Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Make your own Google

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Google Co-op allows you to create your own search engine. You specify a list of sites and are given a home-page which lets you use Google to search just that list or the whole web but with an emphasis on those sites.

This is really useful for specialists or groups of people who have a set of quality sources on a given topic. e.g. Ruby on Rails developers or horticulturalist. Google Co-op lets just one person or a group of invited people to contribute to the list.

I think it is even more useful as a personal search engine. Here I have created a search list that searches just my resources on the web. It includes my Flickr photos, my del.icio.us and Blinklist links and my blog. Other people can use it but it is more useful to me as a way to pull out past things I have written about, photographed or linked to.

Rollyo does much this but I found their interface a bit complicated and it wasn’t using the great Google search engine.

Second Life and your data

Saturday, September 9th, 2006

The recent Second Life database breach makes me wonder if websites will want to continue capturing as much info as they can on registration and usage. The practice has been to capture info that is not immediatley useful to the website. Register for Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail etc. and you will be asked many questions that have nothing to do with sending and receiving email. The belief was that all this user info could be of future value.

Now though it may be advantageous to capture less info. Capture just the info you need to use the service and nothing more. That way a breach does less damage.

Personal Google Search Trends

Friday, August 18th, 2006

If you have a google account and allow Google to record your searches you can go to google.com/searchhistory/trends to view your own search trends. Interesting stuff though not wholly accurate as my top queries seem a bit wrong and I can’t ever remember searching for Teen Tigers (a porn site it turns out.)

Calendar

Monday, July 3rd, 2006

You can share my Google Calendar with this URL or add me to your calendar using paulmwatson@gmail.com. Or view it online.

Attention data silos

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

Following on from Tom Carroll

  • iTunes
  • My iPod nano
  • Google
  • XTravision
  • Credit Cards
  • Microsoft
  • ISP
  • Yahoo
  • eBay
  • Amazon
  • My optometrist
  • HP
  • Cell phone provider
  • My employer
  • Local Government
  • My hosting provider
  • Apple
  • Airlines
  • Hotels
  • Del.icio.us and BlinkList
  • Linkedin
  • Firefox
  • Flickr
  • last.fm
  • Far too many Web 2.0 Beta sign-ups