DEV Community: Quantleaf

DuckDuckGo !Bang + Siri = ?

Quantleaf — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 15:41:50 +0000

Last two months struggle

Last two months I have been working on creating Chrome extensions to enhance search functionality on various sites. While the extensions solved the problems they were designed for, they did not provide enough value gain for the user. The number of downloads were far from what my goal was, but the engagement from the marketing activities were huge! That must mean that the execution was wrong.

A new approach

So, I decided to take my work to the next step by taking into account all the feedback I have received. I am making an assistant like "Siri" but for the browser. Instead of retrieving the results, page navigation is performed, like DuckDuckGo !Bang.

Today is the day of release of Quantleaf.com!

The functionality

Here are some 'cool' things you can search!

github invert binary tree creation date from one year ago c++
subreddit wallstreetbets search gamma sort by hot
tweets from elonmusk about bitcoin between 2011-01-10 and one year ago
10-k AAPL file date from 6 months ago
facebook marketplace price < 100 search microwave condition new
ebay charity bids > 0 and bids < 100 search Bob Ross

There are currently 11 sites 'indexed' in the search engine.

Better execution

To address the concern that the search engine is too hard to use, I spent a lot of time improving the suggestions/autocomplete. The current solution gives you a lot of help when you are not sure what you can't do. Let’s say you want to search on Ebay. What you do now is that you write "Ebay '' and then you can use the suggestions to guide you.

Why not just use Google

Speed. It is faster, for example reaching a subreddit on Reddit: "subreddit stocks"
Privacy. No private data is collected.
More functionality (try searching on the examples above on Google)

Thank you for reading
Marcus

GitHub Advanced Search enhanced with NLP (WIP)

Quantleaf — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 12:29:52 +0000

For the past 3 years I have been exploring how NLP can help us interact with computers. This work has the end goal of creating an AI aided programming language. On the way there I am publishing tools and services that use the technology both as a reality check but also suggestive feedback on the technology (and as a proof that I have not gone insane).

What has come to my interest lately is that vast amounts of sites enable advanced search functionality in a pseudo query language that is "almost" impossible to remember. This is a perfect playground for a programming language, so I have started creating some Chrome extensions that inject the language at various places.

Currently I am working on the GitHub search, which will be available on the Chrome store in a day or two. See a demo below (click for YouTube video):

(I have also done other sites, see my other posts).

What sites do you think could benefit from this technology?

If you want to try implementing the query language for your own website I have released everything as an API which you can learn about at https://query.quantleaf.com.

Happy coding!
Marcus Pousette

WIP Google Advanced Search in Natural Language

Quantleaf — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 15:00:21 +0000

(Click on the image to play the YouTube demo video)

Last week I created a Twitter Chrome extension that lets you do advanced searches in natural language instead of using the syntax or UI. I got a lot of feedback on what I could continue with next, so for this week I decided to implement the same language technology on Google advanced search! The extension is in Chrome Store review now, and is expected to be released at some point next week!

Source code

What do you think about the design, could I improve something? If there would be any features of Google you want to access by writing text, what would that be?

Have a great friday!
Marcus

Twitter Advanced Search in Natural Language

Quantleaf — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 13:30:04 +0000

Have you ever thought that Twitter Advanced Search is messy, and their syntax is hard to learn? Well it is history now.

I created a Chrome extension that automatically detects whether the search request resembles an “advanced search”. If so, when pressing enter, the input will be translated into a search with Twitter advanced search syntax.

Source code

This tool was made possible with query.quantleaf.com, a service that lets you query database tables with natural language. The service is based on a natural language like programming language, which means that the search text you write is treated as code, and the output is created when you run the program!

Feedback is highly appreciated!

Best regards
Marcus