Posts Tagged: google

Hacks / Research / Software — 2 Comments
2
Dec 08

Hacking Google Scholar

If you connect to Google Scholar through a proxy (for example, through your library’s proxy), you’ll find that GS is unable to remember your preference settings.  Although Google seems to forget my preferences far too often, in the case of Google Scholar it isn’t their fault.  When you connect through a proxy you appear to Google as a different user every time, and until preferences are tied to your Google account (and not a session/cookie), Google is simply unable to remember them.

To “solve” this problem, I’ve found that you can set a bookmark that will set your preferences each time it is clicked.  While this doesn’t solve the problem of Google forgetting preferences between sessions, it will save you the time and effort of having to reset your preferences each time.  You will need to custom-craft your bookmark.  Here’s mine:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_setprefs?num=50&scis=yes&scisf=4&submit=Save+Preferences

As you can see, in with I’m passing some options to “scholar_setprefs” – i.e. the mechanism that sets your Google Scholar preferences.  I’m manipulating two options, Number of Results (num=50) and Bibliography manager (scis=yes&scisf=4).  I could also directly manipulate the interface and search language, library links, and if the results opened new windows or not (I don’t because I’m happy with the GS defaults).

The options accept a range of values, which I’ll describe briefly:

Number of results (num), accepts:

  • 10
  • 20
  • 30
  • 50
  • 100

If you’d like 100 results to be displayed, you’d change the url so that num=100.

Bibliography manager (scis=yes&scisf=4).  Google Scholar supports a number of different export formats, and to change their default, you’ll need to change the scisf value.  Here are the corresponding values:

  • 4 (Bibtex)
  • 3 (EndNote)
  • 2 (RefMan)
  • 1 (RefWorks)
  • 5 (WenXianWang)

If you’re a RefWorks user, you’d change the string so that it looked like this scis=yes&scisf=1.

Putting it all together, if you’re a RefWorks user who wants 100 results displayed, you’d set your bookmark as follows:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_setprefs?num=100&scis=yes&scisf=1&submit=Save+Preferences

Finally, if you’re accessing GS through your library proxy, you’ll need to add the proxy information into the URL. In the case of UNC we place the proxy information directly in the url. Therefore, my proxied bookmark looks like this:

http://scholar.google.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/scholar_setprefs?num=50&scis=yes&scisf=4&submit=Save+Preferences

As you can see, I’ve added .libproxy.lib.unc.edu to the beginning of the URL. This will vary by library, so you’ll want to look at other proxied URL’s at your institution to get a feel for where the proxy information goes.  As I noted above, there are a bunch of other options you can change directly. If you’d like to change those, simply view the source of the Google Scholar preferences page, look for the option and value pairs in the form, and tack them into the URL (making sure to add & before the option/value pair).

Hacks — 4 Comments
22
Nov 08

Fixing Google with Adblock Plus

TechCrunch is right – Google, It Wasn’t Broke.  Google has rolled personalization at the item level into search, cluttering their elegant interface.  As far as I can tell, this affects all users who are logged in with a Google account (i.e. Gmail, etc), and there’s no way to opt out.  Now, I’m not against personalization – if you want it.  And while it appears there’s no way to opt out, you can make the cluttering icons disappear with Adblock plus (Firefox users).  To make the buttons and conversation icon disappear, add the following “element hiding rules” to Adblock Plus:

google.com#BUTTON(class=wci)
google.com#BUTTON(class=w10)
google.com#BUTTON(class=w20)

Voila, Google back to normal.

Update: TechCrunch reports that Google may be rolling this feature back, and it reports on a Greasemonkey script that accomplishes the same results as this Adblock Plus filter.  I’m not a Greasemonkey user so I’m not able to verify.

Hacks / Noticed — No Comments
15
Sep 08

Hacking Unit Structures: Google Suggest and iTunes 8

Two tips that have made my life better in the past day:

I can’t stand Google suggest.  Even though I’ve set the preference to make it go away 1,000 times, it keeps returning.  I think something with Firefox and new tabs makes Google forget your preference.  To fix this permanently, set your Google bookmark as follows:

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en

Every time you load Google in a new tab, you’ll reset the preference with your bookmark.  If you call up Google by actually typing in the URL – then you’re out of luck (unless, of course, you want to type the preceding URL).

Next, the new iTunes (8) has removed the preference setting that allows you to remove the pesky “link to iTunes store” arrows that appear next to songs.  To remove, follow Tech-recipe’s formula: open up a terminal and paste in the preference as follows:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

Restart iTunes, and the links go away.

Noticed / Research — 2 Comments
11
Sep 08

Search, Lifestreaming and Outsourcing

Google’s Marisa Mayer has written a post about the future of search.  There are a lot of non-trivial problems in some of the scenarios she describes, but I see others – such as location-assisted search – as very useful next steps.  The real point here is that our metaphors of search will change; right now, we use text to sum our anomalous knowledge state, but in the future our location, or relative position in a social network, or even everyday analytics like the outside temparature may guide and inform our searches.  The real next steps in search are the integration and vectoring of search using such data.  To experience this, do a location-based search in Google maps on the iPhone – this is a very early snippet of the future.

The WaPo writes about Lifestreaming (or more appropriately, Datastreaming).  This article focuses on everyday data collection and the tools we use to collect and share such data.  I see Datastreaming as the vanguard of ubiquitous computing.  That is, ubicomp isn’t Bell’s SenseCam, but rather the collection of streams we choose to share (as well as those recorded about us).  Server logs, surveillance cameras, datastreams, lifestreams – these are the “streams” we should be building ubicomp applications to use and support (rather than the traditional paradigm of us integrating ubicomp into our lives).  Chris Messina, featured in the article, delivers another fantastic blog entry, providing a little more background on the article.

Finally, Andy Baio recounts turning to Mechanical Turk to analyze Girl Talk’s new album.  Turking research is an emergent trend – Brynn Evans recently ran a study, and Ed Chi’s group had a CHI paper on MT methods.  I’m sure there are plenty more examples.

Noticed / Software / Thoughts — 3 Comments
3
Sep 08

Chrome’s reconfiguration of the web’s geography

I’ve really enjoyed Chris Messina’s two recent posts on Chrome.  His background (Mozilla, Flock) and experience thinking about next generation UI’s and UE’s is on fine display; I particularly enjoy his reconcpetualization of the browser and its experience.

Factory City: Google Chrome and the future of browsers

Factory City: Musings on Chrome, the rebirth of the location bar and privacy in the cloud

In the second, more recent post, Chris discusses the cognitive break inherent in Chrome’s vision of the web.  In removing the URL bar in favor of a single search interface, the web transforms from one spatially and locationally grounded (in URL’s, permalinks and bookmarks) to a fully-mediated, amorphous zone of information.  In this new web, there are no wrong answers or incorrect URL’s, because the algorithm always has information relevant to the intent of our information need.

As Messina notes, the tradeoff is such “that our fundamental notions and expectations of privacy on the web have to change or will be changed for us. Either we do without tools that augment our cognitive faculties or we embrace them, and in so doing, shim open a window on our behaviors and our habits so that computers, computing environments and web service agents can become more predictive and responsive to them, and in so doing, serve us better.”

That is, in embracing the mediated web, we trade (to some extent) our agency, any sense of privacy, and most importantly, our extant strategies of finding and reminding for new, less conceptually transparent ones.  To embrace the web in Chrome’s model, we must embrace the algorithm, and essentially invite it into our minds.  This new lens is all-or-nothing, and it casts away our strategies of past, those operationalized in pre-web design patterns.

On one hand, one might be able to argue that the web is so vast that inviting the algorithm home might make sense.  Perhaps it is better to browse with Google on your shoulder, assisting your navigation and selecting your best information choices.  Where I run into difficulty with this model is that Google is placed at a meta-layer above the web; it becomes the lens through which the web is experienced.  This model is troubling at many levels, but I particularly resent the idea the web should be mediated.  Slightly repurposing JPB’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace:

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Of course, this isn’t a question of morals; the web is a market, and there will always be a choice to opt-out or not participate in Google or anyone else’s schemes.  The gray area emerges when we consider Google’s place in the market, and the sheer power they exert in the configuration of consumer preferences.  Thinking as an educator – we lament the so-called death of the book.  In five years, will we lament the death of the URL, in an age in which all authority is conferred through the end-product of a citation-based algorithm?

All of this comes with a grain of salt.  Personally, I believe our current spatial metaphors of the web will exist for the imaginable future.  As revolutionary as these ideas seem, we change slowly, and the browsing and searching patterns of billions of web users are already well-established.  Further, this sort of change is essential – we’re constantly reconfiguring the web and our experience of the web – I just question how much we need to do that with Google looking over our shoulder.

Software / Thoughts — 1 Comment
2
Sep 08

Google Chrome Privacy Information

Via Vowe.net, the Google Chrome Privacy Policy (scroll down, soon to be located here).  It appears that Chrome will follow a pattern similar to the Google Toolbar – that is, all browsing behavior is sent to Google, but an opt-out is provided.  From the Chrome Privacy Policy:

  • When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for.
  • If you navigate to a URL that does not exist, Google Chrome may send the URL to Google so we can help you find the URL you were looking for.
  • Your copy of Google Chrome includes one or more unique application numbers. These numbers and information about your installation of the browser (e.g., version number, language) will be sent to Google when you first install and use it and when Google Chrome automatically checks for updates.  If you choose to send usage statistics and crash reports to Google, the browser will send us this information along with a unique application number as well.

The last bullet is particularly interesting – each Google Chrome browser is fingerprinted so it can be uniquely identified.  It should be noted that Google isn’t the first to fingerprint their browsers – Microsoft tags Internet Explorer with a Globally Unique ID.

As I previously noted, Google is allowing users the ability to opt-out of statistical reporting.  I worry that those who opt-out will not be provided the full browsing experience, compelling users to participate in the statistical reporting.  Furthermore, close attention should be paid to “advanced” features that provide additional reporting, above and beyond the standard statistical reports.  Google Toolbar contains a number of these features that report URL’s, typed information and page content.

The best approach is for Google to be extremely open with Chrome and its privacy practices.  Indeed, open sourcing the code is good – but Google should go a few steps further and meaninfully address the issue in a human-readable format.  Google’s argument about a next-generation browser is solid, and I would be willing to give it a shot.  First, however, Google must win my trust.

Hacks / Software — No Comments
29
Aug 08

Firefox 3 Tweaks

I’ve recently moved to Firefox 3, and I’m pretty pleased with the performance.  Firefox 3 feels snappy, seems to handle JS and memory leaks well, and is all-around pretty impressive. Here are my tweaks:

I’m not a fan of the awesome bar – I simply don’t like interfaces (like Google Suggest) that create a lot of activity while I’m typing.  To disable the URL bar, set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to -1.

Also worth noting is that the malware and phishing protection that come default in Firefox 3 do send your browsing history to Google.  This is not new from Firefox 2, but it is worth mentioning, as you are uniquely identified and correlated in the data.  To turn this off, de-select the two “Tell me…” options under Firefox’s Security settings.  I ran packet traces and verified this does stop Google data collection.

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