Poll Finds Increasing Interest in Virtual Tours TechWeb News (Dec 30) Many internet users are taking virtual tours, according to a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project. Tourists tend to be older internet users.
See Pew / Internet - Virtual Tours
"Some of the most popular virtual tour destinations include museums, tourist and vacation locales, colleges and prep schools, real estate, historical exhibits, parks and nature preserves, public places such as the White House and the Taj Mahal, and hotels and motels."
Pandia does a very thorough review of changes in web searching in its end of year newsletter -- Search engine trends in 2004 (Dec 31) -- changes at Yahoo, local search, desktop search - separate page on alternative desktop search tools, media search, personalized search.
Libraries reach out on-line By TIM GNATEK. New York Times via Globe and Mail (Dec 29) -- Without fanfare libraries have been adding e-books and audiobooks to their offerings, turning web sites into information portals, and providing Wi Fi access for free in the library.
"E-books are only one way that libraries are laying claim to a massive on-line public as their newest service audience. The institutions are breaking free from the limitations of physical location by making many kinds of materials and services available at all times to patrons who are both cardholders and Web surfers, whether they are homebound in the neighborhood or halfway around the world."
Most libraries identified in this article are in the United States but there was one from Canada -- "The Richmond Public Library in British Columbia (www.yourlibrary.ca), for example, offers registered users ways to track books and personal favourites, or receive lists of suggested materials, much like the recommendation service at Amazon."
Article mentions -- "The Wireless Librarian (people.morrisville.edu/drewwe/wireless) lists more than 400 such library hot spots in the United States."
Americans have another choice for local search at Ask Jeeves (http://local.ask.com/local) Search for a business or service by address, city or zip code. AJ will save the locations for reuse. AJ provides this through CitySearch.
I did a test run to look for an outlet for Mail Boxes in the University Village in Seattle. Ask Jeeves found Mail Etc on 25th Street which was near. Google had Mail Etc with the same phone number but at a different address - and the record came from citysearch.com! Google also had a Mail Boxes Etc in the Village - probably the one I was looking for. Yahoo listed Mail Etc at the same address as Google used but had a much better map. At Yahoo the Mail Boxes outlet in the Village was listed as a UPS Store. Moral of story: try more than one. Also - Google and Yahoo are better than Ask Jeeves which did not show either Mail or UPS in the Village.
New Local Search Interface For Ask Jeeves ResearchBuzz (Dec 29)
Desktop Search: The Game Is Afoot "New tools have various strengths, but you can only use one" by Stephen Wildstrom, Business Week Online (Jan 10, 2005) -- mainly about Microsoft 's new MSN Toolbar with desktop search, but mentions X1 being used by Yahoo and Earthlink, Google's desktop search, and AOL's rumoured partnership with Copernic to include desktop search in the browser. Wildstrom is sticking with X1 for now.
Of interest >> "this sudden proliferation of desktop search may end up creating difficult choices. Each of the search programs has its strengths, and it would be a good thing if you could just pick the one that's best for a given job -- the way you might use multiple browsers or e-mail programs. Unfortunately, you can't safely run more than one desktop search program on your computer. "
A Look Ahead by John Battelle (Dec 22) - predictions for 2005 in which the blogosphere will get more fractious: Firefox will win over 15% of the browser market but Microsoft will release a good upgrade; Yahoo and Google will do even more for merchants - and several more.
Turning the Pages lets viewers page through manuscripts online. It's being used at the British Library for several collections including Jane Austen's History of England and Leonardo's Notebook. National Library of Ireland has used it for portions of James Joyce's Ulysses. Requires Macromedia 8.5.
What’s Next in Web Search? (PDF) Laurianne McLaughlin, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, no. 11, vol. 5, 2004. -- "Enhancing personalized results is a large near-term goal for Web search, according to major search-engine companies. Other prominent objectives include improved multimedia searching, localization, question-and-answer technology, visual results presentation, and modified Web search on devices other than PCs, including cell phones."
Gary Price has information about advanced search at Google Scholar that includes publication title, document title, author, and date range - but found that the date search was not entirely reliable.
Google Scholar's New Advanced Search Interface SearchEngineWatch blog (Dec 28)
Newest search engines index video by Leslie Walker, Washington Post via Delaware Online (Dec 28) Reports on new services from Yahoo and Blinkx for video-search engines.
Also mentions a photo-sharing Web service called HeyPix - for putting photos on blogs and sharing those through RSS syndication. The free service allows 50 photos.
Blogs provide raw details from disaster scene by Jonathan Schwartz. CNet News (Dec 27) Personal blogs quickly reported on the tsumani disaster in Asia and India and at least one (tsunamihelp.blogspot.com) is the centre for postings on ways to get and give help.
Google — A new weapon for criminals by Robert Masse, Globe and Mail (Dec 24) - an alarmist article about "malicious hackers are using the search engine [Google] to find everything from credit card information to social insurance numbers." Article is of interest because of the examples of syntax used.
-- searched for "social security numbers" at sites with ".gov" domain (US Government) and file type ".xls" (Excel spreadsheets) -- returned 3,600 Microsoft Excel spreadsheets on government websites
- notes that some high-tech new photocopiers that can scan, copy, fax and print are also connected to the Web and their digital content is being indexed. Doesn't say how these photocopiers can be found.
- claims to have found I"a U.S. Military report described as "Top Secret" describing operations in Iraq — from communications to weaponry to psychological warfare".
Waypath Debuts New Look and Service Search Engine Watch Blog (Dec 27) Waypath for finding and reading blogs has a new look. There is also a Blogs On News
Blogs service to report on what bloggers are saying about the latest news stories.
Searching for Quick Answers To Odd Questions by Mary Ellen Bates, SearchDay (Dec 22) Recommends specialized search tools for finding ready reference information and quick facts.
CSA Lights Up a New Platform: CSA Illumina by Paula J. Hane, Information Today - Newsbreaks (Dec 27) -- Cambridge Scientific Abstracts has released CSA Illumina, a new platform for online bibliographic and full-text searching.
"The new interface provides access to more than 100 databases published by CSA and its publishing partners. Notable examples include CSA Sociological Abstracts, the SAGE Full-Text Collections, CSA Materials Research Database with METADEX, BioOne, PsycINFO, CSA Technology Research Database, and ARTbibliographies Modern."
Compare Desktop Search tools at Desktop Search Matrix. Includes downloads where available. ISYS and X1 have the longest lists of searchable file types.
(Mentioned at Search Engine Watch Blog)
Internet Archive to build alternative to Google "Ten international libraries agree to add digitised book collections to not-for-profit Internet Archive's new Text Archive project" by Mark Chillingworth, Information World Review via PC Mag (Dec 21)
"In a statement, the Internet Archive describes the Text Archive as an Open Access archive that will "ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage". Over a million books have been committed to the Text Archive by the member institutes, with 50,000 available in the first quarter of 2005."
See also Tara Calishain Internet Archive, Universities Team Up For a Digitized Collection (Dec 27) for articles about the project and comments about ways to search the text archive.
A Skeptic's Guide to Internet Research by Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch (Dec 21) - reviews new book by Robert Berkman, The Skeptical Business Searcher -- "The Skeptical Business Searcher by Robert Berkman is an excellent guide to sorting out the wheat from the chaff of business information. And while the primary emphasis is on business research, the lessons offered are applicable to any type of online searching."
Searching for Live Music By Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch (Dec 20) Recommends Live Music Archive for "thousands of hours of free, legal music, available on demand." Joint project of etree.org and The Internet Archive.
All this time (since May 2002) there has been a weblog for Open Access News. It's about " Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature on the internet."
Has several entries about Google Scholar.
On Dec 17, 2004 it mentioned the SDL search engine - Search Digital Libraries - covers Library and Information Science.
Search Industry Gains Clout by Susan Kuchinskas. Internet News (Dec 14) Reports on Danny Sullivan's address to the Search Engine Strategies trade show -- paid inclusion, personal search, desktop search.
Of interest -- "In January 2004, Google had a 79 percent share of U.S. searches; at year's end, Google's share had fallen to 44 percent; Yahoo controlled 32 percent, MSN had 15 percent, and Ask Jeeves accounted for 6 percent of searches."
What’s Next for Google By Charles H. Ferguson. Technology Review (Jan 2005) Sees that the "search industry is ready for an architecture war" -- "Architecture wars (also known as standards wars) occur because information technology markets require standards in order to manage complexity, communication, and technological change." Google and Microsoft are the main contenders. Examines strategies, past and present, of each and observes Google to be in the more precarious position. Shareholders, take note.
Google Scholar - Creator of Google Scholar Answers a Few Questions ResourceShelf (Dec 15) Q and A with Google Scholar, Anurag Acharya.
Google News has introduced versions for Argentina, Chile, Canada Français, México, Österreich, Schweiz or Suisse. See all versions listed on the about us page.
Google SNAFUs Usenet pages Inquirer (Dec 9) Google Groups has changed the format of its newsgroup postings. Some find that navigation of groups has been weakened.
Friendster, Eurekster Team Up for Personalized Search by Chris Sherman, SearchEngineWatch (Dec 9) Friendster, the social networking site for connecting with friends, is using Eurekster, the social networking search engine. "The new service takes advantages of the preferences and interests of Friendster members and their friends to filter search results to more closely match personal interests than general web search engines. "
Keypoint >> "One problem is that unless you take the time to build up a personal network, you're not likely to see much benefit from this type of personalized search. With small networks of two or three people, it's also fairly easy to guess who searched for what, which raises another potential privacy concern."
Google Now Indexing Up to Six Url Variables Search Engine Roundtable (Dec 7) Google has been seen spidering URLs that contain 6 variables, showing that it is getting better at penetrating into databases.
Opera releases new talking Web browser by John Borland, CNet (Dec 23) -- "Opera Software released a test version of a major update to its Web browser software Thursday, intensifying its efforts, along with open-source rival Firefox, to cut into Microsoft's market share."
"The new Opera beta version also includes user interface improvements such as bigger browsing space, cleaner menus, and better printing support, the company says. The browser also now works with Google's Gmail, correcting a problem that had led some Opera users to switch to Firefox." There's voice support too.
New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow by Paul Festa, CNet (Dec 24) -- "Forty-five days and some 13 million downloads after its official release, Mozilla's Firefox browser is showing undeniable momentum--but does it signal the beginning of the end to Microsoft's monopoly over the basic software used to access the Web?" Microsoft's IE browser has dropped below 90% for marketshare but corporations and business users are not likely to jump browsers yet.
RSS Compendium has information on RSS readers, resources, tools, and history.
What are those orange boxes anyway? An introduction to RSS by Teri Vogel. SLA Chemistry Newsletter (Fall 2004) - includes a list of chemistry-related webfeedshttp://www.sla.org/division/dche/Newsletters/Fall_2004.pdf
see page 4 - an article about RSS by Teri Vogel
Both were mentioned in the Internet Resource Newsletter #124 (Jan 2005)
Also see The Role of RSS in Science Publishing - Syndication and Annotation on the Web by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund. D-Lib Magazine (Dec 2004) -- "Syndication and annotation are the order of the day and are beginning to herald a new immediacy in communications and information provision. This paper describes the growing uptake of RSS within science publishing as seen from Nature Publishing Group's (NPG) [6] perspective."
An Introduction to Feeds at Feedster by Jessica Baumgart. See also tutorial on How to Search in Feedster. [Source: Resourceshelf.com]
The On Google Scholar weblog invites news, advice, and comments about Google Scholar especially by academic libraries. There are a few links to pages university libraries have put up. Blog is by T J Sonderman, Research and Instruction Librarian in Norton, Massachusetts.
AOL gets ready to launch free Web e-mail by Jim Hu, CNet News (Dec 22) -- "America Online is testing a Web-based e-mail service that will compete with Yahoo Mail, Microsoft's Hotmail and Google's Gmail."
Washington Post picks up Slate from Microsoft Matt Hines, CNet.com (Dec 21) Slate. the online magazine with a bent for US politics, has survived. Microsoft decided it wasn't a media company and sold Slate to the Washington Post. 6 million readers will be glad.
Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) "is an independent, pan-Canadian, not-for-profit organization working to improve the health of Canadians and the health care system by providing quality, reliable and timely health information." Has a substantial number of reports on health care topics including quick stats by topic - health conditions, health services, human resources, and spending. See http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/splash.html
Google/Yahoo Rivalry Moves Into 2005 AP via CBS Marketwatch (Dec 21) -- Compares the two heavyweights - Google devoted to "transforming the way the world finds and stores information" and Yahoo intent on being "one-stop destination for recreation, work and research". Yahoo's fortunes are tied to spread of broadband and its orientation is to media. Google might be more brainy -- ""We want Google to be the very place to work for the very best computer scientists in the world," Reyes said. "Google is truly a learning organization.""
Using Google Scholar: Georgia State University Library has a page showing how to use Google Scholar in conjunction with the GSU library. Nicely done. [Mentioned in ResearchBuzz (Dec 21) ]
Singingfish Launches New Search Destination ResearchBuzz (Dec 6) - review of the revised Singingfish.com, an audio / video search engine.
SingingFish helps you search by format and category, and limit by duration. Also has a help page on installing media players.
Swets Signs Seven New Publishers eContent (Dec 21) -- "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 8,553 full text ejournals from 323 publishers."
Gigablast, the independent search engine, offers custom topic search - build your own search engine of 200 sites. It's being offered for use at web sites but could be used for research purposes.
Gigablast Unveils Custom Topic Search Tool Press Release via CBS Marketwatch (Dec 20)
LocalSearchGuide.org is to be a who's who of the local search online marketplace. Profiles the leading players and gives some historical perspective.
"... the Yellow Pages Association (www.ypassociation.org), along with supporting partners comScore, SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) and The Kelsey Group, is now offering the Local Search Guide, which profiles IYP, Search Engine and Search Tools companies’ Local Search capabilities, and includes viewpoints, glossaries and other resources. The Local Search Guide is updated frequently to add new companies and reflect changes in the industry. "
Multiple Search Engine Universe Jim Hedger, WebProNews (Dec 9) -- "Today, Google has approximately 46% of the organic search market with Yahoo (26%) and MSN (21%) following close behind. (Yahoo owns Inktomi, a database of spidered sites that currently provides results to MSN.Com. These results will be replaced by a proprietary database when the new MSN(beta) search is released."
Also mentions that Google will now index down to the sixth level in a database. Previously, it was 2 levels.
Newsknife has released its list of the top news sites for 2004 based on analysis of Google News. New York Times, Reuters, and Washington Post took top 3 positions.
The Blogosphere By the Numbers by Rob McGann, Clickz (Nov 22) Technorati estimates that there are 4 million blogs, and figures from Pubsub suggest 6.5 million. But only 200 blogs get substantial traffic ( 1 million pageviews per month) and 20 of those receive over 10 million pageviews per month. Most blogs are done by people under 30 years of age.
Best blogs of 2004 by Frank Barnako, CBS Marketwatch (Dec 15) [Subscription] -- "The Best Overall Blog category was won by Powerlineblog.com, Best New Blog was NationalReview.com's Kerry Spot, and Best Election Coverage honors went to RealClearPolitics.com."
ICANN gives preliminary OK to two domains By ANICK JESDANUN Associated Press via Globe and Mail (Dec 14) - Two new domain - .mobi and .jobs.
"Sponsored by leading mobile phone and technology companies, including Nokia Corp., Microsoft Corp. and T-Mobile, the ".mobi" domain would set apart websites and other services that are specially designed to work around the limitations of cellphones, including their smaller screen size and data capacity."
"The ".jobs" suffix, meanwhile, would go to members of the human resources community."
Google Labs has a new tool called Google Suggest. As you type Google offers suggestions - pick the one you want. Start with federal government - Google will offer: federal government canada, federal government employment, federal government grants - and many more. Suggestions appear as you type and will include misspellings.
Tara Calishain would like to see it help in handling spelling variations better. Google Has A New One for the Labs -- Google Suggest (Dec 9)
Chris Justus has figured out the inner workings of the javascript -- Google Suggest Dissected (Dec 14)
Google News' chief robot speaks out By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco, The Register (Dec 8) - Does Google News have a point of view? Krishna Barat of Google News says not. Orlowski is not convinced and would like Google to publish criteria for inclusion in the news aggregator.
On Local Sites, Everyone's A Journalist
By Leslie Walker, The Washington Post, December 9, 2004 -- Some news organizations are encouraging citizens to cover local news.
"Jarvis said his firm, which owns a string of community newspapers and Web sites, is preparing to launch citizen-journalist Web sites in six towns in Oregon, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The sites will essentially be town blogs, in which postings from different residents will be grouped together and presented in a newsy format."
Bloglines Debuts Internationalized RSS Service eContent (Dec 7) - "Bloglines, a free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing, and sharing news feeds, blogs, and rich Web content has unveiled an internationalized Web site that allows people who speak Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish to join and navigate the Bloglines service in their native languages. "
Questions and Praise for Google Web Library By FELICIA R. LEE, NY Times (Dec 18)
Many academics applaud Google's project to digitize library collections, but do question the implications.
"How will research be improved for students already struggling with, among other things, how to authenticate Internet information? What new roles will librarians play in helping people parse a vast amount of more easily obtainable information? Will libraries have to cooperate to prevent redundancy in their collections?"
blinkx and Yahoo have new tools for searching for video. Pandia has information on both.
blinkx launches TV and radio search engine (Dec 15) -- "blinkx.tv captures and indexes video streams published by TV and radio company web sites, letting you search for news, movie trailers, popular multimedia spots etc." Best for broadband users - at blinkx.tv
Yahoo! Video Search Beta The Yahoo video search handles several formats and can be restricted by domain. Looks somewhat like the old Altavista video search.
Tara Calishain learned from Yahoo that the search technology has been newly developed and is also being used at Altavista. See An Update On Yahoo's Video Search (Dec 21)
Groxis Launches “Search-and-Research” Platform for Education Market eContent (Dec 17)
"... Grokker 2.2, the company's visual search-and-research application that captures content from multiple data sources and presents results in a visual map. The platform has been designed to incorporate many different data and information resources relevant to educational settings." See Grokker Education.
FIND.COM Launches Online B2B Sourcing Directory in Partnership with ThomasB2B.com PRWeb (Dec 16)
"Find.com today announced a content alliance with ThomasB2B.com, LLC, that will give searchers access to the business listings of more than 550,000 industrial suppliers from 29 countries. Find.com’s online business-to-business sourcing directory will combine comprehensive free company listings with ThomasB2B’s advanced pay-per-click ad matching technology to deliver targeted content to end-users."
New search engine Accoona claims to employ artificial intelligence to let users influence the results they get. Searchers can rank results with selected terms more highlighting using the Supertargeting option. The search engine is oriented to business content. It supports boolean and is case sensitive. Features sound great but results are poor perhaps because Accoona hasn't built up enough content.
Accoona Launches, But Isn't Ready for Prime Time by Gary Price, SearchDay (Dec 7) - full review
Bill Clinton Helps Launch Search Engine AP Via CBS Marketwatch (Dec 7)
Copernic Desktop Search is First to Fully Support Mozilla Firefox Browser; Up to 200 Percent Faster Indexing Achieved With New CDS Version 1.2 Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Dec 7) -- "CDS 1.2 features lightning-fast indexing of PC hard drive content and improved PC memory usage. The new CDS version also indexes browsing history and bookmarked sites from Mozilla browsers." More information and download at http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/
MSN joins desktop search fray By Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com December 13, 2004. MSN tries to catch up to the other desktop search players with the MSN Toolbar Suite. "The software lets people search the contents of their hard drive, including Microsoft Outlook e-mail, calendar items, contacts and Office documents. It also lets them navigate the Web with MSN's proprietary search technology, released last month, from points within e-mail and within Windows."
Also reviewed by Chris Sherman -- MSN Joins the Desktop Search Fray SearchDay (Dec 13) -- was "impressed with both the quality of search results and the speed with which they're found."
First Look: Netscape's New Browser "Still in beta form, new browser allows you to view pages as they would appear in IE." Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (Dec 1)
Google has taken a giant step to making the world's information accessible on the web in announcing agreements with several libraries for indexing their collections of printed books. Books in the public domain will be fully viewable. Those protected by copyright will have restricted viewing.
Agreements are with Stanford (8 million books) University, University of Michigan (7 million), Harvard (will begin with 40,000), Bodleian Library at Oxford (pre-1901), New York Public Library (fragile material). Digital scanning will take place over the next 6 years.
This is part of the Google Print initiative begun with publishers. Results will appear in a general web search. Books will be linked to local libraries where available through OCLC Open Worldcat.
Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT, New York Times (Dec 14)
Google to index works at Harvard, other major libraries By Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe (Dec 14)
Google Partners with Oxford, Harvard & Others to Digitize Libraries by Gary Price, SearchDay (Dec 14) - notes other sources of full-text books online.
Google Planning To Index Entire Libraries Tara Calishain, Researchbuzz (Dec 14) - links to all the official announcements. Asks why isn't Google doing something to improve access to existing digitized materials.
** NPR - Talk of the Nation (Dec 15) - explored the issues mainly pertaining to implications for libraries and copyright considerations in Google's Plan Prompts a Question: What's on the Web? Lynn Neary interviewed Michael Keller from Stanford University and High Wire Press, Brewster Kale, founder of Internet Archive and champion of digital collections and libraries, Paul Gerhardt of BBC Creative Archive to discuss issues of sound and visual images. There were some call-in questions. [Roughly 30 minutes.]
While Google's plans are awesome, it's not entirely clear that this is the best Google or other search engines could do to enhance access to information.
Russell Shaw at The Industry Standard (Dec 17) said -- Library Books Are OK, But Here's What Google Should Really Be Concentrating On - the deep web of database content. Shaw uses figures from BrightPlanet to estimate that the 60 largest of databases would have 85 billion documents, ten times what Google purports to index today.
Rita Vine predicts that everyone will be that much keener to buy keywords at Google in order to have their web site found. What's behind Google's massive library digitization project? Sitelines (Dec 14) As she notes - "Giant databases make information harder to find, not easier ..." - more advertisers will compete for keywords thus boosting Google's revenues.
Obviously there are implications for libraries. One view -- Google Move Could Commercialize Libraries by May Wong, AP Via Yahoo News. (Dec 14) Although Google has promised to "do no evil", might others index this material and lure viewers into for-fee arrangements? Also will the public end up having to access information always through a screen of advertisements?
The digitization project is laudable but dumping all the text into the Google database is not. Searchers will need to know that the material is available - not just happen to come across it. They will need tools to focus the search on selected bodies of content and to make use of particular attributes of that content. A broad search for "romeo and juliet" that happens to bring up the text of the play along with a gazillion other instances of movies, games, and toys is not useful. Students need ways to stipulate that they are looking of a digitized version of a particular text or at least a link to their library.
Ask Jeeves Desktop Search (Beta) 1.7.0 by Neil Rubenking, PC Magazine (Dec 16) - reviews the new desktop search from Ask Jeeves - another tool for indexing Windows 2000/XP Microsoft Office documents, text files, and rich text documents, as well as IE Outlook email. It doesn't do pdf or email attachments yet. Compares product to Google Desktop and X1 (Yahoo).
PC Magazine issued a longer article about desktop search utilities - Supersonic Search Engines (Nov 12) - reviewing blinkx; Clarity (Creo Six Degrees); Google Desktop beta; MSN Search beta; and X1 Search.
Also -- Desktop search avalanche set to hit By Joris Evers and Juan Carlos Perez, The Industry Standard (Dec 10) -- new desktop search from Ask Jeeves and Yahoo.
Many more observations and tests of Google Scholar reported in Web Search - Google Resourceshelf (Nov 23) - comparing Google Scholar to using databases available through libraries. Google has made a big splash because it is seen as being more streamlined and easier to use. Is that actually the case?
Librarians' Index to the Internet service has added interactive chat using either AOL or Yahoo Messenger. Web Directories--Librarians' Index to the Internet Resource Shelf (Nov 24)
CiteULike Tracks Favorite Citations ResearchBuzz.com (Nov 29) Another tool for scholars. This one lets you create citations to articles and research papers found in sites such as PubMed, HubMed, CiteSeer, and ScienceDirect. Others include Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) portal, American Meteorological Society, arXiv.org e-Print archive, IngentaConnect, JSTOR, MetaPress, PLoS Biology - and more to be supported soon.
It's a bit like Furl.net but it won't save the text. http://www.citeulike.org/
Searching for Google's Future by Fred Vogelstein, Fortune (Dec 3) Eric Schmidt CEO of Google spoke with Fortune about the potential in targeted advertising and Google's intention to invest in the very small and the very large businesses - the whole gamut.
"Pick any large consumer packaged goods company. How many products do you think they have? Probably millions, I would think, by the time you have all the variants and the different geographies and legal rules. We want every one of those products to be advertised in the appropriate market within Google in the right country. That's our goal."
Tracking the net "From egos to news, Technorati tells us who’s linking what. CEO David Sifry discusses its technology, and how the company will compete with industry big shots like Google." Red Herring (November 29, 2004) Technorati tracks blogs - 4.8 million of them. It knows what is hot in news and in books.
New Google Groups Opens To Public SearchEngine Watch Blog (Dec 2)
Google Groups with mailing lists (http://groups-beta.google.com/) is now out of beta (but still has the beta tag). This is the Yahoo-Groups-like service where you can create your own group and discussion area as well as search the newsgroups.
If you prefer the old Google Groups that just let you search and post to established newsgroups, stick with http://groups.google.com/
See Google Enhances Discussion Groups by Michael Liedtke, AP via SunHerald (Dec 3) -- describes upgrade and Google's marketing purpose (more advertising!) .
Don't Judge a College by Its Internet Address "Ending in .edu does not necessarily mean an institution is accredited" by Dan Carnevale, Chronicle of Higher Education (Nov 26) -- "Although ".edu" Internet addresses are supposed to be reserved for colleges with accreditation from agencies approved by the U.S. Department of Education, hundreds of institutions that do not meet that requirement have the coveted Web addresses."
HighBeam Names "Chief Blogging Officer" EContent (Dec 3) HighBeam Research has partnered with Christopher Locke, "the chief blogging officer" to develop ways that bloggers can use HighBeam as an information source such as searching the newspapers and journals and checking facts. Members will be able "to provide their readers with time-limited free access to full text articles in their blogs." See http://www.chiefbloggingofficer.com/
Oddly, there is no information about this at HighBeam.
Application of this will be fairly specialized - used more for reference research (as Christopher Locke is doing) than current awareness. HighBeam does not carry much current material. On a search for Pierre Berton, a Canadian journalist and historian, who died November 30th there was one story from Agence France Presse English. While there was better coverage of the election turmoil in the Ukraine, it mainly consisted of stories from AP and AFP. HighBeam is not a good tool for current news. As well its alerting service is much too basic. The idea to attract bloggers to use HighBeam is good but I think HighBeam will have to beef up its service to make it work.
Microsoft Debuts MSN Spaces for Bloggers AP via Forbes (Dec 1) MSN Spaces will be a new blogging center, free to people with a hotmail account or MSN instant messenger. Bloggers will be able to alert people thru MSN Messenger about new postings. Check it out at spaces.msn.com
Cory Kleinschmidt was not impressed and gives two reasons why it will fail. MSN Spaces: Better Off as Vaporware? Traffick.com (Dec 2)
Phishers lie in wait for Google searchers by Munir Kotadia. CNet (Dec 1) "Phishers are setting up fraudulent e-commerce Web sites and simply waiting for victims using Google and other search engines to find them, a security company has warned." Main messages - don't click to download images. They may carry a worm.
Presentations at the Internet Librarian Conference 2004 held in November in Monterey are gradually being mounted. Of interest:
Favelets & Bookmarklets Cybertour by Michael Sauers
Graphical Data Presentation by Michael Sauers
Teaching Searching of the Web by Laura Cohen
Making the Most of the Blogosphere by Jenny Levine and Greg Schwartz
Thirty Search Tips in 40 Minutes by Mary Ellen Bates
Cindy Chick lists in her blog, LawLibTech, several post-processing research tools that were recommended to attendees at the Internet Librarian conference -- Internet Librarian - Research Tools: Turning Search into Research
Mozilla previews e-mail program by Paul Festa, CNet (Dec 1) Mozilla is going head to head with Microsoft in introducing Mozilla Mail, direct competitor to Outlook Express. But, as this article points out, eMail is a crowded field right now. There are many alternatives including web-based email as well as ad-based software. Nonetheless, Thunderbird, as it is called, could attract users with its new features for saving searches, blocking spam, and RSS integration.
"Thunderbird offers a laundry list of features commonly available in e-mail applications, including support for the IMAP, LDAP and POP mail protocols and HTML mail; message labels, search, and an address book; return receipts, message filtering, import functions, and a tool for managing multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts."
LexisNexis AlaCarte! - Search the archive for free by Jon Dube, Poynter Online (Nov 30) Recommends the new news search service called LexisNexis AlaCarte!. Search headlines for free, pay for what you want (at $3 to $10 per document). LexisNexis has over "3.8 billion documents from over 20,000 sources of news, public records, and government information, including top newspapers, magazines, and transcripts, company and industry reports, deed records, liens, zip demographics, state and federal legislation, and intellectual property."
Expected (but missing) content on Google Scholar Rita Vine, Sitelines (Nov 30) - report on holes in content at Google Scholar. Rita recommends searching both Google and Google Scholar.
Also -- Side-by-Side Measurement of Google Scholar vs. Publisher's own "native" search engines in Sitelines (Dec 1) - mentions tool developed by Peter Jacso to compare Google Scholar to the publisher's search engine. Side-by-side 2 Jacso's tool is useful just in itself as a meta-searcher.
Amazon through Search-Inside-A-Book can also identify books that are cited by a particular book and link through to the particular book. Chris Locke spotted this - see Amazon hypercites Bezos blows my mind. Again in The EGR Weblog (Nov 12). He ran a search at A9, looked at the books listed, picked one and followed the links.
[Mentioned in Traffick.com - Who's Afraid of Google Scholar?, Part I: Amazon
Going Online to Save Data Safely by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUP Digital (Dec 2004) Backup data to an offsite storage site - could be your ISP or a for-fee service. Xdrive is still in business, and also IBackup.com
Searching Smarter, Not Harder by John Gartner, Wired (Nov 30) Some organizations are constructing topic maps to categorize content and show aspects and relationships. An example given was William Shakespeare -- " ... would be mapped to essays about him, his plays and his famous quotes." Topic maps are created by computers and modified by humans. Mentions work in Europe at Ontopia, Mondeca and Empolis to develop commercial applications.
Rocketinfo and CanWest Interactive Form Strategic Content Partnership Market Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Nov 30) RocketInfo may deliver to its enterprise clients content from FPInfomart Direct service. "In total Rocketinfo will enhance its existing content offering with more than 150 full-text news and business sources -- from major Canadian dailies and newswires, to regional community papers, TV and radio transcripts, corporate databases, specialty trade journals and magazines."
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