Google I/O 2022

Four items which caught my eye at the recent Google I/O 2022…

* Google Translate adds 24 new languages, including… “Lingala, used by over 45 million people across Central Africa”.

* Google is expanding fuel-saving routing suggestions for Google Maps, offering suggestions in places not previously covered.

* There will be end-to-end encryption for SMS on the coming Android 13.

* Virtual payment cards for Android and Chrome, by this summer. Presumably going beyond Google Play, and (my guess) probably requiring the new end-to-end encryption to activate.

Google Searching Tags Box

A new UserScript Google Searching Tags Box. For repeat searches, add tags to the Google Search main page. The code looks clean to me, and it should work, though I couldn’t get it working at all. Even with element-blockers turned off and the page force-reloaded. But this problem might just be due to a cache that’s reluctant to refresh.

Another way to add a frequently used search modifier — such as site:www.yoursearchybigsite.com — is to use a right-click snippet added via a Web browser add-on. I use Paste Email, which can be configured to paste any snippet of text from a right-click of the mouse.

A new large-scale study of academic search databases

A new large-scale study of large academic search options, 30 of which are publicly available to be searched. Yet even among these “openly accessible systems” searchers will…

not find that open discovery — the search and access of scholarly content via freely available resources — is possible.

Sadly they did not test JURN, presumably because the required “query hit counts” could not be mined from results in an automated way.

Of the tools offered by large publishers it was found that the…

journal [discovery] platforms of the large publishers still have open access rates in single-digit percentages … open discovery is still very limited

Put a Python in your Web browser

Embed Python scripts in HTML with PyScript…

embed Python programs directly in HTML pages and execute them within the browser without any server-based requirements

What could possibly go wrong?

At the Boxoffice

A new unofficial index of Boxoffice magazine issues on Yumpu (it’s an Issuu-like flipbook magazine-hosting service)…

these magazines are a superb resource for theater historians, but to say that they are disorganized would be an understatement. For now, I’m concentrating on the years containing the most drive-in theater news, 1948-1965. If you’ve got a list for other years, please let me know.

Back to Google Search

I’ve given up on DuckDuckGo as primary search-engine, now that it’s just Bing in sheep’s clothing. They were an indeterminate blend of Bing and Yandex, but now they’re reported to have thrown out the Russian Yandex. So they’re now just another Bing clone. You can see it in the results. And who wants to use Bing for search? Ugh. Admittedly Bing has its good bits, these being Bing Images and Bing News. But the main search is not one of them.

Google Search thus now seems the best and only option, although you’re going to have to put up with and be able to ‘visually parse’ a lot more spam. I’m assuming you have the spam-iness locked down a bit, by using add-ons like Google Hit Hider. And that you see and can read the full URL path under each result (making it easier to detect pages pretending to be another site) rather than a ‘breadcrumbs’ URL.

So, Google Search it is, for now. Time for some light surgery on the Google Search interface, then.

1. I’m pleased to see that the UserScript Reorder Google Categories still works on Google. This allows you to re-order the items Images | News | Books | Maps | and have the ones you want up front. Then cruft like Shopping | Flights can be removed with the uBlock Element Picker.

2. The UserScript Alternative Search Engines 2 will then let you layer a set of links into Google, such that the current Google Search keyword “or phrase” can be passed over to other engines with one click. Works fine, and I’m pleased to see that JURN can be one of these links. Result…

To get this just edit the Alternative Search Engines 2 script code thus…

This hack now replaces the defunct UserScript I made a few years ago, to add such a JURN link to Google Search.

If you don’t care for Bing Images (see above code), Brave Images is basically Bing Images with a nicer and less fussy UI.

The alternate services are searched in a new window, so your current Google search session is not voided.

You can’t pass the current search keyword over to Google Books or Google News or Maps this way, because the script can only add it the end of each URL. If you could add it in the middle, then the user could do away with Google’s own bar of sub-links entirely. But Books and News have URLs that look like this…

As you can see, the keyword needs to be inserted in the middle. It’s probably possible, and maybe I’ll further hack the code to do that if I find time. Anyway, it all works well so far, with the dual link-bars that are both capable of capturing the current Google Search terms and passing them through.

CC Open Culture Remix Art Contest

CC Open Culture Remix Art Contest 2022. Entrants are invited to… “reuse public domain or CC BY-licensed images … to create, submit, and share original artworks”. The 2022 theme is “Love Culture? Share Culture!” and note that all submissions must be… “supported by a brief description telling the story behind the artwork”. Free entry. Deadline: 30th April 2022.

YouTube Playlist Time Length

There’s a new working UserScript for YouTube Playlist Time Length. Works nicely, and adds a simple total time-length when the playlist page is refreshed. Useful for academics who need to quickly see how long a sequence of videos will run in the classroom, and for learners to know how much time they need to allocate to watching a set of tutorials. Other such UserScripts had stopped working in the past week, but this new one works fine.

Update, May 2022: the latest on how to Display the total time for a YouTube playlist.

You.com News

There’s a new timely news search, at the new You.com which launched before Christmas 2021. Better than Google News, although admittedly that’s not very hard to beat on timeliness.

Quite interesting, until you realise it’s powered by Bing. It’s so good because… it’s just Bing News. Which is the best. Still, it’s prettier than Bing and does columns automatically. Which may make it appeal to some searchers who use widescreen desktops.

SocialGrep

SocialGrep a search-engine of a sort for Reddit. ‘Grep’ being a techie word for search, rather than hipster slang for a trollish ‘gripe’. The Reddit-only aspect makes it not that useful at present for gathering hard timely information (Reddit is almost entirely useless for that). But it is fast, timely, and well-designed. It will be interesting to see it expanded to Twitter, Instagram, WordPress blogs etc.