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.
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?
ReplyDelete*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.