Internet News

Google Street Views in Canada

Google to address privacy concerns for Canadian edition of imaging service program Street View, AP via International Herald Tribune (Sept 28)

Google is trying to address privacy concerns about its close-up Street View for places in Canada that had been raised by Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. Google may be able to block faces and license plate numbers.

"Google hopes that its approach to addressing privacy concerns by masking faces and vehicle license plates will enable it to launch a Canadian version of its Street View imaging service, global privacy advisor Peter Fleischer said Friday."

Digg Filters

News site Digg adds filtering options, AP via Canoe (Sept )

More features for filtering news at Digg - "Users can add others to their friends list and see at a glance what stories they've been recommending or commenting on - ... Later this year, Digg will introduce additional ways to help find stories of interest, including the triggering of e-mail alerts for items that meet the user's criteria and tools for recommending stories based on the user's past activities and friends. "

Live Search Improved

Microsoft Introduces New Live Search Index, Adds Features In Effort To Close 'Relevancy Gap' And Improve User Experience, by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Sep 27)

There will be many reviews of the new look and operation of Live Search. Start with this one for background on rationale, description of improvements, and screen shots. Improvements seem to be larger index (said to be four times larger - does that make it 20 billion?), "instant answers" and a bit more integration of content areas - "expansion of Answers is a vertical initiative that touches on four content areas: Local/Maps, Entertainment (including video) Shopping, and Health".

Relevancy has improved. "Microsoft is using new ranking algorithms that take user behavior and click stream analysis, among other factors, into account." An article by Vanessa Fox, [Live Blogging: Microsoft Searchification Day 2007 ] indicates that Live could be stronger on natural language processing too - "The improved ranking algorithms use neural networking ranking that are loosely modeled from biological neural networks and can learn patterns that simple algorithms can't. "

Things I have noticed:

+ celebrity search brings up images - eg penelope cruz

+ related searches are much better - no longer just some variations of the search terms. These are truly related names or conditions. Eg stephen harper will show conservative party of canada, jack layton - (what - no stephane dion!?)

+ there are news items from the Globe and Mail and Market Wire on Dalton McGuinty.

+ image search for Dalton McGuinty also brings up related names

+ temperature vancouver bc gets the weather there.

+ map cannon beach or brings up an interactive map. This does not work for Canadian places.

+ I don't see anything special for health searches; eg sciatica, diabetes. Perhaps that will come later.

+ Advanced Search has a simpler presentation but is probably more complex to use - choices for site/domain, links to, country/region, language are links instead of a full-page form.

This could restore Live as a tool for searchers to use, but Microsoft will have to work on continuous improvement instead of its usual practice of hoopla and no action.

Postscript Oct 1: Live Search dropped the results-ranking feature for weighting results by currency, popularity, and match. Pity - MSN/Live was the only engine to offer this. The popularity slider could be useful but it took extra effort - and searchers don't have the time or inclination.

Yahoo Podcasts Closing

Yahoo gags podcast service
MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press via Globe and Mail (Sep 27)

Pity - I just discovered it - but Yahoo is closing its service for finding podcasts. It was little used and Yahoo needs to cut costs.

"The podcast section will be silenced Oct. 31, according to a notice posted on Yahoo's website. It joins several other features that Yahoo has scrapped as it tries to snap out of a financial funk that has depressed its stock price and triggered a reshuffling of top management."

Top Video Sites

Top video sites in August 2007: YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, ZDNet (Sept 26)

YouTube had 56 million users in August 2007, a growth of 66% over last year - clearly the leader. In second place, MySpace had 17 mm and Google Video 14 mm. Yahoo Video was sixth at just under 12 mm.

Google Gears for Offline Reading

Take Google Gears for a Test Spin With Google Reader by Scott Spanbauer, PCWorld (Sept 25)

Google Gears might just be the thing for travellers away from an Internet connection or people using dial-up. Spanbauer shows how to configure it in this article.

"Are you looking for a new way to read your Web news feeds while you're on a plane, train, or other conveyance that lacks Internet access? There's nothing new about offline news readers, but the Google Gears add-on makes it easier than ever to access Web information--without the Web."

Web Trends

10 More Future Web Trends by Richard MacManus, Read/Write Web (Sept 25)

More thoughts about web trends sent in by readers of the Read/Write Web blog.

+ Integration into everyday devices. The fridge is mentioned.
+ Hyperlocal - social, geo-tagging, maps etc
+ Data retrieval and manipulation - (hoping for Hal?)
+ Read/Write/Request Web - an agent of sorts
+ User controlled, open Internet identity
+ Extended reality - look to science fiction
+ Expert systems
+ Personalized medicine
+ Blog reading automatically input into our brain - (good question - how are we going to handle the glut of information?)

Google Virtual World

Google eyeing its own 'Second Life?' Posted by Daniel Terdiman, CNet (Sept 24)

Speculation is growing that Google will be creating a new virtual world space, likely connected with its 3D Google Earth.

Hakia Demonstrates Value

BETA Update of hakia.com (Sept 22)

Hakia, the meaning-based search engine, has announced it is past the 75% mark for development. It has also introduced a method of comparing Hakia's results with those from Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

Try this - who was the best prime minister of canada for national unity. Hakia has a credible answer in the first spot from an Angus Reid Poll in June 2007 in which Pierre Elliot Trudeau . Google gave priority to the Office of the Prime Minister and its incumbent.

Google Trends more current

That's how fast moving things are today - Google Trends is being updated hourly and you can subscribe to the feed or put it on your iGoogle page.

Google Trends shows search volume over time, and news references. It's interesting for what it can show of one term against another. For example - Dalton McGuinty vs John Tory - contenders in the Ontario election 2007. Tory, for a time in September, was getting more attention than McGuinty. Add a third -Howard Hampton - many were searching for him, but McGuinty (as Premier) was the man in the news. The weakness is that Google doesn't pick up a lot of Canadian news - most of the stories are from Canada Newswire.

Here's the search for dalton mcguinty, john tory, howard hampton.

Google Trends Now Updated Hourly, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Sep 24)

Danger Lurks on Web Pages

Dangerous Side of Web Searching, Genie Tyburski, Virtual Chase (Sep 25)

Scary observation - "Using Google, I illustrated the prevalence of infected Web pages by searching for known javascript exploits by their filename. "

Tyburski lists organizations that monitor Internet-related security issues.

BAAGZ from Exalead

Exalead Unveils First Semantic Search Service, EContent (Sept 25)

Exalead, the search company in France, has introduced BAAGZ as a social networking community with search at its core. "BAAGZ fosters a collaborative environment where users can connect with others on the web who have similar interests-- whether hobbies, travel, music, or news-- in order to share and enhance this content with new ideas, in effect contributing to the expansion of the Semantic Web. At the foundation of BAAGZ is a search engine based on Exalead's Semantic Web search technology, Search By Serendipity, which is already available."

Google Sky Shots

In Pictures: Most Spectacular Sights in Google Sky PCWorld (Sept )

PCWorld has a slideshow with views from Google Sky. There are also instructions to help you get started using Google Sky to " travel the far reaches of the universe." Google Sky is a separate application - requires Windows XP and above.

Best Of from Business Week

Best of the Web - Readers Make Their Votes Count , Business Week (Sept 24)

Slide show of the top sites on the web picked by Business Week readers in 2007. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a text article to go with it but the slides list sites for each category - probably with the highest ranked first.

Web 2.0 is Social Web

Scaling the Social Web by Catherine Holahan , Business Online (Sept 24)

It's really networking everywhere - is there a limit to how much of this people will do?

"Move over, MySpace. Online players from media giant Viacom to auctioneer eBay are adding networking features for their users."

"In fact, there's been such overwhelming adoption of social networking features that many people are using the term "social Web," rather than Web 2.0, to refer to a generation of sites built on user-generated content and interaction. The idea is that any site worth its salt needs to enable user interaction and content-sharing. "

Of interest: "There are more than 135 million distinct sites on the Web, and the number of active sites is growing by a rate of more than 5% each month, according to Netcraft."

Free Online Access to Newspapers

A pay wall falls, and the Web is watching by GRANT ROBERTSON, Globe and Mail (Sept 24, 2007)

New York Times dropped its for-fee subscription model last week -"deciding it could make more money by making all of its content available free of charge online - including its vast digital archive that users have paid to access in the past." The Los Angeles Times had already done the same. And now News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch has talked about doing the same with the Wall Street Journal, the one paper that has been enormously successful with paid subscriptions.

These newspapers feel they can make more money from advertising if they open up the content to the search engines and increase traffic.

"Search engines and portals like Google and Yahoo act as key conduits that link readers with news outlets, rather than Internet users typing in the Web address of a specific publication. Having noticed this trend, the Times is trying to open the gates as wide as possible so that those audiences aren't inadvertently turned away by the subscription wall."

This will rock the newspapers that continue to have online subscription models - such as the Globe and Mail itself.

Changes to Live Search Coming

Live Search 2.0 begins rollout, LiveSide - News Blog (about Live.com) (Sep 20)

LiveSide.net is a blog about Windows Live featuring news and interviews. Blogmaster is Kip Kniskern in Washington State. In this entry he shows some screenshots of changes Microsoft is making to Live Search - new look with greater variety of results, possibly following the "universal" approach of mixed media adopted by Ask and Google; and more results (maybe there is a larger database).

I'm not seeing anything notably new yet at search.live.com except a tab to search only MSN. Stay tuned.

Testing People Search

Testing the People Search Engines, Mike Gunderloy, Web Worker Daily (Sept 20)

Gunderloy tested 4 of the new people search engines: Spock, SquidWho, WhoZat, and Wink; and compared results to Google. Dismal results except at Wink (and of course Google). The author makes the point about Spock that if you're not a joiner you won't get on the list. I will go further and say that if you want to be found you'll need a profile at a social networking site (LinkedIn, Facebook etc) and also the time to check these tools and update what comes up.

New TouchGraph

TouchGraph has a new version of the TouchGraph Google Browser - its visual-information tool for viewing Google results. It uses the "similar" function in Google to identify connections and likenesses between sites and display the resulting clusters as interconnected nodes. Google's similar pages do not mean they link to each other; rather that a third pary else links to both and possibly that there is some similarity in content.

TouchGraph is most useful for looking at broad topics such as this one for "social networking" in the screenshot below. See how the topic radiates to other sites. Click on the graph to center it on a new node. The representation of the topic is unlikely to be 100% accurate but it is an excellent start at seeing aspects to consider and providing the means to do so.

There are a variety of controls - whether to show the halo, filter out singles, minimum size of cluster.

This new version seems easier to use than the earlier one which relied on lines of different colours and thicknesses.

There is a version for Amazon - especially helpful for books, and Facebook.

Reviewed in TouchGraph connects the dots of Google searches, Pandia (Sept 18)

Web 2.0 Health Sites

Healthy growth in Web 2.0 medical sites By Barbara Feder Ostrov, Mercury News (Sep 21)

We've come a long way with health information and support on the Web, at least in the United States -- " Already, consumers can go online to rate their doctors (ratemds.com), comparison shop for medical procedures by price and location (vimo.com), search for medical information (webmd.com, healia.com) and share experiences with others on health-specific social networking sites (dailystrength.org, patientslikeme.com). In this universe, patients and doctors alike blog about medical conditions, post video journals, and offer comfort and a helping hand."

OneWebDay - Love the Net

Celebrate the Internet on Saturday's OneWebDay, Computerworld (Sep 21)

OneWebDay - September 22, 2007 - is to celebrate online life and the Internet.

"The idea behind OneWebDay is to urge people to reflect on the changes the Internet has made in their lives, how it should not be taken granted and to think about its future, said Susan Crawford, a visiting cyberlaw professor at the University of Michigan."

Visit http://www.onewebday.org/ and get involved.

August Search Statistics

Google keeps top search spot in August, AP via Business Week (Sept 20)

New figures for August 2007 from Nielsen Net Ratings on market share and number of searches show Google continuing to have stunning growth, MSN/Live recovering some share, and Ask.com not growing in spite of all the TV ads.

: "The report, issued late Wednesday, estimated Google captured 53.6 percent of the U.S. online search market during August with about 4.2 billion searches. This represents growth of 39.8 percent year over year, and is also an increase over Google's estimated 53.3 percent share of the market in July."

+ Yahoo 19.9% share, 8.9% growth
+ MSN/Live 12.9% share, 69.8% growth
+ AOL 5.6% share, 34.2% growth
+ Ask 1.7% share, no growth

Google into Shared Stuff

Google adds new "shared stuff" service by Matthew Ingram, Globe and Mail (Sept 20)

Picked up from Google Blogoscoped that Google has a opened a new sharing service - Google Shared Stuff - "it is a fairly simple service that allows you to share links with your friends. You can create a rudimentary profilem, and you can see what links others have shared (and how many times) and that's about it."

You'll find it at http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff

Sounds like a form of social bookmarking but it looks like a blog. See article at Google Operating System - Google Shared Stuff.

Healia adds search tools

Healia Launches Consumer-Friendly Search Engine for PubMed/Medline and Clinical Trials Information, Marketwire via Market Watch (Sep 20)

"Healia ( www.healia.com) announced today the launch of two new search engine tools -- Healia PubMed/Medline Search and Clinical Trials Search -- to help consumers find relevant biomedical literature and clinical trials information. The announcement was made during the Health 2.0 User Generated Healthcare Conference in San Francisco."

Searching Google video

Fun With Google Video, Research Buzz (Sept 17)

Big tip on searching Google's collection of videos - all 4.8 million of them - use site:google.com or use Advanced search to look for video from google.com.

Information Trapping at Google Blog Search

Google’s Blog Search and An Option I Didn’t Know About, ResearchBuzz (Sept 18)

Tara Calishain picks up a tip about using Google Blog Search for "information trapping". It's all in the new date search - "In fact, it isn’t. Jeremy explained that when you narrow your search by time using the links on the left, the results from that time span are sorted by relevance. In other words, you’ll still get results by relevance, but only for the time span you specified."

Google Web Search Tips

In the Sept 20, 2007 Virtual Chase newsletter, Genie Tyburski has a few tips for people using Google who need to look at the cache, look for words close together, or search by date.

+ Corporate Filters Interfere with Research - corporate security might block access to a site and one's only recourse is to look in Google cache. But this doesn't always work. Google and others cache text but not other components. You won't see them but the monitoring software might log it as an attempt. So - use the qualifier &strip=1 to request only the text.

+ Proximity, Wildcard Searching on Google -- * in a Google query substitutes for one word (roughly - I've seen it substitute for 3 or 4 words). This can be used for names, email addresses. Experiment - anything where two parts are typically close.

+ Google Improves Searching by Date - new date-restricted options on the Advanced Page. The date is the date Google crawled the page - not the date it was published.

Changing Country Domains

The Soviet Union lives!
JAMES KILNER, Reuters via Globe and Mail (Sept 19)

What happens to a country domain name after the nation falls apart? Users of the .su domain for the Soviet Union are fighting to keep it.

"Russian Internet enthusiasts are locked in a tussle with an international body over a relic of the Soviet past — the .su domain name assigned to the country just before the Soviet Union collapsed."

Canadians read news online

More Canadians getting their newspaper fix online by RICHARD BLACKWELL, Globe and Mail (Sept 20)

Surveys done in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa in fall 2006 and spring 2007 by Newspaper Audience Databank Inc showed increased readership of online versions of newspapers in all cities. Print is doing fairly well too - "47 per cent of Canadians read a newspaper every day, and almost three-quarters look at one at least once a week"

More figures at NADBank - 2006-2007 Readership Study for Selected Markets Press Release

The Online News People Read

The Latest News Headlines—Your Vote Counts, Journalism.org (Sept 12, 2007)

What people read and prefer online can be much different than what the news media delivers judging from this study by Project for Excellence in Journalism. Part of what people actually read is influenced by what bloggers cover.

"The report, released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compared the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

In a week when the mainstream press was focused on Iraq and the debate over immigration, the three leading user-news sites—Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us—were more focused on stories like the release of Apple’s new iphone and that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth, according to the study. "

Use the Internet for Hobbies

Hobbyists Online, PEW Internet and American Life (Sept 20)

No surprise here - people use the Internet to pursue their hobbies.

"The Pew Internet Project's latest report finds that the internet has become a
hobbyist's playground. A telephone survey conducted in February-March 2007
found that fully 83% of online Americans say they have used the internet to
seek information about their hobbies and 29% do so on a typical day. Looking
for information about hobbies is among the most popular online activities, on
par with shopping, surfing the web for fun, and getting news."

Changes at Digg

Digg To Get Truly Social With Major Update Today by Chris Winfield, Search Engine Land (Sept 19)

Digg is rolling out changes that will make it even more social - add friends, enhance profile, etc, etc.

Spock for People

Spock: People Search With A Man + Machine Approach by Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land (Sept 19)

Many people are writing about Spock. This is a people search engine that looks at social networks and the web and invites contributions from the community.

"With Spock, you can search on a person's name or a keyword that may be associated with a person, and are returned a list of people with associated tags, photos, and web sites. From there, you can drill into more information about any of those aspects, add information of your own, or browse to people who are related in various ways."

Videos from TED.com

Finding and Sharing Videos Online by Steve Bass, PC World

Go to Ted.com to get high-quality videos on "ideas worth spreading". Marvellous collection organized by theme and speaker. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and is famous for its conference. You can join for email updates.

Bass also refers to articles about finding and sharing videos.

Here's how to sift through the junk and find some seriously high-quality videos, plus some help sharing them.

Ads in Google Gadgets

Google sees gold in 'widget' ads, AP via CNN Money (Sept 19)

"Google Inc. will try to cash in on the Internet's latest craze by distributing ads within "widgets" - the interactive capsules designed to bring more pizzazz to Web pages."

Does this ruin a good thing? Google has over 14,000 widgets (or gadgets as it calls them) that people can add to their iGoogle personal page. Now those widgets can come with ads - as long as they will appeal to the user.

Andrew Goodman commented in Traffick - Google's Gadget Ads Rolling Out - hinting that the desirability or usefullness of the gadget might be lessened with ads attached. Also has this interesting line - "There are editorial policies governing Google Gadget Ads. These include "not exceeding 50% utilization of a user's computer" through things like "heavy animation sequences.""

PC World has some examples of these gadget ads - Google Tests Interactive Ads - James Niccolai, IDG News Service

"The format allows companies to build ads that include audio, video, games and live data feeds, and to spruce them up with the Flash and JavaScript programming languages. The ads wind up looking like small Web pages within a Web page, and people can save them to a blog or their iGoogle home page."

Book: Googlepedia

All Things Google - Que Publishing Releases New Edition of Best-Selling Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource, press release Marketwatch

Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource, Second Edition by Michael Miller - available through Informit.com. Covers everything - blogs, mail, Office aps, video, maps, AdSense - the works.

No excerpts - but there is a Googlepedia Blog.

Bookmarklet for Amazon Books

Simple Amazon Searching — Surface Search, Research Buzz (Aug 22)

Use Tara Calishain's bookmarklet for searching title at Amazon Books.

Yahoo does Office

Another Big Yahoo! Acquisition: Zimbra, Rob Hof, The Tech Beat (Sep 17)

Yahoo is moving into Microsoft and Google territory with its acquisition of Zimbra and its online office-productivity applications. This is getting to be quite crowded, and as Hof points out, not Yahoo's core business. Perhaps Office is considered part of social or web collaboration.

Yahoo also launched a beta version of its new social networking place, Mash.

Add Google Presentation to a Blog

How To Embed Google Presentations, Inside Google (Sept 18)

This has to be useful for something - use Google to create the slide presentation and then embed in a blog post.

Profile on Chris Sherman

Interview with Chris Sherman of Third Door Media by Lee Odden, Online Marketing Blog (Sep 17)

Chris Sherman, currently Executive Editor at Search Engine Land, has been involved with search engines from the earliest days when WebCrawler and Yahoo were the two dominant features (1994 - that long ago!). There's a short bio here, and some background on the Search Engine Conference. Has advice for people in search marketing.

Of interest - innovations that will affect mobile or local search: "Maps combined with images rock my universe. I can easily see a day when you do a local search and your results include thumbnail images of brick & mortar storefronts. Those images can in turn be the virtual storefront for the millions of small businesses that aren’t and probably won’t have web sites - hosted by the search engines. I think you’ll also start to see some immersive experiences where you’re not really searching as much as exploring ... "

SquidWho for people

Squidoo Gets Into People Search by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch (Sept 16)

Squidwho from the makers of Squidoo has a people search. And if it can't find the person it will propose ways to build a page. Great - except the sources are very limited. It looks in Wikipedia, Flickr, Yahoo News, and asks for more information through a comment box.

"Squidwho provides similar features to competitors including Wink, Spock, PeekYou, WikiYou and Zoominfo. Pages include a short biography, Amazon products (where applicable), YouTube videos, Flickr shots, latest news and RSS feed data from appropriate sites."

This is probably great for setting up stuff about yourself - assuming that you have any time left after developing profiles at social networking sites.

Powerset Labs

Powerset: Move Over, Google by Robert Hof, BusienssWeek (Sept 17, 2007)

Powerset, a new "natural language" engine that hopes to challenge Google, has set up Powerset Labs and is asking people to help improve its search before its launch in 2008.

Where Google and others do keyword search, Powerset will - "analyze the actual meaning of words and phrases that it indexes on the Web. It then will analyze the linguistic meaning of the query and find the best matches between the two—theoretically, at least, producing more meaningful results. "Our system reads every single sentence in every single document and extracts meaning from them," says Powerset Chief Executive Barney Pell. "

Natural language engines thrive on words - the more the better. Searchers will have to change their ways from the skimpy 1 to 3 word queries they use today.

View to the future: "Google executives have said that natural-language search could be years away from practical use and that linguistic analysis hasn't produced notably better results so far, which Powerset disputes. At the same time, there's little doubt Google's search wizards are examining the possibilities and are positioned to take swift advantage if the technology pans out. But even if Google isn't threatened by the competition anytime soon, it's clear the search game is far from over."

See demo about Powerlabs . The Powerset Labs demo site will use Wikipedia its database during the trial.

Firefox Tips

15 Undocumented Firefox Tips Lincoln Spector, PC World (Sept 10, 2007)

"The increasingly popular Firefox browser offers much more customizability than Internet Explorer does. Here are some tweaks you might not know about."

Good tips in this article:

+ to move from tab to tab in the Firefox browser, use CTRL + Tab.
+ set up bookmark shortcuts for quick searches at any searchable site
+ find text on a page even more quickly by opting for "search for text when I start typing".
+ manage history, cookies and private data.

Web 3.0 - several possibilities

Just in case you missed it, PC Magazine had an article on Web 3.0 in March 2007 - Web 3.0 - The Internet is Changing Again - by Cade Metz.

Web 2.0 was "any site, service, or technology that promoted sharing and collaboration right down to the Net's grass roots". Web 3.0 could be many things - it's just the next stage.

+ Semantic Web - better connections between blocks of information such that the software can anticipate what you really want to know or do. Blue Organizer from AdaptiveBlue (www.adaptiveblue.com) is one example - read about a film and immediately link to a lot of related content and services.

+ 3D Web - really virtual worlds - and the possibilities that presents for new ways of living online

+ Media-centric web - find media from media - find pictures that look like or are about the same topic as one you provide. This exists today at Live.com and is used for shopping (of course).

+ Pervasive web - everything is connected even the windows in your house.

Mapping Sites

Kings of the Road: The Web's Best Mapping Sites by Steve Bass, PCWorld (Sept 13)

Steve Bass gives us a comparative review of the five major web mapping sites - Ask City, Google Maps, MapQuest, Microsoft Live Search Maps, and Yahoo Maps. His conclusion - "annotation and other tools gave Microsoft Live and Ask City a slight edge over Yahoo Maps, and a substantial advantage over Google Maps and MapQuest." There is an excellent chart comparing features for each.

Ask City - Key sentence - "While not available for Canadian cities, Ask City is one snazzy map app if you're travelling to the US." Maps will show for Canadian places but you can't find streets or businesses. But for American cities, you can circle an area, zoom into it, search only it, get walking directions, jump to another part of the city. Terrific.

Google Maps does cover Canada well but I must admit that, like Bass, I experienced great difficulty figuring out the My Maps features.

MapQuest is probably the favourite in Canada. The yellow-page side of local search is well covered for Canadian places. But there are a lot of ads and popups, and the directions for shortest time, at least in Toronto, are way off.

Microsoft Live Search Maps is better than MapQuest for Canadian maps. Not all the features Bass describes are available - eg no Traffic. However, there are yellow page listings, 2D and 3D views (though I didn't test this - read Bass's comments before you try), it can find landmarks, and the scratch pad is very useful.

Yahoo Maps is very good in the United States but not in Canada. It can give directions (same ones as Mapquest) but no businesses or landmarks. Closest pizza place for Torontonians is in Niagara Falls, NY. It's odd that Rogers doesn't help out all its Ontario users by adding yellow page services to Yahoo Maps for Canada.

Steve Bass has a section on mashups of maps with other information for people in the US.

Conclusion: For maps and services in Canada Live Maps is the best and Google Maps comes in second.

Google and Privacy Concerns

Is Google Too Big? by Scott Spanbauer, PC World (Sept 10)

Many people are asking this - "With its empire expanding, the search giant can have an unprecedented breadth of knowledge about you. Can we trust it with so much data?"

Doubleclick is one of the pieces. Did you know this? "Should Google receive approval for its acquisition of DoubleClick, it could become the single largest custodian of Internet user search and browsing histories, with few legal restrictions on using that data or sharing it with third parties."

And there is the matter of warrant search - "Google must comply with search warrants and subpoenas in civil or criminal cases that target your data, just as you would if you stored your data on your own servers."

Bottom line - "Relying on Google's free services can boost your productivity, but they may also put your privacy on the line, your business at risk, and your data out of reach. " Article has a chart of risks associated with Google services.

Google Date Query

Useful Google feature: better date search, Matt Cutts, Gadgets, Google, and SEO (Sep 12)

"As Google has gotten fresher, our advanced search page started showing more useful options for restricting searches by date. The shortest time frame used to be something like three months; now you can look for things that are less than 24 hours old."

Also shows tweaks you can do to the url using as_qdr= to see urls discovered by Google in the last few days (d), weeks (w) or years (y)..

What's Up at Yahoo

Two stories about Yahoo today - but I think they'll have to do better to increase traffic.

Report: Yahoo Mistakenly Leaks New Service Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World (Sept 13)

An employee accidentally leaked that Yahoo is working on a new social networking space called Yahoo Mash. Good luck - Yahoo 360 hasn't succeeded and the social networking market seems very crowded now.

Yahoo Tests Two New Services, Reuters via PC World - Yahoo may have better luck with these two new services:

+ create a composite map using Yahoo MaxMixer - merge one map, such as of a campus, with Yahoo maps.

+ Shop by Color at the shopping site - "Online shoppers will be able to filter their search for items such as shoes or pants by selecting from 56 color hues."

Also see - Yahoo MapMixer & Shop By Color, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land

Social Networking for the Older Set

Social networking sites take notice of seniors By Matt Richtel, International Herald Tribune (September 6, 2007)

People 50 Plus can talk more easily with others their age about what really concerns them at new social networking sites such as Eons.com.

"Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites targeting their parents and grandparents. The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya's Mom, Boomj and Boomertown."

Cooking with Tara

Cookin’ With Google 2.0. ResearchBuzz (Sep 12)

Yay - cooking with Google from Tara Calishain is back but it is a Google CSE

"http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/tools/cookin-with-google/ , has undergone a serious update. From a tweaked-search-tool, it’s been turned into a Google Custom Search Engine that is currently searching over 140 cooking-related sites and recipe collections (and I’m still adding more.)"

Try it.

Kosmix RightHealth - forerunner for topics

Kosmix has two versions of its health search - Kosmix Health with selected resources, topics, news, videos, and Kosmix RightHealth. RightHealth is the newest - also with topics, news, articles, videos and forums. They are very similar and might just be different presentations of the same content.

Charles Knight at Read/Write Web reviewed RightHealth - Kosmix rolls out RightHealth and more! (Sept 12) The RightHealth is a new style of presenting a variety of content and format on a topic.

"The Kosmix technology will cull all of the content on the Web to generate pages algorithmically without any human intervention, giving users an encyclopedia of knowledge that is dynamic, limitless in scale, and constantly changing based on their precise needs."

Mahalo Examined

Mahalo Launches Toolbar - Aims to Convert Google Users by Richard MacManus, Read / Write Web (Aug 10)

MacManus gives Mahalo a favourable review in this article, though he is not a fan of the toolbar that Mahalo has introduced to show Mahalo results in a left panel.

Mahalo is a "human powered" search service - humans pick the results and construct the collections - just like people do at directories but likely without the classification depth. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, is quoted as saying he's gunning for Google and other big search engines. This is a stretch - and many others have said so too [Andrew Goodman for one] .

MacManus reports on his conversation with Calacanis and illustrates with a couple of searches (undemanding ones) and how he felt about the results.

If you have a "popular query", Mahalo just might help you out with well organized material. I liked what it did with the Toronto International Film Festival.

I expect that people will treat this as they do About.com. Check it if they think there might be a guide on their topic (eg antivirus software), or click through on a link if the guide turns up in search results or becomes so good that it is listed in a reputable directory.

Macmanus -- "I admire what Mahalo is trying to do ... . I'm all for quality control when it comes to Web content. So in that respect, I would use Mahalo for certain popular queries. However I also think the major search engines are improving in regards to quality ..."

Google Street-Level Views

Google's new street-level view concerns Privacy Commissioner, Terry Pedwell, CP via Globe and Mail (Sep 12)

Jennifer Stoddart, Canada's Privacy Commissioner, says many of the street-level images Google has on the Internet could break Canada's privacy laws.

"I am concerned that, if the Street View application were deployed in Canada, it might not comply with our federal privacy legislation," Ms. Stoddart says in a letter to David Drummond, Google's senior vice-president of corporate development and chief legal officer.

"In particular, it does not appear to meet the basic requirements of knowledge, consent, and limited collection and use as set out in the legislation."

Comments are interesting - people point out that public scapes are filmed and photographed every day and that privacy is often impinged upon by film crews. Whether they are for or against, the point is that the horse has left the stable.

Freepint covers social networking

"Survival Guide: Online Social Networking" By Shally Steckerl, Freepint No 237 (Sept 13, 2007)

Encourages everyone to develop their social networks and comments on a few of the more business oriented online venues (not MySpace or Freepint)

"Online social networking provides you with a venue to connect with people whom you already know, grow your relationships and find new people connected to you by a common contact. Effective utilisation of your personal network is no longer a competitive advantage, it is a survival tool."

"Social Tools for Business Use: Messages from a Web 2.0 Conference"
By Alexia Miller, Freepint (Sept 13)

Draws some points on the benefits of using social networking tools from attending the conference - Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 New Development & Evolution.

Is tagging sagging?

Is tagging good or bad? Should we spend time tagging bookmarks at del.icio.us, or our photos, or blog entries? Does it help anyone other than ourselves? Is this activity contributing to some collective intelligence?

Tagging is very idiosyncratic - up to the person who is using the item, there is no controlled vocabulary - not even controlled spelling, on the public web there will always be spam artists cashing in on popular tags. But tagging still represents the public voice, chaotic and undisciplined as that may be.

Tagging has been receiving some negative "press" in some blogs - legitimately so. But on the other hand, Stumbleupon has been a huge success and the presence of Stumbleupon tags in search engine results (for those who install the toolbar) is useful. Tagging is a piece of social search - users do have something to add.

Some postings:

To the trough of disillusionment we go!, Matt Mower, Curiouser and Curiouser! (Aug 23, 2007) - "the state of the art in tagging seems firmly wedged in 2003"

Tough Talk About Tagging, Brock Read, Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept 7) - interesting for the comments especially those of Gary Price.

Survey American Tagging, Gary Price, ResourceShelf (Jan 31, 2007) - refers to the study by Pew Internet and American Life Project on tagging and presents 10 points about the weaknesses of tagging.

Meta search for social bookmarks

Infopirate.org has a metasearch of social bookmarking services. It appears to include Stumbleupon, Digg, Netvouz, Blinklist, Blogmarks, reddit, clipmarks, listible, diigo. del.icio.us and other leading social bookmarks didn't come up. Metasearch engines often have a problem with accessing the favourites. Infopirate is a start but lacks the features to be a strong tool.

Intelways - 300 ways to search

September 2007 InfoTip: Intelways, Mary Ellen Bates (Sep 2007)

Bates recommends Intelways as a starting point for finding a search engine. Intelways has over 300 of them well categorized by type. Enter a search and choose - then move to the next. The Intelways frame with the search bar stays on top.

Because pages are displayed inside the Intelways frame, people need a way to save the url of the target page. Intelways has a tip for users - "Please note: The most common question new users of Intelways have is how to get the actual URL address of the page in the results window in order to save it for future reference, bookmark it or send it to a friend. It's very simple: In Internet Explorer, right-click > properties, in Firefox: right-click > this frame > view frame info." See the Tools and Tips page.

I also like the start page with its selection of stories from social sites (digg, delicious, stumbleupon, reddit) and news (Google, Yahoo).

Intelways is very easy to use and in presenting so much choice helps us consider other resources for researching a topic. It's not metasearch - it's more like all-in-one search. Good training - good tool.

People Search Tools

Searching for Humans By Erica Naone, Technology Review (Aug 20, 2007)

New services for finding people:

+ Spock makes use of social networking and uses human and machine intelligence to tag people.
+ Zoominfo - indexes web content. People can update their profile if they provide a credit card number.
+ Wink - search by location and other variables

Various websites are trying to make it easier to find friends and colleagues online.

Open Access at CIHR

New research policy a victory for 'open access' by Michael Geist, Toronto Star (Sep 10)

"The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the federal government's health research granting agency, unveiled a new open access policy for the research that it funds."

Beginning in 2008 "grant recipients will be required to make every effort to ensure that all publications are freely accessible through the publisher's website or an online repository within six months of publication".

"The online repository approach – often referred to as "self-archiving" – relies on smart search engines to index millions of articles and make them easily accessible with the right search query. "

Hopefully, the federal government's two other major granting councils - Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) - will do the same.

Freebase schemas

A web that can read itself may be in our future IVOR TOSSELL, Globe and Mail (Sept 7)

Sees the future of the web in the new Freebase.com - a Wikipedia-like user created encyclopedia that has been designed with metadata in mind - fields for information about the entry. Navigation is enhanced through the metadata as well as access by search engines.

"You can see some by visiting Freebase.com. One such outside application on display asks you to plug in an architect's name, and then proceeds to pinpoint each of that architect's buildings or designs on a world map. It can do this because each architect's Freebase entry comes with a field in which a list of their creations can be entered. In turn, the Freebase entry for each of these buildings has a field for its address. The application then plugs the address into Google Maps, and voilà, a map of every building Frank Lloyd Wright ever built, automatically generated by the information in Freebase. Enter a new building into Freebase, and the new location pops up on the map."

The beginning of the semantic web? The use of schemas and metadata is remarkable.

From Freebase FAQ: "Finally, while information in Freebase appears to be structured much like a conventional database, it’s actually built on a system that allows any user to contribute to the schemas—or frameworks—that hold the data. This wiki-like approach to structuring information lets many people organize the database without formal, centralized planning. And it lets subject experts who don’t have database expertise find one another, and then build and maintain the data in their domain of interest."

Directories take another hit

Pandia Weekend Wrap-up (Week 36/2007) - directories seem doomed. Google has removed its directory that was based on the Open Directory Project (ODP) from its more list. It is also downgrading ranking that it gives sites based on their being listed in a directory. The ranking will depend on the directory which they seem to now have means of assessing. Would be interesting to learn how they regard ODP - likely not as highly as it once did.

Build a Google CSE

Creating Google Custom Search Engines by Bernard Farrell, ONLamp.com (Sep 6)

Detailed instructions on how to build a Google Custom Search Engine.

Upcoming changes to del.icio.us

Screenshots: The New Delicious by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Sep 6)

del.icio.us is working on new displays and functions. Danny Sullivan runs through some screenshots of what it will be like.

Future of Search

Search In The Year 2010: Part Two by Gord Hotchkiss, Search Engine Land (Sep 7)

Gord Hotchkiss interviewed many of the influential people in search a few weeks ago. This is part two of his account of their views - "looking at mobile, what advertising might look like on the search results page, will banner blindness rear it’s head on the SERP, how our interactions might change and some bold predictions for the future."

Much of the discussion is about advertising, but there are some projections about the design of the search results page. Ask has led in innovation with its 3-D presentation. Chris Sherman says that Ask is the Apple of search. Microsoft has done interesting work with images. Google has stayed spartan even with universal search, but it may develop two interfaces: one for the power user and the other for the general user.

It becomes more futuristic with predictions of touch displays, and searching in a virtual world.

Netscape Portal Returning

AOL to Drop Digg-Like News From Netscape By ANICK JESDANUN, AP via Examiner.com (Sept 7)

It's hard to believe that AOL once enormously successfully in creating online communities could bungle the once excellent Netscape portal so badly. Here's the lastest - "AOL is once again revamping its Netscape.com Web portal, dropping a year-old "social news" component in which visitors submitted and voted on news stories and blog entries to determine how they're ranked on the site."

Has something to do with brand, which companies turn somersaults to create and then again to destroy. "AOL said visitor feedback indicated that "people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled.""

So what does AOL do? "Within the next week or so, Netscape.com will revert to a more traditional format and resemble the portal that AOL also runs at AOL.com."

And who uses the AOL.com portal other than devoted AOL users from yesteryear? The Netscape portal will probably be a clone, a ghost of former self.

Also see Netscape "Classic" To Return As Default View, SearchEngineLand.

BTW - there is a Canada AOL s till and it does have some Canadian content in its channels - eg MediResource for Health.

Video Ads Coming to Google

Google Plans to Put Video Ads Into Search Results by Bryan Gardine, Wired Blogs (Sept 7)

I think the big bang I just heard was the other shoe dropping. Google moved to "universal search" to blend results from web and video and other formats, it owns YouTube, it excels at advertising - it follows that there will be video ads.

"At CitiGroup's Technology Summit in New York this week, Google's Business Product Manager for Ads Quality Nicholas Fox said the company will be moving ahead with integration of video and image ads within sponsored search results."

Will this clog my dsl broadband (Sympatico is already slow), or make extra demands on my aging computer? Will there be plug-ins we can use to block these ads?

PlaceSpotting Map Game

Test your knowledge of geography and your navigational skills with online maps with this puzzle at PlaceSpotting.com. You get a satellite image and some tips and have to find the place on a google map. You can also create your own riddles and send them to your friends. This is free - no registration required. You may need to run some searches to interpret the tips and deduce where you should look on the map.

Start off with this sample of a riddle provided by Martin at Place Spotting.

Sample: http://www.placespotting.com/solve.php?placeId=65E-46C08337-1D98

Good luck.

Podanza for finding podcasts

Looking for podcasts? Podanza is an excellent directory and search engine for podcasts. It claims to "aggregate audio and video podcasts from over 5,000 international producers including top radio, television, print and independent publishers." It's well organized, has an enticing list of popular podcasts that are educational and entertaining rather than juvenile and amateur. This is a good starting point for finding podcasts that will be worth your time.

Podanza.com is one of a family of web properties from FUSA Capital Corp. The others are Searchforvideo , newstowatch, and iheard radio directory.

Future of the Web and Search

10 Future Web Trends by Richard MacManus, Read / Write Web (Sep 6)

MacManus gives a time frame of 10 years for these changes, but I think some will be well developed in the next 5.

+ Semantic Web for making connections between blocks of information - has always been thought that will require metadata.

+ Artificial Intelligence for computers to do what humans do - especially in seeing patterns.

+ Virtual worlds - live in them, create them.

+ Mobile web and location aware devices.

+ Attention Economy - "personalized news, personalized search, alerts and recommendations to buy"

+ Web sites as web services - starting to see this in widgets.

+ Online video / tv - get the television programming you want.

+ Rich Internet Apps (RIA)

+ International web - China, Korea, India - surely growth areas but will they use US-based sites and services?

+ Personalization - more and more of this unless people fear for privacy and turn it off.

At SEOMoz, randfish added his thoughts on trends - Where are Search Engines Most Likely To Innovate? - more query intent detection, more use of social, more verticals but the search engine has to recommend it. Some of this is good - I'd like to see some figures on how much searchers use suggested phrases especially those based on a log of queries - I'd rather an engine that can make sense of pages that are returned in a search set.

Google Reader for searching blogs

Google Reader Adds Search & Other Features by Barry Schwartz, Search engine land (Sep 6)

"You can now search your subscriptions, including subscriptions to shared items." - has details. Makes Google Reader as good as Bloglines - it seems.

Amazon Book Reviews

Briefs: Faster and Easier Access to Amazon.com Reviews; Google Book Search Adds My Library, Popular Passages, Embedded Quotes & More, ResourceShelf (Sep 7)

Notable for description of "cursor over" feature at Amazon for finding reviews more easily

My Google Book Library

New Features from Google Book Search Help Readers Organize and Find Books, Google Books (Sep 6)

With these new features at Google Books you can create a personal library of books, add notes and tags, write reviews, rate and share. Book search was enhanced too for finding references and popular passages.

Google Adds Features to Its Book Search Site, Virtual Chase - describes the changes

Google Book Search Adds My Library, Popular Passages, Embedded Quotes & More - Barry Schwartz gives examples with screenshots.

[Added Sep 9] Google Book Search adds My Library and more, Pandia (Sep 7) - finds this a "another step towards providing a broad based, comprehensive library of all text content available".

Health Videos at Kosmix

Truveo Partners with Kosmix to Help Consumers Easily Find Topic Specific Health Videos, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Sep 6)

"Truveo announced today that the company's video search engine ( http://www.truveo.com) is being used by Kosmix(TM) to present topic-relevant videos on its health site, www.righthealth.com, giving users a starting point to explore any health topic they might want from the common cold to diabetes to autism. Kosmix is also using Truveo's capabilities on its sites focused on autos and travel."

Plans afoot at Amazon and Google

Are books passé? Web giants envision the next chapter by Brad Stone, International Herald Tribune (Sep 6)

Two new developments that represent two more kicks at the can to promote acceptance of ebooks.

Amazon will launch Kindle, an e-book reader that will connect wirelessly to an e-book store at Amazon. The innovation here is that the user will be able to download books and periodicals directly from Amazon, and browse the Web, without connecting to a computer.

Google will allow full online (for-fee) access to digital copies of books in partnership with publishers.

Google: Date search and file formats

Google Updates Date Search on Advanced Search Page, ResearchBuzz (Sep 5)

Google advanced search now supports search for pages added in the last 24 hours and 2 months, in addition to the 1, 3, 6, and 12 months. But Tara Calishain has some extra tips on hacking the url to get more choices.

Also mentions that Google will search Google Earth kml and kmz files, and I noticed it will now search Flash files - swf.

For information on kml and kmz files see Google Earth Files - KML/KMZ at Google Earth Blog.

Public Listings on Facebook

Facebook Opens Profiles To Tap Into Google Traffic, While Google Grabs Facebook's News Feed Idea, Danny Sullivan, Search engine land (Sept 5)

Danny Sulllivan decodes Facebook's announcement that public listings in Facebook will be open to web search - except they have been all along - the change might be in the default. He explains why you'll see a link to Danny Sullivan with site:facebook.com "danny sullivan" even tho Google hasn't crawled it yet - but it will as Facebook makes the public listings available.

Online Books

Search for e-books by title, subject or author at The Online Books Page. There are 25,000 free books - well organized.

"The Online Books Page was founded, and is edited, by John Mark Ockerbloom, He is a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He is solely responsible for the content of the site."

FYI: Subject is Email

I'll Read Your E-Mail--If You Use Smart Subjects bySteve Bass, PC World (Sep 4)

Scroll down for some excellent advice from Bass on handling email. It refers to an article on how to construct the perfect email subject line. Essentially, don't be cute and don't be vague - say what the message is about or what you want. Brett Kelly, the blogger for crankingwidgets, recommends asking yourself is this is a question, a response, an informational email (FYI), or spam (meaning jokes and trivia) - and label the email as such.

Download Movies

Cinema Buffs Capture Hard-to-Find Films - Service Lets Users Download Independent, Foreign Movies And Then Talk About Them - by Katherine Boehret, Mossberg Solution, WSJ (Sep 5)

There are many sources for downloading movies: Jaman with independent and international movies (which this article reviews), Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes, and Amazon

ISI Web of Knowledge

Thomson Scientific Redesigns ISI Web of Knowledge Interface by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Sept 4)

Thomson Scientific has made significant changes to the interface and the scope of ISI Web of Knowledge.

Of interest: "The content reorganization, cited by Pringle as one of the main accomplishments of the redesign, involves integrated searching across databases followed by faceted search results. In the course of integrating the file, Pringle told me that ISI has cross-classified and cross-mapped all the different thesauri and taxonomies used by the different databases. That handles subject searches, but Pringle admits that lots of work remains to be done, such as for authors."

People Search Everywhere

People Search Tools Populate the Web by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Sep 1)

Gives a quick update on the people-search services that have sprung up: Wink, Spock, Pipl, PeekYou, LinkedIn, and ZoomInfo (not new but getting bigger)

This posting at Mashable on Social Search listed a few more.

Paula Hane doubts that so many can survive. I agree - I find most are weak and are mainly for finding people in the US.

Tools for del.icio.us

del.icio.us toolbox - 180+ tools and resources for using del.icio.us, Mashable (Aug 31)

There are so many tools here it is hard to choose - something for the sidebar? visualization tool? verify and delete bookmarks? ways to import bookmarks? geotag bookmarks for maps? better search? There is so much here. del.icio.us users - pick one from this list and try it.

Google The Behemoth

Inside the Googleplex, Economist (Aug 30)

Google is everywhere in our search lives - search, photos, email, documents - it's a very long list. It promises to do no evil but can it live up to that? Many are concerned about the amount of information it holds about its users. This article points out a few cracks in Google the Behemoth especially concerning relations with personnel. As this article concludes - "The test comes when the good times end. At that point, shareholders will demand trade-offs in their favour and consumers might stop believing that Google only ever means well."

Everyzing for all media

Podzinger search engine becomes Everyzing, Pandia (Aug 29)

Everyzing is the old Podzinger - that's why it's so good. The reason for the name change - "because it now does in some way index “everything” — or at least all types of multimedia, audio and video included."

Battle for Searching Eyes

Search Engine Wars - A Shifting Battle Plan? by Katherine Noyes, E-Commerce Times (Sept 1)

True - "The fact that the name "Google" is often used interchangeably with the verb "search" today speaks volumes about the current state of the search market."

Article rehashes Google the search king vs Yahoo and others using social search to boost their standings. Except - Yahoo doesn't use its social search tools well for web searching, and Ask is doing better because it has very useful features for refining a search.

Mister Wong from Europe

In Europe people go to Mister Wong for their social bookmarking. It began in German and is also available in Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and French - and now English for the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.

In addition to the capability of online bookmarks, Mister Wong supports sharing among a group of people who can also vote and with hand picked buddies.

There is a plugin for adding entries to a WordPress blog.

Mister Wong staff welcome you in this YouTube video.

Wikia Search Prospects

Wikipedia aims to roll over Google by Dominic Rushe, Sunday Times (Sep 2)

"The online encyclopedia will use the power of the people to take on Google and Yahoo"

One thing - Jimmy Wales gets coverage wherever he speaks - this time in Budapest. His current project is Wikia Search - an engine where users can participate in ranking results and tinkering with the search algorithms. He must be counting on a lot of people taking the time to rate and tinker .

Of interest: "Today Wikipedia contains 8.2m articles, in 253 languages, on subjects ranging from Britney Spears to quantum physics. The venerable Encyclopaedia Britan-nica, 238 years old this year, contains about 500,000 topics in its 32 volumes assembled by 19 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert contributors. It costs $1,395 (£691) in America, plus shipping cost of about $92. Wikipedia is free."

Map Mashups

Online maps offer more than directions By Kim Komando, Gannett News Service via USA Today (Aug 31)

Lots on mashups. Tips - "Do a Web search for whatever you're trying to find. Include "map" as a search term. You'll probably find a site that has what you need. Some focus on a specific geographic area."

Google Date Search

How To Go Beyond Google's Advanced Search Page Date Options, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine land (Aug 31).

Use these parameters in the url to search for page the past few days / week / months - except, dates on web pages are next to useless.

Google hosts news services

Google begins hosting content from 4 news services on its own site, AP via Technology Review (Aug 31)

Google has negotiated with 4 news services to host their news on Google. These are Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, The Press Association in the United Kingdom and The Canadian Press.

For example, "Google visitors interested in reading an AP story will remain on Google's Web site unless they click on a link that enables them to read the same story on other sites. Google does not have any immediate plans to run ads alongside the news stories or photographs hosted on its site, but company officials are not ruling out the possibility in the future."

It's better for Google readers - just see one instance; but it could hurt newspapers that carry these news sources and won't receive traffic for them from Google.

Also Danny Sullivant's comments in Google News Now Hosting Wire Stories & Promises Better Variety In Results - points out that Yahoo News has done this kind of thing for some time. There is a major disadvantage for the user - the article at Yahoo, and now Google news, will expire in 30 days - whereas it might still be found at a newspaper site.