[REBOL] Re: Google + SOAP
From: gerardcote:sympatico:ca at: 21-Apr-2002 18:57
Hello Graham and other lovers of Google,
Here follows an article and another reference about using the Google with
the help of its API (for example using Google with an outliner for
browsing).
I got them today from the Dave Winer's Davenet Userland. It talks about
Google, SOAP and the many uses Dave and others thought about when using the
Google's APIs.
Hope it will ignite some mind sparks to you and other REBOL users.
Gerard
----- Message d'origine -----
De : DaveNet email <[dave--scripting--com]>
À : DaveNet World <[davenet-world--scripting--com]>
Envoyé : 21 avril, 2002 12:23
Objet : The Mind of Google
> DaveNet essay, "The Mind of Google", released on 4/21/2002;
9:18:17 AM Pacific.
> --------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
> ***Carl Stork
>
> I had a long telephone conversation yesterday with Microsoft's
Carl Stork, who's on leave, after being the vice-president who
worked with Micorosoft's hardware OEMs. Carl and I share a love
for baseball, we both grew up in the NY metropolitan area, even
though Carl is an American League fan, and my National League
mind has never really understood the American League. But we get
along really well, I always enjoy talking with Carl.
> We talked about a lot of things, music on the Internet, the
state of independent software developers in 2002, and swung
around to the state of DaveNet. Carl observed that I wasn't
writing as many pieces as I used to. I explained that's because
most of the action is on my weblog [1] these days, it's a daily
story, and to get the DaveNet group in the loop is something I
rarely have the time to do these days.
> But the Google-Meets-SOAP story is an exception. Since I was
briefed well before-hand, I had time to get both flows ready, to
explain the news, what it meant, and offer some insight into
where I saw it going, through both channels. And today I'm
pleased to report that we found what may be a killer app for the
current Google-SOAP interface. I'm going to explain it briefly
here, and offer pointers where you can experience it for
yourself.
>
> ***Outline browsers
>
> First, this is very much like something I played around with
in MORE in the 80s. We licensed a thesaurus. I wired it into the
outliner. Type in a word. Double-click to see its synonyms.
Repeat until the exploration is done. It was a great way to
think up product names.
> Browsing Google in an outliner is similar, but also different,
because Google's database has a different kind of content.
>
> ***The Mind of Google
>
> Open an outline window and enter the URL of a website that's
the seed of my exploration.
> Double-click. See the sites that are related to it. Pick one
of its subs. Double-click. Invariably it loops back to the place
I came from, but gives me nine other related sites.
> It's a very simple way to crawl what I've come to think of as
The Mind of Google. It's remarkably insightful for a piece of
software. For example, I crawled [2] my way to Dennis Ritchie's
home page at Bell Labs. Ritchie is one of the inventors of the C
programming language. Google relates his site to the sites of
Bjarne Stroustrup, Don Knuth, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds,
Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Steve Wozniak, Brian Kernighan and Ken
Thompson. I'm not sure exactly what the common thread is, but
they're all heroic developers who made significant contributions
over many years to the technology and culture of computer
programming.
> I spent a couple of hours digging around. So many things to
think about. So many puzzles. I came across the word telegraphy
in dictionary.com as I was Google Outline Browsing, and found
that many of the related pages were mine! Somehow it seems to
have figured something out about me, or how I am perceived. It
was at this point that I started to feel like I was interacting
with something with a mind. Of course Google doesn't have one,
but it does a fantastic job of tapping into our collective
minds. In a sense Google is a global intellect, and I'm happy to
report that the world has a good mind. Very interesting stuff.
> Where the HTML interface for Google is a quick in-and-out,
this is the contemplative side of Google, previously invisible,
there was no user interface for it.
> I announced this new way of browsing Google on Scripting News,
and within a day, three other developers had similar browsers
[3] in HTML, and of course others are welcome to do it in an
outliner, which is where the interface works best, imho.
> Dave Winer
>
> [1] http://www.scripting.com/
> [2]
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001015/images/2002/04/20/gobscreen2.gi
f
> [3]
http://www.soapware.org/directory/4/services/googleApi/applicati
ons
> --------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
> (c) Copyright 1994-2002, Dave Winer.
http://davenet.userland.com/.
> "There's no time like now."
>
And the reference to using "Google Outlining" is now following below :
http://www.soapware.org/directory/4/services/googleApi/applications
