LEGO Instruction Manuals, Google Workspace, Barbie Easter Eggs, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2023

LEGO Instruction Manuals, Google Workspace, Barbie Easter Eggs, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Open Culture: Download Instructions for More Than 6,800 LEGO Kits at the Internet Archive. “We’ve all come across a LEGO set from childhood and felt the temptation to try building it one more time… If you’re missing a few bricks, you can always turn to the robust secondary market in LEGO components. If you’re missing the manual, there’s now one place you should look first: the LEGO building instructions collection at the Internet Archive. There you’ll find digitized materials for more than 6,800 different sets, including such popular releases as the LEGO Chevrolet Camaro Z28, the LEGO International Space Station, and the LEGO cover photo of Meet the Beatles.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Entry Google Workspace tiers now include code-free ‘AppSheet’ app creator. “AppSheet lets businesses easily build internal tools, and Google is now giving access to entry Google Workspace tiers. Aimed at both desktop and mobile, Google’s example AppSheet applications span ‘project management, operations, field work, human resources, sales, and marketing.'”

Collider: Stop What You’re Doing and Google the ‘Barbie’ Cast Right Now. “It’s Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling’s world, we’re all just living in it. Google further proved this theory with its latest rollout of themes featuring the main cast and director of Barbie turning the search engine pink and sparkly to celebrate this weekend’s arrival of the Mattel-based film.”

Techdirt: Elon Starts Bribing His Biggest Fans As He Admits The Company Is Still Burning Cash (Despite His Earlier Claims To The Contrary). “Elon’s own decisions destroyed the company’s revenue and saddled it with way more expenses in the form of debt interest/repayment. The company is bleeding users and revenue, and despite promising a large group of users payouts if they joined his failed ‘Twitter Blue’ program, the company is only paying that money to a small handpicked group which seems to consist almost entirely of accounts that suck up to Musk on the platform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Scroll (India): Before Indian classical music loses its diversity, an online project is rushing to archive it. “A sweeping, hugely ambitious online project is documenting traditional knowledge systems, pedagogy, compositions and commentaries.”

Fast Company: How Palantir stock developed a weird, passionate, meme-crazy fan base. “Palantir, a data management and software company cofounded by Peter Thiel that deals primarily with government and military contracts, is not what you’d expect to have a fervent, meme-making fandom. And yet, it does. Members of the community refer to Palantir as ‘pili’ and CEO Alex Karp as ‘Daddy Karp.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

US Department of Commerce: Data Privacy Framework Program Launches New Website Enabling U.S. Companies to Participate in Cross-Border Data Transfers. “The U.S. Department of Commerce launched the Data Privacy Framework (DPF) program website today, enabling eligible U.S. companies to self-certify their participation in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF), facilitating cross-border transfers of personal data in compliance with EU law.”

Los Angeles Blade: Angered by LGBTQ+ lecture, state GOP lawmakers threaten funds. “A contingent of Alabama Republican Senate lawmakers led by State Sen. Chris Elliott, are filing a bill that will divert $5 million in critical funds from the Alabama Department of Archives and History over its refusal to not hold a noontime lecture focused on LGBTQ+ history this past month in recognition of LGBTQ+ Pride Month.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: New Online Tool Maps ‘Beans Gone Wild’. “Recently, NC State Extension released an online tracking tool called Beans Gone Wild to capture and share in-season crop problems and recommendations. The new visual mapping tool, funded by the NC Soybeans Producers Association and the NC Agricultural Foundation, uses crowd-sourced field data from public and private partners to document soybean problems (and recommended actions) across the state.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: How Manga Was Translated for America. “The history of manga translation in the U.S. has been one of fits and starts, as publishers grappled with questions about how to present it to fans outside of Japan. When should they cater to American audiences? And when should they be more concerned about being faithful to the Japanese originals?” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 20, 2023 at 12:17AM
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Turn RSS Feeds Into Word Clouds With Stephen’s Cloud Seeder

Turn RSS Feeds Into Word Clouds With Stephen’s Cloud Seeder
By ResearchBuzz

At the end of May I made NewsDrizzle, which lets you browse various news categories as word clouds generated from RSS feeds. In addition to the word cloud, NewsDrizzle also generates a few random Web searches based on the content of the word clouds. It is absolutely not for searching — it’s more for getting a sense of something and generating Web queries for it when you know very little about it. (I note on the page that ‘It’s not so much “browsing the news” as “pogo-sticking the news”’ and I stand by that.)

Someone on LinkedIn named Stephen Albright asked me if he could customize the content used by NewsDrizzle. That seemed like a fair ask so I made Stephen’s Cloud Seeder.

Enter up to 15 RSS feeds, one per line, and SCS will make a word cloud out of the  top terms along random searches, just like NewsDrizzle, only you get to specify the sources.

While I was testing Stephen’s Cloud Seeder I discovered by accident that it works really well with keyword-based RSS feeds. I generated a bunch of thermal-energy oriented feeds using Kebberfegg and CountryFeed and tossed ’em in to see what would happen. The results ended up being a really good jumping-off point for exploring news about thermal energy.

 

 

July 19, 2023 at 09:28PM
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Research Africa Publications, Open Restitution Africa, Nursing Home Inspections, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2023

Research Africa Publications, Open Restitution Africa, Nursing Home Inspections, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Vanguard (Nigeria): Ex-student launches African journal aggregator platform in memory of Prof Oso. “A former student, and protégé of the late Prof. Lai Oso, Olasunkanmi Arowolo, is set to launch an African journal aggregator portal, aimed to improve the international visibility of African journals through robust databases and indexing. Arowolo, a Nigerian scholar, and founder of Research Africa Publications, a pan-African journal database committed to making African research accessible globally, added that the absence of access to African works during his studies abroad was a motivation to set up the website.”

New-to-me, from The Guardian: Meet the ‘headstrong historian’ bringing Africa’s past to life – for Africans. “[Chao] Tayiana is also co-founder of Open Restitution Africa, an initiative that maps data on the return of African treasures that were seized or stolen by former colonial powers, and documents the demands for these artefacts.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ProPublica: How to Use the Updated “Nursing Home Inspect” Database. “As of today, the underlying database covers nearly 400,000 deficiencies from over 90,000 reports at over 15,000 homes. It is updated monthly to include new data and deficiencies. In addition to allowing you to search reports, the database also provides other information about nursing homes, including fines, whether the home is for-profit or nonprofit, staffing and capacity information, and COVID-19 vaccination information.”

Engadget: TikTok rolls out passkey login for iOS devices. “The list of third-party apps that support passkey login on the iPhone has grown by one, thanks to TikTok. Users of the popular video-sharing service will now have the option to sign in with their passkey associated with their Apple ID, which means they can easily get into their account using Face or Touch ID.”

The Moscow Times: Russian Tech Giant Yandex Seeks New ‘Middlemen’ Buyers for Kremlin Handover – Reports. “The Kremlin is looking for buyers of Russia’s internet giant Yandex who would later sell the company to a Kremlin-linked oligarch sanctioned by the West, independent media reported, citing several anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The Bell business outlet and the news website Meduza said the search follows a breakdown of Yandex’s Dutch-registered holding company’s previous talks to sell its revenue-generating businesses and fully exit Russia.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Haaretz: Israeli Antiquities Remain Stranded at Trump’s Florida Estate as Authorities Fail to Retrieve. “Antiquities belonging to Israel have been kept for the past several months at former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and senior Israeli figures have unsuccessfully tried to have them returned to Israel.”

Marketplace: Reddit, Twitter and the [price] war on third-party developers. “Matt Binder, a senior tech reporter at Mashable, has written about the clash over social media APIs. He joined Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal to talk about how it’s playing out and what kind of downstream effects we might see. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.”

El País: AI fuels rise of content farms and fake news outlets. “A study by the NewsGuard misinformation monitor found that an increasing number of content farms now use generative AI. These websites publish articles created by chatbots with little or no human editorial oversight. The numbers are astronomical. One of the websites analyzed in the study — World Today News — published around 8,600 articles during the week of June 9. That’s an average of 1,200 articles per day. The other two websites analyzed by NewsGuard each published 6,108 and 5,867 posts that same week.” This is why I’m writing articles about avoiding infosewage.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Insider: A traveler’s Delta flight was canceled, so he called the airline’s number listed on Google. It led to a scammer — then he says he discovered more airlines with the same problem.. “‘My @delta flight got canceled from JFK. The customer service line was huge, so I google a Delta JFK phone number. The number was 1888-571-4869 Thinking I reached Delta, I started telling them about getting me on a new flight,’ he tweeted Sunday. But that phone call led him to a scam, he said. And, after more digging, [Shmuli] Evers said he discovered at least six other airlines with what he suspected were scam numbers listed on Google.”

USA Today: Are your smart devices safe? New government logo will ID devices less prone to cyberattack.. “The Biden administration and the Federal Communications Commission will launch a new certification and labeling program on Tuesday to help buyers identify which Internet- and Bluetooth-connected devices meet federal cybersecurity requirements and are less vulnerable to cyberattacks. Products that meet the standards will be stamped with a certification mark or logo to be called the ‘U.S. Cyber Trust Mark.'”

Global Voices: A forensic investigation finds a site that doxxes Hong Kong activists and journalists is likely backed by Beijing. “A tech forensic run by Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab finds that HKleaks, a notorious doxxing site launched in 2019 targeting Hong Kong activists and journalists, is most likely backed by the mainland Chinese government or its proxies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MSNBC: What’s going to happen to Black Twitter?. “Black Twitter serves as a potent example of Black digital expertise, one that de-centers whiteness as a default internet identity. Black folk have rarely been considered civil, rational or productive by mainstream American society, yet we dominate this influential platform.” 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.

July 19, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Finland WWII Newspapers, Google Algorithm, Album Archive, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2023

Finland WWII Newspapers, Google Algorithm, Album Archive, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Library of Finland: Gaining a perspective on war through digitised warfront newspapers. “Warfront papers were newspapers for soldiers on the front. The National Library has, in cooperation with the library of the National Defence University, digitised a total of 144 warfront papers from 1939–1945 and made them available.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update & Volatility Explodes This Weekend. “I often post about Google ranking volatility and search ranking algorithm updates but I rarely post about them on a weekend. But I just had to this Sunday morning; the tools are literally all reporting massive and explosive volatility this weekend and the SEO chatter is also very high.”

Android Police: Google is killing Album Archive this week, so save your Hangouts images before it’s too late. “A few weeks ago, Google sent a scary-sounding email to some of its account holders. The company warned that its ‘Album Archive’ would be discontinued soon, and that you would have to back up any data from it that you want to retain. … The July 19 shutdown date is now moving closer, so if you want to see what data you’ve got in your Album Archive and if you’d like to export it, now is the time.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google’s AI Chatbot Is Trained by Humans Who Say They’re Overworked, Underpaid and Frustrated. “Google’s Bard artificial intelligence chatbot will answer a question about how many pandas live in zoos quickly, and with a surfeit of confidence. Ensuring that the response is well-sourced and based on evidence, however, falls to thousands of outside contractors from companies including Appen Ltd. and Accenture Plc, who can make as little as $14 an hour and labor with minimal training under frenzied deadlines, according to several contractors, who declined to be named for fear of losing their jobs.”

Daily Beast: GOP Lawmaker Banned From Wikipedia After Self-Editing Spree. “Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) is a notable alumnus of Manhattan College—at least according to the Bronx liberal arts school’s Wikipedia page. The congressman, a former state lawmaker who upset Democratic campaign chief Sean Patrick Maloney last year, may boast a resume that merits the honor. But it wasn’t the Wikipedia hive mind that put Lawler on the notable alumni list; it was apparently Lawler himself.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Next Web: Cowboy releases digital ebike key to keep VanMoof riders on the road. “Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll probably know that ebike darling VanMoof is facing bankruptcy. Obviously, this isn’t good news for VanMoof riders, who could be locked out of their own bikes which largely rely on a unique software app created by the Dutch company. But fear not VanMoofers, Belgian ebike rival Cowboy has released an app to keep you on the road.”

New York Times: Can A.I. Invent?. “A group of legal experts are pressing patent agencies, courts and policymakers to address the question as generative A.I. seems on the brink of invading another uniquely human endeavor.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI. “If you feed America’s most important legal document—the US Constitution—into a tool designed to detect text written by AI models like ChatGPT, it will tell you that the document was almost certainly written by AI. But unless James Madison was a time traveler, that can’t be the case. Why do AI writing detection tools give false positives? We spoke to several experts—and the creator of AI writing detector GPTZero—to find out.”

Washington Post: Twitter’s Dying. Time to Drop the News Paywalls.. “We now have Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill and Spoutible, but the it thing at the moment is Meta Platforms Inc.’s Threads, which surpassed 100 million users in its first five days thanks to its Instagram ties. Many of us are either getting swept up in the excitement of whatever new app is launching or rolling our eyes after hearing about whatever new ‘Twitter killer’ is on the block. News leaders cannot afford to merely join either camp. They should use this moment to strategize how to compete with a shaky social media landscape that continues to offer “news” and other content for free.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

British Library Knowledge Matters Blog: Building a Minecraft Gateway to the World of Books | User Stories . “Professor Sally Bushell drew on the British Library collections to create Litcraft, a project that builds worlds in Minecraft to inspire reluctant readers. Her most recent Litcraft game is called Steampunk Sherlock Holmes. Sally is a Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University.” 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.

July 19, 2023 at 12:18AM
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Art Deco Mumbai, Twitter Africa, Cooling Centers, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2023

Art Deco Mumbai, Twitter Africa, Cooling Centers, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Mid-Day: Art Deco Mumbai creates exhaustive database of city architects responsible for its magnificent architecture. “Iconic buildings like Regal Cinema in Colaba or the Sona Mahal at Marine Drive may have made for terrific backgrounds for your Instagram Reels, but how much do you know about the people who made these buildings possible? Art Deco Mumbai, a not for profit organisation that documents the history of Mumbai’s Art Deco buildings, has compiled an exhaustive list of architects and designers of yore to specifically fill this gap in the city’s history.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Laid-off Twitter Africa team ‘ghosted’ without severance pay or benefits, former employees say. “Former employees of Twitter Africa who were laid off as part of a global cost-cutting measure after Elon Musk’s acquisition have not received any severance pay more than seven months since leaving the company, several sources told CNN.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Use This Phone Number to Find a Cooling Center Near You. “Most cooling centers are operated by state, county, or municipal governments. To find the one nearest you, call 2-1-1, text your ZIP code to TXT211 (898211), or visit the 2-1-1 website and enter your ZIP code.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: How To Preserve Priceless Documents At The National Archives. “The National Archives and Records Administration is devoted to preserving the priceless records of the United States, including handwritten parchment from President George Washington’s era to 20th-century typewritten documents and modern electronic files.” This is a gift article, so you should be able to read it without a paywall.

Korea Herald: Dramas depicting dark side of social media gain popularity. “Though a lot of creative content such as dramas, films and variety shows have included brief scenes depicting social media usage, Netflix’s latest suspense series ‘Celebrity’ and cable channel ENA’s ‘Battle for Happiness’ put the spotlight on characters’ social media interactions. The 12-part ‘Celebrity’ features the stories of Korean social media influencers, with a focus on an ordinary young woman Seo A-ri’s instant rise to a stardom and her downfall.”

Bloomberg: Russian Wikipedia’s Top Editor Leaves To Launch A Putin-Friendly Clone. “The new site is called Ruwiki, a common shorthand for Russian Wikipedia. It’s the work of Vladimir Medeyko, the long-serving leader of Russian Wikipedia editors. His colleagues were shocked that he’d quit a project he’d worked on since 2003-and even more taken aback that he said his reason for leaving was to create a Kremlin-compliant rival.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Yahoo! Finance AU: Troubling warning over Google Search tool: ‘Dead giveaway’. “Aussies have been warned to watch out for scammers impersonating well-known websites and brands that appear in Google search results. In fact, even the sponsored links that appear at the top of the search results page could be a scam.”

The Conversation: The rise of #Robodebt: how Twitter activists pushed a government scandal from hashtags to a royal commission. “While the nation digests the commissioner’s findings, it’s worth reviewing how a small but committed group of Twitter users tracked the faulty robodebt scheme and helped generate the pressure for a royal commission. As Twitter declines under Elon Musk’s ownership, the #Robodebt saga is a useful reminder of the platform’s potential for social good.”

Straits Times (Singapore): Tighter control of ads on younger teens’ social media accounts: IMDA. ” A new code of practice will require social media platforms to promptly inform users of actions taken on their reports of online harms. This is in response to feedback from users here that they are often left in the dark after submitting their reports. Advertisements that could have a harmful effect on young users’ mental health should be kept away from them, and platforms must submit online safety reports annually to be published on the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s (IMDA) website.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: How an “AI-tocracy” emerges . “Caption:MIT economist Martin Beraja is co-author of a new research paper showing that China’s increased investments in AI-driven facial-recognition technology both help the regime repress dissent and may drive the technology forward, a mutually reinforcing condition the paper’s authors call an ‘AI-Tocracy.'”

Florida State University: FSU Research: Colonization influences worldwide distribution of plant specimens. “A study led by a Florida State University researcher that was published in Nature Human Behavior shows how colonization has contributed to the distribution of plants specimens stored in herbaria collections around the world.”

ZDNet: Is Twitter pay-to-play now? Early results of my Blue checkmark experiment are in. “Remember, you’re seeing the Twitter Blue effect active for just 18 of the 30 days, because I got the checkmark part way through June, on June 12. Now, in July, I have almost as many impressions as I got for entire months before Twitter Blue, but we’re only 11 days into the month. I should note that my tweeting behavior and pattern didn’t differ between the months. I have a pretty reliable daily social media practice, and I just continued it in June and July.” 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.

July 18, 2023 at 05:27PM
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Open Culture Live, Google News, Twitter, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 17, 2023

Open Culture Live, Google News, Twitter, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 17, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Creative Commons: Introducing Open Culture Live: A Webinar Series. “The CC Open Culture Team is excited to announce a new webinar series, Open Culture Live. This series will feature conversations with experts on a number of topics, from the basics of open culture to discussions about traditional knowledge, artificial intelligence, respectful terminologies in collections, and more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google fixes Google News indexing bug. “Google has confirmed it fixed the ongoing issue with Google News indexing. This resulted in many publishers seeing massive traffic declines from Google News for a three-week period, starting around June 21st.”

Japan Times: How the deteriorating Twitter experience affects its prized Japan market. “Ranging from reading news and chatting with friends to promoting products and gathering information in times of disaster, Twitter has become an essential tool for many on a daily basis in Japan — making it one of the microblogging site’s most important markets. But concerns are growing over the fate of the social media service following a series of revisions since Elon Musk acquired it last October that have prompted a chorus of complaints by users and companies over what many say is a deteriorating user experience on the platform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Fast Company: Why Gen Z is flocking from Twitter to LinkedIn. “For years, Twitter has been the platform of choice for young professionals looking to make a name for themselves in their industry. However, in recent years, LinkedIn has emerged as a serious contender for the attention of Gen Z, who are now the fastest-growing global audience demographic on LinkedIn. Gen Z will soon become the largest generation of consumers, accounting for $143 billion in direct spending, says Lisa Sy from the Insights & Data Team at LinkedIn.”

TechCrunch: Threads, a Slack alternative completely unrelated to Instagram, has seen downloads surge . “Threads, a Slack alternative that launched out stealth back in 2019 with backing from Sequoia Capital, has seen a significant increase in traffic to its website in the days following its new namesake’s launch. This is largely owing to the fact that Threads (the Slack alternative) owns the Threads.com domain name, whereas Instagram’s incarnation is on the less sexy Threads.net (though the app doesn’t have a web interface as of yet).”

Axios: Investing in the “AI mafias”. “Llion Jones is about to depart Google, which means all the authors of the internet giant’s seminal ‘Attention is all you need’ paper on artificial intelligence will have left — and nearly all have started their own venture-backed companies. Why it matters: Like other cohorts that decamped from big technology brands to start their own ventures, it appears the era of “AI mafias” is now upon us.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

UPI: Andrew Tate accusers face harassment from ‘troll army’ as influencer seeks defamation suit in U.S.. “The alpha male influencer Andrew Tate, who is criminally charged with human trafficking and rape in Romania, is seeking a U.S. defamation lawsuit against two of his accusers. McCue Jury & Partners, a British law firm representing four women who have initiated legal proceedings against him in London, said in a statement Friday that 36-year-old Tate and his brother Tristan were seeking the legal proceedings in the United States.”

The Guardian: Jeremy Vine agrees deal with Twitter user who falsely named him as accused BBC star. “Jeremy Vine has agreed a settlement with a Twitter user who falsely identified him as the BBC presenter at the centre of claims he paid a young person thousand of pounds for explicit photographs.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UC Irvine: UCI launches Center for Data-Driven Drugs Research and Policy. “UCI has launched the Center for Data-Driven Drugs Research and Policy to accelerate research that tackles pressing individual and population health challenges and to address the lack of diversity in biomedical studies.”

University of Chicago: Your ability to remember works of art may be predictable. “According to Wilma Bainbridge, study co-author and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, the team wanted to determine how well they could predict what people remember when they visit an art museum. The assumption would be that people might have very individual perspectives on how they connect to and appreciate art, so there wouldn’t be much consistency in people’s memory of different pieces.” 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.

July 18, 2023 at 12:22AM
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Search, Browse, and Use Mastodon Better With MastoGizmos.com

Search, Browse, and Use Mastodon Better With MastoGizmos.com
By ResearchBuzz

As Twitter has waned, I have been spending more time on Mastodon. I’m enjoying it quite a bit. It’s a lot more community and interaction and lot less screaming into the void.

One thing I haven’t liked on Mastodon, however, is the lack of extensive search tools. So I made some. This weekend I took all the Mastodon-related tools out of SearchGizmos.com and put together MastoGizmos.com, a collection of one-page, JavaScript-driven apps to search, browse, and use Mastodon better. The site is both free and ad-free and, because it’s static HTML instead of WordPress, it’ll work on your phone. Tools available:

MastoTrends: Take a quick look at the links trending across the fediverse.

MastoWindow: Use Instances.social to find instances, then browse them for hashtags.

MastoWindow2: Search across multiple instances at a time for a hashtag.

Two-Hashtag Mastodon: Search mastospace for TWO hashtags at a time! Woo!

Mastodon Web Space Search: Search Mastodon instance space via Google’s site: syntax.

Mastodon Username Helper: Discover the secret powers of your Mastodon username (like your RSS feed!)

Wikipedia/Mastodon Thing: Search Wikipedia for topics with associated Mastodon instances.

RSStodon2: Generate RSS feeds for Mastodon instances .

July 17, 2023 at 09:14PM
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