KDO Search Now Available to Everyone
Ok, after a week of testing, I’ve opened up KDO search to everyone. You can read more about it in my post from last week:
For now, the search only looks at posts from 2014 to the present. You can search by keyword, describe what you remember (“the guy who walks in Japan”), or paste a link to find posts that link to it. Search is fuzzy-ish but it’s not an AI bot or anything like that so if you ramble on with a 25-word query, it’s probably not going to work that well. You can sort by best match or newest, search all posts or just Quick Links or main posts, and filter by time (past month, past 3 months, etc.)
Launching that member preview was a little deflating tbh — “no plan survives first contact with the user”. It was clear that search was not as good as I wanted it to be — even I started noticing it despite my excitement. I spent quite a bit of time last weekend trying to tune the search and it’s much improved. I’ve been using it quite a bit this week and am loving it. There’s so much good stuff in the archives (and I can say that because if it’s more than 3-4 years old, I don’t even remember writing it! 🤷♂️) and this does a great job of surfacing that stuff.
Speaking of surfacing more posts from the archive, one of the coolest things about the way the search works is that you get a “more like this post” capability more or less for free. If you open recent posts like the video of three humpback whales breaching, the composite photo of 14,000 satellite trails, this Ted Chiang interview, or even an older post like Sesame Street puppeteers on how they play their characters and click on the “Related posts” tab below the post, you should see links 1-5 posts that you may want to read next.
Like the search, it’s not perfect and not every post will have related links, but I keep turning up good posts I’d completely forgotten about. Anyway, related posts are available for everyone on post-2014 posts. Post post post post. Poooooost. Ok, getting punchy. Have a good weekend everyone.
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