The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years by CNet News (Dec 24)
From the last 40 years what would you pick? Then read the article to see what PC World chose as greatest gadgets.
"The rules? The devices had to be relatively small (no cars or big-screen TVs, for example), and we considered only those items whose digital descendants are covered in PC World (cameras, yes; blenders, no). We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation, and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the "cool factor." Then we tallied the results."
Mamma buys Copernic, CP via Globe and Mail (Dec 23) - Canadian meta-search engine takes over another Canadian search engine.
Copernic was by far the better search service. Hope nothing is lost in being acquired by Mamma.
Reminder - you can virtually walk streets in Europe using pages jaunes.
Digital Reference Shelf for December 2005 has reviews of Amazon and Simply Audiobooks.
Péter Jacsó 's review of Amazon describes Search Inside the Book and the new features for concordance, keyword in context, statistically most improbable terms, and ratings of readability. He also commends Amazon on its citations.
Review of Simply Audiobooks first takes a look at the alternatives - Audible.com, BooksFree, Jitterbug, but Jacso likes the rental arrangements and inventory of Simply Audiobooks.
Google's no longer Switzerland by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Dec 21) -- Google used to be as neutral as Switzerland. Francisco says it lost that when it did its deal favouring AOL. It's not the ads AOL will deliver but whatever arrangements are made for AOL to deliver video and IM capabilities to Google.
"But in the nascent alliance surrounding video and IM - depending on how the companies execute on their as-yet-to-be-fully-laid-out plans - it's unclear whether Google won't treat AOL's video with higher priority over others."
The Year in Search: A 2005 Review by Enid Burns, Clickz (Dec 21) - recaps top searches at the major search engines. If this is a summation of our interests, we're in trouble. Of interest - people in aggregate at Lycos are much more serious than anywhere else showing concern for Katrina, Tsunami, Pope John Paul II, Rosa Parks and Peter Jennings,
Consumer Reports: Don't Trust Any Single Travel Search Engine By Antone Gonsalves, TechNews (Dec 21) Study looked at 11 sites and found that none was a good all round resource. Sites included AOL Pinpoint Travel, BookingBuddy, Cheapflights, ITA Software, Kayak, Mobissimo, Pricegrabber, QIXO, SideStep, Travelzoo and Yahoo FareChase.
See Consumer Reports WebWatch press release for link to the report.
Google's first Newsletter for Librarians was published on Dec 19 on the topic of How does Google collect and rank results?. Nothing new here but the explanation is clear and would help new searchers understand the principles.
A Compilation How-To Search Book Reviews by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Dec 21) - last in a series of articles about books on web searching. This set lists reviews about books that were for subject-specific searching - several titles from the Super Searcher series.
Yahoo Launches Open Shortcuts, Allows Creation Of Custom Search Commands, in SEW Blog (Dec 20) - detailed instructions on how to create these search and save commands to use at Yahoo.
Governments Tremble at Google's Bird's-Eye View by Katie Hafner and Saritha Rai, New York Times (Dec 20) -- Google Earth's satellite views and mapping capabilities has some governments worried especially India, Thailand and South Korea. Others say there is nothing to worry about.
"American experts in and outside government generally agree that the focus on Google Earth as a security threat appears misplaced, as the same images that Google acquires from a variety of sources are available directly from the imaging companies, as well as from other sources. Google Earth licenses most of the satellite images, for instance, from DigitalGlobe, an imaging company in Longmont, Colo."
Nonetheless, the US Government puts some areas off limits, and shots of Israel must be kept to low resolution.
New word tools from Ask Jeeves that could come in very handy: page translation, definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, synonyms from Rogets Thesauraus, audio pronounciations. These are described in the AJ Blog - Word Up (Dec 10)
Google's Great Works in Progress by Burt Helm, Business Week Online (Dec 22) -- "Academics point to content errors in the ongoing Book program, but the search giant says fixes are coming" - Google Books continues to be beset by complaints and doubts. Library partners are saying that the quality of the scan isn't great, and users haven't found searching for books very easy.
Some free, Web-based alternatives to Microsoft Office AP via Silicon.com (Dec 21) - covers word processing, email, and calendars.
AOL-Google: Who Gets What By Steve Rosenbush, Business Week Online (Dec 21)
"Both sides stand to benefit from their wide-ranging $1 billion alliance, with the search giant perhaps gaining the most."
Google bought 5% of AOL for $1 billion, thus elbowing out Microsoft and Yahoo, and continuing as the search engine for AOL. But to win this it has to allow AOL to place display ads on Google pages. Although this is a change in Google's position on ads, the analysis in this article suggests that Google could attract a new type of online advertiser and gain in revenue.
In the end, it is really all about advertising. Remains to be seen what searchers will gain.
Wikipedia alternative aims to be 'PBS of the Web' by Daniel Terdiman, CNet News (Dec 19)
Wikipedia may be facing some competition from the new Digital Universe (http://www.digitaluniverse.net/) , intended to be the "PBS of the Web" where experts will contribute articles. Two tiers are planned - submitted articles not yet reviewed, and those reviewed and approved by the experts. Experts will receive some payment for their work.
"But Firmage, Sanger and Digital Universe President Bernard Haisch think their project can avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors. They've created a system built around the idea of portals--one for each major subject area, such as climate change, energy, education, the solar system and so on. Each portal will contain many different kinds of resources."
CBC Puts Olympics Online, Globe and Mail (Dec 19) -- CBC will be carrying the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics at www.cbc.ca/olympics.
"By the time the Olympic torch is lit on Feb. 10, the site will include a suite of results, events and broadcast schedules, a photo gallery as well as a downloadable ticker showing up to date results on a user's personal desktop. Surfers will also be able to access additional CBC Olympic content through interactive services such as breaking news alerts, e-mail newsletters, Mobile/PDA downloads, podcasts and RSS newsfeeds."
Sponsored Search: A Brief History, by Daniel C. Fain and Jan O. Pedersen, ASIS&T (Dec/Jan 2006) -- It's time we recognized that sponsored search makes free searching possible.
"Sponsored search has evolved to satisfy users' need for relevant search results and advertisers' desire for qualified traffic to their websites, and it is now considered to be among the most effective marketing vehicles available."
Information Extraction: Distilling Structured Data from Unstructured Text by Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ACM Queue vol. 3, no. 9 - November 2005 -- describes information extraction techniques.
"Information extraction ... is the process of filling the fields and records of a database from unstructured or loosely formatted text. Thus (as shown in figure 1), it can be seen as a precursor to data mining: Information extraction populates a database from unstructured or loosely structured text; data mining then discovers patterns in that database. Information extraction involves five major subtasks (which are also illustrated in figure 2):"
Articles includes some examples such as ZoomInfo.com for extracting information about people from Web sources, CiteSeer.org for citation information from academic papers, FlipDog.com for job openings.
Comments on the accuracy of automated extraction, and looks to future developments. Concludes that methods for information extraction will be critical in being able to access what we need in an ever growing mass of data.
Web Surfers Find New Online Destination For Information, Business Wire via Yahoo Finance (Dec 6)
Top10Sources has editors who select from the top 10 sources on a topic from news media, blogs, and other online sources and pipes them in using RSS.
John Palfrey, founder and publisher of Top 10 Sources, said, "Top 10 Sources organizes information in blogs, podcasts, wikis, photoblogs and other sources into 'reading lists.' The goal is to foster an active conversation among readers, authors and editors that is about, and results in, great online content with context."
But judging from the selections for Canada, the sources don't have to be about the topic and self-absorbed chatter is acceptable.
THE BATTLE OVER BOOKS: Authors & Publishers Take on the Google Print Library Project, New York Public Library and Wired co-sponsored an event to "present a provocative discussion about the competing interests and issues raised by the Google Print Library Project, and whether a universal digital repository of our collective knowledge is in our future. " Webcast of this event on November 17 is available for viewing through Quicktime.
Yahoo has a method for viewing pages it has indexed from a site at Site Explorer. You can also view the inlinks, although these will include self-referencial links. More about this tool at ResearchBuzz - Yahoo Updates Site Explorer (Dec 13)
SearchTHIS: Google, Yahoo! or MSN? by Kevin Ryan, iMedia Connection (Dec 14) - Year-end review of search engine news and the competition between Google, Yahoo, MSN for traffic. Strangely, no mention of Ask Jeeves.
Yahoo Takes Pulse of Canadian Surfers, by Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail (Dec 15)
Kapica took a look at Yahoo Canada's Year in Review.
"Canadians, it appears, are less interested in the Toronto Maple Leafs than in Paris Hilton, but Paris Hilton takes a back seat to Oprah Winfrey as a more celebrity. They think Karla Homolka's release from prison was a more important news story than the death of Pope John Paul II. And they think the peculiar death of airline Jetsgo was a worse scandal than the Liberals' sponsorship scandal."
Cory at Traffick.com says that the new Yahoo Beta Mail rocks - better than GMail, and one assumes that it far surpasses Hotmail.
Del.icio.us Users Debate Yahoo's Buy - Some fans of social networking site express concern about the new boss. - ByJuan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, PC World (Dec 14) - <b>Del.icio.us has over 200,000 users. This article is a report on e-mail interviews with three users - revealing for how they use the service. Tony Padilla wrote, "I've honestly found them [del.icio.us] more useful than Google for finding information. .."
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head, by Jim Giles, Nature (Dec 14) -- Nature, the science journal, undertook a comparison of Wikipedia to Britannica to assess the science content and found that Britannica had only a small lead.
"In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively."
Google adds music search and purchase features, By Eric Auchard, Reuters via Yahoo News (Dec 15)
"When a user enters a music-related search in Google search box, the resulting search returns information about the artist, a few albums and a picture, when available, above the standard search results."
Google Adds Music Search Feature by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Dec 15) - also describes music search capabilities at Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and MSN Search.
Canadian performers come up.
Celine Dion
Barenaked Ladies
KD Lang
Others - Gordon Lightfoot but not Ian Tyson and not Tom Connors. Anne Murray but not Rita MacNeil.
There are very few opera stars. Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti but not Ben Heppner or Michael Schade. Maria Callas (dead) but not Renee Fleming.
FireTune is a quick way to optimize the Firefox browser.
From the website: "According to your specific computer speed and internet connection speed, FireTune will optimize several internal settings of Firefox for better performance"
Information Wants to be Found by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Dec 14) - reviews the new book, Ambient Findability, by Peter Morville.
"Ambient Findability is really an intellectual romp through a wide range of ideas, history and concepts all related to information: How we find it, interact with it and consume it. As the subtitle suggests, "What we find changes who we become."
Ambient Findability is published by O'Reilly. There's a sample chapter at the book site.
Wikipedia's Chief: Don't Quote Us - "Founder Jimmy Wales talks about the steps being taken to foil fraudulent online entries" by Burt Helm, BusinessWeek Online (Dec 14) Wikipedia gets more and more press over the Seigenthaler story where a person intentionally posted a malicious story about John Seigenthaler Sr, newspaper man. Burt Helm's interview with Jimmy Wales tells us more about how Wikipedia works and the new measures taken to reduce the likelihood of a repeat. There are about 1,850 active editors working in English, and 4,573 worldwide. Quality is somewhat controlled through a New Pages Patrol community.
But of most interest - this question - "Do you think students and researchers should cite Wikipedia?"
"No, I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it's more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet."
I think Wales has a point although I'd like to see some proof of errors in Britannica.
BusinessWeek Online Selects blinkx for 'Best of the New Web' www.blinkx.tv Recognized in Editors' Picks for Best Video Sites , PR Newswire (Dec 13)
Press release describes Blinkx.tv - "Bringing together material from broadcast pioneers such as Reuters, Fox News, and iFilm, as well as several specialist content providers, blinkx has established itself as the place to find and access over 500,000 hours of high quality video footage on demand. "
HarperCollins Will Create a Searchable Digital Library by Edward Wyatt, New York Times (Dec 13)
HarperCollins Publishers will be creating its own digital library of print and audio that users will be able to search using search engines like Google, Yahoo or through Amazon.
"Rather than give copies of books to search services like Google for those companies to scan as it currently does, HarperCollins would keep the material on its own computers, and users would be pointed there by the search engine, Ms. Friedman said. The company expects to have at least part of the service operating by the middle of next year."
Topix.net Launches Tools for User Participation Across 360,000 Subjects, Press Release (Dec 13)
People who read news at Topix.net will be able to contribute news for the local page.
"Topix.net, the Internet's largest resource for online news, today
announced the launch of new features and a user interface which enable users
to contribute original news articles to the site. The new participation
functionality also makes it possible for users to join discussion forums for
all 360,000 news channels on the site, including local forums for every city
and town in the U.S. and Canada."
There will be some control - "Users need to register on the site to ensure that all postings meet Topix.net's editorial guidelines. Postings on the site will be monitored by Newsrank(TM), Topix.net's automated process for monitoring and ranking news."
User Stories will show under Forums on the right side of the Topic pages.
The Pocket Guide to the 2005 Blogosphere, Pete Blackshaw, Clickz (Dec 13) -- It's much easier to create a blog now and there are 22 million of them Blackshaw has more headlines but doesn't mention the one thing that could seriously damage the blogosphere - splog.
Yahoo's Search for Net Supremacy, by Grant Robertson, Globe and Mail (Dec 12)
Yahoo is the most popular website with 400 million visitors a month. Google gets 90 million. Yahoo does this by exploiting fully the portal model. It has gathered content for a long time. Now it produces it.
,"Beyond indexing and repackaging existing Web content, it has taken the unusual step for an on-line portal of hiring its own reporters, including a war correspondent and a travel writer, to produce columns, video clips and to interact with visitors to the site."
Yahoo has also got on the bandwagon for building communities of new users who create their own content. We've gone through this cycle before with GeoCities (which Yahoo bought) and others. That fizzled out eventually. But maybe the new communities of people who do blogs, share photos, and work with audio and video will be different.
The aim, whatever the model, is to bring in more ad dollars.
"Google and Yahoo illustrate two different advertising philosophies for the Internet: The former connects its advertisers directly to surfers; the latter also sells itself as a "branding site," where a marketer can use movies and sounds to reach a broad demographic, in addition to search-based advertising."
Intellext Releases Free Version of Its Watson Personal Search Assistant, PR Newswire (Dec 12)
Watson considers the context of what you are working on (while creating a document or browsing) to search for related materials. There is a free version of Watson now through Intellext. Watch the demo first for a brief introduction. Of course, people could use this as they research purchases on the Internet.
"The free version is designed to give consumers a complete experience,
connecting them with the information they need most, from a powerful shopping
comparison feature, to the web, news and blogs. Watson Professional, the
licensed version of the product, remains available for business users who want
to take the product's capabilities to the next level, customizing and
integrating Watson to search their subscription sources and enterprise
information systems."
Yahoo! Announces Upgrade of Yahoo! Widgets: Maps, Picture Frame, Search, E-Mail Checker, and Notepad Lead Slate of New Widgets, Business Wire (Dec 12)
New Yahoo Widgets are available to help with maps, photos, search, mail, and notes.
"Widgets are light-weight applications that live directly on a users' desktop and perform a wide variety of tasks, such as checking for wi-fi presence or strength, finding contacts in an address book, updating a user's calendar, or checking their latest e-mail. These small applications are always available, and make it easier for users to directly access the content they care about -- whether it's on their computer or on the Internet -- all without launching specific, single-purpose applications or a web browser."
List of 1,600 widgets are at http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/
Six Degrees of Reputation: The Use and Abuse of Online Review and Recommendation Systems, by Shay David and Trevor John Pinch, Social Science Research Network (Nov 25) [PDF document for download, 34 pages]
It's quite clear that many user reviews of books and CDs and likely other products are bogus. This study documents some of the abuses, mostly at Amazon. But this is a system in transition. Article quotes Lawrence Lessig on the constraints that law, norms, market features and code (in this case the technology) impose. But, notwithstanding all those forces, the company (Amazon) could use algorithms to detect abuse and prevent them - and perhaps they will as more people learn to distrust and ignore the user reviews.
Abstract: " This paper reports initial findings from a study that used quantitative and qualitative research methods and custom-built software to investigate online economies of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at several leading ecommerce sites (primarily Amazon.com). We explore several cases in which book and CD reviews were copied in part or in whole from one item to another and show that hundreds of product reviews on Amazon.com might be copies of one another. We further explain the strategies involved in these suspect product reviews, and the ways in which the collapse of the barriers between authors and readers affect the ways in which these information goods are being produced, and exchanged. We report on techniques that are employed by authors, artists, editors, and readers to ensure they promote their agendas while they build their identities as experts. We suggest a framework for discussing the changes of the categories of authorship, creativity, expertise, and reputation that are being re-negotiated in this multi-tier reputation economy"
washingtonpost.com Teams Up with Readers for Remix by Tara Calishain, Newsbreaks (Dec 12)
"The Washington Post Co. has launched a new site called Post Remix, described as “the Post’s official mashup center.” Available at http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/post_remix, Post Remix spotlights reader creativity with both washingtonpost.com RSS feeds and other streams of content The Post is making available. "
fosfor gadgets - Great blog for people who love gadgets and new tech things. Also picks up movies and items about photos.
Yell.com enhances map features, NetImperative (Dec 8) - People in the UK see enhancements to UKs Local Search Engine - Yell.com.
Yahoo! launches answer service, Pandia (Dec 8) -- Yahoo announced that, “Yahoo! Answers is a place where people ask each other questions on any topic, and get answers by sharing facts, opinions, and personal experiences.”
Part 1: The Birth of Yahoo Answers, Gary Price, SEW Blog. He's calling Yahoo Answers a "new social networking/online community/search/question answering service ". Gary has written a long article. In the end, what's going to protect Yahoo Answers from spam and scam?
Part 2: Other Q&A Services, Most Available For Free! (Dec 7) - notes other Q&A services including Wondir.com, virtual reference at libraries, and Google Answers.
Google Book Search: Not So Easy to Find the Library Link, Library Journal (Dec 12) - explains that Google Books will only point to books in a library when the book is out of copyright - and by extension Google has the entry because of an agreement with a library. "The "Find it in a Library" link only appears on books that Google has scanned from libraries, in the Library Project, not the much larger (as of now) collection of current books submitted for scanning by publishers."
Integration with the OCLC 'Find in a Library' that operates in Google Scholar and in Google.com does not exist.
Article notes that Google has 3.4 million Open Worldcat records in the main index.
The future of intranets, by Shel Holtz, A Shel of My Former Self (Dec 5) - looks at the suggestion that intranet content could be handled through wikis. Concludes, "None of which means that blogs and wikis have no place on intranets. Much of what’s on intranets today can migrate to these platforms. But the effort should be strategic, identifying content that is best served by an underlying blog or wiki."
Microsoft Launches Windows Live Local By Kevin Newcomb, Clickz News, December 9, 2005
Windows Live Local launched today at http://local.live.com/. This combines MSN Local, MSN Virtual Earth and live.com.
"New features in Windows Live Local include a "bird's eye view," showing a 45-degree view from above of major U.S. cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Las Vegas. The service has more tightly integrated directions into the service, so users can click on any spot on the map and get directions to or from that location.
Users can also share maps more easily, creating a customized URL for the page that saves their location, settings, notes and user-generated Pushpins marking locations. "
If you zoom in enough you can get a birds-eye view which is very clear and detailed of the buildings and streets. This will be excellent for the cities it covers - all in the United States.
MSN Search Local Search will show a map and the business listings, and offer a link to Virtual Earth, which is now Windows Live Local.
Why do companies spend money establishing one phrase in the public's mind and then switch to another - least of all "Windows Local"?
Sampling and Remixing: Life Beyond Surf-and-Search BY Mark Kingdon, CLickz (Dec 6) - finds he is bookmarking more sites and searching that collection. Most particularly - "More than ever, we're sharing our experience with others -- on our blogs, through shared links, via e-mail. Sure, search is huge. But we are going back to the future: to communities, to sharing, to the very behavior that helped make the Internet what it is today."
Portals Hot Again, eMarketer (Dec 8) - Consumer portal sites are strong again, and Yahoo is in the lead.
"Measured by sheer size of audience, Yahoo! continues to be the number one site on the Web, according to data from Nielsen//NetRatings. MSN, Google and AOL trail Yahoo! in terms of unique audience. The value of e-mail and instant messaging (IM) services can be seen in the varying levels of time per person."
Yahoo has highest unique audience, and its users stay longer - 3.38 hours thanks to use of email and IM. People also go to Yahoo for news (24.9%) higher than even MSNBC (23.8 ) and much higher than Google News (7.2%). And they use Yahoo's music.
Most people also do some searching while at a portal - "Search has become a cornerstone, and perhaps the cornerstone, of Web use. More than half of all users access a search site during most or every online session. Just 4% say they don't use search engines."
Bon appétit! - A Celebration of Canadian Cookbooks from Library and Archives Canada
"Compiled from the Library and Archives Canada collection, the exhibition portrays the evolution of cooking in Canada. It begins with an introduction to the foods and cooking methods of Canada's indigenous peoples; and continues through to the culinary traditions of the early settlers, noting the coming of science to the kitchen at the beginning of the 20th century. It concludes with the multicultural heritage that is an integral part of how food is enjoyed today.
The site includes two fully searchable nineteenth-century cookbooks, as well as appetizing resources for students and teachers."
Fascinating site with cookbooks and descriptions of cooking utensils and methods since the 1700s.
Internet Management: Prevalence of False Contact Information for Registered Domain , U.S. Government Accountability Office (Nov 2005)
"In total, GAO estimates that 3.89 million domain names (8.65 percent) had at least one instance of patently false or incomplete data in the required Whois contact information fields."
Of the 45 error reports that GAO submitted to ICANN, only 11 domains corrected their information.
Commerce and ICANN is taking measures to require "registrars to investigate and correct any reported inaccuracies in the contact information".
Source: Mentioned in TVC Alert (Dec 8)
Fun with Firefox, by Loyd Case, ExtremeTech (Dec 6) - looks at a few extensions that work with Firefox 1.5. Includes themes, Colorful tabs, FasterFox, a few others, and of course the essential IE View.
Lexxe Search Engine handles natural language queries quite well and even better if you use one of the question words - who, what, which, when, where, why and how. How it works is explained on the Questions and Answers page.
Answers.com Acquires Brainboost for Natural Language Technology - Company Now Owns Unique Brainboost Answer Extraction Engine , PRNewswire (Dec 6)
This should boost Answers.com even further. Already very good at providing definitions and information from encyclopedia, Answers.com will be enhanced by the natural language capabilities of Brainboost to find answers from the Web. Brainboost is often very good, but gets forgotten by searchers.
Of interest, "Brainboost (www.brainboost.com) works by scouring digital content and extracting candidate answers to natural language queries. It then ranks those candidate answers heuristically and displays the highest-confidence results in simple English form. Answers.com will apply Brainboost's answer extraction techniques not only to the Web at large, as implemented currently, but to Answers.com's own growing content library of attributable reference sources. A longer overview document outlining the specific benefits of the acquisition can be found at http://www.answers.com/main/brainboost_paper.jsp."
Inform Adds Audio, Video, RSS and Syndication
Several major new features have been announced for the news aggregator, Inform.com.
From release:
"Video & Audio – Inform has added video and audio content alongside traditional news and blogs.
Updated Top Channels Page – Inform has greatly expanded and improved our Top Channels page to showcase more of our powerful directory of news topics.
One-Click Access to More Top Stories Channels – We have installed drop-down menus by topic under our Top Stories tab, with additional news categories. Now you can access the latest Baseball news, for example, with one click from our Front Page.
RSS – You can now create an RSS feed on any person, place, organization, product, topic or combination thereof. The incredibly precise feed can be read through any RSS reader and will include news, audio, video and blogs. Create an RSS URL from any of your Inform channels or any Discovery Path query.
News Widget – Publishers of any website or blog can now add news to their offerings on any person, place, organization, product, topic or combination thereof. Create a Web Widget from any of your Inform channels or any Discovery Path query.
Some of the feedback we addressed in this release includes:
Pop-up On Entry – Inform has eliminated the splash page and pop-up window previously required to visit our website.
Firefox Usability – We have made the mouse scroll wheel compatible with Inform, and restored browser controls to news article windows viewed with Firefox. We continue to be firmly committed to supporting the Firefox browser.
Usability Improvements – We've also made a number of other smaller changes to the site to help make Inform easier to use. For example, we've redesigned our Add a Channel page to try to make the process of creating channels on Inform a little easier. "
Hear report by Frank Barnako at Marketwatch -- Audio
Study: Google users wealthier, more Net savvy - The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that they'll use Google, study finds, By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
"The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that Google will be their search engine of choice, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. Internet users conducted by investment banking and research firm S.G. Cowen & Co. LLC."
Google users are also wealthier. In all, it's very flattering for Google users. Google still leads with 52% of searchers choosing it over Yahoo (22%) or MSN or AOL (9 % each)
Virtual Earth becomes Windows Live Local this week, By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service (Dec 6)
"Using images and technology from Pictometry International Corp., a specialist in this area that signed a licensing deal with Microsoft earlier this year, Windows Live Local will give users images of a much higher resolution and quality than Virtual Earth. Users will be able to zoom in much closer and also tilt the view to see buildings and streets from different angles, and not just directly from above. Virtual Earth is able to do this, but Windows Live Local's ability is more sophisticated and extensive."
Refers to The Local Media Blog by The Kelsey Group - Local Search Numbers and Windows Live Local (Dec 2)
- conservative estimate says that 20% of searches are local searches on a local domain (local.yahoo.com as an example), zip codes and cities.
- could be 35 to 40% if include classifieds and shopping.
Two Alternative Local Search Services, by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Dec 6) Both of these are for the U.S.
+ Metrobot has online maps for some American cities. There seem to be options to add events and polls.
+ TrueLocal tries to block the spam and irrelevant links.
Google Earth has updated its database with new satellite imagery. See the blog for the Google Earth Community. (Dec 2) Many updates were for the UK and improvements for several cities in the world.
People Search Engine, Zoom Info, Adds New Services and Features, SEW Blog (Dec 6) - ZoomInfo, which builds profiles on people from information it gathers from various web sources, is up to 27 million profiles and has a company search options. Gary Price warns that without "authority control" users must be very careful in using this - accuracy is suspect.
Free Resources: The Baldwin Online Children's Literature project, MMISchools.com (Dec) - Baldwin Online Children's Literature Project has English literature for children from the period 1880 - 1920. Article says,"you'll be charmed". REviewed in Internet Scout.
Washington's New Turbo Search Engine Kazzoom Enters Into Race With Yahoo! And Google - New Search Engine Acceses 50 Billion Web Pages Heralded as the "Most Powerful in The World" MarketWire via Yahoo News (Dec 5)
Kazzoom.com, a new search engine, is making some amazing claims about itself. It claims to have access to 50 billion pages (not quite the same thing as indexing). Also - " KAZZOOM is adding an indexing feature that scales up to half a trillion URLs. It includes more of the "deep" or "invisible" Web, making it the largest, most powerful search engine yet created. This new search engine also features over 15,000 free advisors and counselors that answer questions users may have. This includes "Ask My Professor" and KAZZOOM University."
Press release says, "The new Colossal Terabyte Monster Kazzoom includes all Washington, DC databases like the US Census Bureau, Library of Congress and other major government services."
The search page has links for horoscopes and the lottery; the Ask My Professor is a lot of links and images on a poorly designed page. There is no advanced search, no preferences. Information about Kazzoom is 2 paragraphs long. I'm very sceptical.
Are Authors and Publishers Getting Scroogled? "Viewpoint: A Copyright Analysis of the Google Print Library Project", by Keith Kupferschmid,
Information Today (Dec 2005) - detailed examination of the Google Print Library Project and the copyright issues. Seems to conclude that digitization could be a good for authors and publishers but not the way Google is doing it.
"There appears to be no legal basis justifying Google’s massive copying of books to populate its Print Library Project. Nevertheless, digital searching of content—if done correctly—could be of great value to authors, publishers, libraries, users, and Google.
A ruling in favor of Google that allows it to continue to operate the Print Library Project would be a devastating blow to authors and publishers and creators of all kind and would undermine the purpose and goals of U.S. and international copyright law. As a result, no doubt the interested parties will be watching very closely as the cases filed by The Authors Guild and the publishers proceed toward rulings by the courts.
More Online Books Resources by Gary Price, SearchDay (Dec 5) - presents NetLibrary with 100,000 titles available through some public libraries. Also, for those looking for free public domain, the Online Books Page.
Note: Toronto Public Library offers patrons 3,000 ebook titles from NetLibrary. See TPL Unique Collections.
New from from The Internet Movie Database: The Movie Keyword Analyzer, Fun!!! - more expert advice from movie buff Gary Price on how to use the special features at The Internet Movie Database.
The Podscope podcast search engine searches for audio content, Pandia Search Engine News (Dec 3) - Podscope does automatic transcription of audio and indexes it.
Online search proves extra rewarding, Chicago Tribune (Dec 3) -- Win prizes in December while searching Google, but do it at Blingo. No registration required.
" The brainchild of University of Illinois graduate Frank Anderson, Blingo randomly awards about 50 prizes per day, including movie tickets and PlayStation Portable video game devices, to users of its search engine."
The bad news - only open to "legal residents of the United States". See Official Rules.
Interested in learning more about podcasting? U.S. Government has a page that explains podcasting as well as RSS and offers links to the U.S. reports. See Government Podcast and RSS Libraries.
Amazon Starts Offering Tags to Some, ResearchBuzz (Nov 18) - Amazon account holders can tag books, and use tags done by others to get recommendations. Tara Calishain has some screen shots of what to expect and how to do it.
Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar, by Katharine Q Seelye, New York Times (Dec 4) -- There has been more controversy over errors in Wikipedia. John Seigenthaler Sr', former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville, found that he had been defamed in a biography written about hie in Wikipedia . Can an encyclopedia written by a multitude of anyones be self-policing and a source one can trust? Many will say no. But there is some counter argument in this article.
"Jessica Baumgart, a news researcher at Harvard University, wrote that there were librarians voluntarily working behind the scenes to check information on Wikipedia. ... In an interview, she said that her rule of thumb was to double-check everything and to consider Wikipedia as only one source."
Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford and an expert in the laws of cyberspace, pointed out that defamation happens in free speech. There is always recourse to the courts.
Mr. Seigenthaler's biography has since been corrected. Mr Wales is trying to make Wikipedia less open to vandalism or tampering. "He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems."
Figures: "Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales [Jimmy Wales, the founder] said that traffic doubles every four months."
OA Librarian - new weblog about open access resources by and for librarians. Might pick up a few nuggets here. Format and display needs work.
Microsoft takes on Craigslist by Allison Linn, AP via Globe and Mail (Dec 1) - Microsoft want to compete with the very successful online classifieds site - Craigslist.
"Microsoft is hoping to distinguish its service, code-named Fremont, from rivals by tying in functionality with other Microsoft products. For example, people will be able to have Microsoft's instant messaging service alert them if items they seek come up for sale, or if someone is interested in buying something they are selling."
Ugh. If this had been left up to Microsoft in the beginning, the classifieds site would require proprietary software, have a fee, and have no Canadian content - imho.
Mozbot searches Google but makes it easier to use Google features. It will suggest terms, has some date controls, remembers searches, has exclusion list management. It's more appealing by the minute. This search engine is made in France.
Reviewed favourably in Customize Google with Mozbot, Pandia (Nov 28)
CrossRef Announces Partnerships for Web Searching, EContent (Dec 2) -- Improvements at CrossRef may mean improvements in Google Scholar
"CrossRef Web Services will create a tool for authorized search and Web services partners to gather metadata to streamline Web crawling. The CrossRef metadata database contains records for the more than 18 million items from over 1,500 publishers. The CrossRef Search Partner program provides standard terms of use for search engines, libraries, and other partners to use the metadata available from CrossRef Web Services."
The European Library Announces Availability of Searchable Collections, EContent (Dec 2)
"The European Library has announced the launch of version 1.1. There are now 113 searchable collections across 12 libraries, with access to a further 30 as hyperlinks. Early 2006 will see the addition of 3 more national libraries and their collections and by the end of 2006 there will be at least 23 libraries and more than 200 searchable collections online."
Federated search of European national libraries - "The European Library webservice is a portal which offers access to the combined resources (books, magazines, journals.... - both digital and non-digital) of the 43 national libraries of Europe. It offers free searching and delivers digital objects - some free, some priced."
Bringing the Blogosphere to the Masses by Mary Ellen Bates, EContent (Nov 16) - About Google BlogSearch - mentions that " Blogs provide access to invisible Web content, and that may be one of the enormous impacts of search engines' acquisitions of blog sites."
As We May Search - Comparison of Major Features of the Web of
Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar Citation-Based and Citation-Enhanced
Databases by Peter Jacso, Current Science 89(10)(25 November 2005):1537-1547.
(http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1537.pdf).
"G-S has the source records for less than half of the articles. It is apparent that WoS and Scopus have almost identical citedness scores for many of the articles.
It is also clear that Scopus has the edge for articles related to life sciences, while WoS leads for articles in chemistry and physics just as the pie chart about the record distribution in the entire database (Figure 1) suggested. The largest difference is in an economics paper. No wonder as WoS has much better coverage of the social sciences than Scopus."
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