Just a quick note to say that I have released SVGcode, a
Progressive Web App that lets you convert raster images like JPG, PNG, GIF,
WebP, AVIF, etc. to vector graphics in SVG format. You can find the
source code on GitHub.
SVGcode is starting to get some coverage, for example, from
XDA Developers and even a
Chinese website called
软餐.
To help discoverability, I have also listed it on
Stefan Judis' collection of
Tiny Helpers. With the orange
site it is always give and take, but for now (🤞),
Hacker News treats the app
quite well. Looking forward to seeing where the app goes.
You can recognize things mode by looking at the q query parameter in the
URL. If it starts with %2Fg%2F (URL-decoded: /g/), you are in things mode.
The funny code 11bzxympx6 after that is the
Knowledge Graph identifier. When
you
search for "11bzxympx6" on Google,
you end up with exactly one search result that points to the
Wikidata page for Progressive Web Apps.
If you know the Knowledge Graph ID of something, you can hand-craft a URL that
points people at exactly the right semantic search result on Google:
https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11bzxympx6.
See the bold Knowledge Graph ID at the end of the URL.
Note how Google Trends in the screenshot above even helpfully points out that…
[t]his comparison contains both Search terms and Topics, which are measured
differently.
…and directs the reader to a
help resource
to learn more about the difference.
I happen to know all this because this is what I did my PhD in, and I have
a paper at the ACM that
describes the process we used for migrating our proprietary Knowledge Graph
predecessor Freebase to the community-maintained Wikidata.
It's rare that I get to tell anyone about this stuff, so now you know more than
you probably wanted to ever hear about this… You can learn more about this time
of my Google life in my previous
blog post.
My manager back in the days didn't care about any of this, but maybe it's at
least interesting to you… :-)
