This is a space where I will list side projects I’ve worked on with some descriptions.

Unbiased Search

https://unbiased-search.herokuapp.com/

Unbiased search is a tool meant to help you to search for things in a fair, unbiased fashion so people can get the information they want, instead of skewed search results.

The problem it solves

This experiment came from some discussions I had with friends/family members. People often had an explanation for why they believe a “fact” generating a conversation something along the lines of:

Person 1: Wow, my computers personal assistant is incredibly useful!

Person 2: Sure, but all of your conversations are being constantly monitored and shared across the internet.

Person 1: Really? That sounds highly illegal, where did you hear about that?

Person 2: Yea, it’s all over Google! Look: types into search engine “How the Government is recording all voice traffic from digital assistants and using it against us”

The internet is a wonderful, beautiful place…but pretty much anything you type into a search engine will yield some results. The trick is trying to create a query where you are asking a general question, not trying to receive the answer you already expect.

I realize there are many other pieces to the puzzle here besides simply the way a query is phrased (i.e. a search bubble being created using cookies and user specific history, as just one example) but I thought this was quite common and am worried it has a detrimental impact on our society overall, potentially dividing us further and further away from moderate, informed, realistic, scientific views on controversial statements.

How it works

Unbiased search is a website built to try and use some natural language processing (NLP) to gauge whether a search query is written in a biased way…

How the Government is recording all voice traffic from digital assistants and using it against us

Or an unbiased way…

Is the Government capable of monitoring voice traffic from digital assistants?

The website takes any query and gives its best guess suggestion on whether it is biased or not, warning the user not to search in the case of a highly biased search.

More information can be found here: https://unbiased-search.herokuapp.com/about

Feedback, thoughts, or interest to help are all welcomed at: me@anthony-s.com

What is COVID-19?

https://www.what-is-covid.com/

“What is COVID” is a website built to try and expose easily consumable, research backed information about the COVID-19 disease and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes it.

It uses three different categories of answers to expose information starting in a very simple and consumable way, and getting more detailed and scientific.

The problem it solves

Public interest in COVID-19 has exploded, and (as it seems might be the norm these days), this has unleashed a black hole of misinformation and half baked thoughts about the topic across the internet. This not only can confuse people who consume information that is not backed by legitimate data sources by leading them to believe in disingenuous claims, but it may be doubly injurious to our minds by provoking a lack of trust in prudent, scientifically backed sources. When people don’t pursue claims to discover what research logically justifies (or doesn’t) an argument, there is no difference between random opinionated statements, and painstakingly well-thought-out arguments. This may lead consumers of information to begin mistrusting both these categories of sources equally.

A big part of this problem seemed to be that people have two possible sources of information about COVID-19:

1. A tweet or opinion post which does not list the source of its claims, making it very difficult to determine its legitimacy
2. A well backed scientific paper that, though well explained, is almost impenetrable to the average reader

The “What is COVID-19” project is an attempt to find a middle grounds between these two by offering different levels of depth to the answers of common COVID questions. A reader can just glance at the quick and simple answer, but if they are interested to learn more details and see what research backs the statement, they can expand the answer further and read a “Detailed” answer, or a “Scientific” answer - each containing references to the resources used to gather data for that answer.

The answers have been researched by a small team of science researchers, and are dated to avoid misleading information that has gotten too old to be valid anymore.

More details on the website and the three answer levels can be found here

Animatype

http://animatype.herokuapp.com

Animatype is a project that experiments with a different method of communication. It’s a way to send not just a message, but an experience.

Animatype gives you the ability to send the process of you creating a message, not just the final message itself. When you type “Hey, how are things lately at your new Job?” it will not send only the message, but instead replay a recording of each character you typed exactly when you typed it. Every typo you make (and the following correction), every decision to go back and add a new sentence, or change some formatting. Everything is captured.

This experiment was driven by frustration around short messages making bold statements often dropped with little to no context on social media services. It got me thinking…if tools like twitter make it intentionally difficult to add context by contraining the number of characters allowed in a message, what would the opposite of that be? I came to the conclusion that on the other end of the spectrum is a tool that makes it very difficult for you to not send all the context, because it captures as much information about creating the message as possible.

I believe animatype is a more personal way to communicate, making the reader feel as if they were sitting next to you while you are composing them a message instead of simply reading the final production. I also believe it captures information that is often lost, and which we feel is unimportant, like the fact that you changed the phrasing three times on a certain sentence, indicating it’s important to you and difficult to communicate.

Try it out!