crowdsourcing on S Anand

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 16:18:29 +0000

Could you spare a minute & share your COVID-19 vaccination cost, please?

What does India search for?

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:33:19 +0000

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been tracking the top 5 hot searches in India on Google Trends (http://www.google.co.in/trends). Here are the results:

If you're interested in making visualisations out of it, please feel free. But there's one particular thing I'm trying out, which is to categorise these searches and see if there's a trend around that. I've added a "Tag" column.

Could you please help me tag the spreadsheet: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Av599tR_jVYgdE5zTU5QWjcxVWVCaTBuY3d0NkUtc1E&hl=en_GB

It’s publicly editable, no special access required. If you could stick to the tags I already have (Business, Education, Entertainment, News, Politics, Sports, Technology), that would be great. If not, that’s fine as well.

And if you’ve made any visualisations or done any analysis using this data, please do drop a comment.

Comments

Rockey Nebhwani 2 Dec 2010 11:50 pm: I think simple conclusion may be Bollywood, Politics, Jobs, Stock :-)

15 years of Dilbert searchable

Fri, 22 May 2009 07:17:47 +0000

The Dilbert search index now carries 15 years worth of Dilbert comics — over 5,500 strips typed out. This is mainly due to the contributions of BFMartin (over 6 years worth of strips) and Paul Dorman (over 3 years worth of strips), myself (over 3 years worth of strips) and a long tail of contributors.

You can search the strips here. While you can find strips as far back as 1989, you won’t see the images earlier than 2002 because geek.nl (whose images I’m shamelessly hotlinking without permission) only holds images that far back. But once you know the date of the comic (say 1991-02-03), you can visit the Dilbert official site at dilbert.com/1991-02-03/ and see the strip.

Dilbert started around 20 years ago. So we’ve covered 75% of all the strips, and this is in just 8 months after starting this collaborative effort. A couple of lessons I learnt from this:

Crowd sourcing beats going solo if you’re building content. It’s a no-brainer. There will always be only one or two people more passionate about something than you.
The long tail is not very big. There will only be one or two people more passionate than something about you. Don’t expect the long tail contribution to be the significant. The value comes from being able to attract “the big fish”.

Comments

Thejesh GN 27 May 2009 7:57 am: Thanks for the search engine.

Dilbert search statistics

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000

It’s been three weeks since I initiated the effort to type in the Dilbert strips and the results are encouraging. About 2 years worth of strips have been typed out. So this Dilbert viewer now has a reasonably sized index for searching.

Many thanks are in order here. The first is due to geek.nl, whose images I have taken the liberty of hotlinking. Thanks also to those who’ve taken the time out to type strips:

granger95
bthangaraj
gdibyo
adrienbernard
sundar.ramakrishnan
pistohl
waywardone
balamurugan.cse
sruppenthal

… and several others.

When I initially planned to share the typing of the Dilbert strips, I anticipated that I would probably type in the most, and almost no one would pitch in. While I still have typed in the most, the contributions of the above have been of great help in more than the obvious way. When I typed out 10 years of Calvin & Hobbes, it took me 5 years. This is 2 years of Dilbert in 3 weeks. If nothing else, it’s pushing me to work harder on this. So thanks again for the motivation.

Here’s my request again to all you Dilbert fans.

Please go to dilbert-search.appspot.com
Log in using your Google account and type in as many strips as you like
Bookmark it for the future, whenever you’re bored

Here’s a Wordle cloud of all the strips typed out so far (with Dilbert and Pointy Haired Boss removed.)

(Seeing that there’s more “good” than “bad”, and more “like” than “dislike” or “hate”, you might even call Dilbert an optimistic strip.)

Comments

Dibyo 21 Oct 2008 8:10 am: You’ve posted this again? Each time you post this, I do atleast one strip!
S Anand 25 Oct 2008 6:18 am: Hmm… don’t know why that happened. I didn’t realise it appeared again on
Google Reader until yesterday. Maybe I just changed a word or so. Well, all
the better :-)
Anand
Elleana 25 Oct 2008 11:22 am: How should “Pointy Haired Boss” be capitalized?
S Anand 25 Oct 2008 11:25 am: I’m not sure, Elleana. I use “Pointy haired boss” consistently. I think
you’ve used “Pointy Haired Boss” consistently. Since the search is
ultimately case-insensitive, I guess it’s OK either way.
And thanks for all your effort!

Anand
ray 30 Oct 2008 8:06 am: Hi,

I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don’t you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;

BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!

This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)

Cheers,

Dilbert search engine

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: 13 Jan 2026: Scott Adams passed away. RIP.

UPDATE: Mar 2023: Dilbert.com was closed but archives are accessible via the Wayback Machine (slow). Search does not work well. Dilbert viewer is an alternate interface via Reddit.

UPDATE: 2012: dilbert-search.appspot.com died, likely of old age.

–

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to search through the Dilbert archives using text?

This used to be possible at Dilbert.com some years ago, as a paid service. In late 2003, I needed to find some Dilbert strips for a client, so I’d subscribed for a year. I could then search for the quotes (I happened to be looking for “outsourcing”, so you can guess the context).

But I can’t seem to find the feature any more, even as a paid service. The site looks a lot better, of course. But I can’t find strips.

Well, why not type them out? After all, I’d done that with Calvin and Hobbes.

This would be a much larger exercise, though. And I’m hoping to take your help. I’ve set up a site at dilbert-search.appspot.com. You can type in a comic randomly, starting from 2000. These will be made searchable on my Dilbert page. You can export the data and use it yourself, of course.

When typing in Calvin and Hobbes, I did have a few volunteers willing to pitch in, but collaboration tools weren’t easy to set up, and I ended up typing the whole thing myself. This time, I’d be delighted if even 10 people typed in just a strip each.

So, here’s my request, to all you Dilbert fans.

Please go to dilbert-search.appspot.com
Log in using your Google account and type in as many strips as you like
Bookmark it for the future, whenever you’re bored

As I said, the data is readily exportable from the page, so if you’re looking to do cool mash-ups with it, great! And if you want the data exported in other formats, please let me know.

Incidentally, I created the site using Google AppEngine. The source code is at dilbert-search.googlecode.com.

Comments

Dibyo 18 Sep 2008 11:50 am: Stud: I suggest that you add an option of putting tags on the comic strip apart from just the transcribed script. It might be useful while searching. I’ll contribute in the meanwhile.
S Anand 18 Sep 2008 5:10 pm: Thanks, Dibyo.

Regarding the tags, since full text search will be supported, you could just add any additional tags in brackets at the bottom. I don’t want to complicate the data structure just yet.
Vanaja Sarma 19 Sep 2008 12:47 am: Hey Anand

How about using these links…the first to search by keyword and the second for the actual strip using date

http://www.bfmartin.ca/finder/index.php?page=home
http://dribibu.xs4all.nl/dilbert.html
S Anand 19 Sep 2008 1:07 am: @Vanaja: I’ve used the Dilbert strip finder before, and it’s great. But it doesn’t seem to be updated, and it doesn’t have the actual words in the comic, which is what I’m hoping to correct.
Thangaraj 25 Sep 2008 2:42 pm: I found a list of characters with image in the URL below. Guess you could link it to this in the typing page since its easier to check which character it is.

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/the_characters/html/character2.html
Elleana 25 Sep 2008 11:34 pm: I can’t wait until we’re done with the Dilbert database. I actually found your site a while ago because I was searching for a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
S Anand 26 Sep 2008 1:32 am: @Thangaraj: Thanks. Will link to it.
@Elleana: Me too! We’re done with about a year’s worth of work now. Hope to have everything done by end of 2008.
Marty 10 Feb 2009 11:13 am: I’ve been using Dilbert search engines to find a specific cartoon for a while now. I read it in one of the books. I recall it being a square book with four frames per page. A woman is telling a man about how her husband mooned a zoo animal and was killed by it. The man in the frame is trying not to laugh so hard that his heart blows out his back. Can anyone help me find this cartoon? I’d love to see it again.
CCurly 24 Feb 2009 9:39 pm: This list (http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/ftp/dilbert/dilbert.txt) is almost complete, but for years earlier than 1995 the index is not a date but a reference to a Dilbert book. I see some spelling errors also, and it’s missing the “who said it” part. Perhaps it’s usable as a way to get some content, and you could let people check the text in stead of having them type it. Love the idea !!
S Anand 24 Feb 2009 11:09 pm: Thanks CCurly! This looks to be a useful resource. A lot of strips are incomplete, but it will definitely help accelerate the effort. I’ll see if I can parse it and get the data in.
Sid Shniad 20 Mar 2009 4:57 pm: I’m looking for the following Dilbert cartoon, but had no luck on your site. Is there any chance you could find it and send it my way? Thanks. (It ran in 2003, possibly August 9.) Sid Shniad dilbert: i have some disturbing news. dilbert: we outsourced our customer-service function to india a few years ago. pointy haired boss: so? dilbert: apparently, they subcontracted the job to mexico. dilbert: then mexico sub-contracted to vietnam, who sub-contracted to the philippines… dilbert: …who subcontracted it to us. dilbert: it turns out that we’re the lowest cost provider, because we lie about our hold times. dilbert: in summary, we pay ourselves to hose ourselves. dilbert: are you thinking what i’m thinking? pointy haired boss: we should raise our prices?
S Anand 23 Mar 2009 7:46 am: You had the date bang-on. It’s at http://www.s-anand.net/dilbert.html#20030803
BlueBird 5 Apr 2009 1:39 am: I sent Scott Adams a suggestion and he made a strip from it, and like a dummy I put the paper in recycling before I saved the strip. Can you help me? It was about a co-worker who stood and talked to someone else, killing time at another co-worker’s expense, until it was time for him (1st guy) to either go to lunch or go home. Then he leaves and his victimn has to stay late to get his/her work finished. Since the boss doesn’t know from computers, the guy just stands and throws out computing terms in relative nonsense until he’s ready to clear out. I think it ran on a Thursday about a year, to two years ago. I’d love to find a copy of it. (He’s still doing it)I suggested to Mr. Adams that he make the character very fat, with suspenders, and I think he did. Thanks!
Paul 15 Apr 2009 6:40 pm: I have transcribed the text from 11-14-2003 to the present, including which character say it. You could probably reformat it to work for you. Also, on dilbert.com you can now view strips all the way back to the beginning. Let me know if you want me to email it to you or something.
adrian 7 Nov 2009 6:15 pm: Heya! I love the Dilbert search page. I made my own and typed a lot of strips, but deleted the database without a backup. Doh! Then I found yours. But, the page seems to have issues right now. It’s slow to view and usually crashes with an error. Please fix it so I can enter lots of strips!~ Also thanks for making the data easily downloadable. -a
Vanaja 20 Jul 2010 11:34 am: Looks like its updated… http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/strip_search/
TelDaMan 24 Mar 2012 10:43 pm: Hey Anand, this is really excellent work! About a year ago I started trawling for the text and strips and found some really good resources, including yours. Thanks!! My website http://dilbert.is-a-geek.com/ automatically updates every day with new strips. It also OCR’s the text on the strip and comes up a 80%+ guess on the words and then indexes them. Sadly I have to manually edit each strip to fix up the words to 100%. My next phase is to get visual recognisation going for the characters so it knows ‘who said what’. My final aim is to get “deep searching” setup. This should help find strips really easily (based on test, pictures, etc) as well as suggest other strips :-)

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:00:00 +0000

The ultimate irony. Amazon has written an API that invokes humans.

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call - the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

Comments

Karthik 11 Nov 2005 5:03 pm: The robots are taking over the world

PostSecret

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000

PostSecret, where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard. Showcases the extremities of human idiosyncracy.

Bitzi tracks digital media

Mon, 28 Apr 2003 12:00:00 +0000

Bitzi. “The Free Universal Media Catalog”.

Distributed proofreaders

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Distributed Proofreaders. As the name suggests, it’s a distributed web-based tool for proof-reading books for Project Gutenberg. References from Slashdot and kuro5hin have spiked the number of pages proofread. But even that apart, they’re targetting over 1,000 pages a day. That’s over a book a day! via kuro5hin

Conract research by Eli Lilly

Mon, 26 Aug 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Contract research by Eli Lilly. They put up problems in chemistry. You solve them. You get paid.

BountyQuest

Fri, 02 Feb 2001 12:00:00 +0000

BountyQuest is a place where companies post rewards for documents – and anyone who comes up with such documents gets a prize. Many requests are for patent debunks.