October 31, 2006
Visual Shopping Search
Smarter Launches Visual Search SEW Blog (Oct 31) -- visual search has come to shopping.
Yahoo Shortcuts
A Closer Look at Yahoo Shortcuts by Brian Smith, Searchday (Nov 1)
Yahoo has many shortcuts - Smith counted 32. He learned that the local and map search shortcuts are the most used -- "Because these Shortcuts work off of local directories like the Yellow Pages, there are an incredible amount of triggers. "
Yahoo staff analyze types of queries and identifies those that would benefit from a shortcut to Yahoo content (music, photos, travel, video etc).
Users may also create their own shortcuts for searches or sites.
Make Your Own Yahoo Shortcuts
More Open Shortcuts!, Yahoo Search Blog (Oct 27)
More on how to create your own shortcuts in Yahoo to find a site or do a search. Essentially, you set up a trigger word and make it do something. Fore example !wiki creates a search at wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org?search=%s
) This page has more instructions but it doesn't really answer the question on how to find shortcuts other people have done. However, as a starting point there is this list or popular shortcuts in the FAQ.
Yahoo and AOL?
Fortune claims Yahoo! has tried to buy AOL from Time Warner, Bloggingstocks.com (Oct 30) - there's a rumour -- "Fortune claims it has learned from multiple sources that Yahoo! recently approached Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) (parent of both Fortune's publisher and AOL) about buying AOL."
Searching for health information
Majority of Online Health-Related Queries Start on Search Engines by Enid Burns, ClickZ (Oct 30)
Some startling figures about online health search are summarized from the latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project -- Online Health Search .
+ almost half of the queries are done for someone else.
+ 80 % of American users have searched on 1 of 17 health topics
+ people aren't checking the source - "only one quarter of the group say they always check the source and date of the information they look up. As many as half of the group claim they never check the source for the quality of information."
+ "Sixty-six percent of Internet users looking for health information start at a search engine versus 27 percent who go to a health-related site. A quarter of searches in the category say they felt overwhelmed with the information they found online."
Full report at
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/190/report_display.asp
Also see comments by Chris Sherman - Rampant Malpractice Among Health Searchers (Oct 30)
Firefox 2 a success
Firefox 2.0: The Honda Civic of Web Browsers - Updated and improved, Firefox remains excellent but breaks little new ground., By John Borland, Technology Review (Oct 27)
Calls the new Firefox 2.0 browser a success but doesn't break new ground (except for the spell check). "Firefox 2.0 offers a handful of obvious improvements in searching and security and a couple of new features, and it largely keeps doing well what it has done well before."
October 30, 2006
Citizendium
Citizendium: A Kinder, Truer Wikipedia? by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Oct 30)
Wikipedia will soon have Citizendium as a competitor. This is a break away project by Larry Sander a co-founder of Wikipedia.
"Now one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, has begun development of a competitive service, the Citizendium or “Citizen’s Compendium” (http://www.citizendium.org). Sanger was one of the first and most authoritative voices to question the untrammeled openness of the Wikipedia procedures. While retaining his true believer status in support of the wiki model of public collaboration, Sanger intends to generate a new community ethos that defers to the authority of expert editors and requires contributors to use their own names, without the shield of anonymity."
The project is described at http://www.citizendium.org/
Advanced Search Techniques
Long List of Link Searches by David Temple, in seomoz.org (Oct 27) - describes types of searches one can do to dig more deeply for information. The example is a project for a client to see who else is in the "snowboard equipment" business. Tactics used include fielded search at search engines (advanced operators), using stock terms like directory or catalog, searching blogs, and looking for input pages.
Anti-Virus Software
CNET 2007 antivirus performance test scores, by Robert Vamosi, CNet (Oct 26) - Editors pick was Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 over Norton, McAfee, and Eset NOD32. Oddly, no mention of AVG Anti-Virus. However, article does point to test results and comparative information at AV Comparitives and CheckVir.
October 29, 2006
Web 2.0 Social Portals
3 road maps to the web, Pandia (Oct 26)
"We are talking about a new genre of web community where you or I or anyone who feels like it can create topic based gateways to the web. Once upon a time there was About.com the and Open Directory Project (ODP) where voluntary editors edited submissions to the directory. But the number of editors was relatively low and it was considered a decidedly geeky hobby to be an editor."
Three communities:
+ Squidoo - lenses on topics written by contributors - call them lensmasters.
+ Zimbio - public portals on topics created by enthusiasts.
+ Fanpop - social portals of special interests - find fellow fans of Harry Potter, as an example.
These sites make it even easier for everyone to be a guide and to self-publish. How enduring will these be? Can people be active as editors at social news sites, and answer services (Yahoo's and Live's), as well as keep content areas up to date?
Google Tools
Googlife – The good life by Anupam Jain, Information. Integration. Distribution blog (Oct 18) - a day in the life of a software engineer who uses nearly every Google tool there is.
Library Thing for Bibliophiles
Do That Library Thing by Mary Ellen Bates (Sept-Oct 2006)
Reviews Library Thing a web service for cataloguing your book collection.
"... LibraryThing, the love child of Melvyl Dewey and Web 2.0. At its most basic, it enables users to build their own web-based catalog, using information from Amazon.com, the Library of Congress and over 40 other major libraries."
October 27, 2006
IE7 vs Firefox 2
Internet Explorer 7 vs. Firefox 2 By Robert Vamosi, CNet Reviews (Oct 26)
Can there be any doubt about the winner? Judges look at installation, look and community, tabbed browsing, new features, and security and performance.
For a very careful and detailed examination see Cory Kleinschmidt's Browser Report 2006: Attack of the Shiny Tabs at Traffick.com
US Government's Invisible Web
Google seeks better access to government information, By Daniel Pulliam, GovExec.com (Oct 25)
Google is working on ways to index the deeper parts of US government databases such as those at the Environmental Protection Agency.
"As much as 40 percent of the content on agency Web sites is invisible to Google's crawlers, Needham said. This means that for a majority of Internet users who do not know how to look beyond a search engine site, that information is effectively invisible."
This was mentioned in Open Access News - Accessing the deep web of government information.
Open Access Blog
Open Access News , a weblog about the open access movement by Peter Suber. This has archives back to 2002 for anyone who would like to study the progression of open access.
There is also an overview to open access - "Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions."
Google Bombing
Republicans hit in 'Google bombing' by Tom Zeller, New York Times via IHT (Oct 26)
"Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated "Google bombing" campaign intended to game the search engine's ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google's formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results."
FullView at AOL Search
AOL Enhances Search with FullView Results by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Oct 26)
AOL has changed its search interface and display. Main change is the new FullView that will show web search results and whatever else AOL can find in its collections - video, music, images. Sherman finds it impressive and on the examples he includes it is. For example, "the beatles" . But on Grenada where one would expect some images and maybe a video - nothing. Nothing for hurricanes either.
Sherman writes, "FullView results have similarities to Google's OneBox results and Ask's Smart Answers, both of which are triggered when your query has relevant information found beyond text-based web search results—for example, news or images. "
October 25, 2006
10 Research Tools
Get Smart: Top 10 Research Tools, CNet (Oct 20)
CNet has selected 10 tools it thinks will best direct you to expert sources and help you keep track of research. "These digital tools can keep you on track--whether you're working on a middle-school science fair, wrapping up a graduate degree, or pursuing a hobby." Encyclopedia Britannica for $49 / year is the top tool followed by Wikipedia. I would have included Answers.com as well (or maybe instead of Wikipedia since Answers includes it). Google got 4 slots.
Yahoo Bookmarks Beta
Yahoo Updates Toolbar and Bookmarks by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Oct 25)
Yahoo has introduced a new toolbar that includes a bookmark function. It sounds wonderful - save a thumbnail, optionally save the page, create folders, add tags, add notes, search the collection - but this is a private tool and while one can email bookmarks, there aren't the sharing options of the other two bookmark managers that Yahoo owns, del.icio.us and MyWeb2.0
The toolbar is available at toolbar.yahoo.com. The toolbar has a button for Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta by which you can save, search, and browse your bookmarks.
Yahoo Gears Toolbar, Bookmarks For Social Search, By Nicholas Carlson, Internet News.com
Here it is revealed that social search style of del.icio.us is the ultimate goal, but that mainstream users (20 million users have the Yahoo toolbar) are slow to switch and need to understand tagging first.
Good definition of social search: "Social search is search that asks people, not automated computers, to index the Internet."
Yahoo makes Internet bookmarks ready to share by Eric Auchard, Reuters via Yahoo News (Oct 25)
Refers to the toolbar and to Yahoo Bookmarks.
"The new version of Yahoo Bookmarks at http://new.bookmarks.yahoo.com, offers several improvements on organizing bookmarks into folders to make them easier to find. But it also encourages users to try "tagging," a more modern way of organizing information that relies on users assigning keywords to personally important information to make it easier to search for and find such information again later."
Of interest: "The new bookmark and toolbar products are available in the United States, Germany and Taiwan, with other countries to follow." However, I can access the toolbar with my Canadian Yahoo identity.
What I've noticed:
+ MyWeb2.0 users will see all their bookmarks in the My Bookmarks application as uncategorized (because Yahoo dropped folders when it introduced MyWeb2.0). Tags are there but no tag cloud, an essential navigational device now.
+ The thumbnails of the pages are lovely.
+ There is a tab for Recommended. These match what Yahoo shows as Interesting Today in MyWeb2.0
+ There is a help page - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/bkmks/index.html
I like the new Bookmarks tool but I like MyWeb2.0 more. Will be glad when the two are merged.
Google Finance
Google Finance Adds Compare, Timeline & More Features, SEW Blog (Oct 23) - new features are also listed in the faq for Google Finance.
October 24, 2006
Enhanced Hoover's
Hoover’s Enhances Subscriber Offerings, EContent (Oct 24)
"Hoover's, Inc., a D&B company that provides information about industries, companies, and key decision makers, has announced the launch of Hoover's Premium Select, an enhancement to its suite of subscription offerings."
Instructional web videos
Internet Librarian 2007: Creating Online Tutorials in Less that 30 Minutes, Cindy Chick, LawLibTech (Oct 22) - recommends screencasting for creating online tutorials.
"I've created some instructional web videos, but I wanted to learn more about the process. Greg's session didn't disappoint. By the way, you'll find much of the information from the handout, and a lot of other good stuff on Greg's new LibCasting - Screencasting and Libraries blog."
Google's Direction
Google: Where Should It Go from Here? by Genie Tyburski, TVC Alert (Oct 24)
Comments on an article in Business Week -- Observers: Google should focus on search AP (Oct 20) -- many people have ideas on what Google should be doing especially in matters related to search. Tyburski concludes, "I think Google's priority is advertising. That is, after all, where the money is". I have to agree - they will have to pursue those areas where they can attract more advertising revenue.
Firefox 2.0
Firefox 2.0 Released: 'Bon Echo' Lives! By Sean Michael Kerner, Internet News.com
" "The focus of Firefox 2.0 overall is all about how do we take the core things that people like about Firefox and enhance them and at the same time enhance the quality of the overall platform," Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president for engineering, told internetnews.com."
Available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
WebFetchPro for the UK
WebFetchPro by Phil Bradley, SEW Blog (Oct 23)
WebFetchPro is a new metasearch engine from Infospace with tabs for the Web, Images, Audio, Video, News - and more. This is intended for the UK market. It has Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask - Infospace may be the only one to have agreements with all of these. Phil Bradley was not overly impressed.
It's not bad - has "are you looking for", preview, identifies the search engine, gives choices for ranking. It's very similar to Dogpile and the other Infospace metasearchers.
Google Custom Search Engine
Google releases customizable search, CNet (Oct 23)
Google has introduced a Custom Search Engine which website and blog publishers can add to their pages. Results will include ads. Website owners can invite their users to contribute.
"The search engine can be customized quickly by choosing keywords and a list of sites the publisher wants included in the search index. These can be the only sites searched, or simply the ones with the highest priority. Alternately, users can exclude sites from the search index."
Yahoo has the Yahoo Search Builder.
Both are aimed at the webmaster. The person who just wants a personal specialized search engine should stick with Rollyo.com.
Also see Google Copies Rollyo's Business Plan, Inserts AdSense, by Steve Bryant, eWeek (Oct 24) -- has screenshots.
Google Launches Custom Search Engine Service, by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Oct 24)
"The new Google custom search engine builds on the foundation begun with Google Co-Op. "We are trying to shore up our algorithms with the wisdom of the crowds. We know we are not always the expert in every topic in every domain," said Shashi Seth, Product Lead for the new Custom Search Engine service."
Includes examples of sites that have added the Google Custom Search.
Google provides tools for tailor-made search engines by Michael Liedtke, AP via Globe and Mail
"Google designed its customizing system to appeal to Web sites that want their search engines to focus on specific topics. For instance, a fishing site might tailor Google's customized search engine so it doesn't scan music sites to minimize the chances for confusion when the term “bass” is entered."
Example: JumpUp.com created by Intuit for small business.
There will be ads although government agencies, universities and nonprofit groups may run the search tool without the ads. Google will share the revenue with the web site owners.
Review: Customer Search Engine, Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO (Oct 23)
Matt Cutts is "jazzed" about the new custom search. He very quickly created a "search engine that covered 70+ blogs in the search/SEO industry."
October 23, 2006
Internet Resources Newsletter
The Internet Resources Newsletter - Oct / Nov 2006 shows that the specialty site with high quality content is very much alive and well.
+ Culture Info: International and European networks for the cultural sector http://network.culture.info/
+ Northern Light Business Search - http://www.nlresearch.com/imarket.php
+ BioWizard - biomedical research portal - free. http://www.biowizard.com/
+ NewsMap - click on a map to get news headlines for that country -
http://muti.co.za/static/newsmap.html
+ Open Access Central - http://www.openaccesscentral.com/ - scholarly research
And more - very good for a browsing moment.
Using Google Scholar
Exploring the scholarly neighborhood byLuiz Barroso, Google Blog (Aug 22) - tips on making more use of Related in Google Scholar to become acquainted with a topic.
Mentioned in the excellent Internet Resources Newsletter - Oct / Nov 2006.
Flickr for Librarians
Flickr is the Web Photo Tool Preferred by Superheroes and Librarians by Connie Crosby, LLRX (Oct 15)
There's more to Flickr, the online photo management service, than meets the eye. Communities have formed including a Libraries and Librarians group. Connie Crosby interviewed Michael Porter, known by his Flickr handle as 'libraryman'. He mentioned several communities --
"The Librarians' Desks Group really is a fun Flickr librarian group by the way! I’ve added a couple of shots to that group too, one of the few times I’ve ever taken a photo specifically to add to a group. There are other interesting library groups as well, like Librarians in Glasses, Modified Librarians (tattoos, piercings, etc), Librarians in Hardhats, Librarian Fit Club and several others. The nice thing about the Libraries and Librarians Group is that all of these other group photos could also go there, especially once they are accurately “tagged” with descriptive keywords."
Internet Librarian 2006
Internet Librarian 2006 began on October 23. Follow along through the InfoToday blog. Good to watch some of the bloggers on this list too.
Eudora and Penelope
The End of Eudora as We Know It? by Sheri R. Lanza, Newsbreaks (Oct 23)
This is a more reassuring article about Qualcomm's plans to move Eudora over to Mozilla as an open source program. Project is called Penelope. The open source version is expected in the first half of 2007.
"Eudora and Thunderbird will continue to offer different interfaces. Eudora users need not be concerned that once the open source version of Eudora appears, the product will look and act differently than the current commercial version. Aside from the interfaces, another differentiation might be the manner in which each e-mail client relates to other software, such as browsers. Depending on the development path of each product and future technology, Eudora and Thunderbird could continue to diverge or become more similar. When possible, functionality that is added to one might be added to the other."
October 22, 2006
Internet as a source for health information
Rural Canada and acccess to health information -- Harris, R.M., Wathen, C.N. & Fear, J.M. (2006). "Searching for health information in rural Canada. Where do residents look for health information and what do they do when they find it?" Information Research, 12(1) paper 274. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-1/paper274.html]
Reports on barriers people in rural areas have in finding health information. Doctors are the main source (60%), and the Internet is a strong second (59%). But there are many problems.
"Forty-one percent of all the respondents who said they had looked for health information did not use the Internet. Of these, two-thirds told the interviewer that they had no access or only limited access to the Internet. Others explained that they did not use the Internet for health information because it is too hard to find things, there is too much information, or the information they do find is too difficult to understand. Twelve percent said they did not know how to use the Internet at all or did not know how to use it to find health information. Others said they 'never considered using the Internet for health information', preferred to rely on the doctor for information or 'would rather talk face-to-face with a person'. One respondent told the interviewer that using the Internet for health information could result in a 'false diagnosis' and that it is better to rely on the doctor."
Personalizing Search
Making Search More Relevant, By Bruce Clay, Search Engine Guide - October 18, 2006
"In recognition of these limitations, search engines are constantly innovating to make search more relevant. Some are providing a means to personalize your search results with shared knowledge, some are experimenting with a new and different results page, and others want to improve relevance with the human touch."
New AOL Search
AOL Search 7.0 beta - a new take on Google, Pandia (Oct 9) -- AOL is developing a new web search based on Google at http://preview.search.aol.com/aolcom/webhome. Pandia describes the main things to look for and calls it "nice".
Firefox extensions
5 Firefox extensions that will change the way you search, Pandia (Oct) - tips for people who are new to the Firefox browser. Names 5 extensions: hyperwords, googlepedia, google toolbar, stumbleupon, firefox search box. I bolded the three that are my favourites.
Zimbio - user portal
Zimbio — new guide to the web, Pandia (Oct ) -- Zimbio .. "Like About it presents topic sub-sites with articles, links to relevant sites and discussion forums. Hence these sub sites are more than plain web directories, but less than complete web sites. Their main function is to guide people to relevant information on the Net."
Search Trends
What People are Searching For Right Now, Pandia (Oct) -- "Using search for analyzing social and cultural trends" - Google Zeitgeist, Yahoo Buzz, folksonomies, site popularity - more.
LinkFromDomain at Live
Live Search adds LinkfromDomain operator at Pandia (Oct 17)
Use linkfromdomain at Live.com to find what sites a particular domain links to. Of course, linkdomain lists what sites link to that domain.
Also described by Danny Sullivan - Windows Live Search Adds linkfromdomain Command- describes the linkdomain commands plus inanchor and site.
October 21, 2006
Canadian Immigrant Experience
Moving Here, Staying Here - The Canadian Immigrant Experience - new online exhibit from Library and Archives Canada.
"This ambitious project was developed with two key goals in mind. The first was to facilitate improved access for genealogists and other researchers to some of LAC's frequently used immigration documents, such as passenger lists and land grants. ... The second goal was to provide Canadians with a unique history of Canadian immigration for the years 1800-1939. "
Passenger lists may be of greatest interest to many. LAC has them for 1865 to 1935, but before 1925 they are not indexed by name. You'll need to know the date and port of arrival. LAC plans to make digitized versions for 1865 to 1935 available online "soon".
Firefox 2 - Oct 24
Final Version of Mozilla Firefox 2 Will Be Released Oct. 24 Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service, PC World via Yahoo News (Oct 20)
RSS Readers
Make your own headlines - "These easy tools can deliver the best news to your desktop without the fluff--no matter how you define fluff." By Elsa Wenzel. CNet (October 13, 2006)
"Make your own headlines. These easy tools can deliver the best news to your desktop without the fluff--no matter how you define fluff."
RSS Newsreaders: Bloglines, Google Reader, Feed Demon, Newsgator, Rojo.
Tips for Google News Archive
Google News Archive Search -An index to articles that reaches back as far as 200 years., By Jonathan Dube. Poynter Online (Oct 19) Has tips on using Google News Archive including -- "And here's a trick: You can use the Advanced Search to search for articles listed as "no price." That doesn't always mean they're free -- sometimes Google just isn't aware of the price -- but sometimes they are. You can also use the Advanced Search to search within specific dates."
October 20, 2006
Personal Home Page
Getting good vibes at home by Matthew Ingram, Globe Technology (Oct 20)
Another review of Web 2.0 places where you can design your own home page. I'm still with Sympatico but given a few hours to fiddle with settings, I'd try out Netvibes.
Ingram also mentions PageFlakes, Live.com, Google personal page, Protopages, Eskobo, and Webwag.
IE7 rated as very good
Internet Explorer 7> - CNEt Review (Oct 19)
IE7 receives a 7 or very good from CNet. But in the same breath, CNet says that Firefox is better. At the moment, users are saying 6.8.
"The bottom line: IE 7 was Microsoft's one chance to leapfrog ahead of the competition, but the company has only barely caught sight of the current front-runners. For more features and greater security, switch to Mozilla Firefox."
October 19, 2006
Live.com Instant Answers
A Closer Look At Microsoft's Instant Answers By Brian Smith, Search Day (Oct 19) -- Live.com wants to "delight" searchers with instant answers. (Flashback to the 1980s when Tom Peters preached wowing and delighting customers.)
This article shows that the answers are good for sports. These come mainly from Fox Sports. Also --
+ reference from Encarta
+ music from MSN Music
+ finance from MSN Money
+ news
The development team gets its ideas for more answers from "a multitude of places: direct customer feedback, brainstorming, Live QnA Beta, looking at what kind of things people are searching for and associated volume of searches, searcher behavior/trying to understand the intent of searches, competition, etc.’"
IE7 Ready
Microsoft, Mozilla release new Web browsers By Benjamin J. Romano, Seattle Times (Oct 19)
Microsoft has released IE7 for Windows XP users. This will be automatically distributed to Windows XP users in November.
"IE7's appearance is cleaner than previous versions, with smaller buttons and no drop-down "File" and "Edit" menus across the top. More space is given over to the browsing window itself, as well as a built-in search box and side bars to display bookmarks and content feeds."
Firefox 2 is expected in another week or so.
Search Behaviour
Long Tails and Short Queries - An Interview with Amanda Spink, Boxes and Arrows (Oct 17) -- Amanda Spink did some early research into searcher behaviour using data from the Excite search engine. Ten years ago people used very few terms, did not vary the query, and looked at just the first 10 to 20 results. Spink says that this has not changed much.
"We are seeing a growth in more complex search behaviors. More people are searching for information using more than one search. This might mean repeat searches of the same query over time or modifying the queries in successive searches over time. Many people are multitasking or searching for information on more than one topic during a search session. People’s information needs are often quite complex in their home and work environments."
She feels that it would be better if search engines had larger input areas so that searchers would feel they have more room to use more terms. People do best with terms if they have had a chance to talk with another person first.
"Stimulating users to talk with someone or thing (agent) about their information problem helps generate terms and look at the results for additional terms."
Healia
Health Information Search Engines Emerge -- Growing Consumer Demand for Health Information Increases Need for Better Quality, More Personalized Searches, Says Expert at 11th World Congress on Internet in Medicine -- Business Wire via Marketwatch (Oct 18)
"Increasingly consumers find themselves in need of search engines that address the unique complexities of health information search and that can provide more reliable and personalized search results. Recently, several health-vertical search engines, including Healia ( www.healia.com), have launched in attempt to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the health search process."
Browser Stats
IE Remains the Dominant Browser, by Enid Burns, Clickz Stats (Oct 16)
Browser market share stats -- "Across the globe, IE has an 85.85 percent market share; Mozilla's Firefox has 11.49 percent of the market. Apple's Safari browser serves 1.61 percent, and Opera and Netscape each supply browsers to less than 1 percent of the market worldwide."
October 18, 2006
Firefox 2.0 going on 3.0
Firefox 3.0: Mozilla starts brainstorming, SIlicon.com (Oct 18)
Mozilla has begun to ask for user input on what to include in Firefox 3.0 as they wrap up the changes for the launch of Firefox 2.0. Firefox has about 10 to 12% of market share compared to IE's 82%. (Imagine - why are so many people sticking with IE 6?)
"Changes made to Firefox 2.0 include an updated user interface, built-in anti-phishing, inline spell checking, improved tabbed browsing and search capabilities, browser session recovery and an updated add-ons/extensions manager."
LinkedIn adds personal service providers
LinkedIn launches useful service directory, Posted by: Rafe Needleman, CNet Reviews (Oct 16)
"Like other good social network tools, LinkedIn succeeded by finding a niche. While MySpace became the network for teens and Facebook did the same for college students, LinkedIn has become a robust networking site for businesspeople, with a special focus on helping people network to find jobs."
"LinkedIn today is rolling out its new service for personal service providers ("PSPs"), the people we hire outside of our work life. LinkedIn now allows its members to recommend and endorse people--dentists, mechanics, nannies, and so on--who are not LinkedIn members."
TV For Tech Lovers
CNET TV is live!
CNET TV will "deliver new videos every day--product reviews, how-tos, and news. On CNET TV, you choose how you watch: stream CNET TV into your browser, download the videos for watching when and where you want, or subscribe to your favorite shows via iTunes. You can also customize the whole experience to suit your needs. Come on by and join Brian Cooley, Molly Wood, Veronica Belmont, and Tom Merritt over at CNET TV. " (From the AnchorDesk email announcement)
Broadband, of course. Plays well. How does one find the time to watch? It's at www.cnettv.com
Book Review: Librarian's Internet Survival Guide
"The Librarian's Internet Survival Guide: Strategies for the High-tech Reference Desk, 2nd Edition", Written by Irene E. McDermott. Reviewed by Adrian Janes. FreePint (Oct 16)
"... the emphasis is on information sources tested by author Irene McDermott's own experience as a reference librarian. The book has several chapters on the technical side, but these are jargon-free and similarly rooted in working needs."
Searchforvideo adds video from Forbes
SearchforVideo.com Adds Forbes.com Video Network Content to Search Index, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Oct 17)
"Searchforvideo.com users can now search and find video from the Forbes.com video network which features a broad range of categories including top shows, business, lifestyle, investing, people, special interest and technology."
October 17, 2006
Multimedia Search
From Niall Kennedy's weblog, two excellent articles on multimedia search.
The current state of audio search (Oct 15) -- "In this post I will outline the current state of audio search, and how machines make sense of spoken word, progressing from easy to difficult." Covers different audio formats and speech-to-text conversion.
The current state of image search (Oct 14) -- "In this post I will outline image search concepts, the current state of the art, and outline some of the challenges with still image search."
Ranking Search Results Getting Personal
How Can Search Engines Rank Results? Let Bill Count The Ways by Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (Oct 16) There are over 100 factors a search engine could consider in ranking results. For Sullivan the main takeaway is that "... we are moving further into that world ... where not everyone will see the same search results for the same query." Essentially, ranking search results is getting personal.
Points to an excellent article - 20 Ways Search Engines May Rerank Search Results - by Bill Slawski , SEO by the Sea (Oct 14). Article describes ways that results may be re-ranked after the basics of matching on terms and link analysis.
Book Review: Teaching Web Search Skills
Teaching People to Search Like Pros, by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Oct 17)
Reviews Teaching Web Search Skills By Greg R. Notess (Information Today, $29.50)
"Teaching Web Search Skills should be required reading for anyone who teaches others to search, no matter how experienced or skilled they may be. The combination of fundamental knowledge and dozens of anecdotes and techniques based on years of experience that Greg has accumulated makes the book a great read."
Competitive Intelligence Guide
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide, By Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX (Oct 16)
Good listing of a multitude of tools including Website trackers.
Exalead Desktop
New Version of Exalead Desktop Search Offers Unlimited Document Indexing Capability - "Latest Release of Workgroup Software Delivers Performance Enhancements, New Features that Further Reduce Search Frustration", PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Oct 16)
"Exalead(R), a global provider of search software for business and the Web, today announced new versions of its unified search software products for desktop and workgroup environments. The new releases -- exalead one:desktop(TM) 4.5 and exalead one:workgroup(TM) 4.5 -- offer several new performance enhancements as well as support for new file formats and e-mail clients."
Kahzam, Spazahm
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a Search Engine!, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Oct 16)
Kahzam.com is a new search engine with several tabs - images, directory (looks very commercial), reference, news, audio, shopping. It is aiming to get to the second tier quickly by auditioning for a super hero character for its commercials. This does not bode well.
"The Kahzam Super Hero will help us to show off Kahzam's super features and will enable us to leap up to the position of the second tier's leading search engine," said Kahzam.com's co-developer Charles Loiacono. Kahzam.com offers innovative features such as "Quick View," which allows users to navigate website after website on the results page without ever leaving that page. Kahzam said it is coming to the rescue of consumers dissatisfied with the major search engines."
Quick view, innovative? Where have these people been? Many search engines with quick view have come and gone. The front page is loaded with graitutous junk - news, ads, contest - that won't please searchers.
October 16, 2006
Future Tech
Tomorrow's Technology "Here's what's next for technology: when the biggest breakthroughs will appear, how they might change the way you live, work, and play, and why the future won't be trouble-free." Special Report Editor: Eric Dahl. PC WOrld (Oct 2)
For everyone who loves technology. Also 100 Fearless Forecasts.
Of interest:
"New Browsers: Microsoft's answer to the growing threat of Firefox is Internet Explorer 7, a completely redesigned version of its Web browser. The final version will be out later this year, but the beta editions we've seen so far look greatly improved over the glitch-ridden IE6. Version 2 of the open-source Firefox will release later this year, offering faster page rendering and improved RSS features. A beta version of the new Firefox is available now.
Socially Acceptable Searching: Search engines will use social-network features to deliver better results. For example, you'll be able to access searches that your friends have conducted--say, to help you find the best restaurants or the best dry cleaner in a particular city. In addition, community-based question-and-answer search forums such as Windows Live QnA will become much more useful for finding the information you want."
I'd just like a Windows machine that doesn't crash, slow down, or seize up.
Ask.com Search Story
Ask.com Profiled in USA Today, Gary Price, ResourceShelf (Oct 4) -- Comments on the USA Today article, What's Teoma, you ask? You could ask Jeeves, but he's become ... Teoma, and refers to older stories about Ask and Expert Rank.
Privacy with TrackMeNot
Firefox Extension: TrackMeNot, ResourceShelf (Oct 7) - now this is a worthwhile extension for Firefox - " TrackMeNot is a lightweight browser extension that helps protect web searchers from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines."
News Photos
Resources for Finding Real-Time “News Photos” on the Web, ResourceShelf (Oct 15) - suggests Yahoo News, Ask, and Lycos.
October 14, 2006
Google Search Appliance
Google eyes business market by Simon Avery, Globe and Mail (oct 13)
Google hasn't forgotten the corporate market and is forming partnerships to sell its Search Appliance.
"The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., announced its first re-seller partnership in Canada on Tuesday. Compugen Inc., an IT consultancy that integrates computer systems for companies, will begin offering its clients Google's search technology. The partnership follows several formed recently with IT specialists in the U.S."
It faces tough competition in this market - Autonomy Inc., Fast Search & Transfer ASA, and Endeca Technologies Inc., not to mention Microsoft.
Review of Google's Office Software
Toy or Tool? Google Docs & Spreadsheets Reviewed "Google's new office suite is great for quick collaboration, but don't throw out Word and Excel just yet" by Richard Ericson, Computer World (Oct 12)
"Looking for a free word processor and spreadsheet? Google's newly released Docs & Spreadsheets suite that offers just that, but in this case you get what you pay for. While the number-crunching power of Spreadsheets is adequate for simple workbooks, the Docs program (formerly Writely, acquired by Google earlier this year) is so underpowered we wouldn't recommend it for even casual use."
Web site for word lovers
wordiq -- "We offer search results from a diverse array of dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and other valuable references. Our website is completely free with minimal amounts of advertising so that you can maximize your learning experience."
Learned about this through the great newsletter - NeatNetTricks.
October 13, 2006
The .Mobi Domain
A Tour of .Mobi, by ResearchBuzz (Oct 2) - Tara Calishain went looking for sites that are using the new domain for mobile - mobi.
"Then I saw several companies I recognized in new .mobi formats — BusinessWeek.mobi, CityGuide.mobi, and several .mobi sites from mobile phone companies (duh.)"
Web Site Stats
A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available, SEOMoz.org, Oct 11 - finding out all that you would ever want to know about a site from ownership, rankings, subscriptions (if a blog/feed), and pages indexed at various engines. Searchers can use these techniques to validate a site.
Live Search Macros
How To Make Custom Search Engine With Live Search, SEW Blog (Oct 12) - links to more information about Live Search Macros.
Ask Mobile
Ask.com Intros Mobile Search Tools, By Laurie Sullivan, TechWeb Technology News (Oct 12)
" Ask.com on Thursday rolled out a new service for searching the Web from mobile devices known as Ask Mobile.
Ask Mobile's interface and search tool are designed to minimize keystrokes, increase navigability on small displays and accelerate page loads to speed searches on the go. "
October 12, 2006
Exalead is Honoured
Exalead in 2006 Information Access Magic Quadrant - Cited for Ability to Execute and Vision, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Oct 11)
"Exalead(R), a global provider of search software for business and the Web, today announced that leading industry research firm Gartner Inc. has recognized the company in its just-released Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology 2006."
Univ of Wisconsin joins Google Book Search
Google Book Search adds Univ. of Wisconsin library, Reuters via NPR (Oct 12)
" The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google plan to provide access to hundreds of thousands of public and historical materials from the UW-Madison libraries and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library, they said.
Those books and documents represent one of the largest U.S. collections of historical and government documents. They will be selected from a combined 7.2 million library holdings."
... "The University of Wisconsin-Madison joins the University of California and Spain's Universidad Complutense de Madrid -- two other major libraries Google has announced are participating in the library book search project in the past two months."
Google for Educators
Google launches classroom project By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com (Oct 11)
Google is courting educators. It has opened up a new service, Google for Educators. . This has "how-to video tutorials for products like Blogger; lesson plans for applications like Google Earth; and links to a training academy for those who want to become a "Google certified teacher," a pilot program for teachers to learn about technology.""
There are "how-to guides for 12 Google applications, including Web search, Book search, Google Maps, Google Video, Picasa photo-sharing and Google Docs, a free word-processing service."
Eudora going open source
Qualcomm gives Eudora a Mozilla makeover, by Stephen Shankland, CNet (Oct 12)
Qualcomm is getting out of email and is moving Eudora to an open source model based on the Thunderbird email application. The project is called Penelope. New versions are expected in the first half of 2007 .
""It should look like, feel like, act like Eudora," he said. "The goal is to not only maintain as much as possible the feature and user experience consistency, but also, using the open-source community, to continue to evolve the software.""
I suspect that long-standing Eudora users (like me) will want to wait for Version 1.0.
+ Version 0.1 will have "Eudora keyboard shortcuts and software to import current Eudora settings and stored messages".
+ Version 0.5 - "import of current Eudora filters--the automatic actions based on the content of messages--and will feature a more complete user interface. "
+ Version 1.0 - "import all Eudora settings and will support preformatted e-mail templates called stationery."
Work.com Guides
Business.com Launches Work.com, at Traffic.com (Oct 9)
Work.com "... looks to be, unabashedly, a business-to-business version of About.com. At first glance the guides to various business topics are outstandingly helpful."
Smarter Searching
Martin Belam offers instruction in how to "liberate information from the internet" - a four-part series on personal tools. Part one is Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet (oct 9) -- Google Suggest and Yahoo Instant Search, plus a paragraph on Advanced Search.
Free vs Fee
The Ongoing Struggle of Free vs. Fee, By Elisabeth Osmeloski, SearchDay (Oct 11)
The Ongoing Struggle of Free vs. Fee, Part Two, By Todd Malicoat, SearchDay (Oct 12)
Pair of articles from coverage of the ASIDIC Fall Meeting, September 10-12. It's rather a jumbled account but the point is what are workable revenue models.
"The prevalence of "good enough" information has shaken the premium content industry to its core, but also serves t increase the overall value of expert information and reducing the overall noise level. There is a fundamental need for traditional information providers to shift to more creative revenue models embodied by the new distribution channel of the web as it reaches mass adoption."
October 11, 2006
GooTube
How will customers react to GooTube? by SURYA BHATTACHARYA, The Star (Oct 11)
One of dozens of articles about Google's purchase of YouTube. Will Google enhance and improve YouTube? Will it run into more copyright problems? Will users face legal traps?
Of interest:
+ "The site now has consumers viewing 100 million short videos each day."
+ "Ajay Agrawal, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, warns that YouTube now faces the liabilities of a publicly traded company, notably liability for copyright infringement."
Also, Matthew Ingram - So what's next for YouTube? (Oct 10) - Ingram and others see trouble ahead.
"One of the lingering issues Google has to confront now is what happens to YouTube if it can’t manage to convince the networks to let it use their material. Does it take it all down, or wait until it gets nasty letters from lawyers? And if it does the former, will YouTube lose some or all of its appeal?"
Yahoo feels Google's breath on its neck by Saul Hansell, IHT (Oct 11)
There's trouble in Yahoo. It tried to buy YouTube too. It's been loosing advertising and is upgrading its advertising systems.
Google Software
Google pushes into Office space "Search giant Google is relaunching its online spreadsheet and word processor software, in another challenge to archrival Microsoft." BBC (Oct 11)
This is browser-based online software. "The new service will be free and give its current Writely and Spreadsheet packages a unified look and feel. "
Google's YouTube Move
Google and the myth of an open net
By Thomas Hazlett, FT.com (Oct 10)
Examines the implications of Google's purchase of the online video leader, YouTube. Notes that the purchase is in conflict with Google's espousal of "network neutrality" for free flow of information.
"Yet the capitalist engine that powers the internet demands something completely different, as Google’s acquisition of YouTube makes clear. That strategy is to integrate Google’s search and advertising sales with YouTube’s users, which could potentially impede access to one of the hottest technologies by other service providers. Jeremy Schoemaker, a net economy expert, sees the deal as superb for Google, “merging to form the biggest video network” and winning a “land-grab for publisher space”. Perhaps even better, it boxes out a rival: “This move is a total ‘in your face’ to Microsoft,” which had made YouTube an offer for an advertising agreement."
Canadian take on homepages
There's no place like a home page, by Elsa Wenzel, CNet (Oct 6)
Compares four services for creating a home page that has news and tools: news from mainstream or from RSS feeds (niche news) and even podcasts; and tools for weather, maps, search and a bevy of widgets.
These were the four that Wenzel reviewed. I've added comments from the perspective of a Canadian user.
MyYahoo - I find MyYahoo, at least the Canadian version, rather dowdy. It does have Canadian news and is good for weather. There are many tools and you can set up more than one page.
Windows Live is beautiful to look at but not very easy to figure out. It does have all the communication tools and is probably the best choice for people using Microsoft IM and email. However, for the time being, I'm sticking with My Sympatico.
Google Home (Canadian) is even plainer than MyYahoo. News, which includes Globe and Mail and The Star, has just the title line - no lead. Weather for major cities in Canada is available, but not for the smaller centres even those with weather stations. There isn't a way to add your own bookmarks. You can add tabs if you are using Google.com/ig - not if you have google.ca/ig - one of those many minor annoyances that afflict Canadian users of these portals.
NetVibes is new to me. It's very attractive and the choices are clear. You can even show email from your POP3 account. The Web Search gives you a choice of Google, Yahoo, Live, or Snap (pity Ask.com isn't on the list). There aren't any choices for Canadian content: if you want to Canadian news, you'll need to find the RSS feeds and add them manually. (CNet reviewers reported problems in adding feeds.) It does pick up small Canadian cites through the Weather Channel.
CNet gave Google the top pick with 8 out of 10, but I'd be tempted by NetVibes, and if I were a Microsoft person, I'd figure out how to make Live.com work for me.
The New Exalead
Exalead has switched to the new version that has been in beta test for the last few months. It has grown the database to 8 billion pages and is proud to say so. There is also a database of images.
The presentation is softer and easier to read. Thumbnails (page previews) have been moved to the left (and can be removed through preferences or control setting on the results page), and the related terms and other aids are on the right.
Exalead has added sponsored results and put them at the top and bottom of the page.
As before there are Related terms, multimedia formats (these had been at the top before), Language, categories from the Open Project Directory, and filetypes. More choices shows more of these groupings incluiding a geographic breakdown. Related terms can be used to exclude blocks of results.
Exalead will search 54 languages - these are listed under Preferences.
[Postscript Nov 3/06 - Exalead interface can be in English, French, German, Italian, or SPanish. Strangely, though there is no translation function. ]
There is also a "search within results".
The big change is in Advanced Search. Here are examples of what you can do are shown with some aids for using them. Among these are:
+ truncation -- invest* -- to get words that have a stem.
+ sorting according to date modified (although no search engine really knows). Can also be done with sort:new
+ logical expression - AND, OR, AND NOT
+ adjacent - NEAR still works and is probably for within 16 words. NEXT works for 1.
+ title
+ file format
+ an organizational site
+ country
The prefix site no longer works for the top level domain. Instead of site:ca for Canada, use country:ca. This will pick up Canadian sites with .ca as well as .com and other domains. This means there is no option either in Advanced search or through the use of a prefix to search on only the .com domain or any of the others. This looks like an oversight which I hope Exalead realizes and fixes.
[Postscript Nov 3 /06- using site: for a top-level-domain works now. Can enter site:ca and get only the pages in the Canada domain.]
Exalead kept the shortcuts on the homepage. Use these as bookmarks to favourite search engines or canned searches.
Some things are gone.
+ automatic stemming. This used to be available as a setting under preferences.
+ bookmarking - collecting links to look at later
+ the rather cumbersome methods for previewing or opening in a new window.
The new preview is really a cached version of the page with the date the page was indexed and the search terms bolded.
Unfortunately, there is no help page but presumably they'll fix that soon.
In all, there is more gain than loss. The Search Engine Comparison chart has been updated in WSG.
Other reviews:
+ Greg Notess at SearchEngineShowdown - New Exalead Interface Launches.
+ Gary Price at ResourceShelf - Redesigned and Enhanced Exalead Now Out of Beta, We Think
October 10, 2006
Social Local Search
Social Local Search Sites Up 44% in Past Year, by LeeAnn Prescott, Hitwise (Oct 4) - interesting figures comparing traffic to yellow page directories to those that are user-generated such as Yahoo's Get Local.
"The chart below shows that growth over the past year to the yellow pages custom category has been relatively flat, while the market share of visits to the custom category containing Yahoo! Local, Yelp, Judy's Book and Insider Pages has grown by 44% when comparing August 2005 to August 2006. While standard yellow pages sites are receiving significantly more traffic in terms of volume, these newer directory services, with maps, reviews, and community features are quickly catching up."
Ask.com Smart Answers
A Closer Look at Ask's Smart Answers, Brian Smith (Oct 10)
"This is the first article in a four-part series on the special information sections creeping into general search results, usually at the very top of the search engine results page (SERP). Ask, featured in this article, has Smart Answers. In the next three installments, I will also introduce Yahoo! Shortcuts, Google Onebox results, and Microsoft's Instant Answers. These articles will be brief introductions to the services with a lot of examples for you to explore."
Ask's smart answers roughly break down to "Fact/reference based, vertical search results, and expert/partnership driven".
This is a very worthy article, more so since Ask will not list its Smart Answers. But to the ones mentioned in this article, add simple mathematical calculations such as 24*2, imperial to metric conversions. Ask.com will also return the square root -- sqrt(4) - but you won't find that at the Ask.com help page.
del.icio.us network
del.icio.us Plans To Become A Social Network, Read/Write Web (OCt 4)
Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, indicated in this interview that he'd like to move del.icio.us into a social network where people connect with each other. Read/Write commented, "I think what Joshua is talking about is expanding this into a more full-featured social networking system - with commenting, groups, etc. Perhaps similar to Imeem, which combines content browsing with social networking."
Also see - Comparing del.icio.us to StumbleUpon and also The Social Bookmarking Faceoff
"The social bookmarking market is in a steady state with two dominant players - del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. The rest of the pack, including Yahoo MyWeb, appears to be substantially behind. Will they catch up? In this post we attempt to answer that question."
BTW - social bookmarking didn't start with del.icio.us but it did take off as part of the Web 2.0 scene. There were other online bookmarking services like Backflip that let you share bookmarks with others.
Competition in Search Engines
A Gaggle of Google Wannabes by Catherine Holahan, Business Week (Oct 5)
"Ask.com and other challengers hope to pull share from Google with new search methods, but it won't be easy to unseat the market leader."
Compares ranking methods at Google and Ask.com --
"Google's algorithm, known as Page-Rank, was developed by co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in the mid-1990s. Unlike other search formulas of the day, which showed results based on the number of times a particular search word showed up on the page, Page-Rank orders links based in part on the number of times other pages link to them.
Ask.com's algorithm, on the other hand, retrieves and ranks results based on the number of times groups identified as related to the topic reference the site. Company executives say the method is superior because it theoretically avoids displaying generally popular sites that are not frequently referenced by other sites on the topic."
Identifies 5 main areas where search services seek to differentiate themselves.
1. Territory (content) - Google added Finance to compete with Yahoo. It has software now, and, of course, there is the growing academic area. Microsoft is working on its Academic Live.
2. Ranking formulas - described above where Google may still have the edge.
3. Topical groupings - Clusty and WIndows Live (tho surely this is still rudimentary).
4. Social search - Yahoo bookmarking and Swicki Search from Eurekster. Also Yahoo and Microsoft Answers which draw from everyone.
5. Preview site with thumbnail shot (Ask.com) or larger (Snap.com). There could be other small but pleasant features to make handling different.
Matt Cutt's comments on Google's ranking algorithms are interesting too - Competition in Search (Oct 5)
Google and Copyright
A Look At Google's Copyright Battles by Barry Schwartz, SEW Blog (Oct 3)
"From the Google Cache, to Google Images, to web search, book search and other indexing projects - Google needs to keep redefining the law to continue to build out their search engine."
REfers to CNet article - Copyright Tussles for Google - by Declan McCullagh (Aug 4)
While you're there, use the "big picture" where CNet shows related stories.
Literacy Project from Google
The Google Literacy Project by Barry Schwartz, SEW Blog (Oct 5)
Google has brought together Google Books, Scholar, Blogs, Groups, Maps and Video into the Literarcy Project http://www.google.com/literacy/ .
From the site: "A resource for teachers, literacy organisations and anyone interested in reading and education, created in collaboration with LitCam, Google, and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning"
From SEW Blog: "The site was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair with hopes to combat global illiteracy. Nikesh Arora, vice president of Google's European operations said, "Google's business was born out of a desire to help people find information.""
It's available in German and English. There are hints on the pages for each of the tools on how to use these tools; eg, kinds of blogs to look for. While it's nice to have the tools in one place, tabs would better for jumping from one source to another, and a meta-search across selected sources would be even better.
Blog Readers
Google Reader & Ask's Bloglines Undergo Updates by Barry Schwartz, SEW Blog (Sep 29)
"Both Google Reader and Ask.com's Bloglines have gone under some interface and usability updates, with some added features included."
Search for Free Images
Yotophoto For Finding Free Photos Fast, by Phil Bradley, SEW Blog (Sep 29)
"The focus of Yotophoto however is on making 'open and copyleft' images available to educators, bloggers and digital artists. Consequently Yotophoto acts as a multi/meta search engine, scouring resources such as Flickr, Wikipedia, Stock.Xchng, Morguefile, Pixelperfect Digital and OpenPhoto for images in the public domain, or made available under CC, GNU FDL or similar licenses."
Hoovers Online
Hoover’s Premium Select: More Data, More Customization, Expanded Download Options, by Deborah A. Liptak, Newbreaks (Oct 9)
"Hoover’s (http://www.hoovers.com), the Austin, Texas-based D&B subsidiary (http://www.dnb.com/us), is enhancing its subscription products to include more company and decision-maker data, more customization, expanded international company coverage, and more downloads in its newest subscription level, Premium Select. Jeff Guillot, Hoover’s executive vice president of product and technology, discussed these enhancements with me and provided a guided tour to the changes to Hoover’s current subscriptions."
Google - YouTube
GoogTube, the neutral network "Commentary: Google's biggest deal yet is its riskiest -- and smartest" By Bambi Francisco, Marketwach (Oct 9)
"Buying the privately-held YouTube, which boasts 34 million unique visitors a month, instantly makes Google and properties one of the three most-visited sites in the rapidly growing video-sharing segment of the Web."
October 05, 2006
SearchMash
searchmash - Phil Bradley comments in his weblog on searchmash, a new but unlabelled effort by Google to experiment with alternate interface and display. At present it shows web search results with some options for opening the page - - and images. Versions of this style have been done before, often by metasearch engines. Google is going to have to come up with a better searchmash than this.
Extra: Searchers will want to add Phil Bradley's Weblog to their feeds - it's informative and attractive.
October 04, 2006
Online Photo and Video Editing
Shutterfly ready to go shopping "Commentary: Or maybe it's the other way around", Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Oct 3)
Examines Shutterfly as a candidate for being bought by One True Media. Article is interesting for what it has to say about a the boom in emerging online photo and video sites. Shutterfly is one of many photo editing and sharing sites. One True Media is a photo-and-video-editing site.
Net Neutrality
We Own the Internet: Net Neutrality for the Disengaged by Amy Gahran, Poynter Online (Oct 3) Net neutrality is an issue that could creep up on us and then one day we'll wake and one or two companies will own the Internet and we'll be paying the fees. Gahran has found this very amusing spoof about the position of the telecommunication companies.
"If you haven't yet managed to start caring about net neutrality, check out this hilarious advocacy site: We Own the Internet. It features several great bits of Flash video -- enthusiastic speeches by "Richard P. Merryweather, president & CEO of CT&TCOM American Communications.""
Book Reviews
My Favourite Tipples from FreePint (Oct ) lists sites selected by Janet Moore for help in choosing new books to read, especially novels.
StumbleUpon in Google and Yaho
StumbleUpon Integrates with Search Engines, Google Operating System (Sep 29)
StumbleUpon, a kind of social bookmarking recommender system, now taps into search results in Google and Yahoo, marking results that have been bookmarked in Stumbleupon and showing a user-applied tag. The tag isn't always what you would expect and may seem completely inappropriate. but, as long as you know, it can give a quick idea of what the site is about.
"StumbleUpon, the service that lets you find and recommend interesting sites, works mostly by using a plugin for your browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox). StumbleUpon updated their plugin, by integrating their metadata into search results from Google and Yahoo."
October 03, 2006
RSS Mystifying
RSS: Use, Lose, or Abuse? By Michelle Manafy, EContent (Oct 2006)
"Simply put, really simple syndication isn't simple at all. While ease of use on the consumer side—one-click subscription—is improving through aggregators like syndic8 or NewsGator, finding and using RSS feeds continues to mystify most readers."
Article doesn't help to demystify.
US Political Blogs
Politics and Tech Tools - Blogs, Aggregators, and Tracking Tools, by Laura Gordon-Murnan, Searcher (Oct)
Who would have thought there could be so many blogs following US politics? They are national / local, conservative / liberal, democrat / republican, House / Senate, incumbent / challenger. They are all here along with aggregators, alerting services, podcasting services.
"Ways to track, monitor, and participate in political campaigns have exploded. Dynamic, exciting, and wide open political blogging is playing an active role and has an aggressive voice in shaping political discourse."
Info Today People's Choice
2006 People’s Choice Awards - And the Winners Are By Barbara Brynko, Information Today (Oct 3)
Information Today ran People’s Choice Awards for 10 categories. Names are in this pdf document. digg.com, a "social content web site" won for top new technology. Answers.com was the top "information service".
A Google Rollyo?
Build your own Google Search soon, Googling Google, ZDned (Oct 2)
"IndexBench or Search Mashup — take your pick, it looks like Google is indeed developing a service similar to Rollyo. "
Restrict Your Search to Favorite Sites, Soon at Google , Google Operating System (Oct 2)
"So we should expect a similar offering from Google, that will most likely include a way to share your search mashups that combine content from more than one source. Until then you can already do that, albeit not in an elegant way." Gives a tip on how to use a multiple site query to create your own mini-google-search engine.
Branding search engines
Rebranding Ask.com By Rae Hoffman, SearchDay (OCt 3) Tells the story of Ask.com through its years as Ask Jeeves, the reasons for retiring Jeeves, and rebranding itself. I've seen the ads on TV - I don't think the gorilla is an improvement.
Amazon's A9 Turns to Metasearch
There have been significant changes at Amazon's search engine, A9. This was once a leader in personalized search for search history, bookmarks, diary entries, and access to specialized databases including Amazon's own book search.
But the creator, Udi Manber, left A9 in February to join Google - perhaps he felt blocked, because very little had happened at A9 for several months. The new CEO, David Tennenhouse, the former director of research at Intel, has other ideas.
A9 had never been the success that seemed within reach when it shot forth with the new personalized search features two years ago. At that time it used Google as the main search engine and had arrangements with many speciality sites for searching their content.
However, A9 then stalled. Windows Live replaced Google as the web search engine in April 2006. There were no new improvements to the personalized search. Nothing was happening with local search. By August 2006 traffic had dropped 21% compared to August 2005. I stopped using A9 after it switched to Live. Also there wasn't sufficient need to use the other features, since Yahoo and Google had far surpassed A9 in personalized search.
Amazon must have realized they needed to do something. This is the something - a meta-search engine that can be customized by adding predefined groups. One of these is Books with Amazon, a couple of libraries, and RedLightGreen. This itself could indicate trouble. OCLC announced that it is closing RedLightGreen in November.
The search site is attractive, but there is no compelling reason to use this over other metasearchers.
On the general search it has retained the panels for showing web results from Live.com in one column, and Amazon book search in another (complete with jacket covers). Web results still have the popup for Site Info with traffic and ownership information from Alexa.
September 29th, 2006 — A New Look and Focus for the A9.com Website describes what they dropped - the A9 toolbar and personalized services. There are instructions on downloading any that you had saved.
Gone also are A9 maps and A9 Yellow Pages that had the innovative block view of the area near an address.
A9 redesigns, simplifies by Greg Linden, Geeking with Greg (Oct 2) - liked the new look but said the functionality is minimal - "something that has been around for a decade".
Amazon's A9 Becomes, Well, Sort Of Nothing, by Danny Sullivan, SEW blog
A9.com's features scaled back By Monica Soto Ouchi, Seattle Times (Oct 3)
"Amazon.com has discontinued several distinctive features of its search engine, A9.com, including a search history that recorded all the searches ever made by a user, and mapping technology that captured street-level images of businesses in the largest U.S. cities."
Most see this cutback as signifying failure. Sullivan says the result is "sort of nothing". Amazon neglected A9 and let others surge far ahead. Perhaps they should never have got into the search game, and now perhaps they should get out of it. A9 doesn't offer anything you can't get elsewhere, unless you're fond of doing a book search side-by-side a web search. But it is nice to look at.
New Clusty
Clusty, Vivisimo's consumer search service, has had a makeover which has introduced blue and red colours - somewhat reminiscent of signage and ads in the 1940s. There are some new features:
+ adjust the font size
+ adjust the display - number of results, number of clusters, tabs
+ can group web search results by source (search engine) or site (actually top level domain), in addition to Clusty's folders. Other groupings available for other types of searches.
But you can't select the engines you want to use. Sources for web search appear to be Ask.com, Gigablast, MSN, Open Directory, Wisenut, and of course Sponsored Listings.
For the News search below, Clusty got results from Reuters and Yahoo News.
There's a new Clusty Labs. The latest development here is the Clusty Cloud. Enter the query and get a "cloud" of clusters, essentially terms that occur frequently for that topic. Below is the cloud for tagging.
See Vivisimo Upgrades Clusty.Com and Leverages Site for Search Experiments, eContent (Oct 3)
Inxight Search Extender for Google Desktop
Inxight Offers Search Extender for Google Desktop, eContent (Oct 3)
This is one way to cluster Google results - get Google Desktop search and add Inxight's Search Extender . It will "help users leverage Inxight's entity extraction and natural-language processing to enhance the Google Desktop search experience".
"Inxight Search Extender for Google Desktop allows users to see at-a-glance and filter search results sets by the relevant people, companies, products and other information contained within them."
October 02, 2006
PCWorld's Tomorrow's Technology
PCWorld has published a 12 part special report on Tomorrow's Technology that looks at PCs, cell phones, web, nanotech, robots, and more.
The Future of Privacy "New online services could make you an even more inviting target for privacy attacks. Here's how." Ryan Singel, PCWorld (Oct 2)
"What are the dangers of storing more and more e-mail, documents, photos, and financial account information online? We talked to experts and then designed several scenarios that depict what could happen in the next few years if technological innovation and public policy trends in three hot tech categories--online storage, location tracking, and biometrics--remain on their current course."
The Future of the Web (Print version) "The next-generation Net won't just be more portable and personal. It'll also harness the power of people, making it even easier to zero in on precisely what you're looking for." by Alan Stafford
"New technologies will soon give us speedy, uninterrupted access to the Web wherever we wander. We'll see innovative Web applications that allow us to access information anywhere and work seamlessly with colleagues around the globe. People will gain more power online--rather than simply reading the news, they'll be able to go out and uncover some stories of their own. And new sites and services will offer information targeted precisely to your needs, rendering one-size-fits-all sites obsolete."
Among the changes:
+ web services that replicate desktop software
+ search engines that match on intent of the search rather than the keywords
+ more personalized results to be accomplished in part through social-network searching
+ more influence to the public on everything through political blogs, comments, local news, votes.
Firefox 2 Coming
Firefox 2 RC1, CNet (Sep 29)
CNet and a few others have had a peek at the new version of Firefox. It will be adding protection from fraudalent sites that works as well or better than other software. In addition to some subtle changes to the look and to names of bookmarks, Firefox 2 has "enhancements to RSS feeds, the ability to resume your last session--complete with open tabs (useful in the event of a browser crash), and enhanced search-engine capabilities, such as word suggestions from the search engine of your choice"
Look for final release at end of October.
October 01, 2006
Book Lovers Social Network
Love books and reading? LibraryThing helps you catalog the books you have and those you are reading and meet others having similar interests. LibraryThing also searches Amazon, the Library of Congress and 45 other world libraries. And of course people get to tag the books with the terms most meaningful for them.
Alternative Engines
Top 5 alternative search engines - Pandia lists 5 search engine you can use rather than Google, Yahoo and MSN -- Ask.com (many tools and features - not to mention smart answers), Gigablast ( Gigabits for clustering results), Factbites (answers in sentences), Exalead (European with advanced search features), and Snap (easy viewing).
To this I would add
+ Brainboost.com , owned by Answers.com, respond well to questions - eg "what is sustainable packaging"
+ Dumbfind.com "tags" pages and presents tag clusters.
Searching with accents
Searching Google for words with accents, Pandia (Sep 25)
The example given is how can you search for pages with the accent on México and ignore those without. It's next to impossible. Google tends to find both. You can use + (eg +México) which helps somewhat but there will be other factors such as the google search sitee (eg google.es vs google.com), language of the google home page, the IP number, and whether personalized Google is on.
"This is all part of the process towards personalized results, where Google and other search engines take the personal interests or social or cultural context of searches into consideration."