Another Google CSE dashboard glitch?

The recent changes to the Google CSE services appear to have introduced another glitch. The problem happens when adding new URL entries into your Google CSE. For instance, you can no longer add…

http://www.nnns.org.uk/sites/nnns.org.uk/files/

… and reliably select “Include all pages whose address contains this URL”. Oh yes, the Dashboard will let you save it that way… but then go back and open the URL up again. You’ll see that the CSE dashboard has refused to accept the setting you gave the URL, and has instead defaulted the URL to: “Include just this specific page or URL pattern I have entered”.

The problem with this is that you didn’t explicitly enter http://www.nnns.org.uk/sites/nnns.org.uk/files/* With the * wildcard making the “Include just this specific page or URL pattern I have entered” functional. Without the wildcard, the http://www.nnns.org.uk/sites/nnns.org.uk/files/ URL is null and void on that setting, and may as well have not been added to your CSE.

This has only just started happening, and the “Include all pages whose address contains this URL” setting is sticky on entries made prior to about 24 hours ago. Which makes me think it’s probably a temporary glitch, inadvertently introduced during yesterday’s switch from three-options to two-options for settings on individual URLs.

If you’re working on a CSE over the weekend / Bank Holiday (UK), you should be aware of this problem, as it probably won’t be fixed by Google until early next week. You’ll probably want to keep a .txt file of all the URLs you add which you have to use a /* for, because you may need to manually change them back once the problem gets fixed.

Unsplash

Unsplash is a new large bank of CC0 stock pictures, rather more funky than the usual stock look. There’s a Pinterest-y aspect to the service, which allows members to curate folders called Collections. This is useful when your search shows no results. For instance, I searched for Business Independent and had no results, but was pointed to two somewhat useful Collections on ‘Work’ and ‘Office’. A search for Business Creative was better, though as Mac-cultist and white-walls as you might expect, but I found a few excellent pictures (see below) for illustrating creative industries production activities.

Presentation of a Collection assumes you have superfast broadband, with huge previews, which means slow browsing for the rest of us. It makes one especially reluctant to open Collections which have over about 50 pictures. There are also some curious word-wuffles: search for Animation and get Animals, for instance.

There’s no-hassle downloads though: just click “Download” and the picture downloads. Test downloads revealed 2700px+ pictures, usually at 72dpi. I think the biggest I downloaded was 40Mb. The photographer name is sensibly embedded in the file-name, should you want to credit.

Here’s my ‘creative industries’ selection, batched to 80% compression, which takes it from 360Mb to 58Mb in total without changing pixel size.

(For poets and visionaries).