New researches

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

National Recording Registry, NPR, Substack, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 12, 2023

National Recording Registry, NPR, Substack, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: National Recording Registry Inducts Music from Madonna, Mariah Carey, Queen Latifah, Daddy Yankee. “Madonna’s cultural ascent with ‘Like a Virgin,’ Mariah Carey’s perennial No. 1 Christmas hit, Queen Latifah’s groundbreaking ‘All Hail the Queen’ and Daddy Yankee’s reggaeton explosion with ‘Gasolina’ are some of the defining sounds of the nation’s history and culture that will now join the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. The 2023 class also includes the first sounds of a video game to join the registry with the Super Mario Bros. theme, powerful voices of women, important inductions of Latin music, and classic sounds of rock and pop from the 1960s to the ‘80s.”

NPR: NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’. “NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network ‘state-affiliated media,’ the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.”

Ars Technica: Substack debuts feature that spooked Musk into suppressing Substack tweets. “Today, Substack officially rolled out Notes, the product that creates a feed that allows Substack creators and subscribers to interact. It functions so much like Twitter that it controversially caused Twitter to restrict links to Substack. But Substack doesn’t see Notes as a Twitter rival, telling Ars that Substack has no plans to become the next Twitter.” The way they describe it, it sounds more like RSS.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Salem News: Guanci drops out of mayor’s race after Twitter revelations. “Mayoral candidate Paul Guanci said Tuesday that he is dropping out of the race after revelations surfaced that he liked derogatory Twitter comments regarding race, gender, immigration and election denial. Guanci deleted his Twitter account before he announced his candidacy last week, but screenshots of the account were provided to The Salem News.” They’re also in the Wayback Machine. Yuck.

Ars Technica: The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI. “Over the past few months, the field of artificial intelligence has seen rapid growth, with wave after wave of new models like Dall-E and GPT-4 emerging one after another. Every week brings the promise of new and exciting models, products, and tools. It’s easy to get swept up in the waves of hype, but these shiny capabilities come at a real cost to society and the planet. Downsides include the environmental toll of mining rare minerals, the human costs of the labor-intensive process of data annotation, and the escalating financial investment required to train AI models as they incorporate more parameters.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Kodi discloses data breach after forum database for sale online. “The Kodi Foundation has disclosed a data breach after hackers stole the organization’s MyBB forum database containing user data and private messages and attempted to sell it online. Kodi is a cross-platform open-source media player, organizer, and streaming suite, that supports a vast array of third-party add-ons enabling the users to access content from various sources or customize their experience.”

The Guardian: Twitter forced to remove harmful content aimed at Brittany Higgins and partner. “Australia’s eSafety commissioner deployed tough new cyber abuse powers for the first time to force Twitter to remove severely harmful content targeting Brittany Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz, last year.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Hackaday: Wolverine Gives Your Python Scripts The Ability To Self-Heal. “[BioBootloader] combined Python and a hefty dose of of AI for a fascinating proof of concept: self-healing Python scripts.”

Reuters Institute: Will AI-generated images create a new crisis for fact-checkers? Experts are not so sure. “I spoke to several journalists, experts, and fact-checkers to assess the dangers posed by visual generative AI. When seeing is no longer believing, what are the implications this technology has on misinformation? How will this impact journalists and fact-checkers who debunk hoaxes? Will our information channels be flooded with ‘propaganda and untruth’?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Washington Post: The Washington Post’s 2023 Peeps diorama contest winners. “After 364 days of antici-Peep-tion, The Washington Post’s annual Peeps diorama contest has returned with a sweet, sugary bang. This year’s participants drove the challenge to previously unimaginable levels, harnessing unmatched creativity and referencing the year’s most iconic moments (Swifties, are you Ready For It?) in the process.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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April 13, 2023 at 12:41AM
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Independent Russian Media, Google Bard, Google TV, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 12, 2023

Independent Russian Media, Google Bard, Google TV, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Backyard Scholarship
Enter a name and a birthplace in America, and Backyard converts the city state to a zip code and finds all higher education institutions within a 30-mile radius. It then assembles the domain names of those institutions into a Google query. You will need a Data.gov API key to use this Gizmo. They’re free.

NEW RESOURCES

Bard College: The Gagarin Center at Bard College and PEN America Establish Russian Independent Media Archive. “The Gagarin Center at Bard College is partnering with PEN America to launch the Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA), a project that aims to preserve the last two decades of independent Russian journalism, an irreplaceable historical record at risk of erasure as Russian media outlets not aligned with the regime of President Vladimir Putin are shuttered and their reporters and editors are cast into exile.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Google Bard’s new ‘experiment updates’ page lets you know what’s new. “In an attempt to be more open about Bard’s development, Google has created a new ‘experiment updates’ page where anyone can find information on recent updates to Bard, including new features and bug fixes.”

Google Blog: Discover more than 800 free TV channels with Google TV. “Today, we’re introducing a new live TV experience that lets you browse more than 800 free TV channels across multiple providers, organized in one easy-to-use guide right in the Live tab.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ComicBook .com: Lofi Girl Scrambles Social Media as New Anime Boy Joins the Mix. “There have been a few staples of Youtube that have helped to elevate the platform to new heights over the years. One of the more somber and relaxing just so happens to be the channel known as ‘Lofi Girl’. Seeing an animated girl hovering over a desk, her cat and background prominently feature, the channel would let viewers hear some relaxing tunes with the animation that would rarely change. Now, the Lofi Girl threw a major curveball at fans by introducing ‘Lofi Boy’, or Synth-Wave Boy as some call him, and fans are beside themselves at this big addition.”

National Széchényi Library (NSZL): Cooperation agreement between the National Library of Mongolia and the NSZL. “Dr. Borbála Obrusánszky, Ambassador of Hungary to Ulaanbaatar, on behalf of the National Széchényi Library (NSZL) and with her authorization, signed a cooperation agreement with the National Library of Mongolia (MNM) at the launch of the volume of Sándor Petőfi’s poems in Ulaanbaatar.” The NSZL is one of two national libraries in Hungary.

MEAT+POULTRY: Frozen food startup inspired by social media influencers. “Counter was founded by former Walmart merchants Jeff Ferrell and Benn Manning. The brand partners with health and wellness content creators to develop high-protein, low-calorie meals inspired by popular recipes on Instagram and TikTok. Products include protein waffles, burritos, bowls and chicken bites.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

SiliconANGLE: Google debuts new API for detecting open-source security vulnerabilities. “Google LLC is releasing an application programming interface that will enable developers to scan the open-source code they use for vulnerabilities and other issues. The deps.dev API, as it’s called, debuted today. It extends an open-source cybersecurity project called deps.dev that Google launched in 2021.”

Texas Standard: Fentanyl’s rise, distribution tied to growth of social media. “According to an expert who studies drug trafficking, fentanyl is the new ‘social media drug’ and Mexican criminal groups are exploiting the technology to dominate the market – recruiting dealers in Texas to peddle the opioid.”

CBC (Canada): Federal department asked social media giants to drop newspaper article, documents show. “Newly released documents show that a federal government department asked Facebook and Twitter to delete a newspaper article that it felt contained errors — but both social media giants denied the request.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford Medicine: For better video meetings, try taking turns talking. “Early in the pandemic, video conferencing became the only way many of us could work, socialize, see a doctor or take a yoga class, among many other activities. By now, it’s become a fixture of the work-from-home lifestyle. Two new studies led by Stanford Medicine researchers examined whether we work, behave and feel differently in these virtual versus in-person interactions and what’s going on in our brains.”

History Today: Lost Movies. “Almost three quarters of the golden age of Hollywood has been lost. Preservation only began when film came to be seen as art.”

New York Times: In A.I. Race, Microsoft and Google Choose Speed Over Caution. “Technology companies were once leery of what some artificial intelligence could do. Now the priority is winning control of the industry’s next big thing.” Good morning, Internet…

April 12, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Internet Archive, Raspberry Pi, Microsoft Teams, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 11, 2023

Internet Archive, Raspberry Pi, Microsoft Teams, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Internet Archive: Supporters Rally For Library Digital Rights on the Steps of the Internet Archive. “More than one hundred supporters gathered on the steps of the Internet Archive last Saturday to rally support for our library in the face of a judgment that threatens the digital future of all libraries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Review Geek: Raspberry Pi Debuts a Code Editor for Young People. “Python is the preferred coding language for beginners (particularly young people), as it’s the most intuitive language utilized by professionals. For this reason, Raspberry Pi’s Code Editor uses Python (specifically the standard library and P5). Support for web development languages, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will arrive at a later date.”

TechCrunch: You can now access Snapchat Lenses during Microsoft Teams meetings. “Tired of using virtual backgrounds to spice up your Microsoft Teams calls? Well, you now have a new way to express yourself during meetings. Microsoft and Snap have today announced the integration of Snapchat Lenses for Teams to bring a bit of fun to virtual meetings.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: OpenAI’s ‘Pay As You Go’ Is the Best Way to Use ChatGPT. “If you’ve tried talking to ChatGPT, you may have noticed that its free website is often slow, needs frequent reloading, and relies on Cloudflare to confirm you’re indeed a human. But contrary to what OpenAI advertises, you don’t need to pay $20 per month for the paid version (ChatGPT Plus) to solve these issues. Instead, opt for OpenAI’s pay-as-you-go plan that charges you based on usage rather than a monthly fee.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Elon Musk tweets then deletes DMs from Matt Taibbi over his Substack snit. “Elon Musk and one of his ‘Twitter Files’ writers, Matt Taibbi, don’t seem to be on great terms right now, and that situation probably isn’t getting any better after Musk posted then deleted a DM conversation between the two of them.”

Washingtonian: Love City Paper and the Blade? You Can Help Preserve Old Issues.. “At a series of sessions dubbed Describe-a-Thons, lovers of local history have been reading through old issues and entering descriptions and keywords into an online database. Recently, I decided to join one such effort, hoping to help preserve the city’s history and also to enjoy a bit of alt-media-fan camaraderie. (I used to work at City Paper myself.)”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: FBI warns against using public phone charging stations. “The FBI recently warned consumers against using free public charging stations, saying crooks have managed to hijack public chargers that can infect devices with malware, or software that can give hackers access to your phone, tablet or computer.”

Engadget: FTC fines supplement maker $600,000 for ‘review hijacking’ Amazon listings. “For the first time, the US Federal Trade Commission has fined an organization for ‘review hijacking.’ In February, the agency accused The Bountiful Company, maker of the Nature’s Bounty brand of vitamins, of deceiving consumers. Between 2020 and 2021, Bountiful abused a feature of Amazon to make it seem like some of its newer supplements had higher product reviews and ratings than they did in reality.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin. “Bitcoin mines cash in on electricity — by devouring it, selling it, even turning it off — and they cause immense pollution. In many cases, the public pays a price.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 12, 2023 at 12:41AM
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Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tennessee Cemeteries, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, April 11, 2023

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tennessee Cemeteries, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, April 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Shuffle Search
Google’s search results look different depending on the order of your query words! Shuffle Search takes a 2-, 3-, or 4-word query and creates a Google search list of all possible orders for those query words.

NEW RESOURCES

Lion’s Roar: Chögyam Trungpa Digital Library at Naropa University launches with catalog of over 170 recorded teachings. “The new Chogyam Trungpa Digital Library at Naropa University is offering an online archive of recorded teachings by the late Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in both audio, video, and transcript formats. On April 4, the library released a new batch of content to mark the 36th anniversary of the passing of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, including a seminar, a community talk, and a radio interview.”

Greeneville Sun: TN Historical Commission Unveils Online Database Of Cemeteries. “The Statewide Cemetery Map and the Tennessee Historic Cemetery Register are now available online in ArcGIS format for public use on the THC’s website. The map has been populated by data from the commission’s cemetery database, which currently contains more than 32,500 cemeteries statewide, a news release notes.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Slate: Twitter Isn’t a Company Anymore. “Twitter, as a defendant, must continue to submit corporate disclosure statements to the court. And so, in its most recent filing, the company provided notice that ‘Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists.’ As the ‘successor in interest’ to Twitter Inc.—that is, the survivor of the merger—X Corp. is now the defendant in Loomer’s suit. Its parent corporation is identified as X Holdings Corp.” I don’t have enough legal/financial/corporate expertise to assess whether this is sinister or not. It could simply be an attempt to dodge the mountain of bills Twitter hasn’t paid.

Android Police: Google Play will now auto-archive your least-used apps. “If you’re big into downloading media, or playing weighty games, finding all the space you need can be a challenge. Last year, Google introduced the idea of app archiving to help people manage their precious storage, and now it’s tweaking the program to work automatically.”

Ars Technica: Apple releases last week’s security patches for older iPhones, iPads, and Macs . “Last week, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 16.4.1 and macOS Ventura 13.3.1 to patch two actively exploited security vulnerabilities and fix other small bugs. Today it’s following those up with iOS and iPadOS 15.7.5, macOS Monterey 12.6.5, and macOS Big Sur 11.7.6 to patch those same vulnerabilities in older devices that are still receiving software updates but aren’t capable of running the newest OSes.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BuzzFeed News: Twitter Circles Is Broken, Revealing Nudes Not Meant For The General Public. “Eight months and one ownership change later, Circles’ secure functionality appears to have broken. A number of users are publicly warning those who use the feature that their supposedly secure posts — oftentimes nudes — are leaching into the main For You feed, the algorithmically driven homepage of Twitter.”

New Zealand Herald: Privacy fears over New Zealand government departments’ use of Google Analytics. “Privacy experts and analysts warn government departments’ use of Google Analytics may be allowing the world’s biggest marketing company to harvest New Zealanders’ private data for its own purposes.”

Bloomberg: South Korea Fines Google $32 Million for Squeezing Local Rival. “South Korea fined Alphabet Inc.’s Google 42.1 billion won ($32 million) for using its clout in the mobile app market to squeeze out a local rival, the latest sign of intensifying scrutiny on the US tech firm as it seeks to expand overseas.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT Technology Review: How AI is helping historians better understand our past. “Historians say the application of modern computer science to the distant past helps draw connections across a broader swath of the historical record than would otherwise be possible, correcting distortions that come from analyzing history one document at a time. But it introduces distortions of its own, including the risk that machine learning will slip bias or outright falsifications into the historical record.”

EurekAlert: Hooper creating public database of slaving voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia. “The primary investigators will create an Indian Ocean and Asia (IOA) database of voyages that transported enslaved African, Malagasy, Middle Eastern, Indian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian men, women, and children within and beyond the Indian Ocean world between 1500 and 1940 as an integral part of the SlaveVoyages website.”

The Conversation: TikTok’s poor content moderation fuels the spread of hate speech and misinformation ahead of Indonesia 2024 elections. “Researchers and civil society organisations must start to study TikTok’s potential impact on Indonesia as the country will hold its general and presidential elections in February 2024.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Taiwan News: National Taiwan Library repairs 500-year-old Quran. “The ancient text was given to Tzu Chi Buddhist Humanitarian Foundation Master Cheng Yen (證嚴) by a Tzu Chi Turkish volunteer, Faisal Hu (胡光中), over two years ago, per CNA. Hsu Mei-wen (徐美文), a book restorer at Taiwan Book Hospital of National Taiwan Library, was entrusted with the job. With 15 years of experience, Hsu quickly devoted herself to absorbing the book’s lessons and teachings.” Good morning, Internet…

April 11, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Monday, April 10, 2023

Twitter, TikTok, Biden Administration, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 10, 2023

Twitter, TikTok, Biden Administration, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Euronews: Russia mulls lifting Twitter ban after Musk reinstates Kremlin account. “Russia is considering lifting its ban on Twitter after the social media network reinstated access to accounts of Russian state agencies. The ban was imposed before Elon Musk took over running Twitter last October. But since Friday, users can once again search the accounts of the Kremlin and Russia’s Foreign Affairs and Defence ministries, among others.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: On TikTok, ‘The Hunger Games’ is a metaphor for our modern dystopia. “A lot has changed since The Hunger Games peaked in popularity, making it ripe for re-examination. Many of those partaking in the resurgence are revisiting the series for the first time as adults grappling with the climate crisis, social upheaval, and a global pandemic. How do our 2023 adult sensibilities transform our understanding of a beloved childhood franchise?”

Axios: Biden’s digital strategy: an army of influencers. “President Biden’s not-yet-official bid for re-election will lean on hundreds of social media ‘influencers’ who will tout Biden’s record — and soon may have their own briefing room at the White House, Axios has learned.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: ‘Such Is Life:’ FTX Says SBF and Execs Joked About Misplacing Millions of Dollars. “The company said approximately 80,000 transactions made by the company were left as unprocessed entries in some QuickBooks accounts called ‘Ask My Accountant.’ FTX’s hedge fund arm Alameda Research’s record keeping was ‘so poor’ that one document described how employees should ‘come up with some number, idk’ for some crypto token valuations.”

Politico: Twitter fails to report some political ads after promising transparency. “Twitter has failed to disclose some political ads running on its site since early March, according to a review of its activity by POLITICO. At least three promoted fundraising tweets were not included in Twitter’s own data, seemingly contradicting the company’s policies and raising doubts about the integrity of the platform’s data and how many other political ads could go unreported.”

New York Times: Justice Dept. Recently Looked Into Twitter, Lawsuit Says. “A lawsuit filed on Monday by several former Twitter executives said they had personally spent more than $1 million on legal expenses related to shareholder lawsuits and several government investigations, including an inquiry by the Justice Department. The nature of the Justice Department inquiry and whether it was ongoing, was unclear. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, did not offer other details.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: How A.I. and DNA Are Unlocking the Mysteries of Global Supply Chains. “Amid growing concern about opacity and abuses in global supply chains, companies and government officials are increasingly turning to technologies like DNA tracking, artificial intelligence and blockchains to try to trace raw materials from the source to the store.”

Colgate Maroon-News: LinkedIn is the New Facebook. “It might just be a symptom of summer internship season, but it appears as though the platform is emerging as the new Facebook, which has faded into the background of updates on your parent’s long-lost classmates’ family and your grandmother’s cat. Already saturated with older working professionals, LinkedIn has a promising future in the social media networking world as it appeals more and more to young people.”

Northwestern University: People online might not be as outraged as you think. “The prevalence of moral outrage online can be explained in part by our psychology, according to William Brady, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Brady recently led a new study, published April 10, 2023 in Nature Human Behavior, that explores why people tend to misperceive others as angrier than they really are online. In turn, he says, users tend to engage with triggering content, thereby amplifying it and giving it an algorithmic boost.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Engadget: Museum creates giant ‘Donkey Kong’ cabinet with a little help from Nintendo. “The Strong National Museum of Play in New York unveiled an absolutely massive Donkey Kong arcade cabinet that’s nearly 20 feet tall. Donkey Kong is co-starring in the biggest movie in the world right now, so it is only fitting that he also gets an equally gargantuan arcade cabinet.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 11, 2023 at 12:17AM
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Find Relationships Between Wikipedia Entities with Crony Corral

Find Relationships Between Wikipedia Entities with Crony Corral
By ResearchBuzz

Do you sometimes feel that you should have a pen and paper for taking notes when you read the news? Do you long for a program that lists all the people involved in a news story so you can get details when they pop up after an extended absence?

It’s hard to keep up with all the current events when there’s such a ferment of things going on. It seems like your choices are either to severely restrict your news intake for your mental health, or go around in a state of half-understanding which certainly isn’t good for MY anxiety, I don’t know about you.

Even when we’re not consuming the news, though, it’s still being made. Newspapers are still publishing. And Wikipedia is still churning away, aggregating and integrating news content, as people far bolder than me try to make sense of everything.

I wanted a way to harness Wikipedia’s consistency in keeping up with news and turn it into a tool that would allow me to examine the relationships between people outside of a single news article. And, after several false starts and multiple epic discussions with Curly, I am pleased to present to you Crony Corral, at https://searchgizmos.com/crony/ .

Crony Corral accepts input of names – people names, organization names, or company names – separated by commas. Once the names are entered, CC searches for them on Wikipedia and pulls their Wikidata properties, looking for matches across 17 different Wikidata properties:

P159: headquarters location – Location of the main office of an organization, company, or institution.
P108: employer – Used to link a person to the organization or company they work or have worked for.
P69: educated at – The educational institution(s) a person has attended.
P551: residence – The place where a person lives or has lived.
P102: member of political party – The political party a person is or has been a member of.
P106: occupation – Refers to the main job or profession of a person.
P39: position held – Used to link a person to the political, organizational, or professional positions they have held.
P937: work location – Indicates the place where a person primarily conducts their work.
P452: industry – Refers to the main industrial sector or sectors that a company, organization, or product is involved in.
P17: country – Indicates the country that a geographical entity or organization is part of or associated with.
P1056: product or material produced – Refers to the main product(s) or material(s) produced by a company or organization.
P749: parent organization – Indicates the higher-level organization that a subsidiary or lower-level organization is part of.
P414: stock exchange – Refers to the stock exchange where a company’s shares are traded.
P112: founded by – Indicates the person or organization that founded a company, organization, or institution.
P127: owned by – Refers to the person, organization, or entity that owns a particular asset or resource. (I think institutional / stock ownership is in here too.)
P355: subsidiary – Used to link a parent company or organization to its subsidiaries or lower-level organizations.
P27: country of citizenship – Indicates the country where a person holds citizenship.

When matches are found, they’re gathered into pairs which are presented to the user in a drop-down menu. Users can choose a pair from the menu and find Wikipedia pages which the two names have in common with a relationship level of 1 (minimal relationship) to 5 (close relationship).

Here’s how it works.

Using Crony Corral

Start by entering a list of names. They don’t have to be all people names or all company names, but only people will match people and only organizations will match organizations (companies, NGOs, etc.) That’s because the two groups use different Wikidata properties. I have put in 75 names at a time without a problem, but it took a good little while to sort them all out and the menu of matches was huge.

Let’s not put in 75 names. Let’s instead use the very basic example of Louisa May Alcott and her father, Amos Bronson Alcott. Put those two names in (separated by a comma) and click the button.

After a moment the menu of sub-groups will populate. This shows all the matches from the group of names you entered. Even though we only entered two people, there’s still a long list in the menu. That’s because being family members, Amos Bronson and Louisa May Alcott of course shared many life experiences. You’ll note that they match for several residences. That’s because Crony Corral considers all values in a Wikidata property – all employers, all occupations, etc – when looking for matches. Which of these menu items you pick, however, doesn’t matter, because they all represent the same two people.

Once you’ve chosen the pair you want to review, you need to choose the minimum mentions threshold.

What happens in this next part is that Crony Corral searches for Wikipedia pages that the two names you’re looking at have in common. It then counts the number of times each name is mentioned in that common group. Pages with only one mention of each name would be the slightest-possible affiliation, while pages with both names mentioned five times would indicate a close association.

If you want to see all mentions, set it at 1, but if you’re searching for famous people pairs you’ll get a LOT of results this way. Here’s what Amos Bronson and Louisa’s common articles list looks like with a minimum mentions setting of two:

There were nine results, covering a variety of people, places, and things. If you’re an Alcott fan some of these pages might make immediate sense (Fruitlands) or they might take a moment to put into context (I always forget the Alcotts lived in New Hampshire at one point.)

Each article has three search links under it: one for Google, one for DuckDuckGo, and one for Bing. The search links search for the title of the Wikipedia article as well as the name pair you’re searching for. If you clicked on the the Germantown Academy (not shown) Google search link, this would open in a new tab:

These search results get right to the point: Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown and that’s why the two Alcotts have a relationship to that Wikipedia page. And do you see how rich the results are, how focused they are on information? That’s because you’ve added the additional context of Germantown Academy, which is getting you past shallow SEO and ecommerce results. There might be all kinds of companies trying to rank for Louisa May Alcott or even Bronson Alcott as a search query. I don’t think anybody’s worried about ranking for Louisa May Alcott Bronson Alcott Germantown Academy.

What happens when you want to explore a network around someone but you only have one name? Use a different Gizmo first: Wiki-Guided Google Search ( https://searchgizmos.com/wggs/ .)

Getting a List of Names With Wiki-Guided Google Search

Sometimes you’ll have one name to start with and you want to explore the network of that one person – perhaps you want to explore Amos Bronson Alcott outside the context of his family. How do you get started? Use Wiki-Guided Google Search. It’s designed to find you related pages for a Wikipedia topic, so this is a little off-label use, but it still works. Set your topic search for Bronson Alcott and your minimum mentions to 1. You’ll get a long list of results, including a lot of names.

Going through this list got me over a half-dozen names, which I added to a Crony Corral query along with the original Amos Bronson Alcott search term. From there I have plenty of intersections to explore.

April 10, 2023 at 10:48PM
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Wikipedia Official Link Property Explorer (WOLPE): Get Your Web Directory On

Wikipedia Official Link Property Explorer (WOLPE): Get Your Web Directory On
By ResearchBuzz

Do you miss Yahoo and DMoz and all the other link directories that used to roam free across the vast plains of the Internet? I would put the serious decline as starting in 2011, when Google Directory shut down.

That was a while ago so if you were busy then, a bit of backstory: link directories indexed Web resources instead of spidering them. In other words, an entry for a website on a directory like Yahoo would be the name of the site and a description of a few sentences. If it was a really big/important/popular site, subsites might also be indexed and described as well. A directory’s listings were searchable by keyword as well as browsable by category and generally they were browsable by other parameters as well (most recent, most popular, editor’s picks, etc.)

A collection of Websites aggregated with such basic information is a very different search experience from that of a full-text engine like Google, which spiders and makes searchable the entire text content of sites. The limited amount of searchable text in a directory meant that general searches were more productive, while the category structure meant that you could gain context about your topic as you explored to learn more about it. I firmly believe that the Internet ecosystem would benefit from a good Web directory, though there isn’t one available.

Well, if they’re so great, why don’t major link directories exist today? I would guess a couple of reasons. First, Yahoo started charging a $299 submission fee to add links to its directory. I think it might have been intended to act as a filter for spam and so forth but it ended up filtering out all the hobbyists and labor-of-love types, the people who make really great content, because they couldn’t afford $299. Then, if I recall correctly, Yahoo decided not only did the directory require $299 as a submission fee but also as a yearly fee of $299 – and that was the beginning of the end for Yahoo. (I apparently ranted about this in late December 2014, so feel free to read that if you want more of my opinions about what lead to Yahoo’s decline.)

(If you care to draw parallels between that and the current mania of social media platforms for charging their users, with implications about how high those fees will go once users are locked in, I will sit here quietly and not interrupt.)

The second reason, I think, has to do with attention flow. Before the rise of social media, there was a tremendous amount of content curation energy focused on the Web itself. As Facebook got larger, there was still a certain amount of flow between the greater Web and Facebook. Facebook made content available by RSS and didn’t throttle the reach of external links like it does now. But as Facebook went more and more walled-garden, that curation energy became focused on Facebook to Facebook’s benefit and the Web’s deficit. And that was the beginning of the end for the Open Directory Project.

But the thing is, there’s still a lot of curation energy on the Web. Huge numbers of people contribute to Wikipedia. And more importantly, Wikidata has as one of its properties “official website.” So why not turn Wikipedia into a searchable link directory?

Sounded good to me, so I made WOLPE: Wikipedia Official Link Property Explorer – https://searchgizmos.com/wolpe/ . I really wanted to call it WikiHoo but I can’t afford a lawyer.

How to Use WOLPE

WOLPE is easy to use. You’ve got two search type options: Title Only, or Summary (which searches a brief description of the page.) Both pages have limited text, but the summary has enough that it will find closely-related keywords. Make your search general, two or three words. WOLPE will find you Wikipedia pages with official website properties; links, in other words. Here’s what the default search, Eurythmics, looks like with the Title Only option:

Just one result. On the other hand, if you search for the summary, you’ll find the pages for the duo’s two members, as well as affiliated people and topics.

I wanted to add a third option for a full-text search of Wikipedia, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to do it without running afoul of Wikipedia’s API rate limits. It worked only if I rate-limited the API calls to an extent that it was just too slow.

I also want to figure out how to add a category structure, because I liked it as a mechanism for passive learning as you were exploring your chosen topic. But it’s fun to use as-is!

April 10, 2023 at 06:23PM
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