FindLaw Launches New 'FindLaw for the Public' PRNewswire (March 29) via CBS Marketwatch. Thomson has released a new version of http://public.findlaw.com/ with new features. "The new features provide FindLaw users with the most comprehensive and intuitive Web site experience, making it easier for the millions of consumers who visit FindLaw each month to understand legal issues and connect with qualified attorneys. "
Google Introduces Personalized Search Services; Site Enhancements Emphasize Efficiency Business Wire (March 29) -- Google's view of the new features it just introduced. "The new offerings include a revolutionary search engine that uses user preferences to match search results to their interests, a service that delivers search results via email, and an enhanced interface for Google web sites worldwide. "
Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results by Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (March 30)
Lois C. Ambash looks at Keeping Up With Health Trends Online Through E-Letters at LLRX.com (March 15) - has quite a mix of e-letters from items from the Journalist's Toolbox to Wired.
Eyetrack Study on User Behavior May Surprise You New research suggests online audiences focus on text and avoid advertisements. By Carl Sullivan. Editor and Publisher (March 25) Eyetracker will be watching what people's eyeballs take in at online news sites. They's start reporting findings at Poynter.org beginning April 5.
Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results By Danny Sullivan, SearchDay (March 29) Describes the many changes at Google including
- dropped tabs from the search results page and now uses links,
- Open Directory demoted probably because of quality concerns,
- sponsored links are still on the right but aren't contained in boxes,
- continues the "invisible tab" (as Danny Sullivan calls it) to direct people to news or other Google areas.
- Google Web Alerts,
- Personalized search is actually based on categorization Google is doing of sites so that you can find more of cars, or games or whatever. Maybe that is why Open Directory has been demoted. Technology is somewhat based on Applied Semantics, bought in 2003.
Google Alert promises "New look, New features, Premium service coming soon". Current features are described on the Web Intelligence Technology page.
Beyond Googling: tech industry generating next generation of search engines by ANICK JESDANUN Canadian Press (March 26) Article mentions Mooter, Dipsie (that claims it will get past dynamic web pages), Eurekster (social networking), Superpages, Factiva.
Google Labs is trying out Personalized Web Search. To use it you must create a profile of interests based on categories Google presents.
Google has replicated its popular news alerts with a web alert service. Best to develop the search statement at Google using advanced techniques if appropriate, and plug that into http://www.google.com/webalerts.
United Nations ponders Net's future by Declan McCullagh. CNet via Globe and Mail (March 29) A United Nations summit may be the prelude for the United Nations getting involved with regulation of the Internet. Developing nations complain about the digital divide and would like a greater say. Most control bodies such as ICANN are based in the United States.
More and more stories are turning up about deteriorating results at Google and the reasons why, all seemingly written with an eye to the imminent launch of the IPO. In this article from the UK -- You won't find God if you go to Google (Independent.co.uk, March 28) -- it is said that Google is being held hostage by spam websites. It gives the example of a search for God as proof as evidence of deteriorating standards. Of course, Yahoo and MSN are in the wings - but are they any better at finding God?
Gary Price at SearchDay says Dogpile Enhances Toolbar with News Feeds (March 29) Dogpile toolbar now includes a RSS newsreader and will also display favourite feeds in a scrolling ticker. You gotta love news feeds to go for scrolling ticker.
MetaCarta maps search results. EContentInstitute (March 29) - Boston firm, MetaCarta, has developed Geographic Text Search that will do a text search on geographic terms and display them on a map. Demo is available at MetaCarta by request. Intended for firms and government offices who need to search their documents in a geographic context.
Search tool aids browsing By Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News ( March 10/17, 2004 ) Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed software that will help assess relevance of links in a search.
"The software, dubbed ScentTrails, shows a user how strongly the links generated by a Web search correlate with the topics she is searching for. The software grades the links a search engine returns by increasing the font size of links that have more connections to relevant pages. "
It's still in the prototype stage.
Microsoft to create search site for Weblogs By Michael Bazeley Mercury News (March 27) MSN will be indexing weblogs it picks starting in the first half of this year using the MSN BlogBot. It will look a bit like MSN Newsbot, in beta test in the UK.
Microsoft is also building an Answerbot to answer specific queries - who, what etc. Said to be 3 years away.
Microsoft to upgrade search tools By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY (March 27)
InfoSpace to buy rival Switchboard, creating largest online directory By Monica Soto Ouchi. Seattle Times (March 27)
"InfoSpace and Switchboard's combined networks account for 23 percent of all online Yellow-Page searches, making it slightly larger than Verizon's SuperPages.com, according to data from comScore Media Metrix. "
AlltheWeb Database Dies! (But Lives at Lycos) by Greg Notess at SearchEngine Showdown (March 25)
As Greg says, at first glance Alltheweb looks unchanged but in fact nearly all the features that made Alltheweb distinctive are gone.
The FAST database is gone. It's not clear what database is being used - likely a version of Yahoo's. Search for teleconference at Bell Canada (bell.ca) produces different results at Yahoo, Altavista, and Alltheweb. Yahoo has Alltheweb has only 4 hits in French. Altavista has 1 in French, and Yahoo has 2 in English but can be expanded to show 18 mostly in French.
Can search on PDF and MS Office formats but not Flash files, and can no longer find pages that link to certain file formats - images, audio, java.
Does still have URL Investigator - enter the URL in the search box to get information about ownership and links.
Has boolean but AND, OR, NOT. Rank is gone.
Results display is down to one line - no longer the keyword in context plus excerpt.
Clustering at the bottom of the search results page has been replaced with Related Searches.
Syntax title: and site: will work, but not filetype: or inurl: It's possible to select filetype on the Advanced Search page, but you can't search in the url or easily search on links to a page.
With all these cuts, why didn't Yahoo just close Alltheweb? There is no longer any reason to use Alltheweb.
Same old tips but presented more compactly -- Favorite Google Tips and Tricks From the Google Staff - Dr Joseph Mercola - adapted from an article by David Pogue in the New York Times.
Microsoft Concedes Misstep in Search AP via CBS Marketwatch (March 25) - Chief executive Steve Ballmer conceeded that Microsoft missed the boat on search but said they'd be rolling with their own search technology in 12 months. But what they really want is the advertising revenue. "Microsoft - which will spend nearly $7 billion this year on overall research and development - hopes to have some of its own search technology development done in the next 12 months, Ballmer said. It will take longer to develop search technology focused on advertising, he told the advertising executives. "
GlobalSpec Develops ''The Engineering Search Engine'' Business Wire (March 25) "GlobalSpec, the leading specialized search engine and online resource for engineers and technical professionals, today announced the launch of its more powerful search functionality, deeper engineering content and "The Engineering Web." "
GlobalSpec supports searches of applications notes, patents, material properties, and standards, as well as of companies, products and services. Free Registration
Also see review by Paula Hane. GlobalSpec Introduces “The Engineering Web” IT Newsbreaks (March 29) Full description on merits and use. Also mentions other engineering resources -- Engineering Village 2, Engineering.com, and Scirus' engineering subject area.
The Real Orkut by Jesse Lichenstein. New Yorker (March 22) About Orkut Buyukkokten, the Google engineer who came up with the idea of Orkut as a community, and Orkut itself.
Older Americans and the Internet Pew Internet and American Life (March 24)
"The percent of seniors who go online has jumped by 47% between 2000 and
2004. In a February 2004 survey, 22% of Americans age 65 or older reported
having access to the Internet, up from 15% in 2000."
Also see The Net's Late Bloomers By KATIE HAFNER. New York Times (March 25)
"Once largely written off as a lost cause, older Americans are now coming into their own as Internet users. They are researching their family histories, sending e-mail, running virtual book clubs, reading about religion and travel, and pursuing other interests lifelong and new. ....
Despite the increases, this age group still has a long way to go. Only 22 percent of Americans over 65 go online, the study shows, compared with 75 percent of those ages 30 to 49. But as Americans who are more comfortable with computers gradually reach the age of 65, the percentage going online (or more precisely, staying online) should soar."
Sketchy Information Will graphical search interfaces make a picture worth a thousand links? By Erik Sherman. Technology Review (March 19, 2004)
Some new visual techniques to help people see relationships are at work at Gnooks.com. Enter the name of an author to get results that show likenesses of that author with others. The likeness is based on readership patterns - people who read Alice Munro may also read Jane Urquart. Gnooks.com uses Amazon's database. There is also Gnoovies (for movies) and Gnoosic (for music).
Article also mentions Endeca for guided navigation, and Anacubis for use of metadata to determine nodes.
The Web Library, a companion website to Nick Tomaiuolo's book of the same name, is featured at ResourceShelf. The Web Library: Building a World Class Personal Library with Free Web Resources
Plugged In - Presstime Special report by Lisa Rabasca about online newspaper sites. "Today, online operations are sophisticated marketing, editorial and even circulation tools, and newspaper executives continually look for ways to maximize the online experience." Newspapers collect email addresses and demographic information through subscriptions in order to target advertising and content. Some online newspapers are succeeding as subscription only - as an alternative to advertising revenue. Future may be in helping people manage news and information.
Internetworking New social-networking startups aim to mine digital connections to help people find jobs and close deals. By Michael Fitzgerald. Technology Review (April 2004)
There may be over 30 online social networking communities. "The premise behind this new social-networking technology is simple: you may know a lot of people from work, college, church, or your neighborhood, but you probably don’t know exactly who their friends are—and forget about their friends’ friends. But join an online social network and invite a few acquaintances, and the software will begin to reveal previously hidden second- or third-degree connections that can lead to an interview, business meeting, or tee time with that elusive potential client or employer."
Hmm - not all communities are created equal. Let's not think we can hobnob electronically with the rich and influential.
My Avatar, My Self Pick a virtual body and hang out in a massive simulated world: it may be the future of online interaction. By David Kushner Technology Review (April 2004) - Avatars and online worlds were once all the rage and then disappeared. Perhaps they'll have a revival to liven up personal interaction. Many virtual worlds have been for gaming.
"The key insight of the new virtual worlds is to allow people simply to share experiences with fellow cyber travelers, without forcing them to perform any particular tasks. Hygiene, in the new worlds, is a personal choice—not a survival skill. Rather than pitting people against one another, Rosedale says, the new software gives them the tools to express their personalities. “What’s interesting is creating a space that can be meaningfully altered to reflect your ego,” Rosedale says."
Presentations from the Information Highways Conference (March 23-24) are online at http://www.econtentinstitute.org/conference/presentations.asp
Sessions covered Knowledge Management, Collaboration, E-Government, Records Management, Business Intelligence Portals, Digital Libraries, Search Engine Optimization.
Specifically look for:
Create and Leverage the Power of Business Intelligence Portals by Mary Lee Kennedy
Put Search Engines to Work: Understanding the Business of Search Optimization by Rita Vine
Eurekster Discusses Combining Social Networking and Search Engine Technology at Search Engine Lowdow (March 25). Andy Beal interviewed Eurekster CEO, Grant Ryan about the future of social searching. Social searching works on a kind of word-of-mouth among searchers with similar interests.
Newsknife, the excellent web site about online news sites, is featured in SearchDay (March 23) Ranking the Quality of Online News.
Of interest -- "Newsknife believes Google News is a good barometer of how well a news site is serving the general public. Newsknife says, "If a news site does well in Google News rankings chances are it will do well outside of Google News.""
Opera's browser finds its voice By Matt Loney and Paul Festa. CNet (March 23) "Opera is adding voice control to its browser, enabling users to browse the Web and fill in voice-enabled Web forms by talking to their PC. They can also have the contents of Web sites read back to them. "
Thomson proudly announced that FindLaw.com, the legal portal, was the "385th most visited among all Web sites in February 2004". FindLaw.com: Number One on the Web for Information About the Law and Lawyers PRNewswire via CNS Marketwatch (March 23)
"""Most people use FindLaw because they know it's the best source for information about the law and about legal professionals," said FindLaw President and CEO, Debbie Monroe. "It's an incredibly valuable information tool, one that enables users to get smart about the law, and then connect with legal professionals for help if they need it." "
Reuters to Deploy Content Monitoring Solution From FAST; FAST Content Monitoring Application will Track Reuters Online and Print News Content to Identify Copyright Infringements Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (March 23) Reuters uses FAST ESP to delivery customized information to customers. With FAST SDA Reuters will be able to alerted to copyright infringements on the use of the content.
The WebTalk Guys interviewed Nancy Blachman, co-author of "How to Do Everything with Google" and owner of the the excellent Googleguide.com. Google 101: How to search more effectively on the popular Website (March 20) Interview is available in text and audio. Blachman lists her favourite Google tools
Gurunet has refreshed itself again as possibly the best answer engine the Web has seen. GuruNet Launches New Answer Engine Next-Generation Search Tools Leaves No Query Unanswered Press Release (March 22) This announcement puts GuruNet back on the Web with topic search from the web site. Subscribers may also use the new IE toolbar, Version 5 of Gurunet desktop, or GuruNet Kids. The deskto application is for Windows only but a Mac version is promised for later this year.
"GuruNet displays authoritative answers, definitions and facts on more than 700,000 topics comprising news, people, places, history, events, and specific industry knowledge. The content is from more than 150 top-quality data sources and live data feeds "
Annual subscription is $29.99 US.
Google to find place for Orkut network in search by Michael Kanellos. CNet (March 22) Google will do an Eurekster thing and integrate social networks to search. "Schmidt [Google CEO Erick Schmidt] said that such services are a natural complement to the sort of automated searches that Google now provides, because it allows visitors to connect to experts or at least to people with knowledge. "
Next Net moves forward By Marguerite Reardon CNET News.com (March 22) - "The next generation of the Internet, known as Internet Protocol version 6, took another big step toward commercialization, as its second phase of testing in North America wrapped up last week. "
Jagdeep Pannu at the ISEDB.com site has written up a page of Google Advanced Search Tips (March 22) - describes the syntax, search operators, and extra features and tools.
Search toolbars from HotBot, Dogpile make their debut By Michael Bazeley. Mercury News (March 22) These new toolbars are evidence of a move to desktop searching.
The Hotbot Desktop will do email and local files. Today the toolbar can only search Microsoft mail programs, but Hotbot will be adding Yahoo Mail and Hotmail (no mention of Eudora.) Notes that the Hotbot toolbar does not collect information on you or your searches.
The new Dogpile toolbar, like Hotbot Desktop, will read RSS feeds. It will also show ticker-style what others are searching for. Search voyeurism must still be a hobby of some.
Factiva Combines World-Class Content with Simplicity of Free Web Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch. (March 22) Factiva has introduced Factiva iWorker Search Technology, a new way to search its premium content.
"Factiva iWorker Search Technology is a patent-pending system and method that seamlessly matches simple, keyword searches to the filtering capability embedded within Factiva's proprietary taxonomy. The taxonomy consists of company, region, industry, language, and subject codes that are universally applied to Factiva's entire content set to help ensure more precise and accurate results. In addition, the search experience is personalized as users set their preference for a specific region and industry, which influences the relevance of their results. "
Chat Gets Pushy by Lisa DiCarlo Forbes (March 17) The next online store you go to might jump up in a chat box and ask if it can help you.
Yahoo News Upgrades To Take On Google News Greg Jarboe at SearchDay (March 22) Yahoo News now has 7,000 sources and new ranking. It also has more users than Google News. The competition is heating up.
Hotbot has dropped Alltheweb from its roster of four. Left are Hotbot (ie Inktome), Google, Ask Jeeves. What might that mean? Is this a sign that Yahoo will close Alltheweb?
Federated Searching: A Viable Alternative to Web Surfing by Barbara Fiehn. TechNews World (March 22) "A possible solution to the Google-only research approach is making its way into schools via library media center automation systems. Imagine searching your local library media center and other library collections, Web sites, and subscription databases with a single click of the mouse. " - examines the good, bad, and ugly - are still some wrinkles to work out.
Hotbot has introduced a new desktop search. Gary Price and Barbara Quint tried it out in Lycos HotBot Offers Free DeskTop Toolbar NewsBreaks (March 22)
It is the first to support searches of document files on the hard drive, browser history, and e-mail folders for Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. Internet search is based on Inktomi. One can also search RSS subscriptions and view them with the built-in RSS viewers. It comes with text ads. Requires Windows, Internet Explorer 5.5 and above.
More information at http://www.hotbot.com/tools/desktop/
Hotbot also has a deskbar.
Greg Notess has found some magazine articles in Google Print. Google Print Adds Magazines SearchEngine Showdown (March 21) Use this search -- site:print.google.com magazine to see the articles (intermixed with some books).
All Eyes on Google "
In six short years, two Stanford grad students turned a simple idea into a multibillion-dollar phenomenon and changed our lives. Now competitors are searching for a way to dethrone the latest princes of the Net". by Steven Levy. Newsweek via MSNBC (March 29 issue) Examines the actions and intentions of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.
Of interest:
- Google has 90 languages
- Google receives 138,000 queries a minute - 200 million a day
- annual search revenues intotal arer $4 billion - expected to triple over the next 4 years. Google's search revenue is $1 billion.
- Microsoft is making some headway with a "next-generation system" that will search user files - email, photos, documents etc - and even anticipate what they should see.
- reviews efforts to capture "deep content".
Article is part of a special on Technology -- Also of interest:
The IPO: Giddy Over Going Public "Google's highly anticipated stock offering could make history" by Brad Stone.
Little Engines That Can "Even Google can't think of everything. A host of start-ups are working to fill niches and capitalize on the search boom" by Brad Stone
Mentions Grokker, Eurekster, Nutch, Dipsie and Mooter.
For Yahoo, the Search Is Worth the Effort By KENNETH N. GILPIN. New York Times (March 21) Inteview with Lanny Baker, an Internet analyst at Smith Barney, about Yahoo's worth. Yahoo is high risk now, but this analyst says "In time, Yahoo will lose the high-risk rating. If one seeks investment exposure to the sum total of the things that are driving the Internet, Yahoo is the best way to play it."
Some interestig bits:
- projects growth of 25 to 27% in the search market over the next 4 years.
- sees Yahoo as two companies - one for subscribers, other for partners.
- says three companies can survive in this market but the advertisers will have to pay more without getting any additional traffic.
- rumour has it that Terry Semel is might succeed Michael Esner at Disney.
New domains '.mobi' and '.xxx' under consideration AP via CNN (March 20) "Ten organizations submitted applications to sponsor new Internet domains, including ".mobi" for mobile services and ".xxx" for adult content, the group that oversees key aspects of the global network said Friday." Other applications being considered are: ".asia," ".cat," ".jobs," ".mail," ".post," ".tel" and ".travel." I presume cat is for catalog and not for people who love felines.
MSN to shake up search ads by Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com (March 19) "Microsoft's MSN is planning to label its paid-search listings more clearly, a course long advised by the Federal Trade Commission. " Won't happen until July though. When it does, MSN will highlight three of its own text ads at the top as "sponsored results" , and put Overture's on the right. My $.02 - this is not much of an improvement - anything that forces searchers to look at the sponsored results first is annoying.
ResourceShelf had good things to say about FinanceWise "the only finance-specific search engine". (March 18) FinanceWise also has Special Reports on Risk Management, Market Data, Reinsurance, the Euro, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
PIP Data Memo: The CAN-SPAM Act has not helped most email users so far Pew Internet Report (March 17) You can say that again.
From the email: "29% of email users say they have reduced their overall use of email because of spam. That figure is an increase from last June, when we found that 25% of emailers were reporting a reduction in their email use. 63% of email users said that the influx of spam made them less trusting of email in
general. That figure is higher than the 52% of email users who reported declining trust in email in June. 77% of emailers said the flood of spam made the act of being online unpleasant and annoying. That is an increase from the 70% of those who said in June that spam was making online experiences unpleasant and annoying. "
The high cost of not finding information By Susan Feldman of International Data Corporation (IDC). KM World (March 2004) There is a cost to not finding information. Fifty percent of searches are likely abandoned. Studies show that knowledge workers spend up to 35% of their time looking for information. IDC extrapolated from these studies some estimated costs of not finding information. The figures are shocking. Can technology help? Susan Feldman does name a few companies -- "Autonomy autonomy.com ClearForest clearforest.com Convera convera.com Endeca endeca.com FAST fastsearch.com InQuira inquira.com Inxight inxight.com iPhrase iphrase.com Mindfabric mindfabric.com Siderean siderean.com Verity verity.com".
The "Weariness of the Flesh": Reflections on the Life of the Mind in an Era of Abundance Paul B. Gandel, Richard N. Katz, and Susan E. Metros. Educause Revies (March / April 2004) In an era of "information abundance" what do we do? Can information professionals help?
U.S. Internet Population Crosses 200M DM News (March 19) 74.9 % of Americans have access to the Internet from home.
AccuWeather® Selects TriggerNews PL For Private Branded Weather Alerting System (March 17)
Accuweather watches weather around the world. People in the USA can download the desktop version for immediate updates. Now they will get real-time breaking news from TriggerNews
TriggerNews itself is a news alerting system that pulls in major sources and reacts to keyword-based rules to deliver alerts. The alerts are pop-up boxes, not email messages. Cost is roughly $140US / year for 45 "triggers".
Genealogy Search Help will help you use Google to track down ancestry. It creates the searches based on what information you can provide about a person - parents, spouse, birth place. Very helpful.
Yahoo has announced changes to its News Search (What's New). There are more sources - up to 7,000 sources in 35 languages, an Advanced News Search for narrowing the search, sort by relevance or date, and related searches.
This consolidates Yahoo's news sources and the feeds from Moreover. As at Altavista News, Yahoo News has been cut back to 30 day archive. Advanced syntax that was available in the old version for searching news has been removed. The Advanced search is forms-based and restricts query construction. You can search in the headline. When will one of these news searchers let us search the lead paragraph? You can select a particular source or region. Searching for "ontario hydro" mentioned in papers in Ontario seems to work. Setting up a news alert is well integrated for Yahoo subscribers.
Related searches show up for the query on united nations. This also links to Full Coverage portfolios that Yahoo has created on the topic.
The American Society of Magazine Editors have announced the National Magazine Award Finalists (March 17) These are called the Ellies. There is a category for General Excellence Online. Nominees are:
Beliefnet (http://www.beliefnet.com)
The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com)
CNET News.com (http://.news.com.com): Jai Singh, editor-in-chief
National Geographic Online (www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine):
Sky & Telescope.com (http://skyandtelescope.com)
Slate (http://slate.msn.com):
Famous British wills available on-line AP via Globe and Mail (March 17)
The National Archives of Britain has published online about 100 wills dated from 1384 to 1858. Wills of William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth and others are available as colour images. Searching is free but viewing the image costs 3 Pounds. See http://www.documentsonline.pro.gov.uk
Yahoo introduces new search technology Globe and Mail (March 17) Yahoo Canada has dropped Google is now using the Yahoo Search Technology. It has also added some spam fighting algorithms. Claims "YST is that users will benefit from more relevant, Canadian-specific search results."
ZDNet announces a personalized news alert system that notifies readers by e-mail as breaking news occurs. ZDNet (March 17) - can set up e-mail alerts by keyword, company or topic.
NewsAlert has been sending news alerts on business and finance to members for years, but on March 31, 2004 it will be closing. Marketwatch.com bought it in January 2004 and didn't have time to change the About Us page. People are being directed to CBS Marketwatch where there is a variety of e-newsletters and keyword activated news alerts.
Ban spam: e-nough is e-nough "Rick Broadhead and Anthony Jenkins. Globe and Mail (March 16) - the sorry story of spam and how it is wrecking the economic benefits of email. "It is time for Canadian legislators to act swiftly and forcefully to send a strong message to the global community that Canada is not a safe haven for spam. The world is watching."
Google rolls out local search system AP in Globe and Mail (March 17) - "The new algorithmic formulas, scheduled to begin working Wednesday, will allow Google to display more local information in response to search requests that include a ZIP code or a city's name". So - if you are in the United States remember to enter your zip code.
Chris Sherman describes the new service in Google Pushes Local Search Into the Limelight SearchDay (March 17) Local search results will show at the top of the page. There is also http://local.google.com/lochp which will save your location.
In Search of Truth How to determine the reliability of information on the Internet by Reid Goldsborough. Link-Up Digital (March 16) - primer on what to consider in determining the reliability of information found on the Web.
The winners of the 2004 bloggies have been announced. These are awards done by a group of enthusiasts connected with South by Southwest Interactive Festival held in Texas. Boing Boing , "A directory of wonderful things", was named the best weblog overall. There are some interesting categories - best design, best Canadian, best topical, most humorous, best programming, best photography. There is much here to keep any blogger or bloggee occupied.
MSNBC Freshens Up by Staci Kramer. OJR (March 16) - about the redesign at MSNBC - benefits for the editors and producers. "Today's MSNBC.com is designed to take advantage of every bit of broadband bandwidth and every square inch of real estate on increasingly larger monitors."
Beyond Google by Laurianne McLaughlin in PC World. (March 2004 in April 2004 issue) - recommends specialized sites for many search needs - "... best data resources on the Web, from the latest business news sites to the most useful addresses for hearth and home. "
Includes a chart of new features at the major search engines.
There is a section on Searching the Hidden Web but it is quite outdated. Resources mentioned are no longer updated (Gary Price's Direct Search) and Invisible Web Directory, or are poor (Turbo10). The metasearch engines mentioned are helpful for searching - Dogpile, Ez2find, Vivisimo - but not only if you choose the specialized searches will they help at all for "deep web".
Search Strategy Tip: searching within a company's website from Eipert Information Services (March 2004). Describes the type of information you are likely to find at a company website and methods for locating it using the website itself or a search engine.
Newsknife has rated the top news sites based on listings from Google News. Toronto Star placed 10th.
LookSmart's First Quarter Expectations Rise by Janis Mara. ClickZ News (March 11) - Looksmart has reduced staff from 400 to 200, but does continue to provide results to MSN as required.
New software tames Web searches, speeds publishing by Eric Auchard. Reuters via CBS Marketwatch (March 14) - Onfolio has software that is said to work like a "a research vacuum, simplifying the collection, annotation and republishing of information found on the Web or in one's own computer. It bridges the gap between a raw information search on Google or Yahoo and the document filing system of Microsoft Windows."
Chris Sherman called Onfolio: A Powerful New Web Research Assistant. SearchDay (March 15)
Dialog Technology Changes Foreshadow Improvements by Matthew J. McBride. NewsBreaks (March 15) - Dialog is enhancing its platform and interface.
"Dialog customers have long desired a more unified interface that permits comprehensive searching across related arrays of content, especially in the areas of business news, financial data, and market research, and it looks like the future is becoming a reality. Dialog Profound and Dialog NewsRoom are significantly improved in the upgrade process, and the integration of the recent acquisitions of Intelliscope and NewsEdge into the mix so quickly is certainly a good sign. "
Also Dialog Launches Strategic Platform EContent (March 16)
"The new platform features the launch of SmartTerms, Dialog's taxonomy. Developed especially for business information, news, and market research content, SmartTerms leverages both the Dialog NewsEdge Real-time Content Refinery (RtCR) and the Dialog Profound InfoSort taxonomy. RtCR is a background information classification, tagging and XML conversion system. SmartTerms offers more than 855,000 terms in five categories: industry, subject, geographic location, company, and publication. When developing SmartTerms, Dialog included acronyms, company abbreviations, colloquialisms, and slang. An additional benefit of SmartTerms is improved document hyper-linking features, which suggest additional research options and facilitate in-depth research without interruption."
Search Engine Strategies Conference- Round Up and Guide SearchEngine Journal (March 12) - short review of the conference and link to INSIDER'S SECRETS OF 2004 SEARCH ENGINE STRATEGIES for $7.95 US.
Jonathan Dube calls Topix.net "A Local Google News". Poynter (March 12) - Is impressed by the grouping of news stories Topix.net can do (all without human assistance) but finds the ranking and grouping a little off.
Website Review: Seatguru.com By ADAM BISBY Globe and Mail Update (March 12) SeatGuru.com helps you pick the best seat on the airplane - as long as it's a US carrier.
Search upstarts storm Google's gates By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com (March 12) - names as upstarts the companies Quigo and Industry Brains, both working on search engine advertising, and Mooter, Eurekster and Dipsie as companies who are personalizing results. Also Vivisimo and Groxis continue to work on clustering. And all the yellow page outfits want to help you find a restaurant in your neighbourhood.
How do I love Google? Let me count the ways by David Coursey. AnchorDesk (March 12) - Coursey has several examples of how Google helps him.
Gary Price looked closely at the Yahoo announcements concerning deep indexing - Web Search Yahoo. ResourceShelf (March 2) Discusses the implications for searchers - mainly that they will have to learn advanced techniques to take advantage of the extra content.
Search by File Format at Fagan Finder. Tool is in beta. http://www.faganfinder.com/filetype/
First Monday (March 2004) has two articles
Finders, keepers? The present and future perfect in support of personal information management by William Jones. Looks at costs of deciding what information to keep or destroy. Wants to "Develop tools that decrease the likelihood that "keeping" mistakes are made in the first place."
Do you "google"? Understanding search engine use beyond the hype
by Eszter Hargittai - warns against drawing conclusions about search engine behaviour based on seeing Google as the most popular. Millions of people don't use it.
Gary Price interviewed Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix.Net -- News Search--Topix.Net ResourceShelf (March 8) - Topix uses 4,000 sources to built 150,000 topical pages - company, industry, news by zip code. "The goal for Topix.net is to make a web page about everything -- every person, place, and thing in the world -- constantly machine-summarized from the Internet. Since the web can be a messy place, surfing a well-constructed encyclopedia based on live content from the web would be a win for users."
RcoketNews has redesigned its news site and added a RSS Reader. The redesign shows one channel at a time (World, Technology etc) and includes a photo. News search defaults to today and yesterday. After the first search you can raise that to 4 days ago. There are no other limiting options.
The RSS Reader is a download. It's compliant with all RSS forms and Atom. You can create a RSS feed channel using your own keywords. The functionality and display is the same as that contained in the for-fee RocketInfo Desktop - except that RocketInfo has more features for reading and saving news.
Oddly, Rocketinfo Desktop is not promoted at the RocketNews site. Might just have been an oversight in the redesign.
Rocketinfo launches free Rocketinfo RSS Reader (March 9)
David Seuss, CEO of the revived Northern Light gave a presentation to Computers in Libraries about "Ten Years into the Web: The Search Problem is Nowhere Near Solved." (March 2004) [Powerpoint]
Opened with a history of access to information beginning with the Puritans in Massachusetts. Noted that there are unintended consequences to information technology. Web search began as a good thing but today we are seeing that "web search results decline with the size of the Web databases". Junk is a big problem. Also, innovations in search are driven by revenue objectives - it's all about improving advertisements. Seuss does have an alternative -- "organize content into many high quality databases for professionally-oriented Web searching".
Spotted at the ResourceShelf.
Internet giants aim to cut off spammers by David Akin and Paul Waldie. Globe and Mail (March 11) --Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online and Earthlink have filed suits against hundreds of spammers. Among these are Barry Head and sons Eric and Matthew, all of Kitchener, Ont. who has barraged Yahoo users with email.
Questionable Results at Revamped Yahoo By Leslie Walker. Washington Post (March 11) - Leslie Walker is worried about results she got from the new Yahoo. She found that Yahoo compared to Google gave more space to ads, and put them in a more prominent position. She is also concerned about the paid-inclusion arrangement of Site Match as simply being hidden advertising.
Google unlikely to achieve search 'treble', says Forrester in Net Imperative (March 10) Forrester Research predicts three winners in the search competition: Yahoo for portal, Microsoft for desktop, and Google for general search utility and pay-for-performance ads.
Blog format truce proposed by Paul Festa. CNet News (March 8) "Dave Winer, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School who is commonly considered the arbiter of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format, proposed on his Scripting.com Web log that the format could merge with Atom, a competitor launched in the summer. "
Yahoo intensifies push for local ads - Portal Improves Mapping Tool By Michael Bazeley. Mercury News (March 9) - All the buzz will be about Yahoo's mapping tool to help people find local restaurants, movie listings, bank machines and more. Yahoo's SmartView has 50 categories of information for local searching available through maps.yahoo.com. Of course - only works for addresses in the United States.
For more detail, see Chris Sherman -- Yahoo Enhances Local Search with Maps in SearchDay
SideStep Launches New Hotel Search Service PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch (March 9) - "SideStep, Inc. (www.sidestep.com), the travel search engine, today introduced SideStep Hotels (www.sidestephotels.com), a new Web-based version of its popular hotel search offering." Sidestep doesn't have the range of offerings Expedia and Travelocity have, but reviewers like it. (See Design Your Own Discount Getaway at SideStep.) The new SideStepHotels is shakey - can recognize non-US cities but can't find listings. Give it 2 or 3 weeks to clear away technical problems.
E-mail, VoIP Span Net Activities List By Robyn Greenspan. CLickZStats (March 2004) There are many Internet activities that people don't do - starting with making phone calls (87%) and taking courses (75%). Check Trends and Statistics
Chris Sherman says that Altavista and Alltheweb will not die though they will both use the new Yahoo index. Letter to the Editor - The Virtual Chase.
In search of the deep Web by ALex Wright. Salon (March 9)
"Today, the deep Web remains invisible except when we engage in a focused transaction: searching a catalog, booking a flight, looking for a job. That's about to change. In addition to Yahoo, outfits like Google and IBM, along with a raft of startups, are developing new approaches for trawling the deep Web. And while their solutions differ, they are all pursuing the same goal: to expand the reach of search engines into our cultural, economic and civic lives. "
Considers implications of this on publishers and prices.
Search: The Trends by Rebecca Lieb. ClickZ. (March 5) - reports on possible trends in "search as a marketing tool" gleaned from the Search Engine Strategies conference. Local search is one obvious and big direction. There is still life in contextual advertising. Expect trouble with trademarks.
Wikipedia for Journalists Trusting a free resource. By Sree Sreenivasan. Poynder Online (March 9) - Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia built from contributions of volunteer writers worldwide. This article describes how this "open editing system" succeeds.
REVIEW: Family travel websites By ADAM BISBY. Globe Technology (March 9) - describes five sites that can help in planning the family vacation.
Great news site - Topix.net - 3600 news sources, and 150,000 topics. Is said to cover every US zip code.
Tim Bray has left Antartica Systems, the information visualization company he helped to found. He has been using his weblog site to help in finding a new position. It's at tbray.org and his job hunting page is called Looking for a Gig. He says in one post that Google Ads will cover his hosting costs.
Searching for Public Companies Around the World by Gary Price. SearchDay (March 8) - recommends the Scannery, an investor-purposed search engine with information about more than 12,000 companies in over 50 countries. Can search within industry and by geographic region. Has many helpful features for constructing the query.
InfoSpace Latest Search Supporter of XML Syndication By Matt Hicks. eWeek (March 8)
"InfoSpace Inc. is adding the ability to read XML syndication feeds into the next release of its search toolbar planned for April, joining the growing ranks of search companies supporting the technology. "... "InfoSpace, likewise, is planning features in its toolbar release to simplify the process for subscribing to XML feeds. A setup feature called "Search Page" will scan an open Web page for RSS or Atom feeds, and then let a user decide whether to add them to the toolbar. "
Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know All About Me: Web Personality Tests By SAUL HANSELL. New York Times (March 8) - Tickle.com has a battery of personality tests for free and fee. It has expanded into social networking and dating.
Amazon offers RSS feeds now but to figure it out you need see Genie Tyburski's article -- Amazon Launches RSS News Feeds (March 5)
Mamma.com Inc. Announces New Tools Including Geo-Targeting Feature in its Pay-Per-Click Search Solution for All Advertisers CCN Matthews via CBS MarketWatch (March 5) - Mamma.com lets its pay-per-click customers geo-target ads. "The new geo-targeting feature will allow advertisers to target their pay-per-click campaign by selecting one or more countries worldwide as campaigns will only be displayed in the selected target markets. "
Warning: Blogs can be Infectious. by Amit Asaravala. Wired (March 5) - Get ready for tipping point on blogs -- ""What we're finding is that the important people on the Web are not necessarily the people with the most explicit links (back to their sites), but the people who cause epidemics in blog networks," said researcher Eytan Adar. "
Ask Jeeves to buy Web network for $343 million by Stephanie Olsen. Cnet News (March 4) Ask Jeeves is buying Excite.com along with iWOn and MyWay from Interactive Search.
"Jupiter Research media analyst Nate Elliot said that the acquisition should provide Ask Jeeves with distribution for its growing ad network outside of search. The company has been building an ad network in which it sells banners, pop-ups and pop-unders."
Pop-ups? One of the good things about MyWay is that it didn't have Pop-Ups.
See Andrew Goodman's comments in Rising Search Tide Lifting Several Boats at Traffick.com. He hopes that consumers will get a wider choice of portals.
Findory offers personalized news. It claims to adapt to "your reading habits" and can do so even if you don't register. If you want to use the service from more than one computer and take advantage of the cumulative learning, Findory offers registered use.
"The list of articles you have read is associated with a random number stored in a cookie, but there is no way to match that to any personal information about you. Even if you login, all Findory News knows about you is the arbitrary username you provided. You're effectively anonymous when you use Findory News. "
There is no information on number of sources or how frequently they are crawled. There are a few Canadian sources - Globe and Mail, canada.com. Articles are probably today's news only.
See ResearchBuzz review -- Findory News Site Adapts to Your Interests (March 9)
Trackle tracks web pages for changes in content during the day (hour by hour if you like) and will email the excerpts.
Industry Players Predict Search's Future by Janis Mara. Clickz News (March 3) - report on roundtable discussion at Search Strategies Conference picks up on relevance, personalization, privacy, ubiquity, more media types, and worry about paid content.
The NewsSearch Portal is one-page starting point for news search engines, meta search, photos, audio and video searches, news alerts, blogs. The list for news alerts is missing CBS Marketwatch and the new CNet news - but on the whole a good resource. [Mentioned in Research Buzz.]
Research Buzz picked out a new search engine - Sootle the Search Engine (Feb 29) Sootle uses Open Project Directory for the directory search. Has its own index for Web searching - still small according to my queries. Syntax is simple but may grow. Does have a text cache with saved view of the page. Help page explains how it does its ranking, relying primarily on keyword proximity.
Mary Ellen Bates calls the Groowe Toolbar "The Mother of All Toolbars". Groowe has Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK and other engines in one toolbar. (March 2004)
New Online Research Service Highbeam(TM) Research Signs Up 100,000 Members Within 20 Days of Launch PRNewswire via CBS Marketwatch (March 3) - Highbeam Research is off to a good start with 100,000 basic members. Surely some will convert to paid members at $19.95 / year - very good value.
"HighBeam Basic Members can perform advanced searching on HighBeam eLibrary (an extensive archive of more than 28 million articles and pictures from 2,600 of the world's leading publications, updated daily and going back as far as 20 years) by publication date, author and publication name. Basic Members can also save and e-mail article summaries. And, on HighBeam Web -- a robust meta search tool -- Basic Members can select specific sources they want to search, create customized research groups, cluster search results by topic and save searches. "
RSS: Extra! Extra! Read all about it! by Rod Chapman. Information Highways (March / April 2004)
The March 2004 issue of the Internet Resources Newsletter has some directories of interest.
- All.info has resources for science, arts, social science, recreation, and reference. All.info claims to aim for higher "web credibility". Has promise. Descriptions for some sites, however, have been automatically generated from the web page.
- InternetAlerts.info - a blog from Marcus Zillman has alerts, advisories and warnings.
- Directory Resources is another Zillman blog that lists "single subject directories and portals".
- Study Guides and Strategies done by Joe Landsberger, web site developer at the University of St. Thomas (UST), St. Paul, Minnesota. Good one page digests on how to study, learn and participate.
Beyond Music: Downloading Audio Books "The Growing Audible Revolution - a conversation with Audible.com founder and CEO Don Katz " By Dana Greenlee, Co-Host WebTalkGuys Radio -- Need something to listen to on the road? Audible will have it - "40,000 hours of audio books, broadcasts, magazines and newspapers ready to download". Makes one want to get an MP3 portable player. Check Audible.com.
Genie Tyburski shows how a search on a Windows XP technical question could have been done better at Google. Her comments were provoked by an article that found results from Googlel Groups and Teoma were better than Google. Two lessons - think source and choose words carefully Is Google Relevancy Slipping? TVC Alert (March 3)
CNet has news alerts for registered users. Set them up by keyword, company, or topic. E-mail alerts from News.com
AskJeeves denounces paid inclusion by Stephanie Olsen. Cnet News (March 3) "AskJeeves will stop accepting advertiser payments for inclusion in its searchable Web database, a move to draw competitive lines between it and Yahoo's new search engine. " Bravo.
Pandia examines the recent announcements from Yahoo about plans for the Yahoo search engines and the paid inclusion program.
The death of AltaVista and AlltheWeb - fears that development on these two engines is over. Says that "Yahoo! will replace these unique search engines with data from the new Yahoo! search engine", and that "Yahoo! will keep the two sites as experimental portals" So - syntax will be different but indexes the same - and, my guess is, if they are being used for experiment, they won't be predictable and maybe not reliable.
Yahoo! and Overture's new paid inclusion program Examines Yahoo's claim that paid inclusion won't affect rankings - a bit disingenuous. Sites that submit through the Site Match Xchange will be adding a lot of metadata which will help in getting placed in results. Also finds the program expensive.
Sullivan: No One Will Win Search War by Pamela Parker. Clickz.com (March 2) - In his keynote at the Search Engine Strategies conference Danny Sulllivan said he liked the search engines competing with each other - it makes for better search.
"Sullivan predicted search would shake out and begin to resenble the cable TV industry. Some big network players: Yahoo!, Google, and MSN, will dominate, but smaller players with niche offerings will also thrive. He cited DayPop, which specializes in news search, and Gigablast as examples of niche services that provide value. "
Yahoo was the main news item - flipping the switch on Google, increasing its share of market to 43%, and adding paid-inclusion. The latter has many concerned. Sullivan called for greater disclosure.
Also Search Engine Strategies: Something For Everyone By Erin Joyce. Internetnew.com (March 2) -- Some snippets
- at Overture "singular and plural forms of words are combined".
- "At AllTheWeb and Yahoo, related search terms are shown in lower-case, regardless of how users search."
- "At MSN Search, 'Popular Topics' related searches are terms hand-picked by editors, rather than being compiled automatically by query log analysis. "
WSJ.com Announces Enhancements EContent (March 2) - The online Today's paper has been enhanced for easier "flipping through", personalized tracking, interactive graphics, more columns and content. See WSJ.com - take a tour of the "new and improved" Personal Journal.
IndustryBrains Introduces Paid Listings on RSS Feeds EContent (March 2) -- "IndustryBrains, a business performance-based media firm that specializes in contextual, site-specific advertising, has expanded its business to include syndication of paid listings to publishers participating in RSS-driven content feeds."
Google Newsalerts are now available in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Yahoo widens Net search options by Bambi Francisco. CBS Marketwatch (Mar 2) - Yahoo will be launching a Content Acquisition Program for content providers of commercial and non-commercial sites to list pages with Yahoo.
"Non-commercial content sites include information that's in the domain of public libraries, universities or nonprofits. National Public Radio (NPR), Northwestern University, the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, to name a few, have agreed to give Yahoo certain pages to crawl."
Commercial listings will be through site-match -- "Site Match combines the paid-inclusion programs of Inktomi, Alta Vista and Fast into one algorithmic search engine." Price is a combination of an annual fee ($49/url) and a per click charge.
Yahoo to add more content to search results Reuters (March 1) -- says the Content Acquisition Program is aimed at including richer media. "Search users at Yahoo's Web site will be able to access rich content, such as the audio files of National Public Radio, the U.S. Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and Supreme Court audio recordings available through a Northwestern University project."
More at Yahoo crawls deep into the Web By Stefanie Olsen. CNet News (March 2, 2004)
Yahoo Announces Content Acquisition Program by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (March 2) - Notes that CAP brings the 6 paid-inclusion programs together into one. Yahoo will be publishing criteria for quality. It is also encouraging use of metadata to describe the content.
Altavista and Alltheweb will continue but they are now using the same database.
Further analysis (with bite and scepticism) of Yahoo's announcements at Traffick.com -- More on the Yahoo and Overture Developments: It's Almost All Good? by Andrew Goodman.
Here we go again - a search tool that will learn from us (it says). AOMI's Artificial Intelligence Search Product Will Render Most Traditional Internet Search Technologies Obsolete. PR Newswire via News Alert (March 1, 2004) AOMI is just vaporware so far - it's coming later in 2004.
Making the Case for Patent Searchers? Go Tell the Clients by Howard S. Homan. Searcher (March 2004) - all about what a technical searcher really does. Has strategies, search statement construction, and process.
Fiddling with File Types By Greg R. Notess. Online (March/April 2004) - primer on file types on the web such as Adobe pdf, Microsoft Office files, and several others. Covers syntax for searching specific file types at the main search engines.
Factiva Previews New Interfaces by Barbara Quint. Newsbreaks (March 1, 2004) - Factiva is trying out new start pages to facilitate the "Information Worker Experience".
Of interest -- "A new Start Page provides a simplified, Web search-engine-style dialog box for Google-ized search statements, plus some portal-style community services targeted around user profiles. Factiva refers to the Start Page interface screens as an “Information Worker Experience,” using terminology borrowed from their new partner, Microsoft. The IWE interface screens also assist users in refocusing search results by connecting automatically to index-based analysis of preliminary search results. "
New Web tools aim to customize searches By Michael Bazeley. Mercury News (March 1, 2004) - review of work at Google and Yahoo in personalizing search.
Report on Content Creation Online by Pew Internet & American Life Project (Feb 29, 2004) -- "44% of U.S. Internet users have contributed their thoughts and their files to the online world". They have done this through blogs, photographs, writing for their company's web site, family sites and the like. Pew Internet Project surveys have "shown that somewhere between 2% and 7% of American Internet users have
created blogs and about 11% of Internet users are blog readers. These are
not hugely impressive figures, but they are hardly trivial. They mean that
anywhere from 3 million to nearly 9 million Americans have created these
diaries".
"Online content creators are evenly divided between men and women. They are
especially likely to be students, to have broadband connections at home,
and to enjoy high levels of education and household income."
How Yahoo Plans to Compile New Search Engine Index SearchEngine Lowdown (Feb 29) - describes the paid inclusion program. Says that only 1% of the Yahoo Index is made up of paid inclusion customers. Yahoo will be adding a URL submit.
Internet May Not Have It All, Says Web Search Expert ASHU KUMAR in Financial Express (March 1, 2004) - reports on a presentation given by Greg Notess in New Delhi, India, in which he warned against reliance on the free Web for answers to important questions. The free Web will likely have basic information but not the in depth research and analysis.
Bloor Research commented on Google's power and seeming monopoly in Silicon.com (Feb 29). Google Monopoly? Google has obtained its preeminance by fair means, but commentators do have 2 concerns: Google's "editorial control and influence", and of course "power to influence the selection, availability and immediacy of purchases largely through its ranking algorithms.
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