Various Gripes and Kudos

Well, I'm going to say it.

I'm not so crazy about Google.

Yep, that's right. There are a few reasons for this. First, I've found out that Google uses DMOZ, the most useless human-edited directory on the web, as a crutch for its web results. As a result of this, my brief stint as a DMOZ editor has resulted in my empty DMOZ bookmarks list to be replicated around the web, and Google has indexed it a hundred times. Now if you search Google for "SamAMac" the results are absolutely useless. Google also does not seem to understand that that if a page has the exact same URL as a previously-indexed page, it should replace that page in its cache, not place them both in there. Also, it doesn't agree that maybe if I search for "samamac", it should list "samamac.com" before "samamac.com/hosting."

Now if we go over to the new MSN Search and search for SamAMac, the first hit is...samamac.com! And then an indented link to another page on samamac.com, followed by a link that says something like "See more pages at samamac.com." Brilliant! Also, MSN has the ability to get an RSS feed for a specific search result.

Speaking of RSS, I just found this new thing called Plogress. It mines data from THOMAS, the legislative information system, and gives you a feed of what your elected representatives are doing. Cool, huh?