Finding a bad lawyer

Good news on the work front: after weeks of waiting on this and waiting on that, my team finally got an updated version of Boston.com search out the door and into the wild today. It fixes dozens of little things that were bugging me. My favorite feature: we make it a lot easier now to set your default location for business searches. And we know about local locations that Google doesn't do well, like the North End. And we can help you find bad legal advice in Our Fair City from Dewey Cheetham and Howe.
[where: Harvard Square, Cambridge]

Where is the Capitol Theater?

It's a popular movie theater in Arlington. But if you try to find it on Google, it's on Mass. Ave in Boston.

That's a big improvement over AOL Local (formerly CityGuide): it thinks the theater is "convenient to Rts. 2 and 16", but "6132.82 Miles Away" from Boston, in Kyrgyzstan not far from the Kazakhstan border (you have to zoom out the map to see, because they don't have detailed maps of the middle of nowhere).

The clear winner: Yahoo!. They've got it a few feet east of the location, but that's rounding error.
[where: 204 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA 02474]

An old fun correction and an incorrect fun prediction

A co-worker was telling me about one of the all-time best corrections in the Globe: the obituary that spoke of the distinguished teachers tacky pants, instead of khaki pants. A quick search finds the correction, another the obit. Ooops.

On a totally unrelated note, Scott Adams has some interesting thoughts on the future of newspapers. He hopes for "a newspaper that is a hybrid of social voting, such as you see on web sites like www.reddit.com and www.digg.com, but further filtered by human editors who weed out the redundant, the juvenile, and the stuff unsubstantiated by facts." What he doesn't see is newspapers getting into the more general ad-supported search and information business. I think it's a natural - after all, Dilbert certainly isn't news, but the comics are certainly a major reason some people buy the newspaper. And the coupons. And the weather.

Today's fun search

I just activated a great new search at boston.com: boston gas prices. I'm going to expand it to include every other town and city in Greater Boston, but I haven't had a chance to yet.

Facebook

I just tried importing my blog into Facebook. I'm not sure if it will work, or even why I would want to you. Oh yeah, because being on Facebook makes me feel younger and hipper than I actually am.

Rock Paper Scissors

One of my favorite features of the Boston.com search engine is that you can play Rock, Paper, Scissors online. A very silly feature. But one that amuses me no end.

Testing Again

I'm trying to associate the word zymurgy with something random things like beer. Here I go again: zymurgy. There are currently 7 results, and this post itself should make 8.

Testing 1,2,3

I'm doing a lot of testing of movie spotlights, on the third iteration of my script, and I want there to be one result with "test3" in the page. So here it is. I'll also put in test4 and test5, for good luck.

Skunkworks

Yes, I discovered today that I was part of skunkworks at Boston.com. I thought before this point that a skunkworks could only be something that nobody had ever heard about. While trying to find that item again, I discovered that Poynter's E-Media Tidbits had also picked it up and said nice things about what I do.

As reported in the Boston Globe, I'm "goofing off" this summer.