Regular readers may be aware of my little side-project, Findless – which aims to provide shortcuts to frequently sought information. We’ve done a few Google-based search engines with a ‘whitelist’ of recommended sites, tailored for the health & safety and education sectors. There are a couple of map-based mashups, featuring English and Scottish Premier League football news, and your local MP.
Most recently, I threw together a quick inflation calculator called Inflation Buster, which lets you compare prices for any two years – as far back as 1750. I’ve used a few javascript tricks to offer slider-based date selection, and in-page results. It’s not pretty, but it’s really just a technical proof-of-concept.
Just to let you know that Inflation Buster has just been updated to include the new 2006 inflation data, and I’ve fixed some IE7-related presentation problems. So for example, if you’re wondering what level to set your kids’ pocket-money, based on what you got as a child, we’re here to help. I also upgraded the project blog to the new version of WordPress, which was remarkably quick and straightforward. It isn’t often that an upgrade or installation routine manages to make me smile, but WordPress did. Love those guys.
Response
Simon, I’ve just spotted the new stats feature in Google CSE. It’s pretty cool seeing a) how many people use your search and b) what they are searching for!