Internet News

Yahoo Babelfish

Yahoo Starts Up Yahoo Babelfish at Research Buzz (Apr 29) -- Yahoo has taken the translating tool, Babelfish, that has been at Altavista and finally put up a Yahoo version - http://babelfish.yahoo.com/.This one handles conversions between Chinese traditional and simplified. You can also add the tool to your Yahoo toolbar. See the posting at the Yahoo Blog

Google Page Creator

Google now provides web space to its members with Google Page Creator: put up photos, travelogues - whatever. This probably completes the picture for Google as a consumer portal.

"Google Page Creator is a free tool that lets you create web pages right in your browser and publish them to the web with one click. There's no software to download and no web designer to hire. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and are available at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com for the world to see."

You need a GMail account to do this, but this page will take you to a free sign-up for that too.

New Software for Reading News Online

New way to get the news - Microsoft software can replicate your newspaper - By TODD BISHOP, Seattle PI (Apr 29)

"Speaking in Seattle to a convention of the nation's newspaper editors, the Microsoft Corp. chairman brought out executives from The New York Times to demonstrate prototype software that displays text and images on the computer screen in much the same way as in the paper."

But you still need a computer and a connection to read the newspaper.

Google Search Results

Google Trying On Some New Page Designs, ResearchBuzz (Apr 26) -- More talk about possible changes in display of search results at Google, based this time on the Google Blog posting.

Windows Live Search Beta

Microsoft Adds Tools to Latest Search Service -- "Still in beta, new service offers promising Web search features." by Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (Apr 27) - Describes the web search features of Windows Live

Of interest: "Another new feature--one that will have to prove its merit--is the search macro. It lets you search with a single click a group of sites you select, but only after you've logged in to a Microsoft Passport Network account (a step I expect many people will hesitate to take simply to perform a search)."

New Forms of Spam

Beware the sophisticated style of spam to come by DAWN WALTON, Globe and Mail (Apr 27)

"Unless new weapons are designed to keep junk mail at bay, spammers are about to get the upper hand in the war in cyberspace.

Canadian researchers have figured out a way to create spam that could bypass the best filters and trick even the most savvy computer users into opening messages they would normally delete."

Thoughts on Search Engines

The future of search -- Commentary: What experts think of Ask, MSN, others, Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Apr 28) -- Francisco looked for some opinions on the current state of search by "Googling for the answer" -- "I typed into Google: "What does John Battelle think about the future of search?""

Yahoo Blog Search

Yahoo's Blog Searching: A Couple Hints, ResearchBuzz (Apr 25) - you start at Yahoo News site , run the search, and look for blog results on the right side of the page. Researchbuzz has more tips.

Travel Search Engine Farechase

Yahoo's FareChase: The Stealth Disruptor? by Brian Smith, SearchDay (Apr 27)

FareChase has been a small player as a travel search engine, but with the new integration with Yahoo Search it is poised to become much better known and to bring much more business to travel search engines. The article describes the strengths of FareChase / Yahoo Travel -- "All the travel search engines have the same basic flight search functionality—sorting, filtering, amenities, etc. The power of FareChase comes from the integration of hotel search with other Yahoo! properties."

Quaero prospects poor

Does France really need its own search engine?, Bobbie Johnson, Guardian (Apr 27) -- Quaero project is " is part of a much wider revolt against American dominance of the web." But that doesn't mean it will succeed.

"Europe is already happy to use Google, and without serious innovative ideas, Chirac's project could be consigned to history's dustbin by more experienced competitors or more audacious upstarts."

Relevancy of search results

Is Google Search More Relevant Or Is There A Brand Factor?, by Barry Schwartz, SEW Blog (Apr 26) - Search behaviour was discussed in a panel at the SES conference in Toronto. Results are fuzzy but it may be that perception makes Google's results seem relevant to searchers, whereas they could do just as well at Yahoo or MSN.

LCSH Questioned

The End of LCSH? Provocative Report Stirs Up Cataloging Discussion, Library Journal (Apr 24)

"Should the Library of Congress (LC) jettison Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the longstanding professional taxonomy? That's one of the provocative suggestions in a new report announced Tuesday by the LC."

Looksmart History

10 Years of LookSmart - Visual Timeline , Search Engine Journal (Apr 26)

Looksmart has undergone many changes in the last 10 years - from one of the first subject directories to a niche operator now.

"Recently they’ve been focusing on niche content driven portals, tagging and social applications, Internet security and are expanding their paid search offering beyond search engines (one of their past search advertising partners was MSN) and into contextual."

Great article with screen shots from the past. Makes one nostalgic.

Blog Search at Sphere

Sphere: A New Approach to Blog Search, Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Apr 25)

Looks like there is lots to like in this new search engine for blogs. "Sphere takes a new approach to blog search, looking at three critical variables to understand both individual blog posts and the nature of the blog they appear on."

Sphere is still in beta - check in a week or so.

Quaero Project

France launches 'Quaero' search engine project By Anne-Francoise Pele, EE Times (Apr 25)

"President Jacques Chirac of France announced Tuesday (April 25) a 2 billion euro (about $2.5 billion) plan to back a series of projects including one on a Franco-German search engine intended to rival Google." ... "The six projects include the multimedia search engine “Quaero”, which means “I search for” in Latin, which is intended to compete with the ubiquitous Google. The “Quaero” project aims at developing multimedia search software for the general public that would be used on both computers and mobile phones."

Google Search Tips

Looking for tools to help teach your patrons how to use Google more effectively? -- Google Librarian has two posters with search tips that students and trainers can use. These are nice as a start and do mention define, the similar operator, and number range - but they don't have title search or url search, to mention two important tips.

The Google Cheat Sheet has more but it is incomplete too.

Reed Elsevier and Academic Publishing

Publishers watch in fear as a new world comes into view by Dan Milmo, media business editor. The Guardian (Apr 19) - Reed Elsevier, the publisher of academic and scientific journals and databases, faces many challenges not the least of which are Google Scholar and Windows Live Academic.

Google Maps has Europe

Google Maps Details Europe, Search Engine Journal (Apr 25) -- Google has done some upgrades at Google Earth and Google Maps. It has been reported that aerial views for Google Earth, especially for Europe, is much improved. Google Maps is also better for Europe now with streets and driving directions.

Entry refers to a blog that is only about maps - The Map Room.

Google Maps may cover Europe now, but it there are still some holes such as Hawaii.

Google Snippets Have More Links

Google Web Site Categories Explored by Barry Schwartz, SEW Blog (APr 24)

Google is showing some additional links for certain search results that seems to dig into the site a bit more. Of course, people are trying to figure out the logic behind the selection.

For example, on this search for library and archives canada you'll see a link for the site and to an page of Important Notices as well as more results. Schwartz at SEW calls these "web categories", an unfortunate choice of word since category suggests subject, and these links have nothing to do with topical treatment of the site.

In any event it is a change at Google. and based on analysis done at Social Patterns , seems to be related to traffic patterns.

New CEO at Ask

Ask.com names new CEO By Elise Ackerman, Mercury News (Apr 24) -- "IAC/InterActiveCorp, owners of Ask.com, named Jim Lanzone chief executive officer on Monday."

Yahoo and Social Search

Social search getting hot at Yahoo -- MarketWatch (Apr 25) [Video] "Yahoo's efforts to build out social search is gaining "critical mass," says Product Strategy VP Bradley Horowitz. He talks with Bambi Francisco about monetizing these efforts and how the company is well-positioned to get into the video-uploading service game."

Current Awareness and CI

Got Competitive Intelligence? Tips, Tools, Techniques for the Savvy Marketer http://www.llrx.com/features/gotci.pdf - "Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici's guide has again been completely revised and updated to include new recommendations ranging from free websites, news alerts, RSS and blogs to fee-based subscriptions and licensed enterprise applications." This presentation has an excellent list of alerting services.

The Best in Specialty Search Engines

Beyond Google and Yahoo: New, Nifty Search Engines to Optimize Your Research http://www.llrx.com/features/supersearch.pdf, LLRX (April 2006)

Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici at LLRX recommend several specialty sites and vertical search engines for more focused searches. This is a pdf file (21 pages) and seems comprised mainly of screenshots. There are many good sites for scientific materials (Scirus, SciSeek, Public Library of Science, and EEVL), Health (PubMed, Medscape, Omni), US Government, News (Topix, Newsdirectory) and some specialty search such as Blogpulse, Podzinger, and Blinkx. There is much more - browse and try.
have put up this presentation about specialty sites and search engines recommendations focus on subject area and issue-centric sites to facilitate obtaining search results that are better targeted to the scope of your requests. Whether you are looking for government data, blogs, RSS feeds, videos, podcasts, news or scientific papers, this guide will serve you well.

Online Mapping Sites Reviewed

Mapping Goes Local - "When you're on the prowl for a new pizza joint, where do you go to find one" - By Davis D. Janowski, PC Magazine (Feb 15, 2006) -- Reviews the local mapping services that have been springing up over the past year. "This marriage of local search, mapping services, and creative imagery is fairly new, and the sites are still trying to, well, find themselves."

Covers -- A9.com Maps (beta), AOL Local, Google Local, Windows Live Local (beta) (Summary). Yahoo! Local Maps (beta) (summary), Yahoo! Local (summary); and gave top scores to Google Local and WIndows Live.

Search Wikis with Qwika

Wiki search engine Qwika grows, Pandia Search (Apr 12)

" Qwika is a search engine that searches wikis. Qwika’s goal is to index all wiki content. There is still some work to do before that ambitious goal is reached, but in the latest update an additional 1,144 wikis and 21,964,380 articles were included in the index."

Ask.com Chief Goes to MSN

Ask.com Chief Steve Berkowitz Jumps Ship To Microsoft's MSN, Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (Apr 22)

Berkowitz led Ask through some major changes to make it the strong and attractive search service it is today. Will he do as well with Windows Live?

Sullivan must think so. "In short, I think it's a great win for Microsoft. Steve knows what it's like to be an underdog in the search space and fight your way back onto the radar screen. My main reaction really is why stop at Steve? Microsoft should have bought Ask long ago."

Google Search Appliance

New Google search tool will peer into proprietary relational databases, Scott M. Fulton, TG PUblishing (Apr 19)

"With what Google is now calling OneBox for Enterprise, owners of the Search Appliance tool - a server component many customers still don't know the company even produces for corporate customers - will be able to peer into relational databases, retrieving information from a Google query that customers up to now may have had to retrieve using a specially programmed SQL query."

Yahoo Widgets

The Scout Report has featured Yahoo Widgets 3.1 saying, "The widgets offered here, [http://widgets.yahoo.com/ ]on the other hand, are small, yet mighty, stand-alone applications that can be used as helpful computer desktop extensions. While the basic widget package includes a small weather-forecaster and a
contacts list, users have submitted dozens of compelling additions to
Yahoo’s widget site, including a bulk coin tosser and one that tracks the
price of gold every 30 minutes. This application is compatible with all
computers running Windows 2000 or XP."

Opera 9 Beta

Web browser Opera 9 launched by JAMES NICCOLAI, ITWorldCanada via Globe and Mail (Apr 21)

"Opera 9 [beta] includes a feature called "widgets," which are small Web applications such as newsfeeds or games that reside in a window on a user's desktop. It also comes with the BitTorrent file-downloading software built in, meaning users don't have to start that software as a separate application." -- http://www.opera.com/

Relevance Ranking at Google Scholar

A Tip of the Cap (and Gown) to Google Scholar by Andrew Goodman, Traffick (Apr 21) -- appears that Google Scholar is making better use of citations to rank relevance. Goodman finds very good answers in his searches on democracy.

Also see: New relevance rank in Google Scholar by Greg Lindon.

ResourceShelf in Google Scholar Unveils New Sorting Option and Other Ways to Keep Current , describes this as a "new sorting option" for "recent articles". But it is not date-based. The ranking considers the "prominence of the author's and journal's previous papers, how many citations it already has, when it was written, and so on". ResourceShelf works through an example about avian flu.

Part two of that posting is about Other Tools and Concepts to use to Keep Current with Academic and Other Types of Materials.

Earth Day Searches

Earth Day Piques Interest in Environment-Related Searches by Enid Burns, Clickz (Apr 21) -- People at AOL Search have been thinking about the environment. "The top searched-for terms on the portal include: recycling, global warming, endangered species and solar power. Hybrid cars came in as the fifth-highest searched for environmental term." People have also been looking for sites about earth day such as earthday.net.

Google Search Results

Google Tests New Search Results Page - "Technology would significantly increase the amount of Web site information available" - by Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, PC World (Apr 20)

Some have picked up that Google is testing a new search results page that will show more text and possibly pull in an image and make it easier to search the site. The article links to a screen shot.

If Google goes ahead with this, it will be the first improvement to the main search engine in over a year.

Accoona's Talking Toolbar

Accoona Launches the First 'Talking Search Bar' to Help Internet Users Learn English -- Revolutionary Online Technology to Help Youngsters and Global Web Browsers Learn English; Search Bar Allows Users to Highlight English-Language Online Text to Be Read Aloud by Computer -- PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Apr 20) -- Toolbar is at Accoona - wonder if it works?

Shopping Wiki

ShopWiki Launches Next-Generation Shopping Search Engine -- Searches More Stores than Any Other Shopping Search Engine; Features 1,000+ Wiki Buying Guides -- Marketwatch (Apr 19)

"ShopWiki uses advanced Web crawling and extraction technologies to index products from more than 120,000 stores." Uses the wiki technology for the buying guides, a la Wikipedia.

Web Classifieds

ISO Best-Selling Model for Web Classifieds By Leslie Walker, Washington Post (Apr 20) -- Suddenly the Web became the place to search for classifieds, at least in the United States. These are vertical search engines that "scrape" the web for listings. Oodle, as an example, indexes more than 15 million ads from across the US Web. Google Base invites people to list what they want to sell. This article describes several more. How will this affect newspapers who have depended on revenue from selling ad space?

More Social Networking

Social Networking's Gold Rush -- "The movement continues to defy doubters and draw big investments. The latest includes $25 million for a piece of Facebook" -- By Steve Rosenbush and Timothy J. Mullaney, Business Week Online (Apr 19)

Is social networking hype or a real change in how Internet users will behave online? The money seems to be betting on new social-networking sites. Take SimplyHired.com as an example - a vertical search with forums and blogs and networks.

"SimplyHired searches the Internet for job listings at every place from competing job boards like Monster to the help-wanted section of hiring firms' own Web sites and aggregates them on its site. It gets its revenue from selling paid-search ads, both through Google and other ad networks and through its own sales force. Plus, SimplyHired gets referral fees for finding qualified candidates, including payments from larger job boards that need to deliver value to employers who pay them directly."

Search Market Shares March 2006

Number of Search Queries Gain in March, Google Leads the Way by Comscore (Apr 17)

"ComScore Networks today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines. In March 2006, Google gained in search market share versus year ago for the eighth consecutive month and maintained its status as market leader with 42.7 percent of searches conducted on its sites. Yahoo! remained in second place with 28.0 percent, while MSN ranked third with 13.2 percent."

+ Americans made 6.4 billion searches in March, up 10% from February.
+ Google sites had most of those searches (2.7 billion)
+ Among toolbar users, Google's toolbar is most used (48.9%), but Yahoo is a close second at 46.5%.

Huckabuck a Metasearch

Huckabuck is a new metasearch engine that searches Yahoo, Google, and MSN but with a difference: you can adjust which search engine is used most through sliders in the "search tuner". The tuner is quite fancy, but basically it appears to change the number of results taken from a given engine. Other things you can do:

+ change the colour
+ increase the number of results on a page
+ change from metasearch to research, blogs, shopping. Oddly, this just changes the proportional use of the engines, where Research uses more Google, and Shopping uses more MSN.

There's also a "virtual keyboard" - click on letters instead of entering them on your own keyboard.

Huckabuck comes from New Orleans and will be reinvesting some of its profits to the city.

Mentioned by Jonathan Dube in New Search Sites: Taking on Google, Poynter Online (Apr 18)

Digg Technology News

Social bookmarking: vote early, vote often By Rafe Needleman, CNet Review (Apr 17)

Digg.com represents the latest development in social bookmarking. Here subscribers submit news stories, mainly about technology, and others vote on it. You can add a Digg feed to a web page, and, of course, blog the stories found there. According to the CNet article, publishers are keeping an eye on which articles are seen as the most popular.

"The new thing in feedback, at least for tech sites, is to flag a story on Digg.com. If you don't know it, Digg is a fantastic site that collects pointers to Web links (stories, blog entries, and so on) from its users. Links that are popular bubble up to the top of the list. Users of Digg then see these links, and if they also like them, they click a little Digg It button to add another vote. It appears under a square box--called a chiclet by some (like me)--that lists the number of votes the link got. "

Blogosphere Overwhelming

Blogosphere Doubles Every Six Months by Enid Burns, ClickZ (Apr 18)

The size and growth rate of the blogosphere is mind boggling.

+ 35.3 million blogs.
+ 75,000 new blogs a day
+ 19.4 million bloggers (55 percent) still maintain their blogs with new posts after three months of blogging.
+ on average, 1.2 million legitimate posts per day, or about 50,000 postings per hour

Figures are from Technorati - "Technorati currently tracks 35.5 million sites and 2.3 billion links through its real-time search engine."

MSN Photo Searching

Microsoft Shoots for Photo Search By Ben Charny, eWeek (April 14, 2006)

"Microsoft this week revealed that it is at work on a way to search the Internet using photos captured by cell phone cameras.

So rather than typing in an Internet search query, someone can e-mail Microsoft a photo of what they're searching for. Photo2Search, as Microsoft calls the nascent feature, returns Web pages either with information about the objects in the photo, or sites that contain similar images. "

User Behaviour and Search Results at Google

User Behaviour and Google Site Profiles By Jim Hedger, Search Engine Guide - April 17, 2006

There is a sense that Google is relying less on link analysis for ranking results and more on what it figures out about user behaviour and preferences.

"The term “user behaviours” describes any number of actions taken by people while using a Google branded search tool, while visiting a particular site in Google’s index, and while moving from site to site or document to document.

Basically, Google wants to know what its users like and dislike. Those user-judgements have become important factors in how Google ranks sites in its index and in personalized search results shown to registered users. "

Security Issues for Desktop Search

Desktop search tools seen raising red flags -- "Consumer tools brought into workplaces expose companies to data leaks." By Ann Bednarz and Denise Dubie, Network World, 04/17/06

Desktop search tools from MSN, Yahoo, Google and others are great for the users but bad for IT security.

"From a single interface, users can quickly search the text of their e-mail, contacts, application documents, data files, multimedia files and more.

The problem is the information these programs can find and potentially expose, such as documents on a shared file drive that are not properly secured or were supposed to have been deleted. "

Maps for China and Japan

MAPORAMA INTL. OFFERS IN WORLD PREMIERE STREET-LEVEL CARTOGRAPHIC COVERAGE OF CHINA AND JAPAN (Apr 13)

"Maporama International just finalized the integration of Chinese and Japanese road cartographic data. Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing are the three first Chinese cities covered by Maporama International in street level, what represents more than 5200 kilometers of roads and 29 millions of inhabitants.

Regarding Japan, it is Tokyo and Kyoto that are covered by Maporama International, where 30 millions of inhabitants are localised and more than 2300 kilometers of road fully integrated."

Reviewing Health News

Web site to rate content of health care news, AP via Star Ledger (Apr 17) -- University of Minnesota journalism professor Gary Schwitzer reviews and rates health news stories at the new site Health News & Review . The article states that he "fashioned the site after similar efforts in Australia and Canada".

First review on today's page was the New York Time's story, 'Low-Calorie Diet May Lead to Longer Life' - it received one star.

See comments by Genie Tyburski, New Web Site Rates Health News (April 18)

Virtual Chase Resource Guides

New Database on The Virtual Chase - Genie Tyburski has announced a new resource guides database that will replace the Company Information Guide. It will have information on web resources for researchers into companies, people or legal topics.

Video Channels

Why big search engines are in trouble -- Commentary: And, other implications of the splintered Net -- by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Apr 18) -- More young people are watching the video channels, and the more they do so, the lower the traffic at the main search engines. Article lists several Web video channels like OurMedia.org, Podzinger.com, Current.tv.

Microsoft Web Services

Web services: Microsoft's Path --
Vice-President Blake Irving talks about the movement from the desktop to the Net and how that changes Redmond's thinking -- Business Week (April 17)

"Microsoft (MSFT) is in the early stages of rolling out technology on top of which companies and individuals can more easily build their own Web services. Of course, Microsoft gets a piece of the business and puts itself at the core of the new Web world."

Windows Live Academic Search

Information Today Newsbreaks has two articles by Barbara Quint about Microsoft's scholarly search engine - Windows Live Academic Search . (Apr 17)

Microsoft Offers Alternative to Google Scholar: Windows Live Academic Search: Overall description of the beta version of Windows Live Academic Search, with some background on Microsoft's plans for Windows Live and the search components.

Windows Live Academic Search: The Details: Features, accomodations made for libraries, publisher relationships, and reaction from competitors including Google Scholar and Scirus.

Road Maps

GETTING THERE The science of driving directions by NICK PAUMGARTEN, New Yorker (April 17)

In the past we had Rand McNally to guide us in our automobile. Now we have Navteq and Tele Atlas who are the leading providers of geographic data to the Internet mapping sites and the personal-navigation industry. This article is a wonderful account of the changes in cartography, from Henry the Navigator through Andrew McNally to the ground-truthers of today working for Navteq. Ground-truthing is the practice of driving around to check routes and discover new ones and to note the "attributes" - bridges, ramps, exits etc - but they don't note the things we look for like a landmark. G.P.S. and the in-car mapping systems along with traffic updates (available in some U.S cities) is changing our lives, but not necessarily all for the better. Will people lose their sense of place?

"“Geographers now hate maps,” Nebenzahl said. “If you only give people a six-by-six-inch screen, how can they get a sense of where they are, or where they fit in? We’re pushing the next generation into geographic illiteracy by not giving them a sense of what world geography is.”"

Anyone who loves to pore over maps will love this article.

Magellan Metasearch

Magellan Meta Search has been recommended by Internet Scout as having a "rather impressive ability in the areas of discovery and exploration".

From the web site: "Magellan Metasearch is a modular meta search engine, enabling users to monitor as many search engines as they want. It provides a complex query language with standard boolean operators, meta-operators, and proximity operators"

MSN Plans Social Search

Microsoft Gets Social - "Redmond has big plans for tools and partnerships that will let users consult a circle of friends when conducting Web searches", Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek Online (April 14)

Microsoft has concluded that it has to get on the social-search bandwagon to compete with Yahoo and Google. It intends to release a new search tool that will have people asking their friends and other networks. Seems that "generic search engines can't answer 50% of queries" and all these companies thing social search will fill the gap.

Web-Search Statistics

GOOGLE ACCOUNTS FOR NEARLY HALF OF ALL WEB SEARCHES, WHILE
APPROXIMATELY ONE THIRD ARE CONDUCTED ON YAHOO! AND MSN
COMBINED, ACCORDING TO NIELSEN//NETRATINGS Net-Ratings Inc (March 30, 2006)

Figures on search share for February 2006 show Google well in the lead again. Oddly, there is no mention of Ask.com.

"Google continues its lead in the search share competition, garnering 48.5
percent of all searches conducted in February 2006 (see Table 1). Yahoo! drew 22.5 percent of online searches, while MSN accounted for 10.7 percent of the search market. AOL and My Way Search rounded out the top five search providers with 6.6 and 2.7 percent of searches, respectively."

Image search grew by a stunning 91% in the United States. What do people do with all those pictures? Flickr isn't even on the list of Image Search Providers.

"Among search verticals, image search enjoyed the strongest year over year growth in February, increasing 91 percent. Google enjoyed the lion’s share of image search, with 71.9 percent, followed by Yahoo! with 19.1 percent and Ask.com with 3.5 percent (see Table 3). MSN and AOL rounded out the top
five image search providers."

Personal Portal at Google

Turn Google Into a Portal by Tara Calishain in WRAL Tech Talk (Apr 8) -- Google has added many features for personalizing access to the Web most particularly the Google personal page at http://www.google.com/ig. This article has instructions on how to set up your own page. Google has added several new content sources, tools, and games. A person can now set up a very serviceable page.

Canadians can create a page with some Canadian content through www.google.ca/ig and then use www.google.com/ig to add items from Fun and Games, Communication, and other categories.

You can also add the URL for a module or feed that you want on your homepage. At Google.com/ig this is through Advanced Options, and on the Google.ca/ig it is called Create a Section.

Map Sites Popular

The Score: Charting Map Site Traffic By comScore Media Metrix, iMedia Connection (April 13, 2006)

Online map sites have grown in popularity with 38% of the Internet user population visiting map sites in March 2006. The top three are MapQuest, Yahoo Maps, and Google Local. New functionality such as mashups of maps with events or places is attracting new users. Frappr supports groups and social networking, and Traffic.com provides real-time traffic information in US cities.

Trust and Information

In Google We Trust: Information integrity in the digital age by Lee Shaker, First Monday (April 2006)

Abstract: "This paper considers information safety and accuracy in the digital age using Google as an entry point. In doing so, it explores the role media play in shaping the relationship of information, privacy, and trust between Google and the public. This inquiry is undertaken using framing theory to guide a content analysis of the way Google is presented in New York Times articles from a two–year period ending in November, 2005. Analysis of the extensive coverage of Google’s share price and earnings reports leads to the conclusion that trust in Google is fostered in part simply by reports of its fiscal success. To the extent that this is true, meaningful public debate about information policies is inhibited."

Yahoo Instant Answers On

Yahoo is offering its Instant Search as an add-in to the Yahoo search page. Instant Answers looks ahead to find the major sites or news items.

The Instant Answers page has an option for adding this to your search.yahoo.com page, but it doesn't work with Firefox. Instead, you'll need to log into your My Web 2.0, click on Preferences, and Edit Display and Layout to Show Instant Search Results.

Yahoo Offers 'Instant Search' by Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb (Apr 11)

Google Calendar

Google offers free Web calendar service, Eric Auchard, Reuters (Apr 13) -- Google has introduced a slick new calendar service for managing everyday. It will even respond to events mentioned in email. Of course, people can share their calendars. Check www.google.com/calendar. There is some interconnectivity with other calendar applications that accepts iCal or XML files.

See Google Calendar Makes an Impressive Debut by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Apr 13)

"Bottom Line: Google Calendar is a very strong initial release, with a good balance between powerful features and ease of use. The ability to easily work with multiple calendars and the sharing features are particularly appealing, especially for people who are dissatisfied with their current calendar application."

Downside is that you have to be online - can't do this on a PDA.

Voice Command Search

Google Talks the Talk for Search by Ben Charny, eWeek (Apr 12) - Will we be able to ask Google questions by voice, talking to our computers or through a cell phone? "Google co-founder Sergey Brin and three others on April 11 were granted a U.S. patent for technology to let the human voice command Internet search engines."

Personal-Social-Vertical Search

Socially Searching For The Watercooler by David Berkowitz, Media Post (Apr 11) Will personalized search (you set your interests), social search (your searches and bookmarks are part of a larger community of contacts) and vertical search (subject or interest specific) meld together? Author mentions several tools for personal search and social search. He thinks there is a cultural shift to the "watercooler" in Web use and search.

Windows Live Academic

Microsoft creates academic search site to rival Google's By TODD BISHOP, Seattle PI (Apr 12)

" Windows Live Academic Search was launched in preliminary form Tuesday night. It lets researchers search the contents of academic journals to find abstracts and, if they subscribe to the journals, get the documents from the publishers' sites."

Microsoft Launches Windows Live Academic Search by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (APr 12)

"Windows Live Academic Search works closely with publishers and uses structured feeds to build its index. As such, all content accessed through the service comes directly from a trusted source—namely, the publisher of a scholarly journal."

Microsoft has been working with the CiteSeer group at Penn State. One feature -- "author live links" ... will automatically connect to the search results of articles associated with a particular author by simply clicking on the hyperlink of the author's name".

At present Live Academic service has content in the fields of computer science, electrical engineering and physics from scholarly societies. Groups involved include "industry association CrossRef, the IEEE, the ACM, Taylor & Francis Group, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics, Ex Libris, TDNet, Serial Solutions, Blackwell, Elsevier, Nature Publishing, British Library, OCLC and Wiley & Sons, Inc."

This is beta - available in English versions in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Australia.

Also see Gary Price's detailed review - Microsoft Launches Academic Search Beta, ResourceShelf (Apr 12)

Yahoo Travel

Yahoo improves travel planning via search and maps, Eric Auchard, Reuters via Yahoo News (APr 11)

"Using Yahoo's central search site, consumers can receive instant airfare and hotel price comparisons, satellite overview maps and user reviews of restaurants and tourist destinations, features that previously existed in different corners of the Yahoo network or elsewhere across the Web."

A travel related search in Yahoo.com might bring up information from Yahoo Travel. It works for compare hotels in las vegas but bombs on Lisbon, Toronto, and Kauai. It's better on flights to toronto.

Yahoo's travel site - http://travel.yahoo.com/ - has the Yahoo Trip Planner, blogs for travel logs, and comparison shopping through Yahoo's own FareChase systemas well as the low-fare databases of CheapTickets and Orbitz.

Webaroo for Offline Time

Webaroo searches while you're off the Web. It's a software program for downloading content to search and view while offline. Any device will do - laptop, pda, phone - as long as there is enough storage.

Mentioned in Webaroo: Strangeroo, but Useful, Poynter Online (Apr 11)

YouTube for Videos

Now starring on the Internet: YouTube.com by Michael Liedtke, AP via Business Week (Apr 9) -- Everywhere you turn on the Web these days, someone is talking about YouTube , considered a "leading video-sharing site".

"It's become an outlet for sharing everything from amateur videos made by teenagers goofing off to slick productions posted by the likes of Nike Inc., MC Hammer and the director of the upcoming movie "Superman Returns" to drum up demand for their products."

Every day people are posting about 35,000 videos and watching audience 35 million of them. It may have to deal with a few issues such as porn and copyright.

Creative Weblogging

Creative Weblogging is a blog media network - it invites people to be reporters and submit articles for which they are paid a nominal $6 if the article is published. It has slaunched version 2.0 of the citizen reporter tool Creative Reporter at http://www.creative-reporter.com. This is also a community - "With the new version of Creative Reporter, readers at Creative
Weblogging can now decide what's an interesting story. All submitted stories and links can be voted on. Once enough votes and clicks are gathered stories get published at Creative Weblogging blogs".

Creative Weblogging was founded in Germany in 2004 by by Torsten Jacobi and Raik Hoffmann, but is now based in Palo Alto, California. It is very interesting for its list of weblogs in various categories (mainly business oriented) and top 10 picks. Use Creative-Reporter to more easily browse and search the weblogs.

Internet Radio for the Good

Internet radio: Tuning in to local culture, TERRENCE BELFORD, The Globe and Mail (Apr 11)

"Two Canadian musical buffs, an international aid group and the state government of Chihuahua, Mexico ... [have] launched RadioTarahumara.com, aimed at bringing modern technology and communications to a remote Indian tribe in the mountains of Mexico's Chihuahua State."

"The Tarahumara are becoming familiar with computers as they use technology to create Internet radio programs aimed at educating, entertaining and improving the health of those in remote villages, he says. The programs also help preserve fast-disappearing cultural music and folk tales."

Webby Nominees 2006

See the nominees for the 10th annual Webby Awards . This is one of the best ways to see the truly creative web sites and services. Browse the 65 categories and consider registering and voting as part of the People's Choice. Winners will be announced on May 9.

See the press release about the categories and the process. (Apr 11)

DomainTools.com

-- DomainTools.com has a toolkit of lookup services for domain names that will give a profile on a domain, tell you your IP address, to a trace route and much else. There are Power Tools for members for monitoring a domain or doing reverse IP. Membership is free. This service used to be Whois.sc

Whois.sc was renamed DomainTools.com.

Studies into Searcher Behaviour

Searcher Behavior Research Update by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Apr 11) - The new iProspect Search Engine User Behavior Study shows that searchers are becoming a bit more dexterous in searching.

+ more look beyond the first page of 10. "62% of search engine users click on a search result within the first page of results, and a full 90% of users click on a result within the first three pages of search results." In 2002 the figures were 48% and 81%.

+ on finding nothing on the first search 41% will change engines or change search terms. It used to be 28%.

+ but of those more will stay at the same engine and change the search terms. 82% vs 68%.

In the UK Harvest Digital examined searcher behaviour and found many more using more than one search engine. (Only 24% said they used only one, and 20% used more than 4.) UK searchers might be more skeptical of the results: "Just 22% of users reported that they were confident that search engines would always give them the information that they needed."

Google Books Examined

The Google Library Project: Both Sides of the Story, by Jonathan Band, Plagiary: Cross Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification, 1 (2) (2006)

If you've been following the controversy surrounding Google's ambitions to digitize books either through agreements with publishers or libraries, this 17 page will have all the details.

"This article will attempt to set forth the facts and review the arguments in a systematic manner.3 Although both sides have strong legal arguments, the article concludes that the applicable legal precedents support Google’s fair use position."

Newsweek Covers Social Places

The New Wisdom of the Web by Steven Levy and Brad Stone, Newsweek ( Apr 3) - about tagging and social bookmarking and social places online especially MyPlace.com. It's all very Web2.0ish. Gary Price had many comments about the Newsweek article in his posting in ResourceShelf (March 26)

The New Infospace

Infospace is switching to being a local search engine for the U.S. The new search site will find people and businesses in places and neighbourhoods, as well as landmarks, events, festivals, movies. Phone listings are from Acxiom and InfoUSA; a metasearch using Google and Yahoo (and perhaps others) provides the web results.

See ResourceShelf Search Briefs (Mar 27)

Free and Useful Tools

101 Fabulous Freebies by Dylan Tweney, PC WOrld (May issue)

Assembles "useful downloads, sites, and services" -- "... best free software and services you can find. These are the real deal--no hobbled half-products or demos that time out after 30 days." Covers web-based email, online search, reference tools, instant messengers, places for storing and sharing files.

LexisNexis Picks Up Blogs

LexisNexis to Deliver Newstex Blogs on Demand, Newsbreaks (Apr ) -- LexisNexis will pick up blogs from Newstex who licenses content from independent bloggers and tags it with topical categories, company names etc.

MapQuest Enhancements

All Sorts of New Services, Search Options from MapQuest , ResourceShelf (Apr 3) - new options at Mapquest

Canada and the Immigrant

Moving Here, Staying Here - The Canadian Immigrant Experience at Library and Archives Canada. Documents such as passenger lists and land grants and some thematic material about immigrants settling in Canada.

Pixsy for Image Search

A Few Minutes with Relaunched Image Search Engine: Pixsy ResourceShelf (Apr 5) -- detailed look at Pixsy with sample searches for image and video. Conclusion -- "Overall, Pixsy search is an interesting idea that needs a lot more work to make it truly useful. The availability of more imagery via RSS will also help." Lists three others that are preferred.

Inside Microsoft

A Frank Interview with Gary Flake SearchBlog (Apr 5) -- John Battelle interviewed Gary Flake, formerly of Yahoo and now "founder and director of the new "Live Labs.""

Digital Reference Shelf - April

The April 2006 Edition of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf (Peter Jacso) reviews Encyclopedia of Television and the Oxford Journals Collection.

Windows Live Academic Search

Microsoft readies search services to rival Google, IDG News Service (Apr 10) -- Windows Live will have an academic search to compete against Google Scholar for searching academic journals and books. April 11 is the estimated date of arrival.

Why Titans like Microsoft Want to Talk to Librarians in UBC Google Scholar Blog: Folio (Apr 8) -- Dean Giustini, a librarian at the UBC medical school, had a preview and gave his critique. One positive: Microsoft will publish a list of what it indexes, unlike Google who won't divulge its coverage.

Also see the review in ResourceShelf (Apr 9)

Accoona Panned

The Accoona search engine, is this something?, Pandia (Apr 2) -- As Pandia notes, Accoona has been around for a couple of years claiming to be good for business search and news. A few months ago it seemed to improve its "intelligent search" and had more choices for super-targeting a search in business and news. Pandia grants that these are nice features but does this make Accoona an engine to watch? Maybe not - Pandia is worried about Accoona's connection to China and the adware infected toolbar it released.

RocketNews Has Sound and Video

RocketNews now indexes sound and video by Lars Våge, Internetbrus in Pandia Search (Apr 3) -- Very positive review of RocketNews -- "RocketNews is among the best independent news search services, along with NewsNow and Topix.net. Now they index sound and video in addition to news and blogs."

Special Collections at NewsPaperArchive

Specialized collections from the NewspaperARCHIVE, Pandia Search (Apr 5)

"The NewspaperARCHIVE contains 35 million pages of historic newspapers dating from 1753-2006 online. In the past month it has launched a series of free specialized collections pulled from the archive of digital newspaper images."

Selections seem to be mainly (entirely?) from newspapers in the United States.

Name That Tune

What's that tune? Search tool knows, Mercury News (Apr 3) -- Tunatic can tell you the title of a song you're hearing and the performing artist. It will also display links for learning more and buying the CD. Install the software, and then point your microphone at the sound source.

Google Base

Google integrates classifieds into search results by Charlene Li, Forrester (Apr 6) -- Charlene Li noticed that ads for real estate and cars were turning up in Google results in the form of suggested refinements to the search. The refinements were the same as those that show in Google Base. I can't replicate this in google.ca or google.com. Google is likely experimenting with a view to employing Google Base on certain types of queries.

What's Podcasting?

Forrester: Few Have Ever Heard a Podcast by Zachary Rodgers, Clickz (Apr 6)

Podcasting may have been in the news as a new word in 2005 (or was that 2004?), but hardly anyone knows what it is and fewer use it.

"The growth of podcasting has so far fallen short of its great expectations, with only one percent of connected North Americans using them on a regular basis according to a new Forrester Research report. More dismal for the nascent medium, about 73 percent of people say they've never heard of podcasting and don't care to learn more about it."

But for those who do use it, they do in order to pick up content from the radio for listening to later.

Google Toolbar V2 for Firefox

Toolbar v2 for Firefox fans, GoogleBlog (Apr 6) - Google has released a new version of the toolbar for Firefox. It will pick up feeds from the Google Personalized Homepage and some other feedreaders. There are some features for GMail users too.

NT Times on the Web

'NY Times' on the Web Unveils New Look, Features, Editor and Publisher (April 2)

"The New York Times on the Web unveiled a fresh new look on Sunday, with new features. Most notably, besides a more pleasing design, there are now many more chances to see what fellow readers are up to. "

Yahoo MyWeb Is Better

Yahoo Enhances My Web with "People Centric" Tools, SEW Blog (Apr 5) -- It will be much easier to share pages and bookmarks in Yahoo MyWeb with others. Yahoo is dropping the requirement that everyone sign up for Yahoo 360 first.

Evaluating Search Engines

The Thrill & Danger Of Measuring Relevancy Through Ego Searches by Danny SUllivan, SEW Blog (Apr 4) - Sullivan compares the performance of several search engines on some simple searches. Ask.com is not properly consolidating domains. MSN is better but weights words in the domain name to heavily in the relevance ranking (Sullivan presents the examples of cars and movies). Yahoo, on the other hand, doesn't group pages from the same site together very well. And Google, we see, doesn't clean out 404s. All in all - one needs a battery of tests to evaluate relevancy and usability. Don't rely on an ego search.

Compare Hotel Prices

Search Party Launches New Hotel Price Search Engine -- "First Site to Compare Total Cost of Hotel Stay - Helps Online Travelers Easily Compare Nightly Rates, Taxes and Booking Fees, and Cancellation Policies", PRNewsire via Marketwatch (Apr 5)

" Search Party allows consumers to easily search and compare nightly room rates, taxes and booking fees, and cancellation policies for more than 40,000 U.S. hotels, across most major hotel brands and leading online travel sites, including Orbitz, Lodging.com, One Travel, Reserve Travel, LastMinuteTravel.com and many others."

Search for IPod Video Content

Searchforipod.com Launches Online Video Player with over 1,000 Video Content Sources, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Apr 5)

"Searchforipod.com is a free online video download community that aggregates and organizes iPod(TM) enabled video content from over 1,000 independent sources and makes it searchable through various content channels and traditional keyword search. The searchforipod video player lets users easily watch one video or a customized playlist of videos on the web before they make the decision to download a respective video or video playlist to a video iPod(TM)."

Search Startups

Beyond Google -- Commentary: Search is in demand, and VCs are obliging by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Apr 6) Who says Google will be search king for ever or that the search scene won't change? Francisco sees people doing more and more searching online. Already Pew Internet & American Life has identified search as tied with email as the top activity (Dec 2005). Article mentions some acquisitions and startups. A few we might note are

+ Feedster -- for blog, podcasts and news searches
+ X1 Technologies -- for desktop search,
+ Onmeta -- a search engine focused on entertainment
+ 4Info -- for mobile search
+ Rollyo -- "replicates searching based on someone else's preferences"
+ Swicki -- "a search engine that learns from the community, and if used can even strengthen a community"
+ Wink.com - tag searching
+ Tiltomo -- scan for related photos

Search may also change from keyword to true natural language. "Keyword searching -- which most search engines focus on today -- will seem archaic, especially when technology can truly grasp linguistics. Think about it. When we search today, we have to think in keywords. That's truly not natural."

Google's Real Estate Listings - U.S.

Google adds local real estate listings -- Search engine joins fight for attention of home buyers, sellers, By Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe (Apr 6)

Looking for real estate in the United States? "Visitors to google.com who search for the terms ''apartment rental" or ''homes for sale" are asked to type in a location. Results are then displayed with red push pins on a Google map."

This is part of Google Base project and at present does not include all listings. For example, MLS Property Information Network in Boston does not provide its content.

Marketwatch has an audio interview with Peter Zollman, founder of Classified Intelligence LLC. He says, "Google's new beta baby is to be feared and respected by newspapers and the real estate industry". Classified advertising is moving to a pay-for-performance model. Craigslist, as an example, dominates in many markets. Google Base, in time, will be strong competitor. Google Base, he says, i getting better "day by day".

Google Real Estate is a huge threat

Web Buzz at Popurls

Lots of Popular on One Page - ResearchBuzz found Popurls where the most popular urls from a variety of sites are mashed together. Sites include the social bookmarking sites like Furl and del.icio.us, some news sources, and photo-sharing sources. Be sure to heed Tara Calishain's advice to change the display to black on white.

RSS Image Search

Pixsy unveils visual Web search by Stephanie Olsen, ZDNet (Apr 3)

"A picture can be worth a thousand words, but an RSS feed is worth a million pictures. That's the virtual promise of Pixsy, a visual search engine that scours syndication feeds (in the format of Really Simple Syndication) for up-to-date images and then makes them searchable. "

It's really search by photo.

Google Maps Hacks

Hacking Google Maps by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Apr 5) - People keen on the mashups of Google maps with anything else will love this book.

"Like the other books in O'Reilly's Hacks series, this book offers up seventy "hacks" that range from descriptions of features or websites, to detailed scripts that require more than a passing understanding of programming to make sense."

Free Publications at Statistics Canada

Access to Statistics Canada's electronic publications at no charge, Statistics Canada (Apr 5)

"Effective April 24, all electronic publications on Statistics Canada's Web site will be available free of charge." ... "his latest move makes available at no charge more than 150 electronic publications for which fees were previously charged."

Credibility of Web Searches

Project to make Internet searches more credible UWNews.org (Mar 15) - Research group at the University of Washington working with Syracuse University is looking at ways to evaluate the credibility of websites and search results.

"... to create what they are calling the "Credibility Commons." The Commons is envisioned as a place where researchers can come together to develop ideas for improving the credibility of Internet searches and Web information. It is also envisioned as a location for making different Web search tools and collections available to the public to raise awareness regarding issues of credibility of the information that is retrieved."

RSS Feed Readers

Feed Readers Reviewed, Lee Odden of Business Blog Consulting (Apr 3) - There are dozens of newsreaders on the web that one can use to pick up RSS news feeds. This entry links to a review of several online feed readers in TechCrunch. It has a very nice comparison chart.

Search Engines Use Statistics in the UK

Brits regularly use more than one search engine- survey, NetImperative (Apr 4) - An online marketing agency in the UK surveyed people who had been online three years or more. Most (94%) used Google, while around 40% each used Yahoo (40%), Ask (39%) and MSN (37%).

"Only a quarter of people used just one search engine exclusively, while most users habitually used more than one search engine and a fifth of respondents used four or more search engines regularly."

Most people (69%) feel they find what they want "most of the time", but only 22% say they always find what they want. "More than two-thirds (68%) of users attributed this to a fault in their behaviour, thinking they are not using the correct search terms or believing the information they are looking for is too specialist. "

Some respondents were suspicious of advertisers. About a quarter felt results were skewed because advertisers pay to show up at the top.

Searchers are using more terms. More than two thirds say they use at least 3 words most of the time.

TV Guide

MeeVee Announces Official Launch of Video Search and Personalization Service; MeeVee.com Offers Consumers a One-Stop Destination to Search for and Find Something to Watch in the Vastly Changing World of Traditional Television and Internet TV, Business Wire via Marketwatch (April 3) - for television addicts. Only in the United States - pity.

Newspapers Online

Newspaper Sites Gain Audience by Enid Burns, CLickz (Apr 4) - Newspaper sites have seen many more visitors in the last year.

" In 2005, unique visitors to newspaper's online sites increased 21 percent. In the same time period, page views went up 43 percent. The report also found newspaper Web sites increased the total newspaper audience. Counted in the increase is a 14 percent rise in the 25 to 34 year-old demographic, and nine percent more readers in the 18 to 24 year-old age group."

US Legal Research on the Web

The People’s Law: Free Legal Help and Legal Research on the Web by Carol Ebbinghouse, Searcher (April 2006) - finds that free legal resources in the United States are getting better. However, use them warily and carefully.

Podcasting for Libraries

Podcasting 101 for K–12 Librarians, by Esther Kreider, Computers in Libraries (Apr 2006) -- Advocates that librarians produce podcasts to meet training needs -- "Podcasting supports efforts to differentiate instruction in the library in accordance with No Child Left Behind requirements. The podcast is a viable alternative for delivering research content or lessons to students who need re­medial or extended support. While auditory learners particularly benefit when podcasts are incorporated into the teaching model, librarians can help all students and staff find ways to creatively use podcasting."

Has instructions on how to create a podcast.

Windows Live

Keeping Up With The Googles "Microsoft's next Windows version is hung up, but its cool Web services are flowing freely", Business Week (Apr 10)

If there is a way to put Google in the title of an article even though the article is not about Google, writers will find it. In this case, the article is about Windows Live. Live , as it is more customarily called, is Microsoft's bid to attract consumers for the day, not just the hour. It is the ultimate in stickiness.

" What exactly is Live? It's a set of technologies designed to blend the programs people run on their computers, such as Windows or e-mail, with the things they do out on the Web. Live.com, for instance, is a next-gen Web portal loaded with services such as Windows Live Expo, where people can search classified ads on the Web and compare notes on bargains with people on their instant messenger buddy lists. Live "makes it feel like the Web isn't a place where you go to. It's linked [to desktop computing]..."

AOL Mobile

AOL Enhances Mobile Search, Announces Study Results, by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Apr 3)

"AOL has added a new "Surf the Web" option to its mobile search that makes it easy to both locate and view just about any web page without the aggravating scrolling that's often necessary using many web-enabled mobile devices."

Statistics About Searching

Hunting For Pictures Drives Big Boost In Web Searches, By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb News (Mar 31) -- The number of searchers is stable but they are doing more searches is the finding from Nielsen/NetRatings.

"Overall searches in February increased by 38 percent to 5.3 billion, compared with 3.8 billion in the same month a year ago, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The increase was due to more searches per person, since the number of unique searchers remained stable. The average Web user conducted 43.1 searches in February, compared with 33.2 a year ago. In contrast, the number of unique searchers increased year over year by a modest 6 percent."

People are looking for more photos and pictures, with usage climbing at all the image search engines. Google, again the giant, handles 71.9 % of image searches; Yahoo has 19.1% and Ask, 3.5%. Broadband access and the popularity of places like Flickr contribute to the increase.

Forbes' pick of travel sites

Top 13 Travel Sites, by Sophia Banay, Forbes.com via Wired (Apr 3) - Online travel planning is one of the largest categories in e-commerce. In 2005, 79 million people in the United States used the Internet to make travel plans. The top three services are Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity.

Forbes has rated thirteen online travel sites according to "aesthetic appeal, user friendliness and usefulness."

- Breezenet.com for car rentals at airports
- Concierge.com from CondeNast for articles
- FlyerTalk.com for the frequent point flyer
- Gridskipper.com, a urban travel guide
- Hotelchatter - hotel reviews
- IgoUgo.com - travel guides and journals
- Kayak.com - flight listings
- Mytripjournal.com - personal travel blog
- Priceline.com - for bidding on trips
- Seatguru.com - seating maps on airplanes
- SIte59.com - last minute bookings
- Travelzoo.com - cheap fares for the flexible
- Vijaydandapani.com - meant for industry professionals

April Fool's

Google buys the French National Library, Pandia (April 1) "Google announced today that it has taken over control of the French National Library. It managed to do so buy taking over rights belonging to the French Bourbon family."