Internet News

Spyware

Othello goes on-line by Jack Kapica. Globe Technology (Sept 30)

Truly disconcerting - Lover Spy, "a suite of 16 spyware programs ... can secretly copy all e-mail, passwords, keystrokes, instant messages and on-line chat to the spy's mailbox. It will log all websites visited, offer complete access to the victim's computer files, remotely turn on the victim's web camera for visual spying, and can be programmed to alert the spy whenever certain key words are typed."

But Kapica points out that there are several software companies that can do this as well - legitimately - to control use of software programs. Microsoft and Symantec are two. Microsoft can even shut Office 2000 and above if it finds it on two machines.

Semantic Web

The search for 'smart data' pays off - Business will benefit: Customers will be able to find data much quicker by Danny Bradbury, Financial Post (Sept 29, 2003)

Of interest ..

"Wouldn't it be useful to have a network of "smart" information -- data that understood itself? Web searches would be easier if a Web browser was able to search for related concepts rather than just looking for key words without their context." - describes the objective of a semantic Web.

"The biggest problem for semantic Web technology is that it is mostly aimed at specialist applications. It needs a dictionary of concepts called an ontology that will enable it to hook information together. It is relatively easy to create an ontology for a specific subject such as healthcare, aerospace or tigers, but introducing semantic technology on to the wider Web would require a huge ontology, or at least many ontologies linked together." - identifies why the semantic web will be largely limited to specialist applications.

xrefer Research Mapper

xrefer Releases xreferplus Version 2.0 e-Content (Sept 30)

"xrefer, an online ready reference service that provides full-text, aggregated content to academic, public, and corporate libraries, has released version 2.0 of its xreferplus service, which includes improved information visualization capabilities (a new "Research Mapper"), a host of new content, and unit conversions. "

There is a public demo of the mapper at http://www.xrefer.com/research/index.jsp Results show as nodes in a graphic. Mouseovers provide more information. Very effective - could make browsing easier.

DART - Desktop Research

A Personal Search Engine for the Web and Your Computer by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 30)

Dynago DART (Dynago analysis research tool) is a desktop product that will search the web, download the pages, and analyze the content. Analysis includes summarization and visualization and the ability to do offline keyword search. DART Documentation has a demo and faq.

Requires Windows 98 or above and preferrably a 500 MHZ processor and 2 GB hard drive.

There is a standard edition at $47 and a professional (has higher limits for number and size of pages) at $67. Trial version available.

Spam Growing to 60%

Marketers Warned Of Getting Caught In Fight Against Spam by Antone Gonsalves, CMP (Sept 29)

Spam is expected to account for 60% of all email in less than a year. To fight this companies will be adopting "enterprise content managers," (rule-based software) and will blacklist 80 % of all marketing campaigns. But this will also block some product information customers have requested. Legitimate marketers will need to work around this.

Google v MSN

There is a pair of interesting articles by Fredrick Marckini in Clickz Today (Internet.com) on The Coming Search Engine War between Google and Microsoft.

The Coming Search Engine War, Part 1 (Sept 22)
The Coming Search Engine War, Part 2 (Sept 29)

Marckini draws on the marketing theories of Jack Trout, "the advertising pioneer and president of Trout and Partners". Google is "first in mind" for most searchers - it is the "generic". This carries dangers. Netscape was the first and dominant browser, Lotus 123 was king of spreadsheets. Microsoft trumped both largely through the Windows operating system. Essentially, Microsoft came up with the "what's next".

Trout proposes that Microsoft's best (only) strategy against Google is to come up with the "what's next" search engine. Matching Google's search won't be sufficient. People won't change. The same applies for Yahoo.

Options for Google are to use a "knock off strategy" - to match new announcements such as it has done on index size, or launch a "next generation" of Google.

Article notes that more people are using specialty sites for search - books at Amazon, travel at Expedia, etc. Google might consider vertical search sites. Another option is to offer a downloadable search application.

Other market leaders have been upended. Google will have to be very dextrous.

Search and Current Awareness

RBA Information Services in the UK has a list of recommended web-page monitoring tools. This site is the creation of Karen Blackman who teaches how to use the Internet more effectively and find business information. (Home page)

Antarctica

Antarctica Upgrades its Visual Net Software by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Sept 29)

"The upgrades to Visual Net were aimed at maximizing the screen real estate to put as much information at a user’s fingertips as possible, while maintaining visual clarity and usability."

Article mentions that Antarctica's Visual Net software is being used mainly by businesses for displaying information from corporate databases. It could also be applied to many search and retrieval needs in libraries or governments, and by commercial online vendors or search engines. Libraries did show an interest earlier and there are some pilot projects with OCLC.

More information at Antarctica.net. May request a demo.

Your Dictionary

Charles Bowen - Reporter's Digital How-To - says YourDictionary.com Has Words Covered (Sept 23)

YourDictionary.com - a portal for word lovers. Add a lookup button to your browser toolbar.

Paying for content

Consumers Spend More for Online Content by Ann Mack, ADweekIQ via Editor and Publisher (Sept 25)

"Consumer spending for online content in the U.S. reached $748 million in the first half, up 23% versus the year-ago period, according to a new report.

The study, commissioned by the Online Publishers Association and conducted by comScore Networks, revealed that three categories dominate the online paid content arena. Personals/dating, business/investment, and entertainment/lifestyle represented 65% of the dollars spent for content on the Web in the first half. Personals and dating services continue to drive overall growth ... "

Amazon Search

Amazon.com Invades Google's Turf Retailing Giant to Build Search Engine Michael Liedtke, AP via Editor and Publisher (Sept 26)

A9 is an Amazon startup company charged with creating a new search engine for e-commerce that could be licensed to other Web sites. Amazon wants to be a "technology services company" rather than just online retail.

Of interest ...

- Google has 150,000 advertisers and Overture 95,000.
- Search engines are expected to get 2 billion in revenue for paid listings. Some estimate that this will grow to $8 billion / year, "but other observers think the potential is being exaggerated".

Cyberjournalists

The Role of the Delete Key in Blog by Michael Falcone, New York Times (Sept 29)

"Is a blog still a blog if someone else edits it? A recent policy change at The Sacramento Bee has raised questions about whether taking an editor's pen to a Web log before it is published detracts from very nature of Web logs, or "blogs,'' as the online diaries are called. "

Mentions Cyberjournalist.net as a site that has more information about the weblogs of journalists.

From the Cyberjournalist.net site -- "Cyberjournalist.net focuses on how the Internet, media convergence and new technologies are changing journalism. The site offers tips, news and commentary about online journalism, digital storytelling, converged news operations and using the Internet as a reporting tool."

It has a page of J-Blogs - weblogs done by journalists.

Cruises

Bob Tedeschi at the New York Times covers cruises in Web Research, Stem to Stern (Sept 28). He recommends CruiseCritic.com as a source of information (easy to find a cruise) and for its impartial reviews and feedback. Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz offer cruises and information about them as well - Expedia and Travelocity include virtual tours. There are more - all with cruise in the domain name -- cruise.com, cruise411.com, cruiseonly.com, icruise.com.

Sympatico / MSN

Sympatico.ca and MSN.ca will be combining their resources to create a new portal for launch in 2004.

Bell Canada/Microsoft alliance may create Internet juggernaut Gartner Dataquest via TechRepublic (Sept 11)

"On 16 June 2003, Bell Canada and Microsoft announced a strategic five-year agreement in which Bell Canada's Sympatico.ca and Microsoft's MSN.ca will be combined to create a new cobranded portal to be launched in 2004. Also, the alliance of companies will provide a broad range of content and connectivity services initially based on Microsoft's recently launched MSN8."

Bell Canada will manage the content, english and french, and MSN will provide the infrastructure and online services. The MSN8 service will be part of the offering to Sympatico services but might be an additional cost. Gartner Dataquest in its analysis thought it likely MSN8 would be bundled for free with the premium high speed service ($69.95 / month) but not the other subscription packages.

Andrew Goodman is watching the changes at Sympatico and has some comments about its change from using Google as its search engine to using Overture for pay-per-click and search service.

As Promised: Why Sympatico Dumped Google Traffick (Sept 26)

E-Mail on the go

CBS tech guru, Larry Magid has tips for people who are on the road and need to do email. E-Mail To Go (Aug 7, 2003) There are a range of solutions including adding an smtp server to your laptop.

Blossom Software

Blossom Software of Brookline Massachusetts has a suite of software packages to help web sites and web searchers.

For webmasters it offers a search engine, portal capability, enterprise search (web site integration) and intranet search capability. There is also a linkrot checker.

Most interestingly for web searchers there are two tools for "web mining".

Watch the Web - a web monitoring service with email notification. It will pick up all changes in text and say what has been added, changed, or removed. Price is $12 / month plus $.02 per page probed.

Scour the Web - a web mining service that extracts data from the Web. Examples given are for robots that check names and addresses. Company can custom-make the robots.

Google News Interview

Staci Kramer at Online Journalism Review interviewed Krishna Bharart, creator of the Google News

Google News Creator Watches Portal Quiet Critics With 'Best News' Webby (Sep 25)

Of interest --

- it draws on 4,500 news site, probably 50% from the US.
- it does not include press releases on browsable pages.
- Google News has a team of reviewers who decides what will be crawled.
- in August it received 2.2.4 million users making it 17th as popular general news site
- Krishna Bharart sees Google News as "a force for a democracy", an "honest broker", showing multiple points of view.

Shop til you drop

Searching And Shopping By Leslie Walker Washington Post (Sep 25) -- Comments on the recent prominence of comparison shopping sites in the news -- Shopping.com and Yahoo's new Shopping centre.

Of interest -- "We are at the nexis of two big trends," said Nirav Tolia, chief operating officer of Shopping.com. "One is the migration toward direct marketing, or performance-based advertising online. The other is continued growth of e-commerce, which is huge."

There is a good list of sample web shopping guides in the sidebar.

Weblogs for business

Suddenly weblogs are good for business. Frank Barnako in CBS MarketWatch wrote Blogging business idea gets booed (Sep 26) (subscription required) in which he looked at the reaction to Weblogsinc.com, a new web venture by Jason Calacanis. Weblogsinc.com would be a home to bloggers on business topics. It would provide hosting, software, and billing for those who join. On the question of whether this can succeed, Barnako closes with -- "Calacanis' challenge is to find solid, fact-checking, deadline-driven, responsible journalists whose reporting will be trusted and perhaps, even bought, by business. Those kinds of writers and reporters are tough to find, and often employed. If they're not working, why not?"

The public beta site for Weblogsinc is http://www.weblogsinc.com/. The homepage gives three reasons for participating - namely, better journalism, benefits of freelancing, and the advantages of partnering, and invites webbloggers and industry professionals to join.

More on Location search

Is Google like Microsoft? In some ways By Matt Marshall Mercury News (Sep 25)

Article is mainly about latest efforts to provide results by location - specifically commercial results. Mentions Google, Overture, Yahoo.

Does say Google is populated by "missionaries".

Gigablast

A Conversation With Gigablast's Matt Wells by Gary Price. SearchDay (Sep 25)

Will Matt Wells be the David to the Web's Goliaths on Web search? Gigablast is much smaller at 200 million, does not have advertising, and it relies less on link analysis for relevance ranking (which may be a good thing).

Canada.com

CanWest will charge readers to access newspapers online. Ottawa Citizen. (Sep 19)

CanWest will start charging readers of its 11 online newspapers through Canada.com starting in November. "Asper said forcing readers to pay is justified by the fact that the portal gets about 120 million page views per month. "

Sounds like a good way to push more readers to CBC.ca, Canada Newswire, and the Globe and Mail.

Consumer Watch

ConsumerReports.org and Consumer WebWatch Rate Search Engines; AskJeeves, Google and Yahoo! Rank as Top Picks Ascribe Newswire (Sep 16)

ConsumerReports.org and Consumer WebWatch joined forces to evaluate top search engines for usability, content and credibility. Most did well on usability and content but only AskJeeves, Google and Yahoo did acceptably well on credibility -- "privacy and security policies, customer service and disclosure". Ten search engines included AlltheWeb, AltaVista, AOL Search, AskJeeves, Google, LookSmart, Lycos, MSN Search, Overture and Yahoo! ConsumerReports.org has the full e-ratings report.

Moreover Weblog Search Tool

Press release from Moreover announces its new "real-time weblog search tool for the enterprise".

Moreover Technologies Launches First Enterprise-Grade Weblog Search (Sep 22)

"The product harvests information from over 25,000 hand selected, business-critical weblogs in real-time and enables corporate users to gain access to the high value news, commentary and consumer opinion that resides within weblogs. "

Notes that there are over 3 million active bloggers. Because of the wide variety in quality, Moreover editors will rank blogs based on "reliability, integrity and caliber".

Also -- Moreover Introduces New Blog Monitoring Tool by Barbara Quint, NewsBreaks (Sept 29)

Of interest ...

- "In order to deal with the problem of variable quality within blog content, the company has developed a separate set of rankings. The company has also tagged each blog with metadata, including the number of incoming and outgoing links as well as the blog’s status in the blogging community."

- To get the Weblog Content Pack customers will need to subscribe to a ci service. Prices range from $ 6,000 to $250,000.

DbSurfer

Web searches tap databases By Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News (Sep 24)

Birkbeck University researchers have developed software that makes it possible to search different types of databases / sources at the same time.

"The researchers' software automatically constructs trails across tables in relational databases, according to Wheeldon. The software treats each database row as a virtual Web page, and builds links according to database settings,..."

The spokesman, Richard Wheeldon, said the software could be ready in less than a year.

RSS Readers

RSS News Readers Browse for You By Jim Lynch PC Magazine (OCt 1)

FeedDemon - similar to an email client. Can track news by keyword.
FeedReader 2.5 - free but no frills.
NewsGator 1.3 - works with Microsoft Outlook and the .Net framework.
SharpReader 0.9.2.1 - free (donations invited) - requires .Net. Adding feeds is easy.

Berners-Lee on Semantic Web

Berners-Lee Talks Up Semantic Web By Thor Olavsrud Internet News.com (Sep 23)

Tim Berners-Lee spoke to the Royal Society in the UK about his vision for the semantic web. "It's like a great big database.", he said.

"For instance, he explained, consider an event listing on the Web for a lecture. It would include data like the location, start time, end time, the speaker, a phone number to call for more information and so on. But the data is fairly static. It can be read by humans, but not by machines. However, metadata could be applied to those datapoints which identify to machines what they are. Then an interested party could click to attend the event, and whatever calendaring application that person uses could immediately schedule the event in the planner, denoting where it is, what time it will start and what time it will end, and who will be speaking. It could provide a map to get the person to that event, and supply information about the speaker. "

Answer Services - Google v Libraries

Cornell University Library ran a small study comparing the Google Answers service to their own digital reference service. Cornell reference librarians scored higher than the Google service but not dramatically so. Study provides several lessons to libraries especially in the areas of self-assessment and monitoring commercial services.

Google Meets eBay What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers D-Lib Magazine (June 2003)

Smart Mobs

How Will "Smart Mobs" Play Out? Business Week (Sept 25) Howard Rheingold sees a trend in the use of mobile phones with the Internet. There may be some opportunity for new businesses, but Rheingold thinks it will more likely start in China or Brazil.

Macromedia Central - a new Push?

Flash steps out of the browser by David Becker. CNet news via Globe and Mail

Macromedia, the maker of Flash, is developing another add-on called Central that might be used apart from the browser to download information.

"Central runs on Macromedia's free Flash Player software to give a unified interface for using Flash-based services that could range from restaurant recommendations to workplace directories. Typical services will suck in information from the Internet when a connection is available and store it on the PC for retrieval later, whether or not the PC is connected."

There are two sample or demo services services - movies and weather.

Sounds like Push of old - downloading information in the background.

Macromedia delivers beta version of Macromedia Central Press Release (Sep 25)

Amazon Shopping

Amazon gets into shopping search by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News (Sep 25)

"Amazon.com has formed a group to develop e-commerce search technology, an attempt to gain a foothold in a lucrative market Google and Yahoo now dominate. " Amazon has set up a separate unit called A9.com to develop a shopping search tool. Does this mean Amazon will take on the new Shopping.com, Yahoo's new product search, and Google's Froogle?

WebFountain

IBM’s WebFountain Launched–The Next Big Thing? by Barbara Quint Information Today Newsbreaks (Sep 22)

More positive comments about IBM's WebFountain -- "a Web-scale mining and discovery platform that extracts trends, patterns, and relationships from massive amounts of unstructured and semi-structured text."

Web Research Guide

Elsevier's Science Direct has developed a 10 part Web Research Guide. The Guide is intended to help people who use ScienceDirect but can be helpful to those who don't. There are many good tips on using the search engines effectively (mainly Google and Alltheweb) and reference to some good resoures. (Spotted at Sitelines)

Internet Demographics

Marcus Zillman has opened a weblog about Internet demographics at http://www.internetdemographics.info/. This is being powered by a "subject tracer bot". There are other subjects being covered through bots listed at The Virtual Private Library.

RSS vs EMail Newsletter

Will RSS kill the e-mail newsletter? System circumvents user's in-box By TESSA WEGERT Globe and Mail (Sep 25)

Chris Pirillo, founder of Lockergnome, says that email as a marketing tool is dead. Much better to deliver through RSS syndication.

Alternatives to Google

Going Google beyond: The world's most popular search engine is not always the best tool for the job by Liisa Tuominen The Ottawa Citizen (Sep 25)

Promotes Altavista, Alltheweb, Teoma, and Vivismo as alternatives to Google. Some good points.

Yahoo Product Search

Yahoo launches new search engine Reuters via CNN (Sept 23) --Yahoo has added more product search and price comparisons.

"The new products search is directly integrated into Yahoo's main search engine and features a full range of products from across the Internet, from computers to camping gear, with search results sorted by relevance. "

"Like many other Internet product search sites, the new Yahoo platform will offer both merchant reviews and user reviews, as well as side-by-side product comparison grids, and functions that calculate both the base price of products and their final prices after taxes and shipping. "

Chris Sherman at Searchday likes the new search -- Yahoo! Launches New Product Search (Sep 23) - says it "combines the best aspects of the company's existing shopping platform with new advanced search features, including product information gathered from the entire web. "

Just to review - you can search for a product using the main Yahoo search box. Yahoo will direct you to its Shopping section for top brands and comparison shopping. It also has a new tab for Products, also part of the Shopping section.

Google and local search

Google tests local search by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News (Sep 22)

"Google is experimenting with search results tailored to a person's geographic location, after a similar move by rival Overture Services. " Altavista is the testing ground for Overture.

Google's experimental site for searching by location is at http://labs.google.com/location. Google extracts clues from a page to determine its geographic location. At Google Labs you enter your search terms as well as some information about your location - USA only. Search results will show a map with the location of the top 10 results pinpointed.

Sex and the City, Google-style By electricnews.net. The Register (Sept 24) has more information about Overture/Altavista's work to match businesses to consumers geographically. It reminds us that Yahoo Yellow Pages can respond quickly to zip code too.

Verisign's Redirect

VeriSign told to pull '404' redirect service Silicon Valley. (Sept 22) ICANN has asked Verisign to suspend its redirect service while it investigates complaints.

Shopping.com

More Online Comparison Shopping by Bob Tedeschi. New York Times (Sept 22)

Consumers will shop for electronics online but will they look for sweaters and other "soft goods"? Shopping.com is the merger of Dealtime for comparison shopping and Epinions for consumer product reviews. It will have 370,000 apparel items by mid-October.

BizRate, PriceGrabber, and Amazon are three others offering clothes and Yahoo and Froogle have also entered the field of consumer online shopping.

Also -- Dealtime Relaunches as Shopping.com by Chris Sherman. Searchday (Sept 22) - short account of the history of the shopping.com domain.

Online Pioneers discuss Online News

For Pioneers of Web Journalism, the Future Is Still Full of Surprises by Mark Glaser. Online Journalism Review (Sept 11, 2003)

This is part 2 of a roundtable led by Mark Glaser on "the value of blogs, business strategies for pricing content and what professionals and consumers alike should look forward to."

Very interesting comments on first memory of using the computer for online news, importance of weblogs, free or for-fee, most exciting development in online journalism, trusting online news, ideal online news service.

Of interest re weblogs

- Christopher Barr: "Weblogs, or something very similar, were dreamed up more than 100 years ago by Jules Verne. In his 1890 futuristic "A Day in the Life of an American Journalist in 2890," he predicted that instead of being printed, every morning the news is spoken directly (IM'd?) to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, learn the news of the day. Each subscriber owns a recorder (hard disk?) to gather "

- Scott Rosenberg: "Enterprising individuals, inside and outside the profession of journalism, have seized this development and run with it in all directions. Link those people together with good tools like Google and Technorati and you have something more like what people thought the Web was going to be nine years ago -- a true informational ecosystem. That's pretty important. Blogs are evolving as a sort of parallel universe in symbiosis with mainstream journalism. How that plays out will continue to be fascinating."

Moreover Search Tool

Search tool scans blogs for business by Matthew Broersma ZDNet UK (September 18, 2003,)

- ZDNet says that Moreover Technologies has created a weblog search engine to be used by companies to keep them informed about consumer trends and opinions. However, no url given and no mention of it at the Moreover web site.

Blogstreet

Blogstreet seems to be one of the better search engines for weblogs to which I am pleased to add Web Search Guide Internet News.

Semantic Web

Semantic Web: Out of the Theory Realm By Michael Singer Silicon Valley.com (Sept 12, 2003)

WHOIS

Article by Bob Berkman in the Information Advisor on Knock Knock! Whois There ... To Assist Researcher (PDF file, July 2003) - made available through ResourceShelf. Helpful information on how to track down domain names and ownership.

Gigablast

Gigablast will be able to recognize tags indicating geographic area. The Matt Wells, the site's developer, has also said he's going to be doubling the size of the index - presently at 200 million. Reported at ResourceShelf.

Google Size and Freshness

Microdoc News has reexamined size and freshness of Google by analyzing its own pages at Google, Teoma and Alltheweb. It found that Teoma and Alltheweb have not begun to index the new Microdoc web site that was launched two months ago. Google has, but it also has a large number of the old pages. The tricky part is that Google seems to have indexed 643 pages but says it has 1,270. Microdoc News claims it doesn't have that many. Why the difference? Microdoc News suspects that Google is counting links to the old and new pages rather than those actually indexed. If this is true, Google would not have the 5 billion Microdoc News had estimated earlier, and maybe not the 3.4 billion Google claims.

Search Engine Databases Questioned Again Microdoc News (Sept 18)

Term Weighting at Vox Populi

New Search Algorithm Hears 'People's Voice' By Mike Martin NewsFactor Network (Sept 16)

New Internet search algorithm called "Vox Populi" (Voice of the People) developed in Germany assigns relative weights to search words.

"Someone typing "free MP3 downloads" in Google might be taken to all MP3 download sites. In the Vox Populi algorithm, however, if "free" has a larger relative weight than "downloads" (based on statistics showing how many users searching for MP3 downloads are looking for free ones), the algorithm will take searchers to free download sites first. "

Hmmm - I'd like to set the weightings myself.

IBM and Factiva

IBM and Factiva Join Forces EContent Magazine (Sept 19)

"IBM and Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, have announced an agreement to co-develop text analytics solutions built on the IBM WebFountain platform."

IBM's WebFountain can extract trends and patterns from unstructured and semi-structured text. Factiva will be using that technology on its publication base to track company reputation. What a tool this will be for competitive intelligence!

Microsoft and Search

Microsoft targets Google Software giant throwing its weight behind Web search CNN (Sept 19)

More on what Microsoft is doing to compete in search.

- Tool for finding digital photos based on the image will be available thru MSN Internet this winter.
- New (and very secret) web search engine.
- Next Windows version, Longhorn, will have a unified file system making quick searches through everything easier.
- Personalization - search results tailored to what is known about the person.

Certainly there has been lots written about Microsoft's intentions. Will they deliver?

SiteFinder

VeriSign sued over redirect Web service Reuters via CNet (Sept 18) VeriSign's new SiteFinder service has come under fire as an unfair trade practice. The new service will redirect a user who has entered a non-existant .com or .net address to VeriSign's page of suggestions including pay-for-placement links.

MSN and Overture

MSN is now using all of Overture's paid listings and showing them in two places on the search-results page. The prime spot is at the top of the search results (three top listings) and is reserved for the most relevant hits. The secondary is in a sidebar on the right. Both are labelled Sponsored Sites. Listings can be demoted to the sidebar if clickthrough rates fall.

MSN might lead with Featured Sites. These get absolute top billing ahead of Sponsored and Web Results.

For example, "polaroid cameras" finds two featured sites from online sales vendors, three sponsored sites - also for buying, and on the side another five or so sites for comparing prices. Who knew that polaroid cameras are still so plentiful?

MSN Expands Overture Ads by Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (Sept 19)

IBM and Webfountain

IBM unveils new advanced search engine MCN International - Channel News Asia (Sept 18)

Describes WebFountain as a new search engine "capable of extracting minute data from among billions of Web pages."

"The system, run by a supercomputer that absorbs 25 million Web pages a day from the Internet, learns to recognise and put into context particular phrases and groups of words on command."

More information at http://www.almaden.ibm.com/WebFountain/

Broadband Use Increasing

Surfers shift to an Internet built for speed by Victoria Shannon/IHT International Herald Tribune. (Sept 17)

International Telecommunications Union found that one in ten Internet users around the world is using broadband. Number of people using broadband grew by 72% in the last year. Top per capita users were South Korea, Hong Kong, and Canada. United States was 11th. Most subscribers (94%) are in high-income areas.

Changes to IE

Setback for Microsoft Ripples Through the World Wide Web By STEVE LOHR New York Times (Sept 17)

Microsoft was found to have infringed on a patent by Eolas Technologies in Chicago with its ActiveX technology that enables Internet Explorer to automatically run software for playing music, videos, and exchanging documents. Microsoft and multimedia software makers like Macromedia may have to make changes soon.

"Microsoft proposed three possible design tweaks to its browsing software to ensure compliance with the court ruling. These include having personal computer users approve a ``click to proceed'' box to run multimedia programs from the browser and modifications that other software companies and Web page designers can make. All would require some adjustments from companies, executives say, but should not affect ordinary PC users significantly."

Maybe it would be easier to browse with Netscape?

Yahoo as ISP

SBC Yahoo's new look for fall by Jim Hu. CNet (Sep 16)

"Yahoo and SBC Communications launched an updated version of their joint Internet access services on Tuesday, in a move that mirrors similar enhancements by competitors America Online and MSN. "

AOL, MSN, and Yahoo race to provide broadband, content, and features to their communities of users.

Address not found

Software released to neutralize controversial navigation service Mercury News (Sept 16) VeriSign, who keeps the master lists for the .com and .net top level domains, has introduced a new SiteFinder service. This service presents alternate addresses when Internet users mistype a URL. However, some suspect the motives and fear misuse. Internet Software Consortium has created a "patch" to block these referrals and simply report 'address not found'. Choosing one over the other is up to the Internet Service Provider.

Danny Sullivan tried a few queries to see how well VeriSign does. VeriSign's New Site Finder Redirects Bad Domain Traffic He found it no worse (nor better) than what MSN does through Internet Explorer. He noted that there may be implications for security and provides links to other stories.

The Ebbing of E-Books

'E' in e-books doesn't mean everyone by Jack Kapica. Globe and Mail Technology (Sep 15, 2003) - Sales of e-books never lived up to hype. People proposed many reasons - copyright, computer display, accessibility being a few. Barnes and Nobles discontinued selling e-books but Amazon and Microsoft are sticking with it.

Of interest -- "My own belief is that reading on screen is too far removed from reading printed book to succeed in more than a niche market. The reader gadgets are too expensive (especially the Tablet PCs), or too heavy, or too expensively damaged if they slip into the bathwater. Also, a recent study by printer-maker Lexmark showed that office workers print out almost every official document they receive, suggesting a reverence to paper that goes beyond differences in age."

I must agree. I'd rather pay for a print copy of the Globe and Mail Weekend than read it at a fraction of the cost on my computer. E-books are good for reference where one might read just a chunk to answer a question or print out a longer section.

Image Search

Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) in the UK did a Review of Image Search Engines (Feb 2003). It covered Web search engines and collection-based. Among the Web were general web search engines (Google, Altavista, Alltheweb, Lycos), specialized, and meta-search (Dogpile, Excite, Mamma, Fazzle, Search 22 and others). Collection-based included Getty Images, Corbis and several photo stock sites. In the main, images found through web search were poor in quality and results mostly irrelevant. Collection-based engines offered better results and made commercial and copyright issues clearer.

Network Security

Special report on Network Security from BusinessWeek Online (Sept 16, 2003)

- Needed: A Security Blanket for the Net
- If These Networks Get Hacked, Beware
- Why Offices Are Now Open Secrets
- Which Antivirus Stock Is Safer?

Competition for Ads

The online ad wars: Competitors snap at Google Matt Marshall NZoom.com (Sep 16) -- Short article with main points about efforts by Google, Overture and Yahoo to get more ad revenue.

Of interest -- "The competition is spurring the market into new directions - and could spawn new rivalries. Some vendors find search advertising so compelling that they're abandoning auction companies like eBay. The development is worth watching, says Safa Rashtchy, analyst at US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, adding that the market created by search could rival the efficiency created by eBay in the long-term. However, he concludes: "It's not an immediate threat.""

Googlephilia

Google - the only archive we'll ever need? By Andrew Orlowski in Amsterdam. The Register (Sept 15)

Next Five Minutes festival in Amsterdam brought together a panel of artistsl to talk about the effects of Googlephilia.

""The implications of Google have real implications for mass social procedure, on how we enquire," said Byfield [Ted Byfield, N5M Net Time list moderator] . "It's so much bigger than terrifying - it's Interesting." "

Puts size of web at 9 billion pages. Feels Googlephilia blinds people to other information domains, specifically libraries.

Medicine

Visualization Tools by Bryan Bergeron, MD MedGenMed eJournal Medscape (Sept 12, 2003) - requires registration to view. Clinical medicine relies on astute recognition of patterns in patient data. Data visualization software and techniques can help.

"Both plotting and graphing of laboratory data and the 3-D rendering of imaging data have clinical value by making clinical data more accessible. As such, visualization tools are a critical component of pervasive computing in that this technology constitutes the final link between wireless connectivity, tablet PC, and other computer components and the clinician end user. This article reviews readily available software tools for clinical data analysis and interpretation as well as the latest systems in medical research institutions."

Blogs for breaking news

It's Time to Blog Hard News on Your Site by Steve Outing. E&P PUblisher. Steve Outing recommends using weblogs at news sites to deliver breaking news and feels that this will put Web sites on the same footing as TV news.

Infonortics 2003

Reports on The Infonortics Search Engine conference April 2003

Information Overlook By Martin White. EContent July 2003 Issue - saw the theme as being between searching structured and unstructured data - an issue most relevant to enterprise search. How users search was discussed - in particular the dictum "You have 12 minutes before a user gives up". Recommended an IIR Evaluation Model in Information Research, an international electronic journal Issue 8-3.

Meeting report from the 2003 Infonortics Search Engine Meeting, Boston in Unstruct.org - a weblog about unstructured information.

A Discussion Group

Use of the Internet During Times of Crisis: An Expert Interview With David W. Crippen, MD by Alfred J. Saint Jacques, Medscape (Sep 12) How people have used the International Critical Care Internet Discussion Group (CCM-L), during crises.

Making Google the default for IE

There is a way to make the IE browser search Google rather than MSN. PC Magazine has the tip (Put Google in IE's Search Bar ) and also points to an information page at Google - Googlify your browser.

AOL Time Warner

I don't usually cover sports but the new policy at the Sports Illustrated web site is an example of direction. AOL Time Warner is restricting access to print subscribers for most content. They have done this with Time, Fortune and others. Reported in CBS Marketwatch, Frank Barnako's Internet Daily (Sep 12)

Artifact

Also from Resource Discovery Network comes Artifact - in development now and will officially launch in November. Covers architecture, art, communications and media, culture, design, fashion and beauty, and performing arts. It seems from the Advanced Search that it will have many resource types - audio visual, courseware, personal, journals etc. There is no syntax - use the options for Any word, Part of word, of Phrase.

BioEthics Web

Bioethics Web - new gateway under the UK-based Resource Discovery Network. Reviewed by Rita Vine in Sitelines. (Sept 10)

Google Size

Microdoc News thinks Google has indexed 5.2 million pages and wonders why they don't say so. This is based on a search for +the. Microdoc thinks that Google may be indexing more pages from a site. It also noted a decline in the number of weblog pages indexed

Five Billion Google Listings: What are in those 2 billion more documents? Microdoc News (Sep 10)

N-Liter for saving pages

Golden Retriever fetches news Globe and Mail (Sep 10) Golden Retriever is an on-line tool that 'photocopies' web pages, supports notes, and searches the Web. Product is from the Toronto company, N-Liter.

Golden Retriever works on Windows 98 and up and Internet Explorer 6.0. There is a tryware version and a 30-day trial. Purchase is $14.95 USD.

More detail with screenshots on how the product works is in the User Manual.

Nutch

An Open Source Engine by John Batelle. SearchDay (Sep 11)

Big name proponents of open-source software are putting their weight behind Nutch, the open-source search engine. Open source means that anyone may license to use the software for free as long as they share with others all improvements they make. Nutch promises to make all indexing and page-ranking visible. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, is contributing servers to Nutch and it is hoped Nutch will be ready for use in the fall.

Daypop

Gary Price concludes his interviews with Dan Chan about Daypop. Daypop is a search engine covering weblogs. Behind the Scenes at the Daypop Search Engine. SearchDay (Sep 10) Chan gives 10 tips for using Daypop.

Visual search

Idée Inc. and Wonderfile Corporation announce the release of SimSearch, the first commercial implementation of visual search for a stock photography website. Press Release (Sep 9)

Wonderfile offers professional users "royalty-free" stock images in digital format for purchase. These are searchable online and available on CDs. Online search is by keyword and visual likeness.

The visual search software is Espion from Idee, a Toronto-based company. Wonderfile is a Masterfile company, also in Toronto.

At Wonderfile, find an image you like and use SimSearch to find others that are visually similar. For example, search on Venice and pick a canal scene. Simsearch locates mainly water or canal scenes from the collection.

InfoSpace Makeover

Infospace has redesigned its web site to focus on finding businesses and people in the United States. This is a change from its old and now tired portal look. White and Yellow pages are powered by Superpages with data by Acxiom. Infospace for a search on person asks for the format lastname,firstname - a rather retro way for input.

Among other search options is the for-fee Public Records (US only). There is a web search that uses Infospace's metasearch engine, Metacrawler.

The Infospace Email address search continues. In a field of very poor email search services, Infospace's is possibly the best and is international in coverage. It seems to have a huge number of hotmail.com listings. One wonders if they were all self-registered or if Infospace has an arrangement with MSN.

World Directories links to Infospace's list for other countries. Infospace Canada still has the old design with directory and red banners.

InfoSpace relaunches as yellow pages by Bambi Francisco. CBS MarketWatch.com. (Requires registration)

"But InfoSpace's site revamp is yet another example that companies are increasingly focusing on how to attract a large enough local audience that will eventually bring in local advertising dollars that are spent by either small businesses or nationwide merchants."

Genie Tyburski comments on the public records search in Infospace Relaunch and Public Records Search at the Virtual Chase (Sep 10).

Barnes and Noble

Barnes & Noble shelves e-books By Evan Hansen CNET News.com (Sep 9) B&N is no longer selling e-books. It had had deals with Microsoft and Adobe to sell in those formats.

Specialty Search

A Gaggle of Specialty Engines by Chris Gaither Boston Globe via International Herald Tribune (Sep 9) Smaller companies can sell more focused search programs. Article mentions Convera for video, Fast Talk Communications for audio, Eliyon for job and resume databases.

Spam and Viruses

The Deadly Duo: Spam and Viruses, August 2003 by Robyn Greenspan. Cyberatlas (Sep 8)

Spam makes up about 50% of email. Cyberatlas has figures on type of spam. In August adult and health spam dropped and spam about Internet products increased. The largest proportion of spam is about products (20%).

August was the worst month for viruses, with Sobig.F related emails making up 73% of all email at its peak.

Wayback Internet Archive

Internet Archive Adds Search Engine by Barbara Quint. Information Today (Sep 8)

The Internet Archive has added a new search engine for text searching. The Recall Search Engine will allow selection of time period, categorization and topics. Display includes a chart showing percentage of returned pages for up to 6 topics. At present Recall has indexed 11 billion of the 30 billion pages.

There is also the older URL search which can eliminate duplicates and merge aliases. The URL Advanced Search page has options for comparing two versions of a page, and also for converting a web page to pdf.

Google is 5

Google celebrates fifth birthday "The world's most popular site for searching the web, Google, is five years old. "

More review from Chris Sherman - Happy Birthday Google

Research resources for librarians

The Researching Librarian Web resources helpful for librarians doing research -- web site by Beth Ashmore of University Library, Samford University, Birmingham, AL. Has listing of current awareness sources, databases, statistics, journals, funding.

Clustering

Vivisimo press release explains why clustering is useful to searchers.

- can "discover" themes and explore more listings
- can focus on a folder and find more relevant results faster
- are drawn by folders to go past the first page.

Clustering of Search Results Increases Click-Through Rates Silicon Valley Biz Inc (AUg 19) PRNewswire

RSS at My Yahoo

Yahoo Adds an RSS Reader to My Yahoo Research Buzz - Supposedly a place to put headline news from blogs. May have worked for Research Buzz, but doesn't for me. MyYahoo will have to do better.

Dogpile Barks

Dogpile, a very popular metasearch engine from Infospace, has a set of new tricks. Most importantly, it uses Vivisimo's clustering technology to group results into folders. You can view results by relevance (collated and deduped) or by search engine. Dogpile has been stuck for years listing results by search engine. Relevance listing is a very welcome change. Sponsored results are labelled as "sponsored by". Unfortunately, results by relevance do not show the names of the source engines. Dogpile searches Google, About, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Altavista, Overture, Looksmart, and Teoma. There is an Advanced Search page with filters on date, domain, language, adult material etc, but NO option to pick search engines. These changes lift Dogpile to the top of the metasearch engine heap.

See also Dogpile Sports a Fetching New Look by Chris Sherman. Searchday (Sep 4)

Stealthware

Sneaky apps attack by Andrew Brandt, PC World (Sep 5) Stealthware can take over your browser or produce popups all on its own. They often come through ads and are a form of adware. Spybot Search & Destroy or Ad-aware 6 are two products that can help you identify and remove them.

Web Journalism

Online News Pioneers See Lots of Changes in the First 10 Years by Mark Glaser. OJR (Sep 5) Panel discusses web journalism - John Battelle, Ana Marie Cox, Dave Winer, Craig Newmark, Bernard Gwertzman - all with extensive experience in online publications or content sites. Reviews early use of online news, importance of weblogs and RSS today, free v for-fee, and notable new developments.

Ana Marie Cox -- "...I think what's really revolutionary about Weblogs isn't their content, but the way that Weblog software has enabled technically unsophisticated people to produce aesthetically pleasing, well-organized Web sites."

Vivisimo

Vivisimo Announces Release 4.0 of its Award-Winning Clustering Engine PR Newswire via Silicon Valley (Sept 4)

"Vivisimo's Clustering Engine automatically organizes search results into folders, without pre-processing the information. Release 4.0 enhances the functionality and features of the solution and contains fundamental breakthroughs in quality, enabling customers to increase their return-on-investment in enterprise search tools and improve end-user satisfaction by significantly reducing total cost of ownership and improving performance."

Supports metadata clustering (folders grouped around author, sources, set topics etc), and Show-in-clusters (for a particular result identify its cluster).

Public web site at www.vivisimo.com

Boomers read newspapers

Study: Boomers Still Prefer Printed Pages by Anick Jesdanun. AP via Silicon Valley (Sep 4) -- In the older tech elite (ages 42 to 62) 44% go online for news but 60% get a newspaper. Article contrasts boomers to younger generation. Data was from an upcoming Pew Internet and American Life study.

BrainBoost - natural language

BrainBoost is a question answering search engine. It accepts natural language queries and searches multiple engines. BrainBoost told Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch that it searches Google, Google News, Teoma, WiseNut, AltaVista, Yahoo and Yahoo News). (There is no information on the web site about this). The sample questions work well - why is Mars red? It knew the answer to - who was the first Canadian to climb Mount Everest - though, to be fair, most search engines handle this well anyway. Worth playing with.

See Danny Sullivan's comments in the Search Engine Report (Sept 2003) - Resources

Meta Eureka Toolbar

The metasearch engine offers a desktop tool for Windows 98+ users that will search 40 engines at once. Also does weather, translation and dictionary. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch likes it as does Lockergnome. http://www.metaeureka.com/download.shtml

Whittle Bit

New search engine called WhittleBit lets you say yea or nay to results and thereby narrow your search to more-like-this. However, display only has title and url - not much to go on. ResearchBuzz has more about Whittlebit.

Online News Consumption Growing

The Current Status and Potential Development of Online News Consumption: A Structural Approach by An Nguyen. First Monday (Sep 2003)

"In reviewing the current pattern of online news consumption across the globe and modelling major structural factors influencing this adoption, the author argues that the Internet, already a very important source of news, will become a major news medium in the years ahead."

An Nguyen is journalist from Vietnam currently conducting his Ph.D. research on the public adoption of online news at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Gigablast

Gigablast, a small independent search engine, has indexed 200 million pages (includes pdf, ppt, doc, and xls files), and now supports boolean operators including nesting of terms. There are several commands for field searching - title, site, url, link.

Internet Resources Newsletter

September 2003 issue of Internet Resources Newsletter from Heriot Watt University Library. Always worth a browse. Has a Blogorama with news on blogs.

Anacubis

Anacubis offers a visual way to shop at Amazon. Search any of Amazon's collections (books, videos etc) to get a display of items. Right click for options to view cover, get more information, or run a Google search.

It requires Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer with Java. Highest screen resolution of 1280 X 1024 is recommended. Users of Zone Alarm might need to turn Zone Alarm off to run a search.

This is a beta demo and didn't perform well on my not-so-new computer. Items were too tiny to read and processing too slow. Idea is interesting.

Factiva for Individuals

Factiva has added new subscription options for individuals and small companies. Individuals can use the Track function to get alerts on news stories, and make use of search interfaces in more languages. Customers can also get pay-per-view access to the articles from either Factiva or the Wall Street Journal Online. More is mentioned in Factiva's Powerful Business Information Service Now Packaged and Priced for Individual and Small Business Use Press Release, Yahoo Finance (Sept 3)

Argali Phone Directories

Argali is a Windows desktop application for searching phone numbers. It brings together White and Yellow directories including AnyWho, Infospace, Superpages, Whitepages.com and others. As well there are search features for area codes, zip codes, maps, and the weather. Mainly US. Reviewed by Gary Price - Resources for this week.

Adware, Spyware, Trouble

Heart of Darkness, on a Desktop By KATIE HAFNER with MICHAEL FALCONE New York Times (Sep 4) - Scary stories about the spyware (operates in background and can generate popups) and adware (supposedly downloaded by consent) and what they can do to your computer. Beware of Gator and KaZaa. New versions of McAfee and Norton help to identify these new "security threats". Also recommended Ad-Aware to detect and remove.

Hotbot Europe

Lycos Europe Overhauls Hotbot Search Site Net Imperative (Sep 2)

Hotbot.co.uk has been revamped to look like the US version with the simpler design and fewer choices.

Hotbot.co.uk only searches Inktomi and gets paid listings from Overture. The earlier Inktomi features for searching boolean phrase, selecting pages with audio or video or images, and doing backwards link searching are gone.

However, the old syntax appears to work.

Can use the commands -- title:, domain:, link:
Can use boolean operators -- canada AND (native OR "first nations") AND "band councils" AND NOT alaska.

One new feature will "Boost content from specific continents or countries."

At present there is no documentation under Help for using Hotbot search. Seems to underutilize Inktomi and underserve Hotbot UK users.

Size Wars

Search Engine Size Wars & Google's Supplemental Results by Danny Sullivan SearchDay (Sept 3) - Despairs at the new size wars. Likens Google's new supplemental database to the system Inktomi used to use of tapping into a second database if there were too few results from the first. Questions whether Google's 3.3 billion number really represents fully indexed pages. Notes that Teoma is now at 1.5 billion with little fanfare.

RSS vs E-Mail

With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative by Steve Outing. E&P (AUg 27)

With e-mail delivery thwarted by spam blockers, RSS feeds may be the better way for subscribers to get their newsletters. Notes that 17% to 38% of e-mail doesn't reach customers. Lockergnome, the centre for technology newsletters, as an example, points subscribers to the XML/RSS feeds.

"RSS really is a better way, especially for those who regularly read a whole passel of Web sites, blogs, and/or e-newsletters. It replaces manually viewing a bunch of bookmarked sites with a single aggregation pane of fresh content, quickly consuming headlines and blurbs, and clicking through to the stuff that looks really interesting. It's a big time saver."

E-Books

E-Book Scenarios Updated By Mick O'Leary Online (Sept 2003) - Identifies four e-book trends. E-book formats are being deployed for reference and technical - not fiction, and bought by instititutions - not individuals.

"To summarize, e-books are finally beginning to act like other forms of proprietary online content. They are available in large comprehensive collections that support powerful reference applications; institutions provide access to for most users; subscription pricing is the rule."

Microdoc News on Size

Google Understates the Size of Its Database Microdoc News (Sept 1) Searching on just +the at Google shows 5.3 billion results. So why does Google say 3.3 billion? To be modest? Microdoc News compares Google to Alltheweb and finds Google fresher and bigger, though Alltheweb has more non-English content and will index pages and sites that Google doesn't.

Frugal Living

Frugal Fun on the Web by Judith M. Levinton LinkUP (Sept 1) - A webliography of sites that can help you save money.

Magic Words

Search the Web Like a Pro by Reid Goldsborough LinkUP (Sept 1) - Paul Krupin recommends using "magic search words" to improve search results and has written three books about narrowing searches for jobs, scholarships and health. Review has a few tips.

About Canada

All About Canada The Internet is a great source for facts and fun trivia about our Northern neighbor by Pauline Clark. LinkUP (Sept 1) - An American's view of Canadian sites. Opening paragraph suggests some unease at doing this at all -- "Canada has not been in complete favor with Americans recently due to various current events, such as the Northern neighbor’s decision not to participate in the Iraqi War and more recently its controversial plans to ease up on marijuana laws." Author might have suggested some news sites such as CBC where visitors might learn more about Canada and benefit from an alternate view on world affairs.

Personal blogs

Blogs: Hanging dirty laundry on-line By RUSSELL SMITH Globe and Mail (Sep 2)

"The Web is a high-tech gossip network: an entirely public notice board with very private functions. There is something about publishing, even self-publishing, even Web posting, that lends an air of gravity to one's personal relations; when written, they come to seem more literary, more important."

Google AdWords

Google Steps Into EBay Territory by Anthony Effinger, Bloomberg News. LA Times (Sep 2) - vendors find it cheaper to use AdWords at Google to sell their stuff than through listings at eBay.

Google News

Google News Finally Makes the Grade by Mark Glaser. Online Journalism Review (Aug 29) -- Google News attracts 3.3 million users a month. Mark Glaser persuaded comScore to include Google News in its rankings of News sites. He also had a long discussion with Nielsen//NetRatings about the news category and how the rankings are done.

Aggregators

Aggregators Attack Info Overload by Ryan Singel. Wired (AUg 18) - people are using newsreaders like NewsGator to keep on top of news and blogs. Next step for newreaders may be collaborative filtering, similar to Amazon's recommendation system. NewsMonster (Netscape) has a voting mechanism in its for fee version.

Google and Yahoo News Alerts

Free News Alerts By Cindy Carlson LLRX.com (Aug 31) - Reviews features of Google News Alert and Yahoo News Alerts for monitoring topics from multiple sources.

Using link analysis

Google is most popular but others may do it better by Lee Gomes. Wall Street Journal via SFGate.com. (AUg 18) - searches for God at Google and Teoma and prefers the answer from Teoma. In so doing, describes the fundamentals of link analysis.

Overture Research

Maybe Overture will do more for search than place ads. It has opened a new web site to feature the work of its research department - Overture Research.

"Through creativity, invention, and scientific contribution, Overture Research has the mission to position Overture as a pioneer in the next online revolution. Our goal is to develop novel algorithms and technology to empower users, consumers, businesses, advertisers and publishers worldwide to maximize the social and economic potential of the Internet."

Google Size

Google announced that it has indexed 3.3 billion pages (in response to Alltheweb's announcement of 3.2 billion). Greg Notess and Gary Price ran some searches and discovered some big inconsistencies in page counts for individual queries. And Something Else From the Google Beat Google (Aug 20)

Vivisimo

Vivisimo, the metasearch engine that groups search results into folders or clusters, has made a few changes.

- Results open in new window by default.
- Sponsored links are clearly labelled and put in bands of grey.
- "Show in clusters" link will highlight the name of the cluster the result belongs to. Can then explore that cluster / folder only.
- Find in clusters helps in searching just the search results.
- Terms are highlighted in yellow.

Gary Price commented on changes and indicated that more are on the way in Web Search - Vivisimo (Aug 22).

Google Supplemental

On low-hit searches, Google will draw additional results from a supplemental resource. Gary Price gives examples -- Google Responds to a Couple of Recent ResourceShelf Posts and Other Stuff (Aug 27)

Dictionaries

Peter Jacso, who writes a column for Information Today on Picks and Pans, has put together a meta-search engine for his favourite dictionaries.

Jacso also has a polysearch engine for biographies and for documents related to energy, science and technology.

See them all at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~Jacso/extra/poly-page.html

Swets Blackwell

Swets Blackwell launches new name in December 2003 Press release (Sept 1) Swets Blackwell provides software for managing serial subscriptions and receiving table of contents alerts.

The Onion

The Onion: Funny site is no joke A diversified media company built on sardonic, topical humor By Geoff Keighley Business 2.0 (Aug 29) -- The ONion.com has a readership of some 1.3 million and is now based in New York rather than Wisconsin and it makes money. Sean Mills, the President" "... expects to grow the company about 25 percent a year for the next five years. There's talk of adding new paper editions in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Boston. Also in the works is an Onion movie, written by the staff and set to be produced by David Zucker of Naked Gun fame. And while the Web site's weekly review of the news will remain free, a premium subscription service is in the works to give die-hard readers an extra helping of Onion humor. "

Digital Book Index

Digital Book Index provides access to more than 73,000 titles records of which 25,000 are from public archives. Has commercial and non-commercial eBooks from more than 1800 publishers and private publishing organizations.

Spam

Losing the War on Spam. WIred (Sept 2003) - not online. Predicts people will receive an average of 3,681 commercial e-mails, 2,603 unsolicited / spam. Quotes Jupiter research that 30% of messages we bring on ourselves by revealing our email address. Also, spammers have been able to get addresses from corporate or ISP mail servers. Sees spam taking over from other email in September 2004. Chance of getting spam is 100% if you give out your email address in a chat room, 86% in newsgroupos, 50% on a personal web page, 27% on a message board, and 9% in an email service directory.

Online Internet Tenure

Sweden is considered the "web savviest" and strongest IT nation. Newest users are in Spain. Robyn Greenspan reports on Tracking the Experienced Users in CyberAtlas (Aug 27).

Article also references the recent Pew Internet and AMerican Life Project that studied online tenure in the United States. Capital region around Washington DC and the Pacific Northwest had the highest percentage of experienced users and the Midwest the highest percentage of newbies.

Google's Synonym Operator

Google's Synonym Operator by Rita Vine. Sitellines. (Aug 28) - links to what other people have said.

Teoma

Microdoc News scoffs at the notion that Teoma comes any where near competing with Google - its database is old - maybe as much as 3 months, and it is only 19% the size of Google. Teoma Tantrums: Teoma Does Not Come Close to Google Microdoc News (Aug 28)

Mozilla and Opera

There are still two determined competitors to the Internet Explorer browser in spite of the fact that IE has 95% market share. Opera, Mozilla release new browser betas CNet News (Aug 28)