The CIA is publishing their top 25 searched-for phrases on the CIA's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) site. Looks like people are still spooked by UFOs, the Soviet Menace, and JFK. I guess some people think that it could still happen here.
posted on Jun 7, 2006 - View this thread

Even though I've been using Google as a start page for the past five years, this exhaustive list of Google search tips still had loads of stuff I didn't know about.
posted on Sep 29, 2005 - View this thread

Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy delicious and incorporate that?
posted on Jun 28, 2005 - View this thread

The forgotten heros: dogs. Rescue dogs need booties for their feet (such as these) to protect them from the rubble and glass as the search for survivors continues. The National Disaster Search Dog Foundation is also asking for donations now.
posted on Sep 14, 2001 - View this thread

Everyone's favorite search engine Google has opened their GoogleStore. They've got shirts, mugs, and bags, some with the "I'm feeling lucky" slogan, but the strangest thing for sale? That'd have to be the Exercise Ball, which I suspect secretly carries Happy Fun Ball-style disclaimers. When not in use, Google Exercise Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Do not taunt Google Exercise Ball. [thanks RasterWeb]
posted on Mar 18, 2000 - View this thread

Oh my, talk about your imperfect applications of technology. I'm searching for an image of one of those "Hello my name is..." badges for a little joke, so I tried out Lycos' image search engine. After about five pages into the search for images containing "hello", a porn image would pop up on almost every search page. "Hello" is a generic term, so there's pictures of babies and kids right next to some gnarly stuff. Here's an example of a kid and a hello kitty image juxtaposed between some interesting images. Here's another: doll, doll, people screwing each other's brains out, hello kitty mouse....
posted on Mar 6, 2000 - View this thread

SiegeSoft is a company that makes an anonymous web browser for surfing sites without getting any cookies, without recording your IP address, and without leaving a trace of where you went on your browser. I don't know how much use this would be (besides, say, looking at porn sites at work or something), but the most amazing part of this is the programming was done by 15-year old and 16-year old kids, who are now worth at least $750,000.
posted on Mar 5, 2000 - View this thread

WTF does AFAIK mean? Should I RTFM before asking the BOFM? If he tells me "IIRC, IMHO, I'm not HTH" what would you do? Try the acronymfinder.
posted on Feb 5, 2000 - View this thread

MovieFone (or 777film.com, or AOL/Moviefone if you want to be official) has long been my favorite place to look up movie showtimes, but lately I've been running into problems. The biggest one is this: if you search for movies by theater, then hit "more" a couple times, it reaches a limit of about 12 theaters. Here in LA, that limit corresponds to a 4-5 mile radius. The theater I want to look up movie times at is maybe 7-8 miles away, but no where in the interface is a real "search." It's all just lists and lists. Eventually, I found a list of local theaters (covering about a 20 mile radius) in the theater codes section, but it's not a real search engine, so looking up times at out of town theaters requires you to know the zip code of the place you're going to. I know they're trying to simplify their site by taking out a search engine, but what about the people that know exactly what they want? I use moviefone on the web because using it on a telephone requires you to navigate convoluted menu systems, but they've transferred the phone experience to the web quite well.
posted on Jan 16, 2000 - View this thread

Um, does anyone want to venture a guess as to why google's logo is surrounded by threes?
posted on Dec 29, 1999 - View this thread

I've pointed to fark.com before, because I find it one of the more amusing weblogs. While I was searching for pointers to MetaFilter today, I noticed they have their referer logs in a public folder. What's great about it is seeing the search terms used on AOL's search engine. There's a few gems like "pokemon porn," "catholic girls playing in the mud," and "how to fake your own death." I see similar AOL searches in MetaFilter's logs. AOL is used by some freaky people.
posted on Dec 3, 1999 - View this thread

heh, Altavista left some of their old URLs up after the redesign. Take a look at the top banner, remember how useful the altavista.com page used to be? Thanks to their current redesign, I prefer this version of their search engine.
posted on Nov 9, 1999 - View this thread

My god, does the new Altavista look butt-ugly. Can you find anything anymore? I could barely see the search box when I first loaded it. And that new logo? Yawn..... And what's up with the new slogan? Smart is beautiful? What's next: 'Altavista: Check out the size of our brains'?
posted on Oct 25, 1999 - View this thread

This is interesting, free instant online help for a variety of subjects (I've linked the web design section here). I wonder if this site will grow, and how they expect new experts to come in and volunteer.
posted on Sep 21, 1999 - View this thread

Here's a screenshot of a new graphical search engine. Although the interface looks complicated, I have high hopes that this is better than all the attempted visual (usually 3-d) search engines in the past. Hopefully, it will help people find things easier.
posted on Aug 18, 1999 - View this thread

I've always wondered why no one has made a search engine that indexes URL's and nothing more. Network Solutions has just released their dot com search engine, but unfortunately a few test searches came up with some pretty dismal results.
posted on Aug 16, 1999 - View this thread