[LINK] Google Wonder Wheel

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Mon Feb 1 15:36:03 AEDT 2010


At 4:02 +0000 1/2/10, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>Here's an excellent tip for drilling-down Google's results to better-fit
>any topics you are after. As normal enter your search term in Google and
>then hit enter.
>Above the results there's a pale blue bar with 'WEB Show options'. Click
>it, and a sidebar will appear on the left. Scroll down and "Wonder Wheel"
>is there. Each click opens another 'wheel' of sub-search-categories, and
>it's a very simple, easy way to clarify and drill-down your search topic.

The twerps - I mean brilliant CompSci PhDs that Google employs - 
appear to have made the display dependent on a very recent version of 
Flash.

(The area is blank in my Safari - which is my main browser and is 
free of the recent and particularly objectionable Flash versions - 
but shows 'wheel' in Firefox - my secondary browser, which is of 
necessity Flash-infected).

The 'wheel' is of course graphic-artist baloney.  It's a list 
displayed in a cute form, it uses an over-engineered and proprietary 
product to do it, and it wastes a lot of space in the window, 
reducing the list of hits on the right to a narrow segment of the 
page.

I did a test on 'surveillance', and the sub-categories were quite 
useless for the purposes I had in mind;  but to be fair that reflects 
the fact that I'm an outlier.

I do agree that this could be a valuable feature - but it'll be a lot 
better when they get rid of the nonsense parts of this beta version.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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