There’s a whole lot of searching going on
My article this week for The Independent looks at Google’s new “local” search, at last in the UK - along with maps, SMS and also now on the .com site, a “history” feature.
Interestingly Yahoo! has today added a “search history” feature, as part of its “My Yahoo!” customisation options. (Talk about your bad timing - had they done it a week ago they’d have been in the print article.) And of course Ask Jeeves has had such a feature for quite some time now.
For a comparison - though perhaps slightly out of date now, given the most recent changes - of what search engines offer what, see this searchenginewatch.com posting. (Where would we be without them?)
There’s also some discussion on the Guardian/Observer blog about the limitations of Google UK maps. However, I still think it’s something of a threat to Streetmap and Multimap - as much as anything because it’s a lot faster, though Streetmaps Ordnance Survey output has always been attractive for anything that’s outside a city or town. Especially if you were taught (at the point of a stick) how to read maps.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- The Spartacus approach to beating comment spam (9 November 2004; score: 30.09%)
- Apple's Address Book: its search was already broken. And now mine has *completely* broken (9 May 2006; score: 20.73%)
- I'll just buy this... used library book via Amazon.. uh? (25 May 2005; score: 20.37%)
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April 27th, 2005 at 11:45 am
It’s the draggable nature of Google maps that does it for me. Even with printed A-Zs, you’ve still just got two viewable pages at one time. I’ve found that dragging does subtly assist my understanding of where stuff is.
April 27th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Hi Charles,
maybe it’s the new layout/ font in the Indy but i have only just noticed that your column is now titled ‘The Geek’. is this a new development? and does the squiggly heart-ish shaped icon have any hidden meaning?
April 27th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
I like the flowers article. Well, I don’t like the tenuous evolution arguments (they always make it sound like the evolving organism is working feverishly away, as opposed to just being killed before reproduction age except where the favourable characteristic is present), but I like the results the third experiment got:
“The third study involved regularly giving flowers to a sample of people…some participants responded with such unusual emotional displays that the psychologists were totally unprepared for them. The delivery experimenters reported that they received hugs and kisses for the flowers. The psychologists were even invited to return to participants’ homes for refreshments.”
April 28th, 2005 at 10:41 am
I think the Google maps/local service is potentially very useful indeed, and I’d agree they’ve made a few key innovations here (thanks Small Paul for pointing out how that the maps are easily scrollable - I didn’t see that at first!).
However, I did a few route checks and found these to be very poor indeed. I put in a journey I do frequently from SW London out to an area near Gloucester. This is best done on the A4 then M4 out of London, then off on the A419/417. For me a total of 125 miles or so. Another version involves going out on the A40/M40, then around Oxford on the A40 through to Gloucester and on again (the location is actually about 2 miles off the A40). This is around 115 miles, but a bit more unpredictable time wise.
Google suggest a route going up the M40 ALL THE WAY to the M42 around Birmingham, then down the M5, then onto the M50. A suggested distance of 161 miles or so, with a time or around 3 hours (I regularly do this in 2 hours or so). Granted there is a logic for favouring motorways over other roads in such algorithms, but not to this extreme. While it is true that I know this route well, it is also not a particularly difficult route to work out. Try your own!
Being the anal retentive I am, I did email google and received a fairly speedy reply indicating they are working on improving things, and reminding me that it is beta still. Fair enough, and I no doubt expect them to get it right. But just so you know - do not base a long distance journey on it yet!
Ian