Weblogs:
Weblogging - PBS Online News Hour "Web logs, or "blogs," are personal, online journals - and one of the fastest growing trends on the Internet. Terence Smith explores the motivation behind blogging and whether blogs represent the future of journalism." Available in text, streaming video, and Real Audio. Good article. Does say that weblogs don't have the editing that true journalism requires - but that may change, I think, as there are more group blogs or traceable connections between blogs.
Why Blogs Haven't Stormed the Business World By Tiernan Ray E-Commerce Times. (April 29, 2003) "Blog tools have made amateur publishing easy, but fundamental infrastructure is needed to make it all portable."
Managing Overload: We think we have overload. Elwyn Jenkins at Microdoc News watches 3,152 blog sites and 15,700 posts per day. So he has built a tool for himself that he offers to others to try. Managing Information Acquisition in the Blogosphere.(April 29, 2003)
Search Strategy: Enter a query at Google as a declarative sentence - such and such is, or was opened, or whatever. Microdoc News gives the example of -- The Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened -- to find the date it was built. Simplified Google Searching (April 29, 2003) Good advice - sentence format often helps the searcher give enough detail and use the best words to match to a page.
Search Statistics: qSearch, part of Comscore Media Metrix, has released some statistics on usage and find that - "Google.com accounts for 33 percent of all queries by English-speaking searchers ... . In the United States alone, Yahoo leads with 26 percent of the approximately 790 million searches performed in the states during the time covered by the qSearch report." More than half of search queries are Yahoo are for Yellow Pages and Finance. Dogpile, a meta-search engine with few features and a lot of ads, does very well too -- it has a ""visitor-to-searcher" conversion rate--or the percentage of people who visit a site and then end up searching there--of 83 percent. Ask Jeeves, a so-called natural language query engine, scored a 75 percent conversion rate." I have never understood the attraction Dogpile has unless it's the name. There may be a divide between work and home - Google and Yahoo take about a quarter each of the at work market, (27 percent and 26 percent respectively) and AOL and Yahoo in the at-home (25% each). 'New' rating confirms Google's crown By Paul Festa CNET News.com (April 29, 2003)
Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com questions those statistics More Meaningless Metrics?
Yahoo: Yahoo, according to this article, is doing very well under the leadership of CEO Terry Semel, formerly of Warner Brothers. "Since his arrival, Yahoo has been busy entering new businesses through an array of acquisitions and partnerships, including a broadband marketing deal with SBC Communications and buyouts of online employment site HotJobs and of the key search assets of Inktomi." Revenues have grown from advertising (mainly through Overture) and through for-pay premiums services which now have 2.9 subscribers. Sweet Semel of success By Jim Hu CNET News.com (Apr 29, 2003)
Reference: New York Public Library has included some web sites on its list of Best of Reference - newspaper directories, statistics, history, law, New York, general. (Via InterAlia)
Corporate Search Corporations seek better search results By Paul Festa CNet News (April 28, 2003) Corporate search engines are notoriously poor - or so Jupiter Research report found.
"Knowledge workers spend 15 percent to 30 percent of their day searching for information, according to IDC. But more than half of their online searches fail to turn up the desired information. IDC estimated that a company with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes at least $6 million every year spending hours on fruitless searches."
Search analytics are the key - collecting them and using them to make changes to the system. Article comments on Stratify, iPhrase, Verity, Autonomy, and Ask Jeeves.
Spam: AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo say they will fight spam. I hope so - and they can start with preventing their users from sending it out. Spam Becomes Public Enemy #1 By Mark Berniker . Atnewyork.com (April 28, 2003)
Weblogs In and Out: William Gibson out, Ester Dyson in. William Gibson 'gives up blogging' By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (April 25, 2003) The Register - but Ester Dyson, who wrote about the digital society in Release2.1, has started a blog.
Also, at least one reporter has been asked to stop blogging. Dennis Horgan with The Hartford Courant in Connecticut was asked by his editor to close his weblog.
Search log: Google watches the world through its own Zeitgeist -- Inside the Soul of the Web 24 hours watching the world look for answers at Google. By Michael S. Malone. Wired (May 2003). A must read for everyone who enjoys watching people pass by and wonder what they are thinking about. (Found in TVC Alert).
Pay Per Click: Searchengineblog ran a 5-part panel discussion on use of pay-per-click advertising - how to use it, why it's effective. Panelists were Ammon Johns , Andrew Goodman from Page Zero Media and Jim Banks from Web Diversit. Pay-Per-Click Strategies for Search Engine Marketers - Part 5 Part 5 links back to the first 4 parts. Helps in understanding how PPC became so prevalent.
Photos: United Press International provides a search facility to its database of over 100,000 photographs. UPI has some news stories at its home page, but requires subscription for all others. For the moment, the photos are for public viewing. http://www.upi.com/photos/index.cfm (Source: ResearchBuzz)
Internet Marketing: Internet Marketing Column by Michael Wong reports comScore Networks' qSearch to Measure Consumer Search Activity Across All Major Search Engines. Main point - Internet Marketing Column is a good looking blog.
Chris Sherman at SearchDay has a longer article on this. ComScore Launches Search Engine Tracking System (April 29, 2003). The new tracking system is expected to provide better, more informative data.
"The new data promises to give us a clearer idea of which players are truly the most popular with searchers, by eliminating "false positives" from results reported by the engines, or from traditional "page view" counting techniques. For example, qSearch eliminates automated queries from bots and metasearch engines, as well as the double-counting that occurs when the same query is submitted more than once."
Article points out that "four players dominate web search" - and includes some figures on volume. The big race now is for paid search listing.
Google: Microdoc News thinks that Google may have a weak spot - an Achilles heel. Google Inc's Achilles Heel (Apr 28, 2003) The weak spot is the changing Internet - people find other ways to find things. The example given is RSS for news feeds. But RSS is meeting people's needs to get the latest news or updates, it's not in searching on new topics or getting answers. Not to worry. But the article does raise another disturbing possibility - Microsoft embeds search in Windows. "Microsoft may try to pull a swift one on Google through including MSN Search within its operating system and put MSN Search so much at people's fingertips that a good number of Google Searches may be stolen from Google." - the world would revolt - wouldn't we?
Competitive Intelligence: Moreover has a new whitepaper -- Turning Online Information into Competitive Advantage prepared by CAP Ventures, a strategic consulting firm for providers and users of business communication technologies and services.
"Competitive intelligence efforts are implemented to make an organization as aware as possible of external influences that can impact its ability to succeed in the market. Knowing what to look for without becoming overwhelmed is the key to the process."
Search Tips: Mary Ellen Bates, longtime researcher and information broker, has a Tip of the Month page. Available by email. Thanks to MRD for the tip. Past issues:
February: Competitive Intelligence Tips
March: Updating Your Search Skills -- online tutorials from Dialog and Factiva.com, and the search tutorials at Resource Discovery Network
April: Searching by Format -- limiting by file format - why and how
Google Hacks: Good review of this book by Rael Dornfest and Tara Calishain about search things you can do with Google. Tips and tricks for Google geeks Daily Times. Pakistan (April 29, 2003). Mentions that all the hacks can be viewed at hacks.oreilly.com/pub/ht/2.
Kevin Shay created some hacks too. "One of his programs lets you search Google for terms that are within one, two or three words of each other (www.staggernation.com/cgi-bin/gaps.cgi). That’s Hack #71 in “Google Hacks."
Bookmark Managers: One of the most important tool for the heavy-duty web surfer is a bookmark manager that is independent of the browser (so that you can flit between IE, Netscape, and Opera), can be searched, can be organized. Anick Jesdanun, in USA Today, looks at Software to help you track down those elusive Web bookmarks (April 25, 2003). LinkStash was her favourite. My favourite is Compass - a Cross Browser Bookmark Manager - easy to add and file bookmarks, search them, and add comments. See http://www.softgauge.com/compass/index.htm - $25 US for all current and future versions.
Search Strategies: Genie Tyburski gives good advice in her article The Skill of the Hunt: Effective Research Strategies for Finding Information on the Web for finding good starting points when researching a topic. Reviews search statements at a search engine and recommends referring to high quality directories.
Search Tools: Greg Notess has updated his page of specialized search tools - email lists, weblogs, discussion forums, magazine articles, reference tools. See http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/others/.
Amazon: Google will be supplying sponsored listings to Amazon. Just when I thought Amazon couldn't get any more cluttered. Google and Amazon are also going to work together to "offer customers the best information to discover anything they want to buy online". A search for a CD by a performer migh trigger a search for concert tickets. Amazon to Feature Google Search and Ad Links By Reed Stevenson and Lisa Baertlein (April 3, 2002) Yahoo News.
RSS: Danny Sullivan has written two articles for ClickZ Today about finding RSS feeds. Since many weblogs produce RSS - rich site summary - files, this is almost the same as searching weblogs. Specifically looks at RSS directories and search engines.
RSS: Gateway to News and Blog Content, Part 1 (April 16, 2003)
RSS: Gateway to News and Blog Content, Part 2 (April 23)
Online News:
War briefly draws traffic to news sites by Dawn Kawamoto CNet News (April 24, 2003) -- Online news reading in the US went up during March with New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC seeing good increases in traffic. Viewership at foreign news sources, BBC World Services and Al-Jazeera, by Americans was even higher. However, all have dropped back to pre-war levels in April.
The Golden Search:
U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray has sponsored a report titled The Golden Search which reviews the search technology industry. Rita Vine has digested it and has some highlights. 5 key trends to shape the future of the search industry and More from Golden Search. I'll post some excerpts after I read it.
Databases: This tool is too good to ignore. From the Colorado Alliance comes Goldrush - a tool for identifying journals relevant to a topic and locating them in the databases of Information Aggregators. http://grweb.coalliance.org/ From the site: "Gold Rush is a new suite of web-based tools to help librarians better manage subscriptions to electronic resources." Search page is at http://goldrush.coalliance.org/ {Tip from FreePint Tipples by Celeste Smith (Jul 25, 2002)
Search: Great set of papers on search technology from a conference on human factors held in Florida April 6, 2003. Best Practices and Future Visions for Search UIs: A Workshop Goal of the workshop was "to create a road map of current best practices and future needs for search user interface design and research that can guide research and development from all sectors".
Some titles:
- Finding the right stuff
- Interface Techniques for Making Searching for Information More Effective
- Using categories to improve results
- A Search User Interface in a Digital Library Application
- Utilizing a users context to improve search results
- Best Practices and Future Visions for Search User Interfaces: Position Paper
- "I'm Feeling Lucky": the Role of Emotions in Seeking Information on the Web
- Search Without Keywords
- Reconciling Information-Seeking Behavior with Search User Interfaces for the Web
- Search in the Web Shopping Environment
- Dynamic taxonomies and guided searches
- Predicting Where a Web User Wants to Go
Source: The ResourceShelf
Yahoo Tip: Use the ! to jump around in Yahoo. Gary Price explains. Yahoo, the Exclamation Point, and Shortcuts
New Blog on Web Search: Rita Vine of SearchPortfolio in Toronto, Canada, has begun a new blog for web searchers called SiteLines. http://www.workingfaster.com/sitelines/ Selections look very focused and practical - aimed at quality.
Search Tip: Google's Craig Silverstein says that it is best to phrase a question as an answer at Google. Not - what is the capital of Illinois, but - the capital of Illinois is. Yes - Chris Sherman said that years ago - he called it "fill in the blank". Mainly the principle is to think of the words and phrasing the writer might use. For short phrases use quotation marks ("capital of illinois is"), for longer phrases do a free-form search (the causes of the vietnam war were). Tech chief says Google looking into the future by Greg Kline, News Gazette (Apr 23, 2003)
Blogging: New blogging service will be available through Six Apart, home of Movable Type. It's called Type Pad and will operate as a turnkey operation, perhaps similar to Bloggers. But Blogger is also developing something new. Start-up talks up new blog service by Margaret Kane. CNet News (Apr 23, 2003) Good - we need better, more reliable and easy-to-use tools.
Google and Applied Semantics: Google will be adding more intelligence to its ad placements. It just bought Applied Semantics, a company whose technology is used by Overture for content marketing; ie matching advertisement to web page content.
Google snaps up Applied Semantics by Dawn Kawamoto and Stefanie Olsen. CNet News (April 23, 2003)
"AdSense uses search algorithms to understand the context of a Web page related to keywords. For example, it will boil down the content of a page so it can be matched up to a keyword about Java technology, as opposed to a cup of coffee or a travel getaway to the Pacific. Web publishers, including USAToday.com, use AdSense to push text-only ads onto news pages that are related to the pitch."
See also Danny Sullivan's comments in Google Buys Applied Semantics SearchDay. Applied Semantics used to be Oingo, a meaning extracting search engine. Turns out it also applies its content classification technology to promoting domain names through a DomainPark. Accidentally enter www.shops.com and you'll get a directory of topics to Overture paid placement advertisements. Ah - I have always thought of these as one more annoying ad-ridden pop-up.
Newsgroup monitoring: Newsgroups aren't the hotbeds of grassroots sentiment they used to be but there may still be some reason to monitor them for company, product, meme. Netnews Tracker watches the newsgroups indexed in Google Groups. http://www.netnewstracker.com.
Ask Jeeves: Microdoc News tested the new Ask Jeeves and found it very good at picking up results from the past two weeks, but was dismayed to see that Ask Jeeves links to the main site page and not to the page with the answer. This is not something I have ever noticed except in the cases where I was searching for directions or weather - in which case AJ links to the tool for you to ask the specific questions. For the standard research kind of question such as "how are blogging tools used for collaborative work", AJ (actually Teoma) finds matches on pages. The good news from the Microdoc News report is that freshness of the database has much improved. Ask Jeeves -- What is the best search engine? -- (April 23, 2003)
Web Page Monitoring: Agentland has an article about WebSite Watcher, a popular software program for monitoring web pages. The article provides a fairly comprehensive description in text and screenshots of the features and capabilities. These include the automatic monitoring at set intervals, easy viewing, alerts, filters, archives and more. Software such as Website Watcher is recommended for people who need to monitor many web pages.
WebSite Watcher: the choice between power and simplicity
"Website Watcher is a program that is making a lot of noise among the community of intelligent agent enthusiasts. It seems to federate a wide range of approval and positive feedback. So we decided to put Website Watcher to the test to try and answer the question that everyone is asking at the moment: is Website Watcher the ideal monitoring tool?"
Information Industry: eContent Magazine has summarized a report from IRN Research about the European online information market. It notes a growth of 12 % in revenues in 2002 largely related to scientific, technical and medical information (STM). But online revenues are still less than 50% of total. Business and STM markets differ in usage of free vs for-fee. "Over 60% of business information professionals claim to be using some free information to replace information that they previously paid for, a much higher percentage than in previous surveys. In the STM information market, the role played by free information sources appears to be less of a threat, with many information professionals using these sources as supplementary sources to fee-based core services"
STM Drives Growth in European Online Information Market EContent Magazine (April 22, 2003)
Spam, more spam: Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam by Saul Hansell. New York Times (April 22, 2003). E-mail spammers have ways of getting around the filters - at least for a while. I think that we'll have to switch our filters around and accept email only from addresses we know.
Advertising: Search to grow faster than e-commerce on the web, says research firm Internet Retailer (April 21, 2003) Search revenues are expected to outstrip online sales according to US Bancorp Piper Jaffray Research. The leaders are Overture, Google, Yahoo, and MSN. "One of the drivers of search growth in the future will be an expansion of its search scope–-in other words, using Internet search to find things beyond web sites, such as phone numbers, for example". Expect more ads on everything you look up even if it's a definition.
Spam: Andrew Goodman received a special offer from Quote.com out of the blue. How did that happen? Lycos dug up an old email address. Goodman also divulges that he uses aliases and odd addresses when registering on the Web. Doesn't everyone? Lycos Joins the Slippery-Slope-to-Spam Club Traffick.com (April 22, 2003)
New Yorker: Articles in the New Yorker about the war in Iraq are collected at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/previous/?030421frprsp_previous1.
Overture - Fast: Overture Completes Acquisition of Web Search Unit of Fast Search & Transfer Press release via NewsAlert.com. (April 21, 2003) - we might start to see changes soon at Alltheweb.
"As part of the agreement, Overture acquired AlltheWeb.com, FAST's search technology showcase Web site, which the company will use to test and experiment new approaches in search. The acquisition also will add to Overture's international presence through FAST's key distribution relationships and advanced linguistic capabilities in about 50 languages."
Online News: PC Magazine has an article about the increased use of the Internet for news due to the war. A chronological view as well as additional sources of news are provided through links to other articles. America Turns to the Internet for War Coverage by Cade Metz (April 16, 2003).
From the article: "Since the events of September 11, 2001, the Internet has become an ever more important part of the way we gather our news. Nielsen/NetRatings says that the number of visitors to Internet news sites grew more than 20 percent over the past year—a trend accelerated by the war on Iraq. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the Web was the primary news source for three percent of American Internet users in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. By late March of this year, 17 percent cited the Web as their main source for information about the progress of American and British troops in the Middle East."
Google Hacks: International Herald Tribune reviewed the book Google Hacks and picked up some of the tips from co-author Tara Calishain -- Tips and tricks for Google geeks by Lee Demhart (April 21, 2003)
ERIC: ERIC Continues But Without Clearinghouses by Barbara Quint. Infromation Today Newsbreaks (April 21, 2003) ERIC - Educational Resources Information Center - has maintained a education database since 1966 from contributions of several academic clearinghouses. Support for the clearinghouses will end is to end with a new search engine.
Ask Jeeves: Ask Jeeves has changed their search results page to show news headlines and pictures, where available, and show more search results. "George W Bush" does find news headlines as does SARS. Sars Canada does not, nor does "Jean Chretien". Queries that look for photos or pictures will find them - for example, pictures of daffodils.
Leaner Jeeves, Faster Anwsers by Leslie Walker. Washington Post (April 20, 2003)
Chis Sherman reviewed it in SearchDay -- Ask Jeeves Serves Up New Features (April 21, 2003) -- and liked it. He mentioned that the related searches come from Direct Hit, the former popularity search engine, and web search results from Teoma. There are several "smart" enhancements.
AJ can identify multiple meanings of a word. Enter jaguar and it asks about cars, animal or a sports team. This is just about as good as Oingo used to be.
It can handle driving directions. I tried -- drive from toronto to ottawa -- to get a distance calculator (352 km), the official web sites for the two cities, and a city guide. Using the words -- driving directions toronto to ottawa -- will trigger "where can I get customized driving directions".
Similarly it's very good at quickly finding tools for currency conversion and language translation. it will look up acronyms and abbreviations - ask it what does NF stand for and Newfoundland will be on the list from Acronym Finder (Niagara Falls too). It will find a zip code easily - enter zip code 98115. It's slower with Canadian postal codes but will direct you to Canada Post eventually.
This direction is similar to Yahoo's shortcuts - but I think I find Ask Jeeves a little easier. Certainly, it's excellent use of the specialty answer sites that Ask Jeeves first built its reputation on.
The press release -- Ask Jeeves Introduces Intuitive Approach to Search with New Release of Ask.com (April 21, 2003) -- has details on Smart Answers, Pictures, News, Related Search, Spell Check, and Clarification Tools.
Reuters headlined its story -- Ask Jeeves ogles Google users -- of interest, "Though Web search technology itself is not a huge revenue driver, good search results help spur traffic to Internet sites and are a key factor behind revenue from advertising services that is linked to Web search results."
The search scene is never dull.
Google vs Microsoft: Microdoc News has collected several clues that Microsoft will do battle with Google. Microsoft Reveals Battle Plans Against Google (April 19, 2003)
Search Engines: Convergence of Search Engines & Weblogs. Microdoc News (April 18, 2003) Sees benefits in the distributed crawling done by Grub for Looksmart - finds that there is a substantial increment in power for the network with each additional computer. Also notes that weblogs are a distributed activity and that Google makes good use of blogging to identify reader interests.
"Weblog writing is a highly distributed activity, particularly when a weblogger hosts her/his weblog on a different server than a main hosting server. Grub is an example of crawling the web using a distributed model. Both are information management activities conducted using a distributed model."
Surfwax: SurfWax Launches Enterprise Tool in EContent (April 18, 2003) The excellent Surfwax meta-search and research tool is now available as an enterprise version as an "integrated Web search and knowledge management tool". Also reviewed in SurfWax Aims to Surf into the Enterprise Market by Paula J. Hane. Information Today. (April 21)
Browsers: The last of a 4-part series from News.com about browsers. Future: Is there life after the browser? By David Becker (April 18, 2003) The browser if not the Internet - anymore. There are many other special purpose tools that one needs for full enjoyment and exploitation. Among the tools mentioned were Gurunet - quick reference tool, Active Buddy - for instant messaging, NewsMonster - as a RSS news reader, Macromedia add-ons.
Wi-Fi: Business Week ran a special on the wireless technology - Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi Means Business (April 28, 2003). There are several articles. Wi-Fi is off the street, bottom up, and has created hot spots for accessing the Internet in coffee shops and food malls.
"What is Wi-Fi? It's a radio signal that beams Internet connections out 300 feet. Attach it to a broadband modem and any nearby computers equipped with Wi-Fi receptors can log on to the Net, whether they're in the cubicle across the hall, the apartment next door, or the hammock out back. To date, Wi-Fi has grown on the scruffy fringes of the networked world. It shares an unregulated radio spectrum with a motley crew of contraptions, including cordless phones and baby monitors."
For Fee: Locking Up the Web By Lance Ulanoff PC Magazine (April 16, 2003) --examines impact of move of web content from free to for fee. Suggests that for-fee will discourage use and hence growth of information on the Net. Does a fast forward to 2013 and wonders if search will bring up anything other than personal sites.
"The reality is that over the next few years, many hard information sources are going to lock their doors and start handing out keys only to those willing to pay. The complexion of the Web will change in ways we cannot imagine. The Web of 2013 and beyond will be a barred well of information accessible only to those who throw in silver and gold. This is a fact. There's no way to change it, so maybe we need to rediscover how we used to do research. Library card, anyone?"
Microsoft Search: Microsoft Research seeks better search by Michael Kanellos. CNet (April 17, 2003) Microsoft would like to search the desktop too as well as the Internet - and presumably the intranet. They are experimenting with "Stuff I've seen" for the general search, "Ask MSR" for natural language queries and several others. "While search tools exist today, a major focus of Microsoft's research will be to allow for a freer flow of associations between data and to expand how searches can take place."
Web Radio: Freepint has an article by Ian Winship - "Radio on the Web" (April 17, 2003) Covers news radio, software needed, radio tuners, directories and program guides. Tends to emphasize BBC, mentions NPR, no mention of CBC.
Browser Add-Ons: Toolbars can speed up searching. Rick Klau reviews some in nothing.but.net: Supercharge Your Browser ABA Law Practice. He lists search toolbars and bookmarklets (some are handy) but not the very useful iLor Hydralinks. (Source: TVC Alert)
Business Research Gary Price has permission to link to issues of Information Advisor. This is an excellent newsletter for business information professionals and researchers edited by Bob Berkman of Find/SVP. Worth your time. See Full-Text Content from The Information Advisor (April 12, 2003) - links to issue on Digging for Data on Subsidiaries.
Google: Gary Price links to and reflects on an article in the New York Times -- "In Searching the Web, Google Finds Riches". See Web Search - Google (April 13, 2003 ) He considers it a "good overview of the web search world in the Google age".
Alltheweb: Alltheweb has added three features
- Dictionary lookup for query terms - useful for everyone.
- Voyeur - see what others are searching for. This always draws attention. People must get a kick out of it.
- Shortcuts - navigate without a mouse. Good for regular users.
Looksmart: Building a Bigger Search Engine by Leander Chaney. Wired (April 17, 2003) - All about Looksmart's use of Grub to tap into extra cycles on volunteer computers to index the web. It's ambitious. Not only do they hope to enlarge the index and do the link analysis, but they want to extract meaning.
"If the Grub project attracts enough volunteers, it may be capable of performing the holy grail of Web searches: a real-time "semantic parse" of the Web. Stechert said."
Internet Use: The digital divide is not that simple. In the United States 42% don't use the Internet. A new study from Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that 20% of non-users live in homes with Internet connections. These are "net-evaders". 17% of non-users used to use - they are "net-dropouts". For those who have never used the Internet there are some patterns - tend to be older, tend to be less affluent, tend to be less educated. Friends and access aren't large factors. 74% have friends or family who use the Internet, and 60% know where they can get access.
"Non-users say they feel no need or desire to use the Internet, or that going online is not a good use of their time. This nonchalance and resistance is often related to a general misconception of what the Web and email have to offer. In other cases, reluctance is connected to specific obstacles, fears, or previous online experiences." Those obstacles include cost, language skills, fear of computers, time, difficulty, fraud and online pornography.
The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet access and the digital divide - The report from Pew Internet and American Life
Internet simply not a necessity for some: Study By Lisa M. Bowman CNET (April 16, 2003)
Browsers: But Microsoft doesn't control the specialty browser market for cell phones and PDAs and custom-made browsers for special applications. Nonetheless, at least for the desktop, IE has the advantage of non-standard IE-specific pages that others must be able to render.Guerrilla browsers continue the battle By Paul Festa CNet News (April 16, 2003) Also at News.com (where articles stay online longer) -- Upstarts: Evolution creates second wave.
"Two reasons are driving the development of alternatives to the ubiquitous Internet Explorer (IE). First, micro-browsers for small hardware such as cell phones and handheld Net devices are challenging Microsoft, which was never able to replicate its desktop dominance in these markets. Second, "open source" developers see new opportunities in browsers that can be customized and perform more functions, as evidenced by the release of Apple Computer's Safari this year."
Disambiguation: Andrew Goodman at Traffick wonders how well targeted advertising will be able to handle disambiguation. Will java always mean coffee? AdSense Technology does have ability to understand what a page is about; Google's ad program doesn't. Taking Disambiguation Seriously (Apr 15, 2003)
Browsers: How Internet Explorer came to have 95% of the browser market - not a pretty story. It cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars in development, marketing, and legal costs and wrecked great damage on all who got in its way. To the browser war's victor go the spoils By John Borland, Paul Festa, David Becker and Mike Yamamoto CNET (via Globe and Mail).
"Critics say the lack of real competition in the browser business has stopped innovation in its technology. Although software efforts with tiny market share such as Opera, Apple’s Safari, and the open-source Mozilla project are evolving, they note, Internet Explorer itself has made no sweeping advancements in Web browser technology in years. The back button, bookmarks, address bar and home page button — all original Mosaic features — are still the basic tools of Web navigation."
Porn Filters: Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society found that Google's SafeSearch porn filter has been blocking legitimate, non-porn pages. Danny Sullivan responds to the study and reminds us that the filters, though not perfect, are very much needed. Harvard Criticizes Google's Adult Content Filter SearchDay (April 16, 2003)
Enterprise Portal: Death knell for Enterprise Portal pure players? by Phil Howard. it-Analysis.com (April 16, 2003) Examines Open Text's acquisition of Corechange and observes that there are no vendors today that are "pure players".
"Over the last few months we have surely seen the demise of the so-called "pure players" within the enterprise portal market. Epicentric was taken over by Vignette, Plumtree has expanded its product set to the extent that it is at least arguable that it is no longer a pure player and, most recently, Corechange has been acquired by Open Text."
China: Sina.com is joining 200 other Chinese portals in a government-backed project to build a search engine for China and using Chinese web content. Chinese portals link to challenge Google by Sidney Luk, South China Morning Post (Apr 16, 2003)
Google: Google: How the Competition Stacks Up. in Microdoc News (Apr 15, 2003) Microdoc News looks at search tools according to searching styles and behaviours identified by psychologist, Dr Glenn Livingston, of Executive Solutions Inc. Google serves all 5 styles. All search engines - Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Overture - will attract readers and viewers, but only Google draws in the technodoers and discoverers and has more appeal for writers. Interesting theory.
Portals: Portals can have very useful features for delivering current awareness services. They can be tailored for particular communities. This writer calls them microportals and gives some examples of where and how they can be of value. The Big Need for Little Portals by Ian Davis (Apr 15, 2003) Line 56 --
"Consider small and repeatable template-based portal solutions for similar projects and groups in the enterprise"
Webby Awards: The Web's best are recognized by the Webby Awards in June 2003. Everyone is invited to vote on this year's list of nominees until May 23. Webby 2003 Nominees. There are 30 categories of 5 each. CBC Radio 3 has a nomination for Broadband and for Radio.
Webby Awards Reveal Finalists PC World (April 11, 2003)
Current Awareness: Communicator Inc will be delivering financial news from Dow Jones Newswires to customers using its Hub IM. Hub IM "combines real-time messaging and discussion group forums with instantaneous delivery of news and other important information. It is integrated with an address directory and identity management capabilities that use a company’s business rules to manage who has access to whom and how they can be accessed, combined with a wide range of message tracking, archiving and security protections. Dow Jones Newswires’ headlines are viewed within an integrated tab in the messaging and collaboration tool. Hub IM is delivered as a hosted, managed service. "
Dow Jones Newswires to Deliver News Through Communicator Inc's Hub IM . Press release (Apr 14, 2003)
Browser: Opera is testing version 7.1 for Windows and Linux. A newer Mac version is promised in spite of Apple's launch of the competiting Safari. New features in 7.1 sound very useful - especially "Notes" - "lets the surfer write notes about a Web page or cull clips from it so that subsequent references to the note automatically call up the page's address." Opera scales up to 7.1, vows Mac update by Paul Festa. CNet News (April 14, 2003)\
Meanwhile, Apple has a new test version of Safari - Safari Beta 2 for Mac OS X -- Apple adds features to Safari browser CNet News (April 14, 2003)
Search Performance: VeriTest evaluated the relevance of results through Inktomi and found they compared favourably to Google. All other engines slip quickly in positions 2 to 10. Reported in Pandia Search World (Apr 10, 2003)
Also - Inktomi, Google Win In Recent Relevancy Test by Danny Sullivan. Search Day (April 17, 2003) - has some details on the study and questions the panel's assessment of relevance.
Google Movies: Get movie reviews from this application by Avaquest -- GoogleMovies But this does more than find reviews - it analyzes the review to determine if it is positive or negative - it's called sentiment classification. A green, smiling-face disc marks a positive review and a yellow, frowning one, a negative. The red disc must mean - danger.
Yahoo Shortcuts: Yahoo users will get a lot of mileage out of the shortcuts. Jeremy Zawodny picked up on using the !. Use it to quickly get to one of the Yahoo properties -- such as mail! shopping! groups!. Get the complete list of shortcuts from Shortcuts at a Glance.
For a full description of Yahoo's new search options, see ResearchBuzz -- Yahoo Offering New Search Options (April 7, 2003)
Leslie Walker at Washington Post runs some test searches too. She concludes, "Yahoo wants to tap databases to deliver relevant information -- much of it local -- at the precise moment you post your query." It also intends to make more money connecting content and advertising. Yahoo Plays With Search And Syntax Washington Post (April 10, 2003)
Headline News: Washington Post will supply free headline news to web sites. Think Inside the Box
Browsers: Ten years ago the browser was born. "The unassuming piece of software revolutionized high technology akin to the way the remote control reinvented television, but in manifold more dimensions with universal consequences. In roughly six months of 1995, Mosaic transformed the Internet from the esoteric province of researchers and technophiles to a household appliance, creating a multibillion-dollar industry and changing the way society works, communicates and even falls in love--in short, affecting nearly every facet of life." We've scarcely begun to comprehend the impact of the browser on our way of living with and managing information. The article also has some follow-up thumbnails on the pioneer developers of the Mosaic browser from NCSA.
Legacy: A brave new World Wide Web By Mike Yamamoto CNET News.com (April 14, 2003)
Maps of Japan: Japanese maps stored at the University of California may be viewed online at www.davidrumsey.com/japan. These span 400 years. About 10% of the collection is available - 210 maps from 2,300. "Visitors to the Web site can save the maps for their own collections; analyze, rotate, enlarge and crop them; and compare them with modern maps."
In Vintage Maps, a Japan Bygone Floats Lyrically Online by Julie Lew. New York Times (April 10, 2003)
Yahoo: Yahoo! Revises Estimates Upward, Reports Profit By Pamela Parker in SiliconValley (April 9, 2003) -- Yahoo had a 47% increase in revenue in Quarter 1 over the previous year. Paid search was a large chunk of that. Yahoo saw paid membership increase from 2.2 million to 2.9 million in one quarter. It is said to be in "solid financial shape, and is well positioned for future acquisitions".
Image Search: Chris Sherman finds Collective.net useful for finding images of the covers of old magazines - specifically Time, record covers, baseball cards etc. See Searching Images of Popular Culture in SearchDay (April 14, 2003)
SearchEngineWatch: SearchEngineWatch has received a makeover. It has a turquoisy blue that I don't think has been seen since the 1950s. Half the page is billboard space for advertisements - the SearchEngineWatch marketplace. The centre panel is for links to articles by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. The design is probably ok for people who know what SEW does, but I'm not sure a newcomer could quickly grasp the purpose and structure of the site.
Spyware: We can't be too vigilant about blocking intrusive software that tracks what you do online and reports it. PC Magazine tells us what to look for and how to fix it in Spyware—It's lurking on your machine. SpyBot Search & Destroy was the Editor's Choice - it's free and it finds and removes the spyware programs. (Apr 22, 2003)
Gurunet: Atomica Releases GuruNet 4.1 "New Version of 1-Click Fact-Finder Adds 11-Language Translations and Over 7,000 War-in-Iraq Terms" (April 9, 2003)
Web Page Monitoring: Chris Sherman lists his favourite tools for watching web pages in Monitoring Web Pages 24 Hours a Day (April 9, 2003) Web-Site Watcher (software) is his top pick followed by the web-based Watchthatpage, Trackengine, and Infominder.
Internet Librarian: Presentations from Internet Librarian International UK from March 2003 are online. Of particular interest:
- The Future of Search Technology by Dr John M Lervik, CEO and CO-Founder of Fast. Describes the state of search and examines Scirus as an example of a search engine.
- Expanding your Research Toolkit - Mary Ellen Bates
- Finding Books on the Web - Paul Nieuwenhuysen
- Blogging - Darlene Fichter (University of Saskatachewan)
History of Web Search: Danny Sullivan reviewed the past 10 years of search engines in Where Are They Now? (April 3, 2003) in Clickz -- the dead, the changed (or reborn), the same, the new, and powered by others. He says that Looksmart and Altavista are the same as they ever were. Altavista has had many feature changes - it's better - not the same. Looksmart, on the other hand, is worse. It used to be a real directory with reviewed sites. Today it is more like a yellow pages and still has a dreadful search facility.
Current Awareness: Nexcerpt is software for monitoring web sites and "publishing" clips. Barbara Quint in Searcher calls it Another Killer Product (April 2003). Genie Tyburski of Virtual Chase isn't as fond of it -- Monitoring the Web with Nexcerpt (April 8, 2003)
Yahoo: Microdoc News finds that the new search at Yahoo is still using Google exclusively (and nothing from Inktomi) and that it does so selectively. It concludes "So far, the New Yahoo Search does not feature any results from its acquisition Inktomi. It is featuring Google Results at this time. However, it seems that Yahoo plays with those results only showing a subset of everything that Google has to offer according to some selection process."
How Google is New Yahoo Search? Microdoc News (April 8, 2003)
RSS and Newsreaders: ActiveRefresh is a new newsreader from SisyphSoft-- "ActiveRefresh is a web news reader which will save you browsing time by monitoring information sources, gathering all of the information that you regularly access and presenting it in comfortable and adjustable way..." One of the best features is being able to create a RSS-Like channel for pages that don't have a prepared RSS file. Full trial version available - $23.95 US. Worth trying.
Invisible Web: Genie Tyburski and Gayle O'Connor have made their handout and presentation about the Invisible Web available on the Web. The Invisible Web: a Brief Note and Bibliography Includes examples of web sites that are "invisible web" and why and recommends sources for finding more. Presentation has scenarios on situations where the invisible web has the answer and provides strategies and resources for finding that information. It was sponsored by Special Libraries Association, Legal Division.
Yahoo: Change at Yahoo began today. There is a new search interface at new.search.yahoo.com. It's bigger and brighter and has more options.
Results are displayed in tabbed style: Web, Directory, News, Yellow Page, Images. Quick access to images is new.
There are shortcut options for quick lookups. Shortcut options are described at http://search.yahoo.com/new_search_tour/tour_shortcuts.html. They are US only and include:
- map (address) // weather (city) // news (topic) // zip code (business) eg, 98115 flowers // define (word) for dictionary lookup.
Use of Yahoo Search can be customized for blocking adult content, opening in new window, language, number of results.
There are fewer banner ads (maybe none), but the longer list of sponsored sites and the side text panels more than make up for it.
In all, navigation is easier from Web to Directory to News etc and there is a clearer distinction between Web and Directory. Yahoo is still using Google for the web search and now includes a link to the cached copy. There seems to be even more ads and sponsored listings than before - especially on the Directory page. Yahoo certainly has some wonderful services - news, finance, mail etc. But for web searching, I would stick with Google and for a directory, Open Directory.
Yahoo Canada is unaffected by these changes.
See Chris Sherman's review in SearchDay Yahoo Moves to Revitalize Search (April 8, 2003, and the AP release in Wired -- Yahoo Retools Search Engine
Blogging: Where everybody is a war reporter "The first Gulf War did it for CNN. The new one may do it for 'blogs' -- personal Web pages of news and opinion, tracking and debating Iraq's fate by the minute. As JOHN ALLEMANG writes, they're now many people's first choice for unembedded journalism" John Allemang. Globe and Mail (March 29, 2003) - Finds in general that weblogs are a powerful new way of communication. Mentions some top war blogs.
Google News: Google News is picking up company press releases - but is this news? Google News: press releases are OK - Official By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco, The Register. (April 5, 2003) This article says they aren't true news stories and it means the system is not truly automated - there is a bias being introduced. "This isn't some synthetic version of reality created entirely by robots. The selection and placement of stories were determined by a person, someone who thinks unedited press releases from lobbyists, special interest groups or corporations are "News". " Perhaps one day Google will add a filter we can use to distinguish press reports from press releases.
Gator: Forbes magazine doesn't think Gator will go away. Gator is software on a computer that watches what you look at on the Web and serves up advertisements accordingly. This article says that between 25 to 50% of computers have it - possibly unknowingly. Gator can be attached to other software or applets - and just gets loaded in without the person realizing it. Publishers especially don't like it and some of them have taken Gator to court. What is really amazing is that Web surfers click on between 6% to 25% of these popup ads. And how many of those clicks are accidental? How Not To Wrestle A Gator Michael Smith (April 3, 2003) Forbes.com
Domains: State and local governments in the United States may use the .gov domain. However, they should "place their full state name or postal abbreviation within the name, such as Virginia.gov or NMparks.gov." County and city governments "can use the domain by including their state’s postal abbreviation in the Web address, such as Chicago-il.gov or Detroitmi.gov". GSA releases final rule for .gov Government Computer News (March 28, 2003) And this is helpful?
WWW Conference: Gary Price is tracking the papers from the 12th Annual World Wide Web Conference.Conference Papers.
Biography Search: Gary Price picks Peter Jacso's Biographies PolySearch Engine as recommended resource. Jacso describes his collection as "edited, collective, searchable and substantial biography collections in the genres needed the most often by most users." See Searching for People at the ResourceShelf.
Teoma: Head honjos at Teoma and Ask Jeeves talk in What makes a good search engine? by James Matthewson. Computer User April 2003. Apostolos Gerasoulis, head of Research and Development, describes how Teoma's community analysis makes it significantly different from Google. Steve Berkowitz, president of Ask Jeeves Web Properties, reports on Ask Jeeves' recent success at increasing traffic - in part thanks to their use of Teoma.
Travel Online: Top four service online travel agents are Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Trip Network. Cendant has bought the network which includes Trip.com and Cheap Tickets. It will make Cheap Tickets the main brand and close Trip.com. Cendant Says Bye-Bye to Trip.com in ECommerce (April 2, 2003)
Overture: Stock price falls with rumours that MSN is thinking of creating its own paid-search service and that Yahoo want to buy e-Spotting. Nothing confirmed yet. The Overture, search squeeze by Bambi Francisco CBS MarketWatch.com (April 2, 2003) -- "Overture Services may rank as the ultimate case study of why a company should never be overly dependent on one or two customers. "
More evidence that MSN will do own paid search -- Report: Microsoft eyes paid search by Lisa Bowen and Stephanie Olsen, CNet News (April 2, 2003)
RSS: All you really need to know about RSS is covered by Danny Sullivan in the April 2003 Search Engine Watch. Has articles on Loving Each Other More: Search Engines & Blogs, RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content, Making An RSS Feed. As well there is a good update on Search Engine Resources. (Full newsletter is available until end of April.)
Searching for Images: A Review of Image Search Engines February 2003 in TASi (Technical Advisory Service for Images ) in the UK. Reviews and evaluates a range of tools - general search engines, meta search engines, collections. Finds that collection-based image search engines such as Corbis and Getty are the best, the large automated image search engines like Google and Altavista may disappoint, and the meta-search engines are poor.
Google Toolbar: Another article alerting everyone to the fact that Google will monitor pages viewed through the Google Toolbar if PageRank is activated - but it is anonymous. Google Watch By Cade Metz. PC Magazine (April 1, 2003)
HIghlights: SearchDay will be recapping the top search engine stories at the beginning of each month for the previous month. First issue is for March 2003. Good idea.
Switch: Aaron Swartz, author of Google Blog, is closing that blog and switching to one about Overture. He says Overture is where the action is. March 31, 2003: The End of the Google Blog (Source - beSpacific).
Discussion Community: MetaFilter is an example of the weblog as a discussion community in the tradition of newsgroups and web forums but with a new flair - or as MetaFilter says "weblog as conversation" and "more addictive than crack".
"MetaFilter is a community of users that find and discuss things on the web. The topics run the gamut, and tend to run intelligent and civil. If it's your first time here, hang out, and get a feel for the place."
BeSpacific calls it a "current affairs community weblog" and noted the new search facility sponsored by Google. Metafilter Blog Archives and Google Search Tool
Ethos: Microdoc News says Google Gives Ordinary People a Voice (April 2, 2003). Google is seen as a democratizing force - or at least an equalizing one - in which anyone can publish and be read.
"Different to all other search engines at this time, the core value of Google is that not only can I extract information from Google, I can also input information. Google is a medium through which I can be found when people use almost any words that appear on my pages. This is a medium through which people can access what I write, and therefore I write more. When people search, they also get the feeling that through Google they can get relevant results of pages that really matter."
Weblogs: Dr Anne Clyde at the University of Iceland has built up a very large collection of weblogs of interest to librarians. Also listed are blog about blogs, background articles about blogs, directories and guides, and software. The Internet Courses - Weblogs at http://www.hi.is/~anne/weblogs.html
Web Searching: This weblog, Internet News, is one of several listed by Greg Notess on the new Search Engine Showdown page -- Search Engine Newsletters, Lists, and Discussion Groups. I'm very pleased.
Data Visualization: Antarctica has revived its newsletter. Antarctica is known for its cartographic software Visual Net. To subscribe go to the Request Centre. A copy of the newsletter is not kept at the web site - so subscribe soon to get the email version.
One of many interesting sections to the March 2003 issue was about "keeping up with the industry" in which Antartica recommended the website, An Atlas of Cyberspaces -- " One of our favorite resources for keeping up with the diversity and creativity happening with all types of data visualization, in particular mapping, is An Atlas of Cyberspaces. This is an atlas of maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the Internet, the World Wide Web and other emerging Cyberspaces." http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html
Meta-Search: Killerinfo.com, a meta-search engine that uses the Vivisimo clustering technology, has added country specific searches. Canada includes Yahoo.ca, Altavista.ca, MSN.ca and appears to really find just Canadian sites. Note, Killerinfo does not succeed at getting results from Google - as is the case with many meta-search engines. Other countries are Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden.
Killerinfo also brings up results from eLibrary and puts them into a side-panel - much better than loading them up at the top.
All-in-One: Microdoc News will be looking at the all-in-one page - or "search compilations". They kicked it off with an interview with Michael Fagan of Faganfinder. He's a high-school student in Ontario! Fagan Finder Search: Interview with Michael Fagan He thinks main users are " are SEOs, and journalists, lawyers, and librarians; that is, more advanced internet users."
He said, "I see Fagan Finder as a starting place, the first place to go to find something, and it will lead you elsewhere. In the case of the date-range searching available on FF's Google interfaces, that can't be found anywhere else. The ammount of tools assembled together on my Page Info Viewer save so much time for people who would use those tools. I could probably go on forever... although, I do know, of course, that not everything can be found on Fagan Finder. And that's why I have to work on it. Street Maps, White and Yellow Pages, Intellectual Property, and Business, are among the topics I haven't yet begun. I plan on it though."
Google Search: Microdoc News has tips on creating a web page with ready-made searches on Google. First installment of Build Your Own Google Interface covers filetype (March 31), Country and Date Search (April 1), Site Search (April 2). There is a demo page. Might be easier to save that page and modify, or simpler still - just bookmark it. (No longer available - August 2003)
Iraq War: Iraq 2003 Sources of News compiled by librarians at the Leddy Library, University of Windsor.
Online News: Should News Sites Charge You to See the War asks Mark Glaser at Online Journalism Review.
"Forget about the number of dead and wounded. Check out these chart-busters (courtesy of comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings): CNN.com gets 10 million at-work visitors the first week of war, up 58 percent. Yahoo! News had 6.5 million workers, NYTimes.com had 2.8 million and AOL News hit 2.7 million. The BBC site's traffic doubled last Monday, the Guardian saw a 67 percent bump that day, Le Monde's site was up 129 percent and the International Herald Tribune site's up 135 percent. Even star weblogger Salam Pax helped push Blogspot.com traffic up 12 percent."
Will news sites try to make money out of this. AOL announced it would charge for all of its magazines, yet the New York Times is doing well with its free current content (and for-fee archives).
Google Alert: Cory Kleinschmidt at Traffick.com likes Google Alert. Google Alert is the Best Thing Ever (March 31, 2003) - Register with Google Alert and with Google for an API number. Then set up a maximum of 5 searches - which may be run automatically 100 times a day to pick up changes.
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