Monday, October 31, 2005

Google Print Beta

John Moran wrote about Google Print in his most recent column. So I decided to give it a try.

First, I tried to search for an excerpt from the Quote du Jour. It would be nice to provide you with a link to the quote's context, I thought. I entered "Wonderfully ingenious" (sans quotes) into the textbox and clicked Search. I quickly got 1110 separate hits. But the first 40 were not from the Quote du Jour, and I got tired of clicking "Next."

So then I tried, "indicating the automatic ticket machines," which is another excerpt from the Quote du Jour, but I got only six hits, and no keepers.

I suppose one reason Google Print is in beta is because Google hasn't scanned in a complete set of printed material. Or perhaps the reason Google hasn't scanned in a more complete set of printed material is because the service is in beta.

Surely, they've scanned in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books. Well, I tried it out. I entered, "discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here." This returned 51 pages. The first four hits had the exact quote that I had in mind. Oddly, not one of them was from the Douglas Adams book that I obtained the quote from. Instead, the hits were for books that quoted the Douglas Adams sentence. One book, ""Encarta Book of Quotations," had a total of fourteen quotes from various books by Douglas Adams.

It's an impressive start. I hope Google continues to add content. It will tremendously enhance the World Wide Web.

1 comment:

Tirsden Frozenrayn said...

Looks like they've got the basics at any rate. "pray you love, remember" from Shakespeare's Hamlet brings up what must be a footnote written by someone else but actually included in a published version of Hamlet, and the third link down is the actual play. Nice. I wonder if they'll include movie scripts, screenplays, and song lyrics?

*tries a line from As Good As It Gets* ... "just not anyone in this car"... Ahahaha, that brings up only one entry: a how-to-journal book someone wrote called Writing To Save Your Life, in which they quote the entire passage from the movie. Funny.