Yahoo! now! sucks! - official By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco. The Register (Sep 29) Software applications for reading RSS news feeds will wither away in the face of the latest improvements to MyYahoo. As well browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Safari have been making RSS reading easier.
Google Growing – An Update on Google by Jim Hedger. ISEDB (September 29, 2004) -- Many hints and rumours about what Google will do next - browser? new database and Googlebot? Look for news in another week or so.
Shopping Search Tactics By Shari Thurow. SearchDay (Sep 29) -- The tactics referred to in the title are for the merchants, not the searchers. Only 18% of so use the shopping search tools - comparison shopping engines. Of interest - there are seen to be 3 types of shopping search engines: commission based (Amazon), referral fees (probably BizRate and Shopping.com etc), and no-charge (Froogle).
Ask Jeeves Enhances its Flagship Search Engine by Paula J. Hane. Newsbreaks (Sep 30) Reviews improvements at Ask Jeeves and Teoma : MyJeeves, local search with CitySearch, size of Teoma, and enhancements to core algorithms.
IE--embraced, extended, extinct? By Paul Festa and Ina Fried CNET News.com (Sep 30) -- Microsoft promises to update Internet Explorer but intends to deliver it in the next release of Windows, nicknamed Longhorn. In fact there is talk of "dramatic new features" - but only available to Windows users who upgrade to the new operating system. Will this strategy work? Will Google be able to come out with a rich-function browser that is platform independent?
Also see -- Planning to dump IE? Think again By John Borland CNET News.com (September 30, 2004) While people may browse with an alternate browser, they will need to keep IE on hand to view some sites (Expedia, MSNBC news and others), and to get Windows updates.
Search Underdog To Take On Google, Microsoft, And Amazon By Thomas Claburn. Information Week ( Sept. 29, 2004 ) "Blinkx 2.0 promises to proactively and reactively scan the Web, PC applications, and MP3 music files." Says that "Blinkx 2.0 represents a substantial improvement over 1.0 in terms of relevance, document types searched, and ease of use" but that Google's web search results are better.
Google News: Beta Not Make Money by Adam Penenberg. Wired (Sep 29) -- While Yahoo and MSNBC pay money for the news they show, Google just grabs headline and first paragraph from the sources. (Google uses 7,000 sources of which 4,500 are in English.) Penenberg says Google News is stuck in beta because they can't make money on it. Once they try to sell advertising, they could be charged with violating copyright by making money from other people's content. It would no longer be "fair use".
Updated Yahoo! Search Review By Greg Notess. Search Engine Showdown (Sep 25)
Greg Notess noticed that filetype no longer works at Yahoo for limiting a search. But the old Inktomi field name does - originurlextension. (Same applies for Altavista and Alltheweb). Surely Yahoo won't leave it like this. The word filetype makes much more sense. Other old Inktomi terms for feature also work.
Eyetide has a directory of images for sale and for free. There is a viewer that comes with it for viewing new images, sending out e-postcards, and creating your own screensaver. Now it can be used to search the Web as well through an agreement with MyWay.com.
Eyetide Enables ''Screensaver Search'' Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Sep 29)
Search Upstart Launches New Site AP via CBS Marketwatch (Sep 29) Vivisimo is introducing a new search engine that clusters results called Clusty. Clusty, still in beta, provides web search, news, images, shopping, and an encyclopedia (Wikepedia). You can cluster by topics (looks similar to Vivisimo's folders), sources, and url. Advanced Search has some controls including selection of search engine -- Gigablast, MSN, Lycos, Overture, Looksmart, Wisenut, and Open Directory for the web. There will be blogs too. News of the day is automatically clustered giving a quick view of the top themes. Clutsy is better organized and more appealing visually than Vivisimo is. But why not capitalize on the many years of promoting Vivisimo by revamping it and keeping the name? Clutsy is hardly an eponymous name. If this were the Apprentice, someone would be fired.
See Reducing Information Overkill By Chris Sherman & Gary Price, SearchDay (Sep 30) -- strong endorsement of this new search engine -- "Clusty's use of clustering and its presentation of diverse resources helps all searchers see more results quickly, at the same time sufacing related concepts that would be difficult if not impossible to quickly identify without the use of this type of technology."
Rocketinfo Muscles Up Popular RocketNews Search Engine By Adding Ability to Create RSS Feeds Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (subscription) (Sep 28) Users of Rocketnews for current news will be able to save a search as a RSS feed and be updated daily. Rocketnews picks up 11,000 internet news sources and 70,000 RSS and weblog sources.
Yahoo! Redesigns Home Page, My Yahoo! by Pamela Parker. ClickZNews - There's a new feed aggregator and more features for customization.
All-New My Yahoo! Coming to You Soon by Cory Kleinshmidt. Traffick.com
Details on changes from Yahoo!
Memory prosthesis By KAREN von HAHN Globe and Mail Update (Sep 25) Latest mania is "life caching" - recording moments in the day with the webcam-cellphone and uploading to a blog. Liveblog is a program created by Christian Lindholm as a "memory prothesis" for capturing all these moments. The flotsam of our lives.
A9: A new approach to Internet searching By MICHELLE SLATALLA New York Times via Globe and Mail (Sep 24) Author learned that A9 is "a powerful new tool for shopping for long-term, big-ticket items. It's a good way to shop for any looming purchase — a car, a vacation, even a college education — about which you need to gather information over time. Instead of keeping notes in a manila envelope, use A9 to streamline the process."
Pick up a portal by Lorcan Dempsey. Update Magazine (OCt 2004) "Lorcan Dempsey looks at what is happening with portals – including a growing awareness that the library portal is only one step towards creating an effective network presence." Reviews use of portals by libraries and predicts more use of it to create a network presence. [Mentioned in ResourceShelf]
If you think you'll want to locate library books through Google and its arrangement with WorldCat, this bookmarklet is for you. Bookmarklet is from Library Stuff. Mentioned in ResourceShelf - OCLC (Sept 23)
Is It Really A9 Out of 10? by Ross Dunn. ISEDB (Sept 20) Says A9 from Amazon is "one of the most impressive leaps in personalization to date".
Find.com Business Search Engine Adds Content Providers Search Engine Journal (Sep 24)
"Find.com, a search engine for business professionals, today announced that it has signed PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, IBISWorld, IOMA, Datamonitor, and Mintel as new premium content providers for the business search engine."
Tim Bray has found that Google Image Search will locate images by file name and not by the alt tag (or not very well). Presumably Google Images also uses surrounding text.
Pix MisGoogled. Tim Bray, Ongoing (Sep 24)
Meceoo - "Mais c'est oů ?" - is a search engine from France. Results are from Yahoo. It is not, as advertised, a metasearch engine. However, Meceoo is notable because you can set up a list of sites you want to search. As well you can save a list of sites you don't want included in a search, and it shows a small thumbnail of the site as a mouse rollover.
Is Google News Biased? By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (September 27, 2004) J.D. Lasica at OJR finds that Google News has a conservative bent? How could this be? Surely the ranking algorithms are neutral. In whatever human create there is potential for bias. As well, bias is in the eye of the beholder.
Web news feed syncs up with ads By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com (
September 24, 2004) "Moreover Technologies has introduced a free, advertising-supported service that lets Web surfers set up a personalized collection of headlines from news outlets around the Web." It's FeedDirect> - choose the news you want and FeedDirect will give you the javascript to add to the web page - but you'll get advertisements too.
The RSS search engine, Feedster, through a partnership with Kanoodle, will also be serving up ads to non-paying subscribers.
Downloading Audiobooks These digital files never go out of stock—besides that, you’re gonna love them! by J.A. Hitchcock Link Up Digital -- Don't cart around cassettes. Use an MP3 player and get audio books and articles from Audible.com. This article will get you started.
Wikis: not just for techies any more "Knowledge-sharing on-line communities may replace e-mail as collaborative tool" By ANICK JESDANUN AP via Globe and Mail (Sep 27) Wikis are like group weblogs - several people can post and edit, correcting each others work, adding to it. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is an example. This tool can also be used easily by any work group. Article has some suggestions -- "There are Wiki cookbooks, a compendium of quotations and a repository on guitar players. College professors use Wikis to spur discussion. Software developers create on-line manuals. Small teams within businesses track projects, exchange ideas and list good places for lunch."
New AOL Comparison Shopping Site Debuts Search Engine Watch Blog (Sept 20) AOL has introduced inStore for comparison shopping. Database comes from Bizrate but AOL created the search technology. Has a useful product taxonomy.
Flush with cash, Google expands By Verne Kopytoff San Francisco Chronicle (Sep 26) Google's business is concentrated in 10 countries and outside North America is strong in France, Germany, United Kingdom and Italy. It has had less success in Asia - China, Japan, and Hong Kong.
Firefox Preview Hits a Home Run By Jim Lynch, Extreme Tech (Sep 20) Very helpful review about the latest release of Firefox. Lynch thinks it has a "decent shot at taking the crown".
RSS Makes Enterprise Headlines By Anne Chen, EWeek (Sep 20) RSS based on a weblog can be used as a content management system, and can also be applied to calendaring. Article mentions that RSS will become more accepted as readers are incorporated into the browser.
E-mail's about to get better By Tristan Goguen. Globe Technology (Sep 24) Sender ID may be the method for authenticating email senders and closing the doors to phishing scams and spam. Doesn't say when we should start seeing this or what we have to do to use it.
Google News Goof-Up Posted by Harry McCracken, PC WOrld (Sept 20) - sometimes Google News reveals its automated heart with odd groupings and selections. Google News is good but you wouldn't want it as your only source.
Want to search only Google's print collection - the book titles and excerpts or magazine articles? Tara Calishain has the tool -- Isolating Google's Printed Material in a Google Search Form (Sept 22). When you run the search look in the Google search line to see the query construction Calishain uses. She also offers two bookmarklets, one for monitoring excerpts for a given book ISBN, and the other for monitoring magazine articles for a word.
Rich Site Services: Web Feeds for Extended Information and Library Services by Gerry McKiernan. lLRX (Sept 20) - Use of RSS in libraries to send out information on current events and offerings, and provide current awareness services. Has many good examples.
Lively review of Amazon A9 search engine by Shari Simonds in the Victoria Advocate in Texas. New search engine A9 doesn't compare to Google (Sept 24). Author likes some of the features of A9 but prefers the simplicity of Google.
Desktop Search, or just where did I leave that knowledge? · 4 September 04, Tech - Michael Wexler , author of the blog - The Net Takeaway - describes the drive behind desktop search and the main players and software products. Good article.
Blogging for Books The Internet is changing the way we talk about literature.
By Ellen E. Heltzel. Poynter Online
"Now, instead of broadcast [for promoting new books], bloggers are increasingly challenging traditional media outlets in deciding the winners and losers of the book world." Article and discussion that follows names several literary blogs.
Search Me: Online Search Shifts from a Navigational Tool to a Customer Service and Educational Tool Tim Carpenter, Senior Analyst, Watchfire GómezPro, Insurance Technology Online (Sep 22)
"... search has taken a different turn in the financial services industry and is being used increasingly as both a customer service and educational tool, with the goal being to answer precise questions rather than to direct users to a specific product or area of the site".
Ask Jeeves announce new look, ISP News (Sept 23) The new and improved Ask Jeeves launched in the UK also.
Looksmart Acquires Furl.net Chris Sherman. Searchday (Sept 23)
Looksmart is going personal and desktop too with its acquisition of Furl.net, a web page clipping and archiving service .. "you to save the full text of web pages in your own personal archive. You can annotate pages, organize them into folders, and most importantly, search the contents of your archive to locate information that you've saved." Maybe this will breathe new life into Looksmart directory search and WiseNut.
Microsoft to secure IE for XP only By Paul Festa CNET News.com September 23, 2004 - "If you're one of about 200 million people using older versions of Windows and you want the latest security enhancements to Internet Explorer, get your credit card ready." Microsoft will release security upgrades for the IE browser only to those using Windows XP. To sweeten this slightly Microsoft offers an upgrade to XP for $99 US. But older computers may not be able to run XP, and not everyone is comfortable with installing upgrades. This is not going to win any friends. Roughly half of Windows users are XP. That means the other half might look for another browser - maybe Firefox which has lots of features and is a breeze to use.
Firefox beats million-download deadline By Paul Festa CNET News.com (September 20, 2004) By only the 5th day, a million people had downloaded the new Firefox 1.0 Web browser.
RSS Digest is a new tool for creating the javascript code for adding a news feed to web page. It's simple to use and the format can be somewhat adjusted. Peter Cooper in the UK is the technical whiz on this.
Finally - there is a local search for Canada thanks to Google. Search for shops and services in your area. Accepts postal code and will show addresses with map for a specified radius - 2 km, 10, 25, and 75. http://local.google.ca/. It's better than the search-by-distance at Superpages.ca, but it still can't find all the LCBO stores. Maps. though, are excellent.
Jack Kapica at the Globe and Mail - Let your fingers do the surfing (Sept 20) - determined that Google Local Canada is through a partnership with the Yellow Pages Group. YPG also "The company manages on-line directories YellowPages.ca, Canada411.ca, CanadaTollFree.ca, as well as the CanadaPlus.ca network, a local city sites market."
We should start seeing more FLASH (swf) files in search results now that Macromedia has made it easier for search engine spiders to read and index the files. Major search engines are said to have adopted the patch provided by Macromedia.
Search Engines Can See the Movies - Macromedia FLASH SDK Internet Search Engine Database (Sept 20)
Social networks seek financial friends by Matt Marshall. Mercury News (Sept 19) Social-networking companies are looking for ways to make money either by offering other services (like job or apartment listings) and the other to draw in so many people that advertisers will want to be there. Friendster belongs to the second group. Several services are mentioned - Tickle, Tribe, LinkedIn and of course Orkut. It's rumoured that Yahoo wants to get into social networking too.
Searching Smarter: Finding Legal Resources on the Invisible Web by Bonnie Shucha, Wisconsin Lawyer (Sept 2004) Shucha demystifies the invisible web in clear and encouraging text. For finding any information she offers the ageless advice -- "The first step in locating any type of information is considering where an authoritative source of that information might be found. It may be a print source, the Web (visible or invisible), a subscription database, a phone call, and so on." There is a good example of using Google to find the specialty site and then searching it for the answer.
Nethistory.info is a "resource centre for Internet history, including all the applications and platforms that came together to create the early Internet - protocols, personal computers, email, world wide web, networks, and much more!" Ian Peter is the historian. There's a monthly newsletter. The Net is 35 years old - time to collect the stories and the artifacts.
Andrew Goodman considers the market for targeted paid listings in Canada while musing on the announcement that Overture is opening an office in Canada. Eh-per-click (Sept 20)
Watchcow.net will watch for prices on a wishlist at Amazon and deliver the information through a RSS feed to a newsreader.
Reed and Google in talks to share revenue James Robinson, The Observer (Sept 19) Reed Elsevier, the giant scientific publishing company, is in talks with Google about a revenue sharing agreement by which Google would pay Reed Elsevier for pointing users to Reed Elsevier sites. As Genie Tyburski said in her newsletter --"Shouldn't Reed pay Google?" Supposedly Google has this kind of arrangement with other companies.
Tim Berners-Lee, Director, W3C By Ryan Naraine. Internet News (Sept 17) Interview with Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C about browsers, semantic web, patents and standards, and emerging mobile technologies.
On browsers, the main issue is security against viruses and executable code - he says there are some simple fixes - why aren't these being adopted?
Semantic Web, the idea of a global database for organizing information, is into Phase 2. Seems there has been some progress made in the academic field.
Ask Jeeves has developed a MyJeeves with personalized features for saving Web pages and searches and adding notes. Users can set up folders for saving items and view the saved sites by title, date, category or notes. AJ will also keep the search history. Registration and login is not required. Non-registered users can keep up to 1000 sites and searches. Registration means more storage and access to the AJ folders from any computer. Requires Microsoft IE 5.5 or Firefox.
This personal tool set seems to be the direction for search engines - a kind of renaissance of the portal.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li commented, "The next generation of search isn't going to be about who can build the biggest indexes [of Web pages]," said analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research. It's going to about finding better ways to personalize search results and modify the way the results are presented."
Ask Jeeves hopes to outshine Google By Michael Liedtke, AP via Globe and Mail (Sept 21)
Ask Jeeves has also added local search through partnership with CitySearch (US only).
News changes too as Ask Jeeves switches over to using Topix.net. From the press release: "Topix.net provides visitors to Ask Jeeves access to local news
gathered from over 7,000 sources. Unlike any other news aggregator,
Topix.net provides localized news for over 32,500 US and international
localities. Ask Jeeves' utilization of Topix.net includes the use of
NewsRank(tm), Topix.net's algorithmic story editing technology, which
improves the user experience by leveraging a set of semantic category
filters to improve the relevancy of the news selection in favor of major
and interesting stories."
Gary Price writing for SearchDay has more detail on the personal search and other features -- Ask Jeeves Serves It Your Way (Sept 21)
Also see Danny Sulllivan's comments about personal search in Ask Jeeves Personal Search Goes Live in the Search Engine Watch Blog.
Ask Jeeves adds new features By Michael Bazeley, Mercury News via Yahoo (Sept 21) General review of all features. Mentions that AskJeeves is intending to develop a tool for searching the internet and the desktop. That's going to be a very crowded field.
Search Expands Role As Online's Ad Engine By Joe Mandese MediaPost (Sept 20) Online advertising is growing at a rate of around 40% during the past year and in Q1 2004 reached $4.6 billion. Paid search (paid listings) make up about 40% of that, up from 29% a year earlier. Article has a breakdown of online spending by format.
Google Picks Gate's Brains by Stephen Lynch. NY Post (Sept 19) Scuttlebut has Google creating its own browser, instant messenger and much else that would go head to head with Microsoft. Speculation is based on new hires Google has made by raiding Microsoft.
Talk about a commercial edge. Get a shopping discount by using the Amazon A9 search engine. Amazon offers 1.57 percent discount to A9 search users Reuters via USA Today. However, there is no mention of this at A9.
Robin Good gives examples of what he considers good "newsmastering" - the masterful use of RSS feeds for communication and publishing. RSS Wave: Good Examples Of Newsmaster Sites (Sept 17)
Feedster Powers RSS and Blog Search Results for Eurekster - News Search Expands the Scope of Search Engine Powered by Social Networking Technology PRWeb (Sept 16) Mainly - "Eurekster’s users will be able to create custom FeedPapers to distribute to their networks. "
Microsoft flip-flop may signal blog clog By Paul Festa, CNET News.com (September 16, 2004) "As Web logs gain in popularity, critics warn that they are increasingly becoming the Internet's new bandwidth hog. " Microsoft has been finding that the developer blogs it supports have been hogging bandwidth. They'd like to cut back. Problem will likely spread.
Gord Hotchkiss at MediaPost thinks Blinkx might change the way we search -- David vs. Goliath... vs. Goliath: Blinkx and the Future of Search (Sept 16) Blinkx is a desktop tool that searches your computers email (even Eudora), documents etc, as well as the Web. I didn't like it - took cycles and was a poor tool for searching the web. Author chatted with CTO Suranga Chandratillake.
Search Engine Watch has opened a new blog to feature latest news items about search engines. This will be primarily manned by Gary Price. Price will also continue his blog ResourceShelf but keep it more tightly on topic for library and information science. SearchDay will continue to feature articles and new tools.
Search Engine Watch Blog Opens By Danny Sullivan, Editor September 16, 2004
Some changes to Google's local search. Maps are great, and results are said to be more precise. Great if you are in the United States.
Think local, act Google By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com (Sept 14)
Finally someone noticed. The metasearch engine, Dogpile, will be known as webfetch.com in Europe. Dogpile fetches new name Computer Buyer (Sept 15)
5 years ago: E-books make their appearance - And then their disappearance. Silicon. (September 15 2004) Story of UK publisher, Dorling Kindersley 1999 to 2004. E-book is not doing well.
Swiss Army Knife Meets the Kitchen Sink by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 15) - Another new all purpose desktop tool for the web surfer-- Pluck. It has search, rss, alerts and trackers, and clipping capabilities. Sherman says "Pluck is one of the coolest web search tools I've come across in quite some time. Even though it's packed with functionality, it's intuitive and very easy to use. Kudos to the Pluck team for building such a useful tool, and for getting it right." Requires WIndows 2000 or XP and IE 6.
Delving Deep Inside the Searcher's Mind By Heather Lloyd-Martin, SearchDay (Sept 14) - report on session at the Search Engine Strategies conference in August about research done by Enquiro, Vividence, iProspect and Google into what people think about when searching. Most (70%) start general with a keyword or phrase and then narrow. Searchers tend to pick "natural" results (rather than sponsored). Vividence looked into search engine preference and preformance and found that performance is very similar across the major search engines but that users "perceive" Google to be better.
Yahoo! and Musicmatch: A Hot Duet "The $160 million deal signals that Semel & Co. will mount the biggest challenge yet to Apple's dominance of online music", Ben Elgin. BusinessWeek (Sept 15) "Musicmatch should help Yahoo, with over 200,000 subscribers to its ad-free radio service and nearly 10 million users of its desktop software for creating playlists and burning CDs. "
Can Amazon Go Beyond Google? "The e-tailer sees its new A9.com search site as a Web powerhouse in the making. Maybe so, but making money is another question" by Rob Hof. BusinessWeek (Sept 15)
A9 Chief Executive Udi Manber aims to make A9, the Amazon search site, "the prime place for connecting people searching for just about anything -- information, products, or services -- with those who can provide them." A9 has added features for keeping search history and adding notes. There is also the Alexa-like toolbar that works in IE - and makes note-keeping easier. But Amazon has not added any special features for shopping - except of course the connection to books.
Amazon Takes A9 Out of Beta By Kevin Newcomb, ClickZ News (September 15, 2004)
"New features added today include image results, movie results, and reference information. The company has also added a Discover feature, still in beta testing, which presents the user with recommended sites based on their own surfing history as well as different views of their history, such as most-frequently visited sites. A new toolbar function, called Lists, enables users to keep lists of search results or other links handy for easier browsing."
Amazon.com's Search Launch Triggers Second Thoughts By Matt Hicks, eWeek (September 16, 2004) Says reviews have been lukewarm and that the A9 interface is too complex for most users.
Is the butler really on a secret mission? That's what the Ask Jeeves web site says. Will's Web Watch: The Butler didn't do it by Will Sturgeon (September 14 2004)
"Ask.com decides it's time for some 'gardening leave' for Jeeves..." Didn't AskJeeves.com pay a gazillion dollars to use his name? Would be a shame to retire him.
There are a few neat controls at iZito.com - new metasearch engine. It searches Google, Altavista, Yahoo, Alltheweb, MSN, Teoma, WiseNut, and Kobala. You can add a hit to your favourites list, or, more usefully, park it in a to do list. But there is no advanced search. Site does best in Internet Explorer with Flash for various visual effects. Sponsored results are not well marked.
SearchEngineJournal said Beta Search Engine iZito Supports Human Search Behavior (Sept 14)
Mozilla's Firefox browser has matured to a Preview Release or Firefox .10 version. New features include live bookmarks with RSS integration, software updates, improved security, and faster searching. It's free and it's good but it is still a "technology preview". Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Check page on system requirements before downloading.
Bad news is that the Googlebar extension does not work with Firefox .10. Suggest that if you are a Firefox user you hold off upgrading to .10 until the extensions that you use are available for this new version.
Firefox browser to hit 1.0 milestone By Paul Festa , CNET News.com (Published: September 13, 2004, 3:26 PM PDT)
Mozilla burns to prove Firefox worthy By Paul Festa, CNET News.com (Sept 15) Questions whether Firefox will really make a dent in IE's dominance. It has its own security issues, IE has addressed its security problems (I guess), and most people are content to stay with IE.
Firefox drawing fans away from Microsoft IE by Robert Lemos, CNet (Sept 15) "Open-source browsers Mozilla and Firefox have won over a significant number of defectors from Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the past nine months, Web site metrics suggest."
What's New With Google News ResearchBuzz (Sept 13) ResearchBuzz has noted some new features at Google News - mainly top stories by country from a pull down menu, and more features in the news alert. New to me are the in-the-news bits in the bottom right of the first screen panel.
Web IR & IE - Information Retrieval and Information Extraction Has publications, mailing lists, newsgroups, and names of people active in this area.
Reviewed by Chris Sherman in Search Engines 201 (Sept 13)
Do your homework on search services "Don't let your pocket get picked when many services are free" by DOUG BEDELL. Knight Ridder Tribune Business News Bradenton.com.
It's easy to be ripped off by services on the Web that promise a profile on a person and don't deliver anything more than an address you could have got from a phone directory. This article mentions the better services such as Accurint.com and PUblicData.com and lists good free services on the Web. All sites are mainly for people in the United States.
Yahoo Alerts by e-mail are finally working. I receive them regularly now. So does Gary Price -- Has Yahoo Improved Already Useful E-Mail News Alerts? (sept 8) "... from what I can tell Yahoo is now making even more sources available via the alert service. Wonderful!"
GuruNet just got better. The new 5.2 Beta will search your files and emails. Not much info yet.
Gary Price, Steven Cohen, and Shirl Kennedy have created a new weblog for featuring important documents called Docuticker. Great idea and service but would be better with some categorization of documents.
Sree Sreenivasan reported this in Documents Galore (Sept 8)
Put the news you find through Findory on your weblog with Findory Inline News.
Personalized news is everywhere Geeking with Greg (Sep 10)
There is a Bloggery Inline News too. See Gary Price -- News Search Findory
dtSearch has products to search the web, desktop, and network, and supports publishing a searchable database. Web site has a demo. It has announced Version 6.4 of the dtSearch® Product Line -- "dtSearch products instantly search gigabytes (and more) of text across a desktop, network, Internet or Intranet. dtSearch products also serve as tools to aid in publishing large document collections to Web sites or to CD/DVD, with instant text searching."
Infotrieve Releases ArticleFinder 2.0 EContent (Sept 10) Infotrieve, document delivery and e-journal service, has released ArticleFinder version 2.0. Individual subscriptions are $99/year.
Mary Ellen Bates has some great tips on about using define at Google, search inside the book at Amazon, social networking for competitive intelligence, and Google Answers for research ideas. September 2004: Things Learned By Accident
Nextaris: An Integrated Web Research Dashboard by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 9) Praises Nextaris -- "Nextaris pulls together all of the tools you need to find, save, and share information with others in a single online location." -- says it is "blazing a trail for the next generation of web research tools". Maybe - but I'm not certain people want completely self-contained systems for search, saving pages, sharing, and getting alerts.
Internet Explorer Wins the Battle By Lance Ulanoff. PC Magazine (September 1, 2004) Finds that people will stay loyal to Internet Explorer but it sounds like it's mainly based on inertia.
When It Comes to Homepages, It is Polite to Stare by Jay Small. Poynter (Sep 8) - summary of main points from the Eyetrack III study of how people read news pages on the web and the implications for web page design.
Another freebie from Tara Calishain from her new book, Web Search Garage -- Seven Ways to Save Time Searching - good tips that embrace a variety of tools and methods.
NewsbyName in the UK collects news about people from multiple news channels. This is somewhat like the "great man theory of history" - Thomas Carlyle's view that heros are what drive history. News by Name brings that to contemporary times. This week (Sept 9) those movers are Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Tim Henman (tennis). News by Name tracks Hot Names, this week's Movers, last week's News, and has more categories for geographic region, topic, and several sports' categories. There is an email alert service to notify you when your man / woman appears in the news.
Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way By Leslie Walker. Washington Post (Sept 9) [registration required] About Wikipedia, the free online encylopedia developed, maintained, and extended by volunteers. Many warn not to use it because content has not been fully verified and may contain bias. Others say that the community as a whole will find and correct the errors and offer contrasting views. Leslie Walker gives the background about the formation, operation and goals of Wikipedia. The free-wheeling spirit of Wikipedia contrasts with the quality and authority of the for-fee Britannica. But Wikipedia plans to add editorial controls soon. Walker notes that Wikipedia's success raises questions about whether "the Internet's free dissemination of knowledge will eventually decrease the economic value of information".
Killer Desktop Apps, Part 4: Feed Me by Pete Lerma, ClickZ (Sep 7) - Another convert to RSS feeds - good overview article.
FareChase is Yahoo's new travel search engine, just released in beta. Mind, it won't work with Netscape or Mozilla - must have IE and even that is problematic. It has options for searching for flights, hotel rooms (for stays of less than 30 days), and car rentals. It is said to search 150 travel web sites.
Yahoo Tests Travel Search Engine by Matt Hicks. eWeek (Sep 7) Comments that FareChase has not been well loved by the travel providers. Will Yahoo gain their trust?
Creative Commons Search, Now In Beta John Battelle's SearchBlog (Sep 2) Nutch, the open source search engine, is back in the news as the engine supporting the Creative Commons Search. Battelle calls it a "great example of a domain specific search" - only sites that have licensed through the Creative Commons. There are further comments about Nutch from SearchBlog readers.
Cheryl Gidley looks at blogs from a marketing view: reasons to use them, reasons to avoid them, and formats that might be used. To Blog or Not to Blog? iMedia Connections (Sep 1) Part 2, Who Owns Your Blog? (Sep 2) considers copyright issues, and summarizes the ways in which blogs can be used.
Overture Shifting To Default Broad Match By Danny Sullivan, Searchday (Sep 2) - Overture will be introducing a capability for matching terms on a broad basis rather than responding only to exact matches. Advertisers will be able to target more terms, but they will also pay more.
Eyetrack III: What News Websites Look Like Through Readers' Eyes Poynter (Sept 8) What do people look at when reading online news? This study of 46 people in San Francisco looking at 25 news sites provides some preliminary findings. They begin by looking in the upper left corner and then moving right before scanning the page. People look at text the most, photographs second. Small text makes a difference - people read more closely and scan less. They will also skip the blurb connected with an underlined headline - it's the line or rule that makes them skip the rest. Navigation at the top of the home page worked better than either left or right navigation but left and right are roughly equal. People seem to prefer shorter paragraphs of 2 or 3 sentences. Images aren't as noticed as one would think - especially the small ones. Images need to be around 210 x 230 pixels to be noticed by most people.
Internet Search Engine Update by Greg R. Notess. Online (Sept 2004) - has some interesting bits.
- Ask Jeeves is indexing PDF files. It has also added more smart answers. See help page for details.
- Gigablast has grown to 500,000 pages.
- Google is indexing Flash files.
National Electronic Library for Health (http://www.nelh.nhs.uk) is a gateway, created by the NHS in the UK, to a large range of digital resources to aid in "knowledge-based decision making" in health and medical related questions. It includes "summaries and appraisals of the evidence". This gateway is extremely well organized with many views of the resources. Spend time with the tours to become acquainted with NeLH resources.
There is also a Hitting the Headlines feature in which the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York assesses "the reliability of both the journalists' reporting of health stories and the research on which they are based". See the archive for headlines examined to date.
Thomson Gale Introduces New Product Platform by Paula J. Hane. Newsbreaks (Sep 7) Thomson Gale has melded its many services into one platform with a common interface.
"In effect, the company is taking the one-stop model of the “resource center” (an aggregation of periodical, reference, and primary content pulled together) and expanding it to encompass all of its wide-ranging content. Users will still be able to limit searches to whatever slices of content they wish, and, more importantly, they will be able to create their own customized resources."
Search Engine Radio at http://www.seoradio.com/ - tune in for for tips on best strategies for optimizing your site, tracking pay-per-click campaigns, and latest news about search engines. Tuesday at 9 AM Pacific / 12 Noon Eastern time. Archives available at the site. Warning - like AM radio WS Radio.com is loaded with advertising.
Nextaris -- smart search related web application from SurfWax
By Lars Vĺge in Pandia (Sep 1) Provides a detailed description of the new search and alerting tool from Surfwax - Nextaris. Says, "Nextaris is an advanced web application for information management of many kinds. "
Hurricane Resources By David Shedden. Poynter Institute (Sep 3) Anyone with property in the hurricane region of the United States will find this list of hurricane resources on the web useful. Page is organized into Weather Updates, Media Coverage, Additional REsources, and History.
How to turn your website into a 'flytrap' By HARVEY SCHACHTER. Globe and Mail (Sep 3) The dependence by Internet users on search engines for quick answers has implications for web site designers to catch and keep users.
Quick Answers to Odd Questions - Mary Ellen Bates. in the August Tip of the Month, lists her favourite sites for answering "ready reference" types of questions - quick facts, numbers (in the US), how things work, movies, quotations.
HighBeam and LookSmart partner Outsell (Sep 1) - comments on the new partnership of HighBeam with Looksmart by which people searching FindArticles will be referred to articles carried by HighBeam and be encouraged to subscribe to that service.
BoardReader searches bulletin board discussion groups and now uses Vivisimo's clustering technology to display results.
ResourceShelf has an entry about Blabble - a new engine that will analyze blogs to pick up the buzz on companies and products. It's aimed at the corporate market. Price likens it to WebFountain. Web Search--Weblogs (Aug 31) There are other weblog engines -- Waypath, Technorati, and Daypop.
Looking for Good Art: Web Resources and Image Databases, Part 1
by David Mattison. Searcher Sept 2004
Another comprehensive and useful examination of resources by David Mattison.
"I will chiefly deal with digitized, original historical Western (European and North American) art images of any nonphotographic medium prior to the 20th century found in cultural institutions or on private sites. I've ignored commercial art and illustration, as well as architectural images. My intent was to create a kind of virtual "grand tour" of Western art, mainly from English-language sources, and to survey and sample the largest and best historical art from institutions and private sites in North America and Europe. I consulted many art history subject guides and gateways, relying chiefly on those compiled by art historians or art librarians. Due to space limitations, I've had to leave out many other kinds of resources, some of which I've summarized in the sidebar at left, "It's All Art: Other Search Spots for Online Art Images." "
Free Australian and New Zealand Business Information Resources: A Report from the Melbourne Business Information Group By Nicole Sackers, Michelle Nutting, and Sinead Williams. ONline (Sep/Oct 2004) It's all about business resources for Australia but the framework would work for other countries.
New Blog About Trends In Online Dating, Social Networking By InternetWeek.com (Aug 31) Social Networking must be hot because Userplane intends to report on it. Today (Sept 1) it has a posting - Date My Pet - about dating and social networks based on pets. Have an interest? There is sure to be a community.
I-Neighborhood is the latest in communities on the Web but this time it's your local real-life community. The object is to carry events, photos, directory, and connect people who live nearby. Enter zip code or postal code - works in the US and Canada.
Website aims to build local communities By JULIET CHUNG New York Times News Service via Globe and Mail. (Sep 1)
Another software package that promises to deliver answers to frequent lookups - finance, phone, flights, weather, definitions. It's Deskport at http://www.deskport.biz/.
How Americans Use Instant Messaging PEW Internet and American Life Report (Sept 1, 2004)
53 Million American Adult Internet Users use Instant Messaging
24% of Them Use IM more Frequently Than Email,
IM Also Gains a Following in U.S. Workplace
To Chat or Not to Chat — Taking Yet Another Look at Virtual Reference, Part 2 by Steve Coffman. Searcher (Sept 2004) - Time spent in online reference can make it expensive, but Coffman says, "If you don't like the idea of killing off your chat service, then try to improve the way it works." He also has several suggestions as alternatives to virtual reference.
The Changing Information Cycle By Greg R. Notess Online (Sep 2004) Notess ponders the community elements and processes of the information cycle on the Internet. For example -- " The ability to triangulate on the Web and use multiple sources to come up with an answer is often much easier than it is to do in books and articles. " - There are many contributors and in an online environment there will be several who will correct, doubt, or criticize.
Copyscape can help identify pages on the web that are reusing your content. Done by Indigo Stream Technologies Ltd, the same people who do GoogleAlert. Copyscape is free - jsut enter URL. There will be a for-fee version that will constantly crawl and send alerts. Let's hope it includes the option to list many page, or better yet a portion of a web site.
Reviewed in Stopping Web Plagiarists from Stealing Your Content by Reid Goldsborough. Linkup Digital (Sept 2004)
Transportation Security Administration in the United States keeps track of wait times at security checkpoints at US airports. TSA Wait Times ( http://waittime.tsa.dhs.gov/index.html ). Select airport, day of departure and time of flight to find out the average wait times. Can link to particular airport to get information on current conditions. (mentioned in FITA's Really Useful Sites )
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