• About
    • About the FIA
    • Priorities
    • Our Team
    • Brainstorming Board
    • Partners and Affiliates
    • Contact Us
  • News + Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Videos
    • Newsletters
    • @FIAumd
    • In the Media
  • Spark Grants
    • Spark Grants Overview
    • Spark Grants FAQ
    • 2012-2015 Seed Grants
    • 2012-2015 Seed Grant Winners
  • Special Topics
    • SearchReSearch
    • Curated Topics
FIA

SearchReSearch

SearchResearch Challenge (10/28/16): Finding interesting uses for unicode/emoji search?

Dan Russell • October 28, 2016
 SearchReSearch
Republished with permission from SearchReSearch
SearchResearch Challenge (10/28/16): Finding interesting uses for unicode/emoji search? Dan Russell
Now that you can search for
unicode characters and emoji...


... what are you going to do with it?

Today's Challenge is simple, and it requires you to be slightly clever.

Can you find interesting and useful cases when a search includes an emoji or a special Unicode character? Say WHY you find this use case interesting.

For instance, the "Live Long and Prosper" emoji (🖖) could be used to find Star Trek fan posts. Or, as I mentioned in yesterday's blogpost, the chess symbols (e.g.,

There are many useful tools for finding the emoji/extended-set characters that you'd like to use. In addition to the ones I showed yesterday, another handy one is: unicode-search.net
which lets you search by description, such as my search for the chess character for [queen] (to find the character of ♕). I was surprised a bit to find out that the word "queen" also appears for other Unicode characters as well. Here's a screen shot of the results from Unicode-search.net for [queen]

I've seen some emojis used in advertising, which could be useful if you're looking for a place to eat 🍕 in Egypt. (Use the Advanced Search menu to limit your searches to Egypt.)

But my favorite example (thus far) is the query:

    [ Ꭰ lesson ]

now that LOOKS like a strange query, but the "D" term in the query is actually a "Ꭰ" which is the Cherokee language letter for their "a" (the vowel). Thus, this query is actually looking for texts that have a Cherokee Ꭰ in them and are about a lesson. In other words, this is a clever way to find texts that are written in Cherokee (or some part of them is), and is a lesson.

By using a very common letter from the Cherokee alphabet, I'm able to find Cherokee texts using a simple Google search. Note that there's no way to limit Google's results to only those in Cherokee, so this is a quick approximation to that function. (Note that you could do the same trick for other languages: just pick a common letter in the other language, and search for that character--for instance,

    [ ᖃ lesson ]

will find information about Inuktitut (the Inuit language). That character, ᖃ, is reasonably common in Inuktitut.

So what uses can you find!

Let us know. I'll be back next Tuesday to let you know what other ideas I come up with.

Search on!

Share

Comments

This post was republished. Comments can be viewed and shared via the original site.
15 comments

About the Author

Dan RussellDan Russell

I study the way people search and research. I guess that makes me an anthropologist of search. While I work at Google, my blog and G+ posts reflects my own thoughts and not those of my employer. I am FIA's Future-ist in Residence. More »

Recent News

  • Deepfakes and the Future of Facts
    Deepfakes and the Future of FactsSeptember 27, 2019
  • Book cover for Joy of Search by Daniel M. Russell
    The Joy of Search: A Google Insider’s Guide to Going Beyond the BasicsSeptember 26, 2019
  • The Future of Facts in a ‘Post-Truth’ World
    The Future of Facts in a ‘Post-Truth’ WorldMay 15, 2018
  • The Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Storytelling
    The Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive StorytellingJune 6, 2017

More »

Upcoming Events

There are no upcoming events scheduled. Please check back later.
Event Archive »
Video Archive »

Join Email List

SearchReSearch

  • SearchResearch Challenge (3/22/23):  What do you call the sediment that blocks a river from flowing to the sea?
    SearchResearch Challenge (3/22/23): What do you call the sediment that blocks a river from flowing to the sea?March 22, 2023
  • Answer: What do these everyday symbols mean?
    Answer: What do these everyday symbols mean?March 15, 2023
  • SearchResearch Challenge (3/8/23): What do these everyday symbols mean?
    SearchResearch Challenge (3/8/23): What do these everyday symbols mean?March 8, 2023
  • PSA:  Read Clive Thompson’s article about how he does research
    PSA: Read Clive Thompson’s article about how he does researchMarch 3, 2023

More »

University of Maryland logo
Robert W. Deutsch Foundation logo
Google logo
Barrie School
Library of Congress logo
State of Maryland logo
National Archives logo
National Geographic Society logo
National Park Service logo
Newseum logo
Sesame Workshop logo
Smithsonian logo
WAMU
© 2023 The Future of Information Alliance, University of Maryland | Privacy Policy | Web Accessibility