Phil Bradley's weblog

Google drops 'web' adds 'all'

Google has changed the 'web' menu entry in results and replaced it with 'all' as per the illustration below:

It's not entirely clear to me why they have done this, since it's NOT all; while we've got illustrations and news items I can't see anything else in the list of results that would lead me to believe that we're seeing everything in one great combined list. However, it's something to be aware of.

Topsy closed

This is bad news. Topsy was an excellent Twitter search engine - with over 426 billion tweets in its database. It was fast, effective and very good at its job. So good in fact that Apple bought them a couple of years ago. Now they have decided to close it. On Tuesday night they sent out a very sad tweet from the @Topsy account: "We've searched our last tweet". The site now redirects to an Apple support site, urging us to use Siri to search. This is a real case of 'WTF?' It did a superb job and had little by the way of competition. Even Google realised the importance of searching Twitter properly and renegotiated a deal recently. So we're left with Google and the Advanced Twitter search function, neither of which are as good as Topsy was. Apple is simply being a dick here. It's not big, funny or clever. 

CILIP shows some teeth

I was delighted to see an article in the Guardian today "Librarians take legal battle against library closures to government". It's a report that CILIP is taking a strong and robust line against library closures. Nice fighting talk from Nick Poole, CILIP CEO "“We’ve had enough. We’ve marked our line in the sand here. The government is behaving as if it doesn’t have a duty of care and they do, under the law. We think it’s time to be clear about what that means”" You may recall that I was critical of CILIP's weak statement to the Prime Minister back in November. I said then "We should not stand politely at the door of Number 10 hoping to be noticed by one of the PM's aides. We need to be there hammering on the door, demanding to be let it. If we don't show the passion, if we don't shout louder and louder, if we don't make it clear to our communities that we are fighting for them then we deserve to lose everything we have." so I'm really pleased to see this step being taken. 

There is also a petition that people can sign. I know that petitions have little value, but given that it's only going to take 10 seconds of your time, it's worth doing. It's also worth doing in order to show that you support the action that CILIP is taking here. If I, or anyone else is critical of CILIP it also behooves us to be positive as well. So toddle along and sign it at Change.org. While you're here, it's worth also adding that there will be a lobby of Parliament on Feb. 9th next year, so it's worth making a note in your calendar to that effect. 

More detailed Facebook search

As you probably are aware, Facebook is taking on Google in the search arena, and has made public over two trillion posts. However, the search options are very limited to say the least. About a year or so ago Facebook provided a much more detailed way to search, with about 40 different filters, but they didn't like it so they canned it. However, Michael Morgenstern has now gone some way to reproducing that search functionality with 'Search is back'. He says of the service "In 2013 Facebook introduced Graph Search, giving us custom search for people in our networks. Two years later, they've removed the filters and much of the interface. I'm a filmmaker in San Francisco and built this tool in my spare time, in part to open a discussion. Why doesn't Facebook make it easy to find things we put on the site? Search is Back gives you tons of custom options for Facebook search. Play with the knobs and add some friends to the box and see what you can do! Note: Facebook is fickle, not everything will work for everyone."

It's a fairly basic search interface, but you can use it to search for people, posts, events and photos. The interface looks like this:

Please be aware that when you run a search the results do not appear on the page that contains the interface. Instead a second tab is created, which goes directly to Facebook and runs a search for you there. So don't be like me - peering pathetically at the screen and stabbing 'Find people' and moaning it's not working, when it actually is! It's not perfect, but no-one is pretending that it is. However, if you want a different way of searching Facebook, this is worth a try.