Semi-Aquatic Insects, Google Advertising, Zoom, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 29, 2023

Semi-Aquatic Insects, Google Advertising, Zoom, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Phys .org: Some bugs live in water as larvae: Now there is a database to track these semi-aquatic insects. “… so-called semi-aquatic insects are an important food source for animals in the water and on land and are used as bioindicators to assess water quality and the state of freshwater ecosystems. Thanks to the commitment of nearly 100 researchers, the EPTO-database is the first global data source regarding geo-referenced and freely available data sets on aquatic insect occurrences worldwide. The project was coordinated by IGB.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Ads Tests Blue Badges For Verified Advertisers In Search. “Google is testing showing blue badge icons and labels on some search ads for advertisers who are verified by Google Ads. The blue label is a blue circle with ridges and checkmark within it. This is from the ongoing Google advertiser verification program and now we are seeing Google test little blue checkmarks for advertisers who are verified.”

SlashGear: Zoom Just Added New AI-Powered Features, Here’s What They Do . “Starting with chats, users will soon be able to use a generative AI-assisted feature to compose their messages. The composing system will let users specify the tone — from formal to playful — and also pick between three presets for the length of messages they want the AI to generate.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Another art museum chief quits as Russia pressures cultural institutions. “The director, Marina Loshak, insisted Tuesday that her resignation after a decade in the post was voluntary. But her departure is the latest example of turnover in the leadership of Russian cultural institutions amid wartime demands from the government that art exhibitions reflect patriotic, national values.”

Engadget: Twitter’s secret VIP list is the reason you see Elon Musk’s tweets so often. “We now know why Twitter’s algorithm seems to recommend some users’ tweets so often. Newsletter Platformer reports that the company has a secret VIP list of a few dozen accounts ‘it monitors and offers increased visibility’ in its recommendation algorithm. The accounts include Elon Musk, as well as a handful of other prominent Twitter users.”

The Independent: The Global Music Vault wants to preserve the world’s music in case of disaster – but how will they do it?. “When Luke Jenkinson, an Australian entrepreneur now living in Norway, saw what was being done with the Arctic World Archive and the Global Seed Vault, his mind went to something less tangible than food or even history.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google violated order to save evidence, antitrust judge says. “Alphabet Inc’s Google flouted a court order requiring it to save records of employee chats in antitrust litigation over its Google Play app store policies, a federal judge concluded.”

The Hill: Twitter restricts Greene’s congressional account over ‘vengeance’ post. “Twitter on Tuesday restricted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) congressional account for seven days after she repeatedly posted an image of a poster about a rally called ‘Trans Day of Vengeance.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Twitter is dying . “The value that Twitter’s platform produced, by combining valuable streams of qualification and curiosity, is being beaten and wrung out. What’s left has — for months now — felt like an echo-y shell of its former self. And it’s clear that with every freshly destructive decision — whether it’s unbanning the nazis and letting the toxicity rip, turning verification into a pay-to-play megaphone or literally banning journalists — Musk has applied his vast wealth to destroying as much of the information network’s value as possible in as short a time as possible; each decision triggering another exodus of expertise as more long-time users give up and depart.”

Brigham Young University: Can AI predict how you’ll vote in the next election?. “In one experiment, the researchers created artificial personas by assigning the AI certain characteristics like race, age, ideology, and religiosity; and then tested to see if the artificial personas would vote the same as humans did in 2012, 2016, and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) for their comparative human database, they found a high correspondence between how the AI and humans voted.” Good morning, Internet…

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March 30, 2023 at 12:39AM
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Turn a Wikipedia Page Into a Contact Directory With RoloWiki

Turn a Wikipedia Page Into a Contact Directory With RoloWiki
By ResearchBuzz

When you want the official Facebook account or the LinkedIn for a famous person, what do you do? A quick Web search? It’s either that, ask a friend, or try to guess.

But there are other places that have that kind of information too, like Wikipedia. And if you’re looking to get such data on many people in the same category — lists of CEOs or active politicians, for example — Wikipedia might be a faster option. But how do you extract the data without doing a lot of poking and clicking and spending much more time than you would with a Web search?

I like this question. I answered it with RoloWiki ( https://searchgizmos.com/rolowiki/ ).  RoloWiki lets you specify a Wikipedia article and then shows you the content of that page. The difference is that the internal links to other Wikipedia pages are replaced with a function call that extracts a predetermined list of available Wikidata properties about that Wikidata entity. Here’s how to use it.

Using RoloWiki

Start using RoloWiki by entering the name of a Wikipedia article and clicking the button. The default value is “List of chief executive officers” so let’s stay with that.

When you click the button RoloWiki will show you what looks like a regular Wikipedia article, though the formatting is different and the edit links don’t work.

 

See someone interesting? Click on their name. A box will open in the upper right corner providing additional information on them. RoloWiki looks for a number for Wikidata properties – first and last name, date of birth, occupation, official website, Library of Congress reference ID, Wikimedia Commons category, LinkedIn ID, Facebook account, and Twitter account. (Bear in mind that not all accounts have all Wikidata properties available.)

 

 

The Wikidata Properties box stays in the upper corner of the page to minimize interfering with your browsing

Isn’t that nice? You can turn Wikipedia pages into mini contact directories.

Because of the Wikidata properties being people-oriented, RoloWiki is best for people search, but you can search for companies and institutions as well. Apple doesn’t work because it’s too ambiguous, but other companies work fine:

March 29, 2023 at 08:30PM
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LGBTQ Rights Worldwide, Zagreb Film Cartoons, UK NFT, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, March 29, 2023

LGBTQ Rights Worldwide, Zagreb Film Cartoons, UK NFT, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, March 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Time-Sliced News Search.
This tool takes a year and query you input and generates date-restricted searches for several news search engines, including Google News, Google Books (Books, Newspapers, and Magazines are searched separately), Newspapers.com, and Chronicling America.

NEW RESOURCES

Out in Perth: New database tracks global progress and decline on LGBTI+ rights. “The ILGA World Database, a platform launched by ILGA World compiling laws, news, and references to human rights bodies and advocacy opportunities with the United Nations related to LGBTI+ people worldwide. The free, interactive, and collaborative platform gives details insights on the state of laws and proposed legislation concerning sexuality, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics issues in 193 UN member States and 47 non-independent territories.”

Cartoon Brew: Some Of The Weirdest And Most Stylish Cartoons Ever Made Are Now Free To View On Youtube. “Zagreb Film produced some of the wildest, most eclectic animated shorts of the 20th century, but their work has been exceptionally difficult to view — until now.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: NFT: Plans for Royal Mint produced token dropped by government. “Plans for a government backed non-fungible token (NFT) produced by the Royal Mint have been dropped, the Treasury has announced. Rishi Sunak ordered the creation of a ‘NFT for Britain’ that could be traded online, while chancellor in April 2022.”

ProPublica: A Rare Statue of Buddha Fails to Sell at Auction as Questions Swirl Around a Renowned Art Collection. “What happened may be a sign that objects from the collection of James and Marilynn Alsdorf will have trouble finding buyers following questions about how they were acquired. The piece from Nepal was once displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago.”

Engadget: Fitbit challenges, adventures and open groups join the Google graveyard today. “If you’re a longtime Fitbit user, the demise of open groups, adventures and challenges is likely to come as a shame, particularly since two of them made the platform more social and were widely copied by the company’s competitors.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: The Ultimate Todoist Keyboard Shortcuts Cheatsheet. “Productivity is a hot topic of conversation. As such, choosing the right tool for the job is crucial. Todoist is a popular and robust app that lets you create simple shopping lists or more complex projects – including professional ones.” Extensive. No annotation, but extensive.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: How we might stop the flood of data-driven misinformation. “People are often tempted to trust statistics and algorithms as neutral arbiters. But algorithms are incapable of independently understanding the worth of what they’re generating. They’re also very good at producing the appearance of meaning, which makes it that much easier to trawl through data sets in search of the conclusions you want to see in them.”

University of Iowa Libraries: Preserving Hawkeye sports history, one digitized film at a time. “The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections and Archives and Conservation and Collections Care have an initiative to digitize about 530 films of football, men’s and women’s basketball, wrestling, and track films that date back to the 1930s and go through at least 1989. The films’ state of degradation is dramatic, especially for the older material, and many of these films don’t have much life left in them.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CoinDesk: Binance, CEO Zhao Sued by CFTC Over ‘Willful Evasion’ of U.S. Laws, Unregistered Crypto Derivatives Products. “The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued crypto exchange Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao Monday on allegations the company knowingly offered unregistered crypto derivatives products in the U.S. against federal law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

La Trobe University: New project to track alcohol in Influencer posts. “A new research project led by La Trobe University will use artificial intelligence software to monitor social media influencers’ Instagram posts for alcohol marketing, to inform future regulation and reduce alcohol harms.”

Flinders University: Plus side of app use before bed. “Overuse of mobile devices gets a bad rap but an upside may be their ability to create a distraction and positively affect teenagers’ ability to get to sleep, new Flinders University research shows. Feedback from more than 600 teenagers from age 12 to 18 at South Australian schools between June and September 2019 has led the international research group to point to a more nuanced view on using the wide range of mobile content – led by Youtube, music apps, Instagram and Snapchat – before young people’s bedtime.”

Eos: Deluges of Data Are Changing Astronomical Science. “For scientists who study the cosmos, hard-to-grasp numbers are par for the course. But the sheer quantity of data flowing from modern research telescopes, to say nothing of the promised deluges of upcoming astronomical surveys, is astounding even astronomers. That embarrassment of riches has necessitated some serious data wrangling by myself and my colleagues, and it’s changing astronomical science forever.” Good morning, Internet…

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March 29, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Twitter, iPhone, Commercial Spyware, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 28, 2023

Twitter, iPhone, Commercial Spyware, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ABC News: Twitter celebs balk at paying Elon Musk for blue check mark. “William Shatner, Monica Lewinsky and other prolific Twitter commentators — some household names, others little-known journalists — could soon be losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identity on the social media platform.”

Axios: Musk says Twitter will only show verified accounts in “For You” timeline. “Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced Monday evening that only tweets by verified users will show up in the platform’s default main feed of ‘For You’ recommendations starting April 15.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Finally, There’s an Easy Way to Reduce Background Noise on Your iPhone. “As reported by 9to5Mac, Apple is adding Voice Isolation mode to phone calls as part of iOS 16.4. According to Apple, Voice Isolation mode ‘prioritizes your voice and blocks out ambient noise around you,’ a simple solution to clearer audio during phone calls.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rest of World: Twitter blocked 122 accounts in India at the government’s request. “Twitter blocked 122 accounts belonging to journalists, authors, and politicians in India this week in response to legal requests from the Indian government.”

Daily Beast: Elon Musk’s Twitter Makes Millions Off Anti-LGBT “Groomer” Tweets: Report. “Under Elon Musk’s leadership of Twitter, tweets linking LGBT people to ‘grooming’ have sky-rocketed, jumping 119 percent since Musk’s takeover in October 2022, according to a new report released by the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The study also found that Twitter is making millions from big-name advertisers, whose brands are appearing alongside hateful anti-LGBT rhetoric.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Biden administration bans federal agencies from using commercial spyware. “In an executive order signed Monday, President Biden barred federal agencies from using commercial spyware that threatens US national security or carries a risk of improper use by foreign governments and individuals.”

WIRED: A US Agency Rejected Face Recognition—and Landed in Big Trouble. “Officials working on Login.gov, used to access dozens of government sites, worried about algorithmic bias. Their decision breached federal security rules.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NHK: Japan donates washi paper to restore ancient Ukrainian texts. “The western Japanese prefecture of Tokushima has donated locally-produced washi paper to an archive in Ukraine, so that old documents can be restored.”

Washington Post: The biggest decider of who backs a TikTok ban? If they use TikTok.. “More Americans back a TikTok ban than oppose one, with a majority expressing concerns over the company’s links to China, underscoring that distrust of the foreign-owned app has spread beyond Washington, even as its domestic user base soars.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Hobbyist builds ChatGPT client for MS-DOS . “On Sunday, Singapore-based retrocomputing enthusiast Yeo Kheng Meng released a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS that can run on a 4.77 MHz IBM PC from 1981, providing a unique way to converse with the popular OpenAI language model.” You don’t know how much I miss those super-solid IBM keyboards. Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.

March 29, 2023 at 12:28AM
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“The Chills”, Royal Neighbors of America, Criminal use of ChatGPT, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, March 28, 2023

“The Chills”, Royal Neighbors of America, Criminal use of ChatGPT, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, March 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Sinker Search
Change your Google results by emphasizing one word in the query.

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Motherboard: Here’s a Database of Media Scientifically Verified to Give You the Chills. “Chills are an innate response for most people. Whether you’re watching a scary movie, or get some harrowing news, it’s a common emotional response to stimuli. And now, scientists have created a database of certain media that has the potential to give you the chills.”

Our Quad Cities: For anniversary, Royal Neighbors unveils digital museum. “Tuesday, March 21, 2023 is the 128th anniversary of Royal Neighbors of America, the Rock Island-based fraternal benefit society and one of the largest women-led life insurers in the U.S. To celebrate its anniversary (during Women’s History Month), Royal Neighbors launched a new Historical Digital Museum that features information on its camps, chapters, leaders, timeline of current events, and archived historical documents, articles, and photos.”

Europol: The criminal use of ChatGPT – a cautionary tale about large language models. “In response to the growing public attention given to ChatGPT, the Europol Innovation Lab organised a number of workshops with subject matter experts from across Europol to explore how criminals can abuse large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, as well as how it may assist investigators in their daily work. Their insights are compiled in Europol’s first Tech Watch Flash report published today. Entitled ‘ChatGPT – the impact of Large Language Models on Law Enforcement’, this document provides an overview on the potential misuse of ChatGPT, and offers an outlook on what may still be to come.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Boing Boing: Having devalued Twitter’s blue checkmark, Elon sells Gold Badges. “No longer serving the purpose of identifying a publication or other notable source as passing whatever Twitter’s idea of verified or notable was, Elon Musk now offers a Gold Badge your company can buy for $1000/mo to prove they are a company that paid $1000.”

Stephen Wolfram: ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”! . “Thanks to some heroic software engineering by our team and by OpenAI, ChatGPT can now call on Wolfram|Alpha—and Wolfram Language as well—to give it what we might think of as ‘computational superpowers’.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Indicted Chinese exile controls Gettr social media site, ex-employees say. “An exiled Chinese tycoon indicted in New York earlier this month in a billion-dollar fraud case controls the conservative social media platform Gettr and used it to promote cryptocurrencies and propaganda, former employees have told The Washington Post.”

India Today: Man clears job interview at Google but fails tenant interview in Bengaluru, here’s the full story. “A Google India employee posted on LinkedIn that a landlord didn’t accept him as a tenant because he worked for Google and thus would probably buy his own home one day.”

WFTS: Florida Sentinel Bulletin history in the process of being digitized at the C. Blythe Andrews, Jr. Library. “The Florida Sentinel Bulletin Collection dates back to the 1940s. The collection highlights African American history that you wouldn’t see in other media outlets. Right now, the library is in the process of digitizing all of the items to make them more accessible to the community.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Twitter takes legal action after source code leaked online. “Twitter has revealed some of its source code has been released online and the social media platform owned by Elon Musk is taking legal action to identify the leaker.”

Reuters: Japan ruling party group eyes ban on TikTok, other apps – lawmaker. “A group of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers is planning to compile a proposal next month urging the government to ban social networking services such as TikTok if they are used for disinformation campaigns, an LDP lawmaker said Monday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: A design tool to democratize the art of color-changing mosaics. “Computational tool from MIT CSAIL enables color-changing cellulose-based designs for data visualization, education, fashion, and more.”

WIRED: AI Loves—and Loathes—Language. “The particular kind of data that foils AI more than anything is human language. Unfortunately, human language is also a primary form of data on the meganet. As language confounds deep-learning applications, AI—and meganets—will learn to avoid it in favor of numbers and images, a move that stands to imperil how humans use language with each other.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.

March 28, 2023 at 05:30PM
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American House Museums Web Archive, Scribd Alternatives, Emoji, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 27, 2023

American House Museums Web Archive, Scribd Alternatives, Emoji, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Historical Representation at American House Museums Web Archive. “The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation is pleased to announce the launch of the Historical Representation at American House Museums Web Archive, curated by librarians, library workers, and professors at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University. House museums have been a key component of historic preservation in America since the mid 19th century.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 6 Scribd Alternatives to Host Your PDF Files. “Scribd is a popular document-hosting website, and if someone wanted to share a PDF file online, chances are they would upload it to Scribd. However, its interface and restrictive features are less popular, and the company modified its initial business model. Luckily, there are more than enough Scribd alternatives to choose from.”

MakeUseOf: 5 Online Tools and Websites to Make Your Own Emojis . “Have you ever wished a specific emoji existed but couldn’t find it? Well, now you can explore making your own. Fortunately, you don’t need any advanced software, or technical and artistic skills to make emojis, as there are online tools that allow you to do that. Here are five websites to use to make your own emojis.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: How Twitch lost its way. “Delivering live video content to millions of people, 24 hours per day, is expensive, and as Twitch grows, it incurs greater costs. But Twitch’s moves in pursuit of profitability have confused and upset creators, fans and staff. Creators have decried new monetization schemes that put the onus on them to run more ads.”

Reuters: Microsoft threatens to restrict data from rival AI search tools. “Several rival search engines have launched their own AI-powered chatbots, which aim to combine the the conversational skills of Microsoft’s ChatGPT with search engine results.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: Asian Americans are anxious about hate crimes. TikTok ban rhetoric isn’t helping. “Ever since the US government shot down a Chinese spy balloon last month, [Ellen] Min has withdrawn from her normal routine out of a concern she or her family may become targeted in one of the hundreds of anti-Asian hate crimes the FBI now says are occurring every year. The wave of anti-Asian hate that surged with the pandemic may only get worse, Min worries, as both political parties have amplified fears about China and the threat it poses to US economic and national security.”

The Verge: The Linus Tech Tips YouTube hack is the latest in a line of crypto scam breaches. “Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked this morning, with the channel’s 15.3 million subscribers seeing videos for crypto scams instead of tech hardware reviews. It’s the latest breach in a series of high-profile YouTube accounts being hacked, with scammers regularly gaining access to prominent accounts to rename them and livestream crypto scam videos.”

New York Times: Online Troll Named Microchip Tells of Sowing ‘Chaos’ in 2016 Election. “The defendant in the unusual trial, Douglass Mackey, and the pseudonymous witness collaborated to beat Hillary Clinton. They met for the first time in a Brooklyn courtroom.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Motherboard: Microsoft Now Claims GPT-4 Shows ‘Sparks’ of General Intelligence. “Microsoft is betting heavily on integrating OpenAI’s GPT language models into its products to compete with Google, and, the company now claims, its AI is an early form of artificial general intelligence (AGI).”

The Conversation: How TikTok became a breeding ground for hate speech in the latest Malaysia general election. “Hate speech on social media is a major issue across many regions of the world, including Southeast Asia. Hate speech includes expressions to discriminate, insult, demean, or provoke violence against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or others.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.

March 28, 2023 at 12:44AM
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Build Focused Google Searches Around Associated Topics With Wiki-Guided Google Search

Build Focused Google Searches Around Associated Topics With Wiki-Guided Google Search
By ResearchBuzz

How do we ask for what we don’t know?

It’s my favorite question. I chew on it all the time like it’s a mental cinnamon toothpick because it’s such an essential question of search.

All we can bring to a search engine topic query is ourselves and what we know. And unless we’re some kind of expert on the topic, we probably know woefully little and what we know probably contains misinformation of various sorts. Our lack of understanding makes us more susceptible to junk searches or shallow, SEO-serving search results that exist only to bump up a Web site’s ranking, and not to provide knowledge.

Knowing everything is an impossible strategy. Fact-checking every single Web page you get in a search result, also impossible. So currently we tend to trust Google (or Bing or DuckDuckGo or You or whichever search engine you use) to guide us to the most useful search results available.

The problem with that is twofold: search engine algorithms are usually opaque and there is a constant conflict between the search engine trying to serve the most useful results possible and SEO black hats trying to game the system and serve results for the money/propaganda benefits/etc.

I can’t start a search engine because ResearchBuzz is just one (1) person. But I can and do try to figure out ways to make searches focused enough to break through the SEO / general knowledge fog and into richer results  with more context.

In December I made Clumpy Bounce Topic Search, which was an attempt to use Wikipedia categories to build Google queries for broad topics. And it works pretty good and it’s fun, but it’s no good for specific topics, people, etc.

I’ve been trying a bunch of different approaches to address this, to build a set of related query topics that works and provides meaningful search results without excessive weirdness and junk results. Finally I figured out a good way was to count Wikidata entry mentions across Wikipedia pages, so now there’s Wiki-Guided Google Search ( https://searchgizmos.com/wggs/ ).

Using Wiki-Guided Google Search

To use WGGS, you provide two things: a Wikipedia topic (it’s case-sensitive, so keep that in mind) and the number of times the topic should be mentioned in another Wikipedia article before that topic is included in the search results. Fewer mentions will lead to less-associated topics (and occasional nonsense.) If you’re not sure how many mentions you should screen for, start at 2 and go higher if you’re getting too many results.

Let’s stick with the default search here. Solar energy is definitely a popular topic, so it’s going to have lots of mentions. A mention filter of 5 will still find plenty of results. Click the search button.

Results include the name of the associated topic (with a link back to its Wikipedia article), a bit of excerpt, and links to Google and Google News searches for both your original topic and the associated topic.

The first time I ran this search I said out loud “Morocco?!” Morocco as a topic associated with solar energy would have taken me a while to come up with on my own, though it makes sense if you think about it. And man, does it bring great results.

Adding Morocco as additional context to our query about solar energy gets past those shallow sites about solar power and takes us straight to rich results (and, of course, a Wikipedia article.) Here’s another result, this time for “solar energy” and “Passive solar building design”:

 

I don’t have any proof to back this up, but I suspect that the formality and structure of Wikipedia’s language use helps make the results more information-oriented.

WGGS also works great for people search, especially for people who have been influential in our culture but are possibly lesser-known. My favorite pianist is Henry Byrd, who used the name Professor Longhair. He influenced any number of better-known musicians but is not well-known himself. However, if you put his name into WGGS with a filter of 4 you’ll see that his name appears in a variety of contexts:

 

And these too yield tasty search results.

March 27, 2023 at 10:52PM
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