Some thoughts on Mastodon search

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on · · 8 comments · 850 words · read ~489 times.
Cartoon of a tusked mastodon holding a phone.

The latest version of Mastodon includes search functionality. It's early days, but seems to work pretty well. Here are some of the interesting things I found when using it. Search is complex - expectations I don't mean the act of searching a database - that's routine - but I mean it is socially complex. Lots […]

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What's the lowest positive integer for which there are no Google search results?

By
on · · 4 comments · 200 words · read ~258 times.
Google search page showing no results.

I found this rather humourous Tweet in which a computer issued a cheque for £2,324,252,080,110: Thank you for our compensation payment @Northpowergrid for the several days we were without power following #stormarwen Before I bank the cheque however, are you 100% certain you can afford this? #trillionpounds pic.twitter.com/z5MNc2Nxl1 — Gareth Hughes (@gh230277) February 12, 2022 […]

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Every search bar looks like a URL bar to users

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on · · 11 comments · 200 words · read ~18,314 times.
Search results for https in Amazon's autocomplete. Includes links to ebay and other stores.

Computers would be so much better if they never had to deal with users, amirite?!!? I remember, years ago, working on a mobile web service which had a URl bar - so users could tap in bbc.co.uk on their T9 keypads - and a separate search bar. I thought that was pretty nifty. But it […]

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Twitter Hashtags and QR Codes

By
on · · 7 comments · 300 words · read ~2,936 times.

I spotted this poster today, encouraging people to search for the Twitter hashtag "#Transformers". Wouldn't it make sense to use a QR code as well? That way people could quickly scan, and be taken straight to the discussion, rather than have to fire up Twitter and do a manual search. As it happens, it's slightly […]

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