I like trying new things, and the new hotness on search engine world is DuckDuckGo. So I decided to unhook from Google and use DuckDuckGo exclusively for a month. You too can do this by following this guide for Chrome.
A few things originally attracted me to DuckDuckGo:
- Privacy.
- Instant Answers.
- !bang.
Previous to switching to DuckDuckGo I thought those were all killer features, after using it for a month it very much had a sobering affect. That being said, the work done by Gabriel Weinberg and his team is quite remarkable.
!bang
This basically injects your search query into the site which you specified with the !bang syntax for example if I wanted to know about lists in python. I would simply enter the search ‘!python lists’. That would redirect me to a search performed on the python site with their implementation of search on their site. This is very clever for DuckDuckGo allows them to scale pretty quickly and potentially provide good search results on site by site basis.
In my experience using this feature albeit useful in some cases it generally doesn’t work, because most site’s internal search engines suck, returning results that are somewhat hit or miss.
In most cases a simple search would have sufficed. So directing to a internal search engine ruins the entire search experience.
Winner: Google.
Searches
I still can’t put my finger on it, but even in cases where Google and DuckDuckGo returned similar results I still found myself favouring Google.
This brings something very interesting to light, I have gotten really good at processing information returned from Google searches. I can quickly determine what is a useful result and what isn’t.
If I had a gun to my head, I would have to say where the URL placement is what is affecting my comfort with the search engine. This might have been something I learned by exclusively using Google my entire life or something I do to ensure I open relevant links. First thing I do is look at the title, then immediately the URL just to serve as confidence check for a good result.
Google result.
DuckDuckGo result.
As you can see the URL placement in the DuckDuckGo result is the last thing you look at when looking at a search result. Regardless of the result my search will be contained somewhere in the snippet. I think the URL should take precedence in the search result over the snippet this lets you quickly determine favoured vs. unfavoured domains.
Another thing you might notice, I have +1’d the link above in Google result. Which would show up in results for my friends if they have a search that returns that link as a result, which in my opinion is quite awesome, and adds to the confidence of finding what you are looking for and a sense of being somewhere a friend has been.
The real killer feature that DuckDuckGo has is the instant answer result at the top of most searches.
This result can be retrieved from many sources like Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha. This extremely useful for mobile platforms and things with concrete answers like age of Barack Obama. Albeit slightly transparent on how the search is being done, it proves to be useful in most cases. This is a direction I would love all search engines to begin evolving in.
DuckDuckGo is lacking in more refined location based search, as well as searching for more timely searches like for example when a beastie boy dies. This is an area that I would love to see some serious improvement in DuckDuckGo it would definitely help with wider adoption.
Winner: Google
Privacy
DuckDuckGo does certainly delivers on this promise, but at what cost? I certainly don’t mind a search engine using my previous search history to help me find better content. But there is a fine line between using previous searches to return better results and omitting results altogether. As content refinement based on tastes and previous results will eventually lead to omission of results Google determines irrelevant to your interests. Is this good or bad? I don’t know.
But DuckDuckGo clearly provides less affected search results to its users.
Winner: DuckDuckGo.
Customization
Google customization virtually non-existent. DuckDuckGo however has launched this new initiative called DuckDuckHack.
Which is basically a plugin platform for instant answers which allows developer and users of the search engine to write plugins for areas of interest (programming, gaming and documentation). Therefore improving instant answer results for the entire site.
Beyond this you can customize the search engine layout and colors, which is anonymously saved to the cloud. You can customize various settings from region all the way to look and feel of the site itself.
Winner: DuckDuckGo
Conclusion
I for one favour competition in this space, gives me options as a consumer as well as creates better products for us all.
Google can certainly takes cues from where DuckDuckGo is headed with search with things like instant answers and privacy measures.
With that being said DuckDuckGo is a serious contender for many users default search engine, but for me I found it to lack the laser like accuracy in some of innovative features which detracted from the total search experience. It is extremely customizable and I am sure they have found their niche to keep them going until they can deliver this accuracy in all features.
Until then, look for my +1s.
Discussion
Forrst
is a new place for developers and designers to share inspiring code, screenshots and links.If you ever wanted other professionals frank opinion on a piece of code or can’t make a decision between one logo or the other! Forrst is the place for you. It is just ramping up and is still in invite only stage, but I urge you to get on and get to sharing. Nothing better than being popular on the new it site.
Twitter
if you still think twitter is place for little girls to tweet about their Bieber fever you are right. Although beyond that, [amazing reality] so are favorite products and software developers sharing latest updates and interesting articles. I use Twitter as my news aggregator. If I see the same story tweeted by a few people, usually give it a further look. Tweets are a great way to keep in touch, if you follow the right people!
Blog
now you might be saying madness, I don’t want to have a blog. I am not hipster, who shares everything in hopes to have a movie written about them when they die. Although blogs are the best place to cultivate that particular type of pipe dream. It will also allow you share things you find cool, or link you wished you had bookmarked, its a ways to track your progress as a developer and as a human being. Maybe even open doors for you in the future.
Github
what happens to code you write and keep on your hard drive and you dont let anyone use. It never gets run, or used beyond what it was intended for. In my mind that is a complete and full fledged fail. Get on Github, and set your code free. Great way to learn new things as well. Pick a language and start reading.
Stackoverflow
are you the type of person who asks a ton of questions and expects answers? Look no further the greatest Q&A site to ever hit the internet. Now that they are spinning off various sister sites even better time to join. Want to know more about cooking, coding, ubuntu, or maybe even something new. Vast knowledge base and I would recommend this for any developer who wants to know more.
HackerNews
Do you want a legion of smart developer send links to technical articles and interesting things in the news? If so get ready to probably waste [gain knowledge] an hour a day there easily hitting refresh. Check it out.
Reddit
Now you may thinks Reddit is mostly used for finding cool pictures of cats and place where you can make fun of people failing. Although that may be true there is a vast developer community on there that have various discussions about development broken up is more ways you can imagine in subreddits, chime in!
Coderwall
I know I said 7 but I can’t leave out this out for those of us who love competition, and awesome tracking of development achievements! Coderwall goes through your github repositories and gives you badass achievements on code you develop; they recently launched new profile pages that look awesome! Try it out!
—This post has been inspired by Scott Hanselman talk here.
Discussion
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
I am not really big into supporting these things, but its going to affect my ability to find LOLcats online. We can’t have that happen. Do you part, hit up your congressman.
Share and Reblog. Keep the Internet the same.
Discussion
Every single day we are required to do some repetitive tasks, like clean up old data files or run some commands on some servers, and collect X.
Now you can go about this in two ways, do it manually or write a script that does it for you. The generally accepted rule of thumb is to write a script for things that you will do more than twice. Is that really true? If I am going to collect metrics a few times; is the time that i invest into writing a script really worth my time?
Some would say yes, but in my experience I always find myself seconding guessing myself and I often spend time really thinking about if writing the script will save me time in the long run. So you can clearly see where time is being spent.
As you can see this has become and an issue, I am not even including the soul crushing regret that when you realize you should have written the script (grrrrr). Now what is the solution to all your problems? What is the one question that you can ask in order to determine if you should write a script or not. Unfortunately like all things in life it depends. Here are some questions to ask to determine if you should.
- Can you get a significant amount of work done while the script is running?
- How long will the script take to write?
- How many times will you be doing said task?
- Will you learn something new?
This is just what I found useful. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Discussion
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Very clever solution to a problem proposed at a conference called Mathematics - A Beautiful Elsewhere. He proposed a simple problem:
“La réponse est 2011” (The answer is 2011).
- The player can use the as many number as needed, but in the natural order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.
- These numbers can be the operands of +, -, *, /, ^ (power), ! (factorial), and square root. Parenthesis can be added freely to order these operations.
- The result should be 2011, and the formula should use as few numbers as possible.
Read on, once you have completed your feeble answers.
Discussion