And we remember… sometimes with help… If you’re like me, you probably constantly re-searching for things you only vaguely remember. A few years ago, my friend Jamie Teevan of Microsoft Research did a study about how often people try to r…
We forget, of course, … and that’s part of the reason we have search tools–to help us find and recover what we’ve forgotten. I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly re-searching for things I only vaguely remember, and I need all t…
Hate 404 errors? If you do active online research (which is pretty much the whole point of SearchResearch), you fairly often run into web pages that are 404. When this happens, it means that the link you’re trying to follow leads to a page that is missing. It might have been removed by the author, or just moved elsewhere. In any case, the link you’ve got doesn’t work any more.
As you recall, …our SearchResearch Challenge this week was to figure out the history behind this funny group of houses that extends from Lyon Street into the Presidio. Here are the 6 houses that have somehow pushed the boundary of the Presi…
You know San Francisco is full of hills… … consequently, it’s also full of stairs. Some are ordinary, but some are wonderful and beautiful. Here’s one of my favorite places in SF, not just for the view, but also for the cherry tree…
What’s “normal” changes with time. Despite our sense that something as personal as what food you eat is permanent, in fact, our collective tastes have changed significantly over time. I’m not even talking about national preferences (d…
Far be it from me to critique… … the food choices of different people at different times and places. After all, I’ve eaten roasted grasshoppers (chapulines) in Oaxaca, smoked eel (rauchen aal) and …
The key is asking good questions. But you knew that. This week, we tried to figure out what’s going on with a couple of decontextualized images. In this case, these were pictures that I’d taken and recently re-found.&nb…
You might have noticed… … that the Image search now has a set of colored rectangles just below the query area. Here’s an example with a simple query. See those rectangles? They’re called “chips,” and they modify the image que…
Every so often… … you run across a photo that makes you ask, “What’s going on here?” You take a look, and think “hmmm….” Often, these are images that you find in things you’re reading; a figure, photo, or illustration that m…
It’s true: I got an earworm while bicycling… I know, I know–an earworm is typically a short, catchy piece of music. But perhaps my brain (or ear) is wired a little differently and my earworm is a little longer than most. Whatev…
I was bicycling home when it happened… I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, I was just out for a ride. But somewhere along the way I got a terrible earworm–you know, one of those catchy songs that gets stuck in your head, and wo…
We’ve talked about Search-by-Image before, but here’s a nuance we haven’t mentioned… When you do a Search-By-Image, you upload an image to Google so it can find similar kinds of images. To do an SBI search, just click on the camera i…
You think a decent-sized island wouldn’t get lost… And yet, somehow, Google Maps seems to have lost an island off the coast of Taveuni, in northern Fiji. To remind you of the Challenge: I was diving in the Somosomo Strait, betwe…
For me, one of the joys of travel… … is learning something unexpected, something I didn’t expect, something that makes me wonder at the world, and how/why things are the way they are. Not long ago, I was in Fiji, diving in the Somosomo St…