Waldo
Authored by:: Brendan Langen
Waldo is a browser extension that amplifies Google search via advanced operators - scanning all keywords, images, and sentences on each webpage without having to open any links. Search terms express intentions, and Waldo’s search matches keywords and highlights as they appear in each sentence from the webpages found.
Waldo’s unique benefit comes from search within Waldo’s own search engine. Users can add on keywords within the search to hone the accuracy of what they are searching for (2:20 mark)
. An exploratory search system should help the reader cumulatively gain information, and Waldo enables this through its design.
Waldo is built almost as a DSL, affording users to improve their level of search depth as time goes on A DSL enables semantic self-expression, and Waldo has smart defaults so people don’t have to always use semantic self-expression.
Geoffrey Litt’s Twemex offers similar functionality as an override to Twitter’s search.
Waldo also offers on-demand research as a service, an interesting add-on to consider regarding roles needed in a decentralized discourse graph.
This informs Search as a primitive, and may speak to the development of a new feature.
Search enablement.
Extracting data.
Focused views.
