Comments on: Math is Hard, Lets Go to the Mall

Math is Hard, Lets Go to the Mall

m@ — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:30:00 -0800

Look, up in the sky, it's a search engine, it's a phone book, it's....a calculator? Start/Programs/Accessories/awww screw it, I've got Google. Found this by searching for my phone number (with the parens in the wrong place) because a magazine article told my girlfriend to. By the way, my phone number is -7 662.

By: Frank Grimes

Frank Grimes — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:49:01 -0800

I'd call you to tell you this was cool, but my calling plan doesn't let me dial negative numbers. Too bad I no longer have a use for the physics wizardry it does. Looks better than a TI-85.

By: vraxoin

vraxoin — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:50:41 -0800

Google--Is there anything it can't do?

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:52:46 -0800

The unit conversion stuff is pretty cool, they even support Kelvins. 100 degrees F in K

By: phatboy

phatboy — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:57:02 -0800

Heh, it can do "furlongs per fortnight".

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:59:58 -0800

It can even do hectares per degree. Whatever the hell that means.

By: spazzm

spazzm — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:19:26 -0800

Still can't figure out how much 40 rods per hogshead is.

By: spazzm

spazzm — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:21:56 -0800

And what do you mean "even support Kelvins"? Kelvin is the SI unit for temperature, and I should be very surprised if it wasn't supported. Nice of them to throw in Fahrenheit, tho'...

By: spazzm

spazzm — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:30:23 -0800

Actually, it seems that all the SI units, base AND derived, are included, e.g. Volts, Amperes and Ohm.

By: spazzm

spazzm — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:31:34 -0800

Great link, btw. Thanks m@ I'll shut up now.

By: birdherder

birdherder — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:50:07 -0800

maybe google is god.

By: jonson

jonson — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:02:51 -0800

[geek] Okay, so some people here are annoyed by posts about cool new Google tricks and some people here are annoyed by comments bragging about Mozilla, but let me just say that in Mozilla when I see an address, I can select it, right click and choose websearch. Then, thanks to the coolness of Google, when the web search page comes up, the top result links to a mapquest map of the address. No more copying & pasting the street & zip code fields, loading a new window, etc. And now I think I've annoyed a broad set of people here. [/geek]

By: dg

dg — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:27:57 -0800

So, when are they going to add reverse phone number lookups for the rest of the world? Also, what jonson said.

By: Inkslinger

Inkslinger — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:28:43 -0800

For a one-stop desktop shop for everything from simple calculations, a clock, a calendar, and immediate access to more than a hundred tools and information sources across the Net, check out Dave's QuickSearch Deskbar. And it's open-source, so anyone can create new tools and searches (anyone want to make a Metafilter search to help in the battle against double FPPing?) It's Windows only, unfortunately. But since installing DQSD on my machine it's become an absolute requirement--I feel slightly hamstrung when I don't have it a mouseclick away.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:30:45 -0800

kiky

By: will

will — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:42:42 -0800

I really hope Google never goes public. You know the day it does it'll become the kind of rotten-souled dungeon that charges for brilliantly useful features like this. I sincerely didn't intend for that to be as sarcastic as it sounded.

By: ed

ed — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 22:06:36 -0800

Google: the wacky uncle everyone used to love.

By: MzB

MzB — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 22:18:04 -0800

next step for Google: use Maple engine for symbolic calculation (same as Matlab does).

By: dobbs

dobbs — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 22:19:18 -0800

wtf?! i just punched in my phone number and found 4 web sites listing it with my address. 4 non-phone book sites. grr. thanks, m@!

By: Keyser Soze

Keyser Soze — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 22:38:26 -0800

Google is a great search engine. Life is in the details, and Google has it.

By: mischief

mischief — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 22:55:57 -0800

I have had my phone number for just over a year, yet google lists (what I presume to be) a previous user.

By: Dunvegan

Dunvegan — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:07:08 -0800

If you like this, this, this, (conversely for Mozilla/Netscape this) or this sort of thing...then you'd probably be interested in O'Reilly's Google Hacks book...I've had a lot of fun with this neat little resource.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:26:28 -0800

it even knows pi. wow.

By: arto

arto — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:55:41 -0800

Hmmm. My phone number (minus area code, of course) is a barber shop in Rochester, NY, a beauty salon in Canton, OH, and a roofing company in Goodlettsville, TN. Search-o-licious!

By: pinto

pinto — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:56:25 -0800

Here's a half baked idea: What about a button on your mouse being assigned as a "google button"? All you have to do is hold the cursor over any word, or set of highlighted words (in a web browser, or, even better, in any number of text-documents), and clicking the google button would open up a new window with the search results for that word/word set. I know that I can program my five button to have a button be associated with a program -- and it might work in conjunction with dave's task bar (an amazing tool) -- the problem is the text recognition. I suppose an alternate (more practical and easier to actually implement) solution would be to somehow work it into the right click menu ala send to -> google Yes I'm a big fat geek but these things interest me.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:03:42 -0800

I'm so disappointed that while "pi" returns the appropriate "3.1415..." answer from the calculator, "the meaning of life" doesn't return any answer.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:17:03 -0800

Forget pi, it knows e^ip! Complex analysis!

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:18:42 -0800

I suppose one shouldn't be too surprised that when you search for "42" it turns up the top category as "Arts > Literature > Authors > A > Adams, Douglas "

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:18:44 -0800

hrmm. the p in that superscript should be a pi. it worked in preview... shows what I know about unicode, I guess.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:30:34 -0800

GRR, HAIL SATAN

By: BigCalm

BigCalm — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 01:11:52 -0800

wow, it also handles irrational numbers.

By: mischief

mischief — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 01:23:11 -0800

"the meaning of life" doesn't return any answer

That's so deep! ;-P

By: maggie

maggie — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 01:26:12 -0800

Weird. My phone number (with area code) appears to be a bar :) That certainly explains a lot of weird phonecalls.

By: Dunvegan

Dunvegan — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 01:38:17 -0800

Pinto, GuruNet's reference application is trying to do something like that...I use a hotkey command [alt] while clicking on a word and get back a definition [dictionary, legal, technical] and thesaurus, audio pronunciation, acronyms, images, web search and news. There's even a translation tab with written and spoken example of the word in 9 European, 3 Asian, and 2 Middle Eastern languages. All for just an alt-click. Now, if Google would just absorb GuruNet....

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 02:41:34 -0800

It can even do hectares per degree. Whatever the hell that means. It looks like it means degrees of a circle, not degrees of temperature -- which is to say, you're asking it to find the area of a circle in which each pie slice of one degree circumference has an area of 100 hectares. I think I should go to bed.

By: walrus

walrus — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 02:53:42 -0800

If I type "walrus" into google, my crap poetry website is in the top ten, above better-structured, more informative sites. This officially proves that google is evil. Pure evil. Soon I plan to take over the word "octopus". But first I have to lovingly craft more link farms for the final push into that coveted top pinniped spot.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 03:16:41 -0800

I suppose an alternate (more practical and easier to actually implement) solution would be to somehow work it into the right click menu ala send to -> google Errr, my mozilla is doing that right now. I select some words and right click on 'em and web search for "foo" appears in the context menu.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 04:09:14 -0800

pinto, my current copy of Mozilla (which has been tricked out with some extensions, so it might be one of those) has "Web Search for [whatever text is currently highlighted]" in the right-click context menu. Now if I could just force it into a new tab instead of a new window.

By: skryche

skryche — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 04:11:16 -0800

I tried to search for one minus eight hundred minus two hundred fifty-five minus five thousand two hundred eighty-eight, but it didn't work.

By: PeteTheHair

PeteTheHair — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 04:36:22 -0800

Inkslinger - Ask and you shall receive... Save this to the /searches directory, reload the toolbar (type "!" into the search box) and prefix a search with "mefi". My work here is done...

By: jaronson

jaronson — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 05:26:50 -0800

Here's a half baked idea:--pinto Done! Opera v.7.11 Highlight text, right click, search with Google, or Amazon.com, eBay, Google News, Find in Page, Image search...the list goes on.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 06:02:20 -0800

hehe, my phonenumber is the same as a yahoo.com IP number.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 06:03:50 -0800

jaronson, that also works in Netscape 7. :)

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 06:58:06 -0800

I tried golden ratio. Way cool.

By: leapfrog

leapfrog — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:15:26 -0800

It doesn't compute degrees Reaumur. I am so disapppointed.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:16:39 -0800

...All you have to do is hold the cursor over any word, or set of highlighted words... and clicking the google button would open up a new window with the search results for that word/word set. In OS X you can select text in almost all applications and hit Shift+Mac+G, thanks to this service. Unbelievably handy, that.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:18:49 -0800

Oop. Seems I haven't mastered the niceties of cut and paste: meant this service.

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:46:05 -0800

The Meaning of Life: You're Not Dead. According to my (then) 8-year old child.

By: teradome

teradome — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:11:24 -0800

...now if it did currency conversions, it'd be complete.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:20:48 -0800

I installed the Google Toolbar Beta for IE, and I too can right-click and send to Google. I think most browsers have this functionality, one way or another.

By: kurumi

kurumi — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 11:53:02 -0800

it handled tan(pi/2) and sqrt(-1) well (huge number and i respectively), but Google is mortal: it can't divide by zero. Try anything/0 and it defaults to a plain web search.

By: friedrice

friedrice — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:30:03 -0800

Neat feature, but this doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

By: feelinglistless

feelinglistless — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:25:31 -0800

Walrus: You think you've got problems? My weblog is the epicentre for listless people online. And fourth for people who are feeling something.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:55:34 -0800

hey hey hey if you think this is cool, type "weapons of ass destruction" into it and press "I'm feeling lucky." Show it to your mom or boss or somebody. They'll love it, guaranteed. [wipes jizz from throbbing mass of google-loving off self, walks on]

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:10:40 -0800

Google is here to make everything A'ight!