Gate Peepin' and Misspelling Generator

Linda Hilfling, with her project Gate Peepin' and the Misspelling Generator, will be among the speakers of Speaking out Loud symposium of Netherlands Media Art Institute, to be held on December 18, 2008.

Linda works with the premises of participation and public spaces within media structures, with a focus on means of control (codes, organization and law) and their cultural impact. Her artistic practice takes the form of interventions reflecting upon or revealing hidden gaps in these structures.

Initially designed and coded in python and bash by her and also available as a Firefox extension thanks to Erik Borra, the Misspelling Generator intervenes directly within the Google search engine, allowing users to take advantage of the informational gray-zone of misspellings. And it does exactly what it claims:

Each query typed into the normal Google search-box will generate misspellings inserted above the normal Google results – similar to Google’s 'Did you mean', but now with 'Have you tried' instead. When hovering the mouse over the links, you can see the number of search results for each misspelling. Clicking the link will redirect you to the Google page with the results for that specific misspelling. It is a useful tool for creating simple cryptography, circumventing specific cases of censorship, or in general as a means of accessing the 'gray' side of the Internet, which otherwise is isolated by the rigid structures of 'corrective' info-culture regimes on search engines like Google.

Intrigued? Then, a new adventure awaits you, casual user and search engine optimizer alike. Take a look at the 'uncorrected' side and hidden layers of the Internet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pros of Short Domain Names

Life is a good teacher. Up to now, it has never occurred to me a short domain name could be an advantage. I have always assumed, because I do it that way, people could bookmark a site when they like it regardless of the length of its name. Though I do not use it, social networking sites like Twitter changed my mind. I suddenly realized how difficult it must be to write a tweet about an article on this site without the aid of URL shortener services. Just writing the part "experimentsincyberspace/2009/04/" with the protocol prefix consumes 52 characters. I am not saying you will not be found. I am talking about the extra step, often tedious, of the necessity of shortening the URL. A very good idea could be having a short URL handy beneath or above your articles so that people can easily use it. Rather than having your visitors do it, you can take the extra step and place a short link yourself. In addition, keeping your URL intact can be a marketing and branding advantage.
Read more

A Thought Experiment on Do Follow Comments

Image
Einstein was a great scientist and without exception all physics students new to his work are introduced to his use of Gedanken Experiment or thought experiments. Gren Ireson, a lecturer at Loughborough University, UK, where his research interests include quantum philosophy, physics of sport and learning and teaching physical sciences, contests that a thought experiment has three requirements [PDF]: It is carried out in the mind (however one cares to define 'mind'). It draws on experience. It allows the experimenter to see what is happening (perhaps a better term to use than 'see' is 'imagine' or 'form a mental image').  I see a lot of blogs announcing they do follow comments lately, so I will humbly use Einstein's technique to shed some light on do follow commenting today. Let us start with a definition first. Google's Matt Cutts speaks: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives web masters the ability to modify PageRank flow
Read more

New Rush for Top Level Domains Begins

It will shortly, if ICANN's new proposal holds up, that is. According to Paul Levins, VP corporate affairs, any domain name will be possible, subject to your imagination, The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially "generic top-level domains" — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web's address system. Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a web address ending in .hiphop. [...] To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding w
Read more