A new kid on the block

There seems to be quite an interest in Microsoft's Bing. If you like to use this one instead of Yahoo, use the link http://twingine.no/?bing or click the Bing! link in the top frame.

If you build Twingine queries yourself, add &bing=1 to the URL.

If enough people start using this instead, I might consider using it by default.

Twitter updates and hardware issues

I'm experiencing hardware issues on the Twingine server at the moment. The machine is aging, but I'll try to keep it running as much as possible. Please donate if you'll want to contribute to new hardware.

To keep you updated on any changes, I've set up a Twitter account for Twingine. Feel free to drop a tweet for any feedback you might have.

Twingine is back

Twingine is now back again after an extended downtime. I have moved, and the ISP spent longer time than expected hooking up the connection. Good thing is that it's a 25/5 Mbit fiber connection, so there should be no connectivity issues in the future.

AOL customers use Twingine too

AOL has released search usage data for a selection of AOL users in the period between March 1st and May 31st, 2006. There has been some controversy regarding the insufficient anonymization of the search data, and some of the users have been identified from the data.

The web site aolstalker.com gives a per-user view of the search data, in addition to the possibility to see who, if any, searched for a given term.

Searching for "twingine" revealed that two of the AOL customers sampled in the data used Twingine in the time period of the sample.

A note on privacy: Twingine is run by an individual, not a business, on a personal computer in a private residence in a country with strong privacy laws (Norway). As such, the data is much more protected than if a corporation was responsible for the hosting or operation of the service.

Yahoo! and Google have however been subjected to subpoenas in the past for search data. Google refused to comply.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have more information on the AOL case.

Jaguhugel will disappear in 90 days

At the same time I registered Twingine, I also registered Jaguhugel, a similar-sounding site to Yagoohoogle (at least in Norwegian).

It is currently serving around 500 searches a month, and I won't be renewing the domain when it expires on May 7th. If you like the domain you could either Donate $32.95 to keep it up another year, or start using Twingine instead.

I will renew the domain for as many years as I receive donations, and the donors will receive honorable mentions on the Jaguhugel front page!

Yahoo! Hacks author Paul Bausch mentions Twingine

Paul Bausch's book Yahoo! Hacks mentions Twingine in Hack #9. Take a look at Yahoo hacks - Insider Secrets - CNET.com, tip #3:

Viewing both sets of results in different windows is a bit tedious, and a clever Norwegian developer named Asgeir S. Nilsen has made the task easier at a site called Twingine.

The Twingine site contains a blank search form where you can type any search query. When you click Search, the site brings up the results pages for that query from both Yahoo and Google, side by side. For fairness, Twingine randomly changes the sides that Google and Yahoo come up on, so people who prefer one side of the screen over the other won't be biased.

Twingine in your language

I haven't come around to translating Twingine, but you can have Twingine use your localized versions of Yahoo and Google. To use this, you can use the url http://twingine.com/?CC where CC is your country code. I have tested it for no, se, fi, dk, de, uk, and in, and they all work. Please comment if your particular country code does not work. Thanks to Jamie Chilvers for the suggestion. If you have a search box on your site, you need to add a hidden attribute like this:

<input type="hidden" name="lang" value="CC"/>