Internet News

Publishers Go Viral

Publishers allow book browsing on the Web, Reuters via Yahoo News (Feb 27)

Random House and HarperCollins will be letting people browse books online and connect to entries on personal pages. Random House will have 5,000 titles viewablt through Insight and is "also introducing a tool allowing users to add material from titles to personal pages on social networks such as MySpace or to a retailer's Web site." Harper Collins will also allow embedding of pages in networking sites.

Looks like these two publishers have seen the possibilities of viral marketing through the social networks.

MetaGlossary for Meaning

Metaglossary.com "harvests definitions from the Web". This is as good or better as Google's define: command and certainly better than searching for the meaning of a term through a keyword search at a search engine. MetaGlossary also has a small box for looking up non-English words through Babylon.

From the about page:

"MetaGlossary is able to precisely extract the meanings of terms and phrases from the often frustratingly unmanageable mass of information on the web. ...
What's more, MetaGlossary organizes these meanings based on topic and usage, so you'll find the one you're looking for quickly and easily. "

Dates and Freshness of Pages

Squeezing The Search Loaf: Finding Search Engine Freshness & Crawl Dates, Danny Sullivan, Searchengineland (Feb 27)

Shows "how, when and where search engines show crawl dates for pages". Has a summary table (love those tables) of dates and freshness by engine - Ask, Live, Google, Yahoo.

Google Toolbar Tips

Tips for Google Toolbar, Google Operating System (Feb 25)

Tips work for latest versions of Google Toolbar for IE (v4) and Firefox (v3).

New Quintura

Quintura launches a unique search interface with interactive tag cloud and icons., Press Release (Feb 27)

Quintura is getting easier to use. The new front page shows the tag cloud in the left pane and results in the right. The tag cloud is interactive - point at terms to get a new "picture" of the topic and to navigate through related terms.

"Quintura offers an intuitive way to refine and narrow a search. The innovative graphical user interface of Quintura presents search results in two panes - the left pane contains a preset interactive tag cloud and the right pane lists search results. The intuitive nature of the cloud allows web users to refine their search by clicking on tags that appear in the cloud. Holding a mouse cursor over a tag in the cloud causes new, related tags to appear surrounding an original tag and search results to change in the scrollable right pane. Clicking a tag in the cloud the web users can easily refine a search and navigate through visual clusters of search results."

You can also save the tag cloud - essentially saving the search query. Or share it - send an email. You can adjust the settings for number of words to be shown, whether to auto-refine (yes), and the quality of the information.

Quintura supports search of the Web (Yahoo), Images, Video, and Amazon. This is quite promising especially for a first-cut on a topic.

About Wales and Wikia

Wikipedia founder hunts for gold by Tom McNichol, CNN Money.com (Feb 27)

Maybe Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, will make money from Wikia .

"What he does offer is the vision thing, and the vision behind Wikia is pretty simple: Use the wiki model - and Wikipedia's most dependable volunteer editors - to build moneymaking websites. Advertising is provided by Google AdSense, with the click-through revenue funneled to Wales and his investors. If those sites draw even a fraction of Wikipedia's more than 160 million monthly unique visitors, Wales could soon be as rich as he is famous."

But it's unclear how the contributors to Wikia will make money. Wikia is growing nonetheless - "More than 30,000 people have created nearly 500,000 Wikia articles in 45 languages."

Next step is to have a search engine - "In December, however, Wales announced - as a casual aside - that Wikia would produce an open-source search engine, a kind of user-generated alternative to Google (Charts). Unlike Google, which guards its secret search algorithms as tightly as Coca-Cola (Charts) guards its soft-drink formulas, Wikia will make its search criteria transparent and invite outside programmers to help improve them. As Wales describes it, the Wikia search engine will rely on human intelligence to do what algorithms can't - give commonsense search results."

State of Video Search

Video Search Challenge Isn't Speech Recognition, It's Content Owner Management, Danny Sullivan, Searchengineland (Feb 20)

This article goes through the history of video search. The main methods have been:

1. Finding video by reading closed-caption or transcript information
2. Finding video by crawling the web
3. Finding video through sharing and rating
4. Finding video by working with content partners

The big change in demand and search for video came with YouTube. It made it easy to find popular entertainment. What will happen as content providers remove that entertainment or put it into its own for-fee vaults? The baton might pass to Blinkx which does a meta-search. "Rather than hosting the content itself, it builds a database of content that is hosted by others from across the web. That helps protect it to some degree from takedown notices."

Article refers to Millions of Videos, and Now a Way to Search Inside Them, by Jason Pontin, New York Times (Feb 25) - about Blinkx and its co-founder, Suranga Chandratillake.

Online Health Search Habits

Americans Looking for Health Information Online Are Exposed to and Use User-Generated Media on a Regular Basis, "Some may trust Internet content because they are relying on sources they view as credible", PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Feb 26)

Envision Solutions, LLC, did a follow-up study to the Pew Internet & American Life Project that found Americans didn't validate the health information they found on the Internet. Envision's report shows that people do identify the government and other established health sites and use them, but they are also exposed to a lot of user-generated media (blogs, forums) in search results, including Wikipedia.

Diving Deeper into Online Health Search is at http://www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/healthsearch.html

It lists the websites searchers are visiting for health content for selected terms.

Conclusion:

+ Internet users rely on government, non-profit and corporate Websites they view as reliable and may not do any further checking.
+ They are using user-generated media especially Wikipedia. "Because Wikipedia is referenced so often, those maintaining it should take steps to ensure that its health-related content is accurate."
+ People are reading the websites and blogs of “citizen medical experts” like crazymeds.org

Sproose up Experts

Sproose to show 'subject expert' information in search results, SEW Blog (Feb 21)

Sproose will encourage subject experts to set up wiki pages for their speciality and then present these in search results.

""The subject expert will be able to have a Wiki-style page of information based on the topic or keyword." explains Bob. "That person will become a subject expert for that keyword or topic. Others will be able to join, write and edit about that keyword or topic. That information will be tied into web keyword search.""

Phishing Fraud Soars

Phishing Sites Explode on the Web Robert McMillan, PC World (Feb 26)

Over 37,000 phishing sites were added to the Web during 2006 (Nov05 to Nov06), and number of Americans who were duped doubled. The new blacklist-based anti-phishing protection in Firefox and IE7 are being circumvented by the phishing fraudsters.

At the moment the phishers are winning - "Research firm Gartner estimates that 3.5 million Americans gave up sensitive information to phishers in 2006, an 84 percent jump from the previous year--for a total loss of $2.8 billion. One single phishing gang, called Rock Phish, is estimated to have taken in more than $100 million."

For best defense follow this advice:

"Never click a link in an e-mail or on a third-party site to go to any of your financial accounts. If, instead, you always use your own bookmark or type in the address, even when you're 100 percent certain that the e-mail is legitimate, you should be safe.

Automated tools, such as the free Password Safe and PwdHash utilities can still provide help. But to combat ever-adapting phishers, your best protection remains...you. "

Open Access Research

Open access: Reshaping rules of research by Michael Geist, Toronto Star (Feb 26)

Expect to see more open access journals with content from publicly funded research - but not necessarily in Canada.

"Last month, five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy to require that all government-funded research be made available to the public shortly after publication."

The Directory of Open Access Journals, a Swedish project, lists more than 2,500 open access journals worldwide and over 127,000 articles. Many agencies are making funding conditional on self-archiving the research in a freely available repository. Three are agencies are the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom, and the Australian Research Council.

However, in Canada -- "With the notable exceptions of the Canadian Institute of Health Research and the International Development Research Agency, which last year introduced proposals to require open access for their funded research, Canada's major funding agencies have been slow to move on the issue."

Buyers Search Differently

Buyers and people looking for information interpret search results differently, Pandia (Feb 22)

New market research study tell us that "buyers view more search results and are more brand orientated than information searchers". That part isn't surprising. These buyer searchers look at the organic search results 98% of the time, and the top 3 sponsored listing 96%; they look at more and spend more time. Infomation searchers look at fewer and spend less time.

The lesson - get placed near the top of the organic results to be seen.

Musings on the Size of the Web

The size of the World Wide Web, Pandia (Feb )

We do wonder how large the Web has become. There hasn't been a solid figure since 2000 when it was considered to be about 7 million sites. Sites were smaller and had fewer pages then. In 2005 Yahoo announced it had indexed 19.2 billion pages, and Google claimed that it had about three times that but wouldn't say exactly (and still won't). Was the Web 60 billion pages? Not likely - some large portion was spam and duplicates. What is it today? There might be around 48 million active sites according to Netcraft. If they average 1000 pages each there would be 48 billion pages. Pandia concludes between 15 to 30 billion.

More Google Tools

February 2007 InfoTip: Little-Known Google Tools , Mary Ellen Bates (Feb 2007)

Here are 4 tools that use Google, or show Google, or make it easier for us to use Google.

To these I would add Google Picks of custom search engines built using Google Co-op.

There is also Soople as a easy way to use Google's shortcuts and utilities.

Online Travel Agencies Doing More

The price isn't right anymore Michelle Higgins, New York Times via Orlando Sentinel (Feb 25)

"As more hotels offer bargains on the Web, online travel agencies are losing their luster."

""Many people are searching online travel-agency sites," Sileo says, and then moving on to the hotel sites to make their reservations "because they are either getting the same rate or a more flexible cancellation or change policy.""

So the online travel agencies are beginning to offer more packages and more service. "Online travel agencies also have begun to focus on discount packages combining flights, hotels and rental cars. And they are trying to set themselves apart with new customer services."

Book Sellers like Google

From Gutenberg to Google, Maxim Kelly, The Register (Feb 25)

Book retailers may be looking favourably at Google's book digitization projects.

"... e-savvy retailers now looking forward to becoming involved because there is no fee for publishers to participate in Google Book Search. (Although they must pay to ship titles to Google). On the other hand the industry's traditional portals, such as ABE, Amazon and Alibris, charge vendors to market their wares online and add shipping costs to their prices." Perhaps the vendors will get their full 30%markup - Google says it won't charge.

But "One method Google could use to make money from its online book repository is to do an iTunes on it. That is, allow people to download digital texts, called eBooks, directly onto a dedicated e-text display medium, such as Sony's Reader - a tablet-like device designed specifically for reading eBooks."

But then there are the copyright issues. Will Google Books help move the "back catalogues of hundreds of book sellers"?

Movie Shortcuts

Yahoo Search Improves Movie Shortcut Results, Searchengineland (Feb 23)

Movie shortcuts at Yahoo, Google, Ask, Live.com. In the US the shortcut results will include an option to get showtimes by zip code.

At Google.ca you can do the same with the postal code; eg dreamgirls m6s 3e5

For Yahoo Canada, the movie shortcut won't work, but you can use Yahoo Movies Canada.

Live.com only brings up the shortcut if you use a zip code and only works for currently playing movies. There are no movie shortcuts at the Canadian version of Live.com - search.msn.ca/

Making Widgets

The Ever-Changing Widget Landscape, The Widget Blog (Jan 29)

A technical look at platforms to use to make widgets - small utilities to do things. "There are two major categories of Widgets: web Widgets and desktop Widgets. Web Widgets run inside a web page and are also known as “modules” or “badges”. Web Widgets allow anyone to create their own website “mash-ups” by embedding content from one site into a page on another site."

Pagebull shots

Pagebull - A Visual Internet Search Engine, Searchengineland (Feb 21)

Pagebull shows thumbnail shots of the pages - actually a bit larger than thumbnail so that you can read them (somewhat). Phil Bradley didn't love it, but he didn't hate it either - "... not something that I'd use on a regular basis, but I can see times when it might just fit the bill." Yes - seeing the screenshot of the page helps in deciding what to click on.

Copernic Desktop 2.0

Desktop search is not dead. Copernic Desktop, a popular desktop search utility, now supports the NEAR operator (within 10 words). Get details on Copernic Desktop 2.0

Mentioned in Copernic Desktop Search 2.0 Now Offers Proximity Operator, ResourceShelf (Feb 12)

Virtual Library of Parliament of Canada

Library of Parliament Research Publications - research on legal, economic, scientific, or social science topics done by the Library of Parliament.

Jacso on CSA Illustrata

CSA Illustrata is the database reviewed in Péter's Digital Reference Shelf reviewed in February 2007.

Peter Jacso opens with a background about indexing / abstracting databases over the past 40 years. CSA Illustrata's new feature set is one of the four significant innovations that Jacso can recall.

"The fourth innovation is CSA Illustrata, especially appealing to the visual-learner types of any age, and for any of the millennials with an interest in scholarly literature. All four innovations have the common trait of focusing on the delivery of informative summaries, the essence of the works abstracted with the Just The Facts, Ma'am attitude, but CSA goes a giant step forward by including the illustrations of the scholarly articles in different size for the different stages of the search process"

For another review see CSA Illustrata Natural Science.

HEALTHMap

Resource of the Week: HEALTHmap, Shirl Kennedy, ResourceShelf (Feb 22)

HealthMap - Global disease alert map.

"A quick view of HEALTHmap shows you where more than 50 diseases have been reported around the world, who is reporting and how “hot” an outbreak is based on the number of reports. Drill down by content and city or narrow by disease and read what has been reported in the last 30 days."

Health Portal for the EU

Health-EU Portal is the official public health portal of the European Union. It has information on health, lifestyle, environment. policies, and health care. )

The Personalization of Google

Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google, sees the future of search in personalized results. Google has been acquiring the technology and developing the services to personalize search results to the user.

She spoke in an interview with Gord Hotchkiss - Marissa Mayer Interview on Personalization (Feb 22)

Over the past few months, Google has been more assertive in getting people to create an account that includes personalized search and search history, and to make login automatic and logout the option.

"So now it's very easy, if you see your username and e-mail address up in the upper left-hand corner, you're getting personalized results and if you don't, you're not. So effectively there are two parallel universes of Google, per se. One if you're signed out where you see the classic homepage and the classic search results and one where you're signed in, where you get the personalized home page and…you’ll be able to toggle back and forth, of course…and then the personalized search results page and the search history becomes coupled with all that because that's how we personalize your search."

Google has been building its personalized search since 2003 when it acquired Kaltix. Essentially, relevancy ranking will be influenced by what is known about the searcher. At Kaltix, "they were capable of looking at things like a searcher’s history and their past clicks, their past searches, the websites that matter to them, and ultimately building a vector of PageRank that can be used to enhance the search results. "

Results are not fully personalized yet. In the first 10, 8 will be generic and 2 personalized based on search history.

"I think the other thing to remember is, even when personalization happens and lifts those two results onto the page, for most users it happens one out of every five times. When you think about it, 20% of the queries are much better by doing that, but for 80% of the queries, people are, in fact, exploring topics that are unknown to them and we can tell from their search history that they haven't searched for anything in this sphere before".

Also see Gord Hotchkiss' posting to Searchengineland in which he pulls out what he considered the big points - Just Behave: Google's Marissa Mayer on Personalized Search

Pic2Color

Get Color Schemes from Pictures, ResearchBuzz (Feb 17)

This is brilliant - have Pic2Color analyze a digital photo (such as those from Flickr) and give you the color palette. Then use those colors in designing a website or doing home decoration.

Educational Podcasts

Site for Listing Educational Podcasts, ResearchBuzz (Feb 18)

Ed-Cast.org - "a site devoted to listing podcasts related to higher education". Use the Show All button to see what is available.

Search Market Statistics

Stats Show Google Dominates the International Search Landscape by Greg Jarboe, Searchday (Feb 22)

Notes from the "Search Landscape" session at the Search Engine Strategies conference in London, UK where there were speakers from Nielsen//NetRatings' Burmaster, Hitwise, Enquisite, and Global Strategies International - all with figures.

Some bits:

+ "Search is most popular in the UK (85%), France (83%) and Spain (83%) -- ahead of the US (77% reach)."

+ "Despite Google's dominance, it is important to understand searcher behaviour doesn't take place in isolation – around two-thirds of searchers visit at least two search brands."

+ "Based on click through activity [as seen by Enquisite] from August 1, 2006, to January 20, 2007, Google had a 71.6% share of the global search engine market, an 80.2% share of the UK search engine market, and a 78.4% share of the French search engine market."

5 RSS Readers

Top 5 online RSS readers, Pandia Search (Feb 23)

Susanne Koch at Pandia tells us what she looks for in a RSS reader and then names 5. Maybe I'll change from the Snap add-on for Firefox.

Quick Answers

Answers.com Releases Free AnswerTips Tool for Websites and Blogs, EContent (Feb 23)

"AnswerTips allow sites to provide visitors with access to Answers.com's information on topics, without having them leave the site or blog."

AnswerTips is a tool for webmasters to add to their sites so that users can get 1-click Answers. But you don't have to wait to get to such a site to enjoy quick answers. Answers.com has several other free tools for searchers.

1-Click Answers for Windows: Download and install. Then alt click on any word displayed in any program (that means Word and PowerPoint in addition to the browsers) to get a pop-up answer.

Answers.com is in the Firefox 2.0 search bar and the IE7 search box. There is also a 1-Click Answer Extension for Firefox which can show as a popup or in the sidebar.

There are RSS feeds from Answers.com on topics.

Search Engine Market Share

comScore Releases January U.S. Search Engine Rankings , PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Feb 21)

Share of Online Searches by Engine
December 2006 - January 2007
Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Source: comScore qSearch
Pt Chg vs.
Previous
Dec-06 Jan-07 Month
Total Internet Population 100% 100% N/A
Google Sites 47.3 47.5 0.2
Yahoo! Sites 28.5 28.1 -0.4
Microsoft Sites 10.5 10.6 0.1
Ask Network 5.4 5.2 -0.2
Time Warner Network 4.9 5.0 0.1

-- Americans conducted 6.9 billion searches online in January, up
2 percent versus December. Annual growth rates in search query volume
remained strong with a 26-percent increase since the same month a year
ago.
-- Google Sites led the pack with 3.3 billion search queries performed,
followed by Yahoo Sites (1.9 billion), MSN-Microsoft (733 million), Ask

Network (361 million), and Time Warner Network (342 million).

Add-Ons for IE7

Seven Best Add-Ons for IE7 by Scott Gilbertson, Wired News (Feb 22)

A browser can be your best surfing friend with certain extensions (or add-ons) for searching, saving, bookmarking, and much else. Here are 7 of these for IE7.

Matt Cutts on Search

2007: A Search Odyssey? Keynote Conversation with Matt Cutts, Andrew Goodman, SearchDay (Feb 21)

Matt Cutts has become a "celebrity engineer" because of his work at Google as the front man on search engine optimization and spam control. Andrew Goodman describes Matt Cutt's session with search engine marketers at the Search Engine Strategies conference in London, UK. Mostly this will interest people who are optimizing their website, but searchers can pick up points on what Google does to improve results.

Of interest, Cutts named his favourite tools - "On his favorite online services, Cutts cited a number from Google as well as some for competitors. The one many attendees took note of was Google Browser Sync, which synchronizes your Firefox settings on different computers, no matter where you are (including passwords). On this point among others, Cutts made assurances of privacy protection. Other Cutts favorites include Google Reader, Gmail, Google Calendar, Yahoo Site Explorer, MSN's advanced search, Bloglines, and Ask Smart Answers."

Future of search: "Cutts stressed that his was not the official company line, but he felt that personalization and localization would be key, but also that the effort to build Google Search and related services leads to a new ability: massive data storage and a kind of personalized memory."

Videos of the session are at SEO Tutorials - Matt Cutts Keynote Speech Video at SES London 2007

Info.com Adds Product Research

Info.com partners with Become.com for Best of the Web Product Research and Comparison Shopping, Business Wire (Feb 20)

"Info.com, a search platform for broad web and vertical search engines, today announced a partnership with Become.com, the only online shopping website that allows Info.com’s millions of users to research products comprehensively with full featured comparison shopping and pricing through their powerful shopping service."

Answers through Jyve

New Search Engine Provides Live Expert Answers - Jyve today launched a new search site that links users directly with people who can answer their questions. - Heather Havenstein, Computerworld via PCWorld (Feb 20)

Jyve has been around for a while. It started a plug-in for Skype (Internet phone). TechCrunch had an article with screen shot in Aug 2005 - Jyve .

Now it's a answer service using IM and Internet phone (the Skype connection) where live "experts" help out. Browse the list of experts and topics to pick the one who might be best able to help - and ask away. You gain points as you use and participate.

Dialog Classic Web

Thomson Scientific Releases DialogClassic Web, Econtent (Feb 20)

"Thomson Scientific, part of The Thomson Corporation and provider of information solutions to the worldwide research and business communities, has announced that Dialog has released a new version of DialogClassic Web. DialogClassic Web is a browser-based search tool providing access to the more than 600 informational databases in the Dialog content collection, covering subject areas such as business information and news, engineering and technology, market research, intellectual property, pharmaceutical, life sciences, energy, and the environment."

What is Web 2.0 Really?

Watch this YouTube video to get a sense of how the web has changed from the flat web pages of the early web to today where the web truly means connecting people and content in conversation. Also nicely shows how xml is used to add the structure and enable the exchange.

Michael Wesch, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, is the author. This is part of a digital ethnography project.

(DIscovered through Steffen Fiaervik's blog E-Media Tidbits - Web 2.0 and XML Explained. )

Getting RSS

Syndication, really simply by Mathew Ingram, Ingram 2.0 (Feb 20)

Explains RSS feeds and how to get them. Mentions the new news reading capabilities of IE7 and Firefox, the aggregators, and some readers.

Also A blog for every occasion (Feb 5)

Resources for Librarians

LawPro Links - An A to Z Directory of Web Resources compiled by Sabriana Pacifici, LLRX.com (Feb 2007) - these are resources for researchers - "Highlighted topics include: a new search engine for legal blogs, one for free federal district court filings, and one for Wikipedia; an updated legal research guide from M.G. Gallagher Law Library, government sponsored e-waste and recycling services, a filmology of librarians in the movies, the 10 best corporate intranets of 2007, the launch of the Anglo-American Legal Tradition Project Website, and much more."

Hakia Beta 13

hakia Announces Immediate Availability of BETA 13 - hakia, Web's New Meaning-Based Search Engine, Will Complete BETA Phase by End of 2007, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Feb 19)

Changes to Hakia - a meaning-based search engine - "Highlights of the many advances and improvements that went into this release include, (1) extended coverage of galleries http://www.hakia.com/press.html, (2) enhancements of the gallery format, (3) spell checker, (4) improvements on SemanticRank algorithm, (5) addition of more QDEX data, (6) new syndications, and most visibly (7) the advertisements."

Amazon SIB

Compare “Text Stats” for Amazon.com “Search Inside The Book” Titles, ResourceShelf (Feb 18)

Amazon can provide a lot of information about the books for which it provide search-inside. Gary Price has found another piece -- "n addition to all of this info, you’ll also find “text stats and comparison info to titles in similar categories as the book you are reviewing."

PixsyPower Multimedia Search

Pixsy Launches PixsyPower and PhotoSense, Press Release (Dec 19, 2006)

PixsyPower is a suite of search tools and widgets a webmaster can use to add video search to a website.

"PixsyPower enables bloggers, social networking sites, or any website to run private label photo and video search engines and widgets on their sites by simply signing up for free at PixsyPower.com. Image and video search are the fastest growing search verticals on the web and PixsyPower enables any website publisher to tap into this popular consumer activity within their own site. With three easy steps, Pixsy’s image and video search engine and widgets can be deployed on any website with content customized to the specific topic of their site. ..."

Energy Usage by Electronics

Energy saving revisited by Tyler Hamilton, Toronto Star (Feb 16)

To meet new Energy Star standards, computers and other electronic devices will have to be more efficient in energy conversion (AC to DC), and in requiring less electricity in standby mode after June / July 2007.

"The Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental group, says residential electricity use by consumer electronics has doubled since the late 1990s and is now responsible for up to 15 per cent of household power consumption.

A report released last September by the Ontario Power Authority concluded that growth in electronics and small appliances in Ontario households over the next 20 years will require the equivalent of two nuclear reactors to keep them powered.

This electronics surge is why new "Energy Star" standards will go into effect this year aimed at pressuring manufacturers to improve the efficiency of their products – beginning this July with personal computers, and followed later with a new specification for TVs."

And ---

"Computers sold after July with Energy Star labels – including all desktops, notebooks, tablets, gaming consoles and workstations – will now be required to sharply decrease their watt consumption in standby and sleep modes. Also, computer displays will need to be pre-set so that they go into sleep mode within 15 minutes of user inactivity. The whole computer must go into sleep mode within 30 minutes of inactivity."

Intute Health and Life Sciences Tutorials

New Internet Tutorials for Health and Life Sciences, Intute (Feb 15)

Intute in the UK has released three new Internet tutorials for the Health and Life Sciences: Veterinary Medicine , Biosciences, Health and Social Care. Although created for students and educators in the UK, these are always very good tours of resources and have good advice on evaluating what you find.

Stumbleupon vs everyone else

StumbleUpon Defined vs. Digg, Google, MySpace and More, Garett French, Search Engine Journal (Feb 15)

Compares Stumbleupon, the social bookmarking type of tool that thrives on serendipity, to the other tools - social and otherwise.

Search Engine Overlap

Page Found at 3 or 6: Not Google , Search Engine Showdown (Feb 14)

Greg Notess has found a Canadian university page that has been on the Web for four years that Google hasn't indexed but other have - proving once again - don't rely on one search engine.

Working with Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Ruins My Life with Yahoo Pipes, Researchbuzz (Feb 12)

Tara Calishain tries her hand at using Yahoo's Pipes and makes it a bit easier for the rest of us.

Retrevo Consumer Electronic Search

Retrevo Provides Product Information, Discussion, Reviews…, ResearchBuzz (Feb 10)

"Retrevo, in gamma at http://www.retrevo.com/, provides product information. And not just shopping information, but also manufacturer information, reviews and articles, and forum and blog posts. Consumer metasearch? It’s so nice to find a search engine that actually focuses on product information without being overwhelmingly oriented towards buying."

But it is consumers electronic search. I tried it on Toshiba tablet laptop M500 and it was very good showing blogs, manufacturer, and reviews.

Web Page Monitors

How to Best Use Page Monitors For Online Research By Tara Calishain, Informit Network (Feb 9, 2007)

This is a sample chapter from Tara Calishain's new book - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web, published by New Riders.

Calishain is always a delight to read - clear, practical, and useful. If you have any need to monitor the Internet for what is being said and written on a topic, you are sure to find this book very helpful for its coverage of RSS, page monitors, email alerts, creating your own agents.

The chapter, How to Best Use Page Monitors For Online Research, "... discusses the various kinds of page monitors that are available, walks you through how to set one up, and shows you how to limit the number of insignificant page updates you receive."

The web-page monitors - Watch that Page, Trackengine, Infominder, ChangeDetect and Trackle - are described - these are inexpensive to use; as are two client side / software monitors - the excellent WebSite Watcher, and WebWatcher.

More from this book can be seen at Peachpit Press - which itself is worth some time to explore. See http://safari.peachpit.com/0321491718 - and start reading online using Safari.

Here's the table of contents for the book. You can also search inside the book.

"Safari is an e-reference library where you can search across thousands of books from O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press and more. Read books cover to cover or flip directly to the section you need in seconds."

Overlays to Google Earth

Google Earth gets overlay search feature Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, 2/15/07

"Google Earth's search engine now returns KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files which developers have created to add data to the application's maps ..."

"Google Earth is a free, downloadable PC application that taps a multiterabyte database of aerial and satellite images to let users "fly" around the globe using a video-game type user interface."

Social Browsing

"Life of the Party: Social Web Browsers" By Stephanie Taylor, Freepint (Feb 15)

"Social Web browsers are the latest buzzword application. Designed to support the Web 2.0 trend of online sharing, they make it easier to share resources. They address the two sides to sharing, whereas old- school browsers address only one. Social Web browsers let you share information with other people as well as let other people share with you."

Reviews two: Flock for saving and sharing and even blogging, and Stumbleupon for site discovery and building collections. These are quite different tools with "social" components and might be used together.

Stephanie Taylor concludes, "... the biggest thing that social Web browsing has to offer to information professionals at the moment -- an alternative, adventurous source of new material."

Podcasting for Business

"Beyond Music: Integrating Podcasting into Your Business" By Matt Chapuran, Freepint (Feb 14)

Reasons for creating podcasts for your busines and methods for doing it - includes equipment - links to other Freepint articles on podcasting.

Reading and 1812

The Books We Read by Monique Van Dusseldorp, Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits (Feb 13)

This list of books that contributors to Tidbits are reading is wonderfully diverse, though unfortunately there are no global warming / climate change books on this list - a serious oversight I think for journalists.

But the one that caught my eye was Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence by A.J. Langguth. Pierre Berton's 2 volume work, The Invasion of Canada 1812-1814 showed how determined the people in Upper and Lower Canada were not to surrender to the US invasion. And as I recall the US didn't come off as brillliant militarily. This book, according to a review at Amazon, sees the war as being a US victory for expanding west. "Langguth argues that only with America's second victory over England did the new nation fully confirm its sovereignty over the vast western territories."

Swicki customized learning search

New Eurekster Features Dramatically Enhance Search Results Through User Collaboration and Participation, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Feb 13)

"Collaborative "Social" search is taking a giant leap forward as Eurekster, Inc., a pioneer and leader in community-driven, social search and monetization, taps further into the collective intelligence of millions of online users. Eurekster is releasing a set of enhancements to their Swicki customized learning search engine that increase the ease and number of ways users can participate in online search, generating added value for publishers as well as for their audience communities."

Eurekster Swicki shows you how to add a swicki, and has a Swicki Directory for finding sites with swickis that match your interests.

Library Community Toolbar

Libraries Leap onto the Webtop with Conduit-powered Community Toolbars, Press release (Feb 13)

Here's a fantastic idea - provide a toolbar to your community to facilitate search, provide news feeds, open up chat with you, show the weather. Conduit makes it possible for free. About 300 libraries (presumably in the US) are using it.

"Conduit , a breakthrough marketing platform for creating community toolbars that drive traffic and loyalty, today announced the availability of Conduit for libraries. Libraries can launch a free community toolbar that delivers constant browser access to resources and services, and connects patrons to create vibrant online communities. Conduit is the first free, branded solution available to help libraries promote their services and resources all via users' browsers. Now patrons, including research professionals, students and enthusiasts, are interacting with libraries in a whole new way."

Colorado State University library is given as one example.

The Management and Economics Library at Purdue University calls theirs MyMEL.

There are more examples of organizations using the Conduit toolbar under testimonials at Conduit .

The toolbar searches Google and has Google ads.

Healthline's Symptom Search

New Healthline Symptom Search Dramatically Improves One of the Most Popular Online Health Research Activities, Marketwatch (Feb 13)

Healthline allows you to search according to symptoms you are experiencing. Build a symptom list and consider the possible causes.

"Symptom Search is the only Internet symptom tool to use a semantic medical taxonomy -- a relational database of over 1 million diseases, symptoms and their synonyms -- to analyze queries and produce ranked results. The latest extension of Healthline's Medically Guided Search(TM) platform, Symptom Search provides consumers with more relevant, accurate, and faster results than competing symptom research products."

From the press release:

-- GUIDED RESEARCH: The Symptom Search "type-ahead" feature allows users
to start with the general terms that are frequently top of mind and suggests additional terms to help quickly narrow their search for symptoms. For example, if a user begins to type in "c-o-u-g-h," they will not only see "cough," but a medically-reviewed list of 20 other types of coughs such as painful cough, hacking cough, night cough, and so on, to guide and refine the symptom search.

-- SEARCH ON RELATED SYMPTOMS: The Related Symptoms feature recognizes
user inputs, like "fever" and "muscle aches," and suggests symptoms that frequently occur in health articles mapped to these symptoms -- complete with definitions and illustrations.

-- COMPREHENSIVENESS: Symptom Search covers more than 3,500 symptoms and 900 diseases -- more than ten times the number of symptoms covered by WebMD, MayoClinic or any major consumer symptom research tool.

-- INTERACTIVE, SEARCH DRIVEN APPROACH: To offer the ability to explore
possible causes and learn as they go, Symptom Search allows consumers to
enter any combination of symptoms they choose. They can also quickly remove
a symptom or clear their Symptom List to start again. Other tools don't allow for the same experimentation and exploration; typically, symptom combinations are very limited, if they are available at all.

-- QUALITY/CONFIDENCE: In order to design the best search algorithms and
provide consumers with relevant, high quality results, Healthline analyzed raw data from multiple years of CDC surveys to rank the likelihood that a health condition would be detected. This is unique among both clinical and consumer symptom research resources.

Gmail Open To All

Google's free e-mail service finally open to all, AP via Silicon.com (Feb 13)

Google's web-based email, Gmail, is finally open to all. Until today people needed an invitation to set up an account. Users have up to 2.8 GB of space - surely enough to hold all manner of digital things. [Yahoo has 1 GB, and MSN Hotmail 2 GB]. But be aware that using Gmail will mean that the do-no-evil Google knows more about you. This may be good or bad depending on how you look at it. And of course you do get ads, presumably tailored to your interests.

"Making Gmail more widely available is important to Google because other key products like instant messaging and calendar management are tied into the e-mail service, company co-founder Sergey Brin said an interview. ``It has become a real cornerstone for us.''

Because Gmail users often remain logged into Google's Web site while they conduct online searches, the service also helps the company's engineers learn more about individual preferences -- knowledge that can help deliver more relevant search results and foster more loyalty."

Web-based email services from Yahoo and MSN have more users -- Gmail had 60 million unique visitors in December 2006 - "... far behind Yahoo Inc.'s free e-mail, which increased 11 percent to 249 million unique visitors and Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail, which rose 13 percent to 236 million, comScore said."

Examples of Pipes

5 cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes, franticindustries (Feb 12)

Want some ideas on how to use Yahoo's new Pipes for mashing RSS feeds? Here they are. One of these is the Travel Fanatic - "It combines Flickr images, Yahoo Answers, and Yahoo News related to the location. ". Nice idea, but that one is stuck in London.

Sproose for News

Sproose - A Social Search Engine, Search Engine Land (Feb 12)

Oh groan - Sproose - another social search engine - means you have to register and build a network. Phil Bradley says it is "...well laid out, there's thought behind it and it's certainly deserving of the 'social search engine' tag." OK

From the press release: "Sproose, Inc., a recently launched social search engine today announced that it has added more than 25,000 news sources to it’s [sic] index database and is now delivering real-time current news for users. “We have the ability to deliver over 250 thousand article per day, says Bob Pack, CEO of Sproose.” The news database is updated every 15 minutes to ensure that users receive timely news."

But it also searches news and video and keeps track of popular tags.

Seriously, how many social search, social networking services, social bookmarking services can a person subscribe to and stay sane?

Singing Fish Gone

SingingFish Says So Long, Now Redirects to AOL Video; Truveo Redirects to SearchVideo, ResourceShelf (Feb 13)

Singing Fish, one of the first multimedia search engines, has disappeared into the maw of AOL, no longer operating on its own or being evident in AOL Video Search by the sound of it. It was a wonderful name and a reasonably good search engine.

Europe Pulling Out of News Aggregators

Belgian court rules against Google News by James Niccolai, IDG News Service, Paris Bureau, IDG News Service 2/13/07

Bad news for Google and other aggregating news service, and bad news for searchers. A Belgian court ruled that Google Inc "violated the copyright of Belgian newspaper publishers when it posted extracts from their stories on its Google News Web site"

Google has had to "... delay its launch of Google News in Denmark after newspapers there demanded a system that would allow them to "opt in" to Google's service, rather than having their content trawled automatically. And a Norwegian media group has objected to the way that Google reuses their news photographs."

Microsoft and Yahoo News are also affected. "Copiepresse [represents Belgian newspapers] will now go back to MSN and Yahoo and apply renewed pressure on them to remove all of its members content ..."

Enterprise Social Networking

The social enterprise - Commentary: When MySpace meets your HR department by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Feb 13)

It's really happening - some companies are turning to internal social networking. This may partly be because new young hires are tuned into Web 2.0 tools; and also because it does help employess work together and for customer-relations staff to connect with customers. There is still cultural resistance in corporations but in the long run it's a natural extension of the non-computer-mediated networking done today.

What young people will expect:

"I imagine that this college student's future corporate life will be as Web 2.0 as his consumer life is now -- an egalitarian world in which everyone contributes, opines, votes, connects, shares and collaborates instantly."

What some companies are doing:

+ "IBM Enterprise Mashups essentially helps workers collaborate by using Google maps, wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 applications that are helping them (or their children) in their social lives."

+ "Procter & Gamble has begun to incorporate social networks to engage with customers by launching a network targeting women called Vocalpoint."

Prediction:

"But it's only a matter of time before corporate America embraces social networks and other Web 2.0 applications. And, when MySpace meets your HR department, watch out."

Vivisimo Velocity 5.5

Search Grows Up with the Launch of Vivisimo Velocity 5.5 - New Version Addresses Critical Enterprise Search Issues of Scalability and Fault Tolerance, Business Wire (Feb 12)

Vivisimo is introducing the Velocity 5.5 enterprise search platform with much higher levels of scalability and improved search capabilities.

Two excerpts:

Scalability and data heterogeneity: ""As the amount of enterprise information grows by leaps and bounds, organizations storing terabytes of data clearly see the business value of expanding beyond departmental search applications," said Susan Feldman, vice president for search and digital marketplace technologies, IDC. "In an information-rich enterprise environment, search becomes the logical gateway to finding information across all data types and repositories. Because Velocity 5.5 addresses the need to scale, and searches across heterogeneous environments, it should be well received.""

Search functionality: "Velocity 5.5 also offers new search functionality to enhance the end-user experience. Velocity now handles such advanced queries as word proximity, complex date ranges, and natural language. In addition, Velocity 5.5 offers a tool for query expansion. For example, some names have many different spellings because they were transliterated into the Roman alphabet from other writing systems (Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, etc.). For these names, the ability to expand a query to include all spellings is critical. Velocity 5.5 offers the ability to suggest alternative queries for misspellings, word stemming, alternative translations and synonyms - all based upon administrator defined content."

All that - and clustering too.

Protect Yourself

Thwart the Three Biggest Internet Threats of 2007 - Protect yourself against the three gravest Web dangers: IE, phishing attacks, and malware - by Scott Spanbauer, PCWorld (Jan 24)

+ Tells you what to change in IE to turn off ActiveX.
+ Explains phishing and how to adjust the new anti-phishing settings in IE and Firefox.
+ Block malware. Windows XP and Vista are good for blocking incoming but not outgoing connections made by malware. Get bi-directional protection (and be warned about the malware) from ZOne Alarm or Agnitum.
+ Toolkit page with links to the 3 main browsers, firewall protection, anti-virus and spyware.

Extra advice - don't add personal information to a profile on a social network - Keep Your Online Profiles Private by Scott Spanbauer (Aug 25, 2006)

Classic TV coming to YouTube

YouTube to post classic TV shows, Marketwatch (Feb 12)

This will get the 50-plus people to YouTube. "YouTube Inc. plans to offer more than 4,000 hours of classic television shows, including "I Spy," "Gumby" and other material from Digital Music Group Inc., an online distributor of independently owned music, TV and film catalogs, it was announced Monday."

In return, YouTube will help DMGI identify when songs are used without authorization in videos. There will also be ad revenue from the tv shows.

Communicating Well

When NOT To Use E-Mail by Dave Pollard, How to Save the World (Feb 6)

Pollard describes 10 situations in which we should not send email. These were written for the workplace but that workplace can be extended to school and home. Email is not suited for everything. Sometimes we should meet face to face. For group communications a discussion forum, blog or wiki could be better.

The first commandment is to not use email "to communicate bad news, complaints or criticism". So - no dear John letters. Add to this, not to send any email written in anger.

Of value to online education - don't use email "to send news, interesting documents, links, policies, directory updates and other 'FYI' stuff". Post it to a forum. If you don't have one, set one up.

There are other communication tools - "If the audience is a community of practice or community of interest, post it on a blog. If the audience is a project team, a group with a shared sense of purpose and urgency, post it to the team's collaboration space or wiki. If the audience is really broader than that, post it to the Intranet, Extranet or public Internet site."

Tagging Profile

Search Is a Folksonomy, Snarkmarket (Feb 6)

Here's a thought - "Every search a user performs could be seen as a tag she’s applying to the result she ultimately clicks on. Over time, you could imagine a page featuring a tag cloud formed of all the searches that got people to that page."

Followed by a comment from a reader -- "Actually that's where the real value in folksonomy lies I think - where it combines with search tracking and taxonomies."

WebMail Today

A Comparison of Live Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail, Michael Arrington, TechCrunch (Feb 8)

Time to leave the old style Hotmail and earlier Yahoo mail where you had to click to refresh the page for the new Ajax enriched webmail application from Microsoft, Yahoo or Google.

Arrington prefers GMail to the others for speed and storage, but acknowledges that "Yahoo and Live Hotmail offer more mainstream Outlook-like user interfaces". There is a very useful chart that compares features of the three. It's really a contest between Yahoo and GMail -- "If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.'

Pity - I use Hotmail and have just upgraded to Live. This took two stages - the first for standard, low bandwidth (called classic), and the second to high bandwidth (full).

The MSN Today page shows first with an ad that takes up 30% of the screen. MSN Today is one of 4 display views, the others being mail, contacts, and calendar.

Whenever I use a Microsoft Internet product my first act is always to turn off MSN Today. This led me to the high bandwidth option where I could arrrange the panes for viewing the folders, titles, and messages.

Full version will be slower because it loads the messages. It's easy to switch back to the classic when working with lower bandwidth.

Certainly there are more controls. Live Hotmail blocks attachments until you approve the sender. Under Options > More Options there are rules for using the junk mail folder including junking everything except from contacts and allowed senders.

While you can't pick up mail from a POP account, you might be able to forward email from other accounts to hotmail.

Handling is very nice - inbox, send, receive, move to folder, add a folder - everything seems to be where you'd expect it.

Meaning Search

Powerset Aims to Leapfrog Google by By David Needle, Internet News (Feb 9)

In this article about Powerset and its work on a natural-language search engine we get an example on what will happen with a consumer question.

"Bobrow gave a consumer example of how the Powerset service works. When someone types in "Who was Spielberg married to before Kate Capshaw" Google and others give results related to the movie director Steven Spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw.

"Google doesn't give you the answer, Amy Irving, because it's not part of the question. What you really want is the answer, not hundreds or thousands of links. We give you the answer." "

Hakia is another natural-language processing search engine. It had an answer for the Spielberg question -- "The top of its results page said: "You are very curious today. Spielberg was once married to Amy Irving and is now married to Kate Capshaw." That was followed by links to pages related to Spielberg."

TVO - Future of the Internet

The Agenda with Steve Paikin ran a session on Who Lives Online? (Thursday, Feb 8, 2007). Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and director of the Institute for the Future at Stanford University, was the main guest and spoke on the Future of the Internet. A good part of the discussion was about the erosion of privacy. TVO viewers responded to a poll on how worried they were about privacy on the Internet with only 8% being concerned. Session is available as a podcast and a video (listed in left panel).

Chaos Ahead with Personalization

Personalized Search - The Feature No one is Asking For, Graywolf's SEO Blog (Feb 8)

Here's a scary thought, as more search engines apply proprietary personalizing routines to selecting ranking results, how do you work with a customer or a student online with a search query - they may get different results from you, and as you move to another computer, results may be different again. How do you help the customer or teach the student?

Michael Gray gets it - "I’ve never met a single person who’s said “wow searching for something at home gives me different results than searching for something at work, that’s not confusing at all, in fact I think that’s an improvement, why can’t my calculator work like that”."

But the search engines don't seem to understand the chaos they will create by using personal factors to rank results. There will have to be a way to turn off these off.

Searchles for Social Search

Social Search Platform Searchles(R) Launches Site Enhancements and Secures Additional Angel Funding to Accelerate Growth, PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Feb 8)

"Searchles(R) ( http://www.searchles.com) -- the intelligent social search platform that gets smarter every time you use it -- today unveiled a series of group management and collaboration features that give users even more control over discovery and interactions. "

Searchles is interesting. As the about page says - "The platform is a hybrid, combining aspects of "social bookmarking" and "social networking" technology with analytical "social search" capability." It grew out of Dumbfind, an engine that will "tag" pages with terms to make it easier for you to find them.

Anyone can search; but members can post items, form networks, and share.

A search on emissions united nations shows a mix of items posted by members and news stories, both types with tags. Can make more connections through the tag cloud, related people, and related groups.

It's very attractive and could challenge del.icio.us.

Do Your Own RSS Mashup

Yahoo Tests RSS Mashup Creator for the Masses Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World (Feb 8)

"Yahoo Inc. has launched a service called Pipes designed to let regular users mix different RSS and Atom feeds and create data "mashups," a process that so far has required programming knowledge."

Surfing Anonymously

Caught in the Network by Paul Cesarini, The Chronicle Review (Feb 9)

At this campus, the network-security technicians weren't happy that this professor was using TOR and telling his students about it.

Tor, developed by the U.S. Navy, stands for The Onion Router - "A browser plug-in, it thwarts online traffic analysis and related forms of Internet surveillance by sending your data packets through different routers around the world. As each packet moves from one router to the next, it is encoded with encrypted routing information, and the previous layer of such information is peeled away — hence the "onion" in the name."

In short, it enables anonymous surfing. Article mentions why you might want this - looking up sensitive information, victims of abuse, repressive regimes. But fraudsters would use it too, and that is the reason it was not welcome on this campus.

TVC Alert has an entry on this too - Can you search the Internet anonymously (Feb 9) - and points to a reminder that you shouldn't trust to looking at a cached version of a page at a search engine to hide your surfing - that page may link in many ways to the original page where your IP identity will be noted.

Tor:anonymity online is at http://tor.eff.org/

There is also Torrify , reviewed in PC World. Install this program on a USB Flash drive and use it to create "an encrypted tunnel from your computer indirectly to a Tor exit computer, allowing you to surf the internet anonymously."

See Outsmarting the Online Privacy Snoops - Internet privacy controversies drive interest in tools for anonymous Web surfing.
Tom Spring, PC World (Feb 28, 2006) - describes the Tor project, TorPark (now at Torrify), and Anonymizer software.

Natural language search

In a Search Refinement, a Chance to Rival Google, Miguel Helft, New York Times (Feb 9)

At PARC scientists have been working on natural language search technologies. PARC is licensing that technology to others.

"The start-up, Powerset, is licensing PARC’s “natural language” technology — the art of making computers understand and process languages like English or French. Powerset hopes the technology will be the basis of a new search engine that allows users to type queries in plain English, rather than using keywords."

But it will be tough. Powerset doesn't expect to release an engine until late 2007. Many doubt that it will be possible to get an engine to answer real questions such as "what companies did I.B.M. acquire in the last five years". Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search and user experience, was quoted as saying: “Natural language is really hard. I don’t think it will happen in the next five years.”

TagBulb for Tag Searching

TagBulb Features Massive Tag Metasearch, ResearchBuzz (Feb 6)

TagBulb offers tag searching across several sources - bookmarks, blogs, videos, etc - but it displays engine by engine. Some of the meta-search groups are very small: blogs has only Technorati and Google.

Tara Calishain says, "I would use this engine for more of an overview of what’s out there, as it isn’t comprehensive — it lists only two blog search engines, for example, while Zuula lists four (and of course Zuula isn’t comprehensive either.)"

I was searching on folksonomies and came upon an interesting article from Yahoo News through TagBulb -- Tagging: 'Next-Stage Search Phenomenon' Webpronews (Feb 1)

GMail Almost Open to Everyone

Gmail becomes more widely available by Michael Liedtke, AP via Yahoo News (Feb 7)

Google's web-based email, GMail, is open to nearly anyone now who applies from any part of the world, but will be restricted for a little while longer to by-invitation-only in North America, Asia and most parts of the South America.

"The service still remains far behind the competing services run by Yahoo and Microsoft."

Web 2.0 Search

Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines, Online Education database (Feb 6)

I think it is a stretch to call any search engine Web 2.0 including the very blue Live.com, but here's a list of search tools that all do something different - mashups, visuals, tags. Some on this list do have social networking aspects where members help out.

Rave Review for Opera 9.1

Browser Upgrade: Singing Opera's Praises by Robert J. Ambrogi, Special to Law.com (February 6, 2007)

"Opera is so full of clever features that its competitors seem sterile by comparison. These features make it more functional, but also more fun to use."

Opera v9.10 for Windows

Landline or Cell?

Telephone Info Databases: Cell Phone? Landline? Telephone Company?, ResourceShelf (Feb 5)

"Two databases that can assist in helping the user determine if a phone number is a landline or mobile number."

PhoneValidator can correctly identify Bell Canada line vs cell. It connects to whitepages.com to do a reverse phone number lookup but won't be able to find an answer for Canadian phones.

FoneFinder is a partial search that identifies the geographic area and phone company / provider.

For reverse phone lookup in Canada stick with Canada411.

Canada411 can also tell you if a number is a cell phone and from whom. For your search you'll see -- "is a cell phone based in Toronto, ON
The registered service provider is Bell Mobility**. Detailed listing information is not available."

Congoo for news

Do You Congoo? Premium News Service Launches Posted by Peter M. Zollman, Poynter Online (Feb 6)

Congoo offers option to buy premium news - "The site offers custom "news briefings," but the twist is that it includes material from more than 300 sources of premium and subscription sites."

Google Notebook

Google Notebook Update, Google Operating System (Feb 2)

Google Notebook, a tool for saving clips from pages. The new extension has a new popup for viewing the mini-book, a better editor, and public notebooks can produce a feed.

It's a good tool for private or collaborative use, but the public version hasn't found many users yet.

Google Presently

Google Prepares a Presentation Tool, Google Operating System (Feb 4)

Google is adding a presentation tool called Presently to its kit for documents and spreadsheets - "You will be able to convert a document into a presentation, create slides and view the presentation in full-screen. "

Link Command

Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools, Search Engine Land (Feb 5)

Google has finally improved its link command to see who is linking to a site but only for registered webmasters. If you have a site and want to analyze who links to you, register here.
Danny Sullivan describes what you will be able to do.

In a comment to this post, Gary Price notes that there is no change for researchers who are using link: for the backwards search. Searchers will be better off using Live and Yahoo. (<b>New Tools for Webmasters from Google)

Beware Phishing Emails

Consumers Open One in Six Phishing Messages by Enid Burns, Clickz (Feb 5)

A study by Iconix finds that, "As many as 59 million phishing e-mail messages are sent each day, and up to 10 million of those may be opened by consumers."

Phishing e-mails try to lure you to a site and get you divulge private information for fraudulent purposes. Most people know to be wary of messages about bank accounts, but there are other types.

"Divided into eight categories, spoofed or phished messages had open rates ranging from 1 in 4 to 1 in 10. Fake social-network-related messages maintained 24.9 percent open rates. Other categories, including as e-cards (17.1 percent); payment (16.2 percent); financial (15.5 percent); auction (14.7 percent); information (12.9 percent); retail (12.1 percent); and dating (9.5 percent), had lower open rates."

Blinkx picks up Internet TV

blinkx Partners with Veoh to Make Hundreds of Hours of High Quality User-Generated and Commercial Video Content Fully Searchable, PR Newswire via Marketwatch (Feb 6)

"blinkx, the world's largest video search engine, today announced a partnership with Veoh Networks, the leading innovator in Internet television. blinkx will index thousands of hours of Veoh's broadcast-quality entertainment and information video content and make it easily searchable at www.blinkx.com."

Search For Video Meta Search

Searchforvideo 4.0 Launches With New Design and Video Search Experience, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Feb 6)

"Searchforvideo 4.0 introduces a new website design across several popular video categories that simplifies finding popular online video clips from the world's most trusted video publishers. The next generation site design is intended to promote brand name video content so video publishers can easily connect with Searchforvideo's millions of viewers."

Yahoo's Panama Ad System

What Yahoo's Panama Update Means For Searchers, Search Engine Land (Feb 6)

Yahoo has rolled out its new ads-listing-ranking project called Panama. Chris Sherman looks at what this means for searchers.

"The most notable impact on search results, of course, will be on the advertisements that appear at the top and right of a search result page. Mayer said that no major changes are being made to organic results, although he added that Yahoo introduces changes to its organic search algorithms two or sometimes three times per week as a matter of course."

Because Yahoo will be using the "landing page" more to determine which ads to show, "using precise, specific queries will give you much better sponsor results than in the past. Use words with narrow, non-ambiguous meanings in your queries rather than broad, general search terms for best results."

Hopefully, the changes in ranking and selection will mean that paid listings become more relevant and to the searcher as useful as the organic.

Yahoo Blog says so too - Panama Enhances Relevancy for Searchers (Feb 5)

"Unlike the old system for ad ranking, which was essentially a “pay for placement” model, the new model takes into account both advertiser bids and ad quality, including user click feedback, resulting in ads that are more relevant to a user’s query."

Princeton and Google Books

Princeton library joins Google Books project, AFP via Yahoo News (Feb 6)

"Written works in Princeton's library that are not protected by copyrights will be be scanned into digital format and added to Google Book Search, according to the university and Google."

This is the 12th library to join Google Books.

Tagging Growing

Tagging, Pew Internet and American Life (Feb 1)

"A December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content. "

Described in Tagging 'takes off for web users' , BBC News (Feb 1)

"Tagging or labelling online content is becoming the new search tool of choice among web users, shows research."

Google Office

Google poised to launch alternative to Microsoft Office, bigmouthmedia (Jan 29)

"Google, the world's leading search engine, is poised to take on the might of Microsoft Office 2007 and broaden its revenue beyond advertising. The company will be bundling the free web-based software offers into one premium package for sale to businesses."

Personalized Google

Google has begun integrating its personal tools with the personalized home page. It is now connected to notebook, bookmarks, and other Google things.

Personally speaking by Sep Kamvar, Google Blog (Feb 2)

"Now, when you're signed in, you'll have access to a personalized Google—one that combines personalized search results and a personalized homepage."

The personal page has Google Notebook in a corner, and there is a Google Bookmark's Gadget to add your Google Bookmarks to your page. (Thought, I would find it more convenient as a tab.)

A personalized page is easy to grasp - you pick the bits you want. If you use personalized search (or search history), Google will also make recommendations based on searches you do .

These lists are always amusing for the odd ball things that come up. Probably because I often search CBC, Google thinks I'd be interested in the new comedy, Little Mosque on the Prairie, and, perhaps because I live in Toronto, winterlicious is on my list, a festival of culinary events which, as it happened, I had just heard about the day before. There are videos too - in my case a slightly entertaining The World's Fastest Librarian. Entertaining is good, but for all the search history Google has to work with, I'd expect something much better.

Postscript: Google is pushing the personalized. Anyone who signs up for a Google account will automatically get search history, personalized search, and the home page. There is a very detailed description of what to watch for in this post by Danny Sullivan -- Google Ramps Up Personalized Search, Search Engine Land (Feb 2).

How Search Might Evolve

Evolution of a Search Engine by Philipp Lensen, Google Blogscoped (Feb 2)

Very interesting article by Lensen on how search discovery might develop into delivering "knowledge" answers, providing personalized content, and ultimately performing some analysis. Google is the engine under study, but Ask.com may have some of the "knowledge" capabilities today.

"Right now, to answer your queries, Google quotes from the web, and orders the quotes in a list. In the future, Google may combine these quotes into a free-style text for a more direct answer. When the Google AI advances beyond that, it may analyze the texts available to it to come up with conclusions of its own."

Viacom Off YouTube

Viacom's YouTube Smackdown by Josh Grossberg, E! News (Feb 2)

Viacom has pulled another 100,000 clips from YouTube.

"For the second time in four months, Viacom has demanded that the video-sharing site remove all content from its networks, including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, VH1, CMT, Spike TV and BET, an estimated 100,000 clips total, after licensing talks broke down."

Google's Historical View of Earth

Google Earth Overlays Maps With Historical Data , PC World (Nov 13, 2006)

Google Earth has an historic side to it. In November, Google overlaid maps by David Rumsey Historical Maps "to connect users to information about the history of the world".

Also Fly-By History (Dec 20)

Find the maps and a download for Google Earth at http://www.google.com/educators/gaw.html

Market Share December 2006

Top 10 Search Providers, December 2006 by Enid Burns, Clickz (Jan 31)

Nielsen//NetRatings results in December show Google at 50.8% share of searches. Yahoo is in second place with half that (23.6%)

News Aggregators

Surfing through filters by Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail (Jan 26)

Ivor Tossell recommends people use a "good aggregator -- a site that pulls headlines from other sites, and matches your tastes" to be in the know about what's new and hip.

+ Boing Boing - "Boing Boing offers up a trail mix of technology culture and whimsy: retro art, digital copyright issues, ear-wax removal techniques, electronic voting problems, unicorn pictures." Cory Doctorow from Toronto but now in the US writes for Boing Boing and "keeps the site stocked with a supply of Canadian content."

+ MetaFilter - "where community members hunt for "the best of the Web," and usually turn up nothing of the sort. It is, however, one of the most entertaining ways of staying on top of what's out there." Thanks to this site, I discovered the InsideTheCBC, the official CBC blog, where CBC Radio fans responded to CBC's new radio schedule. [CBC has a 5 year history of replacing intelligent programming on CBC Radio with dumbed down content.]

+ Digg - members submit stories they like and vote on others - "If it's not lowbrow, it tends toward the lightweight (not that I didn't enjoy the item on the "cat-washing machine"). "

+ Popurls - "Popurls, a faintly insane site that takes all of the headlines from all of the Internet's top news aggregators, and aggregates them." There are 15 major sources with 20 headlines each - plus photos - making for a very full page of US-centric news. Still where else would you see that Rush Limbaugh has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?

Copernic Desktop

Copernic Desktop Search Wins two International Awards -- PC Pro and Micro Hebdo ranks Copernic Desktop Search Superior to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, CCNMatthews via Marketwatch (Feb 1) - Congratulations to Copernic but can they really compete with Google Desktop which comes loaded on Dell computers or the search in Vista?

Pew Research Center (US studies)

Pew Research has announced a makeover for its main web site. I look the Internet and American Life often, but the main Pew Research Center has wealth of public views on key issues. I am dismayed by "Public Views Unchanged by Unusual Weather" - global warming is not "top tier" with Americans.

The announcement about changes at the web site mentioned:

The site features new studies and nonpartisan analysis on politics, media, religion, and more.

It offers original content and serves as a portal to the latest findings
from our seven projects:

* Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
* Project for Excellence in Journalism
* Stateline.org
* Pew Internet & American Life Project
* Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
* Pew Hispanic Center
* Pew Global Attitudes Project

Business Blog Directory

Directory of Radio Podcasts Also Offers Directory of Business Blogs, ResearchBuzz (Jan 27)

Here's a directory to business blogs - http://www.iblogbusiness.com. Claims 1,153 business blogs in 313 categories. Can search the posts but not the blog names and descriptions. Has a tab for top-rated but no rating system. Primitive

Delexa tagging

Delexa — a Del.icio.us / Alexa Mix, ResearchBuzz (Jan 31)

Delexa - attempt to help people search on tags (taken from Del.icio.us) to find the more visited sites (according to traffic recorded by Alexa). Main page lists the top 19 U.S. sites and their topic tags. To give credit these do describe these very popular "sites" reasonably well - Yahoo -- search, yahoo, email, portal, news. But, is this useful for searchers?

Tara Calishain reviews it and notes that Delexa is one of several tag-based tools "that are increasingly making searchable subject indexes irrelevant."

Trends in Search

A Look at the Next Generation of Search? by Kevin Newcomb, Searchday (Feb 1)

Always On Media Conference had a session on "next generation search" featuring Collarity, Eurekster, Mercora, Nexidia, and ZoomInfo. Dominant theme seems to have been social - Eurekster has collaborative elements and Collarity and Mercora are social. As well there is the continuing challenge to index text in audio and video (Nexidia), and organizing and mining unstructured text (Zoominfo).

+ "Eurekster's platform is based on the idea of Swickis, which combine the power of a search algorithm with the collaboration of a wiki. "

+ "Mercora is a "social radio" network which enables users to become DJs and create their own user-programmed radio channel."

+ "Nexidia offers a tool to index spoken-word content, using technology developed at Georgia Tech University. It analyzes an audio or video track to create a "phonetic audio track"."

+ "ZoomInfo is a business people search engine that this week added "Powersearch 2007," which uses semantic technology to build a database of information about businesses and business professionals."

+ "Collarity offers a social search tool for communities, called the Collarity Compass. It uses collective searcher behavior on a given publisher's site to customize search results made from that site, both site search and Web search."

Exalead one: Enterprise

Extending Exalead, KM World (Jan 31)

"Exalead has released Exalead one: enterprise , which has been designed to provide users with a unified access point to content and both structured and unstructured data regardless of format or location."

Also Exalead Announces Availability of exalead one:enterprise 4.5 -- New User Interface Offers Greater Choice, Simplicity and Ease-of-Use for Less Frustrating, More Satisfying Enterprise Search Experience, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Jan 31)

Google's Web Search

Several interesting bits about Google's index are to be found in postings by Matt Cutts of Google - Infrastructure status, January 2007 (Jan 10), Danny Sullivan's analysis of Cutts' announcements - January 2007 Update on Google Indexing and Ranking Issues (Jan 11), and Greg Notess - Google to Fix filetype: Search?

Filetype:

Cutts announced that Google would be soon allowing filetype to work without additional modifying words - eg filetype:pdf climate. It doesn't work yet but Greg Notess has a work around in which you simply add the file extension as a search term to get a total count for that document type. Eg filetype:pdf pdf. The usefulness of knowing how many pdf pages Google has indexed seems arcane, and Sullivan thinks it will lead to size claim wars. (Incidentally, Google shows 245 million pdf pages.)

Supplemental results:

These are always marked as supplemental and have often seemed to be lesser or inferior hits - an "oh, btw, we have also dug up these". Turns out they are lesser. Cutts says, "the main determinant of whether a url is in our main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank". But he promised they will be "fresher". Sullivan compares this supplemental system to the old Inktomi approach of having "best of web" and "rest of web" - it's two-tiered searching. "Basically, the supplemental index is a way for Google to hit less important pages in specific instances when it can't find matches in the main index.". There doesn't seem to be an easy fix for this since no engine can search it all in one shot.

Country Specific Searches

Apparently, Google's option to "search pages from " a country, Google has not shown all the home pages in the .com domain that belong to that country. Cutt claims that this has been fixed.

core3 posted a comment to Sullivan's post that will be of interest to Canada searchers who choose "pages from Canada". core3 has found that "there is little difference between Google's default results and its "pages from the UK" results, at least for users located in the UK and it's hard to understand what purpose is served by offering the two options at all.", and recommends switching the order - pages from the country as the default (and, it is implied, do this well instead of poorly), and make wider world the option.

Amazon's Poor Search

What's Wrong with Amazon's Search Engine?, TVC Alert (Jan 30)

Builds on comments in the PC World blog article -- No, I Will Not Renew My Amazon Prime Membership! -- on problems with Amazon search - very poor filtering /categorization and many duplicates. Tyburski adds to this list with her tests on finding an audio book - Amazon has it but won't show it in search results.

Sounds like Amazon's search facility needs an overhaul and a full faceted metadata search.

PC World blog entry is also of interest to anyone being wooed by the Amazon invitations to join Prime - it's too hard to find the products that qualify for the lower shipping costs.