Search Engines 2 - is a directory to search engines. Engines are organized by country and by purpose -- book, car, career etc. There are 12,500 links in total. Done by Michael Wong.
Blinkx set to challenge Google Claire Oldfield, Daily Mail (31 August 2004 ) Interesting background article on Kathy Rittweger, co-founder of Blinkx, the new desktop search tool that's getting good reviews.
Gary Price recommends the new Desktop Search product from Copernic. It indexes Office documents, Wordperfect, Acrobat, text, web pages, music, pictures, video. It will also index Microsoft Outlook mail, IE favorites and IE history. People who use Eudora for mail, or a different browser are out of luck. The search bod sits in the Windows taskbar. Of course, this tool will also search the web.
A New Player in Desktop Search Gary Price. SearchDay (Aug 31)
Also see review in Pandia -- Copernic gives away desktop search tool for free (Sep 1) - Notes that the reason we're seeing so many desktop appliances is that Microsoft has utterly failed to fill the need. How amazing given its resources.
Smart Search by Joab Jackson. Government Computer News (Aug 23) US Government agencies are turning to new search systems that provide federated search to be able to search across many specialty repositories rather than run separate queries.
US Center for Drug Evaluation and Research is using RetrievalWare software from Convera.
Nuclear REgulatory Commission has taken the Autonomy software suite - Intelligent Data Operating Layer Server - for its portal and search features.
MoreGoogle is a new "toolbar" that searches Google and shows Alexa thumbnail shots of pages as well as other ranking data from Alexa. The help page says you won't need the Alexa toolbar if you install MoreGoogle. Requires Windows and IE5 and above.
Chris Sherman reviewed it in Visualizing Google Search Results SearchDay (Aug 30) He also mentions Thumbshots.net if you like tiny, postage-stamp sized, unreadable graphics with your search results.
A New Scoop for Business Information Makes Its Debut by Paula Hane. Newsbreaks (Aug 29) There's a new Scoop from NetContent that offers alerts on company information, business topics, and keyword-defined queries.
"The subscription service is aimed at sales and marketing/communication executives. Content suppliers include ProQuest, Thomson Gale, and NewsNow, a U.K.-based Internet news monitoring service. The Scoop Publisher functionality enables group distribution of retrieved content through an RSS/newsletter/news feed mechanism."
The Web news comes from NewsNow.
There is a free 7-day trial. Price is $29.95 US / month.
From factoids to facts Economist (Aug 26) Microsoft is developing an answer machine called Ask MSR. Ask a question and MSR will turn it into several other likely phrases, run the search, then sift through the results. This will save searchers the time and trouble of doing this "manually". MSR is in development and may in time turn up on the Web as the Answerbot. (Drum roll). (Source: Mentioned in TVC Alert)
Also see Gary Price's comments in ResourceSHelf (Aug 30)
Where did the time go? The Internet at 35: Still evolving CNN (August 29) But at 35 some stiffness might creep in, might see early signs of arthritis and perhaps clogged arteries.
Users Connect Online with Offline By Robyn Greenspan. CLickZ Stats ( August 24, 2004) - summary of Pew Internet and American Life Project findings on online and offline activities. There are some activities such as getting directions to places, checking the weather, and looking up sports scores that will soon be done more often online than offline. But people still prefer offline for "playing games, pursuing hobbies, listening to music or the radio, reading for pleasure, and watching videos, previews and cartoons." Who knows - when the Internet is truly ubiqitous that may change too.
The Daily Internet. Topix.net weblog. Rick Skrenta of Topix.net sees weblogs and blogging as a kind of second coming for the Usenet newsgroup. Usenet newsgroups have declined in importance but at one time they were the major source for grass roots opinion, comment, amd help. Today's blogosphere because it is author based doesn't have the spam or anarchy (he feels) of Usenet. But -- "is this [blogging] going to be the domain a small, self-selected technical (or perhaps literary) elite, or will it have broader mainstream significance?" Topix.net is betting on the second as it performs "editorial automation" on the constant stream of new news and content.
Jason Parker at AnchorDesk has Three easy apps for recording Internet radio.
Feed Search vs Web Search at Jeremy Zawodny's blog (Aug 27) - notes that web search engines can't keep up with latest changes at web sites, but maybe searching feeds from web sites will - in time. Concludes -- "The model of "search and find" or "browse and read" will turn into "search, find, and subscribe" for a growing segment of Internet users and it will really change how they deal with information on the web."
Refers to Why Hasn’t Anyone Figured Out How To Do Feed Searches? by Joseph Scott - reviews the capabilities (still very limited) of Feed Search engines.
All the big guys get together -- Hummingbird Integrates with LexisNexis Total Search; Plumtree Software and LexisNexis Renew Strategic Alliance Agreement EContent (Aug 27)
Infotrieve Launches New Federated Search Solution Information Today (Aug 23) - Infotrieve offers a federated search to libraries as part of Article Finder.
One of the advantages of Yahoo today over Google is that there is no word limit. At Google, you can't go over 10 words. At Yahoo, it's endless - as Tara Calishain proves in Yahoo's No-Limit Query Limit As Opposed to Google's -- So What? (Aug 19). She throws in a couple of tools for searching content at county of city sites in the United States or State library archives.
Visual Search: Beyond Keywords "Idée’s Visual Search technology now integrated on Masterfile" Press Release (Aug 25)
Masterfile, a major stock photo agency, has licensed the Espion Site Search technology from Idée of Toronto. The new SimSearch at the Masterfile website provides for searching and buying rights-managed and royalty-free images. Search on a keyword, find more like this, collect items in a "light box" for viewing later, review search history, and control search parameters. The beauty of the search is in the visual matching it can do to find more images like the one you pick. The likenesses may be thematic - on the same subject, or visual - colour and tonality. The Globe and Mail called SimSearch "one of the most compelling visual search tools in the stock photo industry today".
Idée's Visual search integrated on Masterfile Globe and Mail (Aug 26)
Study: Consumer loyalty evades travel sites CNet (Aug 25) "Travelers who shop online don't expect airline and hospitality companies to provide "best deals" on their own, and they check an average of 2.5 sources before settling on a buy, according to a new study from Jupiter Research. "
Know where to look when searching Web Rachelle Ramsey. Dayton Business Journal (Aug 20) - Cut time spent searching by asking a librarian seems to be the message of this article. Good advice. Goes on to say that one needs to be knowledgeable about the engines. Unfortunately, article is somewhat out of date regarding Google and Alltheweb.
Online education is about to get another burst of power. Internet2: 2004 and beyond Marguerite Reardon CNET (Aug 24) Violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman uses high-definition videoconferencing technology over the Internet2 network to give individual instruction to students with high quality sound.
Gary Price reviewed the new URLinfo tool at FaganFinder. See ResourceShelf Web Resource (Aug 23) Use it to find information about a page, translate it, look at older versions, check if it has been mentioned in a blog. There are several options. Michael Fagan even offers a bookmarklet to sit in the Links bar of the browser.
Lycos Introduces People, Discussion Search Tools by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Aug 23) - Lycos provides a new tool for searching discussion groups at http://discussion.lycos.com/. Appears to be indexing discussions at Yahoo Groups, MSN Groups, About.com forums, faqs in .org domains but not Usenet newsgroups that Google covers.
Consumer Index: Search-Engine Loyalty Remains Strong by Erika Morphy. CEM Daily (Aug 24) -- The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows that people are most pleased with search engines, and less so with online portals and news and information sites. Google still rode high as the most popular search engine.
But the survey also shows Google's competition will come from portals - specifically Yahoo, MSN and retailer Amazon. Google's Real Rivals: Yahoo, MSN, And Amazon By Gregg Keizer , TechWeb News (Aug 24)
Full report from ACSI for Manufacturing/Durables and E-Business - Second Quarter Scores 2004
Search Engine Executive Roundtable by Chris Sherman - A report from the San Jose Search Engine Strategies Conference, August 2004 in which Danny Sullivan calls on AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, MSN Search and Yahoo for answers.
Part 1 (Aug 25) - "effective search is all about being part of people's lives" whether that is local search (stressed by Ask Jeeves), vertical content areas (Yahoo), or desktop (MSN). Google wasn't part of the discussion because of impending (then) IPO.
Part 2 (Aug 26) - about search engine marketing and paid listings. Also had 4 participants naming their best feature. Ask Jeeves said it was smart search - recognizing keywords like movies, weather. MSN went for the new LookOut Tool for indexing email. And Yahoo said its shortcuts.
Ingenta been adding features to IngentaConnect, now at the third beta version. Features of this and the planned 4th version are described at The Latest Beta Release of IngentaConnect . IngentaConnect will replace Ingenta.com (based on the old Uncover for journal listings) and IngentaSelect (the electronic journal arm).
There's speculation that Google and Mozilla will produce a browser. More Speculation on a Google Browser in Traffick.com. Mozilla Firefox is a good browser. But would corporations adopt it (or a Google version) for their networks?
Blogging Across America "Who needs postcards? Use high-tech ways to stay in touch while you're traveling." Joel Strauch, special to PC World (Aug 20) Used Yahoo GeoCities to report on travels.
Business 2.0 has a list of best business links on the web - covers business, careers, company information, management, networks, people and much else.
Yahoo! Search Starts to Blog by Zachary Rodgers. Clickz (Aug 19) the new Yahoo blog about its search endeavours is at ysearchblog.com (very clever). Jeff Weiner, Yahoo!'s SVP of Search and Marketplace led off with --""This blog is designed to provide a window into what our team is thinking and doing, in their own words," ..."Above all else we hope this blog enables you to share our excitement for the search industry and what the future holds."
The blog has a blogroll of other blogs about search.
Let's hope Yahoo uses this to truly communicate plans, problems, solutions - not just the occasional press-release hype. So far the Google Blog has been rather thin on content except for an entry from Operations about "global worming".
CNN has a special feature about the Online Music Revolution. (Aug 19) "The rise of online music is changing the way music is produced, sold and experienced, both by fans and those who make their living in the music business." Includes a Gallery of where to find digital music.
Format confusion -- Your music, differing formats -- describes the variety of formats and related digital rights management arrangements. It's not easy to keep it all straight.
Music on your hard drive made easy: Simple steps to digitize your music collection. - how to do it, what to use - if you have time.
Blogs go big business by TESSA WEGERT. Globe Technology (Aug 19) - being seen as a useful tool for building relationships with customers.
Yet another tool for getting quick answers to the day's routine questions - weather, news headlines, whitle pages, dictionary and thesaurus, maps, tv programming. DeskPort (deskport.biz) is a free application that must be downloaded. It sits in the system tray waiting for you to want to look up something. Appears to be for the US market - zip codes, USA Today headlines. Requires Windows 98 or above.
The NPR radio program All Things Considered had a session about Wikis, the collaborative weblog style of authoring best known through wikipedia.org where hundreds of people have contributed to the encyclopedia. David Weinberger explains. Commentary: Wikis. (July 21)
Gizmo at TechSupport Alert has a guide to help PC IE users to switch to Mozilla Firefox as the default browser -- Migrating to Mozilla FireFox: a Guide. Firefox is a lovely browser - fast, good security features, easy to use, displays pages well, works with nearly everything. Try it - but keep IE on your machine for those few sites that will work only with it.
AOL has released a new version of Netscape with better pop-up blocking, faster rendering speed, tabbed web browsing, and integrated IM. Available for WIndows, Mac OS X, and Linux. See Netscape Browser Central.
Netscape Updates Browser Mozilla-based Netscape 7.2 improves printing and integrates instant messaging. Joris Evers, IDG News Service. PC World (Aug 17)
Tara Calishain says there are Four Things Yahoo Can Do That Google Can't. [pdf file - 2 pages) - promo for new book Web Search Garage.
Gary Price has something to say to Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google following comments they made about librarians in an interview with Playboy. Google Guys on Libraries. ResourceShelf (Aug 14)
BIOME in the UK has published the 7th edition of Internet Resources for Health and Medicine - pdf document -- http://biome.ac.uk/about/publications/Health_Booklet.pdf (16 pages)
Search Engines and Competitive Research by Shari Thurow. SearchDay (Aug 17) -- "Search engines can tell you a lot about your competition, if you know what to look for. A panel of experts offers tips on profiling your competition. "
Wired magazine says that <b>It's Just the 'internet' Now . They will no longer capitalize web, net, or internet. The internet is "simply another medium for delivering and receiving information" like radio or television.
Why Won't Local Search Carry Its Weight? Nate Elliot at CLickz thinks local search will not deliver the increased revenues Yahoo and Google are hoping for. It's chicken and egg - consumers aren't searching locally because they don't find much and local advertisers aren't going online. Also search engines have to make local search a clear option - right from the home page. People in Canada may have to wait a long time before the major search engines helps us search our neighbourhoods. Stick to yellow pages and specialty sites like Toronto.com.
When Search Engines Become Answer Engines by Jakob Nielsen. Alertbox (Aug 16) Web site guru Nielsen says that searchers are intent on finding specific pages with answers, and are not looking, on the whole, for "good" sites. "The Web as a whole has thus become one agglomerated resource for people who use search engines to dredge up specific pages related to specific needs, without caring which sites supply the pages. " People are not using search engines for resource discovery - they want answers - and they are less likely to become repeat visitors. Nielsen has advice for website designers.
But I have advice for the searchers - do resource discovery and identify the best sites for the information you need and use regularly.
RSS gets down to business CNet via Globe and Mail (Aug 17)
Share your calendar with others by converting it to an RSS feed. "The RSSCalendar program allows users to convert and publish their calendar data as an RSS feed. Friends, co-workers and customers can subscribe to the calendar feed and automatically receive notices of new appointments, which can be viewed through an RSS reader or imported to a Web-based calendar or Microsoft Outlook."
Searching for new ways to search Dot.life - where technology meets life, every Monday By Mark Ward BBC News (Aug 16) Much of search is about context - is that a jaguar on the road or in the jungle. This article points to tools that watch what you read to determine if you are more interested in road or jungle. Tools mentioned are Blinkx, Copernic, X1, Enfish - all desktop. They also don't need a browser window. Martin Bouchard of Copernic is quoted as saying, ""If you control the search you control a lot of other things like e-commerce and advertising". Competition with Google, Yahoo, and MSN is expected to heat up quickly.
Seeking a fuller search engine - Firms working on technology that scans Web, desktop Verne Kopytoff, SF Gate (Aug 16) Adds the Hotbot Desktop Search to the list of desktop search applications. Notes that, "Companies are hoping that blending search across multiple platforms will increase consumer loyalty. The winners, analysts believe, could be richly rewarded because of the potential to expand targeted advertising from just Web search results to e-mail and documents. "
Seems searchers are fairly satisfied with the results from search engines. This is the message of a new study from Pew Internet & American Life. Some 87% of searchers say they find what they want "most of the time". 92% are "somewhat" confident in their searching ability. Quite astonishingly 68% feel that search engines are a "fair and unbiased" source of information.
Google led as the most used (47%) with Yahoo (26), MSN (7) and AOL (5) behind.
Many people use two or three engines (48%), but there is still a large number stuck at one (44%).
Dependence on search engines is rising. 32% of those who have used one couldn't live with out online search.
Data Memo on Search Engines by Deborah Fallows (and others)
Summarized in Internet Users Rely On Search, And Get Results, Study Finds By Larry Dobrow. MediaPost (Aug 16)
Access all areas Economist (Aug 5) "Scientific publishing is having to change rapidly to respond to growing pressure for free access to published research"
"An impressive industry has built itself around the dissemination of academic research—particularly scientific work. There are over 2,000 publishers in what is called STM (scientific, technological and medical) publishing alone. Together, they publish 1.2m articles a year in about 16,000 periodical journals. It is a huge success. Not everyone, though, is entirely satisfied. Academics, universities and governments are worried that publishers have grown a little too fat and happy. "
On a similar note, Joseph Esposito has an article in First Monday on The Devil You Don't Know: The Unexpected Future of Open Access Publishing. (Aug 2004) - Sees two groups for research publication: author pays vs user pays. But the old publication model of user pays a publisher is breaking down. Blogs are part of that change. We might question whether blogs will ever be accepted as authoritative, but the author points to the wide acceptance of wireless communication as evidence of the kinds of changes that are taking place.
But as options for self-publishing increase, so might the costs. "It is important to emphasize this point: OA, through the range of new services it will provide, will increase the overall cost of scholarly communications. This may be counterintuitive, especially to all those individuals who are building new cost models for the coming OA paradise, models that are quick to point out that electronics requires no inventory costs and the elimination of user fees means that there are no circulation departments or a need for user–authentication software. OA is a paradise — for publishers. Expenditures will rise and fleet–footed publishers will profit from this. The question for the current generation of user–pays publishers is whether they are swift of foot or not."
In search of a better browser By JULIET CHUNG New York Times via Globe and Mail (Aug 16) - reviews browser alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and the arguing for switching to one of them - mainly the IE vulernability to attacks and popups. But change can be difficult -- "Even for those who consider switching, gaining familiarity with a new browser's features can require adjustment time, as well as the importing of bookmarks and the dredging up of long-forgotten user names and passwords. Though this is changing, the optimization of many websites for viewing by Internet Explorer — particularly the websites of many banks — seems to spell limited gains for alternative browsers."
I've switched to Firefox - importing bookmarks was simple and the browser is very easy to use - even has built-in search box for search engines you select. But my bank does insist on using IE for some things, and there are hidden automatic settings that will show pages in IE rather than Firefox. A friend has been loyal to Netscape, but can't view MSNBC videos. Microsoft has its ways of making you keep IE available.
Microsoft has promised some improvements to IE but only for Windows XP users.
Kozoru wants to give relevant answers to your questions Lars Iselid, Pandia (Aug 22) John Flowers hopes to create a natural language search engine - Kozuro - by building up a knowledge database. Good luck.
Blogs: The Marketing Killer By Michael Singer Internets.com (Aug 13) -- "multi-million dollar corporations looking for cheap and effective ways of getting their message out are using the technology to their advantage."
Reid Goldsborough has tips on helping friends with their computer problems in Empower Others to Solve Computer Problems (Aug 8) -- tips come from Anne Kandra, a columnist with PC World. Among other bits she recommends PC Support at About.com for free advice.
City blogs get on the map AP via Globe and Mail (Aug 13) -- "Locally focused group "metro" blogs — compilations of events, reflections, recommendations, news and complaints — are emerging to put a number of big cities in intimate, street-level relief." Mentions Metroblogging.com/ - for city blogs in the USA. If there is a blog for your city, it looks like a good way to stay in the know.
An Overview of the Weblog Tools Market elise.com On the Job. (Aug 6) - analyses hosted vs stand-alone, free vs fee. Blogger is the biggest for free hosted. Movable Type from Six Apart does very well as stand-alone and now has a fee-based licensing. Article is also interesting for the search tactics used at Google with domain name, link and url to extract data.
b/ITE e-zine (July / Aug 2004) from SLA has an article by Peggy Garvin - Mining the Invisible Web for CI - a summary of Mary Ellen Bates' presentation to the SLA 2004 conference. [pdf] Actual presentation is at http://www.batesinfo.com/speeches.html.
Brit search engine debuts beta by Tamlin Magee - introduces Infouno, " the first dedicated metasearch service to hail from the UK. " It has the standard features -- similar keywords, hide summary, group results, quick look for preview, and more like this. It has the usual limitations too - paid listings, no syntax, and 3 versions of Yahoo (Yahoo, Altavista, and MSN). Infouno also uses UK section of the Open Directory.
Infotrieve Releases Federated Search Solution eContent (Aug 13)
"Infotrieve, Inc. has announced the launch of its federated search solution, ArticleFinder eXtreme (AFX), designed to shorten discovery cycles and deliver cost savings to special libraries by leveraging their existing resources."
Onfolio and Lycos HotBot Desktop are reviewed in eContent Magazine -- Onfolio Professional Edition 1.0 & Lycos HotBot Desktop (Beta): EContent Decision Maker Review -- (July / August 2004)
Onfolio is useful for capturing web pages / sites for offline reading, search, annotation, and sharing.
HotBot Desktop searches the Web but also the desktop - or at least Outlook email, and some local files.
Robin Neidorf in Freepint asks -- "E-Newsletters: What's the point? And how do you make it?" Identify the purpose and engage the reader. This is part of a longer Guide for Publishers.
MSN Search is still in the wings, but this report from The Silk Road is a peak at the desktop - web search combo that Microsoft has been promising. Notes that Microsoft has still to "close the relevancy gap and then market it to users". Other challenges will be to market it as better than Yahoo or Google (though MSN gets a large number of searchers just through its Internet Explorer), and to add the commercial ad component. It may be a while yet.
The Internet and The New Economy - MSN and Search Safa Rashtchy
(August 2, 2004) Safa Rashtchy
[Picked up from Sitelines.]
10 Rules for Corporate Blogs and Wikis by Nick Wreden. Marketing Profs (Apr 13, 2004) - How to use weblogs and wikis (collaborate, group version) to build up loyalties.
Why you should Google yourself--and often Robert Vamosi ZDNet (Aug 9) Shows some ways you should search for yourself or your company at Google - just in case there is something on the public Web that shouldn't be. Refers to Johnny iHackStuff.
Another Expanded Whois Service By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Aug 12) Recommends WHois.sc for searching domain names.
Survey: Searching for maps becomes top activity online By Bambi Francisco Investors.com (Aug 11)
"Eighty-seven percent of Internet users who use maps in the offline world say they look online for maps and directions, according to a just released Pew Internet & American Life Project survey".
Everybody I know, novice and experienced Net users, go to Mapquest for maps and directions.
Chris Sherman has reviewed several tools for capturing web pages. Capturing Your Personal Web SearchDay (Aug 11) Here he looks at ContentSaver - capture, annotate, save and search.
All Headline News now offers RSS newsfeeds for its topics. Apart from the broad topics: Top, Business, Entertainment, Health, Offbeat, Politics, Sports, Technology, World, there are 100s of specific topics - acupuncture, legumes, Toronto. It draws from 7,500 sources. There are for-fee subscription plans for putting news feeds on a web site. This service seems to have improved over the past year. Could be another good replacement for Moreover especially when using a newsreader.
Google Me Not by David Whelan. Forbes (AUg 16) Several stories about "sensitive, defamatory, confidential or embarrassing information" finding its way into search results.
ResourceShelf recommends the Movie Review Query Engine. . There are over 40,000 titles and 400,000 reviews. Also has lists for New Releases in the US, Most Popular Titles for last week (and other periods), several film festivals (but not Toronto's). Best yet - Top 100 Overlooked Films of the 1990s.
Motion Pictures--Reviews--Search Engines (Aug 5)
Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE)
New: Add Yahoo News Search Results to Your My Yahoo! Page ResourceShelf (Aug 6) - MY Yahoo users can search the news and then add the search as an RSS feed to their personal page. Also tells how to search for news photos at Yahoo News.
Nextaris is a new search and news gathering tool from Surfwax. They call it an "internet information toolkit". Registration is required but free.
- Search - offers a number of search engines of various types. Pick one and enter the query.
- Newstracker - set up searches across 4,000 sources. Save, and wait for the alerts at the Nextaris site or by email.
- Folders - create your own folders of bookmarks - with or without saving the page to cache. Share these folders if you wish.
- Publish findings to a web pages (Nextaris provides the space) or to a blog (Nextaris has the blog).
- Address Book - for sending messages to or sharing folders with.
It has possibilities, especially for a single office or user who doesn't want to deal with a lot of software or options.
Reviewed in Nextaris, Web-Searching Information-Sharing News-Tracking Application Thingie by Tara Calishain. ResearchBUzz (AUg 5)
Microsoft Tests Web Messenger "New MSN Messenger service doesn't need a client installed on your desktop." PC World (Aug 6) Web-based IM service - text only - yea. Yahoo has a Web client for Yahoo Messenger.
Slashdot reviewed the book - Google: The Missing Manual - and on the whole liked it - "redundant" for geeks, but useful to those new to the Internet or "broaden their research skills".
More information and sample chapter at O'Reilly - Google: The Missing Manual.
Personalized search is much talked about but slow to take off. At present it is limited to local search (based on your location), some smart search shortcuts (not really personal), Google's Personalized Lab (limit by categories - hardly persona), and the social networks at Eurekster.
Search Engines Get Personal "Leading sites explore how to draw on user interests and common queries to serve up custom findings." Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (Aug 4)
Next-generation search tools to refine results By Michael Kanellos.
CNET News.com (Aug 9)
Report from New Paradigms for Using Computers Conference, held at IBM's Almaden research lab. New ways for searching for information will involve connections either assigned (classification) or discovered (latent). Mentions work by University of California at Berkeley on Flamenco for searching art and antiques that uses faceted classification. Also Inxight's software to find connections between people and institutions according to information on the Web. There are also the many projects to index the desktop especially the MyLifeBits by Microsoft. Predicts the end of the file system.
Has figures on amount of information in the world.
- 100 million written books
- 2 million to 3 million audio recordings
- 100,000 to 200,000 theatrical movies - 1/2 from India
Although online ad spending may double to $16.1 billion USD by 2009, growth in paid search will be slower. This is expected to slow down growth in Google's revenue as well.
Paid search growth may slow CNet - Reuters (Aug 8) "A new Internet advertising forecast shows slower growth for paid search listings in the next five years, a projection that raises questions about Web search leader Google's prospects as it goes public."
MSN-Harris Interactive Survey Asks: What Is America Searching For? PR Newswire (Aug 8)
Survey by Harris Interactive and MSN looked at what Americans used search engines for. "Almost half (48 percent) of respondents confirmed they use search engines at least once a day, and over two-thirds (69 percent) said that search engines are the fastest way to get the information they are looking for. The results established that users turn to search engines to get all kinds of news and information, on topics ranging from the war and the presidential race to celebrity gossip, and even to search for long-lost friends."
Yahoo buys travel company By Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com (Aug 6) - Yahoo bought FareChase, a New York online travel company. "With FareChase, which provides tools for consumers and travel agents to find information on hotels, cars and flights, Yahoo will be able to build more robust consumer travel services without tapping third parties." Yahoo Travel itself is a repackaging of Travelocity.
Questions for Scott Garell, Ask Jeeves' Executive VP of Search By Zachary Rodgers ClickZ (Aug 2) Ask Jeeves has been going great guns in 2004. Scott Garell talks about the acquisition of Interactive Search Holdings (to target different segments) and Tukaroo (to build desktop search).
Gang warfare is taking down the Net Robert Vamosi ZDNet (Aug 6) Denial-of-service attacks are getting worse - targeting Google, Microsoft, Akamai - the hackers want to take down the Internet. Vamosi doesn't think they'll succeed but everyone will have to be vigilant to protect their computers.
IceRocket is a new metasearch engine that shows thumbnail shots of the page. Display also includes info from Alexa about the site, link to Internet Archives, a quick view (show page inside active page). The Advanced Search allows filtering by domain and blocking adult sites. Search engine keeps track of your search history. There are options for News, Images, Products and Find a Friend.
- Web: Yahoo, Altavista, Alltheweb, Lycos, MSN, Teoma, Wisenut
- Images: Webshots, Picsearch, Ditto, Yahoo
- News: individual newspapers
- Products: Froogle, Yahoo Shopping
As metasearch engines go it's fairly feature rich, but the metasearch is mainly of different versions of the Yahoo database.
New search tool gets billionaire's backing By John Borland, CNET News.com (Aug 4)
Yahoo to take on Microsoft in desktop search "Tool searches files stored at Yahoo's online services, as well as users' local mail and hard drive"
By Joris Evers, IDG News Service (August 5)
Microsoft, Google, Lycos/Hotbot, blinx, now Yahoo! - everyone wants to index the files on our computers. What do users want?
NewsIsFree, the online news aggregator, can display top stories for the day as a map. With NewsMaps articles are presented as boxes of different sizes. Larger boxes will show part of the headline. Mouse over the box to get the lead paragraph, date, and some other details. These can all be rearranged through controls at the top for "sorting" by source, popularity, popularity and source, or none at all. Box size can be made to change according to age (where the larger ones are more recent) and popularity. There are also controls for colour coding by age or popularlity. Lastly, there are filters for age - might look for stories that are from the last 12 hours, and for popularity. In addition, one can enter search terms and have the page change to show only those stories. NewsMaps has been created by NewsKnowledge and The Hive Group.
It's interesting and fun. It might make it easier to read news - or at least get a big picture quickly. One good combination is to select World News and then use keyword searches one one or two topics. It can overload - as it did when I selected the Technology Map.
ResearchBuzz reviewed it -- NewsIsFree Makes More News In Big Maps
Other News Visualizations:
- Newsmap for Google News - uses treemap approach. Can display by country or high-level topic.
In the News a Google News Graph - uses Google News as the base. Shows stories as color chips. See top names, gainers, losers.
So Much Information, So Little Relevance by Steve Johnson. Computerworld (Aug 2) - Consumers are more interested in receiving personalized Web services and the Web services - especially search - are interested in presenting the right advertisements (if not the right search results). Collaborative filtering was an early approach used for recommending music and books but it is notably error prone. Attributized Bayesian Choice Modeling (ABCM) is better at understanding why people like the content. Still, it is not for every web site. Companies must know when personalization will be most useful.
Vin Crosbie at Poynter Online finds that Google News Spiders 7,000 Sources, But Uses Only a Few (Aug 2)
"Although Google spiders more than 7,000 news sources, only about a dozen sources account for the vast majority of stories displayed on Google News day to day, and two of those predominant sources are owned and operated by the U.S. and Chinese governments."
Wouldn't hurt to check if your credit card number has been plucked onto the public Web. CNet has a story that Google queries provide stolen credit cards (August 3, 2004) By Robert Lemos. The story limits itself to discussing Google, but could be any search engine - and especially Yahoo since it also does deep and wide indexing.
The expert on Google Hacking for finding security vulnerabilities is Johnny at iHackStuff.com. His site is down at the moment (it's been hacked) but you can view it through Google cache.
Travel and Leisure site is companion to the print magazine and part of the American Express Publishing group. It has just published its list of the World's Best in hotels, destinations, and transportation (cruise ships, rental cars, airlines). Quebec City, Montreal, Vancouver and Victoria made it to the list of top 10 cities in North America (no Toronto). There are lots of lists for around the world.
NewzAlert.com is billed as a RSS portal "From RSS feeds organized by category through tools for creating and publishing feeds to tools for viewing RSS feeds, NewzAlert.com offers it all in an easy, professional and stylish interface." [From press release -- NewzAlert.com for all your RSS and XML news feed needs (July 8)]
NewzAlert offers software for receiving feeds and for creating them, and has a directory to feeds by topic. Content is still thin. Directory isn't well populated yet. Newsreader software is limited to FeedDemon and two versions from CastleNews. For creating and publishing RSS feeds there is NewzAlert Composer.
LibPortal: Library Portal Survey and Review A study about the use of portals for academic libraries is now available from Loughborough University in the UK. The primary aim of the project was "to gather information that enables the JISC [Joint Information Systems Community] community to understand the development, implementation and use of library portals by FE and HE institutions."
Informiti is a new metasearch engine lets one differentiate receive "pure" search results (ie - no paid listings), paid listings only, or both. It picks up Teoma, MSN, Yahoo, Wisenut, Dmoz, Google, FindWhat and AdSense. What? No Overture?
Another specialized search engine - GlobalSpec is the "Engineering Search Engine". Has information on products and companies.
Genie Tyburski has updated and expanded her page on Evaluating the Quality of Information on the Internet -- ". A new component, titled Why Information Quality Matters, documents six incidents of false or fraudulent information, printing errors, or illicit revisions of published works." The page on Alerting Services lists sites for information on scams and hoaxes.
Blogging and business moving mainstream By Spencer Swartz, Reuters (July 28) - businesses are using blogs for communications but there are concerns.
"In a sign blogs are moving mainstream, major technology companies including Microsoft and IBM came together at a recent conference to discuss the profit potential of the Web publishing format."
Instant Messaging Managing the risks and rewards by Reid Goldsborough Link-Up Digital (August) - There are benefits from using instant messaging for business, but also risks of waste and liability.
HighBeam helps companies sift through information by Howard Wolinsky, Chicago Sun-Times (Aug 3) - nice quote from Patrick Spain, CEO of the hybrid web search / eLibrary research tool -- ""Hoover's was the Wal-Mart of company information. I want HighBeam to be the Starbuck's of online information," Spain said. "HighBeam offers convenience. Our main competitor is Google. Our subscribers can get their answers in a half hour, instead of spending two to three hours at Google.""
Internet Yellow Pages are the heart of local search. This primer by Kevin Lee Local and Regional Search: A Primer (July 3) - describes the basic operation of 5 of the big services: Superpages, Switchboard, Yahoo, Yellow Pages, and YP.com; as well as Overture's local search listing.
Yahoo! Local Search (local.yahoo.com) has been released on a test basis. US residents can search for a service nearby by entering keyword and address. Results (after the sponsored ones) list entries from the Yellow Pages showing categories, distance, map, driving directions and cross references. For example, can search on psychiatrist to find doctors and mental health clinics in the area. Yahoo will also suggest other community health associations or centers. Yahoo will save up to 4 locations for reuse - might use this for office, home, and travel destinations. Some business information comes from InfoUSA.
Local search for services is hot in the US. Ask Jeeves is working with CitySearch -- Ask Jeeves to get local info from Citysearch -- to provide local results starting September.
Yahoo Unveils New Local Search Engine AP (August 3).
Yahoo Targets Google, Yellow Pages with New Local Search Chris Sherman. SearchDay (August 3) Finds the service similar to Google's in functionality but with some additional personalization and display features.
Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves Bow Local Search Tools By Pamela Parker and Zachary Rodgers, Internet News.com (Aug 3) Ask Jeeves has already added maps and directions similar to Mapquest and is planning for more in September with CitySearch. Yahoo's Yellow Pages have 14 million businesses.
Topix.net, a news aggregator, has a new look and features. Topix.net crawls 7,000 news sources principally US to create over 150,000 topically based news pages. Among these topics are individual new pages for 30,000 US cities, as well as 5,500 companies, and 48,000 celebrities. Canadians will be pleased with the Canada News category for stories picked up from non-Canada press as well as Canadian.
- Search by US zip code for local news.
- Supports keyword search. Can save this and create a RSS feed.
- Provides XML / RSS news feeds for a category or users can opt for an emailed news alert on a category.
- Can add a Topix.net news headline channel to your site. (Such as for "search engine news".)
- Categories are cross referenced.
- Can email a story to another person.
- Page is nicely displayed with clear headlines and some small thumbnail shots. There is advertising but unobstrusive.
- Press releases are bundled together.
More detail on features in Gary Price's review of the changes.
The front page is being assembled by a new editorial algorithm to try to select out the "more interesting" and also to determine the read time of the story. See John Batelle's review - Topix Gets Better.
All in all - Google and MSN - watch out!
Feature Creep: 500 Books In Your Gadget Bag Gizmodo (July 28) - Looks at what it will take to eBooks accepted.
Orchestrating New Search With MSN by Erin Joyce. ClickZ News - Microsoft MSN has made some progress with the new universal search for desktop and web but can't say when it will be ready for the public. Other plans are for "orchestrated advertising" and a new music service.
Searching blogs for rumors and buzz by Susan Eipert - Eipert Information Services (July / August 2004) Short primer on using blogs for following business interests.
Into the Blogsphere -- "online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. Such a project requires a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others." University of Minnesota.
Lots in the July 26 issue of LLRX.com about web search, social software, marketing and technology.
Search Comparison Chart by Diana Botluk showing Alltheweb, Altavista, Google, Lycos, MSN, Teoma, Wisenut, and Yahoo. People looking for charts might also check WebSearchGuide Comparison Charts for Ask Jeeves, Gigablast, Google, Hotbot, MSN, Teoma and Yahoo.
Gumshoe Librarian: "Where in the World Is..." A Bibliography of Recommended Websites for Global Research Issues By Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici - resources for finding people, places, news, public records and more.
Metaforix@Health Free Online Resources for Public Library Users: California By Lois C. Ambash
FeedsFarm picks up XML news feeds from blogs and websites that are news related. It's new - just 2,525 feeds at this time. News is aggregated into a few major topics and may also be searched. Available in english, french, dutch and german. Reviewed in ResearchBuzz.
PassingNotes.com is a new combo blog-website for researchers. Dave, the author, says it is "alternative fuel for researchers", and one thing it is not lacking is attitude. The forums are being found by some researchers who are posting messages about research techniques and tools. But mainly the site has a Research Web Guide - selection of resources for searching for people, getting into the Deep Web, using search utilities. People are invited to add their comments on the resources. [Mentioned by ResearchBuzz.]
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |