DRAGNET and its offspring

My summer project this year was to create a search gadget to put on our Facebook page. Google gives you access to something called Custom Search if you have a Google account (and why wouldn't you?) I'd used this to little effect in my Quinnipiac days, but I knew that there are many good free sites in the legal world, so I gave that another try. Once I had added about thirty sites, I knew I was on to something big. The more sites I added the more powerful this became, and the speed was always lightning-fast. Over the summer we finalized it, got the database count up to 80, and launched it with a new name "DRAGNET." The idea came from library director Camille Broussard, and I worked out the acronym "Database Resource Access using Google's New Electronic Technology."


Once I announced DRAGNET to some listservs it became an immediate sensation. I got several good suggestions about how to expand and fine-tune its results screens. The new expanded DRAGNET went live yesterday with search tabs for New York, International, Federal and a tab that displays the most recent hits from all 80 sites. Then I added the same search technology to a screen we keep that tracks 150 law journals with current issues and archives available free online - "Law Reviews with online content." More recently, at Camille's suggestion, I created a search page to use DRAGNET technology to track the constitutions and state codes of all 50 states and the federal government. This went public today at the NYLS Website.

I have about 10 custom searches in progress, including a few that I did just for practice. One of them tracks suggested recipe sites, to avoid the ones that have abusive popups. That will appear on my personal web page one of these days. Christina Crocker of the East Meadow Public Library used the technique to track book talk information. There is just no end to this.

Full Screen Google

Just found out by accident yesterday that Google now lets you add your own pictures to the Classic Google screen. I went to the Irish vault and had no trouble picking out an appropriate shot. Then I went to my wife's account and added one for her. I emailed her and told her to look. The response was "Wow!" I can't wait for September to start rolling out the fall shots.

New Gadgets

I finally figured out how to code the XML to create a Google gadget and get it in the interface. The first was a spinning cube with the theme "Love your Libraries." Then I resurrected a similar globe with images from the West of Ireland. I'm now busy adapting several customized Google searches dealing with legal data. Once you get the hang of this, the only limit is your imagination.

Inheriting the earth

I recently set out to do a Google map that provided an interface between Google's map of the world and our online catalog. In other words, when you click on the placemark for the Philippines, you can hit a link and see which books we own about that country. I did the initial set myself. Then I passed it along to my work study law student and had him add a further link to the CIA World Factbook. With that done, we added links to the online law archives of every state. Currently, he is adding photos from Wikimedia to show scenes from each country. Meantime, this has quietly attracted an audience - more than 600 views and the pace appears to be accelerating.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&vps=1&jsv=169c&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=107227665862340505019.0004617b83392504880aa

Google themes

For some time Google has opened up its IGoogle theme bars to developers. I looked into it a year ago and found that the instructions made the 1040 tax form look easy by comparison. Recently, I noted that they have put in an interface that makes theme creation about 100 times easier. I started by creating a few from my vast library of pictures from Ireland. Getting the images to display correctly was a process of trial and error. I created 3 or 4 that I wish I could take back, but then got into the swing. Some of these started appearing in the index within days. You can see whatever has been listed so far at: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?q=terry+ballard&hl=en&type=themes . By today, I have nearly 200 themes in the index (If you add one or two a day it adds up pretty fast). The usage counts are interesting. Most show up as <100 subscribers. At first I was doing this just as a lark without any sense of others using the themes. Then one day, one of the themes showed 120 subscribers. Since then more than 30 have popped up with more than 100 at one time or another. Lately, there are always 7 or 8 at a given time with known counts. Things got really interesting in the fall, when one of my themes got some attention, apparently from Google France, and the theme got more than 12,000 subscribers.

YouTube

A few months ago, I realized that my 'B' digital camera can take video with sound that can be uploaded to YouTube. I found out that snippets less than a minute long are most likely to be seen. I've also proved that people will look at anything. See for yourself at
http://www.youtube.com/user/terryballard

Two literary pilgrimage maps - only one still standing

More than a year ago I created a map tracing John Steinbeck's journey with his poodle Charley in the fall of 1960. In time, it got more than 8000 visits and five users rated it to give it 5 stars. One day last week I looked at it and found that someone had hacked it - taken away the ratings and past comments and replacing them with a rather condescending remark about how Steinbeck made up a lot of things in that trip. I complained to Google, waited a week and concluded that Google doesn't much care. So I deleted the map. Google giveth and Google taketh away. I can't imagine how anyone could do that if they don't work for Google, but there are smart people out there who are also psychopathic.

A second map, made at about the same time traces the places in America that have a connection to Mark Twain. It's brand new so I've only got to the places he visited as a journeyman printer. You can see it take shape at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=102923703941959514621.00045dc9dc76fd8686f0a&z=6

Google Earth Community allows developers to post KML files to promote geotagging projects. Each subject area has two levels. An open level that any member can post to. Then those postings are patrolled by moderators, who sometimes move them into the elite moderated area. When I posted the Charley information last Saturday, I was astonished to find that the posting had been moved up in less than half an hour. Like my ego needed more feeding.