Seeing is complicated and subtle. Of course, it works really well most of the time. We see colors, textures, print, cats, people, silver moonlight on the river, smiles, and that expression from your beloved. But sometimes vision gets more complicate…
A Public Service Announcement for librarians, reporters, and editors… I’m giving two different talks this weekend. If you find yourself at either event, please come up and say hi! (It’s great to meet SRS readers in the real world.) ______________…
As you might have expected, there are many answers. I’m not surprised, but the variety of answers (and questions) DID surprise me! SRS readers have a wide variety of interests! This week’s Challenge is about what kinds of SearchResearch questions co…
I wanted to highlight an interesting discussion that’s been happening in the comments of last week’s Challenge. Regular Reader Diane asked a great question: “… [is] there is a way to order Google search results by date?I did a search on [“search les…
By now you know… … what kinds of research questions that come up for me. In the past couple of months we’ve done research on: – finding shadows in ball parks – what kind of mirages cause ships to apparently float in mid-air – how to…
There’s simple.. and then there’s simple… The FIRST version of this week’s SRS Challenge was a bit too simple. Finding shade at Yankee Stadium (along with several other stadiums) is pretty easy: lots of fans have written up guides to sun and shade…
Take me out to the ball game… Outdoor sports stadiums sometimes have a little trouble with the sun. Yes, it’s great to be outdoors watching the players doing their thing, but it’s also sometimes a hassle, especially if you’re watching a long basebal…
A University of Maryland program in partnership with The Phillips Collection was held on June 6, 2017 to explore the frontiers of virtual reality, augmented reality and immersive storytelling. Three speakers working at the forefront of innovation in these areas discussed how these cutting-edge platforms are being used in fields as diverse and journalism, education, defense and the arts and are serving as engines of empathy and windows into our cultural and environmental heritage.
Odd stories: How can you verify / follow-up? That’s really the question this week–when someone tells you something odd, how can you (quickly) follow-up and check out the veracity (“truthiness”) of their claim? Here are the slightly whacky claims …
Every so often you hear a few stories that just seem to go together. This week, even though I’m teaching in Switzerland (maybe because I’m in Switzerland), I hear three stories that seem a bit too odd to be true. Can you help me figure out if these a…
Geolocating Tweets… People tweet about darn near everything. That’s handy for you, if you’re a SearchResearcher. I figured out that my friend’s house was NOT on fire with geolocated tweets. This week’s Challenges: 1. When the Google I/O event ha…
When big events happen, people tweet about it. Big events can be pure fun (like Red Bull’s Flugtag “flying” event), they can be tragic (such as the recent terrorist bombing in Manchester, England), and they be technological (Google’s I/O developer con…
This is a common problem. In fact, we’ve talked about the problem of mis-remembered names of books and songs before. The problem is that our human memories are chock full of errors. Even memories that seem absolutely true and correct can be really,…
The other day… … I was chatting with some friends and we started to talk about the great cartoons from back in the day when we were kids. Naturally, the conversation went something like this: “You remember that cartoon where… the rabbit did tha…
Fun time! Last week I posted my personal SearchResearch Challenges from the past week as the Challenge for you. As I mentioned, these have fairly simple answers… but as usual, there’s more depth here than you might have expected. 1. What’s a plac…