Finding things in the information age.

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eMadman
I have come up with an idea for a bit of a puzzle based on a conversation a friend and I had over msn.

My friend and I were talking over msn and an obscure band came up. The first thing both of us did was to search google. From google, we went to Youtube and then Wikipedia. The strange bit is that I sent him a link to one of the google results - he was already there. He sent me the youtube link. I was watching it already. I sent him the wiki link. He was already there...

every discussion I have, it seems, can have some sort of resolution via a google search or wiki.

So... here's the game: Lets aim to find information that is just not available on the internet. All I have come up with so far seems to be very specific individuals. And even then, some people such as myself can be found by a simple google search.

My next thought would be custom applications and products. My company, for example develops a lot of backend software for clients on a one-of-a-kind basis. These are documented internally only. The general public doesn't know what these apps are, only that they bring them the sites they use...

so... what does google NOT know?
 
It’s actually surprising how much information out there Google doesn’t know (if only because we take for granted that Google is an omniscient being). For example, at work a little while ago I needed to find a certain physician’s email address. I spent quite a while on Google and couldn’t find it – okay, fine, some people have managed to completely keep their email address off teh interwebz. But then my coworker Google an upcoming talk he was giving, and on it there was a link to an information sheet with his email address. I plugged the email address back into Google, and it returned nothing. So Google hadn’t indexed this particular page, even though it had indexed a page directly linking to it.

And of course, there’s the whole deep web, which as that article points out, is probably significantly more than what has already been indexed.
 
Also, Google occasionally has dead links, usually for products that I'm researching to buy. :indiff:
Sage
And of course, there’s the whole deep web, which as that article points out, is probably significantly more than what has already been indexed.
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Like, just as one example, all those web pages that I've started for work and not finished so I haven't made them public but you can still get to them if you know the address? I'll agree there are plenty of those floating around. Actually, according to the description, the Mod and Premium sections qualify for Deep Web status as well.
 
Sage
It’s actually surprising how much information out there Google doesn’t know (if only because we take for granted that Google is an omniscient being). For example, at work a little while ago I needed to find a certain physician’s email address. I spent quite a while on Google and couldn’t find it – okay, fine, some people have managed to completely keep their email address off teh interwebz. But then my coworker Google an upcoming talk he was giving, and on it there was a link to an information sheet with his email address. I plugged the email address back into Google, and it returned nothing. So Google hadn’t indexed this particular page, even though it had indexed a page directly linking to it.

And of course, there’s the whole deep web, which as that article points out, is probably significantly more than what has already been indexed.
Click to expand...

Awesome answer 👍

There's a whole wealth of info out there - just think of the number of sites that are programmed to reject search robots. The sheer number of 'underground' sites like hidden torrent trackers and online communities. That's only the illicit side. Universities have their own internal social networks, externally accessible webmail accounts, etc. Businesses have their own hidden sites for use only by their employees and customers, and my friends have their "family sites" which are a private collection of pictures and blog type stuff - just for their families and not on google.

Even my company owns multiple sites that will never be spidered by Google or the likes. Simple reason - we need these domains to be accessible from outside our internal active directory architecture while being completely hidden from search. Every one of our client sites has a test environment that can be accessed through a simple subdomain on the originating url. None of these can be spidered and at least 95% of them are password protected.

Still. Try to find an obscure subject that a reasonable person would google for. More often than not, you'll find it.
 
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If you Google “how many letters are in the word cat”, this thread is now one of the results. :lol:
 
Prosthetic
WAATTT!!!!

I found it :grumpy:
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Ah yes, I see your post now. Sorry.

Using "cat' was a mistake - because it is so often used as an example for spelling. A better choice would be a common word that isn't used as a spelling example. One you could find on every web page:

how many letters in the word "for"

^ Something like that. Although I'll note that the website above will count the letters in that word, so it's probably discoverable via google search.
 
Danoff
Ah yes, I see your post now. Sorry.

Using "cat' was a mistake - because it is so often used as an example for spelling. A better choice would be a common word that isn't used as a spelling example. One you could find on every web page:

how many letters in the word "for"

^ Something like that. Although I'll note that the website above will count the letters in that word, so it's probably discoverable via google search.
Click to expand...


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how+many+letters+in+the+word+for&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=


It didn't actually worked as well... funny, but I got a kick out of reading the discription of the first link :lol:
 
If any two people have anything to say about something that's occurred in the past 10-15 years, it should generally be on the web, as long as it's not classified and private information, or information you would have to pay to get.

Go back to an age before the World Wide Web was accessible and commercially available the average person's home, or even before an age of digital cameras, scanners, or even word processors, and you realize a lot of places and events back in time have absolutely little or no mention in an average search engine. You'd really have to do your research elsewhere, if you talking about a not-so-famous business that closed down twenty years ago. Few people are going to relive something that happened that long ago, because few people would be interested.

Given that as we age, we forget more and more information, and acquire new information, yet there's always more and more content on the web about different things, there theoretically, and eventually, be information about "everything out there that ever was", but at an extremely slow rate, since there's a lot out there to replicate in another dimension.

As said before, sometimes you have to search, and within each page you find, you have to use their search engine, and then another search, et cetera. And of course, another problem lies not with finding it, but making quick work or finding useful results out of a lot of trash disguised as advertisements, themselves disguised as useful sites.
 
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There are countless magazine articles and info snippets that I have read over the years, and it's near-impossible to find anything about them on the web... like, say, Car and Driver's twin-engined CR-X article from the 80's.

So, as I was typing, I did the search again (earlier searches, back in 06, had proven fruitless)... and lo and behold:

http://www.carlustblog.com/2008/02/car-lust--twin.html
cdhondacover_2.jpg


An analysis of the article, with pictures. Gut-damn, love Google.

I guess the only thing you can't find on the web is that poem you wrote in high-school for that girl that got published in the school paper... thankfully so.
 
Well, that's cause Car Lust wrote a blog entry on it. I was just reading that whole blog last week after I found it on Google while searching for a good sporty sedan that would make a good first car. It's a pretty cool blog.
 
There are quite a lot of magazine articles not available on the internet. Heck, while I was reading online Automobile articles a week ago I couldn't even find the month it was published! I searched for hours, literally.

Also, at Sinclair college we had access to lots of special scholarly journals and science writings and whatnot that required passwords or association with a school to gain access to them. Google has lots of answers, but those journals are full of the answers. Some libraries have journals and encyclopedias that haven't been converted for use on the internet.

EDIT: Via Google 2001 (one of few that still works...)

Keef the Thief, lol.
 
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While doing research for art history I found very little on the internet on certain pieces whereas there are entire print publications dedicated to that specific era of art, containing pages and paragraphs on exactly what I had been looking for.

Everyone in my classes grumble when they've gotta buy 140$ textbooks, but later on down the road they really learn to appreciate them, as there still is plenty of print content not yet archived in digital media.
 
exigeracer
Everyone in my classes grumble when they've gotta buy 140$ textbooks, but later on down the road they really learn to appreciate them, as there still is plenty of print content not yet archived in digital media.
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Yeah but depending on the book you can get an older edition for much cheaper that has almost the same content as the current edition.
 
Of course, in-depth journals will be difficult... but what about non-technical stuff?

I've been trying to think of obscure literary references and works that might not be online, and I've come up trumps...

How about this... Mehitabel the Cat. I've only ever seen one book, and one copy, and from its condition when I had it back in the 80's, it was an original 1920s to 1930s print. It's almost never mentioned in Comics History omnibuses I'ver read, and yet, lo and behold:

http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/
archylogo.gif


I think the challenge is thinking of something you'll never find on the internet, even in short reference form.
 

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