Internet in space: NASA is working to have spacecraft connect to the Web for easier communications with the control centre. Internet beams out into space BBC Technology (Jan 31, 2003)
divine and rowecom: More on the crime of divine -- legal actions, damage to libraries and publishers, loss of $80 million or more in subscription funds, loss of trust in intermediaries. "Things could get pretty ugly for the once high-flying Chicago company."
Divine Debacle Rocks Industry by Paula J. Hane Information Today (Feb 2003)
Online Books: Wired looks at Project Gutenberg - the long-running effort (32 years) by Michael Hart to put up plain text versions of public domain books. It runs on volunteers and shoe-string.
Any Text. Anytime. Anywhere. (Any Volunteers?) The mechanics of a universal library are simple. The tricky part: harnessing the free labor. By J. Bradford DeLong (Feb 2003)
Google's Page Rank: Search Engine Blog interviewed Chris Ridings, author of PageRank Explained. It's long and detailed. PageRank , SearchKing and cowboys (Jan 2003)
Internet vs TV: Internet users watch less televsion - 4.8 hours on average a week in the USA. And long time users of the Net watch 5.8 hours less. No kidding. What's there to watch on television anyway? UCLA survey also said the most popular activities are email and instant messenging but that 60% use it as a source of news - more than television, radio, newspapers and magazines. But one third said they only believe what they read online half of the time.
The Net is cutting into TV time, study finds By Dawn C. Chmielewski Mercury News (Jan 30, 2003)
Surveying the Digital Future UCLA Center for Communication Policy (Jan 29, 2003)
Net Has Both Supporters, Skeptics By CyberAtlas staff and Mark Berniker (Fbe 3, 2003)
Semantic Web: Leslie Walker at Washington Post interviewed Tim Berners-Lee about the Semantic Web.
"He sketched a scenario in which 350 people fell ill with a mysterious disease. Tapping into the Semantic Web, a scientist hunts for clues to its origin. "Is it an allergy? Is it something in the atmosphere? Is it a virus? We don't know, but you want to correlate about everything you've got," Berners-Lee theorized.
In his futuristic scenario, the Semantic Web offers controlled access to American health care data, plus databases charting the location and status of rivers, underground water, forests and local vegetation, along with economic data on local industries and what they produce -- all marked up in special vocabularies. Those allow scientists to run global queries across the Web, fishing randomly for correlations that might exist between where the sick people lived, worked and played -- such as a polluted stream or industrial dump. Even more fanciful, Berners-Lee described all sorts of analytical tools the scientist could use, tools that might replace our aging Web browsers, letting us display data by color codes, by geographic maps or by types of sources searched. "
The man has vision. But the corporate world is not buying it. They talk about web services instead - much more limited applications.
The Lord Of the Webs by Leslie Walker, Washington Post (Jan 30, 2003)
Search Strategies: There's been some discussion of search strategies in legal research. Should one start with Westlaw or Google? This is picked up again in the weblog - explodedlibrary.info. "If I come across a more challenging question, I will often turn to Google first. It's a very quick way of giving me ideas for better search terms in the catalogue or Westlaw or Lexis".
using google or vivisimo for legal reference questions - Free Net Search Engines vs. Westlaw & Lexis Morgan Wilson. ExplodedLibrary (Jan 29, 2003) Source TVC Alert.
Topic Specific Search Engines: Work on identifying web communities and crawling the content is beginning to show results. Gary Price, in SearchDay, features the new eBizSearch engine from Penn State University. " eBizSearch is an experimental search engine that focuses on a very small niche: academic and commercially produced articles and reports about e-Business." It has a similar base to the CiteSeer engine for computer science done by the NEC Research Institute.
+ A Niche Search Engine for eBusiness by Chris Sherman. SearchDay. (Jan 30, 2003)
Search through Instant Messenger: Use your instant messenger to get information. ActiveBuddy has software that will work with AIM and MSN for conversational retrieval of information. There are several applications one can try: SmarterChild for access to news, games, movies - daily life stuff, RecipeBuddy, AgentFinance for news and financial information, and a few others. ActiveBuddy also has a page listing retired agents. Have to wonder why eBay and BBCi would retire their agents if they were so successful.
I tried the RecipeBuddy. It sits as a contact on my MSN IM list. I can click on it and follow the menu structure to look for a recipe. I looked by ingredient for salmon and got several recipes for appetizers that involved crackers. Recipes come from Keebler, which as it turns out makes snack food and crackers. So - while I think the idea is terrific, success really depends on the content.
Resource of the Week Instant Messaging: SmarterChild is Back With a New Beta Gary Price. ResourceShelf (Jan 30, 2003) - Asked SmarterChild some questions. Sees potential for libraries.
Search Engine Watch Awards 2002: The SEW 2002 awards have been announced (Jan 28, 2003) and Google won in 6 categories: Outstanding search service, News search engine (Google News), images (Google Images), best design, most webmaster friendly, best paid placement (Google AdWords). It also shared the top position in another couple of cateogories and got best feature award for its spell checking. However, Alltheweb got frequent mention in second position - including outstanding search service and best design. Teoma received an honourable mention for design - and I think deserved more. Meta-search went to Vivisimo and COpernic (software). SEW ruled out Dogpile and the other Infospace meta-search services because they don't clearly mark paid listings in the results. Bravo SEW.
Online Research: There are a few research services that will search for medical information on the Web for a fee, separating the reliable from the misleading and fake. Sifting Through the Online Medical Jumble by Randi Hutter Epstein. New York Times (Jan 28, 2003) (Source TVC ALert)
Opera: Still in business Opera is releasing its rewritten and faster browser Opera 7 for Windows this week. Opera has a "single digit market share" - but those who use it love it. Opera to release rewritten browser by Paul Festa. Cnet (Jan 27, 2003)
However, Opera might stop producing the Mac version of its browser now that Apple is developing its own browser software - Safari. Mac Opera gored on Safari? Cnet via Globe and Mail (Jan 28, 2003)
Online News - Two Tiered: And for something really scary, Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher considers the trend towards for-fee content at news web sites. He doesn't think that many newspapers will switch to the all-fee model, but he does think that the amount of premium content will increase. What will happen to web search? Will the news search engines - specifically Google News - be able to index that? And if Google News gets admitted, how will it present the premium content and collect the fees? Will there be two tiers - free and for-fee? How will the reader pay? Outing interviewed Gary Price - who commented that this will make Internet search more difficult, and Danny Sullivan - who pointed to the business model used by Northern Light - which ultimately failed. Nick Denton, former CEO of Moreover, says it can't be done until there is a widespread payment system.
Paid Content Trend Is Dangerous But Not for the Reason You Think by Steve Outing. Editor and Publisher (Jan 27, 2003)
Online News: More newspapers are requiring their readers to subscribe, and some only show online content to paying customers.
More Publishers Try All-Paid Web Model At Least 21 Dailies Now Restrict Most Content. by Carl Sullivan Editor and PUblisher (Jan 23, 2003)
"While no U.S. newspaper is yet making a fortune by charging for access to its Web site, more publishers abandoned the all-free model last year. E&P found at least 21 daily newspapers now restrict most of their online editorial content to paying customers. Many of these papers allow print subscribers to access their Web sites for free, but a few levy extra Web charges on top of their home-delivery bills."
Newspaper Sites Move to Registration Model E&P Surveys Publishers on Latest Web Trend by Carl Sullivan. Editor and Publisher (Jan 23, 2003)
Washington Post adopted full registration last year and traffic increased. However, it dropped at many other papers doing the same thing. Registration does help boost revenue through advertising deals that use the demographic data supplied by the registrants.
"As word of this and similar successes spreads, more publishers are gearing up to build registration firewalls this year, including newspapers in the E.W. Scripps Co., McClatchy Co., Cox Enterprises Inc., Media General Inc., and Morris Communications Co. LLC chains. In most cases, the majority of the papers' content will remain free of charge, but users will be expected to pony up some personal information in exchange for the unfettered access. Some papers are sequestering most editorial content in a registration-only area, leaving classifieds and shopping sections open to all; others are selectively registering users on certain portions of their sites or through contests and personalization features."
Search Engine: OneStat.com finds Google in number one spot for global usage at 54.7% though it did drop .4% in the last two months. Yahoo jumped from 20.6 to 22.1%. Usage is determined from an analysis of incoming hits from search engines at sites that are using the OneStat monitoring software. The percentage represents the number of referrals from that search engine. Standings were:
1. Google 54.7%
2. Yahoo 22.1%
3. MSN Search 9.5%
4. AOL Search 3.7%
5. Terra Lycos 2.8%
6. Altavista 2.5%
7. Askjeeves 1.5%
Search engine war: Yahoo is back according to OneStat.com Pressi.com (Jan 27, 2003)
Google vs Searchking: United States District Court in Oklahoma gave Google First Amendment protection in SearchKing's suit against Google for harm to its business from changes in Google's page ranking algorithms. SearchKing is a link farm for its customers. Last year its position in Google results dropped dramatically as Google adjusted its ranking rules. Google argued that PageRanks are opinions and protected by free speech. It won that point, but the Court did say that Google manually lowered SearchKing's PageRank.
SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied James Grimmelmann. Yale Law School (Jan 24, 2003)
BoardReader: Find discussions at Web forums and message boards through BoardReader (www.boardreader.com). The Advanced Search page has a subject directory of 14 top categories. Subjects are heavily weighted to recreation / entertainment / consumption but there is one on health and another on computers. None for finance / investment - though entering a company name in the General Search will find entries from stockhouse.com.
Google Answers: Sequel to Jessamyn West's account of her life as a researcher at Google Answers in which Google says she should have cleared her article with them and then seems to not know who she is. Google Answers Back Searcher (Jan 2003)
Ask Jeeves: The press is agog that AJ made some money this quarter - 5 cents per share. For 2002, tho, it has lost 52 cents per share. Ask Jeeves Inc. Reports First-Ever Profit AP in Nando Times (Jan 23, 2003)
Internet Use: More boomers and seniors are surfing the Net. They are buying books and researching travel. Surfing with Seniors and Boomers by Robyn Greenspan. Cyberatlas (Jan 23, 2003)
Infotrieve: Infotrieve, a leading service for table of contents of journals and document delivery, acquired Ariel software from RLG (Research Libraries Group). "Ariel enables academic and research libraries to electronically convey and share scanned or digitized documents — such as articles published in scholarly and professional journals vital to academic and scholarly research — between and within institutions, in high-resolution TIF or PDF formats across the Internet." Earlier in the month they acquired The Scientific World "a Web-based publisher of scientific information that served research-dependent companies, academic institutions, health organizations and government agencies in the fields of life sciences, health care, industrial biotechnology and environmental sciences." From press releases for Jan 21 and 22, 2003, at http://www.infotrieve.com/news.asp
Google: TVC Alert picked up a thread on weblogs that started with an article by lawyer Jerry Lawson in which he relates an instance in which Google was better for his query than the for-fee professional resources, Westlaw or Lexis, and continued to Tom Mighell on importance of picking the best resource for the job. Both have good nuggets:
- Lawson found relevance ranking at Google better for his query. Also he recommends limiting a search to a site. Free Search Engines vs. Westlaw & Lexis
- Mighell argues for keeping the subscriptions but always considering whether information might be found for free over the Internet Why pay for your legal research?
- Tyburski brings it together -- "While both lawyers provide valid observations, I would caution anyone against becoming completely reliant on any one system, whether Lexis, Westlaw, Google, or the next search tool to win the public's favor. As Jerry indicates, no resource contains all the answers all the time. But more importantly, the technical strengths or weaknesses of the three should not influence where you start until after you determine the potential source of the information you seek. Then, if all things are equal, by all means, begin with the easiest, fastest, cheapest system."
Lexis, Westlaw or Google Genie Tyburski (Jan 22, 2003)
News Alerts: Gary Price mentioned several free news alert services in Not A Good Week For E-Mail Alerts But They Still Exist (Jan 19, 2003) To his list of Yahoo News Alerts, CBS Marketwatch, Net2One, add NewsAlerts.com - good for news about companies.
Altavista: Greg Notess has noticed that Altavista's * for truncation will substitute for any number of letters - not just 5. Also there are two proximity operators < for words before, and > for words after. Not many people will want the <> symbols, but the * for wildcard and truncation is handy.
AltaVista Truncation, Proximity Improved by Greg Notess (Jan 19, 2003)
AlltheWeb: Alltheweb has added more search features.
- Full boolean searches: Use the Advanced Search form and select Boolean Expression. Operators are and, or, andnot. Queries may be nested - "totem poles" AND (juneau OR ketchican). Results may be ranked by using the command RANK -- "totem poles" AND (juneau OR ketchican) RANK museum. In this case, results with the word museum will be shown first. This is similar to AltaVista Advanced where one can Sort By a term in boolean searches.
One can still do OR in the Simple Search by just using brackets -- "totem poles" (juneau ketchican). Results look right, though the number of hits is a bit lower than running the search as Boolean in Advanced.
- Alltheweb Query Language is a new page showing commands and examples.
- Alltheweb customizes the page it presents to you according to the IP number. It guesses at the language you'd like to work in, offering it and the option for All languages.
- Alltheweb has Search Tools tailor made for different browsers - IE, Netscape, Opera, Mac Sherlock. Includes a search button and a keyword search capability from the address bar.
Gary Price at Resource Shelf picked up the changes (Jan 21, 2003) AlltheWeb Online With New Advanced Search Options and Tools
Weblogs Daypop is back up and crawling 10,500 news sites and weblogs. It has 1,000 news sources and are crawled at least once a day. (From ResourceShelf DayPop Upgrade (Jan 22, 2003))
Pattern Recognition: William Gibson's latest novel is Pattern Recognition. Read an excerpt and tap into Gibson's blog at http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/index.asp.
Browser Utilities: Good set of tools from Steve Bass at PC World -- Home Office: Not-So-Stupid Browser Tricks (Jan 2, 2003): snip URLs to manageable size, block ads, be anonymous, record audio on the Net as MP3.
Review 2002: Kalena Jordan of High Search Engine Ranking reviewed predications she made for 2002 and scores as a Nostradamus. Of interest: there has been an increase in pay-for-performance options, there has been a crack down on spammers - and search results are better for it, the SEO industry has gone mainstream, two search services did die (Excite as it used to be and Northern Light), new technologies did come onto the scene - especially those from Google.
Time to Rate Last Year's Search Engine Predictions by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank (Jan 21, 2003)
Teoma: Teoma has officially moved to Teoma 2 with the launch of its Advanced Search page. This is a forms-based page to help the searcher make selections:
- All words or exact phrase. There is no choice for any -- Teoma remains an AND engine.
- Should Have, Must Have, Must not Have - only one word or phrase per box. Can add boxes. To look for totem poles in Juneau or Ketchican, we need to have two SHould Have boxes - juneau and ketchican, and one Must Have box - "totem poles". Teoma converts it to OR Juneau OR Ketchican + "totem poles".
- Anywhere on page, in title, or in url.
- Language
- Domain or site
- Geographic region
- Date page was modified
The Advanced Search page gives some tips on using search commands to apply the same limitations such as intitle: or inurl:. It also says that Teoma supports OR.
Teoma is a good search engine and these additional features will make it more useful, especially being able to limit searches to words in title or a specific site. However, the OR is unreliable. This is not full Boolean - one can't do AND, OR, NOT or even the equivalent. The OR is very simple - apples OR oranges. We can't ask for "fruit salad" AND (apples OR oranges).
Even the Advanced Form's Should have / Must have does not convert properly to a Must Have x and would also like y and z. In the example -- SHould Have juneau and ketchican, and Must Have - "totem poles" -- Teoma gives 208,400 results. But only 17,700 actually have "totem poles". In fact, Teoma treated all terms as ORs.
We get better results from entering in the main search box - "totem poles" ( juneau OR ketchican). This yields a more reasonable 2,300 hits. But we get into trouble by changing the order of the terms to juneau OR ketchican "totem poles" has 189,900 hits.
Advice for now: If you want to construct an OR put the "must have" term first - and then keep a careful eye on the reasonableness of the results.
Other news: Teoma has grown to 500 million indexed pages. It also displays snippets from the web site with keyword-in-context.
Perplexing bit: Teoma sometimes shows Related Pages for a result. Have no idea what this is.
Gary Price covered the changes in Search Day (Jan 21, 2003) + Teoma Releases Version 2.0 Also see Greg Notess's review Teoma 2.0 Press Release.
Newsbooster: Newsbooster in Denmark gets around the prohibition of deep linking to some papers by offering a Newsbrowser - software for the desktop by which readers can make and access their own links. Newsbooster is a for -ee "fully personalized news filtering service" .
This Is Your Deep Link on P2P Wired. (Jan 17, 2003)
Broadband: PC Magazine has the Complete Guide to Broadband - (Feb 1, 2003) if you're thinking of converting. It covers choices, networking, safe connections, and things to do. Read the print version and save on page click and load.
Espotting: Espotting is a pay-for-placement advertiser in Europe - essentially Europe's Overture. FAST has signed to use Espotting for sponsored links in its European operations, while keeping Overture in the US for Alltheweb and Lycos. Some see this as a challenge to Google's might.
"The FAST-Espotting deal makes the companies more Google-like, allowing the partners to market both Web search and commercial listings to top Web portals overseas. Espotting powers search results for the likes of Yahoo! Europe, Lycos Europe, AltaVista, Tiscali and Ask Jeeves; it currently has more than 12,500 advertisers, including British Airways and eBay. FAST, which regularly indexes more than two billion Web documents, powers search results for AT&T, Dell Computer, Freeserve and Terra Lycos, among others."
FAST takes on Google after signing deal with Espotting Chris Dillabough. New Media Age. (Jan 16, 2003)
Europe search partners fight US threat by Stephanie Olsen. ZDNet News UK
Mini Webs: More research into the nature of the Web shows smaller, well-linked mini-webs concentrated around subjects. Filippo Menczer at the University of Iowa has identified a "mathematical power-law relationship between link probability and similarity of language across web pages". Essentially - web authors link to other popular sites on the same topic and having similar meaning. The model - built on a study of text, links, and meaning - may assist in the design of web crawlers dedicated to topics and of software for searching the Internet on behalf of a user.
Webs within Web boost searches by Kimberly Patch. Technology News (Nov 13/2002)
UI researcher studies model for better web search engine resu (Jan 9, 2003) Press Release
Menczer and the University of Iowa has developed MySpiders agent software - "MySpiders is a java applet that uses intelligent, autonomous, adaptive software agents to search the Internet on behalf of the user for information about the user's query. MySpiders complement, rather than replace, traditional search engines, by locating recent documents that may not have been indexed by search engines yet. " From MySpiders FAQ. There is a demo but it wasn't working on Jan 17, 2003.
Steve Lawrence and others at NEC Research had also identified mini-Webs in their study of the link structure -- Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities in March 2002.
Studies like these that confirm the tightness of web clusters give a boost to the Teoma search service which uses links to identify topic concentrations (Refine) and the hub pages (Resources).
Thanks to Research Buzz for lead -- Filippo Menczer Looks At Search Engine Results (Jan 13, 2003)
Search Engine Size: Greg Notess ran his search-engine size tests in December and found Google way in the lead, AlltheWeb closing the gap, and Altavista gaining. Notess' size estimates for Google and Alltheweb matched fairly well their claims (3.1 billion and 2.1 billion respectively). However, Altavista might be larger than published - 1.6 million, as might Teoma at 1 billion (instead of 500 million). Hotbot and MSN Advanced - really Inktomi - might be much lower - only 1 billion rather than 3. Notess also has some estimates on non-web pages in the databases. See Relative Size Showdown.
Google Dominates New Size Showdowns by Greg Notess. Search Engine Showdown (Jan 16, 2003)
Subject Directories: Gary Price as guest editor at Search Day wrote about scholarly subject directories -- The Value of Non-Commercial Web Directories (Jan 16, 2003). His picks are Infomine, IPL, LII, Resource Discovery Network (strong), and Academic Info (weak).
Internet Users: Use of broadband is growing in the US especially in the age groups 12 to 17 and 65 to 99. Broadband users averaged 17 hours and 20 minutes in December 2002 whereas narrowband (dial up) were on less than 10.
Broadband Surges in 2002, But Narrowband Declines by Thor Olavsrud. Cyberatlas (Jan 15, 2003)
Yahoo: Yahoo's Semel Wins Advertisers, Loses Search Users (Update1)
By Adam Steinhauer (Jan 15, 2003) Bloomberg
Yahoo's earnings are up largely because of connection with the sponsored listings from Overture but people using Yahoo search are down - they went to Google. Some interesting figures and observations:
- Yahoo properties get 200 million visitors / month
- " Google.com was used by 37.3 million U.S. consumers for Internet searches in December, a 42 percent increase from January 2002, according to research firm Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo's search page had 36.5 million U.S. users in December, up 4.8 percent from January 2002."
- some analysts expect Yahoo to drop using Google as soon as it has integrated Inktomi into its search service.
- getting sponsored ads from Overture has been a big boost to earnings: "Sales of placements within Overture's search results helped Yahoo boost fourth-quarter revenue to at least $263 million from $188.9 million in the year-earlier period, according to company projections."
Size of the Web: OCLC research finds that the public web has shrunk a bit in the last year (1% - 3.0 million web sites in June 2002 vs 3.1 million in 2001, while the private web has grown. Growth overall is also restrained at 3%. Webpages per website have increased from 413 to 441 - and OCLC suspects that there has been considerable expansion in the use of database technology for web sites. See OCLC Researchers Track Five-Year Growth of Public Web OCLC (Dec 18, 2002) For the statistics, see the Web Characterization Project -- http://wcp.oclc.org/.
Froogle: Alex Slakever at Business Week was disappointed in Froogle for online shopping. Says it "isn't the way to find bargains". NexTag is much better - has buyer reviews and information by zip code.
Will Froogle Be a Google for Shoppers? "Maybe not right away. The search giant's new service, still in beta, is mighty sparse on the useful information that rivals provide" by Alex Slakever. Business Week. (Jan 14, 2003)
Google: Has Google become too successful? By some estimates it supplies 75% of web search results, but this article in BusinessWeek points out that Overture is a tough competitor in the paid placement business, and Verity is making inroads in the corporate search market. Yahoo renewed its agreement with Google for search results but made it non-exclusive. Will others slip away? The article also questions web user loyalty -- "Other potential problems for Google abound. While it remains the leader in producing quality search results, a host of other search engines, including WiseNut, Teoma, and FAST, produce searches that are almost as good -- and in certain categories maybe even a bit better, according to users. These upstarts are already putting pressure on Google's business as a third-party search-results supplier, a business that brought in approximately one-third of its revenues in 2002."
Article might be a bit over the top in sounding warnings. Wisenut is a very neglected search service, people in the iSearch listserv complain that FAST doesn't deliver them any hits - "is anyone using Lycos?" they ask, and Teoma is a niche player for now - good but small.
Google's Gaggle of Problems Competition is building at both the high and low ends of the market. Worse, some clients think the search giant is encroaching on their turf by Alex Salkever. Business Week (Jan 14, 2003)
Lycos: A Glimpse Into the Lycos Search Engine By Robin Nobles - (January 14, 2003) -- Academy of Web Specialists interviewed Adam Soroca from Terra Lycos. Questions raised were mainly about "search marketing" features: InSite AdBuyer (cost-per-click ads or paid placement), and paid-inclusion through FAST. Lycos is using the FindWhat technology for its paid placement ads but not the FindWhat database. Sponsored listings come from Overture. The Open Directory Project directory listings are not included in a Web search - results come only from FAST.
Vote for best search engine: Search Engine Watch invites you to vote for the best search engines in its Annual Award program. See Chris Sherman's comments at Vote for the Search Engine Watch Awards (Jan 14, 2003) and take the link to the vote form. Voting is from Jan 14 to 17.
Information Visualization: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Charts by Stephen Wildstrom. Business Week (Jan 20, 2003) - "New software "visualizes" data in ways that give a much richer image than typical tools". Mentions Map of the Market on www.smartmoney.com, Grokker - Web search tool for seeing results visually, and Mindmanager.
"For the most part, visualization tools are cropping up as part of the analytical software packages that are used to mine data at large companies. However, there are stand-alone products that use the technique to help users make visual sense of what otherwise might be an overwhelming sea of data."
"Data visualization literally changes how we look at information, and it will take some getting used to."
Mac Browser: There's a new browser for the Mac that will operate under the Jaguar version of OS X. It's called Safari and is said to be faster than others, has a clear typeface, and will block pop-ups and pop-unders. It's still in beta - not ready for primetime. Browser for Mac users has good start by Mark Kellner. Washington Times (Jan 14, 2003)
AskOxford: Thanks to TVC Alert for this reference and word site - AskOxford.com - with words, quotations, puzzles, writing advice, and foreign language lessons - all free. Search is available for the dictionary and thesaurus, quotations, dictionary of first names, UK book catalog. Quotations (from the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) are thin (can find T.S. Eliot's famous line about whimper but not Robert Frost's on fire). However, the Home page is worthy of a weekly check, and the section on Better Writing is a good primer.
Google: Search King has filed a lawsuit against Google for manipulating its algorithm such that it lowered Search King (and thus its customers) in the rankings. Google says that page rank is just its "personal opinion" and as such is protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Google claims the 'First' in web ranking row Silicon.com (Jan 13, 2003)
Google responds to Search King Lawsuit Search Engine News Blog (Jan 13, 2003) - has links to the original complaint by Search King, Google's official response, and a law opinion. Chances are the case is too flimsy to make it to court.
Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Jan 13, 2003) - good review of the issues.
Hotbot UK : Gary Price has discovered that Hotbot UK at http://www.hotbot.lycos.co.uk/ is more like the old Hotbot - searches Inktomi (not FAST), supports boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and has all the old options. However, * to truncate and ? to substitute for letters don't work. Search site also uses the UK version of the Open Project Directory. I like it - more than the new hotbot.com.
Yahoo Search: Gary Price also discovered search.yahoo.com - a no-frills, no-ads, old-style front door to Yahoo. Love it.
Web Search Odds & Ends to Begin 2003 by Gary Price (Jan 2, 2003)
Search Engine Awards 2002 Pandia Post Newsletter for January 2003 has the 2002 Pandia Awards for "best search tools, search oriented sites and search engine documentation!" Google, Fast, Ez2www, Vivisimo, Search Engine Watch, Gary Price's Resourceshelf are among the winners.
Online Newsreels: More about the British Pathe project and its collection of old newsreels in Old British Newsreels Find New Life Online by Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times (Jan 9, 2003)
"Much of Pathe's own collection, to be sure, predates color film - or even talking pictures. A search engine enables visitors to find clips of Christmas celebrations in London in 1955, for example, or King George V's 1923 visit to meet the Italian royal family in Rome. If you are not sure what you are looking for or just want a sampling, a Lucky Dip button on the home page randomly selects 20 items for a preview. "
Library Lookup: Library Lookup is receiving rave reviews from libraries. This is a little tool that lets one check quickly if the local library has a particular book. Lookup is by ISBN. The tool is a bookmarklet (some javascript code) that sits as a link on the browser's Link Bar. First find the ISBN number for the book you're interested in - can use Amazon for this, highlight the number and click on the bookmarklet to check your library's online catalogue. Chris Sherman wrote about it in Library Lookup: A Simple but Powerful Search Tool (Jan 9, 2003)
This is the invention of Jon Udell. He has assembled bookmarklets for many libraries at http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html organized by library catolog system. There are some Canadian libraries listed - Queen's University, Waterloo and Kitchener Public LIbraries, several in British Columbia. Torontonians will be disappointed that there is none for the Toronto Public Library or the University of Toronto (although Ryerson is listed). There is a tool for creating a new bookmarklet if one knows the vendor but something went amiss in my efforts - wrong vendor, something wrong with the base url, or other blockage. Pity - this is just the tool that might get people borrowing more from the library.
Northern Light: divine has posted a notice at Northern Light stating "Effective January 1st 2003, divine has discontinued the sale of its special collection articles on a pay per view basis. Thank you for your patronage over the years and we are sorry for any inconvenience. " Current News for up to two weeks is still available - but for how much longer? The backdoor to the old search engine is still open at nlresearch.northernlight.com but it doesn't look like the database has been updated in ages. What was once one of the best search services on the Web has been destroyed.
Online News: Will readers pay to read news online? AOL says it will charge for music downloads and news content. Only print subscribers can get daily news from the Winnipeg Free Press web site. Out-of-towners must buy access for $5 / month. New York Times and the Globe and Mail are among the few who make money from their web site. CNN and ABC now charge for viewing videos of news storage.
Michael Zimbalist, executive director of the New York-based Online Publishers Association, is quoted as saying -- "Paid services and content will become one of the legs in the stool that is going to support on-line publishing. Advertising, subscriptions and some syndication and licensing is going to be the mix that gets publishers to a winning combination and a profitable business."
Does it pay to charge for on-line news? by Andre Mayer. Globe and Mail (Jan 8, 2003)
Legislation: U.S. Congress may be considering anti-spam legislation and copyright protection (mainly for large copyright holders - software, music industry etc). Congress takes on spam, copyrights, taxes by Declan McCullagh. ZDNet (Jan 8, 2003)
Data Visualization: See linkages between web sites with the TouchGraph Google browser. Enter a url to see links of that site with others. There are also TouchGraph browsers for Amazon and PubMed where one can enter search terms and see the relationships. Chris Sherman wrote about this visual browsing in Visualizing the Web with Google - Search Day (Jan 8, 2003)
Search in 2002: Chris Sherman reviews Search Engine Watch Top Stories for 2002.
Spam: Ferris Research in San Francisco says spam is a big problem. It estimates that spam cost U.S. corporations $8.9 billion in 2002, and $2.5 billion in Europe. Costs are from time spent dealing with it and use of bandwidth and tech resources. Pornography was the most annoying form of spam - 91% complained. There is a surprising amount of spam that concerns finance and investments. Spam Cost Corporate America $9B in 2002 by Brian Morrissey. CyberAtlas (Jan 7, 2003)
SingingFish: Singingfish to Power Audio and Video Search in the Windows Media Player 9 Series and On WindowsMedia.com Business Wire via News Alert (Jan 7, 2003)
Danny Sullivan: Sullivan gives his bio and comments on trends in this interview with searchengineblog.com -- Ten Questions with Danny Sullivan . (Dec 2002) He says, "It's long overdue for search engines to do a better job of looking at our queries and delivering up more targeted results." He predicts more personalization.
Inktomi: Kenneth Morton, Director of Marketing and Product Strategy at Inktomi Web Search, was interviewed by searchengineblog.com. He said a few words about the Web Search 9 - the smart summaries and the fresher database - and not a whisper about Yahoo buying Inktomi. Ten Questions with: Kenneth Norton in Search Engine Blog. (Dec 2002)
Elsevier: Elsevier Science has been removing articles from its database of journals that it considers invalid for reasons of plagiarism or poor scholarship. Librarians and others are appalled at the damage done to "historical record". LexisNexis and Westlaw have also been known to remove articles. See Elsevier's Vanishing Act by Andrea Foster in The Chronicle of Higher Education - Information Technology. (Jan 10 2003)
FITA: The Federation of International Trade Associations has a substantial portal at fita.org . Its About page states that "The Federation of International Trade Associations (FITA), founded in 1984, fosters international trade by strengthening the role of local, regional, and national associations throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada that have an international mission." It has a substantial collection of web resources related to international trade and access to business directories (free and for fee). Of particular interest is the bi-weekly newsletter of "Really Useful Sites for International Trade Professionals". Unfortunately the site is rather aggressive in insisting on registering with an email address in order to see beyond the front page.
Fagan Finder: Never plod through one search engine after another to use its advanced features. Go directly to Fagan Finder's Search Engine Ultimate Interface and pick from nine engines. The interface is still in beta and isn't pretty but it could be very useful. It captures fairly well the search features of Google, Alltheweb, Altavista, and Teoma including limiting search to domain or title. The Inktomi search is based on using Position Tech - a simple, no-frills front end to the Inktomi database rather than the more advanced access provided through Hotbot. Wisenut, Gigablast, and Open Find are also here. (The to-be-avoided Northern Light is on the list too. This must be the still open back door to the aging Northern Light. A search for "hybrid cars" found only results from 2001 and earlier.)
The Fagan Finder site at http://www.faganfinder.com/ is an all-in-one page set of search tools.
Also of interest is the Web Page Information Viewer - a tool for finding information about a web page such as similar pages, translations, backlinks, and cached copies.
There is lots here to intrigue the web searcher. Fagan is also a seer with some interesting predictions for 2003. MSN buy Looksmart? Google take on portal qualities? Maybe.
Thanks to a Research Buzz alert about the search engine interface.
Google on Wireless: "Google and Sprint announced the availability of the first US-based wireless image search". The ads are on television too. People with PCS Vision phones will be able to browse and search the web in colour from their wireless phones. Google Comes To 3G Enabled Handsets Press Release from 3G.co.uk (Jan 6, 2003)
Hotbot: Jonathan Dube at Poynter Online likes the new Hotbot - the choice of 4 engines ( Google, Fast, Inktomi, Teoma) and the customizable search filters. His readers note some drawbacks - no cache, filter options are on the second page. One reader recommended Search22 - an all-in-one search page offering access to general and special purpose engines.
A Gift Better than Google (Jan 2, 2003)
HotBot vs. Google, Part II - Readers Respond (Jan 6, 2003)
Predictions for 2003: Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher has some predictions for online news and the Web in 2003.
- web advertising revenues might pick up and support free access to online news. New York Times Digital has said they won't be changing their policy (free for one month, for fee after that).
- web advertising might be less annoying. Pop-ups are under attack, and text ads are gaining use at search engines.
- the move to for-fee content will continue but not as quickly as previously thought.
- online recruitment for workers is growing. Newspapers will have to catch up.
- more multimedia will be used on the Web. It will be "flashier".
- wi-fi - wireless access everywhere - will get hotter. Newspapers should be thinking of ways to deliver content to wireless devices and engage its readers.
2003 Predictions For Online News Biz Outing's Thoughts On Ads, Wi-fi, and Paid Content - Steve Outing. Editor & Publisher. (Dec 18, 2002)
Ask Jeeves: Ask.com drops banner ads. Instead it will rely on Premier Listing (sponsored results) and Brand Response (ads with graphics). At least the pop-ups are gone. Ask Jeeves Is Banner Free in 2003 Press Release (Jan 6, 2003)
Yahoo: Party Like It's 1995 by Kevin Werbach. Slate (Jan 2, 2003) - "The commercial Web in 2003 is getting back to what worked years ago." Werbach reviews the rise and fall of portals and especially Yahoo, which, he says tries to be all things to all people instead of concentrating on their search needs. Buying Inktomi came too late.
Search Trends: in Ga-ga over Google (Icon, Jan 3, 2003) Jennifer Lee studies results from Google's Live Query - a continuous log of Google searches.
"Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the internet-connected world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things. Country to country, region to region, day to day and even minute to minute, the same topic areas bubble to the top: celebrities, current events, products and computer downloads."
"Predictably, Google's query data respond to television, movies and radio. But the mass media also feed off the demands of their audiences. One of Google's strengths is its predictive power, flagging trends before they hit the radar of other media."
Looking to 2003: Leslie Walker at the Washington Post says the tech shakeout will continue through 2003. In A Yawn of a Year in Tech (Dec 26, 2002) she wrote, "Expect more mega-flops before the great Internet collapse has run its course." Use of the Internet is increasing - shopping, dating, e-government. She lists four significant technology trends: WiFi - wireless fidelity, phone vs cable for broadband, business automation, and media decentralization.
Pepy's Diary: Phil Gyford in the UK has turned the Diary of Samuel Pepys into a weblog with daily entries beginning January 1, 1660. Follow the diary and the annotations of readers at http://www.pepysdiary.com/.
'Why I turned Pepys' diary into a weblog' BBC News (Jan 2, 2003)
Internet History: Happy Birthday, Dear Internet by Justin Jaffe in Wired (Dec 31, 2002). The idea of an Internet may date back to 1969 and the U.S. Department of Defense's Arpanet project, but it was the adoption on Jan 1 1983 of Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol for broad inter-network communications that made it possible.
Environment - Webliography: Barbie Kieser has written two extensive articles on web resources for environmental studies in Searcher.
Our Environment: Part 1, General Sources Searcher (Sep 2002)
Our Environment: Part 2, Governments, Laws, and Organizations Searcher (Nov/Dec 2002)
All-in-One Search: Searchenginez.com is possibly the best one-stop centre for finding search engines of all sorts, general and specialized. There are sections for News, People, Reference, Shopping, and Web building, as well as collections by country - Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. It doesn't have everything but what it does have seems to have been evaluated and picked for quality by someone very interested in searching.
Audio Searching: Fast-Talk will search for phonemes in an audio tape. The Power of Voice by Jon Udell in Infoworld (Dec 13, 2002)
Source: Audio Searching by Gary Price. Resourceshelf
Visualization: Demos of Antarctica's Visual Net for browsing through information depicted in map form are available. Antarcti.ca doesn't list them at their site but they turned up at Gary Price's Resourceshelf.
Map.net showing the Open Project Directory: http://maps.map.net/cat?ap=0;ms=10;xzwd=1;
Belmont Abbey College - Library -- http://belmont.antarcti.ca/start?ap=0;ms=10
Information Visualization by Gary Price. ResourceShelf (Dec 31, 2002)
Internet Use: People do more than surf the Net. About half of Internet uses use instant messaging. Others are heavy users of media players from MS and Real.com. Users Do More Than Surf by Robyn Greenspan. CyberAtlas (Dec 31, 2002)
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