This is absolutely fantastic.<p>I remember suggesting ages ago that Intel's ark.intel.com should be integrated, so if you searched for Q6600 or 2600k or i7 980 it would show you details of the processor.<p>I might have a shot at integrating that. Does anyone know about the legality of doing so? I'm sure Intel wouldn't care, but showing the info in a zero click box would seem to be different than merely scraping the pages in order to return search results.
This seems to me to be a great example of hour DDG can gain an edge on Google. I don't think you'll ever see Google offering something like this; they're too big. A smaller option like DDG has more room to grow, and can take advantage of the crowd like this in ways that Google can't.
For some context on how this has been tried before:<p>* <a href="http://yubnub.org/" rel="nofollow">http://yubnub.org/</a> - one of the first if not first to create a community around web commands. Primitive string substitution<p>* <a href="http://queri.ac" rel="nofollow">http://queri.ac</a> (disclaimer: I maintained it for awhile) - a small community of web commands. Supported options, bookmarklets and more. Browser-independent.<p>* ubiquity, <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity</a>, - improved on web commands by having them written in javascript and had an awesome API for combining commands and rendering command output. However, it was firefox-specific.<p>The main innovation I see with duckduckhack is that they're using github to foster contribution.
Here are a few ideas that would be cool.<p># hackernews / hn<p>"hn <i>url</i>" - See if a URL has been posted to HN. If so show the title and link to post + comments<p>"hn <i>keywords</i>" - Show HN search results with linked title and link to comments<p>hn could be an alias to hackernews.<p># reddit<p>Reddit's native search sucks in every way possible. Add a reddit keyword with similar functionality.
Google had something like this back in 2007.<p>Matt Cutts: "An easy way to add new features to Google"
<a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/adding-new-features-to-google/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/adding-new-features-to-google/</a>
Do you guys already support Mycroft plugins? Granted you can't use them to play tetris in the results list, but they're easier to make (you only need to know how to edit XML) and there are already thousands on <a href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org" rel="nofollow">http://mycroft.mozdev.org</a>. You just need to add some heuristics to scrape the results out.<p>Actually, one could make a pretty good search engine that was just a frontend for mycroft that was able to extract results and figure out which plugins to use for which queries.
Slightly off topic, but can anyone elaborate on the legal handling of displaying the xkcd comics? As they are fetched directly from images.xkcd.com, and do not contain a "discussion", would it still be considered Fair Use, or have they made an agreement with Randall Munroe?
This is more about duckduckgo than duckduckhack, but Im starting to love this search engine. Found out about the "s:d" command that sorts all the hits in descending order.. combined with the arrow keys and the "h" key to get back to the search box, you can search a multitude of search terms reaally fast and efficiently.<p>And no spying on its users! Google, you can go f-ck yourself from now on.<p>I love this engine. Thanks so much for creating it!
VerticalSet is offering similar functionality. DuckDuckGo is starting to go in the same direction.<p><a href="http://www.verticalset.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.verticalset.com/</a><p>Although aim is same to make search engine a platform, technologically it is rather different. Would love to hear feedback on this.
I couldn't figure it out from the docs, do the plugins get approved by DuckDuckGo? Or does the user have to install them for their own account? I'm a bit confused at how you would mediate between different plugins trying to provide an answer for the same query, etc.
Reminds me of Yahoo's Search Monkey (RIP). DDG seems like a much better home for this (awesome) idea.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_SearchMonkey" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_SearchMonkey</a>
Nice idea.<p>I have but one problem, and it's with the site (DuckDuckHack) itself.<p>Could the author just make the tutorial section scrollable with the rest of the page? The current functionality is quite awkward. It's also ignorant of (most of) the keyboard (home, end, page up, page down, etc.), which is the quickest way to traverse a page.
I have seen duckduckgo popping up in more places over the past few months. I don't know much about them but they're obviously doing something right. This just pushed me over the top in setting them as my default search engine.
I started using DuckDuckGo for its position on privacy, but that is just one reason of many to use it now.<p>I have more than a few ideas for hacks, after reading the very nice tutorial. Look forward to playing with it.
It's really cool that duckduckgo want to go this way. I think both, the creator of ddg and the users will profit of the ideas, which will come up in DuckDuckHack. The users know what they want, so it's the right choice to let them be part of it ;)