Internet News

Google vs Bing

Bing vs. Google: The Web Search Wars Heat Up , Jared Newman, PCWorld (Sept 29)

Are we really facing a Google - Bing showdown? Comparison is on basic search, images, news, travel, maps, events, shopping, mobile, social search, and features. it doesn't compare on advanced search.

Your assessment will depend on which of these categories matter to you.

Trove from Australia

National Library of Australia has create a search engine for its people - focused on Australia and Australians, called Trove.

Trove digs into books, journals, pictures, digitized newspapers, diaries, maps, movies, archived websites (yes!), and people. The display has a faceted component for navigation and a very attractive layout of the various media types. It integrates the collections into one finding tool. Some of this material comes from the "deep web" - material not easily indexed by Google, Bing or others.

Don't you wish Library and Archives Canada could do this?

GMail Conversational

Google Yields to the Haters of Gmail’s Conversation View, by Edward Albro, PCWorld (Sep 29)

Google made conversation view in GMail optional. Now you can choose to see email grouped into threads (coversations), or in the order they came in. .

Google Instant Comes to Canada

Google Instant has come to google.ca. As you type, Google shows suggestions and results. This does not happen in Advanced Search.

There are some side-effects. This turns off my Firefox code to number the results, and it cancels the setting for 30 results on a page.

I liked the old way. Google Instant seems like a gimmick to me.

Doing Product Research

58% Of Americans Research Products Online: Pew Study, Search Engine Land (Sep 29)

Hard to imagine that anyone does product research without the Internet.

"U.S. adults are going online more frequently to search for information about products and services. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, 58% of Americans conduct such research online “at least occasionally.” That’s up from 49% who said the same thing in 2004."

Jive to watch Facebook and Twitter

Make social media work for you , Enterprise Search (Sep 22)

Following what people say on Facebook - all 600 million of them - is de rigeur for reputation management and current awareness. Jive offers a new product.

"Jive has introduced Social Media Engagement, which enables companies to monitor and respond in real time to conversations taking place on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Jive claims users can now act faster than ever before in response to online discussions about products, services and brands to strengthen customer relationships, nurture brand champions and capture innovative ideas."

Skype on Facebook?

Facebook, Skype Poised to Enter Partnership, Sarah Jacobsson Purwell, PCWorld (Sep 29)

Facebook - SKype agreement could easily change the field for collaorative tools and certainly challenge Yahoo and MSN, not to mention Google's GTalk and Voice.

"Now it looks like Facebook might be trying to get into the phone thing from a different angle -- Skype is one of the leaders when it comes to Internet telephone calls, with more than 560 million registered users and 124 million of those people using it at least once a month. Add this to Facebook's 500 million users, and, well, you've got a decently sized audience."

Look for version 5.0 of Skype expected to be available in beta in a few weeks.

Reading Kindle Samples

Amazon launches Kindle for the Web, by David Carnoy, Crave (Sept 28)

View samples of Kindle books on the Web.

" Kindle for the Web is more geared to driving readers to buy the full e-books (and perhaps paper books), which reside on Amazon. Authors and publishers will undoubtedly see this as a viral marketing tool."

More information at Amazon's Free Kindle Reading Apps

As you browse books at Amazon, watch for notice about being available in Kindle - then install the Kindle reading app on your PC (there are other devices - iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android) to read the sample.

Xmarks is Closing

Xmarks shutting down bookmark sync service, Stephen Shankland, DeepTech (Sept 28)

This is very bad news for people who have relied on the bookmark synchronizing service from Xmarks. It had 2 million users and 100 million bookmarks, but no money. It's closing January 10, 2011.

"The idea of a hybrid free-premium model seemed doomed by the fact that bookmark sync is a feature being built into browsers. Thus, the company will switch its servers off after January 10."

Xmarks suggests as alternatives the free sync services in Firefox, Chrome, and Windows Live Essentials. It's not the same though - Xmarks worked across browsers. There are a couple of other services - Evernote and SugarSync, although both of those save pages and files in the cloud.

Wolfram Alpha has movie data

Wolfram|Alpha Adds Movie Data, Research Buzz (Septt 27)

Movie buffs - Wolfram Alpha now has movie box office data. Enter the name of the movie, or enter several names and get the results in a table. Tara Calishain has more tips.

The problem with automated search suggestions

Google Will Appeal French Libel Ruling on Search Suggestions, Peter Sayer, IDG News via PC World (Sep 27)

Google Suggest (aka autocomplete) got Google into trouble in France in a case that could happen anywhere.

"Until recently, if anyone searched for Mr. X's given name and the first few letters of his family name, Google would complete his name and suggest a number of suggested additional search terms, including "rape", "rapist", "satanist," "sentenced" and "prison," the court document noted."

Google says the suggestion are drawn from what people search on, but the French court stated that "algorithms or software begin in the human mind before they are implemented ...".

Film Review: The Social Network

Influencing People by David Denby, New Yorker (Oct 4)

"The Social Network", the new movie written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, has been released. This is essentially the story of Mark Zuckerberg and his "invention" of Facebook.

Of particular interest in this review from New Yorker David Denby - "From the first scene to the last, “The Social Network” hints at a psychological shift produced by the Information Age, a new impersonality that affects almost everyone. After all, Facebook, like Zuckerberg, is a paradox: a Web site that celebrates the aura of intimacy while providing the relief of distance, substituting bodiless sharing and the thrills of self-created celebrityhood for close encounters of the first kind. Karl Marx suggested that, in the capitalist age, we began to treat one another as commodities. “The Social Network” suggests that we now treat one another as packets of information. Mark Zuckerberg, as interpreted by this film, comes off as a binary personality."

Blocking access to certain domains

Geist: U.S. uses domain names as new way to regulate the Net, by Michael Geist, Toronto Star (Sep 27)

Legislators in the United States are considering blocking access to certain domains determined by the Department of Justice or U.S. Attorney General.

"The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, recently introduced in the U.S. Senate, would potentially force Internet providers, domain name registrars (companies that register domain names) and domain name registries (organizations that maintain the domain name database) to block access to specified domain names

This domain name block list – already being dubbed the Great Firewall of America – would be created through a censorship court order obtained by the U.S. Attorney General. The court order could be used to shut down a site located within the U.S. or to order Internet providers to block access to the domain name if the site resides outside the country."

Sounds like an arrangement that could cause more problems than it solves.

Just Don't Go There

The 17 Most Dangerous Places on the Web, by Nick Mediati, PCWorld (Sep 27)

Danger lurks everywhere on the Net judging from these warning about email, flash, websites, search results, video codecs, Facebook apps - and so much more. Read the article and note exposures you might have. Main protection, apart from being wary and questioning, is to keep all software (including anti-virus) up to date with security patches. Be sure to read the last page on Top 5 Ways to Stay Safe Online.

Previewing search results in Firefox

3 Firefox Addons That Let You Search Faster Than Google Instant, by Ann Smarty, MakeUseOf (Sept 20)

Ann Smarty gives Firefox users three ways to see instant search results without having to go to the search engine. These all work for Google and some others.

+ CyberSearch - see results from Google or Bing in the browser url bar - but you have to remember the smart keywords to specify the target search tool.

+ Ubiquity - get a preview of results - any engine.

+ Peers - more power in the search bar - several engines

Turning off Google Personalized Results

How To Disable Google’s Personalization Of Search Results, Ann Smarty, MakeUseOf (Sep 18)

Sometimes you may not want your search history and bookmarks to influence your search results at Google - you want a fresh look or you are analyzing placement of certain websites.

Ann Smarty shows how to disable Google's personalization. The Google methods are a bit cumbersome. Easiest is probably to use the Firefox add-on Google Global (Course, it means you have to use the Firefox browser.)

"If you don’t want to mess around with Google settings (if you don’t want to disable and remove your search history, for example) but at the same time you do not appreciate Google’s personalization of your search results, use this FireFox addon called Google Global."

Facebook privacy in Canada

Canadian privacy commissioner ends Facebook probe
By: Grant Gross and Robert McMillan, IDG News via itWorldCanada (Sep 23)

Old complaints are resolved, but there may be new ones in the future.

"Canada's privacy commissioner has ended an investigation into Facebook's privacy practices by saying the social-networking site has resolved issues raised in a May 2008 complaint.

Facebook has made changes to its service that resolve privacy concerns raised in a Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic complaint, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said Wednesday."

Over 15 million people in Canada have Facebook accounts.

Phone Apps

The Rise of Apps Culture , Kristen Purcell, PEW Internet (Sep 14)

How many apps do you have on your mobile device, and how many do you use? Pew Internet checked in with US users.

"Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones, yet only 24% of adults use those apps. Many adults who have apps on their phones, particularly older adults, do not use them, and 11% of cell owners are not sure if their phone is equipped with apps. "

My bet is its like add-ons for browsers - doing well if you use 1 for every 10 you install.

Tracking Items in Google Reader

Turning Off Track Changes Feature, Google Reader Blog, (Sept 22).

That didn't last long - Google Reader is dropping Track Changes for being notified of keywords in rss feeds. Recommends that people use Page2RSS

Facebook Advertising Juggernaut

Facebook Sells Your Friends, Brad Stone, Business Week (Sept 22)

550 million Facebook users - advertisers are flooding the pane on the right side with highly targeted ads - and they intend to do much more.

"All this is cause for concern to Facebook's critics—and their numbers among privacy advocates and politicians grow every time the social network pushes the boundaries of the service beyond what its users originally signed up for. People join Facebook to share their lives with friends, yet the information they reveal "is being used by strangers for completely unrelated commercial purposes," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year over changes to the social network's privacy policies. "That is a little unsettling.""

But knowing that doesn't seem to be changing everything.

"The Web has now advanced to the point that most large sites can serve ads based on a user's browsing history. Google, which intercepts users at the vulnerable moment when they're searching for information, has ridden its refined brand of targeting to $23.6 billion in revenues last year. Facebook takes targeting even further. If you recently got engaged and updated your Facebook status to reflect it, you might start seeing ads from jewelers in your hometown. They've likely used Facebook's automated ad system to target recently engaged couples living in the area. "

Read the entire article for detail on the current state of advertising on the Web and how "Facebook plans to be "the greatest advertising juggernaut" since Google.

Waning Days for Google Desktop

10 Reasons Why Google Desktop Will Be Discontinued, Google Operating System (Sept 21)

These 10 points present a convincing case that Google Desktop, once an all purpose search utility (web, desktop files, email, plus all its gadgets) is on its way out.

Come to think of it - are people still using MyGoogle portal with its gadgets?

Correlator from Yahoo

Using Yahoo to Brainstorm , Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Info (Sept 2010)

Yahoo is still developing some new tools - such as Correlator - use it to get a big picture on a topic - even graphically. Mary Ellen Batest suggests using it to brainstorm. Correlator draws its content from Wikipedia. As she wrote, "While limited to Wikipedia results, I have found Yahoo Correlator to be a quick way to see the wide range of possibilities for me to explore with a new concept."

Google News going on nine

Google News turns 8 amid news industry in flux, by Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (Sept 22)

Krishna Bharat, founder and engineering head of Google News, reflected on the past 8 years and on the future.

One piece of online news reading is friends - ""The future of Google News is better personalization and better social input," he said, implying a future (some might argue it's already here) where the most relevant and authoritative content is that recommended by friends and tied to one's preferences."

More important (in my opinion) are the changes in online news environment.

1. "rise in "news spam," SEO-bait articles often written by low-paid freelancers that are designed mostly to surface within Google, rather than inform, educate, or entertain readers with coherent writing."
2. "providing news from different points of view."

Bing's Social Search

Bing Social Search Now Recommends People To Follow On Twitter, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Sep 20)

Do experts twitter? If they do, this might be useful to others. Bing Social Search will recommend twitterers on a topic. Danny Sullivan gives examples of hits and misses.

There is some coding to watch too.

"In Bing’s results, you’ll see some accounts with blue checks next to them. This indicates that they are verified accounts, accounts where Twitter has verified that the person really is who the account claims to be (such as Lady Gaga’s account being real, or Katy Perry’s account being real)."

How well does it work?

Canadian users might have to spend some time switching over to Bing US before seeing the Recommended Users on Twitter at the right side.

It must bother Danny Sullivan some that Search Engine Land does not come up as recommended for searches on seo or search.

Bing Social seems to be able to do this only on single words - and it can't do that consistently.

Like so much in search tools now, nice when you see it but don't count on seeing it.

GMail Apps

10 downloads to make Gmail do more, Grant Buckler, ItBusiness.ca (Sept)

GMail is like a browser - just keep adding apps to make it do more and you more productive.

Google Being Transparent

Google report shows where its content is blocked, Lance Whitney, Digital Media (Sept 21)

Google has a transparency report that 1) requests from government to take down information, and 2) traffic graphs showing disruptions (government caused and accident).

Government Requests - a big box hides part of the map - click on the map to move it (the box won't move). Canada rarely asks for removal of information - it had less than 10 in the first 6 months of 2101. The US had 128.

IE9 - very promising

Internet Explorer 9 Beta: UI Smackdown, by Jared Newman, PCWorld (Sep 15)

IE9 does very well in this review.

"IE9 not only catches up with its competitors, but improves in several areas. Obviously, there's a lot more to the browser wars than user interface--hardware acceleration, for example, will be a big draw for IE9--but look and feel are what you deal with the most in day-to-day browsing. IE 9 is still in beta, so its interface may change slightly before it's finalized, but Microsoft is off to a very good start. "

Yahoo's immersiveness

Yahoo Previews “Rich, Immersive” Search Experience, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Sep 16)

Yahoo had a Product Runway event to show its "“rich, immersive” search results in the news and entertainment niches." Matt McGee reports that they used Lady Gaga as their search example.

"The new search experience includes a content box above the organic results with vertical content tabs for news, events, albums, images, video, and Twitter. There also appears to be a list of related entertainers atop the content box."

The webcast in which Blake Irving of Yahoo speaks and does the demo is at http://ycorpblog.com/2010/09/16/productrunway/.

Lady Gaga? I think that's exactly the point.

Changing face of getting news

News Consumption, RSS Readers, and New Business Models , Bob Reynolds, The Xplanation (Sept 14)

This Daily Research Update looks at "news consumption, RSS readers, and new business models."

This summary from PEW Internet on how people get news shows traditional print, web search, and RSS and blogs.

* More people say they mostly get news “from time to time” rather than at “regular times.” The percentage of socalled news grazers as increased nine points (from 48% to 57%) since 2006. * Search engines are playing a substantially larger role in people’s news gathering habits – 33% regularly use search engines to get news on topics of interest, up from 19% in 2008. * 10 percent regularly use customized webpages or RSS readers; 9 percent read blogs about politics or current events; 12 percent get news by e-mail; 8 percent by cellphone or smartphone; 1 percent through iPad or tablets. * 44 percent of cellphone users with internet access have downloaded an app for news access. * 27 percent go to news blogs regularly for the latest news and headlines compared with 30 percent for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times; 29 percent for views and opinions, compared with 11 percent each for the two papers. At least one third said they regularly go to the two papers for in-depth reporting.

But where's Twitter and Social networking.: people are also turning to their friends for news.

Article also refers to Search takes a Social Turn, Jenna Wortham, New York Times (Sept 12)

"Turning to friends is the new rage in the Web world, extending far beyond established social networking sites and setting off a rush among Web companies looking for ways to help people capitalize on the wisdom of their social circles — and to make some money in the process. ‘"

Bing Maps start to add public transit

Bing Maps gets public transit directions, Stephen Shankland, DeepTech (Sept 17)

Microsoft has added public transit directions for 10 cities in the United States, and 1 in Canada.

"The areas covered in the initial release are Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Vancouver.

Did they choose Vancouver BC because Microsoft people sometimes get time off in Redmond Washington and go north to British Columbia for a break?

Matt Cutts Defends Google Instant

Thoughts on Google Instant, Matt Cutts, (Sept 8)

Matt Cutts answers questions from search engine optimizing community about Google Instant. In doing so, he suggests that people may change the way they search due to Google Instant.

"The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time. For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results."

Also --

"... with Google Instant I find myself digging into a query more. Take a query like [roth ira v]. That brings up Autocomplete suggestions like [roth ira vs traditional ira], [roth ira vanguard], and [roth ira vs 401k]. Suddenly I’m able to explore those queries more just by pressing the up/down arrow key. I can get a preview of what the results will be, add or subtract words to modify my query, and hit enter at any time.".

Long, rich discussion follows.

From Gary Ashton - "The instant results will definitely will have an impact on how people get to their final search results. I have a feeling there maybe some distractions along the way, as results will pop up that are obviously related because of the attraction of the keyword being so prominent in the search results. The predictive text probably did this to a certain extent but actually seeing the results in real time will likely skew the click through a little.
Overall, I really like the instant results and seeing how the results change with just the addition of one letter. It will be interesting to see how the public take to it and adapt to new search techniques when it’s released to everyone not just those of us actually logged into Google accounts".

Reminder - only at Google.com - not at Google.ca yet.

New Yorker on Mark Zuckerberg

The Face of Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg opens up, by Jose Antonio Vargas, New Yorker (Sept)

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head of the still privately held Facebook, has his public persona, but Vargas finds him a "wary and private person" and sometimes not so nice. But he has been a force for change in how we use the Internet - and will continue to be so for some time.

"Zuckerberg may seem like an over-sharer in the age of over-sharing. But that’s kind of the point. Zuckerberg’s business model depends on our shifting notions of privacy, revelation, and sheer self-display. The more that people are willing to put online, the more money his site can make from advertisers. Happily for him, and the prospects of his eventual fortune, his business interests align perfectly with his personal philosophy. In the bio section of his page, Zuckerberg writes simply, “I’m trying to make the world a more open place.”"

His self is the subject of a movie to be released in October - “The Social Network,” directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Zuckerberg has said it won't go to see it.

Article has a transcript of a chat with Jose Antonio Vargas. On the question of Google (bound to come up)

"QUESTION FROM TED: What is Mark’s attitude towards Google from a competitive perspective (re: myopic)?

JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS: Google is on his mind, just as, for a while, Twitter was on his mind. But, as I noted in the profile, he’s building an Internet that, in many ways, is trying to move beyond Google’s algorithms. If you’re a technologist, I think this quote from him was most telling: “Most of the information that we care about is things that are in our heads, right? And that’s not out there to be indexed, right?"

Facebook, in case you'd lost count, is nearly at 600 million users.

Yahoo - all about entertainment

Looking Ahead: The Future of Yahoo! Products, Yahoo Blog (Sept 16)

Here's a list of what we can expect from Yahoo in the fall:

"Some of the updates you can expect to see this fall include:

* A new Yahoo! Mail experience with even more focus on performance and speed.
* New Yahoo! Search experiences with rich, immersive results that keep you in the loop on the news and entertainment topics that matter to you the most
* Twitter integration on Yahoo! that will allow you to link your accounts so you can view and share updates with friends across both networks
* A new Yahoo! app for iPad and other tablets that’s designed to deliver personally relevant news, information, and essentials like weather, commute updates, and more.
* Customized Content Ads with creative formats that leverage an advertiser’s robust content and enable social sharing
* New Connected TV partnerships that p.rovide consumers with thousands of video-on-demand content sources, social networks, games, music, shopping, and more — all while watching TV."

This is all about entertainment and shopping - with a bit about news. Yahoo will be mainly "just fun".

New Google Earth Site

Google Earth gets its own website, By Matthew Bolton, Tech Radar (Sept 10)

"Google has launch a new website for Google Earth, featuring showcases and tutorials for the more advanced features the exploration software."

http://www.google.com/earth/index.html

IE9 -Bing combo

Bing Previews a More Beautiful Search Experience in IE9, Bing Blog (Sept 15)

Microsoft is presenting the new html5 capable IE9 browser as the way for a richer search experience at Bing. It won't just be for IE9 (along with Windows 7) - Microsoft does say that "there’s a lot more to come, including taking advantage of HTML5 on Firefox, Chrome and Safari, so stay tuned." - but it is looking for a leap that will attract users to Bing and then keep them.

"Bing has always stood for re-envisioning search. We’re driven by the belief that in today’s complex world, no matter how fast results are displayed, the experience is not always enough to help you complete your task and make an informed decision. IE9 has given the Bing team a new set of tools with which to re-envision search. The combination of hardware-accelerated HTML5, CSS3, a lightning-fast Javascript engine, and integration with Windows is allowing us to bring search to life in exciting new ways."

There's a 4.5 minute video of using Bing through IE9 (in a very tiny window) - it is beautiful and shows some attractive handling. I'll bite when IE9 comes out of beta.

Google Weights in Favour of Big Companies

Big brands dominate Google search results, Pandia (Sept 18)

This doesn't look good --

Planet Ocean’s Search Engine News found that Google, “Instead of allowing each company to have only two possible listings they can now have up to ten! Google has shown in the past that they favor brands but to give up every listing above the fold to one is a huge step.”

This is fine if your only meaning for the word target is the American retail company, and your only intention is to shop. On the other hand - and in defense of Google, if the only keyword entered is target, lit's likely that the searcher really does want the store.

There is a difference in results between the US google.com and google.ca . At Google.com the first four results today) are from the target.com domain, followed by one Wikipedia article on the company and the Target facebook sites.
Google.ca has only the main Target site and the Wikipedia entry (indicating that at least Google knows Target is not in Canada).

But, back to Pandia's point - this weighting of the big retail firms at the top may crowd out smaller businesses - thus making the work of SEO people even harder.

It also concludes with "The main problem, though, is that searchers do not benefit from this strong focus on enterprise and shopping related search results."

Trends - fewer players

In the next few months, I predict more closures and amalgamations that show an 'oligopolization' of the web - if not full monopolization of sectors. Two stories from the last few days show this as well underway:

+ Bing rising in market share, and Yahoo dropping
+ Ask closing Bloglines

Bing Surpasses Yahoo to Become Number 2 Search Engine, According to Nielsen, Yvonne Bell, Search Engine Journal (Sept 14)

"According to a Nielsen report released today, Bing has surpassed Yahoo to become the number 2 search engine in the U.S. for the first time ever. While Google still holds steady at first position accounting for about 65% of search engine activity, Microsoft’s Bing jumped from 10.7% to 13.9% and Yahoo fell from 14.6% to about 12.1%."

Bing jumped because Yahoo gave up search (or essentially so - they use Bing's database and Yahoo has dropped its search syntax.)

Bloglines Update, Ask Blog (Sept 10)

Ask is closing Bloglines, a service for finding blogs and using its RSS aggregator. RSS seems to be under stress at present thanks to Twitter, but this is also about Google Reader having the market share. The stated reason is -- "Our focus here at Ask is on building out our Q&A offering." . Ask promises a "blend of technology and human insight with the new Q&A experience on Ask.com"

Cuil No Longer

From Cuil to Frozen: The "Google-Killer" Eats Its Own Medicine, David Murphy, PC World (Sept 18)

Word is that Cuil.com has gone "dark". The site no longer comes up. Cuil suffered some hubris when it lauched 3 or 4 years ago and said it was THE Google killer. It was no where near that, but it did have some interesting features. Its categorization made it good for general queries. It had a mapline. It would search social networks. It had some smart capabilities.

But we see from this article, it was running at less than 200,000 visitors a month. And it failed to arouse interest in its latest effort with Cpedia to "to automatically generate full articles instead of search results for a given topic." That was a stretch - it had to be a lot better than it was to pull people away from the tried and true.

Yahoo Mail Beta

Get Ready… Yahoo! Mail Beta Is Coming, Yahoo Mail Blog (Sept 16)

New version of Yahoo mail is in beta test.

"Yahoo! Mail Beta will have a cleaner, sleeker interface that will make it easier for you to navigate through your inbox and use other features built into the product. You’ll see this look and feel when you go access Yahoo! Mail Beta on your PC browser, mobile device, or tablet."

Google Instant - things to know

Google Instant: Interactive Searching , Greg Notess, Newsbreaks (Sept 16)

A much closer look at Google Instant

+ how to turn it off
+ using the keyboard to navigate through the suggestions
+ Google Instant changes the bottom of the page and other curiousities.

Google Health still trying

Google tweaks Google Health dashboards, Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (Sept 15)

Google Health still exists - Google's effort in the US to be your personal health aid and record keeper.

"Google Health is a service that allows users to upload personal health information to track their health status over time and find information on health issues, doctors, and other medical needs. Google has decided to make it easier for users to access their data through an improved dashboard that also lets users set personal health goals for themselves."

Which part of concern about privacy does Google does not understand?

Search Engines in Europe

Multinational Search - Alternatives To Google In Europe, Bas van den Beld, Search Engine Watch (Sep 14)

Google does dominate in Europe. MSN and Yahoo lost their edge ages ago. This article does list some other, very regional engines.

"Despite its dominance, there are alternative search engines in Europe, and for search marketers they’re worth looking at. With Europe’s more than 800 million people, of whom about 60% spends time online, even a small percentage using alternatives to Google offer attractively large numbers, and targeting users of those search engines could be very profitable. Lets take a look at some of the alternatives."

Trailmeme - tool for subject specialists

Trailmeme creates retraceable, social Web history, Josh Lowensohn, Web Crawler (Sep 14)

Trailmeme is a new tool for creating a journey through webpages. Subject experts can "blaze a trail" as curators and guides to a topic, showing the linkages and progression.

Trailmeme has some examples that new members created.

Trailmeme's project manager Venkatesh Rao expects educators to be among the first users - "The service is now open to registrations, most of which Rao thinks will be from education users looking to link together research and share it with colleagues."

Below is an extract from a trailmeme done on the History of Coffee.

There are some tools and plugins to use to make collecting easier.

This looks like a terrific tool for subject enthusiasts to counter the decay in subject-based tool such as Mahalo (user contributions that became loaded with spam), Open Directory (full subject directory but always showing signs of neglect), or even social bookmarking tools (where you can collect but not tell a story).

Twitter redesign

Twitter Revamps Site with Multimedia and Social Tools, Sarah Jacobsson Purewell, PCWorld (Sept 15)

Twitter Redesigns Site, Makes It Easier to Post Videos, Photos, Douglas MacMillan, Bloomberg (Sept 15)

Eventually everything does converge.

"Twitter says an update to its site is on the way and will stress user pictures, videos, and profiles in an attempt to compete with Facebook and Google in the race for ad dollars." [PCWorld]

"The redesigned Twitter homepage addresses those concerns adding split screen on its front door with one side displaying tweets (140 character messages) and the other side consisting of a "details pane" where photos and videos referenced in tweet updates are displayed." - See screenshots in PCWorld article.

The new design will support video feeds from YouTube and pictures from Flickr. Bloomberg article reports that these changes aren't being done to increase advertising, but companies will certainly have more options.

"By giving marketers a new way to use multimedia in online promotions, the redesign also plays into Twitter’s advertising efforts. In April, the company began selling ads called “promoted tweets,” which let Best Buy Co., Starbucks Corp. and other companies pay to have messages appear at the top of search pages on the site." [Bloomberg]

Danny Sullivan has a detailed user guide to the upcoming changes to search and filters: The New Twitter & Search, An Illustrated Guide (Sep 15)

In other news, Celebrities discover the downside of Twitter, The Star (Sept 14). Some with huge fan bases are closing accounts and getting out. Twitterverse can get mean, it seems (and people are surprised?).

This is unlikely to hurt growth of Twitter - it's adding 370,000 users on average each day.

IE9 will be fast wtih graphics

IE9 Has Google Chrome on the Run, Joab Jackson, IDG News via PCWorld (Sept 15)

Microsoft has usually played catch up in improving the Internet Explorer, but maybe this time it will leap ahead in IE9 (now available in public beta).

"Although Microsoft's new browser features a Chrome-like interface, one of the improvements that Microsoft has touted as putting this release beyond Chrome is IE9's vastly improved performance in rendering graphics, thanks to its offloading some of the work from the CPU to the GPU."

Economist looks at future of the Internet

A virtual counter-revolution, Economist (Sept 2)

"The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it "

Cyberspace as a term is a bit passe, but is "open internet" concept that fed the growth through the 1980s and 1990s in danger? This article notes a lot of splintering, and country attempts to build firewalls. "Net neutrality", a core concept and belief, is threatened too as providers want to own and control the pipes.

"The lofty discourse on “cyberspace” has long changed. Even the term now sounds passé. Today another overused celestial metaphor holds sway: the “cloud” is code for all kinds of digital services generated in warehouses packed with computers, called data centres, and distributed over the internet. Most of the talk, though, concerns more earthly matters: privacy, antitrust, Google’s woes in China, mobile applications, green information technology (IT). Only Apple’s latest iSomethings seem to inspire religious fervour, as they did again this week."

RSS in competition with Twitter

Twitter Has Killed RSS Readers -- Traffic To Google Reader Down 27% Since Last Year, Henry Blodget, Business Intelligence (Sep 11)

Kill might be overstating the case, but the volume of updates through Twitter and Facebook must be affecting RSS readers.

"RSS readers, the wave of the future a few years ago, are now basically toast, thanks largely (we think) to Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media (especially Twitter). "

Instead of Google Reader, you might set up software to follow favourites on Twitter. But that is no guarantee that you'll be able to pick up the sources you need - and it's only 140 characters - not much to judge by.

Poor metadata in Google Books

The trouble with Google Books, Laura Miller, Salon (Sep 9)

"How rampant errors threaten the scholarly mission of the vast digital library "

There have been reports of poor bibliographic data (the metadata) in Google Books for a long time - this cinches it: wrong dates, misattribution of authors, wrong subject classification (Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was indexed as botany!). Google says the problem is mainly with "outside contractors" but Geoffrey Nunberg, who was interviewed in this article, suggests it is design. Google expected to be able to answer all questions by simply indexing words, and was not concerned (much - if at all) with metadata. But metadata plays a valuable role and supports other needs.

"Google Books was conceived of in two ways. The first is as a new library -- I call it the "last library" -- an aggregate of all the libraries in the world. The second is as a big database, a storehouse of information that you could search the way you search Google. The idea behind that is that books are just stored information. If I want to know who wrote Roosevelt's inaugural speech, I can do a search and look it up.

But those two ideas are at odds with each other, which is something that Google didn't realize. The beauty of Google is that you don't need metadata, after all. You just barrel into the text and pull out what you want. So metadata -- information about the source text -- was not something they focused on."

As Geoffrey Nunberg says - it's really important that Google Books get this right or scholarship will suffer.

"Because if this really is the "last library," as I put it, and no one is going to go back and do all this scanning again, which I think we can all agree is probably the case, then it's really important that it be done right. And it's going to cost a lot of money to do it. A disproportionate percentage of the resources have to go to a relative small percentage of users. That's what a research library is all about. That is the nature of scholarship."

[Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the story.]

Streaming Live from YouTube

YouTube Goes 'Live' with Streaming Experiment, Ian Paul, PC World (Sept 13)

This is a test to take place Sept 13 and 14 - and an indication of things to come.

"Google's YouTube division is testing the waters of offering a live video streaming channel that gives third parties the capability to broadcast live programming on the Web. Starting this Monday and Tuesday at 8 a.m. (PT), the online video giant introduces Live on YouTube -- a destination that will offer two days of live entertainment programming. YouTube says that its efforts are part of a "live streaming platform trial." Live on YouTube video content can be accessed via YouTube.com or via an embedded Web app that can be placed into a Website or blog."

Web Guide to Live Events

Live Matrix aims to schedule the Web, Josh Lowensohn, Web Crawler (Sept 12)

There are enough live events on the Web today to warrant a new service called Live Matrix to find them. Events will include "Apple event live blogs, online sales, or streamed concerts-" and "TV programs, auctions, and sporting events".

Too much instant

As Google Gets Smarter, are We Getting Dumber?, Mike Elgan, ITWorld via PCWorld (Sept 12)

Google's instant search is causing some consternation - and maybe with cause.

Analysis: Google has replaced what for many may be the last creative act -- building search queries -- with another process of selecting from available choices.

Google also took this approach with Google Scribe currently in its labs.

"Google Instant comes immediately after the launch of Google Scribe, which is a kind of Google instant for writing, rather than search. It works inside online e-mail and browser-based applications like word processing applications."

Watch for the tsunami of hackneyed phrases and dreary prose.

While you are at it, note also this classic line from Google co-founder Sergey Brin -- "we want Google to be the third half of your brain."

Short term information trapping

Temporary Information Trapping: The Hopscotch Case, ResearchBuzz (Sept 10)

Tips from the guru on information trapping with this example of setting up trackers on news about an event to run for just a few days.

Evernote's Site Memory

Evernote launches a bookmarking tool for sites, Josh Lowensohn, Web Crawler (Sept 9)

Evernote, a tool for bookmarking and clipping research on the Web, has added a tool for publishers and blog owners called Site Memory. The site memory button on a page, lets you, the reader, save the content to read later.

Data visualizaion thru Google Maps

Viewing Large Data Sets with Google Maps , Google Maps Mania (Sept 9)

"The Public Data Explorer in Google Labs makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. The examples provided by Google provide animated Google Maps time-lines that let you explore different datasets geographically and chronologically."

Examples: Unemployment in the US, GDP and personal income - US States, World Development Indicators.

See http://www.google.com/publicdata/home

A Variety Pack of Search Engines

9 Awesome Search Engines That Aren’t Named Google, by Kipp Bodnar, Hubspot Blog (Sep 9)

These are special purpose search engines - and some are more service than engine.

+ Hunch - requires that you login with Twitter or Facebook (and you agree that it can watch what happens in either place) - then it gets to know you more through questions with the promise of being able to give you good answers to your questions about life (or roughly that).

+ Yelp - local search for services - very popular. There is a Yelp.ca.

+ Flickr - images

+ Searchtastic - search tweets - shows user and tweet - picks up historical.

+ Collecta - real-time search - can select on type

+ Clipblast - YouTube video search

+ Pipl - good people search engine

+ Simply Hired - job search - even in Canada

+ Wolfram Alpha - numbers and computations - and more - read the WA blog.

ingentaconnect gets facelift

ingentaconnect Gets A New Look, EContent (Sep 9)

"Publishing Technology, a provider of software and services for the publishing industry, unveiled a facelift for ingentaconnect, its flagship collection of e-publications. The new look and field is the second phase of the platform's regeneration, with further releases to deliver additional improvements such as a new Publisher Statistics package, integration with an award winning search engine, enhanced ahead of print functionality, and additional content."

Infotrieve adds content

Infotrieve Announces Document Delivery Agreements, EContent (Sept 9)

"Infotrieve, Inc., a developer of business service solutions for information centers, entered into agreements with six leading publishers and content aggregators. According to the company, the agreements will further expand the depth of content available from Infotrieve in the global scientific, technical, and medical marketplace. "

Google Instant Search

Google Brews A Cup of Instant Search, EContent (Sep 9)

Google.com shows search results as you type now - not just search suggestions, but the results themselves. Think it took this idea from LeapFish. This does not appear to be happening at google.ca.

ResearchBuzz has many helpful comments and tips - Google Instant: Breaking It, Gaming It, and The Future

Tara Calishain tells us how to turn it off - apparently many have been unhappy with the change.

"You can stop Google doing that by putting a + in front of a query as you begin to type. If you do that, Google will refresh its results to ONLY what you’re looking for, and not what Google THINKS you’re looking for"

The instant search doesn't work well with syntax either, she noted. Making me hope that Google adds a preferences option for users to turn off instant search.

Tara has some other tips about repeating words and using * - be sure to read.

Added Sept 10 - Google Instant: Pros and Cons, John P Mello, PC World (Sept 9)

Identifies 3 pros but 5 cons - it will be as people make of it. I'm not convinced the instant display saves time - it might even slow down your review of results. It could make the work of SEO marketers even more difficult for targeting keywords.

How Google Translate Works

Google has a video on how the new Google Translate works. [Thanks to Pandia for the lead]

Facebook doing news articles

Facebook Adds Popular News Articles To Search Results, by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Sep 3)

Does this make Facebook a Diigo?

"Facebook is now showing news articles in its search results and ranking them by how many “likes” and “shares” the articles have received from Facebook users. "

Google Indexing SVG Files

SVG Files and Documents Are Now Indexed by Google, Yvonne Bell, Search Engine Journal (Sept 2)

"Google has announced that they are now going to be indexing SVG documents and files. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based graphics format specifically for vector graphic, both dynamic and static and graphics can be made and edited in any text editor since they are XML files."

Google - finding blogs, not just posts.

How Google May Rank Blogs, Bill Slawski, SEO by the SEA (Aug 30)

Searching for blogs through Google Search yields different results than using Google Blog Search. It might have something to do with "related blogs".

"Google Blog Search has been showing “related blogs” at the tops of blog searches for more than a couple of years. Are those related blogs being ranked differently than the homepage blog results we see when we arrive at Google Blog Search after starting from Google’s home page? The differences in the results showing presently indicate that they might be. It’s possible that the changes that we see when starting at Google’s home page might be mirrored in future results when starting at Google’s Blog Search at some point in the future."

Bill Slawski examines a patent for "indexing and retrieval of blogs" and a related patent, "positive and negative quality ranking factors from Google's Blog Search".

Google Beat

The Google Search Trend Video Channel, Pandia (Sept 5)

It's not enough that Google has trends and zeitgeist, it now does a video, called Google Beat, on YouTube with the week’s most popular search queries in the United States. Supposedly this is another resource of "search information [that] can be used to understand social, cultural and economic trends."

Autonomous personal search forecast

Google’s Schmidt: ‘Next Great Stage’ Of Search Is Autonomous, Personal, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Sept 7)

Is this optimistic or frightening? "Speaking today at the IFA consumer electronics event in Berlin, Google CEO Eric Schmidt painted a vision of the future in which search is fast, personal, and all-knowing — even to the degree of providing search results when searches haven’t been conducted."

Set up your smartphone to know all your interests so that it can continuously feed you information as you walk down the street. I hope not. But "the mobile web is growing 8x faster than the equivalent desktop web from 10 years ago. "

Much of the time must be spent looking at videos - "YouTube has more than two billion views per day, 160 million mobile views per day, 24 hours of video is uploaded every minute, and more than two billion monetized views per week (that’s up 50% in the last year). " Why?

Social Media in Five Years

The Next 5 Years in Social Media, Adam Ostrow, Mashable (Sept 7)

Social Media has been flourishing for five years now. What will the next five bring?

On the product cycle, it's looking mature - "it seems unlikely we’ll see the current pantheon of social media services – Facebook, Twitter (Twitter), and YouTube – fall from prominence in the next five years."

But all those connected devices could be the breeding ground for great change. "The Internet has already enabled anyone to be a publisher. But now, with Internet-connected television, anyone is going to be able to gain access to the living room. Blip (BLIP).tv, a company that bet on this trend early, recently reported that its shows – which air solely online and on connected devices – are being viewed nearly 100 million times per month — or, put another way, 10% as much as what’s viewed on ABC, NBC, and FOX combined."

Does this mean we get to eat the cake? "But the overarching themes of connectivity, portable identity, and the continued democratization of media will drive much of it, making the social media landscape we inhabit five years from
now a much expanded but in fact markedly similar one to that we know today."

I'm skeptical about the "democratization of media" point. That's been promised many times and not worked out.

Google engineers work on algorithms

The human process behind Google's algorithm, Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (Sept 7)

Humans work behind the algorithms to make Google search perform. Matt Cutts has been quoted often as sayting that Google engineers change core system algorithms daily.

"In many ways, this is a natural evolution of Google's quest to organize information. The Web changes quickly and dramatically, and a Google search recipe left unaltered would quickly grow stale and choked with spam. Yet the constant tweaks show that the internal debates conducted by a relatively small number of people can have a significant impact on the way the Internet is presented to millions."

Yahoo Geographically Tuned Search Suggestions

Yahoo Has Geographically-Sensitive Search Suggestions, ResearchBuzz (Sept 6)

Yahoo announced that it will propose search suggestions that are most relevant to where you are, but ResearchBuzz had limited success.

I tried airport, and saw Pearson International Airport - good. Employment insurance shows canada and ontario - also good. But municipal shows municipality of clarington - where's that? I'm in Toronto.

Hacking the Google search url

Google Power User Tips: SERP URL Parameters, by Stephen Spencer, Search Engine Land (Sep 3)

Page of instructions on hacking the Google search url to get more results, refined in some way. These are intended for the SEO practitioner but searchers can use a few of them.

Example: Turn off personalized results. PWS stands for “personalized web search” - set pws=0. http://google.com/search?q=cheese&pws=0

Some syntax is mentioned here too: ~ for synonmys, * for wildcard, nn.nn for number range.

Google's rich snippets

Google Adds Breadcrumb Support To Rich Snippets & Improves Testing Tool, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Sep 3)

Google snippets may get better as webmasters make use of new functionality through "rich snippets"

Message from Intute

Intute Reflections at the End of an Era, Adriane (July 2010)

Intute staff reflect on the history and achievements of Intute, the UK scholarly directory. It was grand - but funding was cut. Perhaps the future is in volunteer help (it's amazing what people will do for free but it's not reliable), and subscription fees.

The very sad conclusion: "The problems that led to the creation of the RDN hubs, that is the need to find quality resources and make sense of the Internet, are still pressing issues today, and throughout its history Intute has helped students to make discerning use of the Internet through community collaboration. However, technological developments, changing user expectations and diminishing budgets mean that services such as Intute will need to find new ways to engage with their communities, and the search for alternative business models will require new ways of thinking. "

Using Twitter

The Information Professional and Twitter, by Laura Warner, SLA Toronto Courier (Aug 2010)

Succinct article on the ways an information professional can use twitter - among which - client updates, self-promotion, stayiing current. To this list we might add monitoring tweets as part of "reputation management" - or just getting a first cut on a current topic. Has a starter list of tweeters to follow.

ResourceShelf now ResourceBlog

A New Look for ResourceShelf, Gary Price, ResourceShelf (Sept 1)

ResourceShelf has has made some changes. Blog is now ResourceBlog - and there is a separate Resource Shelf newsletter with highlights. The blog has a new look and may lead to better things. At present it shows only a portion of the blog posting - that means a lot of clicking to get to full articles.

ResourceShelf is now a password protected community.

Google Places vs Facebook Places

Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social, Lawrence Coburn, The Next Web (Aug 31)

Google Places and Facebook Places give a whole new meaning to local search. Both offer a landing page for business. This article shows how the two differ in distribution strategies.

Google is through the search box and the display of a map with local businesses marked with balloons.

Facebook shows individuals checking into a local business and employs personal recommendations.

Concludes that - "Any way you measure it, Google is pretty far ahead at the moment. "