Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 70. The Search Engine Belt Buckle

Take the Web out for a night on the
town .

It was a late August Saturday night in Seattle. We decided not only to hit the
dance floor, but to boogie down in a whole new way. All the cats in
town were wearing big belt buckles then, so we thought, hey,
here's our chance to strut our latest hack: the
Search Engine Belt Buckle.

5.13.1. What in Blazes Is a Search Engine Belt Buckle?

The Search Engine Belt Buckle is a repurposed PDA, shown in Figure 5-33, that displays a scrolling list of 24
hours' worth of all the bizarre and banal things
that people are looking for on the Webright there just above
or below your navel, depending on local custom or personal
preference.

Figure 5-33. The author, sporting the Search Engine Belt Buckle

Just to give you some idea of the sort of thing that
you're in for, here is a smattering of queries
scrolling across my belt buckle's screen at the time
of this writing:

"olympic nude athletes"

"leaving the scene of an accident"

"night diaper bondage"

"food"

"used juicer"

"homeopathic sinus remedies"

The Search Engine Belt Buckle has enough battery power to last for
about two to three hours, plenty of time for gettin'
down and attracting (or warding off) the ladies (or the gents), as
the case may be. If there's WiFi in the area,
it'll stream live queries, but since
that's always an unknown, we have a few hours of
search queries on hand at all times.

5.13.2. Step 1: The Video

As our source, we used

SearchSpy (http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy),
a groovy scrolling list of search terms submitted to the

Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com) meta-search engine.
We captured a good 24 hours' worth to keep in the
cache.

Capture SearchSpy results by pointing your browser at either
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/results?filter=1
for "family-friendly real-time
searches" or http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/results?filter=0
for "unedited real-time Web searches. Consider
yourself warned."

5.13.2.1 Shoot the footage

Grab and install a copy of

Windows Media Encoder 9 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx;
free). In the New Session wizard, shown in Figure 5-34, click "Capture
screen" and the OK button.

Figure 5-34. Windows Media Encoder's Wizard walks you through screen capture setup

Yes, we could have grabbed the XML from the Flash SWF file (bear in mind that the XML would need to be updated every so often for the latest results, something that's not possible if you don't have an Internet connection in the disco) and built a custom app to do all the display work, but we wanted to make this approachable for the typical readeran odd definition of typical , I grant you, given that we're making a search engine belt buckle. By using a garden-variety video file, we can display it on a broader spectrum of systems and mediums.

In the next menu choose "Region of the
screen" and click the Next button.

Click the "Use selection button"
and drag an outline around the scrolling search results, indicated by
the rectangle in Figure 5-35.

Figure 5-35. Drag an outline around the scrolling search results

Pick a name for the file and click Next. Choose an encoding method;
we picked Medium (Figure 5-36) because all
we're displaying here is text on a belt buckle.
Click the Next button to continue.

Figure 5-36. Medium encoding is good enough for scrolling text

Give the video a title, author, and so forth. Click the Finish button
when you're done.

Windows Media Encoder is now recording all those scrolling searches
in real time. Capture a good 24 hours' worth of
scrolling search terms to keep in the cache, as it were. When you
think you've got enough, click the
Encoder's application icon on your Windows taskbar
and stop the recording.

To give you some idea of the sort of thing you should expect to see
scrolling across your belt buckle, take a gander at the 10-minute
sample at http://www.engadget.com/common/videos/pt/search.wmv
(Windows Media).

5.13.2.2 Encode for Pocket PC

Before you throw this video at your Pocket PC,
you'll want to recode it to play full screen in the
Pocket PC version of Windows Media Player.

Close the Windows Media Encoder and start it back up again. In the
starting Wizard, click "Convert a
file," click Browse, and choose the video file you
just recorded. Click the Next button and choose Pocket PC.

In the Encoding Options window, select "Pocket PC
widescreen video (CBR)" from the Video pull-down
menu (see Figure 5-37); this will encode the video
as 320240. Click Finish and go get a cup of coffee as it churns
through the job of re-encoding.

Figure 5-37. Re-encode the video to fill the Pocket PC's screen

When the re-encoding is done, move that file over to the Pocket PC.
While you can do so over the USB cable with Active Sync or even send
it through the ether over Bluetooth, the simplest method is to put it
onto an SD card (using a card reader plugged into your computer) and
pop the card into your Pocket PC.

5.13.2.3 Get the settings just right

Find the file in your Pocket PC's File Explorer,
click it to start it playing (as shown in Figure 5-38, and click the Stop button.

Figure 5-38. Footage playing in the Pocket PC version of Windows Media Player

Tap ToolsSettingsAudio & Video. From the
"While using another program"
pull-down menu, choose "Continue
playback" and select
"Always" from the
"Play video in full screen" menu.
These settings are shown in Figure 5-39. Tap the OK
circle at the top-right.

Figure 5-39. Setting Audio and Video play options

Tap ToolsRepeat to have the video play again and again,
uninterrupted.

Now we need to turn off the Power Management nonsensenecessary
for day-to-day Pocket PC usage, but not optimal for making sure our
belt buckle is always on. Tap the Start
MenuSettingsSystemPowerAdvanced
tab. Uncheck the "Turn off device is not used
for" checkbox, as shown in Figure 5-40.

Figure 5-40. Keep your belt buckle groovin'

Tap the "Adjust backlight settings to conserve
power" link and uncheck the "Turn
off backlight if device is not used for" checkbox
(Figure 5-41). This will keep the device on (and you
looking groovy) until you press the power button or run out of
juicethe Pocket PC or your dancin' feet,
whichever comes first.

Figure 5-41. Keep your belt buckle glowin'

Tap the OK circle at top-right to finish.

Tap the Start Menu, followed by the Windows Media Player icon. Tap
Play and your search video will play as long as you want it to,
rotated to the right for optimal belt buckle viewing (Figure 5-42).

Figure 5-42. Playback is oriented to the right for optimal viewing

If you want, you can also adjust the brightness (the Brightness tab
in the Backlight settings window), depending on the vibe.

All of this works just as well with any other hip video you might like to strap on to your midriff. And you can always edit the video, alter color, add effects and transitions, and so forth. How about a collage of digital photos from the Google Images gallery [Hack #51] ?

5.13.3. Making the Belt Buckle

Now, of course, you can stop here. You don't really

need to make this into a belt buckle.
It's rather mesmerizing in and of itself and is an
entertaining addition to your desk at the office (assuming you chose
Filtered mode, that is).

That said, we just couldn't resist the temptation to
make a big, bad belt buckle. So we grabbed a few supplies (belt,
shiny beads, black electrical tape, Velcro, and a hot glue gun, shown
in Figure 5-43) from around the house, and we were
off.

Figure 5-43. You'll find all you need lying about the house or at your corner craft shop

First, we wrapped the Pocket PC in black electrical tape, leaving
only the screen and useful buttons showing, as shown in Figure 5-44.

Figure 5-44. "Disappear" that Pocket PC with a roll of black electrical tape

For some flash, we hot-glued shiny beads (from here on out called

studs )
to the tape around the edges in Figure 5-45.

Figure 5-45. Glue on some flash

To attach the buckle to the belt, we stuck one side of a strip of
adhesive Velcro to the back of the Pocket PC, the other side to the
unadorned buckle of a simple black belt we had in our closet, as
shown in Figure 5-46.

Figure 5-46. Velcro the buckle to the belt

Put on your dancin' shoes, disco shirt, some natty
slacks, Search Engine Belt Buckle (Figure 5-47), and
enjoy a night out on the town.

Figure 5-47. The finished product, a snazzy Search Engine Belt Buckle

Phillip Torrone