A Better Wikipedia Utility Search

If you use any of the various desktop searching utility tools like Alfred, Quicksilver, or LaunchBar, you’ll like this.

Searching Wikipedia with a direct query is really annoying. It’s been forever, and they still can’t do a good job helping you find things you’ll commonly mess up:

  • Misspelling a famous name
  • Missing the proper-case or hyphen in a name
  • Not knowing exactly what the thing you want is called

Most of this gets you a “Wikipedia doesn’t haven an article titled…” page. Pretty much useless.

Thankfully, Google does a much better job of searching Wikipedia. This the Google URL for finding an article titled “Soup” on Wikipedia:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+Soup

(You can prefix the wikpedia.org with en. to only search in English.) Adding the btnI variable to the URL query string lets you do a Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. You can use this to build a much better custom Wikipedia search for your utility tool:

Alfred custom search URL:
http://www.google.com/search?btnI&q=site:wikipedia.org+{query}

Quicksilver custom search URL:
http://www.google.com/search?btnI&q=site:wikipedia.org+***

LaunchBar custom search URL:
http://www.google.com/search?btnI&q=site:wikipedia.org+*

Now you can type what you want with a lot more freedom into the Wikipedia search and actually find it. For example, you can search for “long word” and you’ll get the article “Longest word in English”. Or you can search for “branston pickle” and get the article “Branston (food)”.

Elsewhere: Boycotting BP is Hard

Lots of people are angry at BP for the Gulf oil spill. History will tell you that one of the most effective ways to show your distaste for a company is to stop buying their product. But boycotting BP is hard work.

BP is a gigantic, multinational company that primarily deals in crude oil and refined fuel. Crude oil is used to make a huge variety of products, including plastics. Refined fuel comes in many formulas: you’re most familiar with gasoline, but it also includes jet fuel.

You are not the primary customer of crude oil compounds and jet fuel. Packaging and manufacturing companies buy the oil compounds. Aviation firms buy the jet fuel.

Most of the time, you aren’t even the primary customer of gasoline. The current craze of BP hate urges people to stop shopping at BP-brand gas stations and convenience stores. But BP-brand gas stations are just franchisees. Owners of the gas stations pay money to BP to receive BP branding materials and cary the name. But those gas stations might not even sell BP gas. Worse, when gas companies need a leg up on supplies, they might buy BP products and re-sell them under another name. Boycotting BP-brand gas stations is more likely to just harm the franchise owner.

Get Even

So, how do you show that you’re angry at BP? First, as a voting citizen, you can support political representatives that want to punish the company, force it to clean the Gulf, and re-pay business owners. Then, you can embarrass BP. You can take pictures of the oil washing up on shore, covering birds, and ruining marshlands. You can go to the news with your story about how the oil spill has hurt you or damaged your way of life. You can write and speak out against BP’s poor concern for the environment. You can donate to organizations that put pressure on lawmakers. Give the people a bitter taste in their mouth whenever they hear the name “BP”.

And, if you’re someone at a big company, it may very well be that you can boycott BP sales. Shed your BP stock. Tell your firm to look to a more responsible oil supplier.

Watch This: Portal 2 Gameplay

News about Portal 2 is flooding out of E3. Here’s the gist of what I’ve collected:

  • Portal 2 takes place after Portal; the Aperture Science facility is overgrown and exposed to the environment in several places.
  • GLaDOS is no longer playing around. She is now actively trying to kill you. The facility has become a lot more hostile, and it even reconfigures itself right before your eyes.
  • You have a small droid companion named Wheatley. His gameplay functionality is currently unknown. He speaks with a British accent and provides a lot of comic relief. His current vocal recordings are not final.

  • New puzzle elements:

    • Orange paint that reduces friction and allows you accelerate faster. Blue paint that you can bounce off of. The paint is released by valves and can be sprayed through portals.
    • Cubes with lenses on the faces that redirect heated laser beams.
    • A kind of tractor beam tunnel that stops you from falling through it and can be redirected through portals.
    • Vacuum devices with enough suction to pull objects through portals and tiles off walls.

  • An entirely separate two-player campaign where you play as two droids.

Gameplay videos for your viewing pleasure:

Further reading: