Last December I noticed that Yahoo was now offering Open Search Shortcuts — shortcuts you could make yourself and use while you were logged into Yahoo.
Now Yahoo has announced that they’ve increased the number of available Open Shortcuts per user to 60 (yikes!) Open shortcuts made available by Yahoo include !clist (going to Craigslist), !flickr (searching Flickr) or !note (opens Yahoo Notepad.)
Yahoo has a full list of Open Shortcuts to get you started on its Frequently-Asked-Questions page. While you’re there check out the shortcut: syntax to search for things and navigate to a shortcut at the same time.
The University of New Hampshire has launched a new site that allows you to quickly compare population and demographic factors across regions of the country instead of state-by-state. The Regional Indicators site is available at http://regionalindicators.unh.edu; it uses data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Statistics.
From the front page choose “Indicators for Regions,” and you’ll be given a map of the US divided into regions and a list of indicators you can choose from, including population, employment, kids and income level.
Choose an indicator (each indicator has several sub-indicators) and the page will refresh with indicators placed over every region. Many of them are divided out into metro and non-metro areas.
If you don’t want the information in map format, or you want to see more detail, choose the “View Data Table” option, which will give you the information both in percentage and raw numbers. Further, you’ll get statistics for the United States as a whole. Further, you can also print the map (a new page will open with just the map, which you can print) or download the data available in a comma-delimited text file.
Nicely done, though I didn’t realize how much I had gotten used to Google Map-type layouts until I found myself wishing I could zoom in on a static map. I wonder how many indicators you could map to a site like this?
The Springfield Museums have announced an online database of one of the largest Currier & Ives collections in the world. This collection contains over 750 hand-colored Currier & Ives Lithographs. To access it, go to http://www.springfieldmuseums.org/museums/mfa/. While this is a very interesting exhibit, it’s not at all easy to use.
From the front page of the Fine Arts museum URL above you’ll get a search URL for the Currier & Ives collection. I did a search for “snow”. I got nine results, including prints like “A Clipper Ship in a Snow Squall” and “American Railroad Scene. Snow Bound”. Nice stuff. “More Information” takes you to a larger version of the print along with some commentary and a few additional details. You’ll also have the option from the detail page to send an e-card of the print you’re looking at.
Here’s the problem, though. Neither the search results page or the details page has a search form! So once you’re done viewing the search results, all you can do is back out to the Fine Arts home page, reload the Flash, and search again.
After some poking around and URL tweaking I found that this page will give you a plain search form.
There also doesn’t appear to be any way you can do advanced searching — say, by date by print title versus keyword in the commentary. And that’s too bad, because I came to this database thinking Currier & Ives prints were all adorable Americana, and a little browsing relieved me of that notion, showing prints that were active and dramatic (search for Clipper) or downright bizarre (A Bare Chance.) But it’s way tougher than it should be to search this site.
