Category Archives: Search

Spidering Hacks goes live

Spidering Hacks is now available for pre-order around the world. $20 adds these 100 tips and hacks to your library. 400 pages. Currently ranked 432,937 at Barnes & Noble. ISBN is 0-596-00577-6. UPC is 636920-00577-3. ASIN is 0596005776. As previously mentioned, I wrote a hack using Java to gather traffic statistics from Alexa. It will most likely come out in November, not October, but it’s still cool to see it hit the virtual shelves as a pre-order….

Spidering Hacks

I have been busy over the past week writing for a new O’Reilly book. Look for me in chapter 4 a to be released book named Spidering Hacks, part of the O’Reilly Hack Series. Interestingly enough I was the only person to author to use Java. I have a feeling this is going to be a book full of a lot of Perl. There is only one Python example. I wrote a hack that gathers data about Alexa toolbar users traffic to your Web property on a daily basis. Alexa collects subdomain information as well as property rankings, and I…

Amazon’s new search patent

Amazon.com has filed patent 6,564,213 for search query autocompletion strings. A search term is “preferably biased to favor the database items that are currently the most popular.” The idea seems similar to Google’s spelling correction but with partial strings. If I am on Amazon’s wireless site I can see the advantage of typing “Pearl” in the music category for a Pearl Jam CD, but the implications for not discovering Janis Joplin’s CD could make the whole thing dangerous….