Internet News

Social Bibliography

Connotea does for the research bibliography what del.icio.us does for bookmarks. The website is to help researchers and clinicians manage and share information such as books, articles, web sites, blog entries. The front page has a tag cloud to show what the Connotea users are currently reading about. Bioinformatics is bigger and redder than the other.

This service was mentioned by Karen Loasby as a favourite tipple in Freepint (March 30)

WhatsUp MashUp

The world seems even smaller at WhatsUp . News headlines taken from RSS feeds popup in balloons from throbing spots around the world. This is quite a mashup of news and maps done using Flash. Jeroen Wijering, the creator, is a student at the University of Eindhoven. About What'sUp.

CIL2006

Computers in Libraries 2006 (March 22 to 24) has just wrapped up.

Presentation links are at http://www.infotoday.com/cil2006/presentations/.

There is a fair amount on wikis, podcasting, rss, and use of mobile technologies, and, of course, some on Web 2.0.

There are some interesting bits from the weblogs. Bloggers are listed at Information Today - http://www.infotodayblog.com/CILbloggers.shtml

Tags were CIL2006, ISE2006

ResearchBuzz had an entry on the Chris Sherman Keynote (Mar 23) - Emphasis was on the big four search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com, whereas in the past it had been only the big three. There may not be room for another general search engine, but there is for vertical search engines, seen as the next growth area. More on the Sherman keynote from Paula Hane - Sherman Sees Differentiation Among the Major Search Engines

There's a small report on the search duet by Gary Price and Rita Vine in the InfoToday Blog -- The Faster I Go, The Behinder I Get

Ma.gnolia for social bookmarking

Ahhhh, Ma.gnolias.... New Tag Site, Researchbuzz (Mar 9) - Ma.gnolia is a new social bookmarking site. It's not clear why we need another one since ther is already Furl, and My Yahoo and del.icio.us etc etc. But Tara Calishain has noted some useful extras -- "the extra search options, the ability to have both light and
regular RSS feeds for its tag search results, and the many groups already available."

You can get a good sense of the tagged collection of the Ma.gnolia community from the tag cloud page. If you are just visiting, browsing from that page will get you started. However, Ma.gnolia does not consolidate; there is substantial duplication because everyone's bookmarks with a particular tag are listed. Tagging also means variations in terms through spelling, capitalization, and spacing: web2.0, web 2.0, Web 2.0

Tag Search with Keotag

Keotag -- Meta Tag Search With Preview, Researchbuzz. Tara Calishain, as a great fan of tagging, likes Keotag , an all-in-one search tool for getting results according to the tags. Keotag will search Technorati, Blinklist, del.icio.us and 14 other sources according to the icon you click on. Simple one-word searches are best. On the whole, as Calashain says, "This is a good idea that's well-implemented", but she also noted that some resources were missing.

Ask.com holds its own

Ask.Com's New Look Scores Big Points Against Search Rivals By WALTER S. MOSSBERG, Wall Street Journal (Mar 30) -- Mossberg is impressed with the revamped Ask.com.

"I've found that in terms of relevant results and ease of use, Ask holds its own with Google, and even beats the champ on some searches. It has some very nice features Google lacks, including previews of the sites it finds, an easy way to narrow or broaden your search results, and frequent top-of-the-screen answers that lead you directly to core information."

Plum: Collect, share, connect

What to do with search results? 'Plum' 'em

Grab, search and share with Plum. Learn more in this video clip about the new Plum.

"Plum CEO Hans Peter Brondmo tells Bambi Francisco how he plans to get users to organize their search results with his service, which he calls the "then what after you Google," after it comes available April 1."

Basic service will be free. But if you make your collection public, some related advertisements may turn up.

Yahoo Local News

Yahoo has launched a beta version of local news in the United States -- http://news.yahoo.com/local. Pick the state and city and read the news. News is collected from several sources which Yahoo lists in the upper right corner.

Why Ask.com

Danny Sullivan Asks Barry Diller, by Andrew Goodman, Searchday (Mar 28) - Barry Diller, CEO of IAC/Interactive which owns Ask.com, answered questions posed by Danny Sullivan at the Search Engine Conference. And in this piece, Andrew Goodman comments on those answers.

Net Neutrality

Battle for the Web, by Tyler Hamilton, The Star (Mar 28)

"In an interview with the Toronto Star, Berners-Lee said he's "very concerned" about talk from major North America phone and cable giants about their desire to collect so-called Web tolls from content suppliers and e-commerce companies that want assured access to broadband subscribers."

iPod extras

Clever iPod Tricks - "Use your iPod to mix drinks, keep up on e-mail, or record a TV program." James Martin, PC World (Mar 16)

State of Health Search

The Zeitgeist of Online Health Search: Implications for a Consumer-Centric Health System by Daniel P. Lorence, PhD, JD; Liza Greenberg, RN, MPH, Journal of Internal Medicine (Mar 24)

"This study sought to create a benchmark technology assessment of online health search trends and practices, with corresponding evaluation of its applicability within the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) plan for a nationwide, interoperable health information infrastructure."

"Results: A variety of web-based assessment tools are available for consumers to be able to identify reliable health websites; however, many may be too difficult for the layperson to use or understand. Existing search technologies are increasingly powerful, although the expanding volume of information on the internet suggests the need for better mediated searching. Search engines provide consumers a means for quickly bypassing information that appears too technical for their individual knowledge level, and at times, searchers often overlook critical information most relevant to their needs. Overall, existing search technologies need to be more interactive, visible, and context-driven, and supported by better technology assessment methodologies, scalability of information, and enhanced access by underserved subgroups."

19th Century America

New Online Search Tool, Perseus, Tech News (Mar 24)

"Tufts University's Perseus Digital Library has created a resource that will allow users to find specific people, places and dates in its updated 19th Century American collection, which now contains more than 55 million words."

RSS Overload

Filter Your RSS Feeds, Traffick.com (Mar 24) - Use FeedRinse to control information overload from RSS feeds.

Nigerian E-Mail Scam

4 face 30 years jail in Nigerian e-mail scam By: Grant Gross, IDG News Service (Washington Bureau) (24 Mar 2006)

"Four people have been indicted and could face 30 years in prison for a variation on a popular scam in which e-mail senders claim they're trying to transfer money out of Nigeria, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday."

GoodSearch for Charity

Give to charity just by searching the Web -- An Internet search engine aims to make philanthropy as easy as surfing the web, Fortune (Mar 22) -- Want your searches to help others? GoodSearch.com sends a portion of its ad revenue to charities.

"GoodSearch.com is powered by Yahoo! (Research) and raises money for charities using a model similar to paid searches on Yahoo or Google (Research): Advertisers pay a fee whenever Internet users click on a given link. Last year search engines generated almost $6 billion through such searches. In the GoodSearch.com version, a sliver of that goes to a nonprofit the computer user designates."

Better Health Search

Wall Street Journal Examines Availability, Ease Of Health Information Through New Search Engines, Medical News Today (Mar 23) -- Searching for authoritative health information can be problematic, but there are signs that new engines are delivering more relevant information.

"However, a new generation of tailored search engines seeks to address some of the issues by using different searching methods to limit the number of pages they search and taking consumers directly to the relevant information. In addition, some of the sites organize results into different categories to improve searching efficiency."

The new Kosmix.com and WebMD were two services mentioned. Other companies that are developing health search include Google, Healthline Networks, Mamma.com, and MedStory.

Personalized News

A Deeper Look At Personalized News Search Engines, SEW Blog (Mar 22) - points to a guide of personalized news sites by Mark Glaser. Only MyYahoo and NetVibes got A ratings.

Personal Portal

Still Seeking a Site to Call Home, by Leslie Walker, Washington Post (Mar 23) -- Walker is looking for a single page online to call home. But looking over Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, she finds them all wanting.

Google Finance Ho Hum

Thumbs-down for Google Finance, by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Mar 21) -- Francisco is not impressed with Google Finance -- "... Google Finance -- with its perfunctory quotes, news headlines, charts and the like -- is not terribly impressive, partly because it looks so much like other finance sites created years ago, notably Yahoo Finance."

Plum: a Web and Desktop Mashup

Making my media portals -- Commentary: To collect, espouse, share ... to 'Plum' , by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Mar 21)

"In stealth mode for now, San Francisco-based Plum is essentially an easy-to-use service that lets you mash up -- to use the au courant term -- what's on your desktop and what's on the Web, putting all of it on one Web page that's not only for your own use but for the perusal of family members, friends and acquaintances, and other potentially interested parties. That is to say: the entire world."

Broadband users consume news

High-Powered Internet Users Identified as Online News Consumers, by ENid Burns, Clickz (Mar 23)

"A study of news consumption across all channels conducted by The Pew Internet & American Life Project creates a class of "high-powered" broadband users that consume more news and media on the Web than the average Internet user."

The Genie Knows

GenieKnows.Com Expands Operations by Adding Key Staff; Canadian Search Company Hires Tiffany Mitchell as Director of Business Development, US Office and Gina Kosta as Consultant, Marketwatch (Mar 22) -- The Canadian The Genie Knows is still in business but as a product and service search engine rather than meta-searcher.

Competitive Intelligence

LLRX.com has two articles on Competitive Intelligence (Mar 25)

Analyze This: The Evolution of Competitive Intelligence Products for the Legal Profession, By Donna Cavallini. The article is about ALM Research, "... the primary source for actual law firm financial data for all of the major U.S. and international law firms, including the Am Law 100, the Am Law 200, the NLJ 250 and the Global 100, and the release of its annual lists and rankings are eagerly awaited by the legal community."

Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide (Updated) By Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici.

Podscope Search

Podscope vs. Podzinger: A Podcast Search Engine Cage Match?, Search Engine Journal (Mar 21) -- Maybe Podscope was the first search engine to support searching audio and video files for spoken words rather than Podzinger as recently claimed.

Social Bookmarking Prevails

LookSmart's Zeal Directory To Close, SEW blog (Mar 22) - Looksmart is closing the volunteer-run Zeal Directory in favour of promoting Furl.net, Looksmart's social bookmarking centre. This is very much in keeping with the time where individuals do their own 'categorizing' and share with others, rather than having subject experts select and describe.

Free books at Manybooks.net

Looking for something to read on your iPod? Manybooks.net has free downloads for out-of-copyright books in several categories and languages. There are also recommendations and reviews. These will be older books - the classics. For example, the mystery category has several books by Arthur Conan Doyle and some by E. Phillips Oppenheim.

Resistence to the Internet

Why The Web Is Hitting A Wall -- "U.S. Internet growth is stalling. And it's not just the old or poor who are living offline", BusinessWeekOnline (Mar 20) - Not everyone is enamoured with the Web and some are actively resisting. Somefind it too complicated and expensive and others worry about security and privacy.

What amazed me -- " Other consumer electronics gear is much more widely adopted: Nearly 100% of U.S. households have a TV, 83% have a DVD player, and 78% have a cell phone. Despite their particular drawbacks, all these technologies are easier to use than an Internet-connected computer. " Cell phones are easy?

Business Use of Google Earth

Google Earth Catches On In The Business World by Thomas Claburn, Information Week (Mar 20)

"Companies like Bentley Systems, Dell, and Volkswagen make increased business use of what was once a consumer service."

"In fact, Google Earth is used widely outside engineering and construction. The fact that it integrates with GPS and radio-frequency identification systems makes it well-suited for asset tracking in any industry. For example, Dell uses Google Earth to track business customers' equipment in Asia as part of its inventory management system."

Podzinger's Video Search

New Search Engine Helps Locate Podcasts, Newsfactor Magazine (Mar 20) -- More from Podzinger, the podcast search engine.

"Podzinger, owned by Cambridge's legendary BBN Technologies, plans today to launch a new search engine that uses speech-recognition technology."

Google Finance Beta

Google launches free financial news website Marketwatch (Mar 21) -- Google has created its own Google Finance website that has features similar to Yahoo Finance and others - quotes, charts, news etc, to which it has added some of its own like entries from blogs.

"Google Finance offers similar features to its rivals – share quotes and charts, integrated financial news from its Google News service, discussion groups and the ability for investors to create personalised portfolios of their share holdings.

It also introduces innovations. The interactive charts will map market data with news stories, so the effect of announcements can be tracked against the stock performance. The charts can also be dragged dynamically using a scroll bar through different time periods. "

Coverage is mainly of public companies in North America, although Google has picked up some information on private companies through partnerships and crawling.

The front page shows only the American exchanges but the database does have data from the Toronto Stock Exchange. You will find Canadian Tire here.

You can still run a search on a company ticker symbol to get figures quickly and links to Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, Marketwatch, CNN Money, and Reuters, as well as the new Google Finance. See this example for Microsoft - mfst.

Also see Danny Sullivan's review in SearchDay - Google Launches Google Finance (March 21)

Social Networks for Sports Fans

Nike, Google Kick Off Social-Networking Site -- "The sporting goods giant and the Internet search king have teamed up to create Joga.com and connect soccer fans around the world" -- Business Week Online (Mar 21)

Joga.com is being styled after the popular MySpace.com where young people congregate online, except Joga.com will be for soccer fans. Membership will be by invitation, the same format that Google used for Orkut. Nike will control the content. If this works, Nike and Google will go on to other sports.

European Libraries and Open WorldCat

OCLC PICA Expands Open WorldCat for Europe, Newsbreaks (Mar 20) - European libraries are keen to have their collections found through search engines too.

" OCLC PICA (http://www.oclcpica.org) , the European library cooperative, is running a pilot initiative to expand the Open WorldCat program with wider coverage of European library collections."

More information in Pilot to test Open WorldCat benefits in Europe.

"... holdings of libraries in the Netherlands and United Kingdom will begin appearing in response to ‘Find in a library’ links from Open WorldCat search engine partners such as Yahoo! Search, Google and Ask Jeeves."

EBSCOhost Upgrade

Major Upgrade to EBSCOhost Includes Visual Search by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Mar 20) -- All the current trends in search technology seem to have been adopted by EBSCOhost in its new interface especially those of clustering, visual presentation, and RSS feeds.

"The revision adds many advanced features: clustering of search results, RSS feeds for alerts, expedited access to full text, grouping of databases by subject for federated (cross-file) searching, alternative citation format outputs, improved personal account maintenance, context-sensitive help, and—most importantly—a new Visual Search option from its partner Groxis (http://www.grokker.com)."

There's a tutorial on the visual search at http://support.epnet.com/training/flash_videos/VisualSearch.html

Audible and Podcasting

Podcast: Will Audible.com Survive the Podcasting Onslaught?, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Wharton (Mar 15) Foy Sperring, senior vice president of Audible.com says that "Audible has been in Podcasting for more than 10 years...we are the granddaddies of this space." Interview by Knowledge@Wharton's editor-in-chief Mukul Pandya with Foy Sperring is available in an audio file.

Kosmix Health

Kosmix Adds Two New Verticals: Travel and Politics by Gary Price, ResourceShelf (Feb 24) -- excellent review of the Kosmix Heath Search . Also recommends ClusterMed from Vivisimo.

Film on the Web

Web sites offering access to new and historic film are listed in this posting at Resource Shelf concerning the announcement that Google and National Archives (U.S.) have a project to Digitize Historic Films. By No Stretch of the Imagination is this Project the Only Place to Find Both New and Historic Film on the Web (Feb 24)

Blog Search Practices

A Study of Blog Search by Gilad Mishne Maarten de Rijke, Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam [pdf] (2006)

"Abstract. We present an analysis of a large blog search engine query log, exploring a number of angles such as query intent, query topics, and user sessions. Our results show that blog searches have different intents than general web searches, suggesting that the primary targets of blog searchers are tracking references to named entities, and locating blogs by theme. In terms of interest areas, blog searchers are, on average, more engaged in technology, entertainment, and politics than web searchers, with a particular interest in current events. The user behavior observed is similar to that in general web search: short sessions with an interest in the first few results only."

Mentioned in ResourceShelf

Google Scholar vs Web of Science

Who would believe it - New Study: Google Scholar Does VERY WELL Compared to Thomson ISI citation index? - Links and full discussion are in this entry by Gary Price (Feb 25)

About Ask.com

So Long Mr. Jeeves, Ask.com is Here by Gary Price, Resourceshelf (Feb 27) -- Gary Price has written the definitive account of changes at Ask.com complete with history. Reading this article will acquaint you with the breadth of the Ask.com service.

Keyword Searching

KWIC and Dirty? Human Cognition and the Claims of Full-Text Searching by Jeffery Garnett, Journal of Electronic Publishing (Winter 2006) What will be the effects of an information-seeking culture that relies on keyword searching and depends on the vast digitization projects taking place? It could very easily be incapacitating overload.

"This paper focuses on keyword searching as our generation's answer to the problem of information glut. Together with various mechanical sorting and ranking algorithms, it is the dyke we have erected against the flood of information that the progressive digitization of all texts is creating. Or perhaps more accurately, it is the faucet we have put in that dyke. Recent studies suggest that students and information consumers are quite satisfied with what they find through keyword searches (De Rosa, Dempsey, and Wilson 2004; Marcum 2005; Fast and Campbell 2004). Why then are they not the perfect answer?"

Mentioned in ResourceShelf Feb 28

ArchiveGrid Finding Tool

There is much to be happy about at the ArchiveGrid. Thousands of libraries, museums and archives have contributed their records to assist researchers in identifying archived materials and contacting the source to arrange to view them. ArchiveGrid is free to use until May 31. After that it depends on funding.

It is not easy to find out which organizations have contributed to this but running a few searches shows mainly US sources but also some Canadian and Australian. From Canada there are some records from Library and Archives Canada and the National Gallery of Canada and Trent University also shows up.

See ArchiveGrid—RLG’s Authoritative Archival Web Site, press release (Mar 6)

See review in Professional Reading Shelf, ResourceShelf (Mar 7)

People wishing to search only archives in Canada will want to use the excellent finding tools at Archives Canada.

Microsoft on Encarta

Who Do You Trust? For Information Online, It's a Growing Quandary: Q&A: The editorial director of Microsoft Encarta discusses the research standards that drive the No. 1 best-selling online reference source., Microsoft Press Pass (Mar 6)

Interview with Gary Alt, editorial director for Microsoft Encarta.

"Microsoft has enlisted content experts — credentialed authorities in their fields — to author and authenticate the content of the encyclopedia. In addition, Microsoft has assembled a team of professional editors who ensure that Encarta’s content is kept up to date, objective and understandable. Together, our independent content experts and on our in-house editorial staff work to ensure that Encarta is accurate, current, balanced and readable."

But be mindful that this is a press release. See Gary Price's comments at ResourceShelf in the Professional Reading Shelf (Mar 8)

Digital Reference Shelf - March

Digital Reference Shelf by Peter Jacso for March 2006 has reviews on NCJRS (Criminal Justice Database) and Taber’s Medical Encyclopedia.

RDN Changing

RDN Service Changes During 2006 -- Watch for these changes at the Resource Discovery Network in its organization of subject gateways. There is to be a name change too. RDN will be Intute.

Search Library and Archives Canada

Library and Archives Canada Federated Search for the library, archives, website -- http://search-recherche.collectionscanada.ca/fed/search.jsp?Language=eng

Firefox Add-ons

Some of Our Favorite Firefox Add-ons from the Resourceshelf (Mar 16)

Yahoo Facelift

Facelift For Yahoo's Home Page , Internetnews.com (Mar 15) - Yahoo is testing a new design of its home page.

"The design, which began appearing to select users today, brings the search function much higher on the page and offers larger icons of the portal's popular features beyond search, such as mail and messenger, as well as localized features such as weather, movies and search."

Clusty More Like This

Clusty helps you refine a search using the clusters. After you run the first search, choose a cluster from the left panel. At the bottom of the new page you'lls see Search for more results like these. If you like what you see, click on that link. Clusty will add the name of the cluster to the search query and run the new search. Of course, we could do this ourselves just by looking at the clusters to get more ideas on what words to use.

Wikipedia v Britannica

Wikipedia and Britannica The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man),
by Paula Berinstein, Searcher (Mar)

Here's the question -- "The primary question for info pros is, of course, reliability. Can "the public" concoct and maintain a free, authoritative encyclopedia that’s unbiased, complete, and reliable [Wikipedia]? If not, then Britannica may rest on its laurels and its good name, although with the Web so free and accessible, it’s been taking licks for some years. But if the answer is "Yes," what happens to that shining beacon of scholarship, its publishers, and its academic contributors? Is encyclopedia publishing a "zero sum" game?"

Virtual Decorator

Virtual Decorating -- Free Sites Take the Guessing Out of Interior Home Design -- by Roberta Roberti, LinkUp Digital (Mar 1) -- No more driving around to pick up swatches and chips when decorating. Use the web sites recommended in this article instead. All were free and considered easy to use. The author recommended turning off the pop-up blocker at some sites. To this piece of advice I add, be patient with downloads of flash files and other interactive applications.

Top Sites February 2006

Top sites in February 2006: Yahoo!, Microsoft, MSN, Google, ZDNet (Mar 16) -- Nielsen/NetRatings posted figures for audience and time spent for the top sites.

Yahoo and AOL are very good in holding the eyeballs. Average times spent by people at web sites were:
Yahoo 3:10 minutes
AOL 6:00 minutes
eBay 1:53
MSN: 1:43

Yahoo also has a commanding lead in audience with Microsoft / MSN not far behind. Google does very well as a search engine.
Yahoo 102 million
Microsoft 95.5 million
MSN 91.6 million
Google 89 million

MapQuest is in the top 10 for audience (36.7 million) indicating the popularity of that service for maps and directions.

Phone from Yahoo's IM

Yahoo Messenger with Phone Features Next Week by Om Malik, Gigaom (Mar 16) -- Yahoo's Instant Messenger will soon have VOIP.

"Yahoo, which has already released a new version of its Communicator (Instant Messaging) product overseas, plans to launch a similar client next week, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The new release of the IM client has a brand new voice core, and it allows users to make phone calls to PSTN phones as well, in addition to PC-to-PC calls."

Rocketnews picks up audio and video

Audio, Video News & Podcast Search Added to Rocketnews.com - Market Wire via Marketwatch (Mar 16)

Rocketnews has added audio/podcast and video search to its choices for searching news. Top stories are shown on each of the topical home pages. This makes it quite easy to pick out headlines for technology, arts and literature, health etc.

"The video and podcast content accessible on Rocketnews is aggregated from authoritative news outlets such as CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Reuters, and the BBC, along with thousands of online audio news sources and podcasts. Visitors to the Rocketnews portal can now search for news, blog, audio, video and podcast content. The Company has also created a simple taxonomy that gives users the ability to narrow their searches to content from business, technology, health, sports and entertainment sources. Rocketinfo will continue to aggressively grow its audio, video and podcast databases."

Zillow for US house valuations

Finding the Values of U.S. Homes by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 15) -- Zillow will provide approximate valuations for homes in a neighbourhood in the United States. This has zoomable maps, aerial views, details on the house, and a zestimator for tweaking the estimate. Seems this is a growth field. The inventors, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, founded Expedia.

Accoona's CEO Speaks

Marketwatch has a video interview with Stuart Kauder, CEO of Accoona in which he explains its "artificial intelligence" and tools "to supertarget your search". It goes beyond "exact keyword match". This is currently used on their Business and News searches, and will soon be used for Web search.

Accoona digs deep with artificial intelligence (Mar 15)

Saving and Sharing Research

"Save yourself! Free resources for organising, maintaining and sharing the fruits of your web searches" by Mary Ellen Bates, Freepint (Mar 16) -- This article reviews methods of saving and sharing bookmarks and pages using services on the Web -- Yahoo's MyWeb2.0, A9, Ask's MyStuff (previously MyJeeves), and Furl.net; as well as Onfolio (now part of MSN) and eSnips.com. There is lots here to get you started with any one of these tools.

Evaluating Health Information

Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine -- "This tutorial teaches you how to to evaluate the health information that you find on the Web. It is about 16 minutes long."

Yahoo Canada 360 Degrees

Yahoo unveils Canada 360. Globe and Mail (Mar 13)

Yahoo Canada has opened Canada 360 degrees, a place where people can congregate to publish and share.

"Canada 360 degrees brings together communications, content and community services such as Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Canada Photos, LaunchCcast radio and Yahoo Canada Groups with new services like web logs."

E-access to books through Google

Google to broker online book sales. CNet (Mar 13)

"Still embroiled in controversy over its plans to digitize several of the world's largest library collections, Google is inviting U.S. and U.K. publishers to sell online access to their copyright texts through its book search site."

The Past and Future of Technorati

Case Study: Going Up Against Google, by Michael Fitzgerald, inc magazine (Feb 2006) - The case study is about David Sifry and Technorati , the weblog search engine he started in 2002. The elephant in the field, of course, is Google and the search engine it launched in September 2005.

"Since then, the company has been scrambling to keep its edge by launching new features. First up was a tool that provides constant updates of the things that matter most to people who write and read blogs at any given moment--such as the most-discussed books, movies, and news items on the Web. Then in October, it added a feature that is able to determine who is the most authoritative blogger on any particular topic. In November, a "Mini" search window debuted that automatically refreshes users' favorite searches while they're doing other things online. And in December the company introduced a prototype called Technorati Explore, an experiment in creating a newspaperlike front page from blog posts."

Technorati has been innovative but will it prevail in a market where blog searching may become standard for the search giants?

Readers of inc are adding comments concerning strategic options for Technorati.

Yahoo Life

Yahoo! Power by Gary Berline, PC Magazine (Mar 13) -- There is more to Yahoo than search. This article reviews Yahoo Local (finding services and businesses in an area), Yahoo Maps Local, Yahoo Mobile (news, games and other content), Yahoo Music Unlimited (competitive for selection and price).

The Government is Watching

Judge set to compel Google to give data by John Shinal, CBS Marketwatch (Mar 14) -- US Department of Justice has scaled back its request for access to Google's search data, but the request, if granted, would "set a legal precedent granting the government access to huge storehouses of information kept on Web surfers by private companies."

GPS Finds You

Mobile knowledge, part II -- Commentary: GPS, karaoke and blogging on the go, by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Mar 14)

We're far from the day that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, envisions where everyone has a "location-based device" that alerts people to restaurants or other services while they pass by the area. (Could we get one that alerts us to historical sites and important museums?) But Francisco says we're getting an early idea of what the mobile world will look like.

Improved navigation may be one area. TeleNav has a "GPS navigational tool that gives you guided voice and visual directions, much like the GPS in cars today" that works when in a car, on a bike, or on foot. (But will it work in a subway?)

MapQuest has a Find-Me service for finding services nearby and friends (if they are on the same network). Rand McNally is introducing a similar service in StreetFinder. Both have monthly fees.

Other things you can do while mobile include blogging from a phone and buying songs - two things you are sure to want to do while stuck in traffic, one presumes.

Newzinger tags news

If you like tags and news you'll like Newzingo. This picks out tags (keywords) from news stories at Google News and shows them in a "tag cloud". The size of the word indicates the number of stories related to the word.

Newzingo is available for the regional versions of Google News including Canada .

This is something you could also add to your personalized Google homepage.

I'm not enamoured with tags, especially single word tags derived from text analysis. Context is lost and often the tag appears based on frequency rather than aboutness. The day I looked at Newzinger for Google Canada News, the tag handover was larger than all others. To me 'handover' suggests that there has been a major change in government in some country, but in this case it was a sports story.

WebFetch UK

InfoSpace Launches New Web Search Comparison Tool With MSN Additions, Cheap Hosting Directory (Mar 9) -- WebFetch metasearch engine (name for Dogpile in the UK) has been redesigned.

"The new design and improvements take the user through a Flash demonstration and allows them to make real-time searches displaying the results that have been returned by each search engine and shows how many results appear on the first page of that search engine and how many results are completely unique to that search engine."

Full-text Audio Search

Google Video's Achilles' Heel by Matt Rand, Forbes (Mar 10) -- This article is about full-text audio search services, something which Google isn't but TVEyes with Podscope, BBN with Podzinger, and Blinkx are. There is also a list of the 8 "elite" video-search engines.

Web2.0 - New Wave

The Net's New Age -- Technology that aims to revolutionize how surfers use the Web is fueling a new wave of Internet investment and challenging established media -- Business Week Online (Mar 13) -- Web2.0 applications are sprouting up everywhere. Google has picked up Writely, a word processing package that supports collaboration; Yahoo is expanding into social bookmarking; Microsoft is redeveloping MSN as Windows Live. All are working with web-based email systems that will feel and look like desktop.

"A lot of the innovations are powered by a new kind of Internet technology, much of which was developed by Microsoft itself. Many, but not all, Web 2.0 companies use a software platform known as Ajax. Until now, you had to reload a Web page every time you wanted to save a change. If you want to add a news feed to your homepage at a Web 2.0 site like netvibes, all you need to do is make a few clicks."

Newsvine is another example of Web2.0 - a news portal that the user can customize and add comments about stories.

Managing the Browser

Take Charge of What Web Sites Know About You -- Control cookies, clear your download history, and take other steps to keep snoops off your online trail. -- Scott Spanbauer, PC World (Feb 17)

The New Nexis

The New Look of Nexis by Marydee Ojala, Newsbreaks (Mar 13) -- LexisNexis has released a "new Nexis" (http://www.nexis.com) for business and legal researchers. This is a new "global platform" adopted to standardize the content and look and feel across all markets. The hope is that the new Nexis appeals a broader set of users than the customary information professionals. Migration will take place over the coming year.

Of interest: Nexis employs categorization to aid in discovery, and clustering.

"The new Nexis contains more than 32,000 sources from which customers can pick and choose. What normalizes the content is the categorization—that’s its value-add. Rector is proud that the new Nexis “is designed to help discovery.” It’s not just about doing a search, but discovering things unknown to the searcher. Leveraging LexisNexis SmartIndexing is an important component of this discovery—and normalization—process."

"The new Nexis makes use of clustering technology, which is similar to that employed by Web search engines such as Vivisimo, but it’s less problematic, since it works from controlled vocabulary, rather than algorithms applied to nonindexed Web pages. This clustering is particularly important because it can reveal aspects of a search term the researcher had not considered. It both disambiguates the terms and suggests types of coverage of the topic. Categories include source type, source name, subject, industry, company, geography, or language."

Meaningful Results

New vertical search engines from Rapid Intelligence, Pandia (Mar 7) -- The Australian Rapid Intelligence has two more search engines of the style of Factbites.

"Factbites performs your search on the basis of your whole topic area, not just your keyword. In this way it can return relevant results on your topic that don’t necessarily mention the word you searched for."

The two new ones are: CompWisdom for computing, programming and the Internet; and Finance Records for business and finance.

Social Software

Web Tools Employ The Human Factor -- "Start-Ups Offer New Ways to Collect and Share Data", by Leslie Walker, Washington Post (Mar 9) -- O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference was about developments in Web software to become more 'social'.

"... the unofficial theme was social computing; more specifically, how another wave of start-ups is allowing people to mix and match data from different Web sites and forge new social connections online."

Memeorandum, Netvibes and Digg were three mentioned as Web sites that helped in filtering information and doing group editing.

Article describes at length the Root Markets. This "lets you grab your personal Web history from a variety of sites, including Amazon (your entire purchasing history), Google and Yahoo (your search history,) and Del.icio.us (any bookmarks you save there)."

Mechanical Turk software developed by Amazon to help in creating worker networks to do categorization for Amazon.

Relevancy of Search Results

New French Relevancy Study Puts Yahoo & Google Tied For First But Search Overall As Disappointing by Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (Mar 7) -- A professor in France has examined the relevancy of search results from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Exalead, Voila, and Dir.com. He found that search engines aren't good at delivering 100% of relevant results in the first ten, but if expectations are relaxed to a few good ones, they don't do badly. Yahoo had a slight edge over Google in this study, and Exalead was in the middle.

Windows Live Portal

Memo Outlines Microsoft's Plans -- "The Redmond giant details the progress of Windows Live -- and points to a slew of new services on the way" -- by Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek Online (Mar 10) -- Microsoft is moving its online users to Windows Live . Already there is Live Mail, Life Safety, Live Messenger, and most recently, Live Search. More services are in the pipe.

International Museum of Women

New World Library, Yahoo! Team up for Global Women's Project by Bridget Kinsella , PW Daily -- 3/9/2006

Look for Yahoo's celebrity blog to accompany the publication of a new book about and by women -- Imagining Ourselves: a global generation of women.

"Yahoo! is teaming up with the International Museum of Women for a project tied to the publication of Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices for a New Generation of Women, an anthology of essays, art and poetry by women from across the globe edited by Paula Goldman and published by New World Library. New World has already shipped 12,000 copies of the title, but there's more to the project than simply a book release."

Infonortics Search Engine Conference

Search Engine Meeting Caters To Serious Seekers by David Gardner, Information Week (Mar 9) The Infonortics Search Engine Conference will be held in Boston from April 24-25.

"The heart of the conference, Collier said, is still centered on new and offbeat developments, some of which are likely to become mainstream in the future, and he noted that Google's participation this year won't deflect from the conference's main objective of getting search freethinkers and pioneers together."

Prepare Podcasts

Search Engine Optimization for Podcasts, by Grant Crowell, SearchDay (Mar 8) -- "Panelists on this session [at the Search Engines Strategies Conference in December 2005] focused on how best to prepare and optimize podcasts for search engines."

Yahoo Answers Canada

Yahoo goes local . By Simon Avery, Globe and Mail (Mar 8) -- Yahoo is opening Yahoo Answers to Canadians. Ask questions, get answers from people who want to share. But how much do they know? This is part of social search - looking to a community for help.

Yahoo "... wants to spawn a massive on-line community where users share their knowledge and in the process pump new content into its many properties. The new search service lets registered users type in short questions, or more detailed answers, that are then electronically published with a few clicks of a mouse."

Windows Live Search Review

Microsoft's Google Killer? First Glance at Search Engine Beta. Ramon G. McLeod, PCWorld blog (Mar 8)

McLeod seems to like what he sees at Windows Live Search but says it won't beat out Google.

Windows Live Onfolio

Microsoft Tweaks Its Toolbar With Onfolio Acquisition -- Microsoft has acquired Onfolio, whose add-in for the Windows Live Toolbar beta is expected to bolster Microsoft in its effort to catch up to Google -- By W. David Gardner, Information Week (Mar 8)

Onfolio was a tool for saving and organizing web pages for research available to users of Internet Explorer and Firefox. No longer - now it will be an add-in for the Windows Live Toolbar.

See the new product site at http://www.onfolio.com/

Researching Public Records

The Art of Public Records Research. Genie Tyburski, Virtual Chase (Mar 2006) -- "This article explains important differences between public records, public information and private information. It introduces select public records databases and search techniques. It would take a book to cover all worthwhile sources." Public records are those in the U.S. Canadian researchers can get ideas on types of resources to look for in Canada.

Accoona Adds Some Function

Accoona Reinvents Internet Search -- "Artificial Intelligence Combines With Industry-leading Search Functionality to Provide Meaningful, User-Specific Data" -- Business Wire via Marketwatch (Mar 8)

Accoona , the search engine that Bill Clinton helped to launch in 2004, has received some significant enhancements for its news and business search. These were announced in a presentation to the United Nations, surprisingly enough.

For news there are eight new drop-down buttons by which you can change the ranking of the results by:
- keyword.
- time period.
- news organization.
- company name - related companies are picked from Accoona's D&B database.
- country.
- state (of any country - shows Canadian provinces as well as US states).
- people mentioned in the articles.
- type of media: text, audio, video, image.

On a search for sustainable development parks, it was easy to refine by Canada to see reports from Canadian papers about development in Mount Orford in Quebec. That set could be further refined - say by name - Jean Charest.

The Business search finds records on the company in its version of the Dun and Bradstreet database. The SuperTarget supports refinements by:
- business type
- city
- state
- company revenue
- total company employees.

It will find large public companies in the United States, but not much in Canada. Search on Royal Bank or RBC and the only countries listed are the USA and China.

This is a China-based engine, and according to the press release is heavily used there.

See my earlier review.

Ask.com opens in France, Italy and Netherlands

Ask.com Launches in France, Italy and the Netherlands. Press Release (Mar 8)

"Ask.com today introduced the beta versions of Ask.com France , Ask.com Italia and Ask.com Nederland, representing the company's most recent expansions in Western Europe. The beta search sites are available in each respective country at www.ask.com and can also be accessed directly from any country at fr.ask.com, it.ask.com, nl.ask.com."

Ask also has country versions for the UK , Spain, and Germany.

Ask France will also have page translation for English into French.

Online Video Directory

Searchforvideo.com Launches Comprehensive Video Directory. Business Wire via Marketwatch (Mar 8)

"As more video content becomes available online, consumers are increasingly turning to online video as an alternative to TV. However, searching for interesting videos to watch is not a simple task as channel surfing on your television. "We frequently analyze consumer usage and feedback on searchforvideo.com and it is clear that the majority of users still find it difficult to express what they are searching for using keywords," says Tom St. John, CTO. Searchforvideo.com has launched their video directory to provide consumers with a more efficient way to find online videos."

Searchforvideo is a great new directory site for finding video on the Web. There are categories for news, technology, sports, entertainment, business, health and something called viral, which may have something to do with popularity.

Windows Live Search

Microsoft Launches Windows Live Search Beta. Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 8) -- MSN has launched its new search service in beta - Windows Live

"Windows Live Search complements MSN search, and ultimately both services will be powered by the same underlying technology, according to Adam Sohn, Microsoft's Director of Global Sales & Marketing PR. While the Windows Live site will focus primarily on productivity, the MSN brand will continue to evolve as a media and content destination."

Talk about plain - there is so little on the search page that you wonder if the page has downloaded yet. There are two sliders on the search results page: one for amount of description, the other for scrolling down the results.

Windows Live Search has web search, a new image search, news search, RSS feeds, mail, local search with the wonderful new MSN mapping (US only). Sherman mentioned shopping and MSN spaces but these are not showing up in Toronto.

The Business Website Search Box

The Business of Specialized Search. By Brian Livingston, Earthweb (March 7, 2006) -- What search tool should a small business use on its web site? Livingston looks as swickis (search wikis) used at Eurekster, and Rollyo for "roll your own". Article has examples.

Amazon a Worry

Amazon Under Fire On Books As Google Debate Rages -- "Some publishers see Amazon as a bigger threat than Google, and one major bookseller is actually considering severing ties with the E-commerce giant." -- Jeffrey Goldfarb, Reuters via Information Week (Mar 6) -- No kidding. Someone finally tumbled to this.

Victoria Barnsley, chief executive of HarperCollins UK, said, "We all want to talk about Google, but personally I see Amazon as a bigger threat because Amazon has shown a lot of signs that they actually want to move into the publishing space."

Pico for web search

Blinkx revamps search application by Juan Carlos Perez, Computerworld (Mar 8)

Blinkx has replaced its desktop search engine of the same name with Pico aimed at improving web searching. Desktop search is an add-on.

"Like its predecessor, Pico "reads" whatever a user has on the screen at any given moment. Pico then compiles on-the-fly lists of Web pages that are relevant to the on-screen text, which can be from a Web browser window, a word processing document or an e-mail message."

The application installs a toolbar of channels for web, blogs, and other sources. Click on the icon for related results.

You can download the Pico application from http://www.blinkx.com/. There is a small demo that explains the channels and background search.

WiFi in Toronto

There are more details about the WiFi (wireless fidelity) network that Toronto Hydro Telecom will create in Toronto.

It will be introduced to the financial district in downtown Toronto in June running Front to Queen and Spadina and Church, which, one hopes, includes the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. By the end of the year it is to be expanded north to Bloor and east to Jarvis.

"By blanketing the city with radio signals, reaching as high as 40 storeys, transmitting and receiving units on utility poles will carry data to and from Toronto Hydro headquarters via fibre-optic lines already laid beneath city streets."

Access will be free for the first six months and a yet-to-be-determined price after that.

Wireless Net access to blanket core by Jeffrey Hawkins, Globe and Mail (Mar 8)

Also see Downtown T.O. goes wireless by Tyler Hamilton, The Star (Mar 8)

Ultimately the Toronto WiFi project will be the largest in North America, with the entire city covered in 3 years. Pricing is to be competitive with Bell, Rogers, and Telus.

The Star has additional information -- How WiFi Technology Works [PDF]

Also some consideration of the health risks - Cool, but how safe is it? "Toronto Hydro plans blanket wireless network for city core Some urge caution in the face of potential health risks" by Isabel Teotonio (Mar 8)

BookingBuddy for Travel Deals

BookingBuddy.com to Deliver Great Travel Deals via RSS Feeds -- New Service Expands Reach and Provides Further Convenience for Users -- PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Mar 7)

BookingBuddy is a comparison travel shopper. Subscribers can get an RSS feed that brings together great deals from hundreds of travel partners.

""BookingBuddy's RSS feeds are useful for the average Internet user who regularly visits multiple travel sites in search of great travel deals," said Krista Pappas, senior vice president of Smarter Living, Inc., parent company of BookingBuddy. "Now, BookingBuddy visitors can simply click on the RSS link on the site and have travel deals directly sent to them. By viewing the feeds through an RSS reader, like My Yahoo!, Bloglines and Feedster, travelers eliminate the need to search multiple sites for the best deal. "

There are two feeds at present: Top Travel deals for flights, hotels, vacation packages; and Domestic Air (where domestic likely means the United States).

BookingBuddy does have travel information for Canadians - airport listings, flights, hotels.

Exalead One: Enterprise

Exalead Simplifies Enterprise-Wide Information Access with New Unified Search Software , PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Mar 6)

"... exalead one:enterprise(TM) 4.0. Built on the company's unified exalead one:search(TM) technology platform, the new version of Exalead's enterprise search software delivers tremendous performance improvements, greater flexibility and customization capabilities, as well as new semantic technologies to improve multi-lingual search results."

Compare Wikis

WikiMatrix documents the features of other Wikis and offer guidance on how to choose the best one for your purposes.

Mentioned in the March 2006 issue of the Internet Resources newsletter.

Tagging as Social Trend

Tagging - the latest way to search the web by Jeff Jarvis, Guardian Unlimited (Jan 2) - names tagging as an important new trend.

"But tags are proving to be more powerful than that. Tags are a means not only to remember links, but also to discover content tagged by others, to target searches and advertising, to connect people of common interests, and even to collect the wisdom of the crowds."

Mentions that David Weinberger, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, is writing a book about tagging - Everything is Miscellaneous -

Cyberlibel

‘Cyberlibel' cases mount with rising popularity of blogs , Canadian Press via Globe and Mail (Mar 4) -- Be careful what you post to a blog or put into an email. You could be sued for libel. Companies are trolling the blogs form mention of their name - it's called "reputation management".

SiteAdvisor for Protection

Exposing Web Addresses' Hidden Mischief By Brian Krebs, Washington Post (Mar 5) -- Brian Krebs tested SiteAdvisor, a plugin for Internet Explorer to be used when reviewing search results that will warn of sites that may be troublesome for spyware, scams, viruses, spam - somewhat like an automated Better-Business-Bureau assessment. He found that "overall, SiteAdvisor does a good job", but that its database had some holes.

Go to SiteAdvisor to get the trial version. You can also enter any web address from the home page to get a site report. And you can join as a volunteer to add your review comments about the safety of a site.

Toronto Wi-Fi

Toronto to get Wi-Fi blanket by Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail (Mar 6) -- Toronto Hydro may bring Wi-Fi to Toronto by placing place wireless transmitters and receivers in the lamp posts. Some portion of the system might be available by the fall.

"The idea of wireless broadband is to cover whole cities with the same kind of wireless technology found in many homes and small businesses. Toronto Hydro plans to link it to its "smart meter" plan, under which it could monitor electricity usage in homes and businesses over the Internet. Toronto Hydro could reach each smart meter with a laptop or any other computer."

The fate of LII

Librarians' Internet Index Faces 50% Budget Cut, Library Journal (March 6)

The excellent Librarians' Internet Index is facing a massive budget cut beginning July 1. It may drop by 50% to $200,000 that will mean cuts to an already slim staff. The site gets 10 million hits a month, 20% from Californians. LII is considering ads and sponsorships.

The UK has the foresight to fund the Resource Discovery Network, and even to re-brand it to Intute , but in the US budgets are cut.

Intelligent Agent

Robert Berkman has opened a new blog called Intelligent Agent. This is one of several blogs supported by Information Today. In the opening posting, Bob described its purpose a, "a brand new blog with news, conversation and analysis about business research on the Web, with a special focus on the intersection of business research and Web 2.0." Bob has been using and evaluating online services for many years. His comments are bound to be insightful and his discoveries or recommendations useful. But first it would be a help if they could get the RSS feed from Blogger working.

Hoovers' Beta

The New Hoover's: Simple. Comprehensive. Unified., by Deborah A. Liptak, Newsbreaks (Mar 6) -- "Simple and elegant, Hoover’s new beta interface ( http://beta.hoovers.com ) evokes the “Power of Simplicity” in this 21st century Web site makeover. " This site is for paid subscribers. The free Hoovers is unchanged.

Lexxe for questions and clusters

Lexxe -- Natural Language Search Engine With Clusters, ResearchBuzz (Feb 23) -- Lexxe is just starting out as alpha (essentially test mode) that prefers to process natural language questions - (See the Help page) - and will cluster results.

Wiki MetaSearch

Qwika Searches Multiple Wikis, Provides Translated Pages, ResearchBuzz (Feb 24) -- Qwika searches several language versions of Wikipedia and does the translations. Also picks up Wiki Travel, and there are plans to add more.

"Though the machine translation looks pretty bumpy, I like Qwika, which searches across Wikipedia articles in several different languages and provides machine-translated versions of pages which are not in the language in which you're searching."

Market Research Sources

"Purchasing and using market research services: some starting points on the Web", By David Mort, Freepint (Mar 3) - Has advice and resources for people who need to buy market research or commission a new study.

Expert Google Search

Advanced search made easy with MsFreckles. Pandia Search (Feb 17)

MsFreckles.com is a new tool that reconfigures advanced search features at Google to make it easier for people to use them. Available in English, Swedish, and Mandarin.

This seems similar to Soople - "easy expert search".

Trail Blazing

Trexy.com — old idea gets new life Pandia (March 3)

The idea of Vannevar Bush's Memex lives on in Trexy.com.

"London based Trexy.com is trying to build the Memex machine, using searches done in search engines like Google, MSN and Ask.com for the search trails. Trexy.com remembers the search terms and the web pages visited on over 3000 engines. Trexy also enables users to follow the anonymous search trails of other searchers."

Search Statistics

Nielsen//NetRatings: What Search Slowdown?, by Pamela Parker, Clickz (Mar 3) -- comScore Media Metrix sees a slowdown in the growth of web searching over the past year, but Nielsen/NetRatings says otherwise. Both peg the volume at 5.5 to 5.7 billion searches in January 2006. It's possible that there is a slowere growth in new searchers, but existing searchers are searching more.

Google still has the lead at 48% and Yahoo at 22%. Each picked up 1% from MSN which is now at 11%.

Google and the British Library

Google Scholar becomes direct link to British Library, by Mark Chillingworth, Information World Review (Mar 2)

Searchers using Google Scholar will see results from the British Library collection and, if not a subscriber, have the option to buy the article.

"The British Library (BL) became a directly linked resource for scientific and academic information on the Google Scholar search engine following a deal between the two parties today. Search results in Google Scholar will now feature – if the article is in the national collection – a BL Direct tag alongside the cache and citation links ."

Kayak Trip Ideas

Kayak.com Becomes First Travel Site to Combine User-Generated Content With Fare Availability -- With One Click, Consumers Can Create and Share 'Trip Ideas' and Then Easily Search for Relevant Flights, PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Mar 2)

Kayak.com launched " "Trip Ideas", a community-based forum that encourages users to create and share travel destination "wish lists" with other users">

Google Search Tips

10 tips to improve your Googling by Peter Grad, Ottawa Citizen (Mar 2) - 10 tips on how to use Google on searches. The two tips concerning telephone numbers apply to numbers in the United States.

Google News Mobile News

Google News Goes Mobile -- Search giant has optimized its news page for mobile phone users. Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service (Mar 1) - but only for US users. "Other Google services for mobile users include Gmail Mobile, local for mobile, which includes maps and driving directions, and a home page personalization capability."

Bell Canada Sings

Bell buying online music store by Catherine McLean, Globe and Mail (Mar 2) -- "Bell Canada is buying a majority stake in Canadian Internet music store Puretracks as the phone company pushes further into the on-line entertainment market."

Podcasting Content

"MP3s, Podcasts and all that" By Nick Luft, Freepint (March 1) - deals with what is a podcast, but more importantly, what kind of content you can get. Makes a person want to go out and get an iPod.

Google Books Discussion

Google’s Not-So-Simple Side, Inside Higher Ed (Feb 27) -- Google's Book Project to scan books in libraries was the topic of discussion by The American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.

Squeet for RSS via Email

Don't want to use a RSS newsreader? Get those feeds in email with Squeet. It's free and at the moment it does not have advertising.

Using Search History at Search Engines

Tracking Your Search History, by Greg Notess, Online (March 2006) -- Search engines have been adding personal search features over the past 12 to 18 months. Ask.com has Mystuff (renamed from MyJeeves), Yahoo has MyWeb2.0 (an upgrade from MyWeb), Google introduced Personalized Search, and A9 combines the history tracker with bookmarking and notes. They vary in capabilities.

Notess reviews these noting their idiosyncracies. He found Google and Yahoo buggy and awkward - and I agree. I think Yahoo has recently added the My Search History to My Web 2.0 - although it could also be that it was very well hidden. The search history is not searchable and it only keeps clicked-on links - not all that useful.

A9 requires the toolbar but it's much easier to use and keeps records of all searches, regardless of search engine.

I have had need to check back on searches from time to time and not one of these tools has helped me.
- A9 has too much history - though of the three I prefer it because it does tell me what I tried.
- Yahoo's search history can't be searched.
- Google has to be turned on and when I needed it, it must have been turned off. I will turn on Google History on particular research projects when I want to run several different searches, bookmark some discoveries, and keep track of it all.

Notess is not a great fan of any of these either, in part because he uses several engines. He also warns of privacy concerns and recommends not using this where computers are shared or there is a highly secured office environment.

Quintura Search 1.5

Quintura Releases New Version Quintura Search 1.5, press release (Mar 1)

The latest version of Quintura "offers the enhanced ability to create and share personal scopes". Judging from the demo, it is quite impressive.

From the press release:

"Quintura Search 1.5 delivers an improved visual search interface with a better usability and more search customization options. The new version has been enhanced in several areas.

User Experience

· Improved “search cloud” or a visual map of tags (hints) related to search
· New search engines and popular web-sites are now included in the search engine menu (Amazon, Ask, Dogpile, Metacrawler, Wikipedia, Yahoo! News, etc.)
· New option that displays history of user’s search queries and search projects
· New option to download the search scopes from Quintura’s web-site

Customization

· Improved tools to create and operate with a search query (scope)
· Improved removal of unwanted search links or web-sites from the result list
· New Favorites feature enables saving favorite results"

View the demo of Quintura Search 1.5 at www.quintura.com/quinturasearch/demo/

Where People Get Their News

Outsell, Inc. Surveys 2,800 Consumers on News Habits; Analysts Find Newspaper Readers Have Little Loyalty When They Go Online, Preferring Non-Newspaper Sites, Business Wire (Feb 28)

"Health, Wealth and Travel Websites Rapidly Replacing Print as Americans Look for Information And Deals"

"Seventy-one percent of respondents say they rely on network, cable and satellite TV as primary or secondary sources of national news. Thirty-three percent choose their local newspapers first or second to bone up on national events, followed closely by the 28 percent who access sites like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN (collectively known as GYM) and AOL News, which are aggregating national news articles from multiple major dailies and wire services. Only 11 percent of consumers are relying regularly on their own daily newspapers' Websites. Outsell's report shows a generational chasm between the older demographics, who prefer the now-dominant TV and newspapers, and the younger, who prefer online access for their news and information."

TV Guide Adds Video

TVGuide.com Launches Enhanced Search Product, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Feb 28)

TVGuide.com has used the FAST search technology to enhance searching of its collection of text, documents, images and multimedia. TVGuide has local listings for customers in the United States, and picks up listings of some providers in Canada (but not Rogers).

"TVGuide.com ( www.tvguide.com) has launched a new online search product, it was announced today by Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc.
Debuting today, the enhanced search engine provides consumers with a uniquely relevant and comprehensive experience by integrating online video with the breadth and depth of TV Guide's database of listings, photos, show and episode descriptions, news, reviews, ratings, celebrity information, podcasts, TV Guide magazine covers, and other information."

Answers.com Adds Titles

Answers.com Doubles Content Over Previous Six Months New Licensed and Original Content Fuels Satisfaction, Traffic, and Revenue Growth User, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Feb 28)

Answers.com, by adding new sources, now covers three million topics. It has also begun to create its own content in "Resource Centers".

"Among the new titles that were recently added are a leading legal encyclopedia, and the Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer, both licensed from Thomson Gale, as well as several other titles covering such diverse topics as word origins, gardening, geology, pop performers' biographies, and ornithology. Answers Corporation has also extended its long-term agreements with some of its key content partners, such as Houghton Mifflin Company - the source of more than a dozen titles integrated into Answers.com - and the Computer Language Company, publisher of the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia."

Healthline at Info.com

Info.com Adds Health Vertical Search to Its Search Platform; Healthline Partnership Enriches Info.com Medical Content in Response to In-Depth Queries, Marketwatch (Feb 28)

Meta-search engine, Info.com adds Health to its search verticals through an agreement with Healthline.

"Through its partnership with Healthline, Info.com now offers information seekers access to Healthline's proprietary process for crawling indexing and ranking over 170,000 health and medical sites representing 130 million pages of content across the Internet. To present this information in medically accurate context, Healthline has developed the largest consumer health taxonomy of its kind, featuring an information classification system that delivers precise, relevant open Web results, related physician-reviewed articles and HealthMaps(R) -- Healthline's unique visual navigation tools -- to optimize the search experience for individuals seeking healthcare information."

Social Search

Beyond single searches -- Commentary: Seeking and sharing answers, Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Feb 28)

Poses two big questions that relate to the future of search and the role of social groups - "How does Google, or any other search engine, make results more relevant by allowing people to share them? And, can Google Page Creator -- which was just launched -- or startups, like Jeteye or Plum.com, replace email correspondence by fusing search and email functions in a one-step fashion?"

Francisco is quite convinced that a social or sharing component to search will lead to better information gathering. Her example is research she did for a trip to Maui. She compared the effort and back and forth of email exchanges with friends to the use of a JetEye Pack, essentially a web page that others can view more easily and can be updated from anywhere. The argument is good. Unfortunately the JetEye Pack she gave as an example doesn't have the promised images.

Other tools mentioned include Yahoo IM for sharing searches (though not saving them), Plum.com (similar to Jeteye), and Pandora (popular music), MeeVee (TV in the US) and Glam (as in glamour and shopping).

However, there are many instances where group searching may not apply. Librarians deal with a huge range of requests where there might not even be a subject specialty. Individuals have a wide range of interests and needs and can't be glomming onto a group for every question.