Here, in part 1, we try to find ‘something’ in Newcastle

In part 2 [click here to read] we research Newcastle’s history

It’s early May 2009 and a new Internet search engine is warming up that promises, or threatens, to revolutionise the way we find stuff online.

It’s Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” that its creator Stephen Wolfram claims is the nearest yet to a machine that will tell you what you wanted to know, not just what you asked it.

Google returns facts related to a word or phrase you typed and has no idea what meaning you had in mind what you are thinking. Wolfram point out what we have realised 50 years into the computer age: “..getting computers to deal with natural language has turned out to be incredibly difficult.”

In response(I suspect) to Wolfram, and as I write (mid May 2009) Google enhanced its search home page with a tiny link to new experimental features you most definitely should know about.

They are breathtaking compared to what we have become accustomed.

So, you want to find something in Newcastle?

Alert. If you have trouble using these new features, do yourself a favour and install Google’s web browser called “Chrome” – an alternate to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s FireFox. If nothing else it’s blazingly fast on the Internet.

NB: If the Snapshots popups drive you nuts, disable via the little sun icon top right in the popup, which offers a menu when moused over.

The screenshot below is a Google search for the single word “Newcastle.” Three things to note:

• 62 million results!
• Results favour the most famous,  Newcastle Upon Tyne in England, though including our little corner of the world, there are several dozen other “Newcastles.”
• Most important, however, you will see something new on the Google search page – under the Google logo is a new link called “Show Options”

“Show Options” when clicked presents more search options in a column that opens on the left side.

And delicious options they are, especially stunningly powerful choices at the bottom left: Wonder Wheel and Timeline.

With Wonder Wheel and Timeline you can manage the overwhelming world of unrelated facts.

Wonder Wheel, many of you will recognise, is a “mind map” – is a visual linking of related groups of words, ideas, to-do lists, etc.

Google’s is a living mind-map that moves when you click it and drags more and endless related searches from the world’s bottomless pit of facts and information.

Now, instead of a tedious and cluttered list of text, you see a readily grasped diagram of information with subject links.

Some of the Wonder Wheel links are now obviously from Newcastle, Australia: coal and the Jets (soccer team).

If you add “nsw” and “australia” to the search entry box and click the search button, the diagram changes to offer far more relevant topics – except maybe Coffs Harbour?

Ah well, don’t forget it’s only a machine.

Imagine you were visiting Newcastle tomorrow, in the search result above clicking the link “newcastle accommodation” changes the result in a quite dramatic way.

At this point you can see the power of searching visually. Note, however, the resultant choices are still ‘unbalanced’ or not the comprehensive range you might expect.

That’s because – disappointing, and inevitable – the search is fed by what Google can find, NOT by what exists.

This is not a human-compiled directory, it’s a list of web pages that MIGHT be relevant because your search terms appear on the page. Nothing else. Yet.

Drilling down, as they say, if you select “newcastle cbd accommodation” the almost useful set of choices appear below. Still not particularly “cbd” are they?

That’s not Google’s fault, but the people who created the web pages and did not target correctly the key words you typed to reach this point ( it’s an imperfect world).

What more is there to say. I’m impressed!