This app keeps track of all (most) of the slams, slammers, and slammees, as well as the blasts, blasters, and blastees, that frequent the expertly crafted headlines of online media.
For fun, mostly.
Built partly as a way to show off my software development skills, mostly because I thought it was funny, and partly in an attempt to take a spoonful out of my college debt.
Now.
Initially, I used the Wayback Machine's snapshots of rss feeds to get as many previous headlines from as many sources as I could think of. (If your favorite one is missing let me know)
Slam Blast keeps itself updated every 15 minutes using those same rss feeds, as well as a Google Alert for our two favorite words.
No.
The news stories go back as far as The Wayback Machine has archives for them, this varies pretty heavily depending on the source. I would say the average goes back ~7 years?
As for the actual parsing of the titles to find the Slam/Blast/-ee/-er, it is not perfect, and I'm sure it could be improved on, probably will be if people enjoy the site.
Simple titles like 'Man Slams Goldfish' are easy enough to figure out programmatically, but something like 'Man takes out full color ad in local paper, denounces wife and slams Goldfish that ran away.' would have a lower success rate.
Basically the algorithm finds noun phrases and the key verb and tries to whittle away at the title until it has a definitive answer. If it can't find one, I mark it for later. Further improvements should uncover some long lost slams and blasts.
I also tried my best to keep irrelevant and sensitive titles out of the count, so something like a bomb blast doesn't get a card. Things will slip through the cracks though as its an automated process.
Right now there are affilitate links on some of the top cards linking to their relevant books. There is also a donate option if you want to help keep this going.