FAST Launches Market Intelligence Application by Paula J. Hane NewsBreaks (June 21) FAST "has now announced FAST Marketrac, an enterprise software solution that gathers, analyzes, and communicates critical market intelligence from multiple, disparate sources throughout an enterprise and the Web."
Guess What -- You Asked For Those Pop-Up Ads Business Week Online (June 28) Adware makes its way to your machine through various means, some of which are related to Yahoo. Yahoo and Claria (Gator) are partners in this. Seems it's very effective. No mention in this article about how people can stop adware from getting a foothold on their computers. (Use Ad-Aware).
Ask Jeeves zooms in on Web search Reuters (June 20) Ask Jeeves has added binoculars as a site preview tool. Pass the mouse over the binoculars to get a thumbnail image of the site. It might help in deciding if the site will be relevant (except the print is too small to read).
Gary Price covered this change and some additional Smart Search shortcuts in Ask Jeeves Sharpens Its Focus SearchDay (June 21)
Libraries try to fit into a Google world By Katie Hafner The New York Times via CNet (June 20) It is now widely documented that students and instructors start research by going online. According to this article "A few research librarians say Google could eventually take on more of the role of a universal library. " But Google and other search engines only skim the surface of digitized materials. Research libraries are working with Google to get more of their content indexed. Yahoo is doing the same with the University of Michigan.
Going Beyond FTC Paid Inclusion Disclosure Guidelines by Danny Sullivan. SearchDay (June 17) - argues that search engines should mark the items that are paid inclusion - in part to disabuse people of the notion that sites that pay to be indexed more often get a boost in the rankings.
Google Gains in Popularity, But Will It Last? By Chris Sherman Searchday (June 16) - highlights of the latest Hitwise report on "U.S. internet visits to more than 1,900 search and directory web sites between August 2003 and April 2004. " Shares including sub-sites were:
Yahoo - 45%
MSN 19%
Google 17%
Ask Jeeves, Excite, and iWon had about 1% share each
Of interest: "Though the big three dominate search market share now, vertical search sites experienced strong growth over the past year, most notably in the shopping, classifieds and travel categories. This growth is correlated with a concurrent decrease in referral visits from search engines."
My ultimate office: tech I can't work without Rafe Needleman ZDNet Anchor Desk (June 14). Tips for being online from anywhere. Mentions a new department at CNet called At Work. - has products, buying guides, and video demos.
FIND/SVP has found that Flawed Online Searches Costing U.S. Businesses $31 Billion Each Year Press Release (Jun 17) People are wasting time searching the Web. "In fact, 84 percent of respondents feel that Web searches take longer than they should due to poor results, resulting in an estimated $31 billion in wasted time. According to the study, 71 percent of business executives are frustrated with consumer search engines, and an astonishing 74 percent are not confident that their results are reliable. Despite this lack of confidence, 67 percent state that it would be difficult or impossible to do their jobs without Web-based search tools."
To address this FIND/SVP has launched a special purpose business search engine - Find.com - that crawls handpicked business sites on the Web - the Business Web, runs a meta-search on popular engines (Altavista, TEOMA, MSN) and provides content from premium sources on a for-fee basis. There is also a News search.
Results are organized by topic, format, site, and source.
Flawed Online Searches Costing U.S. Businesses $31 Billion Each Year*; FIND/SVP Partners with Industry Leaders to Launch Find.com Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Jun 17)
"Find.com is a publicly-accessible search engine specifically created with the business user's information needs in mind. Find.com's searches are powered by an award-winning, next-generation retrieval technology, which aggregates documents from all major consumer search engines and combines them with results from more than 3,000 business Web sites, as well as access to premium research content from leading business information sources. "
Looks very nice. Business researchers will be very pleased.
HighBeam Research Selected as "Model of Excellence" By Infocommerce Group" press release (June 17) InfoCommerce liked the user interface and set of tools that HighBeam provides in its combination web search and premium content.
Mamma.Com-The Mother of All Search Engines, Releases Free Toolbar and Explorer Bar to Facilitate Users to Search the Web More Efficiently CNNMatthews press release (June 17) The toolbar works with Window IE 5+ - has the usual search history, popup blocker, and highligher. The Explorer - also IE 5+ - will show Mamma search results in the IE search bar. Both services sound useful if you are a fan of Mamma.
Searching for Audio and Video Resources by Gary Price. Presented to Computers in Library 2004 - outlines reasons for wanting to use streamed content. Has several tools for searching the "spoken word", and lists many sources of "Live and Archived Streaming Content". List has CPAC in Canada for government and election news. For Canada, add to this list CTV.ca for news video clips and CBC.ca for news clips, live radio, and the substantial archives for radio and television.
Canadian conceives fully accessible search engine Canadian Press via Globe and Mail (June 16) "YouSearched.com bills itself as the world's first truly accessible search engine for those with a variety of disabilities." Site is designed to deliver content in such a way that it can be easily read.
Front page is cute with very large icons to represent the high level categories. The category topics are always available on each search results page. The search engine itself is very basic.
This company seems to be based in London, UK.
Sort by Date will search news sources and blogs for keywords and present the results sorted by date. It offers a list of resources for Todays News or Discussions / Blogs. You must pick one of them for your keyword search. Without syntax to enhance the keyword search one would do better at the particular search engine.
ResearchBuzz reviewed it in SortByDate Helps Track Keywords in Weblogs and News Sites
'Zombie' PCs caused Web outage, Akamai says By Robert Lemos and Jim Hu CNEt (June 16, 2004) On Tuesday an attack through Akamai brought down servers for Google, Yahoo and other major Web sites for a couple of hours. It looks like the cause was a bot network - where personal computers were taken over by bot software - trojan horse program - and made into zombies as part of a large distributed denial of service attack. Scary.
"RSS: Less hype, more action" By Roddy MacLeod Freepint (June 17, 2004) Roddy MacLeod who edits the Internet Resources newsletter in the UK describes RSS in this Freepint article and names several practical ways the Library community can use RSS to receive or deliver. But he says, RSS is not a revolution.
In the revised The Skill of the Hunt: Effective Research Strategies for Finding Information on the Web Genie Tyburski recommends methods for finding good starting points through a search engine and a subject directory. Describes techniques for narrowing a search at a search engine.
NewsStand Introduces iBrowse eContent (June 15) NewsStand, the place for digital versions of print newspapers, has introduced iBrowse for browsing the paper rather than the special reader. It sounds to be much better than the old reader version where you could only page through displays that were too large for even a 19 inch monitor.
"iBrowse is designed to eliminate firewall and administrative rights issues that would otherwise inhibit downloading an executable reader to an employee's desktop, laptop, or tablet PC. iBrowse also offers keyword search, hyperlinks to the Web, article pass-along, off-line archiving, and embedded rich media.
Moreover and Biz360 Partner eContent (June 15) Market360, a market intelligence application will be using news from Moreover.
Jonathan Dube at Poynter Online created an excellent all-in-one page of search tools for journalists called the CyberJournalist SuperSearch. Has news sites, reference, business, law, US government, people finders, and reporter's sites.
All the News That's Fit For You by Chris Sherman. Searchday (June 14) - reviews Findory, the online news aggregator that will offer a personalized view of the news depending on what you read. The personalization feature is a variant on collaborative filtering. Findory also has a service in beta for blog reading called the Findory Blogory.
Ask Jeeves Trials Graphic Preview in Search Results By Zachary Rodgers ClickZ News (June 11, 2004 ) Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown noticed that Ask Jeeves is trying out offering thumbnails of the search results.
The "Real" Numbers Offer Clue to Google's Huge Lead By Andrew Goodman - (6/14/2004 ) Goodman gets to say "I told you so" as new numbers are released about Google's outstanding lead in search referrals. Of greatest interest is the international survey done by comScore which focused on share of searches in the month.
More Than 40 Million Consumers In The U.K., France and Germany Used Search Engines in April, According to comScore Networks press release. Yahoo News (June 10)
Share of Searches
Canada France United Kingdom United States
Google Sites 70% 80% 77% 44%
Yahoo! Sites 17% 10% 14% 37%
MSN-Microsoft Sites 13% 10% 9% 19%
Yahoo fortifies free e-mail AP via Globe and Mail (June 14) Yahoo has beefed up its web email by increasing storage to 100 MB (Google's GMail promises 1000 MB) and will make thousands of unused email addresses available. Yahoo is the leading web email service. In April it had 39.8 million unique users v MSN's 34.6 million.
Mapping the New Internet Expert says it will take a new attitude to squash spam, wire your washer, and identify the next IM. by Alexandra Krasne, PC World (June 10, 2004) John Patrick, former vice president of Internet technology at IBM and now president of the consulting organization Attitude LLC, spoke at IAPP Truste Symposium about some likely directions in Internet-based services but some attitudes will have to change first. He sees more efficient searching through use of XML, and more services through always-on computers. He's not hopeful about squashing spam at least not in the near term.
Search Engine Watch has created a new forum for people to talk about search engine issues - searching, advertising, placement - the usual. However, it is building up nicely with forums on specific search engines and directories (especially Google and Yahoo), search engine marketing strategies, and general search issues. Registration required - free.
Tools for Investigative Research -- Genie Tyburski has put online her presentation to SLA on Web Tools 2004. These are 45 tips on tools and techniques for doing research on the Web covering getting current news, monitoring pages, using feeds, using the advanced search at Amazon, some Google tricks and much else. Has several tips on searching American sources and public records for people and companies.
Presentation also references Googling Up Passwords by Scott Granneman at Security Focus (Mar 9, 2004) - insight into how easy it can be to find confidential information on the web such as budgets or passwords by searching on filetype and/or site.
The father of 'www' finally gets his due Victoria Shannon/IHT IHT (June 14, 2004 ) - Tim Berners-Lee was awarded the world's largest technology prize, the Millennium Technology Prize from the Finnish Technology Award Foundation. The award recognized his contribution to creating the World Wide Web, attributing to Berners-Lee being the first to truly articulate the concept. He is a strong proponent of an open web and has been critical of the rush to software patenting by the major companies.
How Google Took the Work Out of Selling Advertising by James Fallows. New York Times (June 13) - considers Google the leader is selling search-driven ads. "With AdSense, anyone who operates a Web site - a blogger, a community activist, a retailer - installs a bit of code that transfers control of part of each page to Google. Then users who visit the page will see a short list of ads that, according to Google's analysis, represent the most likely match between the subjects discussed there and the advertisers' products - ads for veterinary supplies on a cat fanciers' site, for example." Fallows says that this service completes the publishing revolution on the Web. First people could browse to any part of the world to read content. Blogging made it easier for people to publish. And now even the smallest operator / publisher can get ad revenue just by connecting with Google.
Microsoft Building 'Safer Search' By Susan Kuchinskas Internet News (June 11) Microsoft is making changes to the Internet Explorer browser to make it safer but only those who download Windows XP Service Pack 2 will benefit. It will include an advanced pop-up blocker, a download analyzer that will block suspicious downloads, and defaults will be set at the highest security levels.
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, spoke with Lisa Rein at Openp2p.com (Jan 22) Brewster Kahle on the Internet Archive and People's Technology Kahle has been working with the Library of Congress to archive web sites.
Source: Mentioned at ResourceShelf
A ResourceShelf Interview: 20 Questions with Gary Flake, Head of Yahoo Research Labs (June 3) Gary Price asked what is wrong with web search today to which he replied, "Today, search engines have almost no understanding of words or language in any significant way. They exploit the statistical properties of words and links, but in no way is there anything going on akin to understanding. Search engines don't recognize user intent, can't distinguish goal-oriented search from browsing search, and are completely ignorant of the subtleties of how different concepts relate to one another. Moreover, they completely lack wisdom -- i.e., they are very poor at distinguishing between trivia and something profound.".
That said, sounds like Yahoo will be pushing into personalization and expanding content.
Quoting Gary Flakes in part 2 of the interview: "My hunch is that personalization will be so good that most users will look back to web search circa 2004 as ridiculously outdated."
The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago has put online its Encyclopedia of Television. It "includes more than 1,000 original essays from more than 250 contributors and examines specific programs and people, historic moments and trends, major policy disputes and such topics as violence, tabloid television and the quiz show scandal. It also includes histories of major television networks as well as broadcasting systems around the world and is complemented by resource materials, photos and bibliographical information." There is a long essay about Canadian programming and many old favourites here - Wojeck, Beachcombers, Front Page Challenge. Barbara Frum has an entry. Browse by letter. Entries are cross-indexed to other parts.
From IR to Search and Beyond ACM Queue vol. 2, no. 3 - May 2004 by Ramana Rao, Inxight Software -- History of search and information retrieval from the 1960s to the present. Describes several models and considerations. Sees a future with a "richer user model of information space".
Report: 25% of Critical Data is Flawed By Sharon Gaudin Internet News (May 19) "Many major companies are making crucial business decisions based on flawed data, according to a new study from Gartner Inc."
Seek but you won't always find By Adam Turner. The Age (June 8) - reports on Jakob Nielsen's comments about searching at the recent Web Usability 2004 conferences in Melbourne and Sydney.
"One in three attempts to find information online fails, and poor search results within websites are the primary culprit, says Jakob Nielsen, user experience expert and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group."
A ResourceShelf Interview: Andreas Wacker from Blogsnow Steven Cohen interviewed Andreas Wacker for ResourceShelf (June 10) BlogsNow tracks weblogs to identify emerging topics according to their links. On June 11 there is as much about Ray Charles' death as President Reagan's funeral. ResourceShelf interview looks at how it works and plans for the future.
Google's man behind the curtain by Stephanie Olsen. CNet news (May 10)
Craig Silverstein is the Director of Technology at Google. In this interview he steps nimbly around Olsen's questions about ranking algorithm techniques (PageRank will always play a role but ...), number of servers (looks like he answered 10,000), and other applications that Google is working on (no specifics - "make more and more information available".)
Source: Picked up at Research Buzz
There's a running list of Google Bombs at Google Blogscoped -- Googlebomb Watch.
Google: What Lies Beyond Search? by Scott Kessler. BusinessWeek ONline (June 11)
Finds that Google is the best and most popular search engine today but that Yahoo has a good shot at challenging it in part due to the diversity of its product line and large number of registered users (141 million).
The kernel -- "However, because Google has established itself so indelibly in the search category, we think it could experience branding challenges as it expands into new segments. We believe this is why it didn't include its flagship brand in the names of some of its newer offerings: Froogle for comparison shopping, Orkut for social networking, and Gmail for e-mail. Although Google has an advantage over Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL in terms of technology, user satisfaction, and brand strength in online search, we believe its positioning is not nearly as favorable when it comes to areas beyond this core segment."
Hmm - and how many Yahoo subscribers choose Google and its toolbar over Yahoo's offering?
Whoopee! FindArticles Now Offering Serious Search Syntax ResearchBuzz (June 8) FindArticles has been annoying to use because of poor syntax. Tara Calashain cheers on finding it has added an Advanced page. It will finally look for all words and accept phrases, search only title, limit to selected publications, and look for articles within a date range.
FindArticles has 2.8 million articles from 500 publications. This is down from 700 publications and includes many newswires.
Ingenta Beta Tests New Interface by Barbara Quint. NewsBreaks (June 7) - Outlines the schedule for enhancements to Ingenta for document delivery and collection management planned over the next few months. Apparently Google has started to index the free metadata at the rate of 20,000 to 30,000 pages per day and Ingenta is seeing an increase in traffic.
Internet attacks can hit your pocketbook by Jack Kapica. Globe and Mail (June 9) Even the technies can be hacked. Jack Kapica opens with a story about Jim Carroll having his server hacked. ISPs Rogers and Sympatico and many others are contacting computers that are spewing spam - unknown to their users - and requiring them to clean and protect their machines. This is what they ask -- "Finally, most ISPs say users must have proper anti-virus protection, including anti-virus software from a commercial vendor (such as McAfee or Symantec), or use a similar service supplied by the ISP. They should also make sure the anti-virus program is constantly up to date — most programs can be set to do this automatically — and that a full scan of the system be done frequently."
Google mulls RSS support By Stefanie Olsen and Evan Hansen CNET News.com ( June 9, 2004)
"Google is considering renewing support for the popular RSS Web publishing format in some of its services, CNET News.com has learned, marking the latest twist in a burgeoning standards war over technology that could change how people read the news"
The debate of RSS vs Atom as the format for news feeds continues to hamstring the industry. Google opted to support Atom as the syndication format for Blogger.com. But many others use RSS including publishers and computer makers. Having two formats is befuddling to users and makes the news readers more complex.
Ask Jeeves Purchases Tukaroo Inc. "Unique Desktop Search Technologies Add to Ask Jeeves' Proprietary Suite of Consumer Search Applications " PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch.
Ask Jeeves has acquired Tukaroo Inc., a San Jose-based desktop search technology company.
Ask Jeeves' Head Says Tukaroo Important AP via CBS Marketwatch (June 9)
Desktop search is attracting a lot of attention: Lycos has the Hotbot toolbar that will search documents and email, Google has said it has something to release soon, Microsoft has advanced the release of its desktop search originally planned for Longhorn.
AP reports "In January, Tukaroo said it had completed technology for fast searches of files on a user's hard drive, local networks, and the Internet. It said it had developed so-called toolbar software to run on a user's computer. Tukaroo also said it had come up with a new, better way to organize search results and a system to serve up advertisements to users."
Outsell noted that "LexisNexis Beefs up Media Monitoring Through Partnerships" June 8.
"LexisNexis has made two recent moves to serve PR professionals. Last week it announced that a live stream of news from LexisNexis databases will be embedded appear in Dashboard, Cymfony, Inc.'s media analytics product. This week, LexisNexis announced a partnership that would embed a feed of LexisNexis news content into Biz360's Market360 market intelligence application."
LexisNexis and Biz360 Form Alliance to Help Executives Manage Corporate Reputation and Build Brands Press Release (June 7)
Michael Fagan of Faganfinder still finds time in a busy schedule for his web site. He has created a page of quotation finders -- http://www.faganfinder.com/quotes/ "This page attempts to collect the largest sources of quotations and related items (proverbs, sayings, maxims, amorphisms, slogans, clichés, etc.). "
Rocketinfo Announces Release of Enhanced Desktop Search Software Market Wire (May 27) Rocketinfo Desktop is at Version 3.0 that includes a full-featured RSS news reader. It also has new content from market research firms, Gartner Group and IDC. This is downloadable software. 14 day trial is available. Annual subscription of $29.95 US /year.
I Column Like I CM: Facets in your Future by Bob Doyle of CMS Labs in Cambridge, MA eContent (June 8) Recommends a faceted directory to help users find documents. There is more about content management and the use of facets at http://www.cmsreview.com/
Google Gains Overall, Competition Builds Niches by Robyn Greenspan. ClickZ (June 2) Latest statistics from OneStat show Google is gaining market share - now at 56.4% vs Yahoo's 21.1% worldwise. Hitwise released similar numbers for the US according to this article from ClickZ Stats. Exact figures aren't given but there is a breakdown of numbers by user demographics.
Keeping Up With Google By Sree Sreenivasan Poynter Online (June 7) Sreenivasan says that ""Google: The Missing Manual" by Sarah Milstein and Rael Dornfest (311 pages, $19.95), is a must-have for Google fans". Sample Chapter 3 as a PDF file.
The Blog-Only News Diet An experiment in mainstream-media deprivation. By Steve Outing Poynter Online (JUne 7) Steve Rubel used weblogs as his source of news for one week, eschewing all standard news media (radio, tv, newspapers). Then Steve Outing quizzed him. Rubel got 12 out of 20 questions. Blogs aren't a bad source but are usually a day behind. There is a list of the blog aggregators and blogs he followed. There are many topic niche blogs though business seemed poorly represented.
"What, if anything, can we take away from Rubel's blog-only diet experiment? Probably that blogs remain in their infancy, despite the wave of press they've received in the last year. They provide a reasonable, but far from perfect, entry point into the news space, better at offering commentary and starting conversations than serving a current-events-indicator role."
The Best Web People Finders Are Free Steve Bass. PC World (May 26) Bass says "You don't have to spend money to get reliable information about somebody." Article mainly slams the for-fee services. Points to Docusearch Investigations as a place to see for-fee services listed.
What Lies Ahead For Local Search Engine Technology by Andy Beal webpronews.com (June 2004 ) Andy Beal spoke with Arnaud Fischer, head of the Search & Directory division at Infospace about developments in local search. Search engines are putting their R&D dollar into finding ways to better deliver results that are specific to the area you are in - especially the advertisements. Infospace is one of these players as a service for yellow pages.
"Geo-targeting Web search content, both organic and paid, requires search engines to better understand users and queries, inferring local intent by extracting geo-signals and leveraging implicit and explicit user profiles. "
Fischer also commented on desktop search saying that, "Both Microsoft Longhorn and IBM WebFountain will eventually make search a lot more transparent and integrated to end-users' broader task-centric activities. "
Gerry Mckiernan is the "syndicated librarian" at Iowa State University. He has put up a new site called Rich Site Services - a categorized registry
of library services that are delivered or provided through RSS/XML feeds. List seems very short at the moment.
Rita Vine at Sitelines warns searchers that the search shortcuts Yahoo and Google offer (and by extension other search engines) are tied into advertisements. All those search engine shortcuts - like who cares? (June 5) She references an article in Internetnews.com - New Google Shortcuts Tie Into Paid Listings.
But shortcuts do save time and so what if targeted ads come up? Searchers can tell the difference and might find them useful.
Here are some handy shortcuts:
Google: calculations and conversions, getting maps of places in the United States, getting a phone number in the US. Full list of extra features is at Google Web Search Features. Canadians won't have the same need to check US vehicle numbers, or various shipment tracking numbers. But they might want to look up an area code. Where is area code 605?
Yahoo has the largest set: weather, definitions, maps, definitions, conversions and many more. Yahoo Search Shortcuts. Yahoo uses the American Heritage® Dictionary for definitions and the Columbia encylopedia. Several of the travel shortcuts are for the US only - airport conditions, traffic reports. But you can convert yen canadian dollar. And you can get a list of hotels in Hull Quebec through Yahoo Travel. Yahoo can pull up weather iqaluit too.
Ask Jeeves has smart search. Use words like weather or forecast plus the place. Example - weather edmonton. Or key in on the climate -- climate iqaluit. It can do distances too (through the web site How Far Is It?) - distance between ottawa and quebec city.
Advertisements do not interfere with the answers to any of these practical questions and sometimes they can help. Ask Jeeves showed a couple of sites for finding accommodation in Quebec City.
Can't stop the pop-ups by Stephanie Olsen CNEt (June 4) No matter how many popup blockers one has installed as toolbars and firewall security, they still turn up. Olsen explains why and warns of a major battle looming for control of our screens. Some are new developments - like the floater ads that stay on screen for several seconds.
Prestigious recognition: PC World Names Opera Best Web Browser in 2004 Press Release Opera (June 4) PC World awarded Opera 7.23 an Annual World Class Award. Opera is now available in version 7.51 for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.
Other top Internet tools are listed at PC World. Another recommendation for browsing was to add Avant Browser tabs to IE.
Search Tip Report: News for Business Research Eipert Information Services (June 2004) - Recommends the main news search engines Google News, Yahoo News, and the Altavista / Alltheweb pair for general news. For subject specialty news, Topix.net, Hoovers (for subscribers), and Findlaw were mentioned. RSS news feeds were touched upon as a tool for monitoring business news from hand-picked sites.
The Changing Face of Email by Amit Asaravala. Wired (June 3) Speakers at the Inbox e-mail technology conference made some predictions about the future of email. Some see integration with instant messaging, RSS readers, new groupings and better searching - and of course spam control.
A cautionary tale is told in Hotmail incinerates customer files By Evan Hansen CNET News.com (June 3) "Alexandria Felton logged on to her Hotmail account last month and was shocked to find that all of her saved files were gone. " If you use web-based services for email, bookmarks, or storing files make sure you backup the files in case the service has a glitch or goes out of business. "Legal experts said there is generally little recourse for consumers in the event of data loss on services such as Hotmail, which are typically covered by terms-of-service agreements that provide broad liability exemptions. "
WebMon is a web page monitoring program that is free. Users can specify the part of the page to watch. Also available through SnapFiles.
Detective Story: Information for Hire By JAMES GORMAN. New York Times (June 3, 2004) - sorry tale of trying to do a background search on a person through the for-fee services that popup constantly on the Web. Buyer beware. Writer mentioned backgroundcheckgateway.com and peopledate.com. He also ponied up $65 US for a public records search to get even less information, and what it had was wrong.
In commenting on this item, Genie Tyburski of TVC Alert recommended that people find a good information broker to do the search, possibly through the Association of Independent Information Professionals - www.aiip.org
Portals: Back to Basics: Despite emerging goal-oriented portals, many companies still wrangling with self-service, HR and information overload.
by Jim Ericson. Line56.com. Portals Magazine (Thursday, June 03, 2004) -- Learn more about portals and their management through Portals Magazine.
New service TodaysPapers.com pulls RSS news feeds to create a personal page of news. It promises a "unique solution for information and news junkies". Register with zip code or postal code to get a page supposedly more localized. Except in the case of my Toronto postal code I lost the one Canadian news story about Anglicans and gay marriage and got many more UK-related stories from BBC.
First page displays top stories first, and stories by topic - US, World, Sci/Tech, Business etc. Click on category heading to get full index of items. These may be from a news source such as Reuters or a weblog. There is some tracking of common interests similar to Amazon's "other readers also read". Readers can comment on articles.
See ResearchBuzz review -- TodaysPapers Turns RSS Feeds Into A Big Ol' Community (may 28)
FindForward -- searches Google but by different parameters (or categories).
- Ask a Question - use natural language
- All-around - get related pages with results
- Search Grid - two word pairs. best search engine would equal "best search" "best engine" "search engine".
- Weblogs and Newsfeeds
- Get questions - be like Gertrude Stein - "I know the answer but what is the question?"
- Person - seems to be using Webquotes. Doesn't return many hits.
- Thing
- Image - get the full picture
- Randomize - word randomly picked is added to the query - might just do the trick to loosen up some creativity.
- Metasearch - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alltheweb, Ask Jeeves, Google Groups, Feedster, Daypop - but only first 5 hits.
Lots more - read the full list at the About page. Was developed by Phillipp Lenssen in Germany.
Reviewed at ResearchBuzz -- FindForward Offers Specialized Google Searches and Some Hackish Stuff (May 27)
The hackers have been busy making more toolbars for fans of Google.
More Google - yet another toolbar for IE. This one gives more options for searching Google and displaying results - thumbnails, site statistics, older versions, and related web sites. Guess people can remove their Alexa toolbar and go with this one.
ResearchBuzz review More Google with More Toolbars. (June 2)
The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) has reinstated display of matching sites as well as categories on keyword searches. Hurrah.
Listings also include usenet news groups and links to Google Groups. ResearchBuzz says that Dmoz is also listing RSS news feeds for a category but I haven't seen them yet.
A domain search can be done simply by entering the domain; eg utoronto.ca taxonomy. No need to use the field operator u - as it u:utoronto.ca.
A reminder that Dmoz is the only directory / search service to support the * as a truncation operator. Enter u:utoronto.ca taxon* to pick up taxonomy and taxonomic.
There is a dmoz blog as well written by ODP editors -- http://dmoz.theblob.org/dmoz/journal.cgi
Google updates enterprise search appliance By Evan Hansen CNET News.com (June 1, 2004) Google upgraded its enterprise search product - referred to as an "appliance". "The new system is bigger, with more processing power and memory, allowing a single box to index up to 1.5 million documents and 300 queries per minute, fivefold increases over the earlier model, he said. The boxes cost between $32,000 and $175,000 each, depending on the configuration. "
Executives see swell of Net offerings on horizon USA Today (June 2) This articles has excerpts from a panel discussion of industry leaders about what's next on the Internet hosted by USA Today. A new Internet boom is expected. John Chambers of CISCO says that new Internet applications over the next 10 years will "change every aspect of our lives". For web searching the current trends are to localization (for e-commerce mainly) and social networking.
HighBeam Research Adds Ability to Locate, Organize and Deliver Information on 20 Million Business Executives, Managers and Employees Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (June 2) Researchers can use Highbeam Executives to search for "information on more than 20 million business executives, managers and employees from more than one million organizations (public and private companies and non-profit organizations)." Paid registration is required to read the profiles. Service comes through Eliyon Technologies.
NexTag Goes Global With Launch of Comparison Shopping Site for the United Kingdom PR Newswire via CBS Newswatch (June 2) -- "NexTag UK (http://uk.nextag.com/) provides British online shoppers with the best prices for products in categories like consumer electronics, computer products, home appliances, and mobile phones. The site currently features products from more than 50 British retailers, including Dabs.com, Ebuyer, Savastore, 24-7 Electrical, Electric Shop, PC Nextday, and Planet Micro. NexTag UK will continue to roll-out additional retailers and product categories over the next several months. " Would be nice if NexTag would do the same for Canadian online shoppers.
Is the Netscape Browser Being Reborn or Just Stabilized? By Matt Hicks eWeek (May 26, 2004 ) AOL is expected to release Netscape 7.2 possibly as early as June based on Mozilla's new version 1.7. This may mainly be to attract more users to the Netscape portal and will be offered to those who sign up for the new low-cost Netscape Internet Service.
Only in the United States - Yahoo has a shortcut for finding gas prices in a zip code area using GasBuddy and GasPricWatch.
Mentioned at ResearchBuzz
The Paid Inclusion Dinosaur By Danny Sullivan, SearchDay (June 2) - In Part 2 of Sullivan's examination of paid inclusion, Sullivan questions why Yahoo does it. It made sense for Inktomi and Looksmart to have paid inclusion programs because they both provide search results to others (such as MSN) who squeezed them for better deals. Paid inclusion was a way to increase revenue. But Sullivan says -- "Yahoo operates its own popular search site, powered by its own search technology. It can subsidize the cost of providing "free" editorial results through the ads that it offers, just as Google does." Also Sullivan wonders why Yahoo doesn't just label them and boost their ranking - or list them in their own section - if paid -nclusion hits are, as Yahoo maintains, higher quality content.
CNet News picks up technology stories automatically from about 20 sources on the Web. News around the Web [Beta] You can view by company or topic. There is also the option to set up an email alert on a company, topic or keyword. Mentioned at TVC Alert.
Copernic Achieves Enterprise Search Milestone; 1500 Deployments of Enterprise Search Product Attained In Less Than Six Months Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (June 1) In addition to being the search engine for small to medium sized businesses, Copernic has an agreement with Infospace to provide site search through InfoSpace's network of search distribution partners.
Google Spawn: The Culture Surrounding Google by By Paul S. Piper Searcher (June 2) Very comprehensive article on the sites and services that have sprung up around Google. First section lists tutorials. Later sections list the discussion areas about Google and google-watch sties. There is an important list of sites that offer search enhancements. Google Bombs are explained, as are Googlewhacks. There's lots more.
As Piper concludes, "There seems to be no end in site to Google madness, mimicry, or mutation. All we can do is sit back, click, and enjoy it. "
Learner's Library Dumbs Down By Mick O'Leary Information Today (June 2) Leary gives Learners Library the thumbs down as a database to journal articles for college students. It's not as good as products from EBSCO, Thomson Gale, ProQuest, and H.W. Wilson. In fact it is more like Questia -- "another ragtag collection of dubious content intended to lure shortcut seekers from the genuine riches of libraries while charging them for it."
New Digital Image Collection Portal Debuts Newsbreaks (June 1) - Visual Collections of art, history and culture. Over 300,000 images from 30 collections. Some collections require subscription.
Microsoft Eyes Master Search Tool AP via Wired (May 27) Microsoft is promising a "end-to-end system for searching across any data type".
An important part of their much awaited search engine will be personalization. "The company hopes to soon have on its MSN website a system similar to Amazon.com's technology that will recognize a user even if that person hasn't expressly signed on to the site, he said. It also is working on a system that will track a user's movements over the Internet and use that data to build a more personalized Web page based on the person's surfing habits. " But personalization requires trust. Will users trust Microsoft?
Also see MSN Investing In More Than Just Search by Mary Jo Foley. Microsoft Watch (May 28) "The new MSN Search is looking like a 2005 deliverable. In the meantime, MSN plans to deliver new MSN Messenger, small-business and personalization services."
Ingenta Launches Beta of New Flagship Web Service EContent (June 1) The new IngentaConnect will replace Ingenta and IngentaSelect.com this fall. This is at long last the integrated service people have been waiting for -- "The new, improved service will integrate all of the electronic, fax and Ariel delivered content currently available from either website ...". Read more about the information architecture and engineering considerations at http://www.ingenta.com/.
The .pro top level domain is open now to doctors, lawyers, and accountants in the United States through RegistryPro.
What do doctors, lawyers, and CPAs have in common? The ability to become a .PRO! eMedia Wire (May 28)
We can know the popularity of a search engine by the number of blogs that group around it. Andy Hagans has been doing this blog about Ask Jeeves for a few months -- www.hagabot.com. (Mentioned in ReseachBuzz)
Gimpsy is a directory to sites that provide interactive online services. All the topical categories are action verbs -- adopt, buy, calculate, design, find, sell -- about 75 of them. "In Gimpsy the sites are examined and categorized only with respect to the service that they provide." The search facility responds fairly well to common "natural language" phrasing such as write javascript, learn photography. Preference settings let one exclude / include certain types of sites, and to localize results to a country.
Featured / sponsored sites will show first. These sites have paid to be listed in Gimpsy and to get higher placement. Other results are randomly ordered.
A Web Directory that Helps You Do, Not Find By David Wallace, SearchDay June 1, 2004 - Interview with Gimpsy's founder, Mordechai Chachamu.
RocketInfo has added some features to its free RSS reader - http://reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/. This is a web-based news reader that works with any browser or operating system. It handles RSS and Atom feeds. Subscription is easy - just email address and a password. You can select channels from a directory, or search for words in the title or description of a feed. You can also create a keyword search on the 11,000 sources that RocketNews watches and save that search as its own RSS feed. All in all this newsreader ranks among the easiest and having the most function.
Gary Price wrote about Rocketnews reader in Resource Shelf (May 29)
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