The Monkey Just Got Delicious
[UPDATE] Try the search monkey app here
[UPDATE] New tag cloud UI for deliciousify can be viewed here
[UPDATE] The search monkey app is currently disabled for public use as it was hitting the delicious rate limit. Hence it will remain as a prototype for now. BTW the delicious team is working on their own search monkey app and I bet its going to be much cooler.
I’m a big fan and an avid user of Yahoo! Search Monkey. So this weekend I decided to write myself a search monkey application that I have always wished for. Well, we all will agree that nothing beats human created metadata and what better metadata about search results can there be than the vast and rich knowledge stored in bookmarking services. My search monkey application deals with enriching the organic search results from Yahoo! with metadata from del.icio.us.
Sometimes the search summary does not provide a useful insight into the contents of the search result (as seen below). The only way users ascertain relevance is by clicking on the result and figuring it out themselves. Wouldn’t it be better if the contents of the result could be summarized by just a few words - keywords that highlight broadly what the document talks about. Deliciousify (as seen below) aims to solve this problem by listing the top tags about a search result from del.icio.us, along with its popularity (number of people who have bookmarked it). In the future, I plan to display a tag cloud for the results. Give it a try and send any comments/feedback my way.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
It’s a neat start! Since you’re designing an infobar app, you have a great deal of freedom as to what you want to display. The tag cloud idea is a very good one, and it would be great to see how you implement that, particularly if you find a visually striking way to do it.
Another thing to keep in mind is the infobar summary — it’s what the user sees before they expand the infobar, so it’s important to put something eye-catching or useful there.
Evan Goer
Yahoo! SearchMonkey Team
August 11th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Thanks, Evan. I’ll work on a few prototypes for the tag cloud and try to find a good visualization for it. Thanks for the tips.
September 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
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December 10th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
wow that s great! i really would like to see how you implemented it, is the source publicly available? thanks a lot!
December 10th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Thanks.
The main implementation is done in the Google App Engine application. I’ll try to find an approriate way to share the implementation.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
It would be really interesting! I am an artificial intelligence researcher in Italy and I’m sure folksonimies are irreplaceable and an app like yours which permits to access the power of an important one like del.icio.us is very useful. If you share the code let me know something! You can contact me directly at gtardini@gmail.com . It always nice to meet someone with my same interests! Best wishes!
December 19th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Thanks the author!