Internet News

Bing Social vs Google Social

Head-To-Head: Bing’s Social Search Vs. Google’s Search Plus Your World, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (May 10)

Bottom line: "In theory, social mixed with search sounds great. In reality, it’s still has a long way to go. "

Also see Bing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar by Danny Sullivan. Hmm - I don't think this is a way to improve search.

Assessing authority

What Is Search Engine Ranking Authority?, Tom Schmitz, Search Engine Land (May 10)

Relevance is still the retrieval of pages according to search terms, authority is how good they are. Question is how to search engines determine authority? This article as a few clues.

+ Google does something with brands. "Just as more links convey more trust, so do more and more brand mentions."

+ Social media probably has some influence. "Search engines can crawl these looking for links and mentions."

+ Site quality means "performance, user experience, and trust signals."

Being a curator

A Curator's Tools and To-Do List- Building a culture of open conversation, Kelly Meeker, eLearn Magazine (Jan 2012)

What it takes to curate - attitude, approach, and tools.

"In this age of information the learning and development specialist is a curator—not with stacks of dusty books and a pocket full of magnifying glasses, but with technology tools and networks of informed colleagues. Creating a workflow for sorting through content, making sense of it internally, and sharing those tools and processes within an organization is happening in real time via the Internet. "

Digital Information Overload

Social media, information overload and careful curation By James Mullan, FUMSI (May 4)

If you feel mentally tired and overwhelmed you could be suffering digital information overload. It's not good and this article won't lessen the feeling. But it does have some suggestions (turn off social as an example). Curation is a strategy - just as keeping all socks in one drawer is a faster way of finding a pair. Article points to several other good articles about handling information overload and the value of curation.

Search with Apps

The Impact of Apps on Search, Lin Grensing-Pophal, EContent (May 7)

People are doing less desktop search and much more search through apps on phones. This is changing the search scene.

""Apps definitely are impacting searching and will continue to do so," agrees Allison Gerlach, manager of PR and social media for inSegment, Inc., based in Newton, Mass. "People are turning to apps for specific searches and this cuts down on the amount of overall search market share retained by large search engines.""

Think about the amount of personal information being collected as well.

Teaching Google Search

12 Ways To Use Google Search In School, By Degree Of Difficulty, Jeff Dunn, Edudemic (May 6)

Another good article about the search advice in Google Search Education and an excellend video on why we should care.

Google's Search News

Google’s April Updates: Bigger & Tiered Index, Document Ranking, Sitelink Changes & More, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (May 4)

Google has implemented many small changes in ranking and results display, and maybe a few big ones. Among the big is that Google has increased the size of its base index by about 15% and added a third tier. It's entirely clear what that tier is other than documents that are indexed at a different rate.

Other smaller ones - Google will tweak titles when it sees fit, and it continues to try to improve predictive power of looking at users' searches to determine intent.

Google News - Small Changes

Google News Adds Larger Images, Realtime Updates & Google+ Comments, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 3)

Next time you're at Google News look for "larger images on the main page; a realtime coverage page to surface the latest articles and commentary; and relevant Google+ posts for a new social perspective."

Excellent web search training centre

Google Launches New Search Education Site with Lesson Plans, Tina Barseghian, MindShift (May 2)

Google Search Education -- shows that Google still cares about search.

"Google has launched a new site called Search Education aimed at educators who want to teach online search strategies."

Especially note the lesson plans geared to beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. These are Google documents for teachers to use - they are not self-study packs. However, there are nuggets that will be valuable to any searcher such as -- "What unique terms can I use that will help me search effectively? What are context terms? How can context terms help me target my search for what I need? "

The site also has challenge questions.

This is very well done - a valuable resource for anyone teaching web searching and internet literacy.

Backup - just do it

Back it up: How to avoid losing your digital treasures , Hugh Thomson, Globe and Mail (May 1)

Good, simple and clear advice on how to make sure you get a backup system set up and use it.

Bing Search Regresses

Bing Goes Search-Retro With Cleaner Look For Results, Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (May 2)

Bing changed its display of search results back to the bad-old days. List of results in column that is 2/3rds across - with ads on the top, and a right side panel with ads and list of related searches. No preview shows with rollover, no guide on the left.

If you enter ingredients in what looks like a food search, Bing will show Recipes in the tabs at the top but very faintly marked.

Link to Advanced Search has been removed.

It's not even worth a screenshot.

Full manual on using Chrome

Browsing at Warp Speed: Your Guide to Chrome!, Lachlan Roy, Make Use Of (May)

"Learn everything you could hope to learn about Google’s browser. It’s all outlined in “Browsing at Warp Speed: Your Guide to Chrome!”. This free manual, from author Lachlan Roy, covers the basics of using Google Chrome and also outlines more than a few advanced tricks."

Twitter and social networking tools

Twitter Tools: 11 Free Apps and Services You Need Now, Lianne Cassavoy, PCWorld (May 1)

More Twitter tools than you can shake a stick at. The multinetwork ones help you follow Facebook or Linked In at the same time - Tweetdeck does Facebook as does SocialOomph. HootSuite is for social addicts. Lots more.

Article has five tools for just Twitter.

What would be the perfect answer?

Search Tip for Students: Try Predicting Your Search Results, Tasha Bergson-Michelson, MindShift (May 1)

Absolutely - ask yourself what you hope to find with your query and imagine what the perfect answer would look like - this will help you quickly assess what you wee. Also - consider different types of displays - maps, images, videos, tables and charts.

Bad news for Digg users

Rumor: Digg to be acquired by The Washington Post (updated: site will remain, tech team transfers) Drew Olanoff, Insider (May 1)

Washington Post is hiring Digg tech staff but not the site. So who will man the fences? What will Digg management do?

News Aggregators Preferred

If You Have News, It Will Be Aggregated and/or Curated, Matthew Ingram, GigaOm (Mar 19)

People reading news online like to go to aggregators - such as Google News or Yahoo News - and they like to customize.

"In effect, many users seem to be looking to generate their own digital-newspaper-style overview of the world rather than accepting one from a single media outlet, and if the content they are looking for comes from an aggregator like the Huffington Post because the original is behind a paywall, then so be it."

That being the case, how will the news sources make any money?

Using the Cloud for your Files

Three PCWorld articles to help (or confuse) you in selecting a place in the cloud for your files.

5 Reasons Microsoft SkyDrive is Better Than Google Drive (Apr 26) - "Microsoft added the ability to store files online and sync across multiple devices right from your Windows or OS X desktop."

Google Drive vs. The Rest (Apr 24) - has chart covering all the big features of the major services.

Add Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive to Windows' Send-To Menu (Apr 27)

PCWorld's roundup of free services

The Best Free Software, Mobile Apps, and Web Services, 2012 Edition, PCWorld (Apr 23)

PCWorld's 17th annual roundup of free stuff on the Web has 59 items -- business tools, mobile apps - of course, social media and communication, travel, shopping (apps), fitness (apps), entertainment.

The number of items that are apps tell us that the Internet for users has moved to the palm of our hands.

One of the very useful looking apps is Next Bus that pulls in information from transit systems in North America - including Toronto Transit

DuckDuckGo as a real competitor

Could DuckDuckGo Be The Biggest Long-Term Threat To Google?, Nathan Safran, Search Engine Land (Apr 26)

Many more people are using Duckduckgo - they're going in droves. Of course there is the privacy reason - DDG doesn't track, but Safran suggests the real reason is search performance - the results and the display. There are several comparisons for different queries.

"The conclusion from our Google – DuckDuckGo SERP comparison for several query types is that DDG is clearly innovating in search ‘presentation’ — an area that has arguably decayed over the years as the large search engines rush to cram ever more (images, video, local, advertising, social…) into the search results."

Guide to Google Drive

Your complete guide to Google Drive, Sharon Vaknin, CNET (Apr 25)

Google users - Google Docs has been retired - use Google Drive.

"Google Docs has been retired and replaced by Drive, leaving you with one place to create and manage all your documents and files.

You get 5GB of free storage, the ability to view and store dozens of file types, and integration with other Google services, like Google+ and Gmail."

Lots of tips on how to use it.

Firefox 12 auto update

Firefox 12 ushers in automatic updates, Seth Rosenblatt, Download.com (Apr 24)

Bravo - Firefox 12 will automatically update itself, just as Chrome does.

Many improvements to developers' tools too - "85 improvements to its dev tools. These include fixes and improvements made to the Style Inspector, Web Console, Page Inspector, HTML View, Page Inspector 3D View, Style Editor, and Scratchpad. HTML5 media player controls have also gotten a visual refresh. " Who knew you could do so much?

FirstRain to monitor tweets

Making Sense of Business Intelligence With FirstTweets by Theresa Cramer, Newsbreaks (Apr 26)

Twitter - “a good marketing tool but not a market intelligence tool.”

FirstRain aims to correct that with its analytics tool, First Tweets - "According to FirstRain, FirstTweets delivers real-time industry- and customer-specific information to uncover revenue opportunities, including customer developments, industry trends, news, market analysis, emerging themes, and much more. FirstTweets delivers the information directly into CRM systems, social enterprise platforms, iPads, and other mobile devices."

Aimed at the corporate market at $10,000 a year for 100 users.

Google fighting webspam

Google Launches Update Targeting Webspam In Search Results, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Apr 24)

Google is introducing changes to the algorithms to detect and remove more spam. Common types of spam are:

Keyword stuffing
Link schemes
Cloaking, “sneaky” redirects or “doorway” pages
Purposeful duplicate content

Bing vs Google in the Search Ring

Bing Versus Google: Search Engine Showdown, Liane Cassavoy, PCWorld (Apr 24)

The Pepsi Challenge - Google or Bing - which tastes better? Both turned in respectable results, tho by my tally, Google had a slight edge. Was surprised to see the Bing was considered more annoying with its autocorrec (where the search engine changes your terms)t. Article includes some useful tips. It didn't mention that at Bing you can stop the autowording by using a + sign in front of the word, and at Google, use quotation marks.

Are you lonely on the Internet?

Is the Internet Making Us Lonelier or Less Lonely? Yes Mathew Ingram, GigaOm (Apr 24)

Ingram doesn't think the social tools on the Internet makes us lonelier - but many do including Sherry Turkle.

"As Turkle puts it in her NYT piece: “We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places—in politics, commerce, romance, and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”"

But it doesn't have to be like that as Ingram points out - "If anything, online connections tend to spark or promote real-world connections. I have met dozens, possibly even hundreds of people I wouldn’t know except for Twitter, had spontaneous coffee meetings thanks to Foursquare check-ins, and made countless other connections between the online and offline world. "

Could go either way.