think we can implement many new programs/ websites in completely new ways, and there may even be fresh commercial niche programs coming out of this. Maybe in 50 years, we'll include AMT (or similar services) into our software as naturally as we now include, say, SQL.
I wish the site was working better at the moment (even before it has been Slashdotted, it was behaving strangely), and I wish it wouldn't ask me for a US bank account (being from Germany, that kinda hinders me from working with it).
And here are the pictures of the Google Dance 2005: http://www.google.com/googledance2005/
I'm missing the part in his blog post where he speaks about earning $10,000 - $20,000. He only talks about a big paycheck. Only in the comments is this figure mentioned. So I wonder where exactly the figure's coming from...
AltaVista is just showing Yahoo results (as they are owned by them). In other words, AltaVista is dead. But yeah, Yahoo's getting better at search and has results comparable to Google results. Of the big 3 only MSN is really way off at times...
Graphical ads have been around for a while -- everyone with a Google AdSense account knows that. The only new thing is that there's now *animation* as well.
Actually, not linking "online poker" was a conscious decision; I wanted to report on the news and not get into the Googlebombing myself. (On my blog, I did link the phrase "online poker" to Wikipedia.)
Yes, we in Germany are able to bypass the censorshop using Google.com. It will take one trip back to Google.de but then you can click on "English version..." and a cookie will be set. Directly entering Google.com has no effect and will take you to Google.de.
Well, there sometimes is a problem even with historical documents. Like Mein Kampf -- you will have problems googling the full text of this, and German libraries AFAIK for a time only showed annotated versions. I remember one time Corel had to remove swastikas from their clip art collection published in Germany...
It will only be censored in Google.de. The first time you enter Google.com in Germany, you will be automatically forwarded to Google.de. Once you press "English version..." on Google.de, you will get a cookie that lets you stay on Google.com -- you can now view the uncensored results. I *always* go to Google.com, even though I'm in Germany.