Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Google Adds Wildcard Searches

by damonp on August 10, 2005

in Snippets

BetaNews posts Google Adds Wildcard Searches.

Web searches are one of the most effective ways to learn more about a topic, but finding the answer to a specific question is not as easy on the Web. To that end, Google has enabled its search engine to “fill in the blank,” meaning a statement can be written with an asterisk substituting the missing fact.

“So instead of asking [who invented the parachute?], you can enter the query [the parachute was invented by *],” explains Google Research Scientist Hiyan Alshawi. “There is so much text on the web that this method often works well, but to make it more effective, we’ve improved the way results are found in response to queries containing such blanks.”

Now lets have some fun:

Popularity: 1%

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Delete CVS / SVN Directories

by damonp on August 10, 2005

in Snippets

Recursively delete all .svn directories:

find . -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

Recursively delete all .CVS directories:

find . -name .CVS -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

Popularity: 1%

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Home Wireless Network Security

10 August 2005

Whenever I travel to a friend’s house its always interesting to see what wireless networks I can browse from their location. One friend in particular who lives at a rather large apartment complex has no less than eight different accessible wireless networks nearby. Most of these are freely available for outsiders to use for Internet [...]

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Area Code / Exchange Search

10 August 2005

Need to find out where an area code, zip code or exchange code1 is located? For an area code or zip code just Google it: Area Code: 281 Zip Code: 77546 To find the location of an area code or exchange code use areacodedownload.com. Or find all the exchanges and cities in area code 281 [...]

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Apple in the Enterprise?

10 August 2005

The University of Texas at Austin was once the largest single installation of Apple computers outside of Cupertino. When I attended in the early ’90′s everyone was using a Mac; admissions, professors, TAs, students. It was my first real exposure to Apple’s products. Most faculty and staff used their boxes as glorified thin-clients to attached [...]

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