Internet News

Will Microsoft Take Over RSS Readers

Microsoft Will Swallow RSS by Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine (JUl 19)

"Internet Explorer will, on its own, automatically discover RSS feeds; and Longhorn—and other apps running inside the new OS—will be able to build feed lists based on a new set of RSS extensions that Microsoft plans on posting to a common source receptacle known as Common Code. Company execs even added that their way of organizing feed lists would be better than existing methods that force you to maintain separate feeds in each reader"

Blogpulse for trends

Deeper Insight into the Blogosphere by Chris Sherman, Searchday (July 21) -- Many improvements at BlogPulse for tracking trends and getting information about blogs.

"Today Intelliseek added four more daily analytics to BlogPulse: top blog posts, top blogs, top news stories and top news sources, as cited by bloggers."

Cookies crumbling

The Web cookie is crumbling - and marketers are feel the fallout, Tessa Wegert, Globe and Mail (Jul 21)

More people are deleting cookies because of worries about spyware. But this hurts marketers who use cookies to anonymously identify where people are shopping and surfing.

"The effect that this will have on on-line marketers is fairly substantial," says Eric Peterson, a senior analyst with JupiterResearch and author of the report. "People doing affiliate marketing [revenue sharing between site publishers and advertisers], those with long lead times between marketing response and actual purchases, and any site that depends on cookies to identify users over multiple sessions is affected by this problem."

Ad networks are working to develop new software. United Virtualities (UV) in New York had developed Persistent Identification Element (PIE). -- "restores original cookies and places Macromedia Flash MX files on users' computers that can't be as easily deleted."

Search Engine Archiving

Internet Archiving Illegal? by Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com (Jul 19) - comments on the "kerfluffle" about the Bill C-60 in Canada to amend parts of the copyright act to make it illegal for search engines to "cache" page that was reported by CNet in In Canada: Cache a page, go to jail?.

Firefox releases

Mozilla programmers have been dealing with a variety security flaws affecting the Firefox browser and the Mozilla suite. Watch for Firefox 1.0.6. Nonetheless, Firefox keeps gaining in share of market - up to 8.71 percent in June, according to NetApplications.com. It's popular with consumers and education but not with corporations yet.

Firefox Flaw Leads to Upgrade Encore By Matt Hicks in EWeek (Jul 18)

Firefox Continues To Gain Browser Share CIO Today via Yahoo News (jul 18)

SLA 2005 PPT

Many of the presentations from the SLA Conference 2005 are online at http://www.sla.org/content/Events/confpresentations/05confpresent.cfm. Several were presentations sponsored by the Information Technology Division.

Podcasting cool and hip

Firms lining up to capitalize on podcasting phenomenon by Tim Lia, Globe and Mail (Jul 18) - coverage of podcasting never lets up - in this article we see that companies are getting into this broadcast mode. "Walt Disney Co. was one of the first companies to use podcasts. TV Guide, Nestlé Purina PetCare Company and even NASA are among companies producing regular podcasts." Doug Kaye, executive producer of IT Conversations in California, says that companies are doing this to appear "cool and hip" and that the podcasts "must be inspirational, educational and entertaining, or face deaf ears."

Three pioneering podcasters are:

+ TV Guide http://www.tvguide.com/news/podcast+ Purina Pet Care http://downloads/podcast.aspx+ BMC Software http://talk.bmc.com/podcasts

Blinkx adds Smartfeeds

Blinkx Bows RSS Feeds For Video by Gavin O'Malley, MediaPost ( Jul 19, 2005)

"Blinkx today is expected to introduce "SmartFeed," a free RSS service that enables users to receive continual automatic rich media updates from any potential video and/or audio source. "SmartFeeds gives users a TiVo-like level of control over their media online, which will only improve as the content available online improves," Suranga Chandratillake, founder of Blinkx, said."

Chapleau, here we come

Tiny Ontario town gets big Web investment By: Stefan Dubowski, IT World Canada (19 Jul 2005)

"“Project Chapleau” will see Bell expand its fibre-optic network in Chapleau, Ont., a town 320 kilometres northeast of Sault Ste. Marie with 3,000 inhabitants. Besides the Bell fibre enhancement, Nortel will install a wireless mesh network in the municipality for local, mobile hooks into the fibre backbone. Thus the firm’s aim is to bring high-speed Web connectivity to the area, a first for Chapleau."

"As well as the new network, project stakeholders will give Chapleau citizens access to video conferencing and other collaborative technologies. Over a period of time the venture will scrutinize the ways in which people use the new applications, to investigate the effects of these novel programs on government services, medicine, education and economic development."

Blog searching at Clusty

The Best Blog Search Is All Of Them! - Metasearch The Blogosphere With Clusty by Gary Price, SEW Blog (Jul 18 ) - recommends using Clusty's metasearch engine for weblogs. It uses Blogdigger, Daypop, Feedster, Technorati, Blogpulse and IceRocket. Be sure to use blogs.clusty.com - clusty.com doesn't have this tab yet.

Become.com for product research and comparison shopping

Become.com, which began as a search engine to help in researching products, now does comparison pricing as well. "This new service helps consumers find the best deals on over 5-million products and services from a wide range of online merchants. The comparison shopping service is tightly integrated with Become.com's research index of over 3-billion pages to give consumers unparalleled access to the best shopping information."

Become.com Launches Integrated Web Search and Comparison Shopping; Adds Comparison Shopping to Its Product Research Service to Empower Web Consumers, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Jul 19)

Chris Sherman reviewed it in Become.com Offers Comparison Shopping, SearchDay (Jul 19)

"The key difference between Become.com and most other shopping search services is the ability to research products using Become.com's web search index, gather useful information and then seamlessly switch to a comparison shopping tool. Most other shopping search services focus primarily on the comparison aspect of shopping, offering a limited set of reviews or other product information."

MSN Toolbar Country Flavours

MSN Search Toolbar rolls out more international versions MSN Search Weblog

Toolbar in all these country flavours:

"Australia, Austria, Belgium (Dutch & French versions), Brazil, Canada (English & French versions), China (Simplified Chinese), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR (Traditional Chinese), India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latin America, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philipines, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (French & German versions), Taiwan (Traditional Chinese), UK, USA (English & Spanish versions), and Global/Worldwide (English)."

Google Power - book review

Become a Google Power Searcher by Shari Thurow, Clickz (jul 18) - very positive review of Chris Sherman's new book, Google Power

"Whether you're new to using Google or a seasoned search professional, Google Power is an essential addition to your search library. In his book, Chris Sherman not only shows you how to become a better searcher, he also provides valuable information for preparing your site for Google visibility."

Lycos has new home page

Lycos revamps portal for tenth birthday netimperative (July 15) -- "The Lycos home page now includes more content updated daily, including streaming video and audio, games, photo albums, blogs, horoscopes, and news. "

Lycos began as a spider, a very good search engine developed at Carnegie Mellon. Now it has a dog beside the search box, uses the Teoma search engine, and features a lot of entertainment on the home page.

New at Scopus

Elsevier Enhances Scopus by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Jul 18) Scopus, the STM abstracts database recently introduced by ELsevier, has announced some updates to make it easier to work with third-party research tools.

"New features being introduced include close integration with RefWorks, the bibliographic management tool from CSA; interoperability with the chemical structure searching in MDL’s CrossFire Commander; and several content integration enhancements."

Of interest: "From an initial 13,000 titles, the service has grown to cover more than 14,200 titles from 4,000-plus publishers. The service now has nearly 28 million records—up from 27 million—and adds more daily. The plan is to add a million to a million and a half records each year. "

Mash-up maps

Marrying Maps to Data for a New Web Service by John Markoff, NY Times (July 18) - Google. Yahoo, and MSN have introduced advanced mapping services. Several programmers have used Google and Yahoo to create specialized maps such as the wineries in California. These are called mash-ups.

"So far the uses have been noncommercial. But Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are creating the services with the expectation that they will become a focal point in one of the next significant growth areas in Internet advertising: contextual advertisements tied to specific locations. Such ads would be embedded in maps generated by a search query or run alongside them."

Says that "Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are taking different strategic approaches to map services."

Yahoo RSS Search

Yahoo prepares blog and RSS search engine in Pandia World (Jul 11) - Yahoo adds blog and RSS feed search to its RSS newsreader capabiliites. Points to more information at Micropersuasion.

Podcasting

Podcasting Spurs a Media 'Land Grab' "Podcasting, Seen As Next Big Web Craze, Spurs 'Land Grab' Among Media Companies" By GREG SANDOVAL,
The Associated Press - ABC News (Jul 17)

Podcastalley.com, Podcast.net and the new Odeo.com are three services helping users understand and use podcasts, both creating and hearing.

Odeo encourages podcasters to upload their shows on its site. Recognizing that one of the main complaints about podcasting is the difficulty of finding them, Odeo organizes the shows by genre. Odeo's headings includes arts, food, religion, sex, and technology. There is even a one called "weird."

Main challenge will be in getting the music rights and collecting licensing fees.

Podcasting Tips

Podcasting Easy for Everyone by Julliette Wallack, AP via Globe and Mail (Jul 15) - Young woman and real newbie at podcasting does her first podcast.

"Sure enough, podcastalley.com had the best tips for beginners, including a link to free sound-editing software I could download. Audacity, the best free program I could find, worked seamlessly with my mike and offered lots features more than I would need, including the option of using multiple tracks (in case I wanted to fade music in and out, for example). Audacity is available for both Windows and Mac OS X."

What the engines collect

Google balances privacy, reach by Elinor Mills, CNet (July 14)

"Privacy advocates say information collected at Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, Amazon.com's A-9 and other search and e-commerce companies poses similar risks."

They do collect a considerable amount of information -- "As is typical for search engines, Google retains log files that record search terms used, Web sites visited and the Internet Protocol address and browser type of the computer for every single search conducted through its Web site. In addition, search engines are collecting personally identifiable information in order to offer certain services. "

Personalized Search and Ads

Search Personalization and PPC Search Marketing by Kevin Lee, Clickz (Jul 15) - Lots of discontent with the relevance of search results at the big engines. Predicts that search engines will do more with personalization to improve relevance. Notes that Amazon's A9 was an early adopter. Says that all search engines may begin to take into account age, gender, geography, previous search, previous click, affinity to paid results, operating system, ISP.

"As marketplaces get better at pairing advertiser listings with searcher intent, smaller marketers may be unable to deal with the additional complexity of thousands of keyword ads (search and contextual) that can also be targeted by geography, gender, age, and perhaps even behavioral factors. These marketers may need to partner with specialists and technologists to attack the marketplace with advanced analytics and campaign management. Many marketers still haven't gotten their arms around the existing search advertising and contextual auction marketplaces."

Factiva adds UK-based companies

Factiva Adds Dow Jones Company Profiles; Adds Publications EContent (Jul 15) "Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, has announced that D&B profiles for over 400,000 private UK-based companies and 1.4 million executives are now available in Factiva SalesWorks and Factiva Companies & Executives."

Blinkx.tv - more video

Blinkx to Index NYTimes, About.com, BusinessWeek Content MarketingVOX ARCHIVES (13 Jul 2005)

"Blinkx.tv today announced an agreement with BusinessWeek Online to index BusinessWeek content, including video and podcasts. Meanwhile, the New York Times Company announced that NYTimes.com and About.com would provide video content for indexing by blinkx's video search engine."

Zenome Directory

A new directory has come on stream, created by two professors at Concordia in Montreal, John Connolly and Zsolt Szigetvari. Zenome seems to be somewhat inspired by the Open Directory Project and others like it where people are invited to apply to be an editor. However, Zenome promises to pay commissions to the editors. It has set up a subject hierarchy and there are a few sites. Looks promising but needs editors and sites quickly.

Zenome - a human touch to searching the Internet by Mathew Ingram, Globe Technology (Jul 14)

"What led to the idea behind Zenome, he [Connolly] says, was the frustration that both professors felt when they assigned research projects to students. "They would go to a search engine like Yahoo or Google and say okay, I did my research. And I would say: 'No, you didn't; all you got were a bunch of results that were based on popularity, not substance.' "

Guide to finding e-books

"Free Public Domain and Copyrighted e-Books Online" By Sam Vaknin in Freepint (Jul 13) - a guide to link collections of e-books on the web. Also mentiones Valnin's Yahoo Group where he posts articles about e-books - though you wouldn't know it from the name - linknfactoid

Special Features of Consumer Portals

50 Coolest Websites 2005: In A Class By Themselves at Time.com - but the article highlights the services and tools most liked at Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Surprise - Yahoo has a Briefcase service for free online storage space. Time also likes the new AOL portal still in beta for mix of channels.

TIME's 50 Coolest Sites Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com

Rogers and Yahoo

Rogers-Yahoo integrates safety suite GlobeTechnology (Jul 13)

"Rogers Cable and Yahoo have announced the launch of the first integrated suite of safety and security tools available to Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet customers at no additional charge. Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet is designed to provide a security software suite including PC Anti-Virus to all of its customers."

Two Travel Sites

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf for July 2005 reviews Lonely Planet Online and SideStep.

Lonely Planet is a clear favourite - it has won 6 Webby awards over the years. "The site is well-designed in its simplicity", good for browsing and searching.

SideStep is a metasearch engine for deals. Peter Jasco found it fairly good at finding flights globally and at good rates. It wasn't as impressive for hotels. Concluded that "SideStep is an appealing tool for finding better travel deals."

What people search for

How Americans Search by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (July 12) - summarizes findings from icrossing about what Americans search for online.

"Most people (88%) said they were researching specific topics—specifically, information about hobbies. And women (61%) were more likely to search for health and medical information than men (35%). Surprisingly few people researching specific topics are looking for job or career information (28%)."

Detected some differences in use of search engines between users of Ask Jeeves, MSN, and Google.

See press release from icrossing -- New icrossing Research Reveals 'How America Searches' (June 21)

Firefox 1.0.5

Mozilla Updates Firefox to Fix Security Gaps By Matt Hicks, EWeek (July 12) -- "The Mozilla Foundation updated the Firefox Web browser Tuesday in order to patch a series of security vulnerabilities, including widely publicized browser spoofing issue and a frame-injection issue."

Skype VoIP with Wi-Fi

Skype and Boingo announce VoIP Wi-Fi partnership IDG News (July 12) - "Skype International and Boingo Wireless announced a partnership Tuesday that will allow users to access Skype's VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) technology from 18,000 Wi-Fi hot spots worldwide." ... "Though the largest percentage of the Boingo hot spots that are used by this product are located in the U.S. many are spread across 35 other countries, according to the company's Web site."

Visualization in Endeca Latitude

Endeca and Oculus Partner To Bring Power of High-Value Visualization to Endeca Latitude Business Wire via Marketwatch (July 11)

"Endeca and Oculus Info Inc., today announced a new technology partnership to bolster Endeca's search, navigation and analysis products with Oculus' next-generation information visualization capabilities. Starting with Endeca Latitude, Endeca's revolutionary, new information access and analysis solution, Oculus will provide unique, high-value information visualization to help users quickly analyze and drill into customer, market, sales and other aggregate and transactional data."

"Oculus' visualization capabilities allow large amounts of complex information to be conveyed in an intuitive, easy to understand, easy to use manner. Rather than getting lost in successive levels of drill-down, visualization helps reveal areas of sparse data and dense data, thereby assisting users find pertinent information. Visualizations built by Oculus will leverage Endeca Latitude's unique capabilities, including Guided Navigation and direct transaction-level data access - and will offer new ways to expose and help find anomalies and patterns of interest."

Canadian Historical Portraits

City of Montreal/Canadian Historical Portraits Virtual Exhibition: Personalities Who Have Marked the Country's History CCNMatthews via Marketwatch (Jul 11)

"The city of Montreal and its archivists are pleased to invite the public, for the second consecutive year, to a virtual exhibition highlighting heritage photographs and prints from the municipal archives. This year's edition features personalities who marked the history of Quebec and Canada between 1534 and 1940, from Jacques Cartier to Henri Bourassa."

View by region (West, Ontario, Quebec, Martimes) or alphabetically. Has some teaching materials.

Canadian Historical Portraits at http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/archives/portraits/

Role of Ask Jeeves

Barry Diller turns to Ask Jeeves for answers by Michael Liedtke, AP via MaconTelegraph (July 7) -- A conversation with Barry Diller about his intentions for Ask Jeeves as a piece in the InterActiveCorp e-commerce network.

"Although Ask Jeeves has been perennially overshadowed by better-known search engines, Diller is convinced the Oakland-based company is the missing ingredient in his Internet stew.

If it pans out the way Diller envisions, Ask.com and several affiliated search engines, including Excite.com and iWon.com, will become the mortar binding all of his other Web sites -- a so-far dysfunctional family delving into travel, lending, ticketing and matchmaking. For example, a lonely heart looking for a date on Match.com could use the Ask.com to plan a night on the town -- a journey that might ultimately lead to Hotels.com, one of the sites to be included in the Expedia spinoff."

Hoover's Free Site

Hoover’s Enhances Site, EContent (July 8)

"Featuring new task-oriented functional pathways to its business insight and tools, Hoover's free site delivers a streamlined customer experience through navigation, allowing faster access to its coverage of 13 million companies, more than 14 million decision makers and 600 industries." ... "Additionally, the enhancements now give Hoover's non-subscribers access to: complete, subscriber-only content for a selection of top public and private companies worldwide each quarter; tabular format search results including company name, company type, location, and sales; and a selection of Hoover's most-used subscriber tools, including Download to Excel, Build A Report, Build Company List and Build Executive List."

Interest in Deep Web

Search Engines Dive into Premium Content By Matt Hicks, EWeek (July 5)

"News Analysis: Search sites are trying again to make hidden "Deep Web" content more accessible, and this time more publishers appear ready to cooperate. "

It's not just Google and Yahoo indexing subscription-based sites or doing 'deep web'.

Groxis, the visual search engine, has opened "Grokker Research that uncovers results from premium business and research content." It uses Ebsco Information Services Inc.'s database and the IEEE. [Grokker Enterprise Search ]

Mamma, the metasearch engine, introduced Mamma.com Health Search -- "the first of between two and four additional specialized search sites the company plans to launch this year"

Firefox Extensions

Still More Cool Firefox Tools by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (July 7) - Reviews a few more handy extensions for the Firefox browser and describes how to go about finding and installing. Really - Firefox extensions are a breeze to add.

Google Shortcuts

Google can handle currency conversion now.

To use our built-in currency converter, simply enter the conversion you'd like done into the Google search box and hit "Enter" or click the Google Search button

Here are some sample queries:

* 3.5 USD in GBP
* currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
* 5 British pounds in Spanish money
* 500 canadian dollars in yuan

See the Help page.

Podcasting hot

Podcasting audience to skyrocket: Study by Jack Kapica, Globe Technology (July 6)

Podcasting - to create audio files somewhat in a blogging style and transmit them as MP3 files to subsribers - is becoming very popular. Some networks such as ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNBC are using podcasts to over their newscasts via downloads.

"The Diffusion Group's report called Podcasting: Fact, Fiction and Opportunity says demand for these time-shifted digital audio files is expected to grow from less than 15 per cent of portable digital music player owners in 2004 to 75 per cent during the next five years, a compound annual growth rate of 101 per cent.)"

Fear of Spyware and Adware

People are being more cautious and changing their practices for handling email and web surfing because of fear of spyware and other malignancies. Pew Internet and American Life surveyed by telephone 2,001 adult Americans May 4 to June 7.

+ 43% of internet users have had spyware or adware on their home computer
+ 68% of home internet users have experienced at least one computer problem in the past year that are consistent with problems caused by spyware or viruses
+ 48% of adult Internet users in the United States have stopped visiting specific Web sites that they fear might be harbouring unwanted programs.
+ 25% stopped using file-sharing software
+ 81% have become more cautious about e-mail attachments
+ 91% have made at least one behavioural change.

Spyware: The threat of unwanted software programs is changing the way people use the internet - PEW / Internet (July 6)

Summary in this press release.

Figures and anecdotes in Spyware changing online habits AP via News24 (July 7)

Search in Europe

The State of Search in Europe by Phil Robinson, SearchDay (July 6)

"Tim Roe from NetRatings presented some useful stats on country shares of the search market. Germany (29%) and UK (23%) are the largest search markets, followed by France (18%) and Italy (16%). Europe is dominated by Google and MSN, at first and second place respectively, but the market is still big enough for local players like Voila (2nd in France) and Virgilio (3rd in Italy)."

Google Premium

Google Indexing Subscription Content By David Worthington, BetaNews (June 30) - BetaNews reports that Google is testing a search service that will show previews of indexed premium content on the standard search results page.

Maybe Google will combine that with Google Wallet as a payment means.

How Good are Search Engines at Trivial Pursuit?

Smarter search engines still get trumped by trivia, by Michael Liedke, AP via Globe and Mail (July 5) - ran 20 trivia puruit questions at Answers, Ask.com, Google, MSN, and Yahoo. All these engines promise answers - how did they do?

Answers.com with its reference library and ASK.com which is rebuilding its expert sources did better than the others but not stunningly so.

"Although they are superior to the other search engines at this task, Answers.com and Ask.com rarely realized their ultimate goal — making things as clear-cut as possible by summarizing the correct response at the very top of the results page so it wouldn't be necessary to click on a link and peruse another Web site."

Liedtke ranked according to whether the engine had the answer in the first 30 results. "Answers.com, Ask.com and Google each drew blanks on three questions (I considered it a miss if a link to the correct answer didn't appear within the first three pages of results). Yahoo and MSN each whiffed on six questions."

Also reported in Search Engines Are Lousy Trivial Pursuit Players SoftPedia.

Check up on Members of Parliament

How'd They Vote? is keeping statistics on the Members of Parliament in Canada -- "voting history, dissention, attendance and speaking habits." Find your MP by postal code. Page will have full contact information as well. Finding the record of the MP takes a little doing: click on MP Statistics, locate your MP on the page (use find in page), click on person's name -- get voting history and quotes from debates.

Cory Horner of Kamloops put this together. Thank you Mr Horner.
Website keeps tabs on MPs, by Sue Bailey, CP via Globe and Mail (July 6) - picks out some snapshots:

+ "Ten MPs, led by a trio of members with cancer, have missed more than 50 votes during the 38th Parliament, which began last October."
+ "Liberal MP Paul Szabo ranked No. 1 for the most words spoken in the Commons -- 107,873 -- out-talking Speaker Peter Milliken, the runner-up, by more than 6,000 words."
+ "MPs averaged about 30,000 words."

Reminder about Spyware

Outsmart spyware by Ken Feinstein, Insider Secrets, CNet -- Three tips for Windows XP users: Use System Restore, Get Security Pack 2, and use Spybot and Zone Alarm.

Yahoo tags in MyWeb 2.0

Yahoo My Web Tagging & Why (So Far) It Sucks by Danny SUllivan, SEW Blog (June 30)

Sulllivan thinks the tagging at Yahoo's new MyWeb 2.0 sucks - and he's probably right. Mainly he doesn't see much value in using other people's tags (or categories) or spending the time doing it himself. He prefers keyword searching.

"Tagging will help you keep all your My Web content you're saving organized, right? But what happens when you've created hundreds of tags for thousands of pages? Are you going to browse pages? Everyone largely abandoned browsing directory categories ages ago because keyword search was like a warp drive to zip you to what you wanted, as I've explained."

Alternatively, Yahoo could use some automated clustering technology like Vivisimo.

Interestingly, Yahoo which started as a subject directory doesn't intend to stick with the tags. They expect the trust in social networks to be the means of refining search.

Three to watch

New ways to search an endless Web Three new features try to sort through the multimedia static by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle (JUly 4) -- identifies three to watch (except that only one of these is multimedia).

+ Blinkx - to search video blogs and podcasts.
+ Google personalized search - search history and statistics on search behaviour.
+ Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 - search with social networking

SOSIG Virtual Event

Social Sciences Online: Past, Present and Future online blog discussion that ran as a virtual event as part of the ESRC Social Science Week (20th-24th June 2005).

Papers and discussion about:
- Learning and teaching
- Research methods
- Access to data
- e-Social Science

Google Toolbar for Firefox Expected

Official Google Toolbar For Firefox Comes This Week, But Don't Comment! by Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (July 5) - a sceptical Sullivan comments on the about-to-be-released and long-awaited Google toolbar for Firefox. Has some information on other search engine toolbars for Firefox. Maybe we'll see it at the Google Toolbar page on July 7.

Searchers found to be using s"emantic maps"

Keeping an Eye on Google by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (July 5) - highlights from a new report by Enquiro, Did-It and Eyetools about how searchers react to the display of search results at Google.

"One of the most interesting parts of the report describes "semantic mapping ..." -- "The idea behind semantic mapping is that when we search, we're not just looking for the "best" results, but rather the best match between an online destination and the concept we have in our minds. This goes far beyond the notion of larding a page with keywords or key phrases that match search queries."

UJIKO 2

Fire up your Flash empowered browser and open the window wide - Ujiko will fill your screen with a new way to search with Version 2. This is like no other search engine I've ever used. It takes some patience, but the reward is a very engaging and more thoughtful way of searching and considering. But you will need some time to work with its colourful and multi-featured interface.

Enter keyword searches - view the results on the oval - mouseover hits to see the name and snippet in the centre - click through to the site in a new window. The small display in the centre also has a thumbnail, last modified date (never very good), and the number of times you have visited.

If you would like more like this, click on the document icon and from the centre click on the heart. If you don't want it at all, use the dustbin.

The centre will also show as you mouse over it a topical breakdown of the results colour coded. This takes a little getting used to. For "time management", as an example, time management skills might be in red and red bands will mark the results on that page of 10 that are mainly about skills, whereas training is in purple.

Yahoo is the underlying search engine so you should be able to use Yahoo's syntax such as " " for words together, - to exclude, site: for top level domain or company domain, and title: (although this doesn't seem to work well for phrases).

As you use the engine UJIKO adjusts the level of service. I don't ever remember a search engine offering this before. " Basic principle: each time you visit a new site, you are gaining one point of expertise. With every 10 points, you move to the next level. Your search engine is mutating, new buttons appear giving you access to advanced features (search video, images, news, encylopedia, advanced filters, animated skins, web archive, traffic details...)" (http://www.ujiko.com/v2a/en_htm/index.htm)

Make it really personal by clicking on a button to change the "skin" colour.

UJIKO has versions for the US, UK, France (its home country), and Germany.
This review is favourable also -- Kartoo presents new exciting version of Ujiko By Lars Våge, Internetbrus, Pandia Search (Jun ) "Last year French Kartoo presented its experimental search service Ujiko, with a new advanced user interface for Yahoo's search engine index. "

Press release with full and illustrated description is at http://www.kartoo.net/e/eng/press02.html

Yahoo - all things to all people

Yahoo Learns New Tricks "Yahoo wants to be all things to all people. But most of all, it wants to be successful" Red Herring (July 4, 2005)

Feature article on Yahoo now in its 11th year. Yahoo describes itself as an "Internet destination". But it is so in part because it became aggressive about search in 2002 with the purchase of Inktomi. Next - again the rumours about Hollywood with video search and a digital media centre.

"Yahoo continues to chase user-generated content. It has come out with blogging and social networking tools for users. The intent, says Mr. Horowitz, is to create new models of programming. It’s an ambitious goal. “Instead of 500 channels, you’ll have tens of millions of options you can watch or listen to at any point,” he says. “Yahoo will play a significant role in helping people navigate that.”"

21% Web Users Read News Online First

One-fifth of Web users prefer online news - Nielsen Reuters via Yahoo News (June 16) -- "The first-time study from Nielsen//NetRatings found that 21 percent of those Web users now primarily use online versions of newspapers, while 72 percent still read print editions." -- This didn't include Yahoo News or Google News -- "In May, Yahoo News had an online audience of 23.8 million and the audience for Google News was 7.1 million, respectively up 3 percent and 4 percent from a year ago, according to Nielsen//NetRatings."

AOL Video on Beta

AOL does video search By Stefanie Olsen, CNet (July 4)

"The beta service, called AOL Video, offers free access to search and playback for more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets from Time Warner, including television programmes and music videos, movie trailers from Warner Bros and news clips from CNN, MSNBC and others. AOL's Singingfish multimedia search engine, which the company acquired two years ago, will complement the new service by pointing visitors to audio and video from across the web."

Access it from the AOL Beta start page - http://startpage.aol.com/beta.adp - and select the video tab for searching.

Google Earth

Google Earth: Officially All Over the Map [Subscription required] By Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post (July 3)

Lots of fun -- "Google Earth, a new, free download from the Mountain View, Calif., firm, takes the Google Maps service into multiple dimensions. Instead of presenting top-down views of maps or satellite photos, this software (based on a program called Keyhole that Google bought last October) wraps those high-resolution satellite photos on a three-dimensional model of our planet's land surface that recreates every molehill and mountain, then lets you eyeball the scenery from any angle you wish."

Tests for Internet IQ

New Test would measure students' Web wisdom AP Via Globe and Mail (July 1) - Cal State in the US has developed a test to evaluate Internet IQ that goes looks at critical thinking skills.

"That's why Cal State and a number of other colleges are working with ETS to create a test to evaluate Internet intelligence, measuring whether students can locate and verify reliable on-line information and whether they know how to properly use and credit the material."

"Cal State is the lead institution in a consortium which includes UCLA, the University of Louisville, the California Community College System, the University of North Alabama, the University of Texas System and the University of Washington."

Kevin Lee on Paid Search

Web Content: Knowing Whether It’s to Sell You or Inform You by Reid Goldsborough, LinkUP Digital (July) - Interviewed Kevin Lee of ClickZ about paid search and began to see the worth to consumers as well as businesses.

"Before talking with Lee, I was skeptical. I mostly ignore paid links, as I suspect many consumers do. I also understood that Lee has a vested interest in promoting paid search. But, like he does in his columns, he presented some powerful arguments in support of paid search for consumers and businesses alike."

Creative Commons is the Answer

Creative Commons and Creative Commons Search Tools by Laura Gordon-Murnane, Searcher (July)

Article poses many questions about copyright and the public domain and reviews the history of copyright law as the introduction to the value and workings of the Creative Commons.

" How can you help patrons identify public domain content that might come from blogs, podcasts, Web sites, and organizations? Existing copyright laws have made it more difficult to identify public domain content. Why? Because everything copyrighted once exists in a “tangible medium.” "

Describes Creative Commons and how to find the licensed content for your needs.

Google Scholar v Scirus

Scholarly Web Searching: Google Scholar and Scirus by Greg Notess, Online (July 1) -- Finds that Google Scholar " ... offers certain benefits and uses, as do several other free Web-based scholarly search tools such as Scirus. Unfortunately, none are even close to comprehensive. Each tool covers one segment exclusively or in very different ways."

Of interest -- " Despite all the limitations and problems, both offer some unique reasons to use them beyond just watching their future development. For a quick, broad, multidisciplinary search on a very narrow, specific topic, either Scholar or Scirus can give a good start. For citation verification, both can help find erroneous as well as correct citation information. The Cited By links at Google Scholar can be a useful adjunct to the more comprehensive citation tracking from citation indexes via ISI’s Web of Science (or can function as a partial replacement for those without access)."

RSS 3rd leg for Longhorn

Opinions cross the spectrum over Microsoft's RSS support by Chris Jablonski, ZDNet - Between the Lines weblog (Jun 30) - Microsoft made a big announcement last week that it would have RSS as a third leg (after browsing and searching) as a means of accessing information baked into the Longhorn operating system and IE7.0.

Jablonski has compiled comments about this move by MSN. Among them is David Cousey at EWeek - RSS: It's Not Just for Bloggers Anymore - who wrote, "I've never felt that RSS did anything particularly interesting. It was just too limited. But with the Microsoft list extensions and presumably the weight of Redmond behind it, RSS could make subscribing to very specific information a common experience for users in about three years or so."

See preview of Longhorn with RSS in this video from Gnomedex. The Longhorn Browser and RSS technology team offer a peek at what's to come ZDNet Audio / Video.

"At Gnomedex '05 in Seattle, Dean Hachamovitch and Amar Gandhi both of Microsoft's Longhorn Browser and RSS Technology Group, give conference attendees a preview of how RSS will work in Microsoft's long awaited OS upgrade. 6 minutes 43 seconds Jun 28, 2005 1:59:00 PM"

iAsk for Chinese

Chinese searchers have a new search engine, iAsk which, from the press release, seems to have a lot of function. Display is in Chinese although the SE has indexed some English-language sites.

SINA Launched Self-developed Search Engine "New Search Engine 'iAsk' Incorporates Web Search, News Search, Local Search, Image Search, Knowledge Search And Other Various Search Functionalities ", PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Jun 30)

"iAsk, offers knowledge-based and community-based search in addition to the standard web-based search. While maintaining the power of traditional algorithm technology, SINA iAsk offers an added bonus of users' interactivity with a unique Q&A platform. iAsk categorizes search subjects into areas of news, pictures, music, knowledge, and video and allows users to input key words and questions of their interests. iAsk then ranks sites partly by subject-specific popularity, clusters results into subject groups, and lists related link collections by experts. SINA iAsk also features an ''express zone'' that filters all past information and data collected by SINA on the subject being searched. In addition, SINA iAsk offers personalized features such as search by local content (maps, entertainment and travel) and archival of personal favorites. iAsk is designed to work with both the Chinese and English language queries."