Yahoo to kill paid video service By Jim Hu and Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com (Oct 30) Yahoo Platinum, the premium source of streamed video clips, will be merged into tje Yahoo Plus bundle of premium service. But there may also be more free video for non-subscribers. MSN and AOL are also changing their video offerings.
News Alerts at FT.com Can choose a combination of 15 company names and topics. Free trial during November 2003.
CORDA Launches New Web Site, So What's the Big Deal? Corda Technologies Gives Prospective Audience a New Site (Oct 29) PRNewswire via Newsalert.com "CORDA Technologies Inc., the leading provider of interactive data visualization solutions, has launched its new "smart" Web site, www.corda.com ."
Corda - has some suggestions and displays for the business executive, government, IT Manager, developer, and OEM.
HOW MUCH INFORMATION 2003? is a study produced by faculty and students at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley. Senior researchers were Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian.
"This study is an attempt to estimate how much new information is created each year. Newly created information is distributed in four storage media – print, film, magnetic, and optical – and seen or heard in four information flows – telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet. This study of information storage and flows analyzes the year 2002 in order to estimate the annual size of the stock of new information contained in storage media, and heard or seen each year in information flows. "
Some findings:
- amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic and optical media has doubled in 3 years.
- World Wide Web has about 170 terabytes of information "on its surface", 17 times the Library of Congress print.
- Americans get most information from the TV at 131 hours a month. Radio is 90 hours and the 53% of people who use the Internet, 25 hours a month.
- amount of information printed on paper is still increasing but this is mainly in documents and email printed in the office or at home.
- the United States produces about 40% of the world's new information.
Mentioned in The Virtual Chase TVC Alert.
Looking for that Easy Alternative to Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail? Andrew Goodman at Traffick recommends NameBargain.com for a web-based service that offers up to 10 e-mail addresses based on a domain name for $14.95 and is spam-free and ad-free. However, domain top-level domains are limited to .com, .org, .net, .us, .biz, .info - no .ca. Also, it's not explained how namebargain can block spam and no one else can.
Big Companies Add to Spam Saul Hansen New York Times via Yahoo (Oct 28)
Some spam is coming from big corporations. You may have agreed to product news, or the company has bought an e-mail list. It's called "permission marketing" - though people are largely unaware of how much permission they are granting and wouldn't agree if they knew.
"At best, if you have ever entered a contest to win a prize, subscribed to an online newsletter or simply purchased a product on the Web, you may well have also agreed, as many such fine-print contracts put it, "to receive valuable offers from our marketing partners." "
Article says that "But in many cases, the big companies are deliberately buying and selling access to names, relying on privacy policies often hard to find on their sites that they say permit such actions. "
Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com comments on this article -- So-Called "White Collar Spam" Getting Attention (Oct 28)
- the ones from whom you agreed to accept certain
Big Companies Add to Spam Saul Hansen New York Times via Yahoo (Oct 28)
Some spam is coming from big corporations. You may have agreed to product news, or the company has bought an e-mail list. It's called "permission marketing" - though people are largely unaware of how much permission they are granting and wouldn't agree if they knew.
"At best, if you have ever entered a contest to win a prize, subscribed to an online newsletter or simply purchased a product on the Web, you may well have also agreed, as many such fine-print contracts put it, "to receive valuable offers from our marketing partners." "
Article says that "But in many cases, the big companies are deliberately buying and selling access to names, relying on privacy policies often hard to find on their sites that they say permit such actions. "
Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com comments on this article -- So-Called "White Collar Spam" Getting Attention (Oct 28)
- the ones from whom you agreed to accept certain
Top 101 Web Sites - October 2003 PC Magazine - 101 sites in 16 categories. For the category Search and Reference, PC Magazine editors chose Google and Yahoo, along with the for-fee Encyclopedia Britannica. Library of Congress made it to the list as well. There are more to browse and bookmark.
Sharpen Your Internet Searches All search engines are not equal. Knowing where and how to make your queries can help you and your business get that vital info -- fast - by Ben Elgin and John Cady and Business Week (Oct 27)
General article on what to do. Has an interesting example of where Inktomi with its paid-inclusion was better than Google for hotels in San Francisco.
Google Studies Creation of Book Database New York Times (Oct 28)
"Google.com has begun talks with book publishers to compile a searchable database of the contents of thousands of volumes, a publishing executive briefed on the project said yesterday. "
That's basically all there is to the article. Something to watch.
Genie Tyburski has tips on using the new Amazon Full-Text service. Amazon Full-Text Search; Advanced Search Features (Oct 23) - advises using specific words and using Amazon's power search.
Amazon doesn't make Search Inside easy to find.
- Click on tab for Books to get the book section.
- Start with a general search. Amazon will show the titles and descriptions as it always has PLUS excerpts from the books where available.
There is no easy way to refine this. You might see a link to In Books at the bottom of the page as part of your Recent History.
Otherwise --
- Click on Search in the Amazon Menu Bar to get the Advanced Search page.
- Use the boxes to construct a new search or use the Power Search at the bottom of the page.
- Example - looking for books with information about collaborative online (or on the internet) published after December 2002 -- keywords:"collaborative learning" and (internet or online) and pubdate:after 12-2002
To start with Search Inside a Book you need the URL. At present Amazon doesn't have it in floodlights.
Antispam methods aim to merge By Paul Festa CNET via Globe and Mail (Oct 25) -- proposals by the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) to cut spam by verifying that the e-mail senders are who they say they are.
"The idea behind the related schemes is to change the Domain Name System database so that e-mail servers can publish what IP addresses are associated with them. Internet service providers receiving e-mail can instantaneously verify whether an e-mail originates where it says it does."
OCLC Project Opens WorldCat Records to Google by Barbara Quint. Newsbreaks (Oct 27) - OCLC will test opening up the WorldCat database of library holdings to Google. They will begin with 2 million representing books that are held by at least 100 libraries. "Searches on Google will retrieve the records and link through OCLC to library holdings. The move expands the scope of the Open WorldCat yearlong pilot project to make library resources available from non-library Web sites and will “test the effectiveness of Web search engines in guiding users to library-owned materials.”"
Clicking on a Google citation will take one to a prompt for location in order to find the nearest library. This will work at zip code level for the US and postal code for Canada.
One problem noted was the thinness of a bibliographic record compared to a full text page for relevancy ranking.
Amazon launches powerful database AP via Globe and Mail (Oct 27) Describes Amazon full-text search of 120,000 books.
Of interest: "In addition, the ability to search specific terms and phrases within books' text — as opposed to the more general book categories — gives Amazon.com greater insight into what exactly users are looking for. With that greater degree of precision, Amazon.com could more accurately link search results to product listings and advertisements."
Dialog Releases Dialog Portals Service by Paula J. Hane. Newsbreaks (Oct 13) -" ... Dialog Portals, its new service for integrating content into enterprise portals. A major selling point for the new offering is that it is compatible with nine of the leading portal software providers, which Dialog says is the broadest array available from any information services company in the portals market. "
More information about Dialog Portals.
When Google puts a world out of whack Tom Reilly Guardian Unlimited (Oct 26) -- Googlewhacking is searching for two unrelated words at Google and only getting one page. The two words are a "googlewhack". It's become very popular as an Internet game especially in the UK.
Googlewhack.com is a web site where people can register their whacks. There are some great ones there -- like "ambitextrous scallywags" (this no longer produces one page because so many people have carried the story). The front page of Googlewhack has matched whacks to questions about Enron -- "Googlewhacking is about having fun with words and search, so political commentary can't be far behind! Here are a few recent pure whacks (exactly one result) along with our signature obvious question to enhance the pleasure. " The Whack Stack makes for some fun reading.
Search Engine Lowdown is a weblog done by Andy Beal to report on Search Engine News, and provide SEO tips, commentary and analysis. It has recently launched a search engine news index in which it tracks how frequently the popular search engines are in mentioned in Google News. Google and Yahoo are well in the lead.
Seeking an Edge Google aims to stay No. 1 in search engines as big-bucks competitors circle around By James M. Pethokoukis USNews.com (Nov 3, 2003)
"Internet users are estimated to execute more than 550 million Web searches globally each day as they quest for information ranging from the whereabouts of old college boyfriends to the latest English premier soccer league standings or The Matrix: Revolutions "spoilers." And, of course, porn. Of those half-billion queries, about a third use Google--far more than rivals Yahoo! (21 percent), MSN (18 percent), and America Online (11 percent). "
Article reviews the high money stakes in the competition between Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Will Microsoft with its deep pockets give Google a knockout blow the way it did Netscape? Maybe Google's talk of going for an IPO is to raise money for the big fight?
Mooter is a new search engine from Australia that combines clustering of results with some information visualization.
It was mentioned in Pandia Search World (Oct 23)
Spammers Clog Up the Blogs by Chris Ulbrich. Wired News (Oct 24, 2003) -- Now we have blog spam. Spammers insert their URLs into comments at weblogs. Turns out that Movable Type weblogs are the most open. There's no clear solution and the worst has yet to come. No mentioned in the article is that bloggers should close the comment facility - as I fear I will have to do for my two weblogs.
CanWest Interactive Automates infomart.ca's Classification Process with SonicBoomerang's Classification Software, ClassPro Business Wire (Oct 23)
"CanWest Interactive announced today that infomart.ca has gone live with ClassPro, SonicBoomerang Inc.'s state-of-the-art document classification software. With over 1,700 topics or geographies classified, this represents one of the largest topic classification systems implementations in the world to date. "
Thanks to RC.
Queries Guide Web Crawlers Technology Research News October 22, 2003
"Researchers from Contraco Consulting and Software Ltd., T-Online International and Siegen University in Germany have written an algorithm that improves Internet search results by factoring in what people are looking for. ... The algorithm, dubbed Vox Populi, picks up trends by analyzing patterns in people's Web search behavior. The algorithm might flag an increase in queries about soccer near the time of the World Cup, for instance."
Local Search Part 2: Google & Mobilemaps Bring Back Geosearching by Danny Sullivan. Searchday (Oct 21) -- "crawler-based methods being used by Google and Mobilemaps to improve local searching when tapping into a web-wide database of content." But it is still all very tentative and experimental. Article reviews the earlier work on being able to find local listings and map them.
But while Google may not have geo-searching entirely figured out for web searches it can do more regional placement for advertisers -- Google Launches Local Search Targeting & Search Forum Spotlight (Oct 24) People will see ads for their local geographic areas first; if there are none, they'll see national ads.
Search Inside the Book at Amazon now. You can do a full-text search on 120,000 books at Amazon. 190 publishers are participating. Display shows title of the book with several excerpts containing your search terms. You can easily do more searches on an individual book. This will make it much easier to assess how well a book matches one's interest.
See Amazon's new search finds kudos By Matt Marshall and Charles Matthews
Mercury News (Oct 25) -- Says new Amazon search is getting rave reviews from librarians and researchers. There will be some limits - readers won't be able to scan more than 20% of a book. University of California Press is one of the 190 publishers. It has included 2000 of its 4000 books in this service but excluded most reference and all poetry.
Metacrawler announced its new look in MetaCrawler Search Engine Launches Improved Interface and New Features (Oct 20). In fact it looks almost identical to Infospace's other two metasearch engines - Dogpile and Webcrawler.
They all search Google, About, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Overture, Find What, Looksmart, Altavista, and "many more" that aren't named.
Results are by relevance or by search engine. Results do not include the name of the search engine or the position in the results of that search engine.
Results are limited to a maximum of 10 per engine.
Vivisimo's technology is used to cluster results - a very valuable feature.
Page can be customized through preferences for adult filter, language, and display.
There is an advanced search page that appears to support boolean. The operators for AND and OR appear to work. ANDNOT does not. Search engines have different requirements for recognizing boolean constructions. It is unlikely that Infospace could correctly match those requirements for all engines. Treat this feature with great care.
Marcus P. Zillman has developed what he calls a Subject Tracer Information Blog on the Deep Web - or Invisible Web. "It is designed to bring together the latest resources and sources on an ongoing basis from the Internet for deep web research." http://www.deepwebresearch.info/ Mixed bag of articles, tools, and databases - some good, some poor and/or out of date.
Zillman has also written two articles with more resources -- "Using the Internet As a Dynamic Resource Tool for Knowledge Discovery" and "Business Intelligence on the Internet".
Clustered Hits will cluster results from searches on Open Directory Project. Enter one or two words. Clusters are on the left of the display, individual hits on the centre. Alfalfa, for example, occurs in 8 clusters including business, health science. Mouseovers will show the sub-clusters. Only works with Internet Explorer, or Opera pretending to be IE.
Mentioned in ResearchBuzz.com
Wegblogs Compendium has a list of the services that will shorten URLs. There are quite a few.
The State of the Search Engine Industry by Dana Todd. SearchDay (Oct 22)
This article is a short account of a panel discussion at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in August 2003. Topics touched on were paid inclusion, vertical engines (travel is doing very well, and Singingfish's multimedia search), and mobile search on cell phones and PDAs. Panelists were asked for their wishlists. Greg Notess of Searchengineshowdown asked for "truncation and proximity locators". Brett Tabke of Webmaster World hppes for "a subscription service for an ad-free search environment".
Cyberatlas has summarized the comScore Media Metrix reports on Traffic Patterns of September 2003 Time on the Internet at work rose 5%, and dropped 1.6% at home. Top 5 properties were MSN, AOL, Yahoo, EBay and Google.
Google buys Primedia's Sprinks "Internet search engine snatches media company's online ad service unit for an undisclosed amount." Reuters via CNN Money (Oct 24)
"Internet search engine Google Inc. is buying online ad service Sprinks, taking over a piece of Primedia Inc.'s media empire while wiping out one of its biggest rivals for content-based advertising online. "
"This makes Google the exclusive provider of targeted and search advertising across About.com and most of Primedia's consumer media and magazine Web sites. "
Google removed a competitor in Sprinks and gained distribution through About.com.
Google has incorporated its glossary function from the Labs into Google search. Enter define followed by the word or phrase. Google will find definitions on web pages and display the first one with a link to more. For example, define semantic web picks up a definition from www.ktweb.org/rgloss.cfm. Other normal web results follow.
If you only want definitions enter define:semantic web ,. Five results are displayed on a page. This is two more than is produced at Google Labs.
Also see Google Releases Glossary Search Command EContent (Oct 24)
"Google has introduced a new advanced search command that is designed to enable users to find the most current definitions to word(s) and phrases."
Gary Price found that you can also start the search with definition, what is, what are. But he warns against using the results blindly. They can be wrong and of course, incomplete. See Glossary Comes to English Language Versions of Google ResourceShelf (Oct 20)
Google goes for gold in £9bn float Owen Gibson Media Guardian UK (Oct 24)
"Google is planning a £9bn float in March next year in a move that will spark a scramble for shares among the public not seen since the dotcom crash in 2000"
Google about to go public? by Jim Hu. Silicon.com (Oct 24)
"Web search giant Google could go public early next year using an unusual electronic bidding and placement system that aims to put individuals on an equal footing with powerful institutional investors, according to a published report."
Study: Spam Is Making Consumers Log Off by Antone Gonslaves. TechWeb (Oct 23)
"A survey of consumers by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project found 52 percent trusted e-mail less because of spam, and 60 percent had reduced their e-mail use "in a big way" to avoid the annoying, and often offensive, mass mailings. "
The problem is that 7% of people receiving the spam actually ordered a product, and 1% paid money!
Pew Internet and American LIfe Project Report is published as Spam: How it is hurting email and degrading life on the Internet It "includes scores of stories gathered in a Web-survey by the Washington-based Telecommunications Research & Action Center about how spam has affected people's experience with email and changed their views about the value of email."
Cyberatlas has a summary of the findings. Spam: Always Annoying, Often Offensive By Robyn Greenspan (Oct 22)
Hotmail tries to fry more spam by Paul Festa. CNet (Oct 23) -- Hotmail is going to adopt white lists to control spam. You only receive email from approved email addresses.
Internet Public Library to Test Appeal to Donors Library Journal (Oct 22) - Internet Public Library, which is partially funded by the University of Michigan, is initiating a new fundraising approach. This is a public good and needs public support.
"Phishing" Is Foul on the Net by Alex Salkever. BusinessWeek (Oct 21) "This rapidly growing type of e-mail fraud is particularly dangerous because you're lured into revealing valuable personal info. Beware "
"Dubbed "phishing" in the Web vernacular, this type of scam entails cybercrooks posing as legitimate businesses asking users for key personal information. The perpetrators spray e-mail by the millions to random addresses using domain names of popular e-mail services such as aol.com, yahoo.com and earthlink.net. These messages request that recipients give up their passwords, account numbers, and other key information."
The Web: Search engines still evolving By Gene J. Koprowski. UPI Technology News (Oct 21)
Of interest -- "Using a combination of statistical mathematics, heuristics, artificial intelligence and new computer languages, researchers are developing a "Semantic Web," as it is called, which responds to online queries more effectively. The new tools are enabling users -- now on internal corporate networks and, within a year, on the global Internet -- to search using more natural language queries. "
"Key word searching is common today," Wiener said. "But the next generation of the Web is making documents more contextually relevant. The relevance of each document to a particular topic, or search, will be related by the semantic tagging language that developers are working on now in fields from artificial intelligence to relational databases to statistics. People have been actively pursuing this for two or three years now to evolve the Web. Several efforts are starting to rollout. I predict that in the next six months to a year, you will begin to see semantic relationship searching on the 'Net."
Mentions the work of ClearForest with unstructured data.
AU search engine takes aim at Google ZDNet Australia (Oct 21) Australians will have a new search engine - Mooter Search -- "In what it claims is an implementation of "artificial intelligence", the Mooter search engine groups together information in logical clusters, which is designed to save time. "We have built a powerful, smarter search engine that enables our users to do more ... with considerably less hassle," the company's chief executive officer, Liesl Capper, said in a statement. " It might use Looksmart's listings. Check back later.
Europe, U.S. on Different Sides of the Gender Divide By Robyn Greenspan. Cyberatlas (OCt 21) Fifty two percent of Internet users in the U.S. are women compared to only 42% of European users. This chart shows percentages by country with Sweden the highest at 46% and Italy lowest at 38%.
Also, in the U.S. while women generate more traffic they spend less frequently than men and buy different things. More proof that the online life is merely an extension of the one offline.
Yahoo Quietly Unveils New Mail Tools by Cory Kleinschmidt . Traffick.com (Oct 20)
"With no fanfare, Yahoo on Monday released an upgraded Yahoo Mail interface and advanced spam protection tools. Now, when marking a message as "spam," Yahoo automatically reports the message as spam, deletes it, and trains its new spam filters to learn what you consider to be spam."
More detail in Yahoo Mail delivers new spam measures by Jim Hu, Cnet News (Oct 21) - gives Yahoo Mail users the capability to use additional addresses for one-off purposes. For example, when registering for a service, use the name specialservice@yahoo.com. Mail will come to main address. If spam turns up, just delete the address.
Also Yahoo beefs up antispam tools Yahoo is continuing to boost its tools for fighting unsolicited e-mail. ComputerWeekly.com (Oct 21) - describes 4 anti-spam enhancements.
Instant dominance? Commentary: Microsoft's IM strategy is tough to beat by Bambi Francisco. CBS Marketwatch.com (OCt 21) - predicts that the Microsoft instant messenger will command the market place the way the browser does.
"On Tuesday, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is set to roll out Office System 2003, which includes 16 separate products ranging from the omnipresent Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, to applications such as Sharepoint, One Note, and Info Path.
For the first time, Microsoft will also have an integrated instant messaging product, called Live Communication Server, a product with ample hype preceding it. "
Microsoft Office 2003 by Jack Kapica in Globe and Mail (Oct 20) has more detailed information about the new Office suite. He notes that the improvements are mainly aimed at enterprises. He was impressed by the collaboration tools (of which Instant Messenger would be part) and by the spam-killing capabilities of the new Outlook. However, he's not persuaded that enterprises will rush to upgrade.
"Unless I am seriously misreading the flexibility of the collaborative features of Office 2003, I suspect that many corporate buyers will take a pass on the product, if only for purely economical reasons or out of a desire not to disrupt the existing corporate structure. Or they will hold back because Office 2000 is already deployed to everyone's general satisfaction."
Also -- Microsoft gets new Office up and running "latest software to be unveiled around world tomorrow" - by Keith Damsell. Globe and Mail (Oct 20)
French Trademark Ruling Could Have Far-Reaching Effects by Andrew Goodman. Traffick.com (Oct 19)-- Goodman comments on the French court ruling against Google on trademarks in which the court fined Google for allowing advertisers to use trademarked words. He notes in Google's defence that "Advertisers are generally making no claim that they *are* the trademark holder, they're just assuming that their message might be of interest to a user typing a query within a given universe of meaning. "
Think Different - Tip of the Month from Mary Ellen Bates (October, 2003) - good advice and excellent examples on how to work around tough research questions - turning the question around, getting an angle, defining the question.
BlogRunner Announces Weblog Content Portal PRNewswire (Oct 20, 2003) - BlogRunner groups weblog entries into topics and news stories. Home page has a summary of the major stories. Directory is really a search engine of blogs by name, author, or topic. You can also search for news stories.
Of interest -- "Most search engines index individual web pages. BlogRunner, however, is capable of identifying the specific chunks of content within a page that correspond to weblog entries. This makes it possible to reassemble these chunks into more meaningful discussion threads.
One key feature of weblogs is the way they dovetail with articles from traditional media outlets. BlogRunner highlights this interdependency by closely integrating weblog entries with the media headlines they reference. "
Expand Shorthand Meanings with the Acronym Finder by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Oct 20) - Acronym Finder, developed and maintained by Mike Molloy, may be the largest collection of acronyms anywhere - it has 313,000 entries.
Woman sentenced for reading e-mail of husband's ex-wife AP via CNN (Oct 19) "A judge sentenced an Arizona woman to 60 days home detention for intercepting her husband's ex-wife's e-mail, saying the penalty is a warning to others who might be tempted to do the same. "
Usenet an overlooked but rich branch of Internet By Dwight Silverman Houston Chronicle (Oct 18, 2003) - Not many write about usenet anymore - the discussion groups that are like an electronic bulletin board. However, the people who read and post can be very helpful. Article describes the structure of usenet groups, how and where to read them.
Opera scores a grand slam "Opera 7.21 for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris unleashed" Press Release (Oct 14)
"The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource."
This site was overwhelmed with visitors the moment it opened. Traffic overwhelms new online science journal by Alorie Gilbert. News.com (Oct 14)
MEDLINE SDI services: how do they compare?Mary Shultz, M.S., Assistant Health Sciences Librarian1 and Sandra L. De Groote, M.L.I.S, Assistant Information Services Librarian2. JOurnal of the Medical LIbrary Association (October 2003) -- Looks at PubMed Cubby, BioMail, JADE, PubCrawler, OVID, and ScienceDirect.
"Results: Not all MEDLINE SDI services retrieve identical results, even when identical search strategies are used. This study also showed that the services vary in terms of features and functions offered."
Gary Price recommends CentralOps.net for WHOIS lookup. Gary Price Resources of the Week - WHois Lookups. (Oct 16)
Ask Jeeves has added an Advanced Search page at http://web.ask.com/webadvanced Can look for words in title or url, and also by language, domain and date. There is even a help page
Gary Price found that the syntax used at Teoma also works at Ask Jeeves -- site, intitle, inurl.
Gary Price - Web Search - Ask.com
Ask Jeeves can be customized to display more results per page, and filter out "adult" material.
Teens struggle to find accurate, useful health information online University of Michigan Health System (Oct 17, 2003)
Of interest -- "In a study of how teen-agers search the Internet for answers to health questions, University of Michigan researchers found that misspelled words, ambiguous search terms and an imprecise approach to scanning a Web site often prevented students from finding the information they sought.
The study, published today in the online Journal of Medical Internet Research, suggests the importance of teaching teens better search strategies as well as encouraging Web site designers to target teens. "
"The researchers offer several suggestions that both teens and Web designers can take to help improve access to health information. For example, teens can be taught better search strategies. This may mean using directories within search engines that drill down into specific topics, or teens could learn to formulate and refine search terms used on general-purpose search engines. "
Adolescents Searching for Health Information on the Internet: An Observational Study by Derek L Hansen1, BS; Holly A Derry2, MPH; Paul J Resnick1, PhD; Caroline R Richardson3, PhD. Journal of Medical Internet Research. (Vol 5, Issue 4 - December 2003)
iHound is a metasearch engine that does web search as well as several specific topics - news, business, technology, images, and shopping (of course). There are 24 subcategories and over 300 search engines. About page says that this is version 3.0.
Of the 16 search engines for web search, 3 are pay-per-click. Results are presented as a tab for each engine. Results are not collated and deduped.
It promised a new feature called SpeedLinks for faster searching that would be delivered in August 2003. Looks like they missed their target date.
Let private sector run the Net By Charles Cooper CNET News.com (October 17, 2003) -- More fallout from Site Finder, introduced by VeriSign to redirect people when they hit a "no such address" error. VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos has words for the governing body ICANN.
"But the controversy attending the dispute over the Site Finder service revealed a deeper split between technologists who helped guide the Internet in its infancy and the businesspersons who later realized the platform's commercial possibilities. After spending much of the last couple of weeks explaining his company's position, Sclavos believes that this cultural divide is a big reason why VeriSign has not received a terribly sympathetic hearing. "
Faster, better, with less junk by Anna Salleh . Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Oct 17) An Australian firm, Advanced Messaging Technologies PL, has come up with a third way to deliver content - not web and not email - but through Elvin, a content-based routing engine. "An information producer can notify Elvin that they have generated particular information, and then the technology routes the information on to consumers who have specifically requested that information. Both parties, says Segall, would have to have a special interface to communicate via Elvin." This has been shown to greatly improve speed and decrease volume. It's not expected to hit the home Internet network, but is being used at some universities and by the US military.
Yahoo's Overture extends Microsoft contract AP via USA Today (Oct 17) MSN extended its contract for paid placement listings with the Yahoo-owned Overture until 2005. Advertisers pay Overture an amount for each click, a portion of which Overture gives to MSN.
August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web by Paul Ford. (July 26, 2002) fTrain.com -- Futuristic article on how Google succeeded in becoming the largest online marketplace, easing out Amazon and eBay by using semantic web constructs. Mentioned by Stephen Downes in the OLWeekly Oct 17, 2003
AOL Search & Google Search Results: The Partnership Strengthens Eric Lander TopSite Listings ( October 16, 2003 ) -- Sees the AOL-Google partnership as a step to dominating the search market. Also lists capabilities AOL users can expect in search.
Researchers search for faster searches AP via Globe and Mail (Oct 16) -- Carnegie Mellon University researchers are trying to make image search better by attaching labels that have been created through a computer game played by people. Some are skeptical this will work.
VeriSign might be bringing SiteFinder back -- VeriSign to revive redirect service by Declan McCullagh. ZDNet (Oct 16)
Yahoo! Introduces Smartsort Technology: Personalized Product Recommendation Tool "New Yahoo! Search Technology Helps Consumers Customize Shopping Experience Based on Personal Product Preferences" Yahoo Press Release (OCt 16)
Consumers will be able to rank criteria on nine product groups to get top 10 recommendations. Products are digital cameras, MP3 players, personal digital assistants, desktop computers, notebook computers, printers, mobile phones, televisions, and DVD players. This is just the beginning.
A "Fireside Chat" with Google's Sergey Brin By Greg Jarboe (October 16, 2003 ) Searchday - Danny Sullivan interviewed Sergey Brin, President of Technology at Google, during the August Search Engine Strategies Conference.
Of interest
- Google will not support paid inclusion
- It is constantly working on new ranking technologies
- Possibly the most unknown Google feature is the tilde operator.
"The tilde operator," a new search command that enables users to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. This is accomplished by placing a ~ character directly in front of the keyword in the search box. He also mentioned, "The calculator," which enables users to solve mathematic problems by entering numeric expressions into the google.com or the Google Toolbar search boxes. "
With update, Mozilla introduces fees by Paul Festa and Matt Hines CNnet news (Oct 15) -- Mozilla Foundation released Mozilla 1.5, an open source browser, and introduced a for-fee support service at $39.95 per incident. Mozilla is a nonprofit organization that was spun off from AOL.
IBM WebFountain - taking web search to the next level it-analysis.com (Oct 15)
Describes Web Fountain as a "text analytics system".
Of interest -- "WebFountain runs on an IBM supercomputer and monitors everything on the World Wide Web. WebFountain contains over a petabyte of storage with over 3 billion pages indexed, 2 billion pages stored and the ability to mine 20 million pages a day."
"Web Fountain is not about building a better search engine; it is about identifying patterns, trends and relationships that can be used by businesses to transform the way they work. WebFountain can spot trends in public opinion and popular culture as they emerge and watch them catch hold around the world. WebFountain can be used as a surrogate for public opinion, providing instant, comprehensive virtual market research in the place of newspapers, Web page research or a professional report."
Google also owns pattern finding, meaning extracting technology through recently acquired Applied Semantics but it's being used to deliver targeted ads.
Study: Personalization not Secret to E-Commerce by Sharon Gaudin. Datamation (Oct 14)
"Jupiter Research released a study today that shows that only 14 percent of consumers say a personalized Web site lead them to buy more often from online stores. And just 8 percent say personalization makes them more apt to visit news, entertainment and content sites more frequently."
Study found that consumers want improvements in site navigation and more contact information. When they go online they have a task in mind - to find a particular CD - they don't need to be bothered by suggestions and distractions.
Surprisingly the article did not say anything about the privacy issues - people not wanting to give the information that would assist in personalization or have their activity tracked.
However, this was covered in Report slams Web personalization by Paul Festa in CNet News.
"More than 25 percent of consumers surveyed by Jupiter said they avoided Web site customization because of concerns that marketers would misuse the information. A similar proportion avoided registering with a Web site, for the same reasons."
Study indicated that personalization costs too much for little to no gain. However, there were some individual successes such as at Rand McNally, and 35% of the surveyed companies intend to go ahead with personalization plans.
Five personality dimensions and their influence on information behaviour
Jannica Heinström. Information Research October 2003
"It is shown that information behaviour could be connected to all the personality dimensions tested in the study - neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, competitiveness and conscientiousness. Possible explanations for these relations are discussed. It is concluded that inner traits interact with contextual factors in their final impact on information behaviour. "
Pity there isn't a predictive questionnaire.
The next thrust for web search engines is local search - being able to let you narrow your search to a particular city or even zip code.
Google has a beta site in its lab area for Location Search in the US -- http://labs.google.com/location
The little Gigablast will work with geo-sensitive metatags.
Overture has been testing localized search.
Pandia had an overview article Google and AltaVista test local search (Sept 23)
Danny Sullivan reported on New Developments In Local Search: Part 1, Moves By Overture in SearchDay (Oct 14)
Mainly the effort seems to be to make web search engines serve as yellow pages. But then - why not use yellow pages? Because the search engines want to serve up "localized sponsored matches" - ads for your area. If there are none, the search engine may be able to pull from the yellow pages.
Sullivan said, "Overture has a separate database of listings that involves a small number of its US national advertisers taking part in a pilot program. Additional "backfill" results are also provided by yellow pages and data provider Acxiom."
So far all the work is being done for US locations.
Blog noise achieves Google KO By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco. The Register (Oct 15) Trackback - where one blogger can ping another to indicate s/he has commented on another blog - is causing Google trouble. Somehow an empty page is created and it's bogging Google down.
Google Alert Greatly Improves Web's Leading Automated Search Service. News from Google ALert (Oct 15) Google Alert has announced a new release --
"The new release adds many possibilities for integrating search results into web pages and desktops. Results can now be delivered as email, HTML, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or TrackBack feeds, with a wide variety of customization options. The user experience has been further enhanced by direct links to Google's cached versions of sites, and additional online help and example resources to help users get the most out of the service. "
Bloogz - World Wide Blog. New search engine searches weblogs in five languages - English, French, Italian, German, Spanish. Can sort results by relevance or date. No information about Talent Group Srl.
Free Search Engines vs. Westlaw & Lexis at NetLawBlog (Oct 10) Sometimes Web search engines have the edge over the for fee Westlaw and Lexis, says Jerry Lawson. Main point is that Google is easier to use than the for fee services. In particular it allows one to limit the search to a site. (Entry doesn't mention that Google may not have indexed all pages at that site.)
GEsource the RDN geography and environment hub officially launched on 4th September 2003 at The Royal Geographical Society. To view the launch presentation click here: http://www.gesource.ac.uk/gesource_launch.ppt .
GESource also has a timeline of significant dates and events that shaped the Earth. http://www.gesource.ac.uk/geography_timeline.html. Worth some browsing time.
Are search engines confusing surfers? by Stephanie Olsen. CNet News (Oct 13)
The Federal Trade Commission finds that search engines are doing a better job of labelling paid-placement search results (essentially advertisements activated by search terms) but not paid inclusion - those pages that companies pay to have indexed. Yahoo is a "target of concern" because it owns the main paid inclusion engines - Inktomi, Altavista, and Alltheweb. The Commercial Alert, a consumer watchdog, is asking for full disclosure. Many say that the results that are part of a paid inclusion program should be marked as such.
MSN Drops LookSmart Results and Sends Signals to Rivals by Jim Hedger. ISEDB.com (Oct 9)
Hedger sees three reasons: MSN is competing with Looksmart for the paid listings, MSN has Inktomi and doesn't need Looksmart, and Microsoft feels it needs to be big in search because sales of Windows will fall off. Maybe.
This is too much. Microsoft Office 2003 users will be able to order books from Amazon while deep in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet. It's part of the Research Task Pane in Microsoft productivity applications. How much volume are they really expecting? There are several applications that will allow the user to dispense with a web browser.
Amazon Partners with Microsoft Office NewsBreaks (Oct 13)
Internet Search Engine Advertising Shows Major Gains - Term-Targeting Becoming a Killer App For Online Marketing by Tobi Elkin. AdAge.com (October 13, 2003)
Paid search (paid listings) is worth $1.6 billion as estimated by Jupiter Research, and could get to $8 billion by 2008.
Of interest -- "In large measure, paid-search has quietly converted search engines into a new sort of customer mining device, systematically matching hundreds of millions of specific consumer searches each day against advertising campaigns precisely aimed at certain search terms. "
There are 4 billion search-engine searches each month.
Gives the example of participants in the auto industry bidding for words.
British Pathe Develops Huge Historic Picture Archive by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Oct 13)
"British Pathe is offering free access to a digitized collection of more than 12 million historic photographs from its 20th century cinema newsreel archive. "
Also see Historic photo archive available on the Web Globe and Mail (OCt 14)
Google Answers Vs. Reference Librarians - A Response by Rita Vine. Sitelines (Oct 10, 2003)
Rita Vine is not surprised that the Cornell University study published in D-Lib as Google Meets E-Bay found that its librarians were only somewhat better than the Google's freelance researchers in answering questions. (Answer Services - Google v Libraries) She suspects that the reason that the reference librarians didn't score much higher than Google Answers was because both groups are using the same faulty and inadequate web search tools. (There is nothing in the DLIB article to support this.) Too many people trust their searches to the popular search engines and -- "Most popular, well known search tools aren't very good. Many rely so heavily on pay-for-placement advertising that results are terribly skewed in favor of paying partners. " She recommends speciality, non-commercial tools - though does not give any examples.
Point is well taken - search engine results are being more skewed. But keep in mind that many searches are for products. Nonetheless, on searches with no consumer purpose, searchers should also use the librarian maintained subject directories such as Lii.org and RDN.ac.uk to locate resources. There is also Gigablast.com, a growing non-commercial independent search engine. Also, when using the popular search engines, we need to be more attentive to the signs of commercial placement such as the words sponsored or featured, or just the nature of the page description.
Developers gripe about IE standards inaction by Paul Festa, CNet via Globe and Mail (Oct 10)
"Gripes have mounted recently over support in IE 6 for Cascading Style Sheets, (CSS), a Web standard increasingly important to design professionals. Web developers and makers of Web authoring tools say the software giant has allowed CSS bugs to linger for years, undermining technology that promises to significantly cut corporate Web site design costs."
Adobe and Macromedia are trying to push Microsoft into improving IE by supporting CSS themselves. But Microsoft seems unmoved to improve the browser at all, intent instead in adding browser capabilities to its new operating system, Longhorn. Meantime, AOL has dropped support for Netscape.
Dogpile Search Engine Introduces New Toolbar Features EContent Magazine (Oct 10, 2003) --
New features to the Dogpile Search Toolbar include:
- Popup blocker
- Cursor search - search for a word on a web page
- Scrolling news ticker - picks up headlines from ABCNEWS.com
Also has the Dogpile metasearch and access to US White and Yellow pages from Infospace.
As usual, it requires Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP, Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher.
Google bug blocks thousands of sites By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco, The Register (Oct 10) -- Oh dear - will spammers never quit? There's a new problem, named Google-NACK which Orlowski describes as "you enter a particular search term and Google tells you that there are thousands of matching results, but fails to return many, or any results". He gives the example of keyboard bracelet. Theory is that Google's spam filters are blocking pages from being displayed.
Article also describes the operation of Elwyn Jenkins in Australia who maintains microdoc-news.info and several other sites that are about Google, web searching, and blogging. Through incestuous linking of his sites and others to his site, he created a "perfect storm" of links to raise the ranking of his sites at Google. It's this kind of operation that Google must counter.
MS defends LookSmart breakup Kate Mackenzie, Australian IT (Oct 10) - Looksmart was an internet startup from Australia that made it big in the US. Although MSN is ending its partnership with Looksmart in the US, the partnership of MSN with Looksmart Australia will continue at the MSN portal, ninemsn .
How to hack Amazon David Coursey. ZDNet (Oct 10) - reviews the new book Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools by Paul Bausch and throws in a few tips on making Amazon do more for you.
Infomart, known for its large collection of Canadian news and business information, has expanded its service to include the Financial Post Datagroup suite of financial information products. New resources include investor reports, historical reports, industry reports, information on dividends, an Analyzer tool, and an archive of new issues. Current infomart users have access to these products on a free trial basis until October 22nd. Visitors to the website may view the list of companies by industry for free.
Website: http://financialpost.infomart.ca/
20 Great Google Secrets By Tara Calishain. PC Magazine (October 28, 2003 issue) - short article that covers syntax, other neat tricks (spell check, calculator etc), and extended googling - Google's other search places.
As The Blogs Churn By Robyn Greenspan, Cyberatlas (Oct 8, 2003) Two studies on blog longevity seem to indicate that bloggers who use hosted, free services are often one day wonders, whereas those who host their own weblogs are more stable and durable. Hosted blogs number around 4 to 5 million (Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga), and could double in the next year.
Some Enron workers' dirty laundry aired on Internet By Dennis K. Berman, The Wall Street Journal via Austin American-Statesman (Oct 7, 2003) -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has put more than 1.6 million pieces of Enron e-mail and other documents on the Web. Suddenly some very personal remarks made by 176 Enron executives and employees made during the years 2000 - 2002 are open for all to see. Since putting it online FERC has been removing some of the personal content.
"For many of the Enron employees, the database has become a lesson in the do's and don'ts of e-mail. A former employee who asked not to be named said, "I think before I send anything on e-mail now. If I need to talk about something personal, the e-mail will say, `Call me when you have a minute.' " "
If you are curious, links to the databases are at this FERC Information Released page.
Watch developments of the Detod legal portal at the Detod blog. As of October 7 you can -- "You can search:
the web (powered by Gigablast) website directory (powered by ODP) blawgs (powered by Blawg Search) blogs (powered by Feedster) news & blogs (powered by Daypop) and caselaw (coming soon). Chad Williamson of Detod Communications is putting a lot of work into this site.
Copernic Agent : an information retrieval, analysis and monitoring solution - detailed description of the software at Agentland.com. Says "Originally a ‘simple’ metasearcher, Copernic has over the years added a range of features that have turned it into a very complete solution for information retrieval, analysis and monitoring." (October 2003 ?)
Googling at the future By Andrew Donoghue. ZDNet (UK) (October 6, 2003 ) - interview with Craig Silverstein about plans for product change and impending competition.
AOL Renews With Google By Danny Sullivan, SearchDay (October 8, 2003 ) --
Google adds search features for AOL users.
Microsoft fixes broken patch CNet News via Globe and Mail (Oct 7) - another patch for security holes in Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 for all versions of Microsoft Windows. Sounds important.
Microsoft to alter Web browser Associated Press via Globe and Mail (Oct 7) Microsoft is changing Internet Explorer so that it does not infringe on patents held by Eolas Technologies. The changes will prevent IE from automatically activating plugins or applets that are used by a Web page. This may mean that users will have to take some extra steps to see or use a page fully. Microsoft and others are working on a method to make the connections transparent again without patent infringement.
Microsoft drops LookSmart search tool by Jim Hu, CNet News (Oct 6)
Microsoft announced that it will stop using Looksmart's web search results at the MSN.com site after January 15, 2004. This will hurt Looksmart badly. In the quarter ending June 30, 65% of revenue came from sales to Microsoft.
Also MSN To Drop LookSmart by Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (Oct 7) - mentions that Looksmart will be dropped immediately from MSN Search UK. MSN said that dropping the Looksmart listings increased relevancy of results. Perhaps this is because Looksmart's listings are so monetized. Without Looksmart, MSN will be relying on Inktomi results - but it is expected that MSN will switch to its own crawler and database before 2005.
Startups Offer Online Publishing Alternatives Will These RSS Entrepreneurs Succeed? by Steve Outing. Editor and PUblisher (Sept 24)
Outing continues his consideration of RSS delivery as a publishing replacement to e-mail newsletters by looking at the RSS software for users. He notes that today's RSS applications have disadvantages - don't do alerts well, aren't automatic, require a lot of reading. But "the next wave of online publishing applications will solve those problems".
Some companies that might provide this next wave are:
- Toolbutton , an IE browser addon being developed in Edmonton Alberta
- Klip Folio, an awareness and notification tool from Serence in Ottawa, Ontario.
- Quikonnex, a publishing service based on RSS
- MyWireService, webbased service for reading news. Has nearly 3,000 news sources.
FT, Yahoo Deepen Relationship Media Daily News (Oct 6) Yahoo Finance will have more content from the Financial Times especially in the areas of telecom, IT, and financial services.
Google Testing Frequent Searcher Program by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Oct 6)
Google has been testing a search counter with some of its users. The counter is a cookie that will count number of searches. No one know why Google is doing this or when it will be launched.
New York Times ran an article on this too - Frequent Search Engine Users, Google Is Watching and Counting by Lisa Napolli (Oct 6) - saying that it was a test - just something Google thought was fun. But privacy advocate, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, is worried that this could lead to monitoring individuals.
Gale thinks highly enough of Google's image collection (425 million) to build a bridge between the Gale Infotrac information products and Google Images.
Gale Databases Link to Google Image Search by Barbara Quint, Information Today Newsbreaks (Oct 6)
Of interest -- "Before selecting Google, Gale looked into licensing content from commercial image suppliers, such as Corbis and Getty Images, but Paschal described the prices charged by those services as “ridiculous.” " The connection to Google will be free.
Copernic Launches Enterprise Search Product for the SME Market by Paula J. Hane, Information Today Newsbreaks (OCt 6)
"Copernic, a company known for its consumer metasearch product, Copernic Agent, has officially launched its first enterprise search product, Copernic Enterprise Search. ... a product that is specifically designed to meet the needs of the Small-to-Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) and departments of larger enterprises. "
"Copernic Enterprise Search uses advanced linguistic and statistical technologies that can identify the key concepts and the key sentences of indexed documents. It is able to rank a document whose main theme corresponds to search keywords higher than a document that only contains search keywords once or twice. The results ranking can be fine-tuned by altering the weight of different ranking factors. The software also does automatic indexing of new and updated documents in real time, ... "
Nieman Reports (Sept 2003) [PDF file]
Nieman Reports is a quarterly publication from Harvard University about the news industry. The September 2003 issue has several articles about -- Journalist's Trade: Weblogs and Journalism.
"In this section of Nieman Reports, bloggers and journalists (some of whom wear both hats) write about the points of convergence and divergence of Weblogs and journalism. What separates these forms of communication? How do they influence each other? Is what’s happening on Weblogs changing how journalists do their jobs and, if so, in what ways? Can news organizations embrace Weblogs and maintain the standards of the craft?"
There are 18 articles, several by leading journalists. Here is a sample:
Weblogs and Journalism - Do they connect? by Rebecca Blood - sees "wide adoption of Weblogs as just the first wave of an age of online personal publishing."
Is Blogging Journalism? by Paul Andrews
Weblogs: A Road Back to Basics by Bill Mitchell -- "Weblogs are providing journalists with more edge". Includes a guide to weblogs.
The Infectious Desire to Be Linked in the Blogosphere by Mark Glaser
Determing the value of blogs by Eric Alterman - "Blogs. Blogorrhea. Blogosphere. Blogistan. Blogdex. Blogrolling. Warblogging. Where it will all end ..."
Google to Expand Keyword Matching By Brian Morrissey, Silicon Valley (Oct 3) -- "Google notified its 150,000 advertisers on Friday that it would expand its keyword matching to show paid listings on related search terms, while also increasing the performance standards for such ads. " ... " Now, an AdWords customer with the keyword "cashmere sweater" could have broad matches to several related searches, ranging from "cashmere cardigan" to "cashmere turtleneck.""
VeriSign shuts down Web site finder Reuters via CNN.com - "Web address provider VeriSign Inc. said on Friday it would suspend a controversial new service that steers mistaken Web searches to its own page after the organization that oversees Internet policies demanded it do so. "
Biz Leaders Prefer Web By Robyn Greenspan. CyberAtlas (Oct 3) Studies by Survey.com show that executives use the Web -- "with 51 percent of executives naming it as the most important business information resource. "
Net body threatens suit over VeriSign site finder AP via CNN.com (Oct 3) "The Internet's key oversight body [ICANN] threatened legal action Friday to stop a new online search service blamed for disabling junk e-mail filters and networked printers. "
Web Searches: The Fix Is In How much exposure can you buy? Plenty, concludes a BusinessWeek probe. By Ben Elgin, Business Week (Oct 6, 2003)
Looks at the booming business of paid inclusion - where companies pay to have their web pages indexed either as entries in a directory or pages in a database. Yahoo, Looksmart, Inktomi, Alltheweb - all do it. They claim that results are not skewed since relevance ranking reigns. But BusinessWeek found that paying customers did do better.
"What gives? For starters, the paid-inclusion pages are easily engineered for high placement. When submitting paid-inclusion data, companies typically fill out a spreadsheet with information on product details, along with the search words and phrases for which they'd like to appear. The result is a rich stream of data targeted precisely to what the search engine will deem relevant. Consequently, their ratings are primed to soar."
Article has a chilling story about a small travel site, Online Highways, that decided not to pay Inktomi 10 cents per visitor.
The October issue of the Internet Resource Newsletter is online.
Some sites to note --
1UpInfo.com Encyclopedia and Reference Resource portal. Also has a North American Gazetteer. (Though use with caution. Entry for Toronto, Ontario was taken from the Columbia Gazetteer with data from 1991.)
Canadian Architect and Builder Journal published between 1888 and 1908.
Corante - Tech news filtered daily
Also lists several Blog and RSS services.
Bloglines is a free web-based service for subscribing to and reading RSS news feeds. No need to download an application or the feeds. Bloglines will also blogroll your subscriptions to add to your own blog. Blogline was reviewed in the October issue of Internet Resources Newsletter.
E-mail is broken by Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon (Oct 2) - "Four Internet pioneers discuss the sorry state of online communication today. The consensus: It's a real mess." Experts are Dave Farber at Carnegie Mellon, Brad Templeton - Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jakob Nielson - usability expert, Dave Crocker - once part of Arpanet. Problems are spam and viruses. Various solutions discussed were laws and enforcement of them, authentication of e-mail, traceability - but no one was hopeful there would be a fix anytime soon.
The Future of RSS - Is E-Mail Publishing Dead? RSS-based Information And News Feeds: Pros and Cons For Content Distribution Through RSS By Robin Good, LLRX.com (Sept 29, 2003)
Excellent analysis of the good and bad of using RSS for online publishing. It doesn't replace the two-way communication power of e-mail but it does compete with the e-mail newsletter. It is being much promoted as the solution to spam, but Robin Good does see problems and limitations for readers and publishers.
Copyright Issues Present Ongoing Dilemma: To Link or Not To Link? by Robert I Berkman and Christopher A Shumway, Online Journalism Review (OCt 1)
Article examines the arguments surrounding the ethics and legality of linking to web pages. It seems accepted that linking to a home page is ok, but linking to specific content pages without permission might not be. News stories, as an example, are really copyrighted material and not public domain.
The article is an edited excerpt from the book "Digital Dilemmas: Ethical Issues for Online Media Professionals," published in Aug. 2003 by Iowa State Press.
E-Book Scenarios Updated By Mick O'Leary, Online (October 2003)
Identifies four trends in e-books: they are used not read, preferred as an aggregation rather than individual books, are bought by institutional customers, and are subscription priced.
"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. I've referred to e-books as the "last mile"—the last major form of publication to become widely available online. We've long had journals, magazines, newspapers, broadcasts, etc., etc.—it's about time we're getting books. "
Greg Notess looks at the use of -, & and _ at Google. Punctuation at Google and Minor Site Updates (Oct 1)
LookSmart Sponsored Listings To Take On Google & Overture by Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (Oct 2)
Looksmart has modified its sponsored listings program to be open to anyone and to use competitive bidding - similar to Google and Overture's programs. Previously the sponsored listings program was flat-rate based and used mainly by large advertisers (30,000 of them). This change, Sulllivan says, may strengthen Looksmart's position as an all-in-one search provider. It will be able to provide paid placement listings and "editorial style" listings (relevance ranked search results). This may strengthen Looksmart's position with MSN, who uses the Looksmart directory and might turn to Looksmart for paid listings instead of Overture. Infospace already uses Looksmart for sponsored listings.
See also LookSmart Looking to Trump Yahoo! Move by Michael Liedtke,
Associated Press in Silicon Valley.com (Oct 2)
Marcus Zillman has noted two search engines from Penn State Univerisity for business research at his weblog
under The eBizSearch Engine.
- eBizSearch -- http://gunther.smeal.psu.edu/index.html "searches the web and catalogs academic articles as well as commercially produced articles and reports that address various business and technology aspects of e-Business. "
- SMEALSearch -- http://smealsearch.psu.edu/ -- articles, academic and commercial, that address all aspects of business.
Both support boolean and proximity searches and will do a citation search. They are both in experimental stages and could be slow.
Se also Gary Price's comments about the work of Dr Giles and team at Penn State University. Business Research, ResourceShelf (Oct 1, 2003)
Yahoo! Customizes Ads for 'New Yorker' By Ann M. Mack (September 30, 2003 ) - a sign of things to come, Yahoo will supply contextual ads to the New Yorker to highlight Yahoo's properties.
"Text-only ads running under the theater heading of that section, for instance, will carry copy such as, "Break a Leg? Yahoo! Health," or "Get Your Own Tony ... Yahoo! Personals." Another ad for the Web portal's personals will read, "Harvard Symbologist seeks Mona Lisa"—a fitting reference to The Da Vinci Code that will appear in the magazine's books section."
Research Reports from Consumer Webwatch Analyze Problems Facing Consumers and Health Web Site Publishers. Business Wire (Sept 30)
Consumer WebWatch has published two studies about problems identifying quality health web sites. From one -- ""There are no user-friendly tools for consumers to use, and they cannot rely on existing seals of approval, to assess the credibility or reliability of health websites," said Goldschmidt, who authored the study. "Our findings to date validate the Institute's work and the need for programs such as Consumer WebWatch to draw attention to a significant problem and the lack of adequate solutions, and to work toward enabling consumers to evaluate Web sites and health information.""
Consumer WebWatch and the Health Improvement Institute will be developing independent ratings of health Web sites. They recommend that in the meantime we consider the following attributes of a site in assessing quality: sponsorship, purpose, audience, currency, sources and credentials.
Full reports are at http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/
Bookmarklets: Nifty Tools a Mouse-Click Away by Mary Ellen Bates, Tip of the Month (September 2003) - Mary Ellen Bates likes bookmarklets - small javascript applications that act as quick links from the browser toolbar. So do I - good for dictionary look up, adding pages to a page monitoring service, and many other applications.
How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet
By Marylaine Block, Searcher (October 2003)
The Internet has been both good and bad for libraries. Marylaine Block looked at the challenges and identified imaginative solutions adopted by librarians. This article lists the threats and some of the responses. It also has an excellent list of resources refered to in the article.
The article is a preview to Laine's new book Net Effects: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet.
Google buys personalized search start-up Reuters via CNet (Oct 1) - Google bought "Kaltix, a start-up that builds the personalized and context-sensitive search tools the industry sees as part of its next wave of product offerings".
This is likely to deliver targeted advertising rather than better search results.
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