News About SLA, ProQuest, Search Technologies, and More by Paula Hane. Information Today (July 4 2004) reviews announcements from LexisNexis, Thomson, Nerac, ProQuest, and covers news about specialized search engines, desktop search, and enterprise search.
A South Korean company will by the Lycos portal from Terra Lycos. Terra finds buyer for Lycos Reuters via Cnet. (July 28)
"Ottawa, July 28, 2004 – Rocket Technologies Inc., a leading international supplier of current news search, content and publishing solutions is pleased to announce the formation of a strategic reseller alliance with The Canadian Press, Canada’s multimedia news agency. CP plans to extend their media monitoring solutions by offering clients access to the full 11,000 source Rocketinfo database, augmented by the authoritative content generated by CP. "
"In addition to news content access, the terms of the agreement mean that CP will be able to offer the full range of Rocketinfo business and competitive intelligence solutions as well as news trackers. The two companies are already collaborating on a tracker solution that enables visitors to the NASCAR.com website to read the latest news on their favorite drivers and teams. "
Press Release from Rocket Technologies (July 28)
Consumer WebWatch finds Paid Listings Complicate Search for Quality Lawyers Online (July 2004) There are many find-a-lawyer services on the Web but most are mainly yellow pages with no quality checking. Only FindLaw.com and Lawyers.com are"diligent about omitting disbarred attorneys from listings". Even so that's not a recommendation since neither reallly does any performance review. They are marketing sites. One recommendation is to use non-profit referral services that have been screened by state bar associations.
AP Looks Into Enhanced Online Search Tool AP via Yahoo News (July 27) Associated Press is looking into developing a news search tool that would have more content and "provide the AP's member news organizations with greater protection from unlicensed use of their material online". No mention of whether this will cost consumers money.
MSNBC will be using Microsoft's Newsbot to provide its readers personalized news. Steve Outing says this " takes MSNBC.com from being strictly a destination site to one that's that plus a news aggregator". Like MSN Newsbot being tested in other countries this can learn your preferences from what you read. It could make MSNBC a strong competitor to Google News and Yahoo News in the US.
Who Needs Google News? Not MSNBC.com PoynterOnline (July 27)
News Search ResourceShelf (July 27) Post lists other news search and browse tools like Topix.net, Yahoo, NewsNow, Rocket News, and Findory (which will also "learn").
MSN Previews Personalized News Search by Chris SHerman. Searchenginewatch (July 27) Sherman says the personalization at Newsbot is similar to Findory's.
Microsoft Deploys Newsbot To Track Down Headlines By Leslie Walker, Washington Post (Aug 1) [registration] - notes differences between MSNBC and Google News - and in particular that MSN Newsbot at MSNBC gives preferences to MSNBC stories.
News Reporting From Europe & Hard-to-Monitor Countries Added to Dialog NewsRoom PRNewswire (July 14) - Dialog Newsroom will carry English versions of reports from media in such hard-to-monitor countries as China, Cuba, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Serbia.
Recruiting firm shows how to search the web for candidates for a position. Example given was a search for a highly trained manufacturing employee. Query used "stock words" to search for "cissp (directory OR bios OR people OR speakers)."
Trying to Hire? Hit the Web Monster offers tips to find qualified candidates among online job-seekers. Emily Kumler, Medill News Service PC World (July 21)
The Older You Are, The More You Want Personalized Search by Danny Sullivan SearchDay (July 26) Survey shows that people older than 50 are more interested in personalized information services than those younger are.
However, only 673 respondents were polled and only 56% provided demographic information - which probably includes age. So exactly how many people over 50 were asked?
Sullivan notes that the two main personalized services are Google's Personalized Web Search (does anyone use that?) and Eurekster. What about MSNbot News and Findory.com news?
MSN Launches Hotmail Plus By Shasta Jean-Mary, PC Magazine (July 21) Microsoft has released its new Hotmail Plus in 30 markets - 2 GB storage, 20 MB attachments, no expiry, and no advertising. Enhancements to the free Hotmail service will follow.
Going beyond Google Simon Williams, Computeractive 26 Jul 2004 - This article guides searchers in the UK to specialized resources for finding people and places, finding businesses in the area, getting travel information, researching health, and much else - all as alternatives and/or supplements to Google.
Information Research Vol 9 Issue 4 July 2004 is ready for reading.
Has papers from the Conference, 'Toward a user-centred approach to digital libraries', Espoo, Finland, September 8 - 9, 2003 and a variety of others in English and Spanish regarding information seeking and information technology.
Editorial describes the making of this issue. Wilson, T.D. (2004) "Editorial." Information Research, 9(4), editorial E94 [Available at: http://informationr.net/ir/9-4/editor94.html]
Steve Outing at PoynterOnline recommends Findory as a news aggregator because it personalizes news - no registration required. It learns from what you read and does so through a cookie with a unique but anonymous identifer.
News Personalization Without Registration PoynterOnline (July 23)
People who are able to use ProQuest through the online web services of their public library may see some improvement in the search facility. ProQuest Online Information Service Introduces Smart Search eContent (July 23) "New features [from ProQuest Information and Learning) include Smart Search query analysis, enhanced email capabilities, and advanced browsing for better access to non-periodical content."
Searchenginelowdown says that the new version of Google Groups (who knew there was a new version?) is similar to GMail (July 9).
SearchEngineLowdown picked up news that Copernic is about to Launch a Desktop Search Tool. Expected to be available in the fall. This is further proof that desktop search is the next trend.
More searchers are entering queries of over two words according to the latest OneStat survey. Most people use 2 word phrases in search engines according to OneStat.com OneStat.com (July 20) Three-word phrases have increased from 25.61% in February 2004 to 26.83% in July 2004. Even seven-word phrases are up to 1.13%. Meantime Yahoo and others simplify their systems to respond best to the two-word queries.
BlogBridge is a new blog reader for managing RSS feeds, designed (it says) for the "non-technical user". At present it supports the RSS formats but not Atom (coming later). It can track read and unread articles and has many display options. This application (download) works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. The FAQ compares BlogBridge to FeedDemon and notes: "The two unique capabilities of BlogBridge are: the heuristics to help the user add new and prune out old feeds based on a variety of factors, and the ability for BlogBridge to directly tap into various web-based indexes and resources to help the user get more done."
Recommended in the July 23, 2004 issue of Scout Report
Gary Price has more proof of why we shouldn't rely only on Google. He points to a tool created by Peter Jacso that compares the searches at five prominent publishers vs Google's index of scholarly archives. More on CrossRef/Google Search Pilot ResourceShelf (June 17)
They think they can: Small sites challenge big search engines Newcomers focus on niches, use different methods San Francisco Chronicle (July 19) - mentions several niche engines such as Topix.net for news, Find.com and Globalspec for business, Vivisimo for clustering, Eurekster for social networking.
Google killers by Simon Sharwood, apcmag.com (July 20) -- Can new weapons in Google’s armoury fight off the swelling ranks of rivals? -- recap article about Google, Yahoo, social networking, local search and much else. Does list as rivals Grokker, Vivisimo, Teoma, Eurekster, A9, Mooter.
Meet The Crawlers by Christine Church. Searchday (JUly 21) "Representatives of Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves and Looksmart offer an inside glimpse of recent developments at the major search engines. "
Nothing startling here:
- Yahoo powers half of US web searches.
- Yahoo says that it is continuously tweaking the interface or the ranking to improve the search experience.
- Future for Yahoo is in personalized search.
- Some explanation from Google about page rank - that the "Page Rank of a page is dependent on the aggregate importance of all the pages pointing to that page". But as well, Google looks at another 100 factors.
- Looksmart is still chugging along trying to improve the "user's search experience".
The Future of Search By Andrew Goodman, SearchDay (July 22, 2004) - a lot about personalization and some about advertising.
Google Toolbar Adds Keyword Browsing to Internet Explorer By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (July 15, 2004 ) "Google has added a keyword based browsing feature to its toolbar, allowing users to type words rather than URLs into the Internet Explorer address bar and automatically see the "most relevant" site for those terms. " Said to be similar to Google's I'm Feeling Lucky.
Network Solutions Offers Enhanced Whois Lookup by Chris Sherman. Searchday (July 14) - Improved lookup service for information about domains at Network Solutions' WHOIS
New research from NEC Research Institute shows that the top 11 search engines cover 42% of the Web, down from the estimated 60% in 1997. There is a fragment of information about this at Silicon.com with no supporting sources quoted. -- 5 years ago… Search engines are rubbish. Now everyone wants a piece of the action (July 9)
Musicplasma. Enter a musician's name (preferably contemporary) to get a visual map of related artists. Artists show as orbs, the size of the circle indicating relative importance. There are arcing lines. Click on another artist / performer to get a new map. For example, on a search for George Gershwin, Bette Midler is one big orb. Clicking on her orb changes the relationships. Items available through Amazon for the artist are listed on the left. Can play some cuts. Frankly, it's all very confusing, but then the display did not fit well in my IE 6 browser. Doesn't look ready for primetime.
A Visual Search Engine for Music By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (July 12). He liked it.
TEXT MINING FOR REPUTATIONS: SCOUG Spring Workshop 2004
by Amelia Kassel Searcher (July 2004) Full report on sessions from the SCOUG day on "The New Gold Rush: Text Mining Finds the Motherlodes". Covered tools, technologies, and implications of data mining, text mining, and reputation monitoring.
Public Relations Via Search Engines Grant Crowell. Searchday (June 30) - looks at the importance of news search engines to researchers including those in Public Relations.
A lot of people are recommending switching from the IE browser to anything else - Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Netscape.
Netscape: the long, strange journey of an anti-Microsoft Web browser by Lou Dolinar. Newsday.com (June 27)
Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky Until Microsoft proves it can fix IE's security bugs, you're better off using one of a few good alternatives as much as possible by Stephen Wildstrom. BusinessWeek Online (June 29)
Mozilla Gains on IE Robert McMillan, IDG News Service PCWorld (July 9) "Study shows Microsoft has lost a percentage of market share to open source browser."
Greg Notess reviewed The New Yahoo! Search in Online (July / August 2004) Yahoo! Search is a new database, replacing Inktomi, Altavista, and Alltheweb's. Results do differ from one to the other, but mainly Yahoo delivers more. Notess examined what was lost from Altavista and Alltheweb and what was gained at Yahoo. He concludes that "Yahoo! will be a significant player for some time to come."
See also the WSG Newsletter -- Fallout from Yahoo! Search (June 9) covering the gains, losses, and remains. Should anyone bother using Altavista or Alltheweb now? Yes - but only for the audio / video collections and some special features.
FIND/SVP and Partners Offer Business Search Engine by Paula J. Hane Information Today (July 22) - reviews Find.com, the free business search engine from Find/SVP and partners that weds web search with some premium content. Paula Hane noted that her limited testing showed weaknesses in the premium content component. Article notes that there is also an enterprise version. Competitors are current offerings from HighBeam Research, Factiva, and Northern Light.
TravelZoo Super Search is an all-in-one type of tool for finding flights and hotels. Enter the place and dates and TravelZoo will recommend a number of sites for you to search - one by one. It's very much geared to travel in the United States.
Reviewed in ResearchBuzz -- Travelzoo Launches Travel Meta-Search (July 13)
This fall's reading by anyone who does web searching will surely be Tara Calishain's soon-to-be-released Web Search Garage. Web Search Garage: The Definitive Guide on How to Best Search the Internet Press Releas (July 14). Book is published by PrenticeHall - Web Search Garage
Gary Price interviewed Dr Gary Flake, Principal Scientist & Head of Yahoo! Research Labs. Part 1 starts in Behind the Scenes at Yahoo Labs (June 24) Flake describes the work of the Yahoo! Research Lab and reflects on the state of web search engines -- "Today, search engines have almost no understanding of words or language in any significant way. " His intention is to get closer to the perfect engine -- "If web search were perfect, then it would produce an answer to every query that would be as good -- or better -- than if the smartest people in the world had as much time, data, and contextual information (about the user) required to fulfill the query; and it would do all of this in a split second. "
In Behind the Scenes at Yahoo Labs, Part 2 Flake discusses structured and unstructured data and the possibility of extracting implied data from pages. Personalization is an important development area - he foresees more tailoring of the relevance ranking functions.
Behind the Scenes at Yahoo Labs, Part 3 (July 7) covers a variety of topics - Yahoo! shortcuts as answers, local search, filtering out spam, and new features. Flake is certain that personalization will make the difference.
FeedDirect will help you add a news feed to your website. It gathers articles from thousands of news sites worldwide, categorizes by topics and delivers them as Webfeeds. You select the categories and decide on the look. FeedDirect creates the javascript for you to plug into your page. Moreover Technologies is the company behind this. It discontinued its earlier free service a couple of years ago. This version includes advertisements from Google. (Mentioned in ResearchBuzz, July 1)
Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage by Jim Yu. CNet (June 23)
"The upgrade will increase Hotmail's free e-mail storage limits from 2 megabytes to 250MB and its paid e-mail service, which costs $19.95 a year, from 10MB to 2 gigabytes. The changes will begin in early July. "
Ask Jeeves, Microsoft join e-mail battle By Matt Marshall. Mercury News (June 24) Ask Jeeves will be offering free e-mail storage of 125 megabytes on its three portal brands, www.myway.com, www.Excite.com and www.iWon.com.
Tech News Around the Web Filtered by CNET By Jonathan Dube Poynter Online (July 12) Recommends the new News.com EXTRA for "highlighting the best technology news coverage on the Web. CNet EXTRA is an aggregator of selected stories, including those from News.com.
MLA Language Map Modern Language Association offers an online mapping function to show concentrations of spoken languages in districts in the United States.
Reviewed by Jonathan Dube in Mapping Language Use Poynter Online (June 28)
Perhaps good decisions can come from a crowd. That is the message of The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations, a new book by James Surowiecki. According to Nigel Waters in his review of the book - A crowdy crystal ball [The Globe and Mail Book Section for July 17, 2004] -- Surowiecki "is able to show that, for certain types of problems, the group is wiser than the individual. " He cites as one example Google's ranking according to links or votes from other sites.
Contrast this to conclusions by Terrence Brooks of the University of Washington's Information School that Google's method for ranking search results replaces judgements by experts with that of the crowd. [See The Nature of Meaning in the Age of Google Sitelines (July 11)]
But if Surowiecki is right about crowd wisdom maybe Google's approach is actually better.
The nature of meaning in the age of Google by Terence Brooks, University of Washington. Information Research April 2004
Vivisimo's clustering technology that it showcases at the metasearch engine site www.vivisimo.com is wonderful but how good are the underlying search engines? Rita Vine at Sitelines finds them "sub standard" - and I must agree. The Web engines include the Yahoo-based MSN and Lycos, the commercial Looksmart (though Looksmart does have good content), the less-than-fresh Wisenut, the paid-placement Overture, and the troubled Open Directory. There will be paid listings in the results. However, the folders will still give one a big picture of a subject area and not all will be dross.
Some Cautionary Notes on Vivisimo Sitelines (July 14)
Some time ago Google began indexing lists of books in libraries. These are WorldCat records obtained through OCLC that will show what library holds a book. This month Yahoo did the same.
For example, a search for death dying care "what to do" turns up this entry:
Find in a Library: Fragile lives : death, dying, and care
See which libraries own this English book! ... Death, Social aspects., Death, Psychological aspects., Terminal care, Social aspects ...
www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/ebad25c0a720cfb6a19afeb4da09e526.html
As it turns out there were three academic libraries in Ontario that hold this book - none of them easily accessible to me.
I ran the same query at Google and the Worldcat record was nowhere to be seen in the first 30.
Rita Vine has noted the same difference in ranking at the two engines.
More on Yahoo! and Google's Inclusion of WorldCat records
Irrespective of the ranking, Vine questions the value of "database dumps into search engines". While at first blush it seemed a good idea - promotes libraries and reminds people to look for books - how many cases will these listings actually be useful to the searcher? Surely people have the sense to think of a book and use a local library. Seeing Worldcat records could easily become as annoying and useless as the Amazon and Walmart catalogues, which, by the way, also turned up in the Yahoo search.
See also Barbara Quint's positive report -- Yahoo! Search Joins OCLC Open WorldCat Project -- Newsbreaks (July 6)
Borrowers And Lenders Meet at Moogul by Leslie Walker at Washington Post (July 15) Moogul is a new online marketplace for lending and borrowing things. So far it has about 2,000 items, according to Walker. Items are mainly books, videos, and cds but I found two entries for a chain saw. Will this be the next eBay?
The web search behavior of adult learners Pandia (June 16)
Pandia has summarized the main findings of an EU Socrates project into the search strategies of adult learners.
The study identified three types of searchers: Passive - tend to use a commercial portal; Selective - who know where to find something or use a search engine; Dynamic - use a wide variety of tools and strategies. Researchers found that searchers are often unwilling to spend additional time learning how to search or evaluate information. Even the advanced searchers haven't learned how to select good information.
More Yahoo! Shortcuts "You can use the Yahoo! search form for more than searching. Use it , for instance, as a calculator or a currency converter. "
By Lars Iselid. Pandia (June 27) - A Swede's view of the US-centric set of shortcuts at Yahoo. "Shortcuts converting weight, measures, and temperatures are very convenient e.g. for Scandinavians, who might have problems with tasks like convert 81 fahrenheit, convert 81 inches, convert 81 pound. "
Apple unveils its answer to users' searching questions by Laurie Flynn. International Herald Tribune (June 29) Apple will be introducing an all-purpose search in its next version of the Macintosh Operating System. The search is called Spotlight and will be able to find data anywhere on the hard drive.
HURISEARCH - specialized search engine for human rights by Lars Våge. Pandia (July 2004) HURISEARCH stands for HUman RIghts SEARCH engine. This is a specialty search engine to "provide one point access to all human rights information published by human rights organisations worldwide, and particularly human rights NGOs"
Genie Tyburski in TVC Alert has some comments about Anti-Spyware Tools in response to an article in Wired on An Arsenal to Combat Spyware (June 25) Main message is to get protection. Spybot Search and Destroy is considered by many to be the best.
Also see Tyburki's checklist of things to do to protect your WIndows PC from viruses and worms: Worms Spreading via Web Sites (June 28)
News Lookup is a new news search engine. It has many options - select the media (Internet, newspapers, radio etc), choose the region, use Boolean, search whole document or part of it, sort by relevance or date. There is also a US form for searching just US sources or limiting to a state.
Downside is that it doesn't have much content yet. The discovery that eating fish may forestall or prevent atrial fibrillation didn't come up at all. Its FAQ says it has indexed 2,690 English language news sites. Archive is for 3 days but it hopes to extend this to 30.
Very promising.
Web Addresses Extending Their Global Domain by Leslie Walker BizReport (June 17) Several changes in domain names mark the growing internationalization of Internet addresses long dominated by US businesses.
"Looming on the horizon is a newer set of Web addresses ending in such suffixes as ".jobs" and ".asia." Perhaps more intriguing , a move is afoot to merge Internet addresses with phone numbers." Domain names in Japanese and Chinese are being sold. European countries tend to use their country code such as de for Germany - now the second largest top level domain name (after .com).
There is a danger that the naming will become too fractured. And server software must be quick to adapt to the new suffixes in order to recognize the web sites and email addresses.
Ask Jeeves has some new smart search shortcuts - trigger words that bring up answers quickly - as well as binoculars to indicate thumbnail image for web page. Gary Price describes the AJ shortcuts in Ask Jeeves Sharpens Its Focus SearchDay (June 21)
Ones I think are handy:
- Ask Jeeves recognizes the name of a movie and will bring up ratings, official site, review, trailers.
- People Search - enter name and place for people in the USA.
- Definitions - define moot
- Top sites - editorially selected sites for a current topic such as "west nile virus" or news stories on iraq
Also see the Pandia article AskJeeves gets smarter and shows thumbnails of web sites (July 12) for user response to the binoculars. Seems people like them.
Is E-Mail Doomed? "Under attack by spam, phishing, and viruses, e-mail users may seek other ways to communicate." by Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (June 21) -- Speakers at the E-mail Technology Conference in San Francisco suggested that email could drop in popularity because of problems with spam and security.Some are turning to e-mail authentication to stem spam and other unwanted mail. This article mentions Sender ID and Yahoo's DomainKeys for validating IP addresses.
Genie Tyburski turned to Mailblocks, a challenge-response system, to gain control over her email. Email: Is the Killer App Dying?
Also see Father of the internet says email ID will cure spam by Stefanie Olsen Silicon.com (June 18 2004) Vint Cerf argued for standardising methods for authenticating email senders in order to filter out spam.
Google has two white papers on the importance of search to the enterprise. Both are links from Google's page about its Search Applicance.
Look for:
Enterprise Search -- Simplictiy and Enterprise Search: A New Model for Managing Your Enterprise Information. Google 2400
Search and the Strategic Value to the Enterprise -- by Dave Girourd, General Manager, Enterprise, Google Inc. Published in eContent Magazine.
Google's Growth Engine By Warren Bennis. CIO Insight (June 1, 2004)
Warren Bennis identifies Google as a "great group", sharing characteristics to others he studied in the book, "Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration". He and co-author, Patricia Ward Biederman, studied seven highly successful groups including the Manhatten Project and Disney Feature Animation. All had "a talent-driven organization or enterprise, filled with people who set out to do something extraordinary and succeed in doing something that's never been done before". Google is one of these. But Great Groups do tend to peter out - project is over or rigidity sets in. Will Google stay young after the IPO?
Pew Internet Life looks at use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP). 17% of Americans have heard of it. Only 1 in 8 Internet users are considering using it. VoIP requires broadband to be used effectively. Adoption may be slow, but VoIP is expected to replace traditional telephony.
One Quarter of Online Americans Have Heard of VoIP Pew Internet Life (June 27, 2004)
MSN launches revamped search engine By Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com via ZDNet (June 30) MSN has made some small changes to MSN Search. Everyone is still waiting for the big move.
For now:
- new front page with minimal, no frills look. Dropdown box for search choices.
- Advanced Search - no change - same awkward page.
- uses Yahoo search database but has dropped sites that pay for inclusion.
MSN has launched its own crawler which has indexed 1 billion pages so far.
Also see MSN and Yahoo! make some changes to their search engine sites at Pandia (July 2) for information about the new MSN engine in test -- MSN search technology preview. At present it is a straightforward display of hits.
MSN Search Gets New Look; Microsoft Gets New Search Engine by Danny SUllivan. Searchday (July 1) Sullivan fills in the gaps but bottom line is "The new search technology itself, not yet part of MSN Search, is significant. It's Microsoft's first real weapon of its own in the ongoing search wars. But that technology is not superior to others nor an advance in the state of web search, not yet."
Arden Matheson took good notes when attending Gary Price's session at the SLA Conference 2004. Keeping up with Search Engines and the Web in the Summer 2004 issue of Wired West (SLA Western Canada chapter) picks up the points and the tools.
On the other hand, maybe paid inclusion can help in moving content into search results. Zachary Rogers, writing for Clickz (July 19) thinks it is -- Visible and Relevant: A Paid Inclusion Case Study Carlson Hotels has used paid inclusion to make its property-specific content about its hotels more visible.
Yahoo Search Gains on Google "Study finds each engine draws 40 percent of North American Web surfers, with Yahoo coming on strong." By Anne B. McDonald, PC World (July 16) Forrester Research believes that Yahoo will spurt ahead of Google in 2005 because it has "personalization, presentation, and quality of service".
Search Tangles: Internet search is big business. But the drive for profits by search firms and the sites they index is taking its toll on the results in your browser. by Tom Spring. August issue of PC World (July 1) - Tom Spring is troubled by presence of paid listings and use of paid inclusion programs by search engines. He feels that "Search results are being manipulated to a greater degree than ever." May be true. He hopes that the competitive edge will really prove to be relevant results and that this quallity will keep the players honest and innovative. We hope so too.
"GIS Enabling the Internet" By Chris Kutler. FreePint (July 1, 2004) Geographic identifiers for web sites would greatly help in localizing information. This article describes current situation where web site owners must "register" their sites by location. It looks to Dublin Core to establish location as metadata, and to the search engines to use it.
Trends in Business Information Provision and Use By Pam Foster. Freepint (July 1, 2004) Pam Foster analyzed the content of the new VIP e-publication from Freepint to identify some trends in provision of business information. Notable trends are the acceptance and use of blogs in corporations, the growth in social networking, the transformation of vendors such as D&B into electronic publishers, and the introduction of new products.
Blinkx is a new search engine that learns from what you read and connects you to related information on the Web or on your computer. It can be used in a "reactive mode", just responding to what you read, or a proactive way in which you specify the keywords. It claims not to collect personal information.
This is client software - requires Windows XP or 2000 - support for earlier versions of Windows is promised.
There is also a web version in beta called Blinkx Broadband - optimized for those using Internet Explorer 6.0 and with broadband speed. It claims to have indexed 10% of the Web (but is actually at around 60 million pages). There are 10 results per page Individual results can be selected as the basis for refining the search. Blinkx also identifies one or two concepts from the result set. Clicking on a result will show the page and some other suggested hits. News stories can also be picked up simply by rolling the mouse over the News box. (Requires Internet Explorer 6.0)
Search Engine Blinkx Launches EContent (July 20)
Blinkx links to several rave articles about itself such as Is the search over for the new Google? in the Guardian.
(July 11) It revealed that "Blinkx is the creation of Suranga Chandratillake, a 26-year-old computer-science graduate from Cambridge University, who founded the company with Kathy Rittweger, an American technology entrepreneur. "
Full assessment by Gary Price -- Search the Web, the News, and Your Computer with Blinkx -- ResourceShelf (June 19) - -He says it needs work -- "In what might be the most important area, relevancy of results, blinkx needs work. I've seen worse, but improvements are needed, especially with web search. "
Update (July 27): I've tried it and it does need work. It will index email and documents reasonably well but search options are limited - just keyword and date range - no subject, body, title. This is true for local documents and Web. Lack of control over the search query especially in Web searching is a serious shortcoming. There is lots of choice for viewing only email, or documents, or online new, or web but very few comfiguration options. Speed is good. This might develop into something but for now I'm not sure it's worth keeping on the system tray.
SwetsWise Online Content Adds Publishers EContent (July 20)
"Swets Information Services has recently signed seven new publishers to SwetsWise Online Content. SwetsWise is a Web-based, modular service for the procurement, access, and management of subscriptions and online information. SwetsWise now carries a total of 8,325 full text ejournals from 309 publishers."
OmniMedicalSearch.com is a metasearch engine for medical search engines. There are 13 engines including Healthopedia, MedlinePlus, WebMD.
Medical professionals may want to use the MedPro grouping. General users are advised in the overview, to use Basic. Search results come with "related search options" - suggestions on refining the search.
There are options to search the News only or Images. Other features include OneLook.com for dictionary lookup, an Acronym Search engine, directories to medical associations and to journals. In total there are 72 databases.
Some navigation is awkward, and the service does not help identify key words or medical terms to use. But it appears to have breadth.
Jason Morrow created this site to get away from the "snake oil salesmen" that turn up in broad search results. SofterLogic, a UK based company, developed the software program.
Searchers will want to compare it to Health on the Net Foundation.
Related article: Medical Metasearch Engine Launches EContent (July 16)
Also David vs. the Goliaths: A Specialized Metasearch Engine Makes its Debut Press Release eMediaWire (July 15, 2004)
Ingenta, provider of publication and distribution services for electronic journal and print, will be providing table of content updates updates as RSS feeds.
Ingenta Introduces RSS Feeds EContent (July 9)
Ingenta Adds RSS Feeds By Steven Cohen, ResourceShelf (July 13) - more information on features.
Copernic Appoints New CEO and EVP EContent (July 9) The new CEO at Copernic, David M. Burns, and EVP of strategic development, A. Romagnolo, both come from Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) Inc. They are looking to "develop low cost mass distribution channels that will quickly achieve maximum market penetration."
HighBeam Research added features and content to its research engine- HighBeam.com. HighBeam offers premium content through eLibrary, a web metasearch, and executive profiles from Eliyon.
- Number of publications in ELibrary has grown from 2,600 to 2,800. HighBeam now has 32 million articles and images. There are more than 500 newspapers.
- Registered users may limit their search on eLibrary to up to 5 publications at a time. A saved search on those publications can be used to set up an eLibrary alert.
- A new Reference tab gives free access to the Columbia Encyclopedia. Registered users can use this tab to search another 25 dictionaries, almanacs, and encyclopedia. The resources appear to be the same as those in eLibrary.
Registered users of the basic service number 600,000. About 40,000 are paid users.
HighBeam has also been recognized by the InfoCommerce Group as one of 15 products to be a Model of Excellence in 2004.
HighBeam Improves Tools, Adds Millions Of Documents EContent, Registers More than 600,000 members. Press Release (July 9)
Highbeam Research Adds Encyclopedia, Other Reference Tools. Press Release (July 14)
Groxis brings visual search to Mac OS X machines with Grokker 2.
Groxis Ships Grokker 2 for Apple Mac OS X EContent (July 6)
UJIKO is a new search engine developed by Kartoo, noted for its work with information visualization. It uses the Yahoo database, and invites people to customize searches to your interests by identifying good results and creating filters. It is now available in four versions: USA, UK, France, and Germany.
Kartoo Releases German Version of UJIKO EContent (July 2)
"Users can choose which site will be first with the heart-grade or, on the contrary, filter the ones they dislike. All sites can be modified: title, description, and heart grade will be memorized and displayed during another query. Finally, users can create filters to mark or delete some results depending on their addresses (URL) or description."
Infotrieve and ISI ResearchSoft Announce Collaboration EContent (July 2) Researchers using Infotrieve for citations will be able to use the Thomson ISI ResearchSoft products for capturing articles and citations.
Thomson Gale and xrefer Form Strategic Partnership EContent (June 25) xreferplus, the excellent reference product for libraries, will be added to Gale Virtual Reference Library as a ready-reference component.
Copernic Launches Enterprise Search 3.0 EContent (June 22) Small to medium businesses can search online documents with the latest version of Copernic's Enterprise Search.
Time for a Redesign: Dr. Jakob Nielsen by Brad Wieners. CIO Insight (June 1) In this interview, web-usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, identifies bad search design a continuing problem for intranets and individual sites. Users need to know where to look - there isn't a good unified search. Pages are poorly described or indexed. Public web pages are often very vague - more hype than useful information. Article has many bits of advice for the web site designer.
Historical BBC archives go online BBC News (June 24)
BBC Motion Gallery will provide direct access over the Internet to more 300,000 hours of BBC footage over 70 years and also imagery from CBS News archive. There are a few sample reels as demos. Other material requires registration and fees.
Tara Calishain gives a first hand account of registering and viewing clips. BBC Launches their Motion Gallery (June 28).
Quality Health Resources on the Web - July newsletter from D.L. Cohen. (pdf) - starter set of sites. Recommends searching Find Articles for an article from Searcher magazine. Searcher is no longer carried in FindArticles.com - use eLibary at HighBeam Research.
Online Movie Sites Entertain, Inform By Robyn Greenspan (June 15, 2004) Online user reviews of movies influence the success of a movie and may predict it according to a recent MIT Sloan Study. By far the most visited site is IMDB.com - Internet Movie Database.
Corporations are finally becoming concerned about outgoing mail that divulges confidential information.
"A SurfControl survey of roughly 400 UK IT managers and HR officers found that more than one-third (39 percent) have received confidential information via e-mail that was not intended for them. Nearly twice as many IT professionals received confidential data by mistake compared to human resource (HR) professionals — 45 percent versus 23 percent, respectively. "
Companies need strict policies for outgoing e-mail.
Spam: Problems Coming and Going by Robyn Greenspan. ClickZ (June 29)
The Deadly Duo: Spam and Viruses, June 2004 by Robyn Greenspan. ClickZ (July 12) Spam hit 65% of email in June 2004 with greatest growth being in product-related categories. Drugs topped the list of products being pitched (especially Viagra in my email box). Porn and casino ads are dropping some.
As more people turn to the Web to find the local drycleaner, companies providing information are merging or partnering. W3Data, owner of whitepages.com, has bought 411.com. Earlier Infospace acquired Switchboard.com.
W3 Data Acquires 411.com by Janis Mara. CLickZ (July9)
Look for changes in Yahoo Mail to counter the interest in Google's Gmail. Yahoo acquires Web communication startup Oddpost Michael Liedtke, USA Today via Associated Press (July 14) Oddpost is web-based email but the interface works more like a software application. Competition for email customers is getting fiercer - Yahoo Mail now offers 100 megabytes of storage in its free version.
Pamela Parker at ClickZ has some suggestions to revitalize the Yahoo service in What Should Yahoo Do? (July 9) She'd like to see a much better interface for reading RSS news feeds - something like Bloglines, a unified desktop service that takes in documents, photos, email - the works, wireless service, and help for people interested in doing local commercial / consumer searches.
Pew Internet Project has released a report on attitude towards graphic news images online - Reports: Major News Events . Millions go online to seek out images that mainline news media decline to show. Study was based on nationwide phone survey done between May 14 and June 17 2004.
"During some of the most turbulent weeks of the Iraq war nearly one quarter of Internet users (24%) went online to view some of most graphic war images that were deemed too gruesome or horrific for newspapers and television to display. Further, of those who have seen the images, 28% actively sought them out. "
Respondents were divided on whether the images should be shown on television or in newspapers. Gender, political leanings, income and age seemed to influence viewpoint. Males, under 30-year-olds, and liberals were more in favour of showing the images than were females, older people, or Republicans.
ClickZ has a recap - Americans Find Graphic Images Online - by Robyn Greenspan (July 9)
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