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Google Outline Browser

Posted by Dave Winer, 4/20/02 at 2:53:01 PM.

A picture named telegraphsmall.gifA simple tool that allows you to browse "related to" links in any Radio outline.

It does this by connecting Radio's node types architecture to Google's SOAP interface.

It's a different way to crawl through The Mind of Google.

And it's fun! And more than a little addictive. ;->

How to 

1. Download googleOutlineBrowser.root into the Tools folder. It's in the same folder as the Radio UserLand application. Visit the Tools page and enable the googleOutlineBrowser tool.

2. Make sure that you have set up Radio to work with Google, per the instructions on this page. If you've already made a Google Box, you can skip this step, it's already set up.

3. Open any outline window. If you don't know which one to open, choose New from the File menu to create one.

4. Choose What's Related? from the Google Outline Browser sub-menu of the Tools menu. Enter the URL of a site you're interested in. (If the sub-menu isn't present, try quitting and relaunching Radio.)

5. A new line appears in your outline containing the URL you entered in step 3. Expand it by double-clicking on the wedge to the left of the URL. A set of as many ten sub-heads appears. You can then double-click on any of them to walk the "what's related" hierarchy. Screen shot.

6. Remember to take a break for dinner, sleep, and to take a walk every once in a while. ;->

Ideas for exploration 

I started in my Favorites menu for ideas of places to start traversals. Some sites lead to lots of others, some (such as Google itself) lead to a few sites that then lead back to where you came from.

If you're a developer, you might try doing an HTML-based browser for these hierarchies. Not very many people have outliners that can do this kind of stuff, and the idea deserves more exposure. I don't have time to write one myself, but feel free to do one yourself, and if you do, send me a pointer so I can tell people about it on Scripting News.




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Last update: Saturday, April 20, 2002 at 3:49:24 PM.
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