ResearchBuzz reminds us that SurfWax Has a News Search Too (April 13).
Surfwax News has 100,000 news topics and a list of popular topics. The list of topics for Canada has several museums and an odd entry for Canada Goose (pets). Would be nice to know how these topics are created. Perchance, might they have been derived from the Open Directory Project via Google? Just a guess.
There are two search boxes. The Look Ahead box will find topics - and show news stories. Display of stories by topic is by date and easy to read. Categorization is rather odd though. Maine travel category found an item from the Globe and Mail about a musical on the Acadian expulsion. An item from India was even stranger.
The News Search is keyword - it searches Surfwax's collection of news stories using the Google site search. Display is by ranked results and very hard to read. Clicking on a result takes you to the Surfwax category where you have to do your own digging. Choosing to search a category - for example, telecom.surfwax.com for netsky - brings up ads from such paid-listing services as Kanoodle and FindWhat. Very odd.
The use of topics at Surfwax News is interesting but this news search is not ready for primetime.
Posted by Gwen at April 15, 2004 02:53 PM