March 31, 2005
HighBeam Research
HighBeam helps employees do their own research by Sandra Guy, Chicago Sun-Times (March 30) -- Chicago-based HighBeam Research got some recognition in their town paper.
"HighBeam Research Inc. fills a niche between Google and Lexis-Nexis, but it's a niche that will widen as workers take on more responsibility for their own research. The company also must differentiate itself from similar sites such as Find.com, Scoop.com and KeepMedia.com."
ZoomInfo for People Search
Searching for People with ZoomInfo By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 31) -- Finds flaws with ZoomInfo, as anyone who searches on themself will, but grants that it can be a useful service. ZoomInfo (previously Eliyon) has compiled profiles on 25 million people from the Web.
March 30, 2005
Google Honours Van Gogh
Google has a adopted a logo in the style of Van Gogh presumably to honour his birthday on March 30, 1853.
A search for Vincent Van Gogh shows off Google's capabilities quite nicely.
+ Click on definition to get the entry from Answers.com
+ News Results - there's a Van Gogh exhibition taking place at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
+ Book results - links to Google Print for Van Gogh Drawings where you'll be able to view three black and white drawings.
+ Selected images - maybe - showed on first search and not on second. If you don't see any, click on the Images tab.
+ Click on Froogle to shop for prints.
Note that the Book results will only appear with a search for vincent van gogh without " to mark the phrase, and only at google.com - not google.ca or google.co.uk or any other domain.
Travel Search Engines
Travel search engines: New routes to deals -- Consumer Reports.org (March 2005) -- reports on two new travel search engines, Kayak and Mobissimo as well as Sidestep and compared to Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity.
Did save money with the three search engines compared to the "big three" but found there were some drawbacks. Concluded -- "Travel search engines are no doubt a great new tool for bargain-hunters. For now, the best way to use the sites is to add them to your comparison-shopping mix."
March 29, 2005
Rocketinfo and CNW
Rocketinfo and CNW Group Announce 5-year Licensing Deal -- press release in Canada Newswire (March 29)
Canada NewsWire Group will be using Rocketinfo's database to feed its MediaVantage Service.
"... CNW Group will have full access to Rocketinfo's current news and business information database. The content to be provided by Rocketinfo will be integrated into CNW's MediaVantage service, a full-featured, near real-time media monitoring solution developed by CNW and their technical partner dna13 Inc. The Rocketinfo content database includes a broad and diverse collection of current news sources, weblogs, and RSS feeds. This database includes unmatched coverage of more than 1,000 Canadian sources including content in both official languages and content from Canadian radio station websites."
Aware for Researchers
Aware (http://www.awaresearch.com/) is a new search software package for searching the Web. It operates as a meta-searcher, similar to Copernic Agent, but has a "context-aware search technology" that can learn from what you identify as good or bad and expand the query. This would be most suitable for people who are doing extended research on a particular topic and who need in-depth coverage. Aware saves searches on a topic to a "collection". It also builds a "terms list", "a weighted list of key terms that it thinks best represents your research topic". Users may select sources from a check list and stipulate the "depth ratio". The product web site does not list the sources. This runs on Windows 2000 and up. Free trial available. $79 US to buy.
Topic Hunter All-In-One
Topic Hunter is a new all-in-one-place search service. It groups engines by their type such as major, answer searching, blogs, reference, invisible web and several other categories. The major category includes Google, Yahoo, Looksmart, Teoma and on the second page, lesser known ones like HomerWeb, Zerx. Mouseover the image for the engine to get a bubble of information about the engine. Not all groups have this feature, and the Topic Hunter staff may find it a brute to keep the annotations up to date. To use this service pick the group you want, enter your search terms and choose an engine (only one - this is not a meta-searcher).
The collections in several of the categories are quite handy -- News, Blogs, Audio Video. The Invisible Web seemed the most unlikely and unsatisfactory collection: Ixquick, a metasearch engine, in the same grouping as LII.org, a 'scholarly' subject directory. There was also Gary Price's Direct Search, which he stopped updating ages ago.
Worth a visit if only to see the engines that Topic Hunter has listed.
Tara Calishain reviewed it in Topic Hunter Meta Search In Several Different Categories (March 29)
Google * Works
Google's wildcard word in a phrase has been fixed. An asterisk will substitute for a word in a phrase. For example: "google * * wildcard" -- looks for google two words removed from wildcard.
Inside Ixquick
IXQuick.com Q & A With David Bodnick & Alex van Eesteren - By Jason Dowdell at Searchengineguide (Mar 28) -- Insight into the goals and operation of the metasearch engine Ixquick. Reviews latest enhancements for international phone books, international comparison shopping, metasearch for pictures, and multi-language web search and options for "honing" the search.
March 28, 2005
Business Research
Book review: The Skeptical Business Searcher by Robert Berkman. Reviewed by Penny Leidtke in Freepint.
""The Skeptical Business Searcher" is an easy read with plenty of
examples, anecdotes and even a few case studies. "
More information about the book at http://books.infotoday.com/skepticalbiz/
Yahoo on the rise
How Yahoo Got Its Mojo Back by Om Malik on Broadband (Mar ) -- writer for Business 2.0 magazine, Om Malik comments on the rising profile for Yahoo. It has the attention now of the "chattering classes". Posted comments to this blog entry are very interesting too.
Incredible Virtual Montreal
MadeinMTL is an incredible tourist site about the City of Montreal. This is a virtual guide that is absolutely gorgeous in its execution with maps, text, slide shows, itinerary builders, videos. Put aside 30 minutes or so to enjoy the site and the subject. Use the We Recommend to get started and select one of the Activities. For example, under Fresh Air there is The Alleys of Miles End, a fascinating tour that includes a visit to a bagel shop.
See this description of the award winning site: A visit to a virtual Montreal By Jim Regan | csmonitor.com (Mar 28)
Not to be missed.
March 27, 2005
Desktop Tool Lineup
Seeking a More Intuitive Search Tool By Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post (Mar 27) [Registration required] -- reviews the six leading desktop search tools. Tends to favor Google as "best of this bunch" but it doesn't pick up everything and is "not as easy to access as MSN".
Telling conclusion: "All this add-on software winds up being both fascinating and frustrating. By freeing users from the need to think like accountants when filing their data, and to carry a quiver of applications to view different files, they promise to solve two of the oldest problems in personal computing."
Desktop software is also reviewed in Total Recall by Cade Metz, PC Magazine (Mar 2) -- gives a primer on desktop search and tested 12 tools. It gives some guidelines on how to choose according to your needs, and points out some security concerns. In the end, Yahoo Desktop Search was their pick.
Overall, PC Mag editors concluded: "Desktop search tools really can make our lives easier, and since so many of them are free, there's little reason not to give one a try. Your mailbox isn't getting any more manageable, your hard drive isn't getting emptier, and after all, finding something on the PC right in front of you should be as easy as finding something on the Web."
But desktop search products could all become obsolete when Microsoft delivers Longhorn with full search capabilities.
Search Titans
The battle to be the fastest fetcher on the Web by Richard Dalton, Newsday (Mar 27) - rehash of the main points of competition between Google, Yahoo and MSN - but it's all in one place and has quite a few figures. Yahoo made $3.6 billion in 2004 and Google, $3.2 billion.
March 26, 2005
NYPL Digital Gallery
Review of "new digital image repository from the New York Public Library" by Shirl Kennedy, ResourceShelf (Mar 10)
From NYPL: " NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more."
A9 Open Access
Users of the A9 search engine can add other columns for specialty searches. It's called OpenSearch .
From the A9 information page: "OpenSearch is not a search engine—it is a way for search engines to publish their search results in a standard and accessible format. And because OpenSearch is built on top of standard RSS, existing tools—such as blog readers—can read OpenSearch results natively."
Review the submitted columns. Already there are 109 tools including Creative Commons, Acronym Database, British Library, and various blog search engines including A9's very own Top Blogs Search.
Richard Wiggins describes OpenSearch in Amazon’s New OpenSearch Enables Search Syndication in Newsbreaks (March 28, 2005). Amazon has succeeded in offering vertical (specialized) search by exploiting RSS technology.
"RSS traditionally has been used to feed news or article headlines to a cooperating Web site, which uses an “aggregator” to interpret the XML content and turn it into HTML, formatted as the receiving site sees fit. OpenSearch allows a content provider such as NASA or The British Library to export search functionality to other sites instead of headlines."
RSS and Libraries
RSS: Moving Into the Mainstream by Randy Reichardt, Cameron Science and Technology Library, University of Alberta (Mar 22)
"The application of RSS feeds has moved into the library world, riding the wave of hundreds of library-related weblogs and other services."
Mentions several examples and some resources.
Factiva RSS
Factiva Adds More RSS? (Updated) in Library Stuff (Mar 22 ) - has screenshots.
WikiWax for Wikipedia
Search the encyclopedia Wikipedia using WikiWax, a lookahead type of searching powered by Surfwax. It has indexed 800,000 Wikipedia terms and has 2,200,000 rotations. Rotations will switch index terms around: for example, you can find Lester B Pearson, or Pearson, Lester B - and other variants. Very useful.
See Wikipedia Plus Dynamic Search Term Suggestions = WikiWax SearchEngineWatch (Mar 21)
EU Country Code
ICANN Approves .eu Domain Space By Jim Wagner, Internet News (Mar 25) -- European Union is one step closer to its own country code top-level domain. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the .eu domain. It will take another few months before we'll see it in use. Some have wondered if it will cause confusion - when should you use a .uk or .fr, and when .eu?
"Karl Auerbach, a former ICANN board of director, welcomed the latest TLD entry in a blog post earlier this week but wondered if states in the United States or Canada, which retain a great deal of self-sovereignty, might apply for their own ccTLD. Alternatively, he mused, would EU member nations like France, the United Kingdom or German have to relinquish their own ccTLDs?"
Amazon worries Privacy Advocates
Amazon knows you well -- too well for some, AP via Mercury News (Mar 25)
Privacy advocates are worried about the amount of information Amazon collects about its customers through their browsing and purchases at Amazon, and now through searches they do at A9. Amazon also has a website called 43 Things for matching people up with similar goals.
Of interest: "Udi Manber, A9's chief executive, says the idea behind A9 is to improve search, both on Amazon and in general. A9 is adding some Amazon functions, such as reviews and recommendations, to a system that searches the Yellow Pages.
But Manber said A9 has no current plans to link customers' Web searches with their Amazon shopping habits, even though data from both sites are stored using the same customer log-in.
Amazon's backing of 43 Things potentially gives it an opening into social networking. At the site, people list personal goals and find out who else shares their ambitions."
Copyright and file sharing
Canada considers file-swap crackdown by Angela Pacienza, Globe and Mail (Mar 24) -- Canada is getting closer to amending the Copyright Act to control file sharing on the Internet.
"The changes would include the signing of two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties and forcing Internet service providers to keep records of those who share high volumes of copyright-protected material such as songs, Hollywood movies and TV shows."
"The reforms, which will be introduced in the House of Commons later this spring, would give the music industry greater power to stop such behaviour through the courts via lawsuits. Currently, it is not illegal in Canada to upload material to programs like Kazaa and BearShare."
March 25, 2005
Free tagging
Yahoo's game of photo tag -- Stefanie Olsen, Cnet (Mar 22) -- Discusses the free tagging of photos at Flickr, the online photo sharing service that Yahoo just bought, and the possible expansion of such "folksonomies" to a "global categorization of information".
""The future of folksnomies involves meshing these user-generated categorizations with more standardized categorizations, such as the Library of Congress or the Getty Thesaurus of place names, so you could start to connect data to allow more of these associations to be made," Merholz [Peter Merholz, a founder at Adaptive Path] said."
Improved Ixquick
IXquick metasearch engine gets some new features - Pandia Search (March 24) -- "Metasearch engine Ixquick adds an international phone directory, shopping search and other useful features."
IXquick is a Netherlands-based company. Pandia Search likes this metasearcher for (in its view) an "ability to translate more complex Boolean searches into the syntax used by the various search engines harvested by the metasearch engine."
The International Phone Directory is truly international. Using this for phone numbers is very much easier than dealing with Infobel.
The shopping engine is also international. Select your country, and Ixquick will find a comparison shopper. For Canada, it uses PriceGrabber.com, but PriceGrabber, though it claims to have a Canadian version, has never been satisfactory.
For Web searching, Ixquick has new search refinement options - get more results like a page, or exclude results that are similar to a page.
Ixquick has spruced up its look and cleaned up the search engines too. Engines include Yahoo, MSN, Gigablast, Netscape (Google based) and a few others, mainly pay-per-click. You can disable an engine to exclude it as a source.
Specialized Search Engines Hot
Search, the Next Generation -- A rash of specialized search engines may actually boost Google and Yahoo in the short term. But in the long run, it's another story -- Olga Kharif , Business Week (Mar 22)
Mentions the startup of several new specialty search engines including Nextaris search and save, Factbites (Australian) for answers, Blogstreet for finding similar blogs, and the shopping engine, Become.com.
Quoted: ""We're seeing fractionalization of search," says Chris Churchill, CEO of Fathom Online"
"Many of these search startups discover that they can make ends meet by simply serving up ads from ad networks like Google's AdSense and Yahoo. Here's how this works: Google's marketers find advertisers wanting to display their ads on the Web. Then, Google recruits sites wanting a cut of the fee for displaying the ads it obtained."
British Library Maps Online
British Library Puts 800 Historic Maps Online, Managing Information.com (Mar 24)
Digitised maps from the British Library’s maps collection are on view as The Unveiling of Britain at www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/unveiling/. Ranges from Saxon times to the reign of James I.
Science.gov Alerts
Deep Web Technologies Deploys Alert Service for Science.gov in ECOntent (Mar 25)
"Science.gov now offers a free "Alert" service, created by Deep Web Technologies (DWT), that sends alerts to patron's email each week based on their area of interest in science. "
See also Science.gov Offers Alert Service, Research Buzz (Mar 23)
Gigablast Related
Matt Wells at Gigablast has been adding features to the search engine Gigablast fairly regularly. A month ago or so it was to access Answers.com for definitions and other factual information related to the query terms.
Today, you may also see
+ Reference pages: On a search for debt consolidation consumer plans Gigablast pulled up a Finance page in Seekon.com.
+ Related pages: Pastel yellow block with, according to Wells, “... highly relevant search results which do not necessarily contain the searcher’s query terms". This segment just before Web results. Results have a percentage score.
Search for sicily tours produces about 20 related pages ranging from 100% to 66%. Top one was Cycling in Sicily.
Redo the search as cycling sicily tours - Cycling in Sicily drops off the list, and all the Related pages are about cycling tours and are unrelated to Sicily!
Not all queries generate a list of related pages. For example, there are none for history sicily, but enter sicily history and you'll see some tourist information about hotels and weather.
Related pages may be interesting as an alternate view of results. But you can't count on your terms (or strongly related terms) being on the pages. My searches suggested that there is a stronger commercial leaning - not necessarily bad - but without some explanation from Matt Wells, suspicious.
Tara Calishain wrote about Related pages in Gigablast Adds Related Pages Feature (Mar 25)
Yahoo Travel Canada
When Did This Happen? Yahoo Knows Where Koreatown Is... ...in Toronto. (Mar 24) -- Andrew Goodman has discovered that Yahoo Travel knows Toronto - it even knows restaurants in neighbourhoods.
Yahoo has other Canadian places -- see Yahoo Travel - Canada
Yahoo Search for Creative Commons
Yahoo Search Embraces Content Sharing by Matt Hicks, eWeek (Mar 24)
Yahoo has boosted the Creative Commons movement by creating a new search engine for finding content such as text, graphics, music, educational materials that people have granted rights to others to use. http://search.yahoo.com/cc
"In its search service, Yahoo lets users refine their searches to only Web pages which include Creative Commons-licensed content. Users also can choose to further refine a search to return pages with specific types of reuse conditions."
There is also the Creative Commons search engine which is very good but will have a much smaller database than Yahoo Search.
Yahoo Search Creative Commons has a few features to consider.
+ on one word queries it will suggest 'Also try'.
+ cached copy
+ group pages by site -- 'More from this site'
+ another button for search the web
Standard Yahoo syntax does NOT appear to work.
At the Creative Commons Search you can
+ restrict by format
+ see the rights immediately from the CC symbols.
Topix.net Gets Support
Newspaper Publishers Invest in Online Site in ECommerce Times (Mar 23)
Gannett Co., Knight Ridder Inc. and Tribune Co. are each taking a 25 percent share of Topix.net, the news aggregator that has excelled at local news.
"Topix uses a computer program that its founders designed to separate news stories into very specific categories and geographical reasons. Thus a user can type in a ZIP code and get local news from that area, or go to one of the 300,000 pages that contains specific categories of news."
+ "searches for stories from 1,400 daily newspapers, 800 college newspapers and 3,000 magazines" and others.
+ got 1.4 million visitors in February according to comScore Media Metrix.
Andrew Goodman in his posting - Newspapers Continue to Beef Up Online Presence - notes, "This continues a trend of traditional news organizations hedging their bets by acquiring strategic online properties -- Reuters investing in Moreover, NYT buying About.com, etc."
Rocketnews Adds Ads to RSS
Rocketinfo Monetizes RSS Feeds With Kanoodle Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Mar 23) [Registration required] -- Rocketinfo is partnering with Kanoodle to include content targeted ads on RSS feeds. Users of the news search engine Rocketnews can use RSS feeds Rocketnews has set up or create their own based on keyword searches.
"The Rocketinfo RSS feeds with content targeted ads from Kanoodle can be created using the RocketNews search engine (www.rocketnews.com) and the Rocket RSS Reader (http://reader.rocketinfo.com). The company also plans to integrate Kanoodle ads into the soon-to-be-released Rocket Desktop."
Article has some figures on the number of sources Rocketinfo has.
+ "RocketNews RSS feeds include content from the comprehensive Rocketinfo content database that includes over 16,000 current news sources plus thousands of weblog and RSS content sources."
+ "Rocketinfo's database of over 100,000 business news sources includes all of the world's leading news outlets including Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, the New York Times, BBC and extensive specialized news sources."
March 23, 2005
Friends and Networks
Are Socialites Still Networking? by Joanna Glasner, Wired (March 2005)
"More than a year after "social networking" became the leading buzzword in internet startup circles, companies in the sector haven't gained the traction early enthusiasts predicted. Still, many of the bigger networking services say the number of users is growing steadily, and if they're not profitable already, they soon will be."
Hype has died down. But this article found activity at social networks aimed at consumers and at professionals.
Comparing US Travel Sites
Major Travel Sites Face Credibility Crunch -- An Examination of Booking First-Class Tickets Online -- a report prepared by Consumer Reports WebWatch (Mar 1) -- WebWatch tested six sites for US travel: Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and the Web sites of American Airlines, Continental Airlines and Delta Airlines. The testers noted that "fare jumping" happened frequently. Some services missing or incorrect labeling information for the airlines’ classes of service.
Is Greasemonkey Safe?
Firefox add-on lets surfers tweak sites, but is it safe? by Paul Festa, CNet (Mar 22)
The Greasemonkey extension to Firefox lets people customize the web page they are viewing. Greasemonkey uses users scripts to remove ads, change colours, remove copy restrictions and much else. But there's a risk.
"The trouble with Greasemonkey and user scripts in general is that scripts can be used for both good and ill, and end users scanning through lists of enticing scripts might fail to distinguish between malicious and benign code."
More Storage at Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Ups Free Email Storage to 1 Gigabyte Reuters (Mar 22) -- Yahoo will be increasing storage space on its free email accounts to 1 GB in late April, May. Free subscribers will also be able to remove viruses from attachments. Competitor MSN offers 250 MB for free Hotmail accounts. Users who pay $20 / month at Yahoo or Microsoft each get 2 gigabytes of storage plus some other features.
March 22, 2005
Researcher Tools
Onfolio and Thomson ResearchSoft Partner in EContent (Mar 22)
"Onfolio, Inc., an independent software company committed to helping people in business and academics conduct research and manage Web information, has announced a partnership with Thomson ResearchSoft, a business of the Thomson Corporation."
Google's Gallic Woes
France vs. Google -- How does Google annoy France? Let me count the ways. By Stephanie Olsen, News.blog Google (March 18) -- Recaps the problems with Agence France Presse, trademark litigation, and the national library.
Also see Google News Sued by Agence France Presse in Search Engine Journal (Mar 19)
From Der Speigel, English edition, Culture Wars in Cyber Space. What Does France Have Against Google? By Scott Lamb in Berlin (Mar 25)
Mainly keeping up
Two presentations by Genie Tyburski at Computers in Libraries:
The Good, The Dead, and The Dying -- dying and emerging technologies - briefly email and advanced search are dying; IM, RSS, podcasting, simple search are flying. See full presentation for more interesting bits.
Tips for Keeping Up without losing your sanity -- recommended sources and tools including RSS, page monitoring and alerts.
Pinpoint Travel
AOL Launches Pinpoint Travel By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 21) -- Pinpoint Travel is a new meta travel engine from AOL and is powered by Kayak. It searches online travel agencies and travel provider sites, "including over 100 web sites, 550 airlines and 85,000 hotels" - but only for travel in the United States.
"Pinpoint Travel currently searches for flights and hotels in the continental U.S., but the company plans to aggressively expand both the number of travel products and locations searched over the coming months, offering searches for cars, cruises and ultimately packages that combine the best deals from multiple providers."
Find Articles
Web Search Gets Specific: LookSmart Re-designs FindArticles.com -- "
FindArticles Proves the Easiest Way to Search for Pinpointed Content; A Top Destination for Free Articles on the Web" Business Wire (Mar 21) [CBS Marketwatch - registration]
Looksmart has redesigned FindArticles.com . It claims 5.5 million articles from 1,000 publications some dating back to 1984. Not all are free. From scanning the listings I get the impression that about 30 to 40% of the titles are premium priced. Among the for-fee sources are HighBeam, KeepMedia, Goliath (Thomson/Gale).
+ Find magazines by topic
+ Find magazines by name
+ Featured magazines and articles by topic
+ Topical categories: Arts & Entertainment, Automotive, Business & Finance, Computers & Technology, Health & Fitness, Home & Garden, News & Society, Reference & Education, and Sports.
+ Search free or all articles.
+ Advanced search: search in title or body or both; select specific publications; specify date range for published date; and sort results by relevance, date, length, or name of publication.
+ Option for Furl members to save a copy of the article.
All in all, a much improved service.
Finding Facts
Just the Facts, Please By Mary Ellen Bates, SearchDay (March 22) -- Says nice things about Wikipedia, the encyclopedia written by subject enthusiasts, and Answers.com.
To her list I would add Factbites (http://www.factbites.com/) - it searches online encyclopedia and the Web in general. It does well on Mary Ellen Bates' query about tungsten.
March 21, 2005
Google Tutor
Let Mark Fleming be your Google Tutor. Blog style site with Tips, Techniques and Advice for Google Users. ALready has quite the 'taxonomy' of categories for following Google news. There is a Using Google Manual. Is a work-in-progress - give it some time. Opened with a substantial article on Don’t Overlook the Google Deskbar (I didn’t say Toolbar).
Eliyon now ZoomInfo
Eliyon Renamed Zoom Information with New Consumer-Oriented Strategy to Match by Barbara Quint, Information Today, Newsbreaks (Mar 21) -- Eliyon who was making a name for itself for compiling information off the web about all working people has opted for a name change -- ZoomInfo.
"ZoomInfo creates 500,000 new summaries and updates 3 million existing profiles each month, tapping into millions of corporate Web sites, press releases, electronic news services, SEC filings, and other online sources. It also produces 1.5 million summaries for both public and private companies."
"Distribution channels for ZoomInfo include Business.com, Find.com, HighBeam Research, Lycos, and The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal.com."
Yahoo OR and Nesting
Yahoo Search is supposed to support AND, OR, NOT and nesting, but when it comes to handling this on intitle searches, Yahoo falls apart.
intitle:landmines ban anti-personnel -- 1780 hits
intitle:"land mines" ban anti-personnel -- 322 hits
intitle:"land mines" OR intitle:landmines ban anti-personnel -- 84,800 - doesn't add up.
(intitle:"land mines" OR intitle:landmines) ban anti-personnel -- 5
(intitle:"land mines" OR intitle:landmines) AND ban AND anti-personnel -- 0 - doesn't work.
However, nesting does work on simpler queries.
"land mines" ban anti-personnel -- 36,000
"landmines" ban anti-personnel -- 68,000
("land mines" OR landmines) AND ban AND anti-personnel -- 85,600 - Reasonable
And also when ORing sites. You can use the ANDs or not.
"landmines" ban anti-personnel (site:gov OR site:mil) -- 354
"landmines" AND ban AND anti-personnel AND (site:gov OR site:mil) -- 357
The Butler Goes to InterActiveCorp
InterActiveCorp buys Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion by Matt Hines, CNet News (Mar 21) -- InterActiveCorp, a travel and media conglomerate, owned by Barry Diller will buy Ask Jeeves. It also owns Home Shopping Network, Match.com, City Search, and Ticketmaster. Possible rationale -- "Specifically, Diller said that InterActiveCorp will work to integrate all its travel and ticketing services with Ask Jeeves, and that all of the company's sites will soon feature a search function powered by its latest acquisition. The executive did not rule out the notion of creating a portal-type site to market all its products through one URL."
Comments from Bambi Francisco at CBS Marketwatch -- Why IAC's plans are too ambitious -- Commentary: Ask Jeeves might fit better elsewhere (Mar 21)
"But I wonder whether Diller can masterfully orchestrate the empire he's built. Even though Ask Jeeves has a larger purpose in life now that it will be the default search engine on all of IAC's properties which reaches 44 million unique visitors, I doubt Ask Jeeves' rankings in the search wars will improve."
True Local for the US
True Local is a new local search service for residents of the United States to find stores and businesses. Search for a service for a city and state, or zip. Listings include name and address with a link to telephone and map. Some have links to web sites. According to the About page, linking to the websites was a main objective.
From the About page: ""Currently, there are more directories and engines aimed at local search, but visitors are still frustrated with the results they get. Some listings are out of date, others return directories cluttered with spam and many don't link to the correct companies' website."
The main advantage of True Local over Google Local may be in its use of categories to group services.
True Local is hoping for businesses to sign up to expand their listing.
Regulating ISPs in Canada
Revise rules to foster competition, protect privacy by Michael Geist, The Star (Mar 21) [Registration required] -- Gives four reasons for the government to regulate the ISP's carrier function: limited competition in broadband; possibility of an ISP blocking competing sites or services; need to control spam and spyware across all networks; and protection of privacy.
"Fourth, the federal government's lawful access plans, which will reportedly require ISPs to implement new interception capabilities and to hand over subscriber information without a court order, places Canadian ISPs into the position of being critical guardians of sensitive personal information. While ISPs will no doubt take their obligations seriously, some groups fear that privacy and civil rights will take a back seat to the cost concerns associated with the government's proposals. If Ottawa's plans go ahead, regulatory oversight might provide an additional layer of protection against privacy breaches and data misuse."
US Government at Clusty
Clusty, the metasearch engine that clusters results so well, has added a new tab for Goverment search -- http://gov.clusty.com/. The main page spotlights US Government news from political news stories at CNN, Reuters, Yahoo. The Advanced Search page offers search choices from MSN, a few Think Tanks, First Gov, DefenseLink, State Senators Keymatch, plus the political news sources.
The MSN search appears to pick up from all domains - not just .gov.
There is also a shortcut for finding senators and representatives for a state. Type in name of state for senaotors (doesn't work for Washington State) or zip code for both. Public Citizen provides the information.
Clusty Now Offering Government Info Search and Cluster at SearchEngineWatch Blog (Mar 14)
Yahoo bought Flickr
Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr By Jim Hu, CNET News.com (Mar 20) -- Yahoo bought Flickr, the digital photo centre based in Vancouver BC. Yahoo is assembling quite the suite of products for blogging, photos, community.
"Earlier this week, Yahoo announced Yahoo 360. The service combines a new blogging tool, along with several longtime Yahoo products, including instant messaging, photo storage and sharing, and Internet radio. It also offers tools for sharing recommendations about places to eat, favorite movies, music and so on."
March 20, 2005
Blogs and Business
One blog leads to another.
Peep Into Blogging Movement Inside IBM in Sadagopan's weblog on Emerging Technologies,Thoughts, Ideas,Trends and Cyberworld (March 20) -- picked up an entry about blogs at IBM.
IBM has 2800 Inside Blogs (March 14) at Portals and KM by Bill Ives.
"Some of these blogs are "information blogs" linking to interesting articles and other sources and some are used for project management. In this latter case the blogs are used to get the team on "the same page" on project progress or critical issues being tackled. I have heard that they have been getting great benefit from these project management blogs like a number of other IT firms."
Portals and KM "shares ideas and hopes to generate discussion on the use of portals, blogs, and knowledge management to provide value to organizations through practical applications. New trends and technologies are covered with a switch to music and food on the weekends."
March 19, 2005
Shopping.fr
The End User: Let Net find lowest price by Victoria Shannon, International Herald Tribune (Mar 19) -- Europe will have more options for comparison shopping. Dan Ciporin of Shopping.com opened one in the UK in 2000 and is adding France and Germany this year. Competition is the Yahoo-owned Kelkoo, which based in Paris and operates throughout Europe.
Pay-Per-Click Ad Inflation
Victims of pay-per-click ad inflation At the Internet Stock Blog (Mar 18) -- Ad brokers like Yahoo and Google are making more money through higher charges of pay-per-click advertising but the higher costs are a burden on the companies who depend on their ads to get sales. The Internet Stock Blogs examines the effects on several companies. Amazon's marketing expense, as an example, went up 44%.
Google Print and Copyright
Harvard-Google Project Faces Copyright Woes By BEAU C. ROBICHEAUX, The Harvard Crimson (Mar 15) -- Some publishing organizations oppose Google's digitization plans for books that are still in copyright. Digitizing of books at Harvard has begun. While they may be uploaded, they won't be displayed.
"But Sally Morris, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers—an international association of over 300 not-for-profit publishers—wrote in an e-mail that even with these safeguards, she and the publishers she represents object to the project, which plans to digitize copyrighted books."
Yahoo Will Support Firefox
Yahoo pledges full Firefox compatibility, By Munir Kotadia, CNet (Mar 17) -- Yahoo will be making all of its services accessible through the Firefox browser and will build future ones to support both Firefox and IE. This is another welcome victory for Firefox.
Addendum: Yahoo backtracks on Firefox pledge (Reported by ZDNet Australia on March 22)
Digitizing European Literature
Paris match for Google's library plan?, Reuters via Cnet (Mar 17) -- " Jacques Chirac told France's national library on Wednesday to draw up a plan to put European literary works on the Internet, rivaling a similar project by U.S.-based Web search engine Google."
The French project is called Gallica -- http://gallica.bnf.fr/.
Answer Man
Answer man on the future of search By Paul Festa, CNET News.com - ZDNet (March 17) -- Interview with GuruNet CEO Bob Rosenschein tells us much about how Answers.com works and what its direction will be.
Gurunet had tried to be an information tool for enterprises. At that time ad revenue was poor, and Gurunet opted for subscription. That has switched. As Rosenschein commented, "Google has pretty much validated that you can make money from consumer ads on the Internet."
On Gurunet's goal: "Our goal is to deliver concise, relevant information in one click. If you're looking for Web pages, use a search engine. If you're looking for rapid, concise explanations and definitions, then try Answers.com. It's a different value proposition. It gives me useful information in fewer clicks."
On the similarity of MSN Search's use of Encarta: "But you're accessing these reference sources one at a time. We've [Gurunet] taken a hundred dictionaries, encyclopedias and almanacs and put them together on one concise page.
What Answers.com has: "A million covers an enormous amount of territory, all the words in the English language, 15,000 public companies, 2,900 U.S. cities, 500 international ones. It's not just encyclopedia terms."
On its other strength: Alt click on a word anywhere to get an answer. But Gurunet has more plans for that: "One of our most interesting patents involves our one-click tech and the ability to deliver promotional commercial information based on the neighboring words."
What's next? Probably wireless. Also expansion internationally and in other languages.
Don't Be Fooled
Gullible.info has some fascinating bits of information but nothing is true. Kyle Stoneman, a student at George Washington University created this "as a social experiment, parodying people's willingness to accept bits of information without question".
If it's on the Internet, it must be true ... right? By Lisa Napoli, New York Times via Globe and Mail (mar 18)
March 18, 2005
ISI and HighWire
ISI Web of Knowledge Expands to Include HighWire Free Archive in EContent (Mar 18)
"ISI Web of Knowledge is an integrated, research environment that delivers a combination of content, tools, and technology, allowing researchers and information professionals to access, analyze, and manage information. Once all links are in place, users will be able to link directly from any content area within ISI Web of Knowledge to the full text of more than 800,000 HighWire Press articles."
Evaluating Search Tools
Rita Vine writes about "Tips and techniques to help you find the best Web search tools" in Search Savvy, Information Highways (Mar 2005) Walks the reader through a process for evaluating search tools.
March 17, 2005
Market Share Statistics
SEOBook amassed Free Market Research Data on market share figures of search engines, including the Nielsen/NetRatings figures from Jan 2005. (Mar 4)
GoFish and IceRocket partners in multimedia search
GoFish and IceRocket Partner for Multimedia Search Search Engine Journal (Mar 16)
"GoFish and IceRocket search have partnered to deliver the largest single searchable universe of digital media downloads encompassing the categories of audio, video, mobile content, and games."
More about IceRocket in this interview with Blake Rhodes by Lara Stella in MetrixMedia (2004)
"IceRocket is banking on the link between search and relationships in the hopes that it'll feed the needs of the information starved twenty-somethings. "
IceRocket shows thumbshots of sites and links to Internet Archives in its Web search. Also searches weblogs, news, images (very good), multimedia (new), and phone pics. Can create RSS feeds from searches as well.
GoFish announced new browser plug-ins last month -- GoFish Technologies Tells Customers to 'GoFish This!'
GoFish claims, "GoFish has mapped the largest single searchable universe of digital media downloads encompassing the categories of audio, video, mobile content, and games. By developing proprietary search algorithms, hosting regular updates, and offering partners access via an open API, GoFish is delivering a turn-key solution and quantifiable benefits to search engines and portals working to address the demand for multimedia downloads."
Yahoo 360 Coming
Yahoo Tests Blend of Blogging, Networking by Michael Liedtke, AP via ECommerce Times (Mar 16) Yahoo will be introducing a new service for its subscribers that will make "community living" better.
"The service is designed to enable Yahoo's 165 million registered users to pull content from the Web site's discussion groups, online photo albums and review section to plug into their own Web logs, or blogs, the Internet shorthand used to describe online personal journals."
"Yahoo also is making it easier for the service's users to connect with others who share common interests and friends -- a practice known as social networking. Participants can either choose to open their blogs to the entire world or restrict access to people invited through e-mail."
Yahoo 360, as it is to be called, will be by invitation only.
If you don't want to wait for Yahoo's social networking, you might try its competitor -- MySpace.com
Significance of Yahoo 360 is examined at Internet Stock Blog in Seven implications of Yahoo 360. (mar 17). The first is that this confirms that the competition will be at the bundle level - and it is the ultimate in stickiness.
Feedster Syntax
Google Blogscoped has some syntax tips for people looking for feeds at Feedster -- Feedster Syntax Update (Mar 17)
Feedster has a very advanced query system and many features to make assessing and subscribing to feeds easier. Read the full Feedster Help page and the advanced syntax. The Advanced Page is a mini-course in search tactics. To note: the near operator, wildcard characters * and ?, number ranges -- 2000 .. 2004, and relevance rating.
March 16, 2005
A9 Open Search
More search columns for A9 may become available as content providers build special purpose searches for display through A9's OpenSearch. See John Battelle's comments in A9 Launches "Open Search" - Vertical Search, Syndicated
Etiquette of Email
Keeping E-Mail in Top Form by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUP Digital (Mar 15, 2005) - several points of etiquette.
Outsell on Blogs
Blogs and RSS must really be mainstream now. OutSell has a new study -- HotTopics: Blogs: Betting With House Money -- examines the business impact and lessons, and identifies the companies.
TurboScout in the Firefox Search Box
FireFox browser users can add TurboScout. the meta-search engine with 90 engines, to their search box. That's a good place for it.
Access 90 Search Engines’ Results With Firefox’s Search Box Press release (Mar 15)
MSN adCenter
Microsoft launches into paid search by Stefanie Olsen. Silicon.com (March 16 2005) MSN is about to show its new pay-per-click advertising service, to be called adCenter.
Of interest: "Google fields 35.1 per cent of the searches online, followed by Yahoo at 31.8 per cent and MSN at 16 per cent, according to ComScore qSearch. If the number of searches translates to the percentage of the ad market, MSN generates roughly $1.6bn annually from search, minus the portion shared with Overture."
March 15, 2005
State of the Blogosphere
David Sifry, CEO of Technorati, is writing a series of articles in his blog about the blogosphere. It starts with State of The Blogosphere, March 2005, Part 1: Growth of Blogs -- "Technorati is now tracking over 7.8 million weblogs, and 937 million links." That was nearly double the number 6 months earlier in October 2004.
Internet Bodies
Who's in Charge of the Internet? by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 14) - points to an article on Internet governance -- A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies. There are many to oversee domains, protocols, standards and more.
News at Search Engine Showdown
Greg Notess has posted several updates to Search Engines Showdown in March covering:
+ problems with * at Google as a wildcard operator. Notess's tests indicated that it either represents either nothing one word. For example, "minds * science" first brings up hits with two words together, then later, one word apart. It's a kind of OR, and not especially useful.
+ Yahoo searches for stop words now inside phrases. This means that using a as a wildcard inside a phrase no longer works.
+ Gigablast up to 1.5 billion pages.
+ Some changes to Yahoo Directory that shoves the directory aside and makes it harder to browse.
+ how well search engines handle long words - Gigablast does it best.
+ review of Exalead search engine - has truncation and a proximity operator.
March 14, 2005
Infotrieve LSRC
Infotrieve to Launch Life Science Research Center by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Mar 14)
Infotrieve, know as a document delivery service for STM (scientific, technical, and medical) markets, will be launching "a new Web-based “search and discovery” research environment for scientific researchers in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and other life science-related industries" on March 25.
See article for details on content and search features.
RSS for Yahoo Mobile Users
Yahoo Freshens up Its Services Portfolio By Susan Kuchinskas, Internet News (Mar 11) - users of Yahoo Mobile Internet Service can subscribe to synicated feeds through their My Yahoo on their mobile device.
"Users of WAP (define) phones will see headlines and summaries of stories; those with full HTML mobile browsers will be able to click links to access the full HTML version of a story."
March 12, 2005
Become.com Specialty
Specialty searchers, a future trend? - Commentary: Finding alternative to the big players - John Dvorak, Marketwatch (via CBS Marketwatch) - Describes Become.com as a specialty engine - it is for shopping - "Using both page-ranking concepts and proprietary methodologies the site attempts to isolate product news, reviews and sales elements."
Here's the innovation -- "What makes the choice of "shopping" a note of genius is that the site can serve up targeted advertisements for people who are probably online to buy something. Thus the effectiveness of advertising with Become.com should be higher than with Google or the competition."
Become.com is in test. Must register to try it.
March 11, 2005
Search Market
Where did all the search engines go? by Grant Buckler, ITBusiness.ca (March 11) - Reports on market finding by Keynot Systems that Google is still in the lead but that Yahoo and MSN are narrowing the gap. Of interest: "Meanwhile Looksmart Ltd., though not even represented in Keynote’s rankings, says it will emphasize search tools aimed at vertical markets. An example is Teenja, the company’s recently launched search site for teens, says spokeswoman Carm Lyman."
Thanks to PS for the article.
FactBites Speaks in Sentences
FactBites will find facts about things - inuit, privacy, BNA act, oil embargo. It gets answers from factual databases - MSN Encarta, Wikipedia, nationmaster - as well as web sites such as USA Today, BBC News. Most notably, the answers are in real sentences. It will also show related topics - saves you from thinking of them yourself.
Reviewed in FactBites Search Engine Encyclopedia Hybrid Search Engine Journal (Mar 9)
This was just launched -- PRESS RELEASE: Search Engine/Encyclopedia Hybrid Launched (Mar 9)
From Rapid Intelligence, a web technology company based in Sydney, Australia
Nextaris Dashboard
Surfwax announced the official launch of Nextaris as an integrated set of tools for searching the Web, saving what you find, sharing, and publishing in a weblog. Last fall, Chris Sherman had haled Nextaris as an "integrated Web research dashboard".
Searchers are being given a greater choice in tools to help them manage what they find. My Yahoo Search, A9, and Furl.net are in this category too. However, my experience with My Yahoo Search is that it can collapse under the weight of many bookmarks. Nextaris could be a strong contender in this field.
Nextaris Features are:
+ all-in-one page of 57 search tools
+ save full text of pages from anywhere - don't need to be using the Nextaris search page.
+ save images from a web page easily
+ organize bookmarks and saved pages in folders
+ 100 MB is free. Paid subscribers get 250 MB
+ share folders with groups you can define.
+ publish the contents of a folder (links to other sites) as a web page.
+ create a weblog of your own and publish it as a RSS feed to the web page.
+ get news updates on topics you set up through Newstracker which monitors 4,000 news sources
In all it has promise, but there are still a few glitches for Surfwax to address before this is a full fledged personal productivity tool.
+ can search saved pages in folders but can't search in title of the bookmark.
+ can publish a weblog based on a folder, but although you can share a folder with a group, you can't limit the weblog to that group. The weblog is either public on the web or doesn't exist.
+ display of contents of the web page is odd. Nextaris shows a large @ image for each link - you have to click through to see the page. It would be impossible for Nextaris to set a display that everyone would like but some choice in how items are shown on the page would be appreciated (as images, just as links with citation, down the page or in 2 or 3 columns).
+ in setting up a newstracker you may have to wait a day or more for the page to appear. It's not immediate. Stories will accumulate on the newstracker page until you delete the page. This is good if you have a well defined tracker and you want to keep all articles. It's not as good if many are irrelevant and are cluttering up the page.
Gary Price describes the features in Web Research "Dashboard" Nextaris Formally Launches, New Services Added Search Engine Watch blog (Mar 7)
Get an overview of Nextaris from How Nextaris Helps You Use the Web.
Nextaris is worth a shot as a tool for experimenting with these very interesting concepts. You may find that its page saving and image saving capabilies are just what you need. If you do try it out, you'll want to use the bookmarklets Nextaris provides for capturing pages. Also go to My Account and set your Session On to Always On so that you can use those bookmarlets easily.
Info Tech Readiness
Singapore tops survey of tech readiness by Alexander Higgins, AP via Globe and Mail (Mar 10) -- The United States and Canada have dropped in the ratings for " best use of information and communications technology". Singapore leads in info tech capabilities according to World Economic Forum report.
Top 10 were: Singapore, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, United States, Sweden, Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland and Canada.
Semantic Web For Enterprises
Next big step for the Web--or a detour? by Paul Festa, ZDNet (Mar 9)
Speakers at the Semantic Technology Conference discussed whether enterprise applications for the Semantic Web will be the next wave.
"Just as the Web encompassed existing Internet technologies while adding its revolutionary system of hyperlinks, so, they claim, will the Semantic Web give birth to vastly more powerful ways of gleaning information from the world's computer network."
First they have to sell the concept -- "The Semantic Web protocols aim to let computers distinguish different kinds of data. Armed with those distinctions, applications could more automatically trade information, for example between an online address book and a cell phone. A Web site could automatically reconfigure itself on the fly based on the needs of a particular visitor. Search engines could narrow down results with greater precision."
Article points to a few real-world implementations of the Semantic Web. But a world of interchangeable data does come with concerns about security and privacy.
March 10, 2005
Visualization in Search
Groxis, makers of the visual search engine - Grokker 2.2 -- have an article, courtesy Library Journal, titled Visualize This by By Judy Luther, Maureen Kelly, & Donald Beagle, (3/1/2005) -- about visualization tools.
"Visualization tools use two basic approaches to clustering information: they use metadata (such as cataloging information) that is associated with the information resource, and they use statistical and/or linguistic algorithms to create topical clusters on the fly. These approaches can be used alone or in combination to provide different views of the content."
Article describes different "visual metaphors" and reports on the adoption of these tools primarily by libraries. EBSCO Publishing for example is in discussions with Grokker.
Desktop Search Loyality
Desktop Search: Searching for Loyal Users By Kimberly Hill, NewsFactor Network (March 8, 2005)
"The challenge for all desktop search vendors -- traditional search engine companies and other application makers -- is how to secure loyalty. Companies like Google and Ask Jeeves are counting on their popularity in the Web search world to carry over into the desktop search arena."
Future of Search 2005
Special reports on the future of search by Jennifer LeClaire in E-Commerce Times (Mar 10)
Experts Predict Where Search Will Go in 2005 (Part 1)
+ Webifying the world - Use "XML architecture that will allow search engines to receive informational feeds from proprietary content databases."
+ personalizing
+ clustering
+ value added -- Clare Hart, president and CEO of Factiva said, "As search continues to evolve, it will become less about simply giving information and more about users being able to garner valuable insight and meaning from that information more quickly," Hart said. "Emerging search applications will use technology to uncover trends, comparisons, discoveries and sentiments and then feed this information into applications that can present these findings using visuals and analytics."
Search Industry Facing Evolution (Part 2)
+ Google has 47% of the market, Yahoo 21, MSN 13; plus the crossover -- 58% use Yahoo and MSN.
+ sponsored advertising - soon to be on blogs
+ lawsuits over trademarks
+ portal power -- "Finally, Beal predicted Google will become more of a portal like MSN and Yahoo, with numerous new applications, including instant messaging, currently in beta testing."
Customize Google News
New Customization, Personalization Features at Google News By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 10)
"The Google News home page is now customizable, allowing you to add or delete main news categories (such as business, sports and so on), as well as increasing or decreasing the number of headlines within a section. You can also add sections from any of the 22 country-specific versions of Google News to your own page."
You can also set up your own topic by entering key words. Google News appears to pick up stories with your terms in the headline. Already, I have three good entries about search engines I hadn't seen before.
Kijiji for Classifieds
EBay opens classified-ad sites> -- By Michael Bazeley, Mercury News (Mar 9) -- EBay has launched an international network of 47 websites for classified-ads in China, Germany, Japan, Canada, France and Italy - but not the United States where Craigslist is well established. (EBay has a stake in craigslist). Kijiji will be in the language of the country, wherease Craigslist is in English.
"EBay launched the 47 Web sites in 50 cities under the brand name Kijiji (www.kijiji.com) Feb. 28. They offer the usual assortment of ads, from personals to jobs and housing. EBay is allowing users to post ads free of charge for now, while it tries to build up market share in each of the cities."
Canada sites are Montreal and Quebec and are in French.
Improving Search
Search Engines Build a Better Mousetrap By Tim Gnatek, New York Times (Mar 10)
Search engines jostle for searcher favour. Ask Jeeves led in shortcuts which MSN and AOL have been the latest to imitate. Next, Ask Jeeves will be introducing Direct Answers as an extension to its question-answer capabilities by searching the entire Web for the quick-answer type of question rather than its own structured database.
Notes that, "The continuing efforts to improve the search experience are likely to focus on more readily anticipating just what the user is looking for - no more, no less - and making the results easier to navigate."
Seems to suggest also that the search technologies far surpass the capabilities of searchers right now. Quotes Dr. Deborah Fallow of the Pew Internet and American Life Project who feels search will improve when the habits of searchers change -- "They always get an answer because they aren't asking very hard questions".
RSS Feeds Everywhere
TVC ALert (Mar 10) has a list of more sources for RSS feeds. Moreover is on the list. Also NetworkWorldFusion
Give yourself a Brainboost
Brainboost is getting better. This search engine eats natural language - just ask it questions. The front page has many examples for who, why, what, where, and how. It found the answer quickly to "who hung Louis Riel?" Even for one word questions -- buckeyballs -- it does well. Brainboost's answer is much more informative than Google's. You may need to work with the question. I wanted to know who was chiefly responsible for Canada's Bill of Rights. Best answer came from -- when was the bill of rights in canada passed?
Reviewed positively in ResearchBuzz -- Brainboost Unveils New Version of Its Search Engine (Mar 9)
Also see NASA-Sponsored Project to Use the Brainboost Answer Search Engine - PR Newswire (Mar 8) -- "Brainboost, a provider of state-of-the- art natural language question answering systems, today announced that Old Dominion University's Center for Advanced Engineering Environments (CAEE) has selected the Brainboost Answer Engine as a key component for a breakthrough research platform under development."
Zuggest for Amazon
Francis Shanahan invents with code. Zuggest has been getting favourable reviews. It's a search engine for Amazon (US products only) that will suggest words as you enter letters. Pick the collection you want to search (books, music etc) and start typing - Zuggest will start presenting possibilities. Very useful is you have only partial recall. Display is in thumbnails - very compact.
Reviewed in ResearchBuzz -- It's Like Google Suggest, Only for Amazon (Mar 7)
Movie Trailers
Digital History has a collection of film trailers for educational use. Trailers at this website are " original works of authorship, government records, works for which copyright permission has expired, works reprinted with permission, or works that we believe are within the fair use protection of the copyright laws". View by title or by date.
Digital History is an "online textbook" that presents the history of the United States from the Revolution to the present through various multimedia audio segments.
Mentioned in ResearchBuzz. (Mar 10)
March 09, 2005
US Public Records through Pretrieve
Free Public Records Access - What you can find without leaving your desk(top) - By Sree Sreenivasan (Mar 8) Poynter ONline -- recommends Pretrieve as a search engine for public records in the US. It has several categories -- criminal, court, financial, professional, miscellaneous.
My searches showed it was best for finding phone numbers and reminding you of other databases and aspects of a person's life you should consider.
Pretrieve doesn't do wildcard searches - you need to know exactly the name as it would be listed, otherwise Petrieve just picks the first combination it comes upon. Searching by initials is hopeless.
How People Read a Page of Search Results
A New F-Word for Google Search Results By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 8) - new study that shows that people read a web page in a pattern that is the same as the letter F -- " with the eye travelling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant's attention." People gave more attention to the top 3 organic results declining to onlye 20% for the 10th ranked item. People also look at sponsored ads more when they are at the top of a page than at the side.
Floaters Taking Over
Floater ads create 'an arms race' by Jonathan Miller, NY Times via International Herald Tribune (Feb 26) If you were wondering what those new ads that float across a screen and aren't stop by popup blockers (or anything else), they are called floaters - and also overlays or popovers.
"The floater ads, often using a computer's Macromedia Flash Player to run, overlay the content of the page rather than spawning new windows. They have been around since 2001, but their rise has been abetted by the growing use of high-speed Internet connections, allowing them to play with greater ease."
Sites using these the most in 2004 according to Nielsen/NetRatings were msn.com, msnbc.com, hotmail.com, espn.com and yahoo.com.
Dot.ca Domain
Dot-ca domain reaches milestone Globe and Mail (Mar 8) More than 500,000 doc.ca domains according to figures released by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). There are about 275 new registrations a day. However, Canadian dot com registrations rose to 1,144,801 in 2004.
March 08, 2005
User Taxonomy
Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata by Adam Mathes, at Computer Mediated Communication, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (December 2004) - examines the user classification done at services like Furl.net, Flickr, and del.icio.us. Argues that "The primary problem with this approach is scalability and its impracticality for the vast amounts of content being produced and used, especially on the World Wide Web." On the other hand, involving users in organizing information may mean picking up new terms earlier and patterns of use.
RSS for Press Releases
24-7 Press Release.com says it will deliver RSS feeds of press release headlines. Add these to a web site, a news reader, or your My Yahoo page. It's not working at the moment - parsing error - but presumably they'll get past this. Site has releases by category (enterntainment, business, industry, fashion, medical ...) and region (all in the US.)
Also see Moreover's free (ad supported) RSS News Feeds by category.
FeedDirect also provides topic-based newsfeeds for web sites. Has a wizard to help customize the look.
More Tips from Bates Information Services
Three new articles from Mary Ellen Bates at The Virtual Chase:
Do You Culture Pearls? Using descriptors or subject indexing applied to one article to find others that are on topic.
Is This Information For Real? Walks the reader through evaluating a web site. Starts with an examination of CEO Central.
Is this Information on the Record? What should you do if (when) you find confidential or sensitive information on the Web?
Blinkx's Implicit Query
blinkx Delivers 100 Million Search Results Daily PR Newswire (Mar 7) Announces that Blinkx is serving up lots of searches. Has some information about the technology. Main claim is that Blinkx can anticipate need.
"Using implicit query, blinkx assesses all the information that the user is
actively viewing, and automatically recommends and retrieves relevant content,
including video, PDFs, Zips, MP3s and Jpegs from local and Web searches, based
on context. For example, blinkx can infer from the content on the user's
screen whether to retrieve information on Apollo the space program, the Greek
god, or the theatre in London."
About About.com
About.com CEO explains why NYT spent $410 million to buy site by Mark Glaser, Online Journalism Review (Mar 7) Glasner has extracted some interesting bits of information about About.com's operation from CEO Peter Horan.
+ about 500 guides - all are subject experts.
+ covers 57,000 topics.
+ 7 or 8 editors supervise and review 'channels'
+ About.com has been very successful in optimizing the content for search engine placement - keywords, meta tags.
+ adds 3000 pieces of new content a week
+ Guides might make as little as $500 / month or as much as $20,000.
+ Audience is 2/3 women, average age 37.
+ Food and education channels are strong. Tend to specialize in "consumer sites and information".
+ Gets about 40 million unique visitors a month. This makes About.com attractive to advertisers looking for market niches.
+ Site is personalized -- "For the past 18 months, we've been serving all the users cookies, and we build the page dynamically based on the cookie we see coming in."
What's the fit with the New York Times? "When you put the story together, if somebody reads a news article on the Times, we've got the evergreen content that's the drill-down. When you read an article about the tsunami in Southeast Asia, we've got a geology guide who already had great articles about tsunamis, the biggest tsunamis ever, what are the things that cause tsunamis, those were already on our servers. All that stuff is nice and compatible."
This is all fine and good, but the ads at About.com often overpower the content.
Under Google's Hood
Slashdot has an entry on Google's Technology Explored (Mar 3) gleaned from several articles.
Especially Peeking Into Google By Susan Kuchinskas, InternetNews (Mar 2)
Of interest: "As a search query comes into the system, it hits a Web server, then is split into chunks of service. One set of index servers contains the index; one set of machines contains one full index. To actually answer a query, Google has to use one complete set of servers. Since that set is replicated as a fail-safe, it also increases throughput, because if one set is busy, a new query can be routed to the next set, which drives down search time per box."
Google is also applying machine learning to know that one thing can relate to another even though there isn't an exact match on words. Clustering is part of the process.
"To do this, the system tries to cluster concepts into "reasonably coherent" subclusters that seem related. These clusters, some tiny and some huge, are named automatically. Then, when a query comes in, the system produces a probability score for the various clusters. " Google uses this for its contextual ads and to cluster news stories in Google News. Now - if they would just add it to web search results.
Yellow Pages Group Canada
Yellow Pages buys SuperPages for $2.55-billion By TAVIA GRANT , Globe and Mail (Mar 7) -- Yellow Pages Group will buy Advertising Directory Solutions Holdings Inc., publisher of SuperPages, from Bain Capital LLC for $2.55-billion. This makes Yellow Pages Canada's largest telephone-directory publisher.
March 07, 2005
Weather Shortcuts
Google has a weather shortcut for US cities. Enter weather
Yahoo.com is better for Canadians. Enter weather flin flon to get the forecast for Flin Flon Manitoba. Yahoo uses weather.com.
Faster with Browster
Browster is a browser plugin for getting a preview of a web site before actually pulling the page up. It fetches pages in the background -- preloading. Tool is in beta at the moment and works only with IE browser. Final version is expected in April, 2005 and a plugin for Firefox is promised. Browster will likely also delivery small ads.
Downloadable tool gives Web page preview Mercury News (March 7)
Google Desktop Version 1.0
Google Desktop Search Moves Out of Beta By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 7) Google has release Version 1.0 of Google Desktop.
+ new formats including pdf, music, image, vodel
+ addresses some security concerns
+ compatible with IE, Firefox, Netscape browsers - indexes pages you've viewed and puts in a cache on your computer.
+ English, Chinese, Korean
+ Does Thunderbird and Netscape email folders as well as Outlook -- NOT Eudora.
+ Requires Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above, and 500MB of disk space, a minimum of 128MB of RAM, and a 400MHz (or faster) Pentium processor
Online News and 2004 US Campaign
75 Million Americans Used Internet in '04 Race by Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (Mar 7) -- reports on new study by Pew Internet & American Life Project the internet's role in the 2004 election.
"The Pew study was based on a survey of 2,200 adults between November 4 and November 22 last year. The report found that consumers of online political news grew to 29 percent of the U.S. population in 2004 from 18 percent in 2000. Among online Americans, the Internet is a more important source of news than the radio."
Full report - E-Gov and E-Policy Pew Internet and Amercan Life (Mar 6, 2005)
Netscape 8.0
Netscape 8.0: a test-drive By Molly Wood, CNET.com (Mar 4) Found some things to like but several not to like.
Really - any new browser should have ALL the good features of Firefox as a starting point and then add the extra customization or security features.
March 05, 2005
Fonts for Readability Online
In Search Of: The Best Online Reading Experience -- Exploring the future of on-screen type, including 8 things you can do to improve readability and a preview of 6 new fonts. -- By Sara Quinn, Poynter Online (Mar 4)
Of interest: "Verdana, a sans serif, Georgia, a serif, and Trebuchet (which you are probably reading on Poynter Online right now) have become standards for readability on the Web."
Data Mining the Internet
Net searcher has its ears to the blog Faster information on trends promised by prototype tool by SARAH STAPLES, CanWest News Service (Feb 28) -- Accenture Technology Labs, in Palo Alto, Calif. has a tool - Online Search -- that "focuses on several thousand influential sources of online news and gossip that have traditionally been less accessible to search algorithms - from chat rooms and bulletin boards, to Usenet groups, fan sites and blogs written by amateur scribes. From those, it identifies hot topics and monitors people's positive or negative reaction to the next new thing."
Scirus vs Google Scholar
Elsevier, creator of the free Scirus, offers this reprint of an article from Searcher Magazine -- Google Scholar, Scirus and the Scholarly Search Revolution [pdf] by Laura M Felter (Feb 2005)
Scirus has strength in identification of availability of full-text and its source, and search-by-keyword refinements. Scirus has also been more forthcoming about what it indexes and offers choices for selected journal sources and web sources from the Advanced Search page Limiting the search to a field (author, title, journal, part of a url) is more developed too.
In Google Scholar's favour there is its connection with OCLC Worldcat for local library holdings. Also that it can identify which sources are citation, abstract only, or full text.
Review seems to suggest that the two are equally strong in citation searching. However, Google is surely the stronger in citation analysis since it can identify "cited by" as well as citation sources.
Branded Newsreaders
The Great RSS Reader Bandwagon BY Pamela Parker, Clickz Experts (March 4, 2005 ) A few publishers (Guardian, LA Times, Denver Post) are offering RSS newsreaders to their readers. Consenda and Newsgator are two companies that provide the brandable newsreaders. Of course, they come with ads.
Of interest: ""Incorporating news readers into media sites or information sites is a really good idea because it provides a way for readers to be exposed to a new technology. They get the benefit of their destination's feeds at the same time and then further customize the package," she [Susan Mernit or 5ive] said. "I think that's a very good thing.""
March 04, 2005
Ask Jeeves Pictures
Gettin’ the Picture, AJ Style Ask Jeeves Weblog (Mar 3) AJ uses Picsearch for the Ask Jeeves Picture search but has tweaked the algorithms for better relevance. Weblog entry has some examples of before and after - impressive.
Research while Mobile
Keep tabs on what's happening with search aids for people using mobile devices through ResourceShelf. This entry - the Mobile Researchers -- lists services from WSJ.com, Random House, California libraries. (Feb 22)
Night at the Oscars (Movies)
Academy Awards Database from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is back online.
From the help page: "There are three search screens: Basic, Advanced and Statistical. The Basic screen allows searching on the five main components of Academy Award data: film title, nominee, award category, award year and song title. The Advanced screen expands the capabilities of the Basic by providing additional searchable fields, indexes and delimiters, and allowing the creation of more complex searches with the use of Boolean operators. The Statistical screen allows one to search for films or nominees that meet a definable set of criteria (e.g. films with ten or more nominations; nominees with three or more nominations in a single year)."
Reviewed in ResourceShelf - Resources (Feb 27) - mentions the creators, Librarians Libby Wertin and Lucia Schultz and Information Systems Coordinator Vionette Sellars. It took 2 years to create this restructured database.
MSN Maps
New Services from MSN Maps Search Engine Watch Blog (Feb 28) - of most interest - can directly link to maps. I tested MSN Maps on Southern Ontario. It could find Oliphant on the Bruce Peninsula and give fair road directions to Toronto from there but was seriously wrong about the distances. Canadians should use maps.sympatico.msn.ca. The new map service will also show certain businesses on the route. At the moment "featured sponsors" are Holiday Inn and ChoiceHotels. What we really need is Tim Hortons and Coffee Time.
All About Weblogs
BlogBib - An Annotated Bibliography on Weblogs and Blogging, with a Focus on Library/Librarian Blogs... by by Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian @ Eastern Connecticut State University -- well done.
Movie Recommendations
Yahoo can recommend movies at Yahoo Movies. You have to login in because this is a personalized tool. Greg Linden says that the recommendation engine is ChoiceStream that matches on metadata.
Others are Movie Lens which uses collaborative filtering, mentioned in Search Engine Watch Blog.
Also NetFlix, the online rental movie company in the US, has a recommender system.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online was reviewed in Internet Scout who described it as "tremendously helpful source of brief and informative profiles of those personages of importance throughout Canadian history from the year 1000 to 1930." Site uses Macromedia Flash.
Rocketinfo adds journals
Rocketinfo Now Accesses Premium Periodical Content Business Wire (Mar 3)
"Rocketinfo Inc. (RKTI), the real-time business news search engine and infomediary, has signed an agreement with Thomson Gale to provide Rocketinfo's customers with access to over 1,000 full-text periodicals, journals, and magazines licensed by Thomson Gale."
Google Local Canada
Google Enhances Canadian Searches Globe and Mail Update (Mar 3)
According to the release -- Google Local Canada will include the new Google maps for navigation and plotting routes. "In addition, Google Local Canada now also offers reviews of businesses and additional information about establishments such as hours of operation, payment types accepted, WiFi availability, restaurant menus and hotel amenities."
Unfortunately, Google Local is still defaulting to a 75 km radius -- would be better to look for businesses within 2 km or 5 km first. Google Local does produce individual pages on businesses - such as restaurants but so far no menus or hours of business. Lastly - to be able to see and work with the maps, you'll need javascript fully operative in your browser.
March 03, 2005
Netscape 8 Browser
Netscape launches browser beta by Matt Hines, CNet News (Mar 2) Netscape has released a beta version of its new browser, Netscape 8. for Windows 98 or higher.
Features to note:
+ blacklists of Web sites suspected of spyware or phishing schemes. If you hit one, Netscape refers you to a warning page.
+ built-in RSS reader
+ tabbed browsing
+ Form Fill / Passcard - save information for commonly asked questions, and save login information.
The browser was built through a partnership with Canadian development company Mercurial Communications.
Creative Commons Search
Finding Free Content in the Creative Commons By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 2) Creative Commons helps people locate material on the Web - text, multimedia - that they may use for free or a nominal charge. Article describes the Creative Commons search engine and types of material you are likely to find.
Google Hacks Revised
Newer, Fresher Google Hacks By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 2) - review of the revised edition of Google Hacks by co-authors Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest.
"The book has also been reorganized to better reflect Google's structure, rather than focusing on the geekier aspects of programming. Although many of the "hacks" are essentially unchanged, they're now organized in a more logical fashion."
There are some sample hacks at the O'Reilly page.
CrossRef Search with Google Scholar
CrossRef approved continuing a pilot project with Google Scholar in January 2005 to deliver metadata and citation links for articles from some publishers.
CrossRef is a collaborative reference linking service for scholarly information in electronic form. "It holds no full text content, but rather effects linkages through Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), which are tagged to article metadata supplied by the participating publishers. The end result is an efficient, scalable linking system through which a researcher can click on a reference citation in a journal and access the cited article." (CrossRef history)
Google Scholar will make the first link to the publisher's authoritative copy where multiple copies exist. Google will also be using the digital object identifiers as primary means to link to an article. Also, starting April 2005 results from CrossRef will be delivered from Google Scholar rather than results that were in the Google index.
Of interest: "The CrossRef Search Committee feels that CrossRef Search still provides a valuable service as a search focused on authoritative, peer-reviewed literature from a known set of sources. Google Scholar is a very broad search of all the web and includes any material that "looks scholarly" and the material comes from an unknown set of sources. Therefore, the schedule is for results from CrossRef Search to be delivered from Google Scholar starting in April (the results now come from the regular Google index).
The CrossRef Search Committee is also continuing discussions with Google on a number of technical issues, such as making sure coverage of CrossRef member content is complete and crawling of content is as efficient as possible."
The CrossRef Search Pilot involves 35 of CrossRef's 350 member publishers.
From CrossRef Search Pilot CrossRef Newsletter (Feb 2005)
Also -- CrossRef Search Pilot and Google Scholar Posting by Chuck Hamaker to liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu (Feb 14)
Gary Price wrote about this in Google's Scholarly and Digitzation Initiatives Search Engine Watch weblog (Feb 16)
The CrossRef Search Pilot was reviewed by Péter Jacso in Péter's Digital Reference Shelf (June 2004) The pilot project goes back to early 2004 when CrossRef delivered 2 million articles to Google "making them searchable and making the metadata (bibliographic citation and abstract) freely available."
Lycos - Ask Jeeves
Lycos Selects Ask Jeeves to Power Search on Lycos.com PR Newswire (March 2) - Lycos will be using Ask Jeeves (ie Teoma search technology) rather than Yahoo.
March 02, 2005
Rogers and RSS
Rogers to Offer RSS Globe Technology (March 1) Rogers.com will be offering its internet users RSS technology, presumably a built-in reader. "Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet offers RSS integration on the Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet portal homepage." But there will be some Canadian content -- "Content sources range from the smallest blogs to major media outlets such as BBC, Financial Times, CBS Marketwatch, Sports Illustrated, CBC, Canadian Press and About.com." -- well, a little bit.
Opera 8.0
Singing praises of Opera browser By Mark Kellner, THE WASHINGTON TIMES (Mar 1) Opera has released a beta of Opera 8.0 browser for Windows. Has 'cleaner' screen, will zoom screens to let everything fit, can respond to voice commands (and will read documents aloud!), very customizable and small.
Reasons to Furl pages
The New Wave of Bookmarks Mary Ellen Bates, The Virtual Chase (Mar 2005) Describes Furl.net as a social bookmarking service. You can save full web pages or urls, both with notes, 'classify them' by putting them in folders, and get recommendations about other web pages that might be useful to you. Furl works on the same principle as Amazon's recommendations - if several of you like the same book you might be interested in other books that the group reads. Mary Ellen Bates gives her reasons for using Furl. Also comments on del.icio.us, another social bookmarking tool but still in early development.
Weblogs and Cost-per-click Ads
Blogs and Blog Advertising By Peter Figueredo, Target Marketing (March 2005) - Is it worth it to buy context-sensitive cost-per-click advertising for delivery through weblogs? Might be good for e-commerce companies if the ads turn up in successful weblogs.
Of interest: "According to a survey of more than 17,000 blog readers conducted by BlogAds, 61 percent of readers are 30 years of age and older, and 75 percent earn more than $45,000 a year. A surprising 66.7 percent of blog readers have clicked on a blog ad in the past. "
Vlogging and Moblogging
Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings By SANDEEP JUNNARKAR, New York Times (Feb 25) - Weblogs have moved out of text and into video (called vlogs) and postings from camera phones (called mobile blogs or moblogs). This article reviews the main services, web and otherwise, for setting up weblogs, and the software or services for adding video content. Content can be syndicated through RSS which people can pick up and view through special RSS aggregators - in particular mefeedia.com and ANT
Tips for Email
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload By Stever Robbins, HBR Working Knowledge (Oct 2004) Good advice for construction the subject line and first sentence, who to copy, blind copies, editing included text, and much else. Should cut overload.
What's in a name?
Yahoo to Rename Overture Services Brand AP via Yahoo News (Mar 1) Overture will be renamed Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions in the United States and most international markets.
March 01, 2005
Open Access
Two articles from Information Today journals on Open Access:
Open Access or Differential Pricing for Journals: The Road Best Traveled? by David Stern, Online (March 2005) -- Doesn't think that Open Access for journals is a good thing.
" I believe that the adoption of the OA model for journals will create serious instabilities within the existing scholarly publication industry. OA, as a business model, is neither necessary nor desirable."
Open Access: The Battle for Universal, Free Knowledge by Carol Ebbinghouse, Searcher (March) It's a battleground of self-archiving authors, publishers, consortia, search engines, database vendors. Where will it lead?
" In truth, the players (authors, publishers, databases aggregators, open access archives, libraries, academic institutions, the Internet Archive, researchers, end users, etc.) have much more in common than many may think. To avoid blood on the walls from the war-games analogies that I have drawn, new alliances, partnerships, collaborations, and joint research and development projects should be explored. "
Moreover's Jim Pitkow Speaks to Infomation Today
Moreover, the News Aggregator: Interview with Jim Pitkow by Paula J. Hane, Information Today (Mar 1) Moreover was among the first to aggregate news from online web sites. Jim Pitkow, CEO of Moreover since May 2002, reviews some of the recent history of aggregation, and describes Moreover's services to corporations, vendors like Factiva, and some news search engines. Moreover classifies its news stories through an editorial system. Versus - Google News which uses an automated system.
Of interest: "We spent 100-plus person years building our editorial system from scratch. It's a combination of human editorial input with automated systems underneath, coupled with the latest in information extraction technology. We use a combination of lexical, semantic, and contextual analysis to reliably extract things like location. Unless there are sophisticated technologies behind the scenes, you just won't get precision and accuracy."
Moreover also supplies RSS feeds to MSN, and has a broadcast content package for enterprise clients.
For 2005 -- " We see 2005 as a strong continuation of the momentum begun in 2004. We'll continue to evolve our work with broadcast, do some cutting-edge things with RSS, and expand the content in our corporate products. We started with current awareness, expanded that to blogs, and, recently, to broadcast. We continually examine what makes the most sense to our users."
Arbitrage and keywords
The arbitrageurs.com -- Commentary: VCs may fuel a future paid-search bubble -- Bambi Francisco, CBS Marketwatch (Mar 1) -- Sees the return of venture-backed startups in "niche or vertical search engines, comparison-shopping engines, or next-generation search engines". They are competing with Google and Yahoo over keywords and then reselling at a higher price - essentially an arbitrage transaction.
"For instance, NexTag, a popular comparison-shopping site, bids up the keywords "DVD player" to be listed as a sponsored link whenever someone searches those terms on Google. NexTag then sells that traffic to companies like Dell Computer".
Gives some examples: Become.com, new comparison shopper; Kayak, travel; Sidestep, also travel.
Very interesting.
Tagging is del.icio.us
A Tag Team's Novel Net Navigation -- Tagging is a new way surfers can organize and share sprawling Web content, providing a fast-growing grassroots alternative to traditional search -- by Heather Green, Business Week Online (Feb 28) -- Josh Schachter feels that tagging documents makes it easier to find them. He has created the public site -- del.icio.us -- where subscribers can easily add what they find on the Web into a "social bookmarks manager". You can see your collections of tags and those of others - by topic. There are more than 60,000 subscribers.
Article mentions that tagging is catching on. "Indeed, such tagging is already being adopted by popular startups, including blog search engine Technorati and photo-sharing service Flickr. It has also caught the imagination of well-respected thinkers online, including Dave Weinberger, a research fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, both of whom have written extensively about tags on their blogs. "Del.icio.us is about the most important software launched last year," says Shirky. ""
Purists and critics aren't so sure this will work. There is no standardization of word use for the tags. Design means different things to different people.
"This joint effort, though, is prompting a debate about tagging. Critics argue that tagging could collapse under its own weight because it isn't a standardized system created by professionals. In the free-flowing tagging world, one person might apply the tag "seal" to the animal, while someone else applies it to the musician. Or, as more broad words are used to tag content, such as Iraq or wireless, too much information will be collected to plow through. "
Search Engine Rankings
On the lookout for the next search winner by Stephanie Olsen, CNet (Feb 28) -- report from the Search Engine Strategies Conference. Includes some figures from the latest Nielsen / Net Ratings.
Of interest: "According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Google serves 47 percent of the search market, Yahoo serves 21 percent and Microsoft's MSN 13 percent. It measured the percentage based on the number of people who visit a search engine and then jump to another site.
But an overlap in usage between the three search sites is significant, according to Cassar. Forty-two percent of Google searchers are exclusive to the search king, but 58 percent also use Yahoo and MSN search sites. As much as 71 percent of Yahoo searchers two-time the Web portal, according to Nielsen."
Also see Majority of Online Searchers Use Multiple Search Engines, Pointing to a Fluid Competitive Landscape, According to Nielsen//NetRatings at Yahoo News. Has detailed figures.
Topix.Net Profitable
Topix.net: All news is local by Frank Barnako, CBS Marketwatch (Feb 28) Topix.net is in the black and making a profit. This has become a very popular and useful search engine. It takes in 150,000 Web news sources every 30 minutes and has just added content from the New York Times. Search by keyword or topic. US residents can also search by zip code and city.
Rick Skrenta says, ""Try doing a news search on your home town in Google News. It's pretty tough," ... "But we can bring it down to a four-block-square area, because we have 30 thousand feeds, for every city and town in the U.S. and for every country, too.""
Accoona for Web and News
Accoona Adds News Search Functionality to its Artificial Intelligence Search Engine PR Newswire (Feb 28) Accoona applies its SuperTargeting (TM) to news stories. Article does not mention how many sources but does say that Accoona has a 30-day archive.
Of interest: "Accoona's breakthrough AI algorithm greatly improves the quantity and quality of Accoona's News results by seeking out the context of keywords rather than the keywords alone. The SuperTarget(TM) feature gives users greater control and flexibility over their search results. By allowing seekers to emphasize the most important search terms, SuperTargeting(TM) yields the most relevant news results of any search engine."
From the Accoona web site -- "SuperTargetTM is the term used by Accoona to describe the search features that enable searchers to change the ranking of the results in the same query in order to bring more focused results to the top."
For example, on a search for pipeda records management, Accoona offers each of those words as SuperTargets - pick one and narrow results instantly. The first search looks like an OR although Accoona explains that " Accoona Artificial Intelligence Technology understands the meaning of words to get you more results." Using SuperTarget terms, however, will force the presence of those terms. Accoona has some powerful syntax too for constructing queries. There is no information on the size of the News collection or the Web index, but it's not tiny. On a search for "current awareness services", Accoona had 3,028 and Google, 29,100 hits.
RSS Reader for MS Outlook
New Release of You Subscribe: RSS Adds Search, Enhanced Internet Explorer Toolbar and Podcast Support to RSS Reader for Microsoft Outlook Business Wire (Feb 28) Microsoft Outlook users can get RSS feeds delivered directly through You Subscribe: RSS. News release has a rundown of new features in version 0.83. Public preview is available at You Subscribe: RSS.
Northern Light sets up Market Intelligence Centers
Northern Light Adds Market Intelligence Centers by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Feb 28) Northern Light has created Market Intelligence Centers (MICs) to its Business Research Engine service. These are similar to the Special Editions of a few years ago. MICs are planned for about 50 industries.
"The MICs provide the most important news, analysis and commentary, company information, and resource links for an industry or issue. Each MIC draws content from Northern Light’s business research database of 70 news wires, 1,400 trade journals, newspapers, and tens of millions of pages from the “Business Web,” which are editorially selected sites of high quality for business research."
You can preview these for free at http://www.centerformarketintelligence.com/
Demand for Internet Access Slowing
Internet access spending holding steady By CATHERINE MCLEAN, Globe and Mail (Feb 28)
Demand is starting to slow for residential high speed Internet access. New report finds that -- "Canadians' spending on Internet and data access will rise 5 per cent this year to $7.3-billion as higher demand from businesses and consumers counters falling wholesale revenue".
Specialty Search
Smart Searches, Without Google -- Find local restaurants, sell used junk, and search the contents of TV shows -- by Steve Bass, PC WOrld (Feb 23) -- several useful recommendations for specialty searching.
+ Chowhound for getting advice on restaurants through bulletin boards. There are boards for Canada (in general), Montreal and Toronto.
+ Craigslist for buy-and-sell market. US and International - has 6 Canadian cities.
+ TV Eyes for monitoring television and radio programs. Has live content alerts and searchable archives are available from US, UK, Canada, Australia and the Al Jazeera network.
+ Answers.com for reference.
More at Info.com
The New Sights and Sounds of Info.com PR Newswire (Feb 28) Info.com, the metasearch engine, added "new audio and video search capabilities, enhanced picture search, and eBay searching ..." Audio and video are from Singingfish and Muze. Info.com also uses Yahoo Audio and Yahoo Video.
Info.com has the same web metasearch capabilities as Dogpile and other Infospace search tools, but it clearly puts sponsored results to the right side of the page.
+ News comes from Topix.net of 7000 sources.
+ Pictures: Yahoo Images, Ditto
+ White and Yellow pages - Verizon - mainly US. White pages have the appearance of working for Canada but don't do it well.
+ Comparison shopping: Shopping.com
Ads for RSS Feeds
Kanoodle Announces 'BrightAds RSS' - First Self-Service RSS Feed Monetization and Distribution Service, in Partnership with Moreover Technologies PRNewswire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 28)
Of interest: "Small- to medium-sized publishers will now be able to access and benefit from revenue-generating sponsored links as part of their RSS feed toolset. Through BrightAds RSS, Kanoodle's content-targeted sponsored links will be inserted directly into site owners' RSS feeds within posts or as individual posts. "