Internet News

Google Notebook Handier

Google Notebook, New Features, ResearchBuzz (Sep 27) Google is making the NoteBook more social-search friendly. This page describes the new features . To note: you can share your notebook of clips and sites with friends to be jointly edited, the public, or keep it private.

There is a search tool to go with this -- http://www.google.com/notebook/

I think it is very handy that you can now add the Notebook to your Google personal page and also add a Firefox extension for taking notes.

Local Search Growing

comScore: Local Search Gains Momentum, SEW Blog (Sep 29)

People are finally using the Internet for local searches -- ""According to the study [comScore], 63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005. Google Sites (30 percent) and Yahoo! Sites (29 percent) garnered the largest share of local searches in July. Microsoft Sites captured 12 percent of local searches, followed by the Time Warner Network with 7 percent.""

Samfind Preview

Interview with Samuel Deskin of SamFind.com - Simple Access To The Websites You Use, Tech Address (Sept 29)

Samuel Deskin talks about SamFind , a new site that will aggregate search tools. SamFind is to be launched in the New Year. You can add your email address to be notified when it will be live.

Samuel described Samfind as "a consolidator of the web’s most popular websites to make the websites that people use handy from their homepage. samfind’s interface is fully customizable so that users can select or add topics and websites that they use. The websites that they want are accessible from the samfind homepage directly and can also be accessed via search directly from our homepage."

I had an advance look at SamFind and will say that it is one of the most attractive sites for fresh graphics I've seen in a long time. That and its collection of tools could keep a person coming back.

Yahoo-OMD Research

The Internet, 'Family 2.0' And The 43-Hour Day, Greg Sterling, SEW Blog (Sep 26)

Yahoo and OMD, a communications specialist, have been studing the activities of 4,500 online families in 16 countries. The SEW picks up a few salient points that show how much our information lives have changed.

"Across the 11 categories of content that Yahoo-OMD explored (News, Travel, Jobs, Music, Movies, Finance, etc.) the Internet was the preferred source in all but two categories (News, Comedy/Humor), where TV was preferred with the Internet second."

From the press release: "The study, "It's a Family Affair: the Media Evolution of Global Families in a Digital Age," found that technology and media are essential to planning, researching and acting on many of family life's important priorities, and that multi-tasking significantly extends the average day's activities beyond 24 hours."

How dependent are we on technology? "The research also found that the average global family owns 11 technological devices (12 devices in the U.S.), creating concerns about information overload while enabling better communications ..."

August Market Share

Statistics on US search engine usage for August 2006 from Nielsen/Netratings

+ Google 50.2 % of the searches. Handled 3 billion searches.
+ Yahoo 24%
+ Windows Live 10%
+ AOL 5.5%
+ Ask 2.3%
+ MyWay 2.3%

Google and Ask had search volumes that grew 30% over the year. Yahoo's increase was 23%. AOL fell, likely over the data scandal, by 18.2%. Of interest - MyWay Search grew by 42% - pretty good for a minor player.

From Nielsen//NetRatings Announces August U.S. Search Share Rankings, PR Newswire (Sept 19)

AOL Search Beta

Update: AOL enhances search but scandal hurts market share By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, InfoWorld (September 20, 2006)

AOL Search is being enhanced for the broadband user -- "This version is operational but still under construction. When finished, it will mix, in a single results page, links to different types of files, like Web pages, photos, business listings and videos. It will also have tools for people to refine queries and fine-tune results."

Wink Collections

Search Briefs: Social Search Engine Wink Launches Version 2.0, ResourceShelf (Sep 7)

Wink does more than just search on tags. It encourages people to build collections and share them

"Wink Collections are a cool way for you to gather and share the best links on any topic. A collection can be about anything - hilarious videos, your favorite band, the best restaurants in your area, or research on a new gadget - you name it. You create a collection and add links to it and it shows up in search results. Others can add links to the Collection - a great way for people to share what they know and improve search."

Goodbye RLG

RedLightGreen To Go Offline at the End of November, ResourceShelf (Sep 8)

"No surprise. After the merger of RLG and OCLC and then the recent launch of Worldcat.org, we read that RedLightGreen will go offline at the end of November." It is hoped that OCLC enhances its own service with features that RLG had before the end of November.

RLG provided access to catalog entries for millions of book titles and helped connect the searcher to a local public library to check if the book was available. This used to work reasonably well for finding and accessing Canadian libraries.

Clustering from Vivisimo

Shakespeare Sonnets & Dynamic Clustering from Clusty, More Vivisimo Tools and Demos, ResourceShelf (Sep 13) - lots from Vivisimo

Book Sales

If your hobby is to pour over used books tables, here are two resources to keep you travelling.

Book Sale Scout - US cities. Takes classifieds.

Booksalefinder covers the US and Canada. Can easily find the big fall college booksales here.

Social Information Foraging

Social Information Foraging and Collaborative Search Ed H. Chi, Peter Pirolli, Palo Alto Research Center

"In this article, we outline several explorations on models of social information foraging, and how some of these ideas might impact social search engines. We will touch upon general results concerning the costs and benefits of
cooperative foraging, the effects of group diversity, and patterns of social structuring that are correlated with innovative discovery."

Of interest -- "We surmise that new social foraging tools could mediate some of these interference costs, focusing users’ interactions to enriched information patches, thus enabling larger groups of users to collaborate with each other. Web technologies such as Wiki, Blogs, and Collaborative Tagging might change the scaling effects, enabling larger groups to work more effectively on the web."

Using Transit

Google Transit Expands With New Cities PLUS a Selection of Other Real Time and Trip Routing Tools, ResourceShelf

Google Transit covers 6 cities now: Tampa, Honolulu, Seattle, Pittsburg, Eugene, Portland.

ResourceShelf lists other real time services - Traffic.com has Toronto, and Vancouver has trip planner.

BL Archival Sound Recordings

Breaking the sound barrier -- "Massive digitisation programme by the British Library and JISC makes 3,900 hours of historic sound recordings available to students, researchers and academics" - "The [ Archival Sound Recordings ] ASR service is accessible to any web user, but access to the audio content will be limited to password-authenticated members of the UK HE and FE communities."

Weather at Ask.com

Ask.com Launches Earthquake Info Maps & Enhances Weather Info, ResourceShelf (Sep 28) The weather information is impressive and will work for my favourite - weather in wiarton. Click on Detailed Weather to get a satellite view of weather over Canada. For US cities you see the region around the city: forecast, satellite, and doppler radar.

The Search Interface

Why Search Sucks & You Won't Fix It The Way You Think, Danny Sullivan, Daggle (Sep 19) - screenshot tour of search interfaces since the early days of Altavista with substantial coverage of design efforts to cluster results and some on the information visualization efforts at Kartoo, Grokker, and Ujiko. What works? People prefer simple keyword entry and results display. One person commented -- "Search is a verbal process for the most part, so effective display of results is going to be blocks or columns of text. In my experience, anything else is just annoying."

How to introduce RSS

Reflections on Web Search University, ResearchBuzz (Sept 20)

Of interest - how to introduce RSS to co-workers -- "I think what I would recommend is showing people individual RSS feeds using a tool like Grazr to highlight the kind of content available. From there, create a list of feeds relevant to your company or institution and show some of the content available. If c/p/c’s show some interest, offer to set them up with a really basic reader like the one available from My Yahoo, or use a tool like RSSFwd to show them how they can get updates by e-mail."

Personalizing Search

Potential of web search personalization, Geeking with Greg (Sep 27) - Summarizes points from KDD 2006 paper, "A Large-Scale Analysis of Query Logs for Assessing Personalization Opportunities", by Steve Wedig and Omid Madani from Yahoo Research.

Basically there are two ways - "using a searcher's short-term history to change search results, which they call "adjustment", and modifying searcher results using a profile built from their long-term history, which they refer to as "personalization""

Either way, search personalization is something we will be seeing more of, but I fear we won't know when it is being applied. When search engines adopt this, it would be nice if they had a turn on and off button.

Online Video Sharing

The online video race by Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail (Sep 27) - competition between My Space and YouTube for online video sharing - and there are more to come. Refers to article by Bambi Francisco -- MySpace trumps YouTube in video Commentary: Talk is cheap with videos, and cell phones

UCBerkeley Google Video

Google Shows Berkeley Lectures "Search giant’s video service will deliver educational content from California." Red Herring (September 27, 2006)

University of California, Berkeley is making 250 hours of video available to Google Video that will include lectures and symposia. This will be viewable from a UCBerkeley Google Video page.

"The Berkeley web page will include a half dozen courses from the university in their entirety, including “Physics for Future Presidents,” “Integrative Biology,” and “Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business, ...”

For example, there is Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, lecturing on Search, Google, and Life. (Oct 2005)

Ask.com Smart Answers - Blogs

Ask Has Some New Smart Answers, Courtesy RSS, ResearchBuzz (Sept 20) -- Ask.com will find rss feeds easily on many topics. Tara Calishain gives the example of hurricane warnings where you'll get links to recent posts from the NOAA blog. The results are nicely identified with the blog icon. This will easily find the weblog and related feed from well known and popular blogs such as NOAA's or ResearchBuzz itself (see below), but it's not truly a feed search tool. For that, you'll want to turn to Ask Blogs and Feeds.

There are more examples at ResourceShelf Getting the Info to the End User: Ask.com’s RSS Smart Answers Continue, Not Only Blogs (Sept 21)

Search For Video

Searchforvideo.com Launches Updated Video Podcast Directory, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Sep 26)

"Searchforvideo.com organizes the most popular video podcasts into various categories including news, sports, comedy, technology, music, television and animation. Each category provides information about the video podcast publisher and one click access to subscribe to the video podcast or one click access to the video podcast publishers website."

The New LII.org

Librarians' Internet Index, a subject directory maintained by librarians in California and Washington States, has made the switch to a faceted organization of its collection. It is using Siderean's SeaMark Navigator.

There are 14 broad categories on the main page, each with sub-topics. Computers > Digital Divide has 7 sites. In the left panel, you'll see a list of topics and sub-topics according to how these 7 sites have been indexed. All relate to technology, and 2 to librarianship. The filters will help in selecting a resource that best fits your interest.

The new LII.org is reviewed in So Cool! New Faceted Search and Browsing Technology Debuts on Librarians’ Internet Index., ResourceShelf (Sep 27)

NetRatings' Top Travel Sites

Top Travel Sites, iMediaConnection (Sept 26)

Nielsen//NetRatings lists the top 10 travel sites - and also online education / careers, and health advertisers.

Search Podcasts

New software can search podcasts AP (Sep 26) Pluggd Inc's HearHere software uses speech recognition and semantic analysis to help users find what they want in a podcast.

"Users just have to type in a keyword in the search box, and HearHere would display a map to indicate where in the podcast the content would likely match a request. It also displays the related words HearHere is using to make its matching decision."

Demo is available at http://www.pluggd.com/

Copernic Desktop Search V 2.0

New: Copernic Desktop Search Version 2.0 Steve Bass's Tips and Tweaks (Sep 20) -- finds Copernic Desktop Search better thanks to the redesigned interface.

Ingenta and Google

Ingenta Makes Library Available for Google Scholar; Releases IngentaConnect 2.5 eContent (Sep 26)

"Ingenta, a technology provider, has announced that it is making its library holdings data available to Google Scholar, enabling the search tool to implement prominent "appropriate copy" links for patrons of the more than 25,000 libraries that use IngentaConnect to access ejournals."

Podcasting Pointers

Podcasting Pointers by John Nolt, Earthlink (Sep ) -- "basic needs for creating and maintaining a podcast ". Recommends using Odeo.

Backpackit Organizer

Backpackit.com - free web resource for getting organized. Use it for notes, calendar, to-do, ideas - and share it along with files and photos.

Book: Teaching Web Search Skills

Information Today, Inc. Announces Publication of Teaching Web Search Skills

"Information Today, Inc. (ITI) has announced the publication of Teaching Web Search Skills: Techniques and Strategies of Top Trainers, by leading trainer and search guru Greg R. Notess."

del.icio.us and digg

Del.icio.us reports 1 million users - post Yahoo! growth tops all of Digg, TechCrunch (Sep 25)

del.icio.us has 1 million registered users; Digg.com, 1/2 million; Flickr, 2.5 million.

Says Marchall Kirkpatrick - "This tells me that there is plenty of room for more services to provide these types of services, despite the exhaustion some of us feel every time a new one emerges. It also indicates that there is something far more interesting about Digg than the size of its contributing users."

History of Web Search

History of Search Engines: From 1945 to Google 2006 by Aaron Wall, Search Marketing Info (2006)

Found this through Digg.com under Technology - proving that votes from the public can spread the word about very good articles. This History is comprehensive, well researched, well organized, well illustrated, well written.

Bookmarks for Traffic

3 Reasons Why Delicious Bookmarks Beat Digg Traffic Hands Down by Brian Clark, Performancing (Sep 22)

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking centre (also called a link aggregator), and Digg.com is a user community for current hot news. Clark, in this piece written for people looking for more links to their sites, has three reasons for prefering del.icio.us bookarks: they are enduring, they show commitment, and each bookmark is a targeted link. Someone commenting, added that bloggers can add a feed of sites they have bookmarked at del.icio.us.

Google Product Results

Goodbye Froogle; Hello Google Product Results In Web Search, Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (Sep 25)

Froogle was demoted from the main page, and Google will return results from Google Base on product searches [Shows as Product Search Results - see sony dvd player. ] Google Base is mainly a method for merchants to list their wares.

It's not much of a shopping service. Sullivan hopes "we will see a renamed Google Shopping service still survive, with a custom home page and URL. Shopping search is important enough that it deserves a standalone brand."

Some enhancements are promised -- Google Will Boost Product Searches
Holiday season will see enhancements to Google Base so shoppers can refine queries. Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, PC World (Sep 25)

"When people search for products on Google.com, the system will present them with another search box so that they can refine their query, wrote Bear Stearns & Co. analysts in a note published Friday."

Internet 2020

The Web Beyond 2.0 in 2010 by Enid Burns, Clickz Stats (Sep 25)

"Web 2.0 is only the beginning of the Internet's evolution. "The Future of the Internet II," a report published by Pew Internet & the American Life Project gathers views of the future from Internet leaders, activists, builders, and commentators."

There will likely be a global low cost network with interoperability across platforms, the dominant language is expected to be English, people will divulge more about themselves with more loss of privacy, and there will still be a digital divide in access to the Internet.

The report and executive summary are at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp

Also see summary by Amy Graham at Poynter Online - Pew Predicts Ubiquitous, Scary Net of the Future

Business Online's Best

Best of the Web 2006 from readers of Business Week Online - no search engines on this list, but there are sites for news, blogs, health, social networking, trip planning, photo sharing and more. Click on Readers Choice Winners.

Firefox extensions

27 Of The Most Useful Firefox Extensions from thanassis blog (June30) - what a list! Has useful comments by other readers as well. Power up your Firefox with a few of these.

Windows Live Favorites

Windows Live Favorites - review in CNet by Elsa Wenzel (Sept 22)

Windows Live Favorites is an online bookmarking service for saving and organizing sites with relative ease. It connects with Windows Live Spaces for networking and blogging, and with Messenger, but it doesn't support sharing outside of the Live community.

"Windows Live Favorites makes it easier to peruse your saved URLs than does Del.icio.us, although it's less elegant for sharing content collections with other people. Overall, we find Favorites helpful for organizing bookmarks for personal convenience, and the integration with other Windows Live services is a bonus if you already use Spaces and Messenger."

This works with Firefox and Netscape. Importing bookmarks is easy, and display is excellent. Live supports both folders and tags, better than del.icio.us or Yahoo. However, the nuisance factor with any bookmarking service is weeding out the old, useless, and dead.

NYT and Answers.com

NYTimes.com Integrates Answers.com Reference Content, EContent (Sep 22) - "Answers Corporation, creators of Answers.com, has announced an agreement with The New York Times Company for the integration of certain Answers.com reference content into NYTimes.com." - Quite the endorsement of Answers.com

SoapBox for video sharing

Microsoft launches Soapbox, its YouTube competitor by Rafe Needleman, CNet (Sep 2006) - read the review and watch the video to see how Microsoft's Soapbox works and compares to YouTube.

Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums - No Invitation Required, Google Operating System Blog (Sep 19) People who use Picasa to edit and organize photos on their PCs will be interested in the new Picasa Web Albums.

"Now you can add your friends, view their recently uploaded photos, link to your friends' albums on the homepage of your album. You can also embed photos and albums into blogs, even though this feature still needs some work (embedded photos are too small, embedded albums should display random photos)".

(I wonder how many photo albums a person can keep - Flickr, Yahoo, Blacks, Kodak, Sony?)

Anyway the posting announcing this has many interesting comments from readers.

New Words

Wanted: New Words , Peter Clark, Poynter Online (Sep 19) -- In this excellent blog about writing, Peter Clark talks about the creation of new words - neologisms - and points to WordSpy as a way to keep on top of these. How about christmas creep? "Christmas creep n. The gradual trend to begin displaying Christmas-related merchandise and advertising earlier each year."

Google info on url

Changes in URL Queries, Matt Cutts, Gadgets, Google, and SEO (Sep 18) -- To get information about a url through Google, you must now use the prefix info:

This shows description, cache, link to, link from, anchor text. Example: info:www.websearchguide.ca

Google Archive News has case law

Find Legal Documents via Google Archive News, Virtual Chase (Sep 20)

Genie Tybyruski has identified that "that you can search the full-text of case law, as well as statutory and regulatory law, from VersusLaw, Fastcase and LOISLaw" in Google's Archive News. This is for-fee content.

Google Notebook

Google Notebook - review by Rafe Needleman at CNet. (May 2006)

Goodness - nearly forgot that Google had Google Notebook , a bookmarking service for organizing sites and saving clips but it uses categories rather than tagging and doesn't have a strong social component.

"Better social features (such as those found in StumbleUpon), group voting (such as in Digg.com), and interface features (a toolbar bookmarklet would be nice) would bring this product up to grade level. "

Personalized Search Builders

Your Search, Your Way By Phil Bradley, SearchDay (Sep 19)

There are a few services that let you create and customize a search engine on your topic that searches web sites that you select. Bradley reviews Rollyo, the Yahoo Search Builder, PSS! and Eurekster's Swicki in this posting and tomorrow's. He says, "Although they all claim to do the same job—create a search function for users, they all do it rather differently".

Part 1 has Rollyo and PSS.

Part 2 covers Yahoo and Eurekster.

MSN Soapbox

MSN's YouTube clone Commentary: Can this old-timer compete? by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Sep 19) -- MSN is launching Soapbox as a video social network in direct competition to the popular YouTube. Currently Soapbox is in beta and available by invitation only. (How many of these sites can video addicts use?)

Of interest: "YouTube, which is as much as a social network and place to blog about yourself, will give you eyeballs. The site attracted 34 million monthly unique visitors and 1.2 billion page views in August. This compares to Google's blog hosting service, Blogger, which commanded 19 million unique visitors and a mere 289 million pageviews, and MSN's blog called, MSN Spaces, which drew 8.2 million unique visitors and a very low 69 million pageviews. "

Google News Archive

Traditional Information Industry Opens Premium Content to Google News Archive by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Sep 18)

Full review of Google's new News Archive search (http://news.google.com/archivesearch)

Also Who? What? How Much?: Google News Archive Premium Content Suppliers by Barbara Quint

"Three of the big five national newspapers have opened their archives to Google News Archive. And two of the three have left their backdoors open for dirt-cheap downloading. Which two? Read this NewsBreak and see. You’ll find out what traditional vendors are doing sleeping with the enemy, too."

Search Results Clustering

Microsoft—Faceted Search Coming Soon? by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Sep 18)

Microsoft may be bringing faceted search into web searching. If so, this is a real coup.

"Unlike the upgrade to Live.com, which, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, just uses algorithms that mine previously submitted queries to the engine, the new and unannounced search system brings faceted search to a Microsoft application. Try it yourself at http://rwsm.directtaps.net . The Microsoft project, called Search Results Clustering (SRC), currently offers a search beta and downloadable toolbar."

This could become a giant killer. At present, it has options to search MSN or MSNBC.

Tabs (maybe) for Google Personalized

Google Personalized Home Tabs By Tony Ruscoe, Google Blogscoped (Sep 14)

Google Blogscoped has a screenshot of a new feature on the Google Personalized Home page that lets users add tabs for what they want - but this may be for US users only - doesn't show for Google Canada.

Mojeek for Topical Search

Mojeek adds customization to personal search, Pandia (Sep 15)

Create your own personal search engine for a subject area and publish it to your web site.

New Yahoo Mail

Yahoo's excellent Mail Beta now open to everyone by Rafe Needleman, CNet Reviews (Sep 14)

Hot review for Yahoo's new mail program -- "Yahoo's new e-mail reader is now in public beta [previous review]. It doesn't take very much time with it to come to a simple conclusion: it is a fantastic e-mail application. "

Finding Friends

Find old friends online By: Jennifer Gruden, 50Plus.com (2006) -- Tips on how to find friends online using web search, phone directories, associations and classmate sites.

Back to Online School

Online classes keep mind sharp Jennifer Gruden, 50Plus.com (2006) - some ideas for finding online courses such as general interest courses through BBC Learning or university level courses through Distance Education Canada.

Social Local Search

Yahoo Adds More Social Features To Local, SEW Blog (Sep 15)

"Yahoo has been rolling out its "FUSE" (find, use, share, extend) strategy across its many properties and has just made its popular Yahoo Local site more personal and simultaneously more "social." A number of new features have been integrated into the site that allow people to create customized profiles and lists of local favorites but also to tag and share those favorites for discovery by the larger user community."

Microsoft Zune

Microsoft Zune Debuts - CNet has a slide show featuring the new Microsoft iPod contender called Zune.

Search Trends

Interview with Danny Sullivan, WebMasterWorld PubCon 2006 (Sep 12)

Of interest:

"[Brett] What would you say are the top two trends in Search for 2006?
[Danny] Probably understanding the social aspect that's coming into search along with the greater verticalization of it. People continue to fixate that search is whatever comes up tops on Google by default. That's web search, and Google-specific. Search is more than this, and there are lost opportunities for those who don't understand that video, news, shopping and other types of verticals are more and more getting "default" treatment. Meanwhile, I think everyone is looking at how social sites are growing and wondering how that's going to come into search. It will, but the trend so far is that exactly how remains unclear. "

Is Danny speaking as a search engine marketer or as a searcher or both? For information professionals the value of social search is very unclear indeed. How many will group together over a common interest and take the time to form the networks and add the comments?

Verticals for news, video, shopping, they may be underappreciated and underused. While the news sites can be excellent, video offerings are largely amateurish and crude. They might entertain but they don't inform.

Google Earth Content

Google Earth Adds Featured Content Partners SEW Blog (Sep 14)

"Google just announced that they launched new featured content on Google Earth from the United Nations Environmental Program, Discovery Networks World Tour, US National Park Service, Jane Goodall Institute and Turn Here."

Yahoo E-Mail has News

Yahoo Mail Beta Adds News Home Page, Events & Calendar, Search Engine Journal (Sep 11) Yahoo Mail is sounding very spiffy -- Yahoo Mail has a home page with Yahoo News Stories, Advertising, Mail & News tips, and the inevitable internal Yahoo.com offerings. "... a perfect addition to the Yahoo Mail Beta offering, which rewrites the entire Yahoo Mail experience into a 2.0-esque RSS Feed, Event and Calendar integrated offering."

Advanced Dork

Here's a new addon for Firefox that will help in running advanced searches at Google from words you highlight from a page. I don't find that much occasion to search on words from a page I'm reading, but the idea of a quick utility to the advanced search functions sounds useful. It's called Advanced Dork.

This was mentioned in Gizmo's Support Alert Newsletter (Sept).

Wikipedia v Britannica

Encyclopedia Wikitannica? Poynter Online, Posted by Amy Gahran (Sep 12) -- links to article in Wall Street Journal on the competition between Britannica and Wikipedia - more like a standoff. Amy Gahran writes, "Personally, I think all this head-butting is a waste. I'm with Jeff Jarvis -- I think both sides are missing a major collaboration opportunity." YES

Self Promotion on the Net

Identity of "lonelygirl15" revealed by Matthew Ingram, GeekWatch in Globe and Mail (Sept 12)

Again a case of real life on the Internet -- real life in the sense of deception, gullability, voyeurism. One thing - it's a great case of self-promotion. It all surrounds a teen lonelygirl15 putting up videos on YouTube that hundreds of thousands watched. Mystery will only bring out the detectives, and one person tracked her down. Llonelygirl15 is Jessica Rose, a 19-year old aspiring actress with possible ties to a Hollywood agency.

Also, Geeks blow the cover of Internet teen darling by PAUL WALDIE, Globe and Mail (Sep 13)

Videos are easy to find at YouTube.

Onscreen Reading

Old Gray Lady Dons New Clothes by Jeff Koyen, Wired (Sep 13)

The Times Reader, an online screen reader to be used by the New York Times, could make reading news on a screen like using a newspaper. But will it partly depend on the screen?

"... The New York Times has developed a stand-alone digital reader that's specifically modeled on ... the printed newspaper." ... "Stories are presented clearly and with priority; artwork aids both design and context. Section heads are customizable, and clicking on them feels as natural as thumbing through the paper on the subway."

Windows Live Search

Microsoft has launched a more unified and finished Windows Live service after over a year of trying out the beta version.

Live Search has a new look that has calmer and cooler colours than the customary Windows blue. Gone is the annoying scrolling feature for showing search results.

+ Shows related searches on simple queries (ie one or two words or a phrase). My guess is that Windows Live analyzes a results set to identify sub-sets that have another frequently used term or two. For example, history canada shows history channel canada, credit history canada, canada people's history. Clicking on one pulls up that subset. There might be a further breakdown. I don't find this is enormously compelling as a clustering technique but it is better than Google's nothing.

+ Advanced search has the search-builder filtering tools that had been developed for MSN Search for site, country, language, links to, and results ranking. This is a much better implementation. But there is still no slot for searching on title. Instead, you must use the prefix intitle:

+ Options are for setting preferences.

+ Has a cached version and sometimes shows the date the page was indexed.

Image search uses Microsoft's own database rather than PicSearch. Controls for display are lovely to use: mouse over the image to see it expand and show details about the file; change the number of thumbnails on a page; select image size; or use the scratchpad for keeping individual images as you browse further.

News Search is a plain listing of stories. It is better to use MSN Newsbot.

Local Search has bird's eve view for more of the United States and is now available for the UK. Navigating is very smooth. The local search works for Canada to show street names on the map and a high level aerial view, but not a bird's eye view of buildings.

QnA is Microsoft's question and answer service. I see this option when I use Firefox but not Internet Explorer 6.0 - an oddity if there ever was one. Search to see if there is an answer to your question, ask the community, answer, vote on answer. From what I can see, some Seattleities are using it. Mostly the questions and answers are a waste of time.

More has video search, academic search, feed search - all still in beta. But there are also "macros" - a method for subscribed users to create a personal search engine.

"A home page is automatically created for your macro, making it easy to use, bookmark, and share with friends. For example, you could create a search engine for your favorite hobby, area of research, or one that searches your website or blog."

Windows Live users can also set up a personalized page with saved searches, hotmail, and selected content.

Assessment: Certainly worth trying. Live Search handles well and offers a well integrated set of tools. Local Search is a delight to use, as is the Image Search. However, web search results seem somewhat commercial to me and lack the relevancy of Google's. Canada's version of MSN Search (http://search.sympatico.msn.ca/) continues with the old tools and interface.

[Postscript Sep 27: Search at Sympatico/MSN flips to Live now.]

Microsoft Upgrades Live Search Offerings, Chris Sherman, Searchday (Sep 12)

"In all, Microsoft's enhancements to Windows Live Search are welcome additions, improving functionality or adding cool new features to the service. If you have yet to try the service, it's definitely worth a look."

Previously in test release, new service is successor to MSN Search , Marketwatch (Sep 11)

"Microsoft Corp. on Monday formally launched its overhauled Web-search technology, a successor to its MSN Search tool, as part of the company's bid to offer software as a service over the Internet."

Microsoft unveils updated search engine Allison Linn, AP via Globe and Mail (Sep 12)

"Among other changes, Live Search will include improved ways to refine a search engine query so a user can better differentiate whether they are searching, for, say, the jaguar animal, car or Apple Computer Inc. operating system, said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Live Search effort."

See also Gary Price's comments at ResourceShelf - Live Search from Microsoft Goes Live - compares Live to Ask and notes that Ask is better for image search.

Fun with Google

55 Ways to Have Fun with Google from Philipp Lenssen, author of Google Blogscoped. Buy the print copy or download a free copy in either PDF or DOC (228 pages).

"In this book, you’ll find Google-related games, cartoons, oddities, tips, stories and everything else that’s fun. Reading it, you won’t be the same searcher as before! "

Phillip Lenssen was the creator of the Google Image quiz - guess the search terms - which is mentioned in Chapter 3.

Social Atlas Sites

Social Atlas Sites Let You Map Your Life "New sites let you share memories, info with friends, family, or the entire internet."
Dennis O'Reilly, PCWorld (Aug 25)

If you love maps and especially marking where you have been or favourite places, one of these services might help you spend many hours. Reviews -- Flagr, 43 Places, Platial, Plazes, and Wayfaring - and recommends Platial as the first place to start.

"New online services tap that information by enabling you to share your knowledge and memories of your most beloved locales--in your hometown or on the other side of the globe--with the rest of the world."

Look for your city to see what places others have picked. This one of bikeshare hubs in Toronto could be useful to some.

Northern Light's Business Research Engine

Northern Light Debuts New Business Research Engine by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Sep 11)

Good news for business researchers. Northern Light has opened a Business Research Engine with free access to searching business content that includes a business web of 100 million pages and 22,000 sites, 3 million archived articles, and 1.3 million articles from more than 1,400 premium publications. Subscriber access to viewing the proprietary material is only $9.95 US / month.

"All visitors to the www.nlresearch.com site now have free access to the Business Web and can browse and search the proprietary business content for free. A subscription or a day pass—a new option with this version—is required to read articles from the journals and business news sources and to take advantage of advanced functionality such as Search Alerts, Public Alerts, and user preferences. The company hopes that access to the fairly extensive free search and editorial functionality—not to mention the lack of advertising, pop-ups, paid inclusions, or consumer content—will be an attractive enticement to subscribe."

Downloading Movies

Amazon.com Launches Movie Download Service, TechWeb (Sep 8) -- Amazon is introducing Unbox for downloading movies and showing them on any Windows-media compatible device.

"Amazon.com on Thursday started selling movies, TV shows and other video content from Hollywood and TV networks. The retailer said it had signed a total of 30 studios and networks."

Problem -- "Having a good portable device is important because content from Amazon.com and Apple cannot be played easily on a TV, which is how most consumers prefer to watch video and movies. Neither company offers a burn-to-DVD service."

Google Book Search and the Library

Google Adds Library Search to Book Search: Thoughts, Issues, Questions; Google’s Contract with U of California, ResourceShelf (Aug 25) - interesting comments on the inadequacies of the links in Google Book Search to WorldCat union catalog content of library holdings.

Site24X7 for site monitoring

Free: Monitor Any Site (or Page) and Receive Quick Notification When It Goes Offline, Slows Down, and More, ResourceShelf (Aug 28) -- describes Site24X7 -- "It’s a tool of value to many including system librarians, webmasters, journalists, and others. I’ve been using it for a week and have zero complaints. Although many similar services exist, this one is very easy to use, offers lots of info, and is free."

Flight and Airport Updates

Real Time Airport Delays via RSS and/or E-Mail (#11 in the ResourceShelf Real-Time Series), ResourceShelf (Aug 29) - flights and airports.

Sources for EBooks

Google Allowing Some Books for Offline Printing BUT Don’t Forget About Other Sources (Free), ResourceShelf (Aug 30) -- reaction to Google Book Search offering downloads - lists many other sources for finding eBooks.

Tag Search

Another Tag Search Engine, ResearchBuzz (Sep 4) - "Tagvy, at http://www.tagvy.com , metasearches a few different tag resources." - but only a few.

Yellow Pages Canada

New Look YellowPages.ca Comes Out Of Beta by Greg Sterling, SEW Blog (Sep 7)

Yellowpages.ca has a very well done demo that helps you see the changes from the old to the new design.

Google News Archive

Chris Sherman and Gary Price have posted comments about the new Google News Archive service (http://news.google.com/archivesearch/.)

In Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search - SearchDay (Sep 6) Chris Sherman describes the service thoroughly and especially notes the timeline feature by which you can see an event or topic over time.

As an example, Chernobyl disaster occured in May 1986. Google News Archive has about 380 stories in that year (1986) from U.S. sources and principally the New York Times. There is also a sprinkling of articles from aggregating services like HighBeam and NewsBank. Entries show the price or subscription cost.

Gary Price exposes the flaws, some of them quite serious, in his ResourceShelf posting (Sept 7) -- Google Launches News Archive Search: Commentary

In my view, Google has created a useful tool for expanding the breadth of a search and digging into resources that aren't easily available in one sweep. The success of Google Scholar for making searching diverse scholarly journal articles and sites comes to mind. But like Google Scholar it is not all that it seems: it is not complete and can be misleading. As Gary Price points out the Archive doesn't have all of the New York Times, as one example; and users are being directed to for-fee services when they could get some articles at no cost from other sources on the Web, and often from databases provided by the local public library. (Though how are people who don't read Gary Price's columns to know that? Public libraries do not promote the services well.) What Google News Archive does is make it all seem easy. At the very least it gives a big picture on a topic or event. The timeline feature for chronologically listing the articles is the best part.

askSam Surf Report

The Surf Report from askSam this month recommends Infoplease People for biographies on 30,000 + people.

The Surf Report is a very useful newsletter that features ebooks and educational or reference sites. As well, of course, it is the home of askSam products for databases, web research (saving pages), web publishing, web site management.

Toronto WiFi

Toronto WiFi network goes live by
CATHERINE MCLEAN, Globe and Mail (Sep 7)

"Toronto Hydro Telecom yesterday lit up what is expected to become one of the largest wireless Internet networks in North America, and told Torontonians how much they will have to pay for the service."

Phase 1 which began yesterday runs from Spadina east to Church, and from Front north to Queen. Expansion north to Bloor is scheduled in 2 phases, October and November, as well as east and west between Queen and Front in December.

Toronto Star has much more - Wireless Net Goes Live by Tyler Hamilton (Sep 7)

Blogging Services

Broadcast yourself with a blog By Elsa Wenzel, CNet (August 25, 2006)

Describes and compares different blogging services: Google's new version of Blogger (still in beta), Google Blogger, Typepad (monthly fee), WIndows Live Spaces, and Yahoo 360 - the last two have social networking components.

Answer Centres

Dropping knowledge: question-and-answer sites By Elsa Wenzel, CNet (September 1, 2006)

"Online social search services Yahoo Answers, Answerbag, and Windows Live QnA connect you with a community of knowledge seekers and experts on all kinds of matters."

Has a chart that compares the three.

U.S. Internet Usage Over Time

Pew Internet and American Life project has assembled its data on usage of the Internet by Americans since 2000 in a spreadsheet researchers can download.

" The spreadsheet can be used to examine changes over time among online
Americans in key internet activities such as using email, getting news online, doing internet banking, using search engines, accessing weather information, buying products, pursuing hobby information, making travel reservations, getting sports information, downloading music and other digital files, sending instant messages, and participating in online auctions."

Start with the tip sheet - Usage Over Time Tip Sheet" http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/UsageOverTimeTipsheet.pdf

Google News with Archives

Google expands online news index by Michael Liedtke, AP via Yahoo News (Sept 6)

"Google Inc. is expanding its online news index to include stories published years ago, continuing the Internet search leader's recent efforts to create new sales channels for long-established media while it strives to make its own Web site even more useful."

Google News

+ will show excerpts on articles older than 30 days and link to the source for the full article. Users might then have to pay the sources to view the article in full.

+ will have old articles from many news sources including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and The Washington Post.

+ some new content from LexisNexis, Factiva and HighBeam.

Also Google opens up 200 years of news, BBC News

+ some content from 200 years ago

+ includes the Guardian in the UK

+ "People using the search are shown results from both free and subscription-based news outlets."

Firefox Crib Sheet

Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet - shortcuts galore for keyboard, navigation, and general, along with tips on where Firefox puts things and the options you can change.

This was mentioned in the excellent Neat Net Tricks newsletter. This is bi-weekly and costs only $12 US, well worth it for the web sites, tools, and tips Jack Teems features - "fun and easy things one can do with the computer and Internet".

Hyperwords

The Hyperwords Company Makes the Most Useful Tools on the Web Available in a Single Click; Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo!, Translations, Maps, Dictionaries, Share Prices, Shopping, Email, Blogs & More, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Sep 4)

" Our research group at University College London looked at optimal strategies of online knowledge work. We found that an effective approach in getting to grips with such a large volume of data was to make the data more interactive.
The result is the Hyperwords(TM) extension for Firefox. It makes all words on the web interactive. Users can select any word, or selection of words, and choose commands from an intuitive pop-up menu. "

PCWorld called it a "fabulous freebie".

Another Set of Answers

InsiderPages' 'Answers', SEW Blog (Aug 29)

"InsiderPages, one of the top "social directory" sites, has launched its equivalent of Yahoo!'s Answers: "Insider Advice." It's only available to members but allows people to ask open-ended questions of the community."

Limited to insiders in the United States.

Yahoo Answers in Search Results?

Yahoo Tests Enhanced Yahoo Answers Integration In Search Results, SEW Blog (Sep 1) - this sounds like bad news to me.

Pinakes and Subject Gateways

The Internet Resources Newsletter (Aug/Sept 2006) announced changes at Pinakes , a subject launchpad maintained by the Heriot-Watt University Library. They've noted a decline in subject gateways and have had to delete some. But, they are also finding new subject-based repositories and are working on keeping Pinakes a starting point for good subject sources.

Downloading Google Books

Google Opens Public Domain Books for Downloading, Michigan Launches MBooks by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Sep 5)

Details on the new policy at Google Books to allow downloading of some public domain books.

Using Advanced Search

It’s Not Rocket Science: Making Sense of Scientific Evidence By Paul Barron, LLRX (Aug 2006)

"The purpose of this article is to review a search process using advanced search query features in Google, Yahoo, and other search tools to find publicly accessible Web-based information on toxic substances and the law and, more specifically, the reliability of scientific evidence about toxic substances. Search tools that perform better with specific topics are searched using queries related to “sick building syndrome.” "

Mozilla Story

Mozilla Goes Mainstream by Sarah Lacy, BusinessWeek Online (Aug 30)

"The unconventional company hopes to gain market share and outfox the competition with a new version of its Firefox browser".

Podango Podcast Channels

Podango to Create Podcast Channels by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch (Aug 29)

Coming soon -- Podango aims to create topical channels that will bring together best podcasts into one - just like a radio channel.

"The goal is to combine multiple podcasts, which may only be publishing weekly, into a 3-5 shows per day channel with a single RSS feed. Just like old-style television and radio stations."

Review of Accoona

Accoona: Super-Charged Super Target Searching by Phil Bradley, Ariadne (Aug 2006) - Bradley reviews Accoona, a search engine that made a splash 2 or 3 years ago for its "intelligent" search especially for businesses. Its main feature is to SuperTarget the search by identifying and matching on related terms. It can do some "entity extraction" on names and places. Bradley liked it, especially for news.

Corel's Free Image Software

Whupped by Microsoft, Corel takes on Google by SIMON AVERY, Globe Investory (Sep 4)

"On Tuesday, Corel will launch new software for managing digital photos and video. It will give away one version of Snapfire, which lets users organize, edit and share their images, and sell a premium version called Snapfire Plus for $40 (U.S.) with more advanced editing features."

ChaCha Human Search

Rethinking Google's system - Human-powered search premieres, Ryan Kim, San Francisco Chronicle (Sep 4) -- describes, Cha Cha , a new search engine that calls on paid guides to help the searcher. Users connect to it through instant messenger where they can talk to guides according to their specialty.

"Jones said the company will have about 3,000 guides when the program is released and is prepared to add many thousands more as business warrants. They will be typically paid from $5 to $10 an hour and the company will recruit among college students, retirees and stay-at-home parents. The guides will be trained and will compete against each other for rankings, determined by customer satisfaction. Guides who get higher scores will earn more -- up to $20 an hour for top earners."

Revenue will come from advertising.

More in -- ChaCha.com Debuts Human-Driven Search Site By Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek (Sep 5) -- describes ChaCha as a "sort of a cross between MySpace.com and Wikipedia.org, with cash to sweeten the deal". Has details on the payment scheme.

This is not a new idea. Many have tried to align subject experts and people needing answers before and the schemes have fizzled out. WebHelp and Experts.com were two. There was usually a small charge. ChaCha is waiving the charge but can advertising really support the guides?

And why don't people ask staff at their public library? And why doesn't the public library make a splash about offering such an information service?

Postscript: Gary Price raises the same question and lists some virtual reference services in the US and the Toronto Public Library Ask service. See Ask A Question: Virtual Reference for Non-Librarians, What is It and How to Access These Services (Sep 5) -

Traceless Browsing

Surfing the Web Without a Trace, The Virtual Chase (Sep 5) Tyburski brings Browzar to our attention - a small browser that lets you surf and search without leaving traces. It uses Internet Explorer as the base but does not keep history, cookies, or other files.

Postscript Rafe Needleman at CNet finds that Brozar does leave tracks -- Update: Browzar leaves tracks after all (Sep 4)

"In sum, the current version of Browzar is not reliably secure and does not perform as advertised. Alternatives include Firefox and Safari, both of which have privacy functions. Even Microsoft's own Internet Explorer can optionally erase files it creates during surfing."

Tagging as taxonomy

Taxonomy for Fun and (Google's) Profit? Community Image Tagging, Traffick.com (Sep 4)

Does tagging work? Andrew Goodman thinks the tagging done at Flickr and YouTube for images and videos has worked out well, but there is some indication of problems with malicious tagging at Google Video and the same may happen with images. Does tagging need professional editors, he asks. Will a community system work, can there be effective incentive systems? He seems to answer yes. Information professional agree that keyword terms are good but that they should be drawn from a controlled vocabulary, and be applied with some analytical rigour rather than whim.

Back to Goodman: "Either way, tagging is moving search forward. Probably the most intriguing nascent tagging experiment, for me, is Amazon's. Books are being tagged as we speak, first by authors, then by prolific reviewers... and... later, everyone else? Or not? Regardless, the result seems to be a parallel form of taxonomy that arises spontaneously out of community effort (assuming reasonable expertise in the community), as opposed to getting the Library of Congress category right, or some other method that might have existed in the past. From a tag, bringing up all known books about "beanstalks" *tagged as such* is only a click away. That's not the same as doing a raw keyword search for beanstalks. Tagging is shades of past information science efforts, obviously, but it's happening here and now in a specific kind of way, and it would be a mistake to dismiss its impact."

Online Photos

Google and Yahoo Embrace Photo Sharing "Picasa Web Albums and Yahoo Photos both provide simple-to-use online image tools." by Dave Johnson, PC World (Aug 25)

Reviews Picasa Web Albums (from Google) and Yahoo Photos and gave the nod to Yahoo Photos as being better because of the search function.

Google and Yahoo Embrace Photo Sharing "Picasa Web Albums and Yahoo Photos both provide simple-to-use online image tools." by Dave Johnson, PC World (Aug 25)

Reviews Picasa Web Albums (from Google) and Yahoo Photos and gave the nod to Yahoo Photos as being better because of the search function.

Viral Video

Searchforvideo.com Launches New Online Viral Video Guide , Business Wire via Marketwatch (Aug 30)

" The new viral video guide makes it easier to uncover funny, bizarre and entertaining video from across the web. It includes links to the most popular viral video categories including stunts, fights, commercials, crashes, chasing and pranks and anime. The online viral video guide will be built out in the coming months to include new channels as determined by searchforvideo users."

http://www.searchforvideo.com/channel/viral.jsp

Google Book / Print

Google expands book service to allow user printing From Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) August 30, 2006

Google "expanded its book service to allow users to download files of classic books and print them free of charge" - applies only to books were copyright has expired.

Also - Google Offers Book Downloads, Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World ( Aug 30)

"Google has expanded its controversial book search service to allow people to download whole copies of books in PDF format to their computers, with the ability to print them out."

Use http://books.google.com/

Managing your domain

Microsoft and Google give away office space By Elsa Wenzel, CNet Review (August 29, 2006)

"Microsoft and Google are offering free online packages to put your company's touch on its communications and to help build basic Web sites. While Office Live lets you register a domain name for free, Google's tools work within more browsers."

Compares Microsoft Office Live Basics beta to Google Applications you can use to manage a domain.

Bookfinder.com Report

BookFinder.com Report Reveals Demand for Classic Out-of-Print Americana, PRNewswire via Marketwathc (Aug 31)

"The BookFinder.com Report is a listing of the most sought-after out-of- print titles in America, based on aggregate trends between July 2005 and June 2006. The Report includes lists of the top-10 most searched for titles in ten different categories: http://report.bookfinder.com/ ."