Articles and news about Internet use. Will cover search tools, current awareness tools, and general use.
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| Internet News Articles and news about Internet use. Will cover search tools, current awareness tools, and general use. |
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Monday, March 31, 2003 Iraq War: Iraq Around the Clock: The First Internet War by Irene E. McDermott in Information Today (March 31, 2003) News sites for mainstream readers, hawks and doves, and those looking for a view from the Middle East. Also a couple of directories to more. Productivity Tool: Favourable review of Net Snippet desktop tool for saving, organizing, and annotating web content and bookmarks. Requires IE5+ and WIndows 98+. 30 day trial, $79.95 US. Lots of features. Making sense of Web searches by Michelle Johnson in Boston Globe (Mar 31, 2003) Also Chris Sherman reviewed Popout Prism, a browsing tool that makes it easier to find keywords on a page and view them in context. Magnify Your Search Results in Search Day (March 31, 2003) Current Awareness for Law: Dailywhirl.com picks up headlines from law sites. You can customize to your particular interests. (Source: TVC ALert) Infoglut: Tales of Technology: Consider a cure for pernicious infobesity (March 30) first of a new monthly column at post-gazette.com by James H. Morris, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Very amusing article about infobesity for which he presents various infodiets. For example: "The Atkins Infodiet. The only permitted sources are the Economist, The Wall Street Journal, "Washington Week in Review" and the Sunday New York Times Week in Review section. No magazines." (Source: TVC Alert) Ixquick: The meta-search engine Ixquick is trying out clustering results by topic. It's available at the beta site -- http://ixquick.com/new/ (Source: Pandia Search) Advertising: Google Teams With Ad Networks By Brian Morrissey (Mar 28, 2003) Boston Internet.com -- Google will be supplying content-targeted ads to Burst Media and Fastclick which service 24,000 sites. "Google uses its algorithmic search technology to scan content pages and determine relevant listings to serve. For example, a visitor to a sports page reading about the Boston Bruins game might see paid listings to the side for buying Bruins tickets or paraphernalia. " Paid search has been the money maker search sites have needed. But it is moving off the search page. Article mentions that "Overture has partnered with controversial adware supplier Gator for a test to serve up pop-under ads of paid listings to visitors of search sites. " Oh dear - I'll refuse to use sites that go the pop-under route. Data Visualization: Anacubis.com, the tool for producing visual interactive results, is now available. There is a Google Enabled Visual Search. To use it you need IE5 + with the Java Virtual Machine. Frankly, I don't think it shows relationships as well as Kartoo and Touchgraph do. Domain Names: Soon there will be non-english domain names. ICANN Still Moving Toward Non-English Domains By Mark Hachman, ExtremeTech (March 26, 2003) Hope the search engines are gearing up to handle this. Google Hacks: Anchordesk covers the new book Google Hacks - and gives away a few of the hacks. Use Google? Here's how to hack it! avid Coursey (Mar 28, 2003) Google Compute: Google Labs has added Google Compute to its list for people interested in donating their "computer's idle time to help scientific research". Would be nice if you could choose which scientific research. BBCi: BBCi, "home of BBC on the Internet", which made a big splash about a year ago because it was licensing Google for Web Search, has switched to Inktomi. There isn't an advanced search page but the syntax of Inktomi appears to work. title:word (note that Inktomi can't handle title:"a phrase"), domain:. BBCi switches from Google to Inktomi CNet News (March 27, 2003) Lists: If you like lists of things - top executives, top trading companies, top anything - you'll enjoy Gary Price's List of Lists, available through Special Issues. Chris Sherman featured List of Lists in Search Day (March 27, 2003) Google: Microdocs has counted the web pages at the Google site. Google's Minimalist Website (March 27, 2003). Google has 382,000 and Yahoo, 5,300,000. IBM is around 928,000 FAST: Enterprise Search--FAST Search & Transfer Gary Price comments on "FAST Launches New Version of Enterprise Search Tool". (March 24, 2003) From press release "FAST Data Search offers the most comprehensive combination available of powerful real-time search technology, business search management tools, and information analysis capabilities." Streaming Audio and Video: Gary Price is still updating his page on News and Information via Streaming Audio and Video. Has transcripts of News Conferences and Speeches Relating to the War in Iraq. http://www.freepint.com/gary/audio.htm Information Visualization: A map is worth a thousand search results Is the marriage of graphics and text the answer to speedy and useful Web searching? Health Information: MedlinePlus has page on Evaluating Health Information - especially on the Net. Yahoo News: Yahoo News Adds English Language Content From AFP Gary Price, ResourceShelf (March 27, 2003) Subject Directory: Resource Discovery Network has a new gateway: ATLIS - hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism -- http://www.altis.ac.uk/. Creation has been led by subject experts at the University of Birmingham, UK. Oddly, there is no information on what Atlis stands for. (Source: ResourceShelf Search Engines: Cory Kleinschmidt at Traffick.com responds to the Stephanie Olsen nad Jim Hu article in CNet about "Changing face of search engines" in PPC and Web Search Walloping Web Directories. He says "The main reason Google in particular -- and algorithmic search in general -- have succeeded so much is that human editors cannot possibly keep up with the dizzying pace of new web sites and repurposed web sites. The only way to properly catalog the web at this point is the technique for which Google is now famous: link popularity." (march 25, 2003) Resource Discovery Network: Chris Sherman recommends the search tutorials at RDN and so do I. Honing Your Web Searching Skills SearchDay (March 25, 2003) Google: Being Googled: Web search tool is not without critics by Lee Dembart International Herald Tribune (March 24, 2003) Comments from David Krane, Director of COmmunications at Google, and Daniel Brandt of google-watch.org and chief critic. Does note that Google handles 200 million searches per day. Also note -- "Everyone should be aware that under the USA Patriot Act of 2001, anything you enter into a search engine can be obtained by the government merely by telling a judge "that the spying could lead to information that is 'relevant' to a criminal investigation," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation." Google cache: When Google pulls a page now, they remove it from cache too. Google Closes Cache Loophole in Microdoc News (March 25, 2003) For fee content: Jupiter Research predicts that consumers will spend 30% more this year on online content but this will still be a small part of total revenue. A study by Online Publishers Association suggested that online dating attracted people willing to ut down money, and also financial services and entertainment / lifestyle. Top 5 paid destinations were Yahoo, Match.com, RealNetworks' Real.com, Classmates.com and Dow Jones' WSJ.com. Paid content slowly winning converts by Lisa Bowman. CNet News (March 24, 2003) E-Mail Marketing: E-Mail may be 25% spam, but Paul Soltoff predicts that "e-mail marketing will one day exceed postal mail as the preferred direct marketing vehicle for both acquiring and retaining customers" and that "permission-based newsletters ... will emerge as the preferred way to establish relationships." The Future of E-Mail by Paul Soltoff in ClickZ.Today. Iraq and Online News: Mark Glaser looks at all media as sources of news about the war. Re the Net - "With war raging, the Internet offers rapid delivery of information, with a depth and 360-degree view unmatched by old media. And advances in streaming video and high-speed connections make moving pictures an option for surfers as well." Many people are doing roundups of best sources and weblogs. But there has been a flood of cyberattacks and e-mail worms. Why the Internet Rules (and Annoys) with War Coverage by Mark Glaser (March 24, 2003) Online News: NYTimes.com is 5th Largest U.S. News Site (March 19, 2003) Editor and PUblisher. "The top news sites in terms of audience for February were MSNBC.com, CNN General News, AOL News, Yahoo! News, and NYTimes.com. When aggregated, Gannett's newspaper sites (with the exception of USAToday.com) ranked 7th. Counted separately by Nielsen//NetRatings, USA Today's Web site ranked 11th." Search Engines: Directories are out, search engines are in, and pay-per-click advertising is hotter than hot. Surfers and advertisers prefer the algorithimic search engines. "The transformation is bringing to an end an altruistic era of human editors, who once wielded significant clout in driving traffic to Web sites through recommendations made without regard for commercial considerations." The changing face of search engines By Stefanie Olsen and Jim Hu in CNet News (Via Globe and Mail) Article comments on Yahoo, Looksmart, and Open Directory Project. Yahoo and Looksmart charge to list business sites. ODP is still completely run by volunteer editors, but over the past year has had serious technology problems and its editors are overwhelmed by spam submissions. But, if directories deteriorate what will be the effect on the ranking algorithms used by the search engines? All consider who links to whom and at present it does matter if a site is listed in ODP or Yahoo. Handhelds: HHS testing bioterror alerts via handheld BY Judi Hasson. Federal Computer Week (March 21, 2003) "The text message of the bioterror DocAlerts will contain a special memo on the highest biological threats, including anthrax, the plague and smallpox." Iraq News: Lexis Nexis New Research offers free news from diverse sources on the War in Iraq. There are four news topics: War on Iraq, Security, Government and PUblic Respone, Economic Impact, and Television Transcripts. The site is a showcase for the LexisNexis News Publisher, available to organizations for providing news customized to an industry. Google Labs: Microdocs surveyed people's views on the 6 tools available from Google Labs. Survey: Google Webquotes the Favored Tool - Google Webquotes - 62% would definitely use - Google Glossary There were no results reported for Glossary or Sets. In my opinion, the Glossary is the most useful - I use it regularly to look up terms. Webquotes is tactical tool - use it with broad searches where you are looking for web sites on a topic and will be aided by seeing how they are referenced by referring sites. Search Technology: The Search Continues: Three Publishers' Site Search Solutions by Stephen Ellerin. EContent Magazine (February 2003) "Therefore, a good concept search depends on a set of semantic relationships - an understanding of which words are related to others. Furthermore, the engine should recognize that certain businesses and professions rely on idioms, and that those idioms take on extra importance in articles for and about those professions." Presents three case studies: Christian Books - Endeca In-Front search engine, Encyclopedia Britannica - Convera, and SmartBrief for news search - Inxight. Museums Online: Tour with Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times -- Imaginary museum for Web browsers International Herald Tribune (Mar 21, 2003) RSS Search Engine: The Fuzzy Group has launched Feedster ( http://www.feedster.com/ ) - a search engine for indexing RSS feeds. RSS is a syndication format used mainly by weblogs and news sites. Search Engine Aims for Web Logs Feedster monitors and indexes content posted on blogging sites. By Cathleen Moore. Infoworld (March 19, 2003) "Unlike typical Web search tools such as Google that index Web content at the page level, RSS-focused search engines index RSS feeds and do so more frequently and at a finer level of granularity." Article notes that "One application for RSS search in enterprises is to accurately monitor the burgeoning number of news feeds and Weblog postings, which could be vital for competitive intelligence or product research." Feedster is looking into developing "personalized aggregate search capability that can build a view of information tailored to a particular theme or personal preference". Google Hacks: Marylaine Block reviews Google Hacks by Tara Calashain and Rael Dornfest. She found it very useful - information on using Google as is and with new tools written using Google's APIs. (Mar 21, 2003) Data Visualization: Review of Grokker in Forbes Finding Meaning In A Google World by Bruce Upbin. (March 21, 2003) "Its $99 desktop software application called Grokker creates a colorful knowledge map out of raw masses of data by sorting them into themed silos. " Mentions The Brain, Inxight's Star Tree, and Mirror Worlds' Scopeware. Looksmart: Looksmart may tap into distributed computing power to index and refresh its pages. It bought a company named Grub that can use spare computer power on volunteer PCs for crawling the Web. LookSmart searches for volunteer PCs by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News. "Though it has a history as an editorial guide for the Internet, LookSmart has modified its business in recent years in order to survive the dot-com downturn. It still operates a volunteer-staffed directory, but the company has largely turned its focus to small-business listings, in which marketers pay for Web site reviews. It also sells commercial listings related to keyword searches." Mentions that Looksmart has been improving Wisenut - up to 1 billion pages and has "better" ranking algorithms. Danny Sullivan "speculated that LookSmart might use the Grub system to start a "trusted feed" service for inclusion into its WiseNut index. Marketers could send updated Web pages to the index to refresh it for a fee--or what's known as paid inclusion. Search engines, including Inktomi and Fast's AlltheWeb, already use such a service to keep indexes of product-related sites and catalogs fresh, and to augment revenue." Online News: People turning to Internet for war news by Showwei Chu in Globe and Mail (Mar 21, 2003) Traffic is so high MSNBC and CNN have temporarily removed advertising. A Medium Meets Its War by Leslie Walker. Washington Post (Mar 20, 2003) More video, more staff, more journalists on the scene. "All of which sets the stage for a new kind of war coverage, one that combines the immediacy of television with the depth of newspapers and adds the public participation unique to the Internet. " ... "It's probably too early to tell whether the second Gulf War will turn into an "Internet war" in the same way that radio shaped perceptions of World War II, television shaped views of Vietnam and cable TV dominated coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. " Online News: Mark Glaser - War a Boon for News Sites, Blogs OJR (Mar 20, 2003) Find out which sites and blogs to follow. He mentions the BBC weblog being done by correspondents in the Middle East. Gripping reading. Mar 21 - BBC Reporters' Log is now at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2870361.stm. It's possible that this will change daily. If news looks old, search for "reporters log". Search Toolbar: New toolbar from Groowe.com. Covers Google, Yahoo, Teoma, Altavista, MSN, All The Web, Kanoodle, HotBot, Overture, Search123, About, Monster Jobs, Barnes & Noble Shopping and Downolad.com. Works with Windows, IE5+. Google: Traffick says Google keeps on Goin' (Mar 19, 2003) Lists three articles about Google's success in search and advertising. The article (April 2003) at FastCompany identifies five "rules" at Google that accounts for its success including and especially its interest in research and trying new approaches. How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows Sidebar has a "Gaggle of Google Games". Fight Spam: Study suggests spam-stopping tricks by Lisa Bowman at CNet News (Mar 19, 2003) - excellent list of ways to cut email spam - especially disguise the email address and be very careful when filling in online forms. Google Offspring: This writer says Google News and Froogle are ok as search engines but need more features and especially presonalization to be really useful. Google's Offspring: Taking Baby Steps by Ben Elgin. EcommerceTimes (Mar 19, 2003) Scholarly Directories: Gary Price featured Academic Info as a Web Resource. Academic Info is maintained by Mike Madin, a librarian in Seattle and operates as a charity. It needs donations. Cached Web Pages: Gary Price recommends a few tools for finding a cached copy of web pages. Of course there is Google and Gigablast. Price also recommends Fagan Finder's Page Information Viewer as a meta-tool. More Sources for Cached Web Pages (Mar 17, 2003) TVC Alert has more on this too. Finding a Dated Cache - mentions Comet Web Search - enter the URL get the dated cache copy. Current Awareness tools: Nexcerpt and EMM Group Partner to Delivery Industry Experience Across the Marketing Value Chain - press release (Mar 19, 2003) "This alliance allows Nexcerpt to offer comprehensive industry intelligence solutions seamlessly to EMM Group's competitive intelligence EMMpack product. The Nexcerpt service automatically monitors, gathers and filters information from a vast array of user-defined data sources. Nexcerpt's enhanced customization allows users to share their expertise by adding commentary and publishing to internal or external audiences via e-mail, electronic newsletters and web sites. " Semantic Web: Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology has a special issue about the semantic web and related topics metadata and ontologies. http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-03/BulletinAprMay03.pdf (April / May 2003) Information Industry: Outsell Inc predicts that the Information Content Industry will grow in 2003 by 8.5%. Outsell tracks 60 companies including Reed Elsevier, Reuters, D&B, Gartner Group, IMS Health, Yahoo!, and CBS MarketWatch.Highlights of study are available in the press release (Mar 17, 2003). Online News: US citizens are going to foreign news sites for war coverage - specifically Australia and the UK. No mention of Canada. Media Watchdogs Caught Napping by Leander Kahney. Wired News (Mar 17, 2003) Newspapers on the Web: Carl Sullivan compared the top 20 newspaper web sites to their positions as print newspapers. There are some surprises. Newspapers 2.0 in Editor and PUblisher (March 12, 2003) The Miami Herald, The Seattle Times. and the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News are three in the top 20 for cyber presence but not for circulation. Detroit Free Press and Dallas Morning News are big in print, but not as big on the web. There are lots of caveats. World News: George Bowen at Editor and Publisher liked World News (www.worldnews.com) -- World News Network Compiles World Media Portal Links to News Stories Around the Globe (March 11, 2003). But he doesn't say who owns WN. It's registered with Domain Finance Ltd in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Search-Related Advertising: Search-related advertising is fueling profits - and intense competition among the main players - MSN, Yahoo, Overture, Google, AOL. Searchers aren't annoyed by the sponsored links and other search-related ads - 35% of their searches are for services and products. Article places Yahoo and MSN as best-positioned portals and suggests that MSN will be buying more search capabilities in 2003. Search Engines Are Picking Up Steam Mixing ads in with search results is paying off, and the big players are jostling to gain from the surge (March 24, 2003) by Ben Elgin and Timothy Mullaney. Business Week Google Sets: Microdocs (love that weblog) asks is Google Sets: Ready for Prime Time?. Not quite but has promise. Microdocs illustrates the point with a clever cartoon. History: What if Netscape had won? by Charles Cooper in CNet News (Mar 14, 2003) We'd have a better browser? Anybody else getting annoyed with font size in the IE 6 browser? Copper says we are frozen in 1999. "Almost 5,000 Internet companies have either been acquired or gone bust since 1999, and the computer industry, which boomed during the go-go era, is still dealing with the fallout from the dot-com collapse. But another big anniversary is around the bend: Next month will mark 10 years since the invention of the Mosaic Web browser, a seminal development that led to the subsequent creation of Netscape. " Meta Search: Microdocs has a review of meta-search engines by Daniel Bazac. Guide to Meta Search Engines (March 7, 2003) It looks familiar - Bazac has written on this before ( Meta Search Engines - Web Searchers' Best Friends 2002). On the whole good - tho I disagree with a couple of the picks. People Finding: WHo's Googling you right now? Reuters in CNN (March 13, 2003). Another article that makes it seem Google helps stalkers find their prey. Google is not the only search engine - any search engine will find names on the Web. If you don't want to be found, make sure you don't get on a web page. The article says you can also contact the search engine to be removed from the index. MSN Search: MSN Search has a new look. Year 2003 must be the year of soft colours in search engines. MSN opted for blue - same shade as at AlltheWeb. Front page has the box, the Looksmart categories, and a big advertisement. Advanced Search is simplified from the previous version - drop down choice for type of search (any, all, boolean, title, url), group or ungroup results, restrict by region or domain, restrict by file types. Sort by date vs relevance is gone (pity - that was one good feature). You can set depth of page to search - ie how deep into the site. There is no mix and match - title, text etc. It still has popups. Doesn't MSN know that even AOL has stopped these? Pandia has an informative review about the new MSN Search and using the search on the front page. It will bring back results from the increasingly commercial Looksmart first. New MSN Search is out of beta Pandia Search (Mar 7 2003)) Microsoft and Factiva: First Gale teams up with Microsoft for inclusion in the new MS Office 2003 - now it will be possible to search and use Factiva from inside Office. What a way to take over the desktop. Information Industry--Factiva by Gary Price in ResourceShelf (Mar 10) Online News RocketInfo, the news search engine made in Canada, can restrict searches to business, health, technology, science, sports, entertainment. Use the Advanced Search page -- http://www.rocketinfo.com/2corporate/searchengine_advancedsearch.html (Source: Resourceshelf.com) Duplicate Domain: Detlev Johnson helps to clarify how duplicate results with different domain names turn up on search queries. He advises Web site managers who maintain multiple domains on ways to avoid being penalized as spammers. Use Robots Exclusion to inoculate yourself against potential domain spam penalty at SuccessWorks. He gives an example of treatment by the major engines of four identical sites with one as the primary domain. Inktomi identified the main domain and indexed only it; Google identified the main domain and a bit of a second one; Altavista and Fast missed the main domain and picked up bits of two others; Teoma got the main domain and some of all the others. Johnson advises web site managers to use Robots Exclusion Protocol to prevent crawling of the duplicate domains or risk being banned. E-Mail: Yahoo Canada unveils revised spam filter Globe and Mail Update (Mar 11). Online Shopping: Chris Sherman reports that DealTime to Acquire Epinions. (Mar 12, 2003) Fortunately Epinions will continue as a separate service. Epinions provides user reviews of products organized by one of the best consumer-product taxonomies on the Web. Also see Shopping Search Gets Smarter by Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com (Mar 12) -- "This is about to become very interesting. I know that when I go online to do product research, I may surf directly to a review site like Epinions, but I also do background research using Google's search engine. In this new age of consumer empowerment, it's the customers in the appliance store explaining the features of the products to the salespeople! " Using Search Engines: Search Engines' Influence on Shopping. BizReport (Mar 11, 2003) "DoubleClick reports that in December 2002, 41% of US consumers reached a site they used to research a purchase by using a search engine. WebSideStory estimates that 35.6% of Net users arrived at their desired sites last month by using search engines." Looksmart: Looksmart has a new, cleaner, simpler look which is fairly pleasing to the eye - but I don't think it has improved its search. It's still impossible to search on phrase. Search Engine for RSS Feeds http://www.fuzzygroup.com/roogle/ is being developed and renamed. It will search the XML / RSS feed files - very simple search at present. Search it for Roogle itself - see what people are saying. Source: TVC Alert. Data Visualization: Visualizing Google by Chris Sherman. Anacubis is software that will show relationships between people, organizations, and locations from Google results. (Mar 11, 2003) PS - Microdocs followed this story about Anacubis and was disappointed. Visually Seeing Google Results Is Believing: Anacubis Disappoints Demo software is not available yet. Anacubis is just collecting email addresses of people interested. Gale and MS Office: Gale to Offer Online Business Information to Microsoft Office 2003 Customers PR Newswire (March 10, 2003) "Gale, a leading research and reference publisher and a part of The Thomson Corporation (TSX: TOC; NYSE: TOC), announced today that it will offer users of the Microsoft Office System seamless access to a portion of Gale's vast online information resources." In Transformmag.com. More information at http://www.gale.com/bizdev/. Northern Light News: Northern Light News might be alive again - though might be last gasp. There are stories from March 11 at http://nlresearch.northernlight.com/news_research.html. Story picked up at Pandia from Interbrus.com. Probably spreading fast. Google powers Go: Go.com goes to Google in CNet News via Globe and Mail. Disney's Go.com which used to be the marvellous Infoseek, and then Overture is now powered by Google. That might help it. Search Engine Map: An up-to-date map of connections between search engines in the UK. Done by a-51 Communications. War News: Mark Glaser at OJR looks at The Net's a Natural for War, Conflict; Interactivity a Boon for Corrections (March 10, 2003) -- Journalism sites are gearing up for war and will do a better job of reporting on the Web than ever before, but Glaser also notes that the Net is an important source of alternative viewpoint and discussion. Re the plans of the major news providers, he refers to a Reuters article -- Maturing Web Offers Focal Point for War Coverage by Caroline Hurner (March 6) She quotes Refet Kaplan, executive editor of Foxnews.com, "A lot has changed in the Internet since 1999 and post 9/11. I think you've seen a much greater integration of Web sites and their corresponding broadcast or print entities in that time." Big sites plan streaming video, interactive maps, and breaking news. Google News Syntax: ResearchBuzz figured out how to search source at Google News. For example, to search the Globe and Mail for mention of Sheila Copps -- source:the_globe_and_mail "sheila copps" See Google News: Source Syntax (Mar 12, 2003) iPhrase: Chris Sherman advises - Keep an Eye on iPhrase (Mar 10, 2003) "iPhrase specializes in integrating search results from so-called structured (database) and unstructured (web) sources of information. iPhrase's One Step technology is what powers the finance search tools for both Yahoo! and Lycos." It also now powers the Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center at Georgia Institute of Technology Search Local: Interest in serving local web markets is picking up. NYT reports on action by CitySearch for USA Interactive to introduce a new search engine and by Google, Overture, and Yahoo to direct more attention to local as well. " Neal Polachek of the research company Kelsey Group says ""The search business is going to become increasingly local, because these companies realize that local is the way the world runs." "Google would not comment on its efforts to serve the local market. But at a chief rival, Yahoo, executives said their site was likely to announce a change in approach to local searches in the coming weeks. Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's senior vice president for search and marketplace, would not disclose details of that change, but as a hint, he pointed to the fact that the site can now display a brief weather forecast at the top of the search results for someone who types "New York weather" into a search box. " Yellow page / advertising directories are already into this business - especially Verizon's SuperPages.com. CitySearch to Start Search Engine by Bob Tedesch. New York Times (March 10, 2003) Top Sites: PC Magazine has issued a new list of Top 100 Web Sites (March 2003). Categories are Computing, Information, Learning, Travel, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Kids, and some extras for infojunkies. "For this year's Top Web Sites story, we focus on sites that you might not have heard of—but now that you have, you won't be able to imagine life before them. They range from the incredibly useful to the incredibly—well, silly. Not every site is for everyone, but we think there will be plenty for pretty much anyone." PC Mag also has the Top 100 Classics. Blogging: Some think blogging will soon emerge from being a personal, quasi-underground phenomenon to accepted and mainstream. Success of Weblogs Heralds Big Future AP in New York Times (March 9, 2003) "But as more people have embraced the concept, what once seemed like a passing fancy has morphed into a cutting-edge phenomenon that may provide the platform for the Internet's next wave of innovation and moneymaking opportunities." "Because blogs tend to focus on specific subjects and attract people in similar demographic groups, they could be huge for advertisers hoping to target their pitches." Tells the story about promotion by Richards Interactive of a new beverage from Seven Up called Raging Cow. The drink is for teens and young adults. Richards Interactive is using blogs to reach them. Online News: Jack Kapica identifies two new subscription-based news aggregators that gather online news and feed it to you - for a fee. EIN News (Europe Internet News www.einnews.com) 5,000 sources, 250 countries, updated hourly. GlobalVision News Network. www.gvnews.net/html/index.html gets stories from a network of journalists in 325 organizations. Kapica comments -- "Much of the non-American journalism offered by these two services might indeed be free of U.S. bias — but not necessarily its own." Enter the Aggregators. Globe and Mail (Mar 7, 2003) Blogging vs News: Microdocs, the new Verity Info weblog, studied stories about Google in blogs and news sites over 1 month. The two did differ over stories about the Google Dance (reranking every month - which concerned the bloggers more) and the purchase of Pyra - which News sources analyzed for implications in a changed business model at Google HQ. Interesting reading. Blogs Reveal Interest in Google Different to News Sites (March 8, 2003) Word Bursts: A search engine for buzzwords Data mining software trawls for ‘word bursts’ on Internet. AP via MSNBC (Mar 7, 2003) Another article mentioning Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University and his work to identify trends through "word bursts" on the Internet. New "burst software" is being used to analyze blogs - surely a place rich in new word usage. Gives some examples of words whose meanings have changed thru Web use - ping, bandwidth, spam. Blogger: In owning (and we hope enhancing) Blogger, might Google be aiming at helping people keep track of things and not just search for them? Steve Johnson thinks - maybe yes. He likens the possibilities to the Memex machine proposal of Vannevar Bush in 1946. He doesn't think Blogger is up to it yet but maybe with automatic blogging (which is almost in place) there is promise to have a highly personalized link collection. Google's Memory Upgrade "How Blogger could do more than improve Google's Web searches." By Steven Johnson. Slate (Mar 6, 2003) "Google is the encyclopedia of the connected age, and bloggers are the trailblazers. If Google simply uses Blogger to update its database more rapidly, it won't change the Web experience as we know it in any profound way. But a genuine trailblazing device would be a way of preserving—and widening—the paths that our lives have carved through information space." Atomica / GuruNet: Atomica Slingshot - that wonderful quick reference tool - has been replaced by GuruNet. Yes Atomica is ditching the product name Atomica to return to the original name for this product - GuruNet. In doing this, they have dropped the web access to querying its collections of encyclopedia and dictionaries. This is a shame. Many people can't download the software - they can only test out the web site - and then if they like it they will go to their IT people. Atomica also increased the price by $10 to $34.99 - but still well worth it - if you can get it to work. I can't - it won't install properly on my WIndows 98 machine. Atomica Unveils GuruNet, 4th Generation Reference Tool "Advanced Version of Popular Windows Application Delivers Answers on Demand" Press Release Atomica (Mar 6, 2003) GuruNet as a Reference Tool Goes Beyond Search Engines by Walter S Mossberg. Wall Street Journal (March 6, 2003) -- "... if you want quick definitions and information from the Internet, instead of just Web links, GuruNet is a terrific reference. It's a very clever product that delivers real value." Google Hacks: ResearchBuzz has some things - hacks - you can do with Google. There's one for movie reviews from Google News. Check them all out and have fun. http://www.buzztoolbox.com/google/ Browsers: On Beyond Microsoft Explorer "Sluggish Explorer now faces competition--like Apple's sleek Safari and Norway's Opera" by Stephen Wildstrom. Business Week (Mar 10, 2003) Instant Messaging: Microsoft wants to sell IM to businesses. If anyone can do it, MS will. Microsoft to push instant messaging for business By Kristi Heim. Mercury News (Mar 7, 2003) "Companies now see instant messaging, which began as a way to exchange short text messages online and became hugely popular among consumers, as a potentially useful tool to collaborate and exchange data." Article points out that it is instant, and email isn't, but that there are security and interoperability issues - and of course companies will want to control how often employees use them and for what purpose. RSS Newsreaders: Suddenly everyone is writing about these and especially about NewzCrawler. Leslie Walker at the Washington Post likes it but says she won't give up her web browser for news. She's still waiting for her "electronic Einstein". Hot Off Your News Clicking Service (March 6, 2003) BBC News: BBC News was redesigned - much more readable - wider page, shorter indexes, changing content according to the time of day, smaller downloads - more. See The New and Improved BBC News Searching Blogs: Mark Glaser at OJR searches blogs to find references to the report that Martin Sheen, President of the US in the TV show West Wing, does not support the Iraq War - and the flack he has received because of it. Glaser used Daypop, Blogdex, Metafilter, Google, Altavista. "I'd like to say the weblog indexers are a good resource for journalists covering showbiz. I'd like to say the top search sites give you even more dirt from blogs. But in the end, you'll have to prepare for a mound of sifting, linking, slow-churning pages, and the occasional dead end. In other words: still in beta, still a lot of work for someone on deadline, but eventually entertaining." Unearthing Dirt in Weblogs Still a Black Art by Mark Glaser. OJR (Mar 6, 2003) Search Guru: Marylaine Block interviews Genie Tyburski of The Virtual Chase. Online Books: Collecting the world's books online by Robert F. Worth NYT via International Herald Tribune -- new Alexandria Library hopes to have "all of the world's books available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection". Good luck getting the money, the cooperation among nations, and publishers' agreements. Travel Search: Gary Price finds New "Flexible Dates" Search Feature on Orbitz NewsNow: Newsnow.co.uk searches 7,636 sources. News stories are organized by subject and by time (5 minutes to 1 hour) may be viewed for free. Can also run simple keywords searches on the 30-day archive. The Business Service (for fee) provides feeds for online news monitoring and more sophisticated search capabilities. Gary Price likes it. "NewsNow is a powerful online media monitoring service that finds specific news, predetermined by your requirements, from thousands of online sites. With more than 300,000 users worldwide, searching over 15 languages in 84 countries, NewsNow is one of the world's leading news search facilities." Search Technology - Overview and Critique In Search of the Good Search The Invisible Elephant By Stephen Arnold. Searcher Magazine (March 2003) "Many extremely complex and costly search-and-retrieval systems are in use in many large organizations. A typical news-focused system supporting about 500 users costs one U.S. government agency more than $3 million per year. According to one expert close to the agency, "About 95 percent of the system's functionality is not used. People type one or two words and take whatever is provided. The users seem happy with good enough." But there are different types of search engines and different "ecologies" for each. " Article includes a Table showing what search-and-retrieval systems can't do today (available as a pdf file). Also a list of "actions information professionals must take" in assessing search tools, the search industry, and online content. Google and Ads: Some interesting figures Google expands with advertising links AP in Globe and Mail (Mar 5, 2003) Nigerian Scam: The Nigerian spam scam hits Hotmail. Hotmail struggles with Nigerian scam by Tony Hallet. Silicon.com (Mar 6, 2003) "E-mail users, up in arms over the massive amounts of spam allegedly from wealthy Nigerian money-laundering refugees, want to know what ISPs and e-mail providers are doing about this scam." Future for Search Engines: Tim Cadogan, vice president of search at Yahoo, and Paul Ryan, chief technology officer at Overture, spoke at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Boston this week. Stephanie Olsen at CNet covered the event. Some snippets: "Paul Ryan... estimated that in the next couple of years, sales from search engine marketing will hit about $6 billion--just shy of the total worth of the online advertising market in 2002." "Ryan outlined his vision for coming improvements to paid search listings, a market his company pioneered, and to the science of indexing billions of Web documents to produce relevant, noncommercial results" "There's a lot of work to be done in Web search," said Ryan. "All of the search engines have fundamental problems with relevance." "Yahoo's Cadogan ... outlined areas that his company sees as key for innovation in Web search, including understanding the intent behind queries. In the future, he said, if a Yahoo visitor types the word "Windows" in a search field, Yahoo might deliver results that provide helpful choices among products to buy or research links. He also said that improvements will help match people looking for products and services with commercial interests." "In addition, Yahoo is experimenting with a new search interface that will feature simplicity and give Web surfers greater access to information within search results, Cadogan said. " "Conference attendees in years past have typically consisted of ragtag Webmasters or mom-and-pop Web site operators. This year, panels were packed with well-suited attendees, investment bankers and Fortune 500 advertisers. According to program organizers, the conference signed up roughly 1,300 attendees, nearly double from a year ago." Web companies searching for dollars by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News (Mar 5, 2003) More about Tim Cadogan's remarks in Search Seeks Economic/User Balance By Colin C. Haley. Internet Advertising (Mar 5) Search Engine Relationships: Here are three charts showing connections between search engines and especially the sources for pay-per-click sponsored results. http://www.alphaquad.com/search_engine_relationships.htm UK Search Engines Source: Posting to I-Search. More information at http://www.adventive.com/subscribe.html Kartoo: Kartoo, the visual search engine, has a new look. This article describes what it does and how it works. KartOO Search Engine Launches New Version High Search Engine Ranking (Feb 23, 2003) "KartOO's real strength is in it's ability to provide advanced search options in a graphical context and explore the visual relationship between search queries" - I agree. Best used when looking for big picture and relationships. Not good for answering a very specific question. History of Search Engines: Feeling nostalgic for the past in web searching or feeling a need to grieve? Two old-time search people review the search engines and search. Where Are They Now? Search Engines We've Known & Loved by Danny SUllivan SEW (Mar 4, 2003) -- rest in peace, changes, same as ever, new breed, powered by others. I think Excite should be listed as one of the dead rather than as reborn. The search engine with concept-based search was abandoned, the news search that could learn from your searches was killed. The Canadian Excite.ca died. Today Excite.com has a mediocre meta-search engine and somewhat adequate portal. A Decade on the Net by Greg Notess. On the Net in Online (March 2003) "On this tenth anniversary of that first column proclaiming the meeting of the Internet with the online searching world, much has changed. Looking back over 10 years' worth of columns gives a snapshot of the growth of the Internet as a major information resource and a look at how it has changed." Internet Public LIbrary: IPL is broke. It just had the revamp in the spring of 2002 and it gets lots of traffic, but it doesn't have money. Joseph Janes was there at the beginning when IPL began in 1995 as a project at University of Michigan School of Information. He says Librarians' Index to the Internet is strapped too. He ponders the feasibility of a free public library on the Net. Who pays? Yahoo and Google make money serving the Web world but they get advertising. Back to the problem of funding models: public purse, donations / endowments, commercial advertising, subscriber fee, or do without. It would be a great shame to lose the IPL. Why Is the Internet Public Library Broke? by Joseph Janes American Libraries. (Mar 2003) But .. "The IPL is a really great idea, but the bottom line is that it’s not anybody’s responsibility to fund a “public library” for the entire Internet. Other libraries have communities or institutions that they serve; in return for that service, support and funding flow. The IPL doesn’t, and it’s an interesting question whether it ever will. Will the Internet ever be a “community” in the classic sense, with institutions like parks and police and so on that we’re used to in geographic communities?" Google and Ads: Google has introduced a Content-Targeted Advertising program. Google will be able to place ads on partner sites according to what the site is about. Sites include How Stuff Works, Knight Ridder properties, AOL, Ask Jeeves. Alltheweb Changes The new color palette to ATW is great but there have been some significant changes. - Customization: It's still possible to select any, all, phrase, or boolean from the main page (thank heavens). Thru Customization - Advanced Settings, change the Search Type Display to ON. The option to show FAST Topics has also been removed. These disappeared in 2002 and it's now certain they won't be coming back. - URL Investigator: This is the new function added. Enter a URL in the search box and get information about the page and pointers to the home page. It can provide link analysis of the home page and will get ownership information from easywhois.com. There is also a "used to look" from the Wayback Machine. All very fine - but why didn't ATW put a link on results to "investigate this URL"? Why do we have to paste the url into the search box? Win some, lose some. On the whole, it's an improvement. PS - I didn't notice this but ATW also dropped banner ads. Google rival unpins banner ads CNet by Stephanie Olsen (Mar 4, 2003) Online News: It is not inevitable that online news publishers will adopt a for-fee business model. Twenty European news publishers met to noodle on the future. They concluded that, although not evident yet, a business model will emerge and that it's not likely to be pure paid-content. Top Online Media Execs See Bright Future Workable Business Models Are Emerging Steve Outing. E&P (Feb 12, 2003) Google and Bigness: Mark Glaser says Google's Popularity Makes it a Media Target Online JOurnalism Review (Mar 3, 2003) Google has been getting bad press - it insisted the word google be removed from a dictionary, and it is periodically accused of fixing the search results - removing sites, changing the ranking. Glaser sees Google dilemma: "With no marketing, no advertising, really nothing but a darned good search engine, the company has become an Internet powerhouse and favorite. But in its flush of success, it comes under the media microscope, with everyone waiting for it to flub it all up somehow. So far Google has fared well and deflected most of the criticism, but the coming storm generated by its domination will show every chink in its armor -- with a specialty Web site dedicated to each miscue." MSN UK: MSN Search UK dropped banner ads and is expanding featured sites. Has also added highlighting of key terms. MSN UK dumps banner ads on search engine Revolution UK (Mar 3, 2003) Allthweb: Alltheweb is sporting new colours, a fresher look and much more readable at least to my eyes. It has also added information about a site - they call it the "AlltheWeb URL Investigator". Find out " who owns the domain, what language the site is written in, its subdomains and size, the date it was last updated, and a link to see how the site looked in the past." Bravo. Chris Sherman has favourable things to say -- AlltheWeb Introduces New Look, Features SearchDay (March 4, 2003) Multimedia News: Breaking-news Multimedia: Not an Oxymoron "How NYTimes.com Does It on Deadline" by Steve Outing. Editor and Publisher (Feb 26, 2003) - says breaking news multimedia is the direction for online-news, and the New York Times is well in front. Article recommends the index page to the multimedia stories. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/multimedia/index.html Online News: Newspaper Web Sites Gear Up for War by Carl Sullivan. Editor and Publisher (Feb 27, 2003) Internet Librarian 2002: Irene McDermott reports on the Internet LIbrarian Conference 2002 in Palm Springs, CA. Internet in the Air: Internet Librarian 2002 in Searcher March 2003. Picked up the sessions about wireless and new gadgets. Overture buying spree: Barbara Quint recaps and synthesizes views in Overture Acquires Two Major Web Search Engines in NewsBreaks (Mar 3, 2003) Google and Bigness: Bigness brings criticisms and distrust - must be part of human nature. 'Reassurance' a key word as Google grows By Stefanie Olsen and Margaret Kane . CNet (mar 3, 2003) "Google is known and loved for its impressive Web search tool, but now the company is beginning to face some probing questions about its plans to branch into new areas." Web and Personal Power: GoogleVillage, a new weblog that had a lot about search engines, is changing to Microdocs and will be about "personal power in the Information Age". Personal Power Re-Vitalized Through Combining Blogs and Google Search And also ... "It is thus that the new Microdoc's News (or News about the use of microdocuments) centers on the composition of weblogs (Blogger News), advertising the existence of information and knowledge in the microdocument world through Google (News on Google), information seekers news (Info Seekers' News), a special personality test that enhances one's thinking about information seeking (Seeker Personality Test), and a review section where Dr Jenkins reviews special tools of this information age (Microdoc's Reviews). There is also a special section devoted to digital art and cartoons about this information age which were at first called Googletoons, but in keeping with our theme of protecting Google Inc., trademarks we have renamed, Microtoons." Looks fascinating. Sign me up. Search and RSS: New search engine, Fresh Search, will convert search results to a RSS feed. Short blurb at New Search Engine Offers Active Web RSS Feeds SearchGuild. Fresh Search at http://www.terrar.com/ Overture, Altavista, Alltheweb: Tara Calashain is a bit worried about the purchase. Altavista and Alltheweb had been doing some good things. Will Overture develop the search technology further? -- Search Engine News and My Exploding Head (Feb 26, 2003) |
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