Skip to main content

Google CSE

When Google came up with CSE (custom search engine), I knew this was a big thing. So, I promptly joined in the party. I started thinking about how I can use this cool tool.

First about the things that CSE can do-

* Place a search box and search results on your website.
* Specify or prioritize the sites you want to include in searches.
* Customize the look and feel to match your website.
* Invite your community to contribute to the search engine.

It’s the fourth feature that really got me going.

Every time I typed Kashmir in the Google search box, the top results were like this: info on Danish Rock band, news about 2005 earthquake, views of the whole world about Kashmir conflict, tourism site, government site, many useless sites and nothing about Kashmiri Pandits; no news about us. It actually bothered me. I wanted that when I type Kashmir, I should get results about my community.

It enables you to make your own CSE (custom search engine).Instead of searching the whole net, we just get to search a sub-set of the web specified by us and result is that we get totally query specific results. In my case, this sub-set is a bunch of good Kashmiri sites.
So, I set up a Search Engine just for Kashmir.

You can see it at work here at my other blog: Search Kashmir.

This makes it probably the first cyber Kashmiri Search Engine.
Right now, I have only linked the sites that I usually visit for my Kashmiri culture~history queries. However, the best think is that others can contribute. So, hopefully this would be a community affair.

Besides, this I have been a member of another community on Orkut. This community is for serious discussions of academic nature. Infact, it goes by the name Serous Academic Discussion. This community has lot of bright people from all over the world. And typical of bright people is, links to sites with bright content. So, I put up another search engine specifically for this community and named it Find Me Engine.

I have used the same Engine in this blog , as it has started to show really great results.

The most obvious use of CSE would be a search engine that searches only your blog or site, sort of an insite-searching tool. Earlier I had to use the services of some third party like technorati for this feature. Now, I just built a search engine for my own blog. Although, this feature is not working as good as it should but hopefully it would improve with time.

Read more about Google Custom Search

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.

All about Taro Ek Dragon Ka Beta

Hawa mithee tu aa ja, purab se Tufaan tu aa jaa re paschim se Chali aa, jaldi aa jaldi aa tu aasmaan se ~Title song from Cartoon Series Taro Ek Dragon Ka Beta Japanese cartoon series from the late 70’s Taro the Dragon Boy ( orginal story by Miyoko Matsutani ) was shown on Indian national television - Doordarshan, in mid nineties with the Hindi title: Taro Ek Dragon Ka Beta . Due to this one serial, a generation of Indians was introduced to the wonders of Japanese animation. Although it may not seem to be a great series in itself( when compared to the new age sleek animation of these days) , showing of Taro the Dragon Boy was the true precursor to the coming of Pokemons, Inuyashas, Samurai Jacks and Dragon Ball Zs. In India, the series is mostly remembered for its title track Hawa mithee tu aa ja written by Gulzar and brilliantly composed music by Vishal Bhardwaj. In 1966, Taro, the Son of Dragon with the original Japanese title of ...

Space City Sigma, 1989

A strange new deadly creature has sneaked aboard the ship. The latest maneuver of  Zakhakoo to take down Commander Tara and his city, the last hurdle to his plans of adding earth to his galactic kingdom and the universe. This time he sent a small Blob, strangely, much resembling a stinky wet Upla , a throbbing pack of  cow-dung . The Blob is given to jumps onto its unsuspecting victims and sucks the life force out of them. Soon, this 'death-on-contact-with-skin' creature starts making victims out of helpless citizens of the Space City who have no clue about the nature of these new deaths. As the word slowly spreads,there is mayhem, in this mayhem the Blob zeros in on what could be its most prized victim - Shakti. As a doors open (automatically, woosh -pause- woosh ), Shakti walks in only to be attacked slyly by the Blob. In the manner of its previous killings, this time too, Blob goes for the face, sticking to ...