Google is killing off another couple of lab projects that I particularly liked. The first of these is Google sets, which allowed you to type in a term, and get a set of items back as a result. It was a nice way of playing around with terms and finding new ones to consider using in a search. You could have large or small sets - here's what it looked like for the seed term library:
This tool will be gone by the 5th of September, so if you like it, you'd better use it a lot between now and then.
The second tool that I enjoyed using was Google squared. It created a matrix for you based on a concept that you gave it, such as British poets, or Star Wars. Not only did it create the matrix but it populated it for you:
While I liked squared, it wasn't without its faults - I just tried a search for Confederate Generals - not only did it not include Bobby Lee (Confederate General in Chief of Army Northern Virginia), but it had the date of birth of another in 1966! However, even though it had lots of bugs, it was a nice tool and I'll be sorry to see it go.
Can't believe Google is abandoning Google Squared :(
As you rightly point out, it wasn't perfect. But *when* it worked, it was a real gem. I loved teaching with this one :)
Posted by: Therese Kenny | September 01, 2011 at 12:24 PM
Darn, was really hoping Google Sets would sneak past their radar and remain. I've used it so much and people in my classes always loved it.
Posted by: pollyalida | September 08, 2011 at 12:29 AM