Internet News

Google's wdyl

Google Launches “What Do You Love” Search, To Find Google Services, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Jun 28, 2011)

Just found this - if you'd like to search all of Google services at one time - use wdyl.com - What Do You Love.

I typed in friends and expected to get Google+. Not so - but it's fun to see what else Google can come up with from its many products.

Hitler is not happy

The “Hitler’s Downfall” Meme Takes On Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Jan 14)

What do you think about Google Search Plus Your World? You've probably seen several articles - all the ones I've posted. Now for the video version in which even Adolf Hitler has had it with Google. Very funny, but be prepared for some strong language.

Your digital recipe collection

Digital Recipe Library Still Defies Construction, Keviin Fitchard, Gigaom (Dec 26)

If you have wished for a web application for saving recipes you find online, this article advises that you'll be waiting a while longer - but at least you'll know what features to look for.

"This year, I decided to build a digital recipe library, using what tools were available on the Web and through various app stores. It turns out there are plenty of recipe-aggregation tools out there, but I wound up focusing on three: Paprika’s Mac and iPad apps, MacGourmet’s Mac App, and KeepRecipes’s Web portal. I discovered they’re all great services for saving and cataloging specific types of recipe. They share a single, huge limitation."

Catch Google's xmas doodle while you can

Google is very creative with its welcome doodles. Be sure to try the Xmas 2011 creation - start clicking on the buttons to get the music.

CNet explains it better - Google's holiday doodle serenades with 'Jingle Bells', by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Dec 23)

Supporting your hobbies

Two sites where you and the children in your life can spend some leisure time in developing hobbies. Thanks to JW for both resources.

An Art Education Guide for Kids and Adults- (http://www.wholesalecostumeclub.com/articles/
arteducationhuidekidsadults.jsp)
Tremendous resource of links to pages about colour, media, styles - and more. Page is managed by Carolyn Todd as a personal interest. Many of the resources are in the .edu / school domain.

Collections on Display: A Kid's Guide to Collecting Things - (http://www.curiocabinetspot.com/kids-guide-to-collecting).
For the collector in all of us - but especially for kids - how to collect and what.

Semantic search at Yummly

Yummly’s semantic recipe search gets spicy, Erica Ogg, Gigaom (Aug 24)

My favourite recipe search engine - Yummly - is smart enough to know spicy thanks to its examination of the context of a search and intent.

“For the data to compare spiciness, Yummly went to the classic rubric for spice, the Scoville scale, which ranks the heat of peppers from bell peppers on up to those even hotter than habanero chilies. Yummly uses that data to rank recipes based on the spicy ingredients as well as add more information not included in that scale, such as mustard, wasabi and horseradish.”

Fun with Google Translate

10 Inexplicable Google Translate Fails, Search Engine People (Jul 13)

This is funny - Google Translate trips up on the strangest things.

Seeing the world's museums using Google

Google Art Project has captured the art and interiors of some top museums. Explore these using street-view technology. It supports search and provides text and videos about individual art works. It's worth watching the Visitor Guide: How to use the site - will save some time.

Google Search Globe visual

Google Search Globe: See Searches Happening Visually Around The World, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 5)

Try this Google Search Globe in Chrome to see visual display of Google’s search volume by search query language.

Google's daily puzzle

A Trivia Game Where Using Google is Allowed, Google Blog (April 11)

This new google game, A Google A Day, is fun and could improve search skills. Thanks Tony for the tip.

"A Google a Day is a new daily puzzle that can be solved using your creativity and clever search skills on Google. Questions will be posted every day on agoogleaday.com and printed on weekdays above the New York Times crossword puzzle. We’ll reveal each puzzle’s answer the next day in the Times and on agoogleaday.com, along with the search tips and features used to find it."

Google Recipe View - Brilliant

Google bas become an even better helper in the kitchen thanks to its new recipe view. Enter the name of the dish - eg chicken cacciatore - to get a recipes panel in the left column with choices for ingredients (include the ones you want), cooking times (sooner vs later), and calories (can keep it lite) - and even some other ideas for dinner. [See screenshot]

Some things to note:

1. Go to Google.com - not Google.ca. At present, recipe view is only in the US and Japan.
2. Tends not to work with single words such as chicken, pizza, tomatoes. Google won't interpret those as recipe searches - UNLESS (sometimes) you add recipe as a search term.
3. Can help with meal plans for a special event such as holidays, birthdays etc. Search on the event - st patrick's day - if you don't see Recipes on the side panel, click on the More arrow.

Google Chef Scott Giambastiani shows ways to use the recipe view.

See Google Recipe View Dishes Up Tasty Search, Jeff Bertolucci, PC World (Feb 24)

Google's Art Project

The Work of Art in the Age of Google, Roberta Smith, New York TImes (Feb 6)

Another way to explore major art museums in New York, the UK, Europe and Russia - use Google's new Art Project.
"If art is among your full-blown obsessions or just a budding interest, Google, which has already altered the collective universe in so many ways, changed your life last week. It unveiled its Art Project, a Web endeavor that offers easy, if not yet seamless, access to some of the art treasures and interiors of 17 museums in the United States and Europe. "

Music recommendation engines

3 great music recommendation engines,Pandia (Jan 23)

Break out of Pandora and Last.fm. Pandia recommends these 3 music recommendation engines.

2010 in Review on One Page

2010 Year in Review - an infographic that shows the major events, personalities, interests of the year determined by postings and tweets. This is an amazing creation from onlineschools.org that will keep you zooming in on areas of the poster.

2010 Year in Review by Online Schools
| View Infographic Full Screen

Play games at Bing

Playable social games come to Bing's search results, Josh Lowensohn, CNet News (Dec 17)

Enter the name of the game Crowdstar as a search term at Bing and you'll be able to play the game directly from the search results page. Bing does have a games site - this saves gamers the "trouble" of going of entering the url or the name in the address bar.

This new twist puts the social games front and center

"The first social title to be offered with this functionality is Happy Island from social gaming company Crowdstar. When a Bing user searches for the game in Bing, the full playable title will show up as an embedded result on the top of the page using technology from Sibblingz. Users can then play through the first few levels before being asked to log-in with their Facebook credentials."

This tells us some things about Bing - using games as a way of getting into every day life of the demographic that plays games online - probably on a mobile device; and very intent on being there for social.

Game: But That Was Yesterday

Browser-Based Game But That Was Yesterday Is Lovely, Thought-Provoking, Ian Harac, PCWorld (Dec 12)

A meditative game on moving forward in life - or at least moving - But That Was Yesterday - using only the arrow keys - that teaches that to look backwards can sometimes get you past forward problems, and to leap forward can take you to the next place. The art work in this is beautiful, and the music almost mesmerizing.

Reading this review provides some pre-game orientation. I'm not sure there is an ending.

What Google's autocomplete tells us about Canada

The United States of America According to Google Autocomplete, Lauren Indvik, Mashable (Dec 5)

What a clever idea - a map showing the states’ names altered to match the suggestions offered by Google’s autocomplete search algorithm.

What would that look like in Canada? The following is taken from searching at Google.ca on the name of the province and selecting the first item from the autocompletes (though I did skip a couple that were just news). There are some surprises here.

british columbia institute of technology
alberta health services
saskatchewan roughriders
manitoba hydro
ontario place
quebec city
newfoundland power
new brunswick election
nova scotia power
nunavut jobs
yukon college
north west territories jobs

Buyer (and Viewer) Beware

News and Trends We Could Do Without , Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Dec 2)

Too many people, too much stuff, too much chatter - it all adds up to mind-boggliing trends. Paula Hane watches the scene through Trendhunter. She was aghast at the trend that people are printing out memoris from social networking pages.

There are some other bits - Buyer beware (seriously) even if you are shopping at Amazon, and Bad publicity pays off (it always has).

But Trendhunter is something else. Can get ideas and be amused and maybe find something you want.

Image Quiz

Want some brain relief? Try The Image Quiz from Games for the Brain - it uses Google images.

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".

10 Google Services

10 Google Services That Don’t Get the Limelight They Deserve by Saikat Basu, Make Use Of (Aug 4)

A good article about Google services that don't get mentioned much but are certainly worth trying.

Odd that Picasa for photo editing and sharing isn't on the list, but perhaps it is better known.

This list has:

+ Search Stories - create a search story in Google with sound and post to YouTube. This must have grown out of the ads Google did last year with its own search stories.

+ Movie Showtimes - works in Canada too

+ 3D Warehouse - make buildings, use Sketchup, look at what others have done.

+ Panoramio - a different kind of photo showing - very geo-centric

+ Aardvark - social question and answer - build your network first.

+ Google Sidewiki - add comments on web pages - I don't see the point of this and don't want to be pestered with the comments.

+ Google Code Search - for programmers

+ Google News Archive - excellent resource

+ Google Fast Flip - a better way for reading news online

+ Google Sites - create a website for free

Name that song

4 Ways To Find Out The Name Of That Elusive Song, Simon Slangen, Make Use Of (June 24)

There are ways - this article names 4 of them - starting with a search at Google for the lyrics. I'd be wary of the search term lyrics now since malware spammers have optimized on that term - be very careful with what you click on.

Otherwise you can hum a tune (Midoni), search for written music (Musipedia), look up Shazam on your mobile phone.

Bing Entertainment

Bing Now A Lot More Entertaining With Music, Movies And Games, The Next Web (June 23)

To each his own taste - Bing has an entertainment wing - bing.com/entertainment - with music, videos, games, and tv.

Yummly for recipe search

Yummly’s Semantic Search Engine Is The Ultimate Online Cookbook For Foodies by Leena Rao, TechCrunch (Jun 21)

Yummly is described as a "powerful food search portal". It may pull us away from what Yahoo and Bing can do, or direct searches at allrecipes, epicurious, and the others.

The secret is in the filtering - "Not only can you filter results by type of food, course, and ingredient, but you can also break down recipes by diet, allergy, nutrition, price, cuisine, time, taste, and sources. " And you can re-size the recipe for number of servings and get nutritional information.

Of course it is a community. Must register to "get taste-specific recommendations, find and follow TasteBuds, import your recipe boxes, and edit recipes. "

Webbys 2010

The ceremonies have come and gone, but it's still worth our time to look over the list of Webby awards in 2010 whether our interest is web design or just finding interesting, useful sites.

14th Annual Webby Awards Nominees & Winners:

Big wins:

Best practices: Twitter and NPR
Social networking: Twitter
Copyrighting: New Yorker and NY Times
Business Blog: Mashable
Cultural Blog: Mashable
Community: Flickr
Events: Ted
Guides, ratings, reviews: Metacritic and CNet
Health: WebMD Consumer Health News
Lifestyle: All About Birds from Cornell and Epicurious. (I would choose the birds)

So much more.

Such as - Waterlife created by the National Film Board of Canada - The story of the last great supply of fresh drinking water on earth. This is the companion site for the documentary film by Kevin McMahon released in 2009. This site won the Webby Award for Documentary, Single Episode

YPG Drops Print Version of Phone Book

Cyberspace swallows Toronto’s phone book, Nancy White, The Star (May 27)

Hurray - no fat telephone book lying on the porch this year. Yellow Pages Group is not distributing the 3 inch white pages directory to Toronto residents.

If you know someone who needs the print version, tell them - "Consumers can ask for the 2010 ones by calling 1-800-268-5637 or by visiting ypg.com/delivery. More than 35,000 printed copies are presently in storage."

For the Birds

Bird Education Website Wins Webby Award, Jake Richardson, Care2 Make a Difference (May 22)

All About Birds - from Cornell

"An online guide to birds and birdwatching has won a Webby Award. It was made and is maintained by Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab. The site educates visitors about 585 bird species and bird behavior. It features Nest Cams, and offers a volunteer project where you can sign up and participate in their research simply by counting and tagging online bird images."

Screensavers that please

The 10 Creative Ways To Use A Screensaver, Saikat Basu, Make Use Of (Ap 23)

Screensavers today are not needed to save pixels on the monitor, but they can be used to entertain, inform, and bring pleasure to your day. This article has many suggestions including ones for showing RSS feeds.

Scrabble with Wolfram Alpha

‘Tis the Season for Scrabble, Wolfram Alpha (Apr 23)

Summer is the season for scrabble to fill evenings at the cottage. If you have your computer with you, you can get words from WA which "supports the American English, International English, and French versions of Scrabble"

Flower Power

Image search engine GazoPa is Blooming!, Charles Knight, The Next Web (Mar 29)

Features a image search engine that will help flower lovers find images similar to the bloom they love. There will be sharing of flower knowledge too.

Find it at http://bloom.gazopa.com/beta. This is in private beta - but you can apply to be an early user.

There is a video demo to watch. looks like a marvellous site for people new to gardening and for experienced gardeners keen to share blooms.

Biking with Google Maps

Bike Directions Added to Google Maps, by Ian Paul, PCWorld (Mar 10)

Another gift from Google -- "Google on Wednesday launched bicycle directions for Google Maps making it easier for cyclists to plan routes in 150 U.S. cities including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Portland and Washington, DC. You can use Google Maps to find cycling-specific directions in urban areas, and by default Google Maps will plan your route to avoid steep hills whenever possible. The new maps feature can also be used as a map layer to get an overall sense of cycling accessibility in a particular city."

Math at the Search Engines

Math Engines: For Multiplying Mixed Fractions, It’s Wolfram Alpha Over Google & Bing, by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Mar 9)

If you're doing math, Google will handle fraction but give you decimal; Bing will show fractional answers; and Wolfram Alpha will deliver "mixed faction answer" the way we used to do it many years ago in school.

Translation and other cool interfaces

For years translation on the web has been a joke. So, I was very surprised when I looked at Aromicon - German site about wine - "aromicon ist eine Geschmackssuchmaschine für Wein". I don't read German, but my Google Toolbar does. It automatically detected the foreign language and offere to translate. The translation was into fairly understandable English - though this passage has a curious word - "Robert M. Parker, Jr. - is American wine critic, and at the moment probably the einflussreiste wine critic at all." Google does not know that word at all.

Of course, Google can't translate images (a reminder to web designers to not make images the only way to access something or convey the information)

The site itself is very attractive and has the most interesting taxonomy for wine searching: aroma (fruit, chocolate, floral ...), type of food (fish, poultry ...) and region (region - country)

It was singled out by Charles Knight at The Next Web as one of The Top 10 Most Creative Search Engine Interfaces

Try them all. I thought TagGalaxy for browsing Flickr by tags was visually spectacular.

Yahoo! You've come a long way

Happy Birthday, Yahoo: 15 Years Old Today, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Mar 1)

Oh Yahoo! - how long we have loved you. Yahoo was incorporated in 1995 - 15 years - but its directory came online in 1994.

This is what it looked like in October 1996 - taken from saved page at Internet Archive.

But how much longer will we have Yahoo. CEO Carol Bartz slipped up - again - in an interview.

On Its 15th Birthday, Yahoo CEO Says She Would Sell To “Any company at the right price.”, Zee, The Next Web

Posting has a CNBC video with Carol Bartz for nearly 9 minutes - Yahoo: Past, Present and Future. (Have to watch the 30 sec ad first).

40% of Yahoo is search and the rest is advertising - she said.

Question: What is Yahoo today? Answer: "place for you to come on the internet and find things" - and has - "editorial presence". Lots of annoying talk about stock price from the interviewer - he tripped her up - and the investment people moved in for the kill. Nasty interview.

Final words from Bartz - Yahoo intends to focus on user for great "wow" experience - and on the advertisers - immerse people into the ad.

Suggested searches

Google’s Super Bowl ad good, parodies even better., Charles Knight, The Next Web (Feb 160

Everyone knows about the ad Google used during the SuperBowl. Here it is again along with three parodies.

Magazines Galore

Magazine search engine Maggwire bridges the gap between old media and new media intelligently., The Next Web (Feb 16)

This can't be good for magazine sales, but it's great for people who like to browse magazines online. Maggwire - "a magazine search engine with over 650 popular titles so far and more being added all the time. The site is drop dead easy to use, you just browse through the magazine titles or top articles and click through." Collection includes cooking magazines among much else to inform and delight us.

There's a 3 minute video in the posting to show how to navigate maggwire.

Vancouver Winter Olympics

Bing, Google & Yahoo Gear Up For The 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Elisabeth Osmeloski , Search Engine Land (Feb 9)

Bing, Google, and Yahoo give us many ways to watch the Olympics and get the medal standings.

Bing: "Powered by Microsoft Silverlight, over 400 hours of live event coverage, and 1,000 hours total available of on-demand, streaming video content in HD quality, will be available on both the official NBC Olympics site and on MSN.com"

Google: " Explore the Games with Google, aka, “Google.com/Games10″, with Google Maps being a main component to track medal counts by country,"

Yahoo: "Yahoo has unveiled its official sports site for the games at: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics

Regular Yahoo search results for Olympics related queries have been enhanced with event information and schedules, athlete profiles, photos and videos blended into the results:"

In Canada , CTV is the broadcaster in partnership with Rogers and has the CTV Olympics site with news, schedules, hourly updates, results and statistics, and live streaming.

Added Feb 13: Of course CBC has a site devoted to the Olympics with news, schedule, featured videos, and ways to contact athletes.

Recipes in Bing

What's For Dinner? Bing Mixes Recipes Into Search Results, Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Jan 21)

Bing will show recipes on many food-related queries. It knows chocolate chip cookies but not lemon bars.

"Bing pulls from a number of popular recipe websites (delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com.com, etc.) to bring you correlating recipes that you can sift through by holiday, meals, ratings, and my personal favorite, convenience (with a 10 month old at home, quick is key) and much more."

Postscript: Bing Launches a Recipe Feature, Research Buzz (Jan 25) - Tara Calishain provides a detailed review - and points to one serious weakness - can't look for special needs recipes.

Google Me The Movie

Google Me (The Full Movie) Altsearchengines (Dec 30)

This movie has been around for over a year. Jim Killeen lived in Los Angeles and decided to Google his name and then to meet the people with whom he shared a name. Out of this emerged a 96 minute movie about our relationship with search and internet technology.

"Whether an effort to defeat the innumerable self-imposed social barriers erected since the advent of the Internet or out of sheer and simple curiosity, the result is nevertheless telling and enormously entertaining – as well as a provoking commentary on today’s society and how technology has transformed our lives."

The full 96 minutes is available for viewing. Settle in and enjoy.

Best of the Best

This is the time of year for best-of-best lists. Here are two sources.

2009: The Year in Review in the New Yorker - growing list of best in theatre, movies, museums, dance, books, television - more.

The 2009 Globe Books 100, Globe and Mail

"Our 12th annual pick of the 100 best and most influential books of the year includes prize-winners and surprises, writers allegedly famous and those about to be, prose and poetry, science and social studies, memoir and manifesto, and much, much more."

Coming Soon - Multiplayer Game

Flickr co-founder tries his hand at another Web startup, David Ebner, Globe and Mail (Nov 19)

Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr. is back in Vancouver and has set up a new company Tiny Speck Inc.

"Tiny Speck hopes to hit the chord of connection that has moved decisively into the mainstream. While still mostly shrouded in secrecy, Tiny Speck is building what's called a massive multiplayer game, and the roots of the genre go back to text-based programs in late 1970s, accessed by early computers and modems.

Such games allow multiple players to develop characters in fantasy realms. The most popular of the bunch is the medieval-themed World of Warcraft. It has more than 10 million subscribers."

Of interest: "Mr. Butterfield sees unlimited potential in connection billions of minds. “It's a profound shift,” he said. “Maybe more important than anything that's happened before.”"

Hulu Watching

Hulu focuses on search by Harrison Hoffman, Webware (Nov 30)

To go with its growing library of videos, Hulu has added Advanced Search. Work with title, season, episode, people, video type, network, and keywords

It's largely American but has some Australian and British - no Canadian networks.

Sometimes you can find the full episode of a TV program or an entire movie. Other times, such as for Flashpoint (shows on CBS), only a very short excerpt.

There are many ways to browse: by channel, most popular, recently added. Hulu just added Hulu for the Holidays - videos available on each of the days.

Hulu is only available to people in the United States. However, many in Canada have found work arounds such as this - No Hulu in Canada - No Problem

Google as sous chef

What's cooking with iGoogle, Google Blog (Nov 19)

"But, in addition to spicing up your recipe repertoire, Google can be a huge resource in the kitchen. From helping you with sugar measurements, to jump starting ideas for unique Thanksgiving table settings, the web has made becoming a culinary master much easier."

Special Gourmets - A Guide for Different Diet Needs

Global Eating Guide to Several Different Diets, ResearchBuzz (Nov 12)

"Special Gourmets at http://www.specialgourmets.com/. This site lets you map hotels, restaurants and other destinations that accomodate several different diets: gluten-free, dairy-free, nut/peanut-free, shellfish-free, egg-free, and soy-free."

This is a "community-driven restaurant and hotel guide", says the founder, Dr. Cynthia Schuck-Paim, to make eating and travelling easier for people with celiac disease and other alergies.

Users in Canada have contributed. Easiest method that I have found is to use the List Guide and use the dropdown selection boxes to choose Canada - province (called a state) - city.

This site also has a magazine, recipes, and resources with advice on eating out and chef cards to print out.

The navigation on this site needs a little work - the blog and magazine takes you out of the SpecialGourmets frame - and you may have to backtrack a bit.

SpecialGourmets was developed by "Origem Scientifica, a scientific consultancy company specializing on health research and data analysis" based in Brazil. The two members of the Special Gourmets team have degrees from Oxford University, UK.

Recipes for Food Lovers

RecipeBridge is a specialty vertical search on just recipes. It collects from 200 culinary web sites. Browse by category, or search by a recipe name (eg chicken cacciatore) or ingredients - then refine by other ingredients.

It also offers a "recipe of the day". iGoogle users will be able to get these through a gadget. As well, subscribers can save and share recipes.

Recipe search engine RecipeBridge, Altsearchengines ( Oct 3)

"RecipeBridge is a search engine for recipes, allowing people to find recipes on thousands of cooking websites and recipe blogs."

Art of Short Messages

From Telegraph to Twitter: The Language of the Short Form by Roy Clark, Poynter Online (Sep 4)

Roy Clark shows that a good writer can convey a lot in less than the 140 characters of a Twitter message.

Follow him at @RoyPeterClark

The Twitter Bird

NCC and the Twitter Bird, Nature Conservancy Canada (Aug)

Here's a view of Twitter I can relate to - "Solving the mystery of the bird that goes “Tweet”"

Amusing Website

40 Fantastic Time-Wasting Web Sites, JR Raphael, PC World (July 28)

Many amusing websites in this article, and some actually useful. Some have games, others have photo enhancing / modifying tools, some are good for everyday - like LifeHacker.

Try Hunch

Web Searches on a Hunch, Business Week

Video with Caterina Fake on Hunch - a new service that "helps people make decisions by asking them a series of questions and comparing their answers to others". Caterina Fake co-founded Flickr - so she has a knack for new Web uses.

Full article - Hunch: The Search for Better Search

"Hunch arrives at a response after asking users about five to 10 questions. Going a step beyond Yahoo's community-voting model, Hunch determines the best response for each individual user based on their past clicks. The site has voluntary survey questions on its front page, in the section "teach Hunch about you," where it asks simple, fun questions and then factors in those preferences when it's advising you on a decision."

To Do: Join Hunch, let it get to know you through its questions, and then ask it questions.

Clean up Oil Spills with Human Hair

Hair clippings mop up spills by COLIN MCCONNELL , TORONTO STAR (May 29)

This story still has legs. Several years ago Phil McCrory discovered that hair could be used to soak up oil spills. A San Francisco based non-profit, Matter of Trust, accepts donated hair and makes woven mats to be used to clean up oil spills.

Google Street Views - Candid Camera

Strangest Sights in Google Street Views PCWorld (Apr )

Google has Street View in more than 200 cities now and the filming has captured many curious or amusing (or embarrassing) moments. This slideshow has some strange sights.

Finding Songs

Song Search Engine at Google Blogscoped, April 11.

A search engine that will find and play the song - go to Just Hear It. . It found Maple Leaf Forever. Create a playlist.

Random Walk on the Web

Nine tools that let you randomly browse the Web, by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Apr 6)

If you're into serendipity and have some time, here are nine tools that let you randomly browse.

+ Digg's new software-ware free toolbar
+ Stumbleupon - use toolbar or go to site - can control by interest
+ Mangle - older service
+ Delicious randomizer
+ Google Toolbar - has a random page button recommended by Google.

+ and a few others

Found through Google Street Views

Strangest Sights in Google Street Views Tom Spring, PC World (Mar 3)

24 strange sites found through Google Street Views.

"With the unblinking eye of Google's Street Views, anyone can be a virtual rubbernecker. And some of the things you can spot using the service are downright unexplainable."

Also see story of Cheating husband caught on Google Street View? by Chris Matyszczyk. CNet News (Mar 30)

TV Online

Pay TV providers fret over penny-pinching viewers by DEBORAH YAO, AP Via Globe and Mail (Feb 9)

More people are dropping cable and watching tv programs through Internet access.

Follow discussion as well. One commenter offered this tip to Canadians for getting past geo-blocking.

Denied the right to watch TV online? You've been geo-blocked, Bill Brioux, Toronto Star (Feb 8)

"As many as a half-million Canadians, among 5.5 million Web surfers worldwide each month, are already using AnchorFree.com to do just that, according to David Gorodyansky, founder and CEO of the northern California company. AnchorFree offers an ad-supported virtual private network called Hotspot Shield that, in addition to boosting PC security, allows Canadians to view geo-blocked content. Once installed (a process that takes about a minute), the shield prevents content providers from knowing what country you are in."

Google Fun

The Top 17 Google Gags, Hoaxes, and Easter Eggs - slideshow from PCWorld.ca of "gags and goofs" inserted to Google products by their fun-loving programmers. Amusing and nice tour of Google's products.

Personalize iGoogle

Making your personalized homepage even more personal, Google Blog (Jan 15)

New tool for users of iGoogle to create a personal theme -- "The theme-building tool has a simple interface for uploading your photo from your desktop, Picasa Web Album, or the web. Once you've chosen a photo, the builder provides a basic set of tools to help you create your theme:"

Obama Inauguration Live

Mathew Ingram on Obama's inauguration online, Globe and Mail (Jan 15)

Mathew Ingram answered questions about accessing sites that are covering the inauguration of Barack Obama.

He began by explaining why people who are not in the US are often blocked from viewing streamed video from Hulu or Joost. This is generally because a distributor who has paid to broadcast the content would not want it given away on the Web - and so opts to block it.

But, everyone can tap into the Twitter lines. Ingram has many suggestions about Twitter pages / feeds to follow (such as Twitter / inauguration or Obama Inaugural ) and how to search Twitter to pick up conversation.

Another live method to use or view is Cover It Live, a Canadian service that makes it easy to host a live blog showing text, chat, live video. Globe and Mail reporters will be using it on Jan 20 for the inauguration - "We're hoping to have a live-blog/chat going on the day of the inauguration, so that we can talk about it not just with other Globe journalists who are covering the event, but with people who are there and Twittering about it or want to comment."

The Globe and Mail will also have a hub with a variety of content about US Presidential inaugurations. Link given was http://www.theglobeandmail.com/Obamainauguration

For searching for more information or events, Ingram recommends using several key words or finding specialty services (Twitter in this case) -- "include as many unique keywords as you can -- Obama and inauguration and "live stream" for example, or Obama and inauguration and video and streaming, or something like that. That's where Twitter search like search.twitter.com or Twitscoop or Tweetscan can help, because it's a smaller group of people who are already focused on what you're trying to find. "

MORE: Learn more ways to virtually participate from this article in PCWorld -- Obama Inauguration: Be There Without Being There by Mark Sullivan, (Jan 14) -- "These sites and services, used together or separately, will immerse you in the media experience of Obama's inauguration on Tuesday."

Create your own puzzle

Puzzle extension turns any Web image into a game by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Dec 22, 2008)

Fun (and possibly useful) extension to Firefox for turning "any image from a page you're on into a sectional puzzle with pieces that can be moved around. " It's called Puzzle.

Online Games

Five sites that lead to online gaming addiction by Don Reisinger, Webware (Dec 16)

If you have time over the holidays, you might like to explore these gaming sites. As an example, "PlaySega.com sports the basics--puzzle games, arcade games, and quiz games--but it also offers Sonic at the Olympics and The Official Mini Game of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. "

Freebies on the Web

World Wide Web: Land of Free Stuff by Douglas MacMillan, special report in Business Week Online (Nov 19)

E-Commerce may be soaring, but there are still many ways to get free services and products from the Internet. This article shows how - and includes a slide show of 101 Best Web Freebies (45 slides).

"This year, e-commerce is projected to be a $259 billion business, up 18% from 2006, according to market researcher Forrester Research (FORR). That's a mind-numbing figure, but it doesn't mean everything online has a price tag. The list of free things you can get is as nearly extensive as the Internet itself, and includes everything from circus tickets to booze, including golf lessons, gift cards, pets, even a college education. "

Also - 2008: The Year of Living Cheaply (Dec 10)

"From ditching their cable subscriptions to opting for "staycations," many Americans found ways to cut back during the past year

Inside Google Canada HQ

Google Canada’s New Eco-Friendly Home Enjoys Playful Work Philosophy Part One by Kris Abel, CTV (Nov 24)

There are several photos of the new Google Canada's headquarters in Toronto.

"Google’s first official Canadian headquarters enjoyed their open house last week. Overlooking the Dundas-Yonge Square in Toronto’s downtown district, the new suite of offices and board rooms represent more than just another branch of the search engine giant, but also mark the completion of a research project, this time into the creation of an innovative workspace that balances the philosophies of being environmentally-responsible with the creation of a relaxed working environment that is distinctly Canadian in its feel."

A Happy Ending

On a wing and some glue by Will Doolittle, Globe and Mail (Nov 21)

Sometimes there is good news. A couple in New York State nursed a monarch butterfly back to health and repaired its damaged wing through the aid of a video they found on the Internet.

"As the butterfly strengthened, they wondered whether they could fix its wing. They turned to the Internet, searching under "fixing a broken butterfly wing," and found a video posted by the Live Monarch Foundation, a non-profit group from Boca Raton, Fla."

An Adirondack couple fix up an injured monarch butterfly so that it can make it to Mexico

Yahoo Crosswords

Coming to Firefox and Safari: A companion to solve your puzzle mysteries, Yahoo Blog (Nov 19)

Yahoo has two crossword puzzle games now available through Firefox and Safari browsers! Daily Crossword and Hollywood Jumble.

Get hints for the answers through Yahoo Search Assist. Brilliant!

Google SketchUP for 3D

Google SketchUp 7 wants to shape you into a 3D artist
by Don Reisinger, WebWare (Nov 17)

Fun for some --

"Google has released SketchUp 7 (download), the latest free version of its 3D modeling software, along with its premium counterpart, SketchUp 7 Pro.

Like previous iterations of the software, SketchUp 7 will enable you to model just about anything you'd like as long as you start with a predesigned template. The new version, released Monday, offers simple templates that help you gauge size through feet or meters, but it also includes architectural design, Google Earth, and a product design template to aid you in your modeling endeavors."

Online Photo Sharing

Share Photos Easily With Anyone, Anywhere by Rick Broida, PC World (Nov 1)

"Powerful photo networking services let you share shots to anyone, from anywhere, even while you're still on vacation."

Searching Craigslist

A less crazed way to search all of Craigslist by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Sept 22)

Craigslist is the online (free) classfieds service for finding anything and everything worldwide. Although it has its own search, there are two other search engines you might use.

+ Search All Craig's Lists - Google Custom Search
+ Crazedlist - but you have to modify a setting in your browser (which most users won't want to do).

Picasa 3 features

Picasa Web Albums Get Face Recognition, Read Write Web (Sep 2)

Picasa 3.0 will have face recognition and several features.

"The central new feature of this version will be automated face recognition and tagging. In tandem with this update, Google will also launch a new version of Picasa, its desktop photo management software, which will also get a number of new features, including a movie maker mode, a retouch brush, and online synchronization with Picasa Web Albums."

Also see Revamped Google Picasa site identifies photo faces, Webware

Olympics shortcuts

Searching For Olympics News And Video by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Aug 8)

".. roundup of where you can keep track of the medal count and watch your favorite action online."

To that list add the CBC sports page - http://www.cbc.ca/sports/

Commentary

Your Friday reads by
Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail (June 13)

Good tour of sources for comment on the United States as well as being fun to read -- "Jack Kapica searches the Web and offers a selection of the week's interesting stories: a post-mortem on Hillary; a retort to Ann Coulter's defence of G.W. and lots of stupid Americans".

Manage Information Overload

Managing Information Overload: A Personal Plan by Genie Tyburski, The Virtual Chase (June 2008)

Genie Tyburski describes what she does to manage her information overload. Has many good tips.

It all comes down to: "Above all, set reasonable goals and prioritize them. Plan your workday to the extent possible. If you accomplish most of what you plan, you'll feel productive. Moreover, if you let go of what isn't at the time essential, you'll feel less overloaded."

TUN3R for Toronto

TUN3R helps connect Internet radio fans to AM and FM stations around the world and stream the programs directly to the desktop. In May, Toronto was added to a set of tabs that includes New York, London, Paris, Rome and others. http://toronto.tun3r.com/ I had no idea Toronto had such a variety of stations in addition to my favourite CBC Radio One and Two. Incidentally, connecting to the streaming for those CBC stations through TUN3R is easier than using CBC itself.

TUN3R offers two modes: Discovery - plays in separate full window, and Live mode - player is in small window within easy reach. As well it has many useful features - playlist samples for the station, notes on how the sound is delivered, most popular stations, random spotlights, and latest additions. Listeners can also do a keyword search for other cities or known stations. It's easy to find US public radio. Alternatively, select on genre or on language. TUN3R is truly international.

Very interesting service. Connect to where you'd like to be, where you'd like to go, or just where you are now.

Telescope on the Universe

Microsoft Research launches WorldWide Telescope, Scoble cries By Harrison Hoffman, Webware (May 12)

Watch stars from your desktop with Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope.

"WorldWide Telescope is a desktop application for Windows which does exactly what you would think. It essentially turns your computer into a telescope. You can choose from a variety of options from roaming the universe freely, to guided tours of various celestial features. You can join communities of stargazers and also connect your own telescope to your computer and control it with this application. Another option is to change your source of imagery to gain a different perspective."

Get a Grip on Distractions and Overload with GTD

Mastering the high-tech tools that help us By Gloria Goodale, The Christian Science Monitor (Apr 2)

There's multitasking - essentially juggling many balls (or information streams) at one time, and there's thrashing - doing so much that the system slows down or crashes.

Thrashing - a term coined by computer scientists: "That's when a computer is asked to do so many background tasks at once that its hard drive is overworked. That can paralyze its ability to do the important tasks a user requires."

It's true for humans too. David Wertheimer, executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, warned that multitasking is overload and is hurting productivity.

"I see the American worker becoming less and less productive." "As workplaces get flooded with digital demands, such as constant e-mails and nonstop information, we are in danger of becoming a third-world-style economy, where much movement takes place but little actual effective work is being done."

This afflicts everyone but perhaps especially today's multiple-digital-device carrying and information-streaming knowledge worker. One way of dealing with this (apart from doing a digital time-off for a few hours) is taking control over information and tasks by using the Getting Things Done system.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a work-life management system developed by David Allen. Allen presents seminars to help people get a grip (might be a bit like triage on dealing with information onslaught) and has a product line of books, templates, and CDs. LifeHacker picks up postings on GTD.

How I Tamed My Inbox is an example of bits that Lifehacker picks up. Chris Brogan described an email control system that involved folders, calendaring, project management, and a daily practice to sort daily and review periodically. Great idea but most people won't find the time to set it up.

For more on GTD see NPR's Tech Junkies Crazy About 'Getting Things Done' where there is a list of web sites for more information and how to get started, and 4 minute audio clip from All Things Considered.

Of course, there is the no small matter of finding the time to order the book, get rss feeds on postings with more ideas, pick up the podcasts, read, listen, adapt and adopt.

Review of Photoshop Express

Photoshop Finds its Way to the Web By Kate Greene, Technology Review (Apr 4)

More about Adobe's PhotoShop Express - free, scaled down version of its photo-editing software.

"Now Adobe is jumping into the fray with its new online photo-editing software called Photoshop Express. The service opened a test version to the public, which offers simple editing tools, syncs with Facebook, Picassa, and Photobucket, and provides two gigabytes of free storage."

There are drawbacks - these are early days yet - but ...

"As it is, Express has a number of appealing characteristics. The interface is easy to use and intuitive. It's exceedingly simple to update photo libraries and edit pre-existing photos on sites such as Facebook. The service includes thumbnails that give the user an instant glimpse at how a specific editing decision will change the picture. And importantly, it's easy to see the changes you've made to the picture and retract any of them individually using the toolbar on the side of the screen. For instance, if you've cropped and rotated a picture, changed the white balance, and converted it to black and white, a check mark appears next to these editing options in the toolbar. To retract an edit, simply click the check mark."

However, comments on this post point out that Adobe has a very sweeping terms of service that gives them "a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed." - for anything that is "publicly accessible".

I think this means - read the fine print.

Postscript Apr 5: Adobe drops unpopular online Photoshop terms By Stephen Shankland, Webware

Photoshop Express

Adobe launches free, online version of Photoshop, hoping to draw new users AP via Technology Review (Mar 27)

Adobe is making a web version of Photoshop free to users for photo editing.

"Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. And, once they register, users can get to their accounts from different computers."

Go to http://www.photoshop.com/express/

Others in the online photo editing management are Shutterfly Inc., Picnik, and Photobucket Inc (image sharing).

Trend: "Many kinds of software are available for use online in a trend known as ''software as a service,'' or ''cloud computing.'' The earliest were e-mail programs, but they now include services to create and manage content and even whole operating systems. And they don't require time-consuming upgrades because they're maintained by the service provider."

Google Funnies

If you have time over the Easter weekend to play, here is an amusing side to Google.

Google's Top 17 Easter Eggs, Gags, and Hoaxes PC World

"Google makes your life easier with great search, but did you also know it's loaded with pranks, goofs, and put-ons? We show you the best of the bunch."

Point mouse at an image in the gallery to read the title - then select.

Guided Walk to Toronto

New technology brings us closer to our heritage architecture by Dave LeBlanc, Globe and Mail (Feb 29)

Here is the perfect way to spend a sunny afternoon - take a guided walking tour of historic parts of Toronto with author Michael Redhill on your iPod as the guide.

"Thankfully, the marriage of technology and heritage appreciation has arrived in MP3 form courtesy of Heritage Toronto, the Toronto Public Library and Michael Redhill, author of Consolation, the award-winning 2007 novel that deals, in large part, with 1850s Toronto. Released just two weeks ago, on offer is a free, downloadable podcast walking tour narrated by Mr Redhill."

...

"With minimal walking between stops and the pleasure of Mr. Redhill speaking privately into your ear — sometimes offering insight into his creative process — the hour-long tour is a real joy. It's also a forum, at times, for him to vent about Toronto's abysmal record of heritage preservation and even offer solutions."

Written by Mr. Redhill with Heritage Toronto's Gary Miedema and Nancy Luno, the walk is available for download at: www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ktr/onebook/audio/walking_tour.mp3

Gourmet for Foodies

Gourmet mag dishes up hearty new Web site by J.M Hirsch, AP via Seattle Times (Jan 16)

Announces the opening of a new Web site from Gourmet magazine offering news, travel, history, culture and videos of the first season of the magazine's public television show, "Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie.""

The web site has sections on food and cooking, recipes and menus, chefs and restaurants, food politics, travel and culture, wine, spirits and beer, and a diary of a foodie.

Look for the interview with Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma, under Food Politics where he talks about the problems of the western diet.

There is also some content from the print magazine. Some older articles from the Gourmet archive are included such as An Alphabet for Gourmets by M.F.K. Fisher.

The Gourmet web site does have recipes but Epicurious will continue to be the prime site for Gourmet recipes. Epicurious also has content from Bon Appétit and other Conde Nast titles.

Paperspine

Check out books from home with Paperspine, Seattle Times (Dec 31)

Paperspine aims to be the NetFlix of books. This is a new company in Issaquah, Washington that will rent out books for $9.95 / month (plus $1.49 shipping / book) - you pick from the list of 150,000 titles, wait for the mail, read and return. USA only.

People should be able to get the same service from their public libraries for free just be phoning or submitting the request over the web - but the wait for current best sellers would probably be longer.

Story Telling Tools

50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell as Story , Resourceshelf (Dec 17) - refers to Alan Levine's presentation and list of 50 tools.

Music Downloads

The best sites for music downloads By Marian Liu, Seattle Times (Dec 19)

Compares 9 music download sites: iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo, eMusic, Microsoft Zune, Wal-Mart, Sub Pop Records.

Considers sound quality, method of obtaining the music - straight purchase or a subscription, the software and connection to your mp3 player. Seems to settle on iTunes and Amazon.

"Comparatively, iTunes is still the easiest to use. Amazon comes in second. Its downloads (at 89 cents) are cheaper than iTunes (at 99 cents)" ... "For sound quality, Amazon and iTunes have the highest at 256 kbps (kilobits per second, a data transfer rate), which makes for better audio. The rest are at 192 kbps, a manageable size that allows you to keep some audio quality but saves storage room for other songs."

Here's the telling line -- "Note that however you decide to purchase music now, you can expect it to change in six months."

Gadgets Galore

Gadgets, Gadgets, Gadgets By Aaron Schmidt, Sabrina I. Pacifici and Barbara Fullerton, LLRX (November 24, 2007)

Popular presentation at Internet Librarian conference - all about gadgets some of them useful. Love the cable cat.

Canadian Weather Quiz

Weather Quiz - 20 questions by David Phillip, The Star (Dec 3)

David Phillips is the senior climatologist with Environment Canada. "Generally acknowledged as Canada's foremost weather expert, Phillips has reached a milestone with his 20th Canadian Weather Trivia Calendar, now on sale for $17.95."

These questions look easy but aren't. There are many surprises. Phillips explains some answers in audio clips. Weather Quiz is here .

Bruce Sterling Short

New story from Bruce Sterling - The Interoperation -- Architecture had given way to software management. So he turned buildings into construction programs. in Technology Review (Nov/Dec 2007)

Classical Music on the Internet

The Well-tempered Web by Alex Ross, New Yorker (Oct 22)

Classical music is alive and well on the Internet.

"Classical-music culture on the Internet is expanding at a sometimes alarming pace. When I started my blog, I had links to seven or eight like-minded sites. Now I find myself part of a jabbering community of several hundred blogs, operated by critics, composers, conductors, pianists, double-bassists, oboists (I count five), artistic administrators, and noted mezzo-sopranos (Joyce DiDonato writes under the moniker Yankee Diva). After a first night at the Met, opera bloggers chime in with opinions both expert and eccentric, recalling the days when critics from a dozen dailies, whether Communist or Republican or Greek, lined up to extoll Caruso. Beyond the blogs are the Internet radio stations; streaming broadcasts from opera houses, orchestras, new-music ensembles; and Web sites of individual artists. There is a new awareness of what is happening musically in every part of the world. A listener in Tucson or Tokyo can virtually attend opening night at the Bayreuth Festival and listen the following day to a première by a young British composer at the BBC Proms."

Alex Ross's weblog is The Rest Is Noise.

His blog and new book received a lot of attention in http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/Opera Chic, a must-visit blog for any opera buff.

Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds - Photos: Google Earth in the virtual world Silicon.com (Oct 15)

Photo story of what virtual-world developers will be able to do using Multiverse Networks' platform - import terrain from Google Earth, incorporate real buildings and cities and even interiors, and create "fantastical 3D models'.

Silicon.com has more with Virtual World.News and Virtual World.Extra.

Add to this STRIKE!* (*banana suit optional), Wendy Leung, Globe and Mail (Oct 15) "In a dispute over pay cuts, IBM workers took to the picket lines - of Second Life. The virtual protest echoed the real thing - bullhorns blared, IBM refused comment and no disciplinary action ensued."

"From fantasy to reality..." - indeed!

Doris Lessing

Sometimes a news alert can bring good news. Today, from the New York Times breaking headlines service, came the clip --

Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The Swedish Academy said that the 87-year-old British author "has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny" with "skepticism, fire and visionary power."

New York Times points to a Featured Author page on Doris Lessing with new and reviews from the archives of the NY Times. There are audio clips as well.

The New York Times recently opened its archives for free access. Registered members can get:

+ Articles from 1981 to present - free access
+ Articles from 1853 to 1980 - free access to articles in public domain
+ breaking news alerts
+ daily headlines from a section
+ a choice of newsletters (travel, movies, money etc)

The change in policy to make more content free is described in Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site (Sept 18, 2007)

The Times Online Fiction section had Comment: a fitting gift for Doris Lessing (Oct 11) also offering a quick overview of her writings. A search for doris lessing at the Times will find more.

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.

Sky's the limit

Google Sky Released, Google Blogscoped (Aug 22)

Google Earth has a virtual telescope to the sky where you can explore constellations and planets through images that Google has stitched together.

There is a full description in Introducing Sky in Google Earth , Forbes.

"With Sky, users can now float through the skies via Google Earth. This easy-to-use tool enables all Earth users to view and navigate through 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. High resolution imagery and informative overlays create a unique playground for visualizing and learning about space. "

To access Sky in Google Earth, download the newest version of Google Earth - available in 13 languages.

Aerial Shots

In Pictures: The Strangest Sights in Google Earth, PC World

Slide show of "odd and spectacular sights" seen through Google Earth.

Google SketchUp for 3D

Want to build pictures in 3D? Google SketchUp might be tool you need. It's free and there is a new Dummies book just on how to use it (and why). View the first chapter from Wiley.

Breaking News

Report on Internet Crash at the Onion.

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

Officials confirm that all online data has been lost after the Internet crashed and was forced to restart.

Google Game

Universal, Google are game for "Bourne" deal, Reuters Canada (Jul 12)

"Universal Pictures and Google announced a new online game, "The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google," that uses such Google tools as Search, Maps, Images and YouTube and serves as a promotional vehicle for the upcoming action feature "The Bourne Ultimatum."" ... "The game can be played at www.google.com/bourne until the film's release and will include exclusive clips from "Bourne Ultimatum.""

TUN3R for Internet Radio

TUN3R is a new Canadian-built (Toronto) Internet radio search engine where you can "dial" into stations from around the world. The FAQ page says it works best with Winamp Media Player. Also works with Real Player.

Personal Start Pages

Top 5 personalized start pages, Pandia (May 14)

What to look for in a personalized start page - rss, news, widgets etc - and where to look for it - Netvibes, Pageflakes, Protopage, My Webwag, and iGoogle.

Gadgets Galore

60 Gadgets in 60 Minutes - presentation at SLA 2007 Conference by Barbara Fullerton, Brian Neale, Holly Pinto - always popular.

Google Hot Trends and Yahoo Buzz

Google Meme: Hot Trends Added To Google Trends by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 22)

"The Google Trends home page now has a section named "Hot Trends," which shows the hottest queries for the day. You can also look back historically and see the hottest queries for that day. Plus, Google Trends upgraded the trends history to show not only country data in the regions box but also state and even city detail - worldwide."

The Hot Trends are for the US - and on May 27, Jim Nabors was the hottest, spelled as nabors for first place and neighbors as third. Sad, whatever way you look at it. Seems Nabors won't be able to sing at the Indianapolis 500 because of illness. I mean no ill will to Nabors, but is this really all that people have to search about?

Yahoo has something like this in Yahoo Buzz, which has daily and weekly scores for top subjects and features articles about the buzz. Yahoo should make more of a buzz about this.

There is also a Yahoo Canada Buzz, but the list of top 10 searches for the weeks is too embarrassing to grace with a hyperlink.

Who Uses Tech Toys?

Pew Research: 'Web 2.0' Crowd A Small Minority by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (May 7)

Summarizes the recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project on the use of "modern information gadgetry".

Which are you?

• Elite user (31%)


• Middle of the road (20%)


• Limited use of technology (49%)

At PEW - Technology and Media Use (May 6)

Postscript: Test yourself with the Pew / Internet quiz - "Answer a few questions to see where you fit in the new typology of information and
communication technology users developed by the Pew Internet Project."http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/

And since we are on the subject of information overload, the Walrus Magazine has a terrific article in the April issue - Driven to Distraction by John Lorinc.

Are you packing a crate of electronic devices and also feeling tired and overwhelmed. There could be a connection.

"Even before this all-in-one technology makes its grand debut, we are revelling in the miracle of nearly ubiquitous connectivity. But all this access has not come without a psychological cost that is ultimately rooted in the way our brains function. If we now find ourselves adrift in an ocean of information, our mental state increasingly resembles the slivered surface of a melting glacier. As the dozens of studies at interruptions.net attest, we have created a technological miasma that inundates us with an inexhaustible supply of electronic distractions. Rather than providing necessary interruptions to assist us in focusing on the incomplete task at hand, as Zeigarnik proposed, the deluge of multi-channel signals has produced an array of concentration-related problems, including lost productivity, cognitive overload, and a wearying diminishment in our ability to retain the very information we consume with such voraciousness. It may be that our hyper-connected world has quite simply made it difficult for us to think."

Yahoo Photos Flickring

Yahoo Photos going dark as Flickr shines on, USA Today (May 4)

But I liked Yahoo Photos!

"Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos — for years, the No. 1 or No. 2 most-visited photo site on the Web. Its users will be directed to move their pictures to Yahoo's hot upstart, Flickr." ... "Yahoo Photos is a static photo-sharing site, with links to offers to buy prints and accessories. Flickr is a social community, like MySpace and YouTube, where members can search through photos and comment on them."

Article has some market share figures. Top photo sharing sites is Photobucket with 40%, and Yahoo Photos had 5.7% still more than Flickr at 3.1%. Google Photos is not on the list yet - maybe disgruntled Yahoo Photo uses will move there.

Internet for Everyday

Hanging Pictures in Your Home - Web sites show how to do it right the first time by by Ken Rubino, LinkUP, Information Today (May 1)

If you ever thought time on the Web was a waste, here's the antidote - web pages that can help you figure out where to hang pictures in your home.

Another worthy topic would be how to get rid of mice (no kidding).

2007 Webby Awards

Webbies celebrate the best of the net, CBC News (May 1)

This is the 11th year of the Webby Awards for excellence in web design. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences selects the nominees and the winner of the Webby Award, and the public votes to pick the People's Voice.

Get the complete list of Webby Awards for 2007.. There are over 70 categories with something to delight and interest everyone, not to mention surprise.

For example, in the category of Best Copy / Writing, HowStuffWorks won over New Yorker and Slate. HowStuffWorks is good, but better than the New Yorker? HowStuffWorks also won for Education.

Want to see the best in navigation? There are no drop-down menus at IKEA Dream Kitchen . The music is good too.

If you're doing green, People's choice for a cultural/personal blog is the Treehugger.com.

Out of all the Health verticals now available, WebMD was the only entry in the Health category and it won People's Choice. The judges picked That Guy - which seemed to have nothing to do with health. Why?. Dig deeper into ThatGuy and you'll find the site was funded by the Department of Defense to encourage young servicemen not to binge drink.

No surprise that BBC News won for News and BBC Radio for radio but CBC Radio 3 got on the short list. British swept the news awards - Guardian Unlimited won for newspaper. However, the US NPR did win for its podcasts.

Lots more - I'll end with Lifestyle where BP Global's Carbon footprint calculator was the judge's pick.

[Postscript (May 5): Trehugger.com This is a Canadian site founded by Quebec-born Graham Hill. Ken Rother is the CEO and president - he co-founded Mountail Lake Software with Bill Tapscott. The site has 1.4 million viewers.

Canadian website wins coveted Webby - 'This is actually better than an Oscar,' says president of Treehugger.com] - by Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail (May 2)

Has a list of Notable Webby Winners. ]

Gadgets you might need

Gadgets, Gadgets, Gadgets [pdf] - presentation to Computers in Libraries (April 16)

- Barbara Fullerton, Manager, Librarian Relations, 10-K
- Sabrina Pacifici, Editor & Publisher, LLRX.com & beSpacific.com
- Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library

My favourite was the cordinator, but the iCharge for the iPod looks good too.

Have a Laugh

The Lighter Side of Technology - YukITup from itWorldCanada - oh lovely.

Wikipedia and Pop Culture

Wikipedia's pop culture addiction, CNet News (Apr 10)

CNet News staff love Wikipedia for its coverage of pop culture. They have put together this album of 14 photos and commentary showing just to what extent Wikipedia has more on pop culture than related but more serious topics. It may make some look more favourably on Wikipedia, or (my guess) less favourably.

English Dialects

British Library launches Sounds Familiar, an interactive spoken English website, British Library (Mar 28 2007)

" Sounds Familiar is the only English language website of its kind. It features 72 recordings of regional accents and dialects from every corner of the UK, some recorded in the 1950s and some almost half a century later, in 1998-1999, making it possible for users to explore how spoken English varies regionally and how accents and dialects have changed over time."

Search Engine Trivia Game

Watch Bill Gates Fight Larry Page, SEW Blog (Mar 27)

A game! Pit one big search engine guy against another. It's Search Engine Smackdown . Helps to have been following search engine news for a few years.

April Fools from Google

Welcome to Google TiSP - a flushing-good wifi solution from Google (April Fools Day)

Onion News on Video

It takes a comedian by Jack Kapica, Cyberia, Globe and Mail (Mar 27)

The Onion, the wonderful satiric news site and paper, is going to add videos to its salvos.

"The Onion, a satirical fake-news website that has offered up a lot of smirks and giggles if not outright belly laughs, is launching an online version of its pseudo-newspaper format, a news program with an anchor (Michele Ammon, an actress who plays the newsreader Jean Anne Wharton, pictured at left). The Onion News Network will start as two video clips per week, and move on from there."

Start watching now - there are links to videos at http://www.theonion.com/content/

Pic2Color

Get Color Schemes from Pictures, ResearchBuzz (Feb 17)

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

Reading and 1812

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

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

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

Music Recommenders

Web 2.0 offers whole new tune, Matthew Ingram, Globe and Mail (Jan 23) "As the Web evolves with more sites and services incorporating the interactivity and community design, the kinds of things available to music fans also evolv."

Describes some services for finding music, often through recommender systems - last.fm, Pandora, Yahoo Launchcast and others.

Tech Stories 2006

The Top 10 Tech Stories of 2006 "Mergers, acquisitions, lawsuits, scandals, and battery recalls kept journalists busy in 2006" Marc Ferranti, IDG News Service via PC World (Dec 22)

What Canadians Search For

How Canadians are different from Americans judging from the top 10 searches recorded by Yahoo - as reported by Jack Kapica in Cyberia.

"In Canada, the top-10 list is as follows: 1) NHL; 2) FIFA World Cup; 3) American Idol; 4) RockStar Supernova; 5) World Wrestling Entertainment; 6) Neopets; 7) Revenue Canada; 8) Days of Our Lives; 9) Environment Canada; 10) Jessica Simpson.

The top-10 U.S. Searches were: 1) Britney Spears; 2) WWE; 3) Shakira; 4) Jessica Simpson; 5) Paris Hilton; 6. American Idol; 7. Beyoncé Knowles; 8) Chris Brown; 9) Pamela Anderson; 10) Lindsay Lohan. "

End of Year

2006 Top Searches - And What a Year it Was, Yahoo Blog (Dec 4) - It is that time of year again when the search engines report on what interested their users. Yahoo is first out - searh, news, and video

Yahoo Food

Yahoo to Launch Web Site Devoted to Food by Gary Gentile, AP (Nov 2)

Gotta be a winner - just in time for American Thanksgiving comes this new food site from Yahoo - Yahoo Food

"Yahoo Inc. is launching a new site devoted to food that will feature videos and other content from celebrity chefs such as Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart."

Web site for word lovers

wordiq -- "We offer search results from a diverse array of dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and other valuable references. Our website is completely free with minimal amounts of advertising so that you can maximize your learning experience."

Learned about this through the great newsletter - NeatNetTricks.

Book Reviews

My Favourite Tipples from FreePint (Oct ) lists sites selected by Janet Moore for help in choosing new books to read, especially novels.

Book Sales

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

Book Sale Scout - US cities. Takes classifieds.

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

Backpackit Organizer

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

Picasa Web Albums

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

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

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

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

New Words

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

Back to Online School

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

Corel's Free Image Software

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

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

Online Photos

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

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

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

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

Bookfinder.com Report

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

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

Zoho web-based tools

All Zoho All the Time: A Growing List of Free Web-Based Tools Getting Better (and Growing) ResourceShelf (Aug 13) recommends Zoho.com for web-based tools for word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, polls, planners, web site monitoring. One word - WOW.

Yahoo Photos

Yahoo, Flickr May Share Features - Photo services stay independent, but both will offer image-sharing and tagging features - by Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World (Aug 17)

U.S. users of Yahoo Photos will get new tagging features and a "retooled user interface that functions like a desktop PC application with drag-and-drop functionality.".

News about Picasa

Google Buys Company to Boost Photo Management - Neven Vision acquisition expected to bolster portal's Picasa photo management software and service. By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service (Aug 15)

Wonderful -- "Google plans to strengthen its Picasa photo management software and service with the acquisition of Neven Vision, a Santa Monica, California, company specializing in mobile photo search."

Using All Recipes

AllRecipes.com’s Ingredient Search and Recipe Time Search, ResourceShelf (Aug 10) - what a good idea - find a recipe that will use up those leftovers. <b>All Recipes has it.

Wikipedia's Chief Contributor

Prolific Canadian is king of Wikipedia "With more than 80,000 articles under his belt, Ottawa man is the on-line resource's busiest contributor" by Alexandra Shimo, Globe and Mail (AUg 4)

Simon Pulsifer, a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, is devoted to the continuance and quality of Wikipedia. He has posted 2 to 3 thousand new articles - "Mr. Pulsifer's thousands of articles cover a broad variety of topics, including Canadian and U.S. history, international and Canadian politics, economics and current affairs. He has written featured articles, those profiled on Wikipedia's opening page, on the military history of Canada, the Italian Renaissance, the Marshall Plan, the economy of Africa, the history of Central Asia, among others." - and edited some 78,000. Of interest - his mother is a librarian.

There are some new words in this article - Wikipedians (people who post and edit), Wikipediholism (addicted to being a Wikipedian), and editcountitis (addicted to editing).

Google Photos Coming

Google does a Flickr -- 'My Picasa is your Picasa' By Elinor Mills, Silicon.com (June 14)

Google is adding online storage and photo sharing a la Flickr to Picasa, its photo management software. Initially this will be available only to GMail account holders by invitation. http://picasaweb.google.com

"Picasa Web Album is designed to let people easily upload and store their photos online. Uploaded albums can be public and available to anyone who knows the Gmail account under which they're listed, or private ("unlisted") and available only by way of a special link Picasa users can send to whomever they wish."

Sounds great but the shutterbug has much to choose from. Yahoo has a new photos site (photos.yahoo.com), and of course there is Flickr, plus numerous sites by the camera makers.

But Google's will surely be popular. Time for everyone to apply for a GMail account just to take advantage of these other services.

Add serendipity to your life with StumbleUpon

CYBERIA: Happy stumbling by Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail (May 16)

"Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and Justin LaFrance have created StumbleUpon, a browser plug-in (or extension) for Mozilla's Firefox browser, which is designed to surprise surfers.

StumbleUpon places a button on the Mozilla browser, and with a (free) registration, surfers tell the plug-in their personal preferences by checking radio buttons from a long list of interests. Then when they click the "Stumble" button, the browser delivers them to websites, news articles, photos, videos, or Wikipedia pages according to the listed preferences."

I'm game.

Google Trends

Interested in culture mining on the Internet? Google Trends is a new tool for watching the popularity of topics on the Web and in the News. It has two parts:

1) Compares search volume on terms based on Google's records of people's queries and "normalizes" them.

2) Determines how often the terms have appeared in the news.

Both types can be restricted to a country and by year.

You can compare up to 5 topics, separated by commas. There are more options for searching search volume as follows:
* compare one against the other -- stephen harper, paul martin
* either of two terms -- "stephen harper" | "harper government"
* exclude terms -- "david miller" -crime

They don't apply to the news search - a pity, since that is where we'd like to use them.

Let's try it. For lack of any scintilating topic, let's compare neil young to shania twain. Search volume for Shania far exceeded that for Neil until 2006, when Shania's dropped.

Most volume was in Canada, in both French and English, and mostly in Winnipeg.

There are news stories and a chart for news reference that show Neil was getting more than Shania, likely due to the Neil Young Heart of Gold movie.

Compare two mayors: David Miller in Toronto and Michael Bloomberg in New York. Miller receives many more searches and Bloomberg much more news.

We should take all of this with a shaker of salt. In these comparisons we can't specify we mean David Miller the mayor. We don't know whether Google is taking a representative sampling of search volume or news stories to make this comparison meaningful.

There are some strange figures when you limit the search to Canada. For one, there are no news stories. Secondly, the city mix for the searches is odd. On stephen harper, bob rae, Ottawa shows as a city where these search terms came up, but not Toronto.

ResearchBuzz in First Look: Google Trends (May 10) kicked the tires on this one too.

But Jack Schofield at the Guardian said -- Google Trends - great time waster, and so did several of his readers.

PolyGlot Translator

Polly Glotto Translates and Reads Translations, ResearchBuzz (May 10) - Polly is an avatar who will translate words from one language to another and also speak them! The service is called Polly Glotto and was developed by Eric Iverson in Minnesota.

"An animated talking language translator. It's a mashup between Google Translate and SitePal. Polly Glotto is available at http://www.pollyglotto.com/ ."

CNet Review of Google Sketchup

CNet editors rated Google Sketchup, a 3D drawing program, 8 out of 10. Want to try it? There is a video review, text review, page of specifications, and a download link at CNet's Google Sketchup page.

Google 3D Drawing Tool

Review: Google SketchUp Beta, by Lance Ulanoff, Publish (ZdNet) (Apr 27)

"Google SketchUp Beta, the brand new, free 3D drawing tool isn't an obvious fit for the Google desktop application canon. However, this blend of vector-based 3D drawing and CAD-like control lets you rapidly build 3D models that can be exported to numerous bitmap and compressed file formats and, more importantly, geo-coded and shared on the company's Google Earth satellite imagery program, which is also free. So, it's a undeniably cool, oddball app that has the potential to turn one of Google's most popular services, Google Earth, into an even more powerful and personal tool."

Google Page Creator

Google now provides web space to its members with Google Page Creator: put up photos, travelogues - whatever. This probably completes the picture for Google as a consumer portal.

"Google Page Creator is a free tool that lets you create web pages right in your browser and publish them to the web with one click. There's no software to download and no web designer to hire. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and are available at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com for the world to see."

You need a GMail account to do this, but this page will take you to a free sign-up for that too.

Free and Useful Tools

101 Fabulous Freebies by Dylan Tweney, PC WOrld (May issue)

Assembles "useful downloads, sites, and services" -- "... best free software and services you can find. These are the real deal--no hobbled half-products or demos that time out after 30 days." Covers web-based email, online search, reference tools, instant messengers, places for storing and sharing files.

Name That Tune

What's that tune? Search tool knows, Mercury News (Apr 3) -- Tunatic can tell you the title of a song you're hearing and the performing artist. It will also display links for learning more and buying the CD. Install the software, and then point your microphone at the sound source.

Google Maps Hacks

Hacking Google Maps by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Apr 5) - People keen on the mashups of Google maps with anything else will love this book.

"Like the other books in O'Reilly's Hacks series, this book offers up seventy "hacks" that range from descriptions of features or websites, to detailed scripts that require more than a passing understanding of programming to make sense."

TV Guide

MeeVee Announces Official Launch of Video Search and Personalization Service; MeeVee.com Offers Consumers a One-Stop Destination to Search for and Find Something to Watch in the Vastly Changing World of Traditional Television and Internet TV, Business Wire via Marketwatch (April 3) - for television addicts. Only in the United States - pity.

April Fool's

Google buys the French National Library, Pandia (April 1) "Google announced today that it has taken over control of the French National Library. It managed to do so buy taking over rights belonging to the French Bourbon family."

Virtual Decorator

Virtual Decorating -- Free Sites Take the Guessing Out of Interior Home Design -- by Roberta Roberti, LinkUp Digital (Mar 1) -- No more driving around to pick up swatches and chips when decorating. Use the web sites recommended in this article instead. All were free and considered easy to use. The author recommended turning off the pop-up blocker at some sites. To this piece of advice I add, be patient with downloads of flash files and other interactive applications.

Zillow for US house valuations

Finding the Values of U.S. Homes by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Mar 15) -- Zillow will provide approximate valuations for homes in a neighbourhood in the United States. This has zoomable maps, aerial views, details on the house, and a zestimator for tweaking the estimate. Seems this is a growth field. The inventors, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, founded Expedia.

International Museum of Women

New World Library, Yahoo! Team up for Global Women's Project by Bridget Kinsella , PW Daily -- 3/9/2006

Look for Yahoo's celebrity blog to accompany the publication of a new book about and by women -- Imagining Ourselves: a global generation of women.

"Yahoo! is teaming up with the International Museum of Women for a project tied to the publication of Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices for a New Generation of Women, an anthology of essays, art and poetry by women from across the globe edited by Paula Goldman and published by New World Library. New World has already shipped 12,000 copies of the title, but there's more to the project than simply a book release."

TV Guide Adds Video

TVGuide.com Launches Enhanced Search Product, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Feb 28)

TVGuide.com has used the FAST search technology to enhance searching of its collection of text, documents, images and multimedia. TVGuide has local listings for customers in the United States, and picks up listings of some providers in Canada (but not Rogers).

"TVGuide.com ( www.tvguide.com) has launched a new online search product, it was announced today by Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc.
Debuting today, the enhanced search engine provides consumers with a uniquely relevant and comprehensive experience by integrating online video with the breadth and depth of TV Guide's database of listings, photos, show and episode descriptions, news, reviews, ratings, celebrity information, podcasts, TV Guide magazine covers, and other information."

Organizing digital photos

The network effect of photo sharing - Commentary: Managing our digital mess is getting bigger by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Jan 12)

Digital photos may bury us. People take an average of 2,000 photos a year with a digital camera, and the global volume of prints is 101 billion. We will need help in organizing our digital photos and videos. Francisco mentions several companies that are in this business. This is a growing market - others will appear.

The two top photo sites are Yahoo Photos and CNet's Webshots.com. Google has stepped into inviting video submissions. Blogs are loaded with photos. And there are also sites like Filmloop.com and Slide.com for photo sharing.

Flickr is not mentioned, but maybe it's because it is so well known. There are many other services for managing digital photos. How does one select from all these? And what are the risks?

Tech Gadgets

The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years by CNet News (Dec 24)

From the last 40 years what would you pick? Then read the article to see what PC World chose as greatest gadgets.

"The rules? The devices had to be relatively small (no cars or big-screen TVs, for example), and we considered only those items whose digital descendants are covered in PC World (cameras, yes; blenders, no). We rated each gadget on its usefulness, design, degree of innovation, and influence on subsequent gadgets, as well as the ineffable quality we called the "cool factor." Then we tallied the results."

Gadget Lovers

fosfor gadgets - Great blog for people who love gadgets and new tech things. Also picks up movies and items about photos.

Treat Yourself to Alice in Wonderland

Did you love Alice in Wonderland? Lewis Carroll's manuscript in his handwriting and with illustrations can be viewed online, page by page, at the British Library's online library. Lewis Carroll's Alice. Have your computer read to you by clicking on the Audio button, and follow along just as you may have done as a child. You can also see the text in print, and magnify parts of the page. This e-book is done in Shockwave and is a complete pleasure to view - brilliant. Treat yourself. Find a half-hour, find your favourite section in the book, and sit back to be read to.

If you'd like to download the book, English Grammar 4U Online has links to Project Gutenberg for copies and also offers some exercises. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Academy of Television at Google Video

Google Announces Partnership for Free Viewing EContent (Oct 28) - Good news for all TV program buffs -- "Google and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation has announced a joint effort to make the Foundation's Archive of American Television interviews available for free viewing on Google Video. This collection includes interviews with Alan Alda, Dick Wolf, Steven Bochco and other television actors, writers, producers, and directors."

Back to Books

Make your own library with LibraryThing by By Lars Iselid, InternetBrus, Pandia Search (Sep 27)

"LibraryThing, which was launched in Beta in August, is a service similar to the bookmark service Del.icio.us and the photo sharing service Flickr. As you have probably guessed, LibraryThing organizes books."

Digital Duo

New online e-magazine from PC World - Digital Duo - "an independent, irreverent video review of all things digital. Hosted by Stephen Manes and Angela Gunn."

"In each episode of PC World's Digital Duo, Stephen Manes, columnist for PC World and Forbes, teams with tech writer Angela Gunn of USAToday.com to test, talk over, and--when necessary--tear into the gadgets and gear that make up the current digital-tech landscape."

Out-of-Print Books

What out-of-print books are people searching for? Bookfinder, online since 1997, tracks the titles. See The Bookfinder Report. There are some surprises - people are still reading Taylor Caldwell.

Spotted on the ResourceShelf (Sept 10)

Guess the Search Terms

There's a new game on the Web to entertain searchers. It's done in Flash and is called Guess-the-Google. View the images and then guess the search term; build up your score. Lots of fun.

Fun stats from Amazon

Amazon's Vital Statistics Show How Books Stack Up By Linton Weeks, Washington Post (Aug 29) [subscription required] Search-Inside-a-Book at Amazon not only gives you access to selected pages of a book, but it counts words - all the words, and unusual phrases (called Statistically Improbable Phrases - SIPs) - while also assessing complexity. Text Stats has a score for Fog Index - "Conceived by the late Robert Gunning, an English professor at Oxford University, the index states the number of years of formal education you should have in order to read and comprehend a random passage."

You can see an example with Ulysses by James Joyce. Note the SIPs and CAPS. Then move down the page to see Inside this Book and a link for Text Stats. You'll find that Ulysses has a low fog index and a low complexity index.

Compare this to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

Not all search-inside books have these analyses. Look for CAPs and SIPs at the top of the page, then scroll down to Inside This book.

Amazon online photo developing

Amazon.com to offer photo service with Shutterfly Reuters (Aug 22)

"Web retailer Amazon.com on Monday said it would offer online photo developing services through a partnership with leading Internet photo service Shutterfly as it targets a fast-growing market."

Flickr Photo Clusters

Yahoo's Flickr Adds New Features SEW Blog (Aug 8) - Flickr now shows the most popular photos and can cluster them on a search by the terms (tags).

I tried a search on Ontario . Clusters were appropriate: canada, toronto, kingston, hamilton, lakeontario - but oh my the pictures are mixed up. A stencil of Bill Murray tagged with the term Toronto? It came from toronto graffiti. There was also a beautiful photo of Malinge Lake in the Rockies tagged as Toronto.

Sharing Photos

Diversity Among Photo Sites Is in the Frills By Sacha Cohen, The Washington Post, Sunday, August 7, 2005 --- there are many net services for sharing photos but how do you chose?

"But among five of the most popular photo-sharing sites -- Kodak EasyShare Gallery ( http://www.kodakgallery.com/ ), Shutterfly ( http://www.shutterfly.com/ ), Snapfish ( http://www.snapfish.com/ ), Webshots ( http://www.webshots.com/ ) and Yahoo Photos ( http://photos.yahoo.com/ ) -- a few key differences emerge in such areas as their prices, how you can upload photos and what sort of photo-based gifts you can create."

PCWorld Digital Duo

Something new to fit into one's information-gathering schedule - Digital Duo at PC World with Stephen Manes and Angela Gunn. It's a video magazine on topics somewhat related to digital or as they say at the site "independent, irreverent video review of all things digital". Last three shows have been about digital video, tips for travelling, and high-tech gear for the outdoors. Each "show" has segments - pick the ones you want. Video plays inside the browser.

For Digi-Bugs

Triscape FxFoto is another tool for digital camera users for " importing, organizing, fixing, annotating, e-mailing and printing all of your digital photos" - for free. The deluxe versions (at $29.99 or $39.99) have more creativity features and media support. Web site has a very nice tour showing the features and how to use this software to touch up photos and organize them.

Looks very enticing.

FxFoto 3.0.054 was reviewed in the Internet Scout Report (June 24)

Digital Camera Focus

News.com has special coverage on digital cameras - Zooming in on Cameras - with articles from various sources. Page is available as a RSS feed.

This month there are several from the New York Times including:

On photoblogs, there are no mundane shots (June 12) - Photoblogs are "Web sites that are part visual diary, part photo gallery, where in recent years anyone with a digital camera and Internet connection can take part. " Fotolog.net and Flickr.com are two sites.

Less cursing, better pictures: 10 suggestions including one on how to end shutter lag.

Geek Watch

Catch this list of finds by Mathew Ingram at the Globe and Mail of new, far out inventions. If it's cool we'll find it. Entries go back one year. There is a mini-plane - two adults can lift it, mini-helicopter, several watches, wireless devices, some podcasting.

For cat lovers there is the Flo Control Project that is about image recognition. Boris Tsikanovsky outside Seattle built a cat flap door that lets only his cat into the house and only when the cat isn't carrying an animal. See the video from this page about the High Tech Cat Door.

Yahoo Movie Recommendations

This will keep me coming back to Yahoo. Where music and video and social networking didn't, movie recommendations will. Yahoo Launches Personalized Movie Recommendations By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (May 25)

"Movie recommendations from Yahoo! movies provides personalized recommendations for both current and past films playing in theaters, on TV or on DVD/video. It's easy to use—simply enter your age range and gender (this is optional, but can help focus the recommendations you receive), indicate whether you lean more toward Hollywood-type or independent films, and rate a few movies that you've already seen."

Need an account with Yahoo. Rating movies is easy to do. Recommendations are in the ballpark.

Toronto Blogs

Some blogs around and about Toronto.

Reading Toronto - a city is a book with 100,000 million poems. This is a "forum for innovative design and culture in the city". James Adams in the article At last a blog for design works (Globe and Mail, May 7) said, "Reading Toronto made its bow on March 30, courtesy of the Design Exchange and Digifest, "Canada's annual showcase of digital culture," with Robert Ouellette as its producer and editor" ... "determined to make Reading Toronto "the sort of place where you can find a rather complex essay on, say, bricks or a tribute to the bartender at the Drake Hotel.""

There were a few others mentioned in a post to the SLA Toronto listserv are:

Torontoist - About Toronto and what happens in it. Has categories for arts and events, city, sports.

BlogTO - with sections on Arts, Eating, Fashion, Film, Music, Podcasts - more.

Art is Everywhere - a photo blog.

Tech Stories

The Digital Download - Ten Must-Read Tech Stories, by Penelope Patsuris, Forbes (May 6) -- This is a weekly feature and available through RSS from Forbes. Stories are picked up from Wired, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and many others. Very eclectic on technology, especially the Internet.

Forbes also has an alerting system for members called Attaché.

Fine Art Photography

Fine Art Photography on the Web, by Ken Rubino in LinkUp Digital (Apr 15) Has answers for:

" So, what are some true fine art photography Web sites where you may look, appreciate, and perhaps purchase pieces without fear of having them eventually fade?

And what different types of photography are there? Where might you browse and feel comfortable in the knowledge that the photographer is, in fact, a fine art photographer?"

Your Google Map

HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map at engadget (Mar 8) - "This how-to will show you how to make your own annotated Google map from your own GPS data. Plus, you’ll be able to tie in images and video to create an interactive multimedia map. " Need a GPS device and digital camera - just to start.

Found by ResearchBuzz who will try it out. Make Your Own Google Maps Mashups

Film Blog

Love film? Ain't It Cool News, a blog by Harry Knowles, watches the news and does reviews. New York Times noticed him -- Anticoolnews.com is cool in blogsphere -- New York Times via Globe and Mail. (Apr 4)

Yahoo! Canada Music

Yahoo! Music Canada Goes Live - Globe and Mail (March 31)

"Yahoo! Music, Canada provides music fans with a wide range of audio and video music and music-related editorial content free of charge to Yahoo! Canada registered users. Users can visit http://music.yahoo.ca to register or sign-in with their Yahoo! ID. From there music fans can begin to customize their music experience."

This works with Internet Explorer, not Firefox or other "netscape-based" browser. Also - turn off those popup blockers.

The main advantage of Canadians using this version rather than the US Yahoo Launchcast is that Yahoo! Canada subscribers might rate the music and videos differently. Can't imagine that there would be any difference in the music and video collections. However, the front pages for the US and Canada versions will target their audiences through different news, features, and advertisements.

Google Honours Van Gogh

Google has a adopted a logo in the style of Van Gogh presumably to honour his birthday on March 30, 1853.

A search for Vincent Van Gogh shows off Google's capabilities quite nicely.

+ Click on definition to get the entry from Answers.com
+ News Results - there's a Van Gogh exhibition taking place at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
+ Book results - links to Google Print for Van Gogh Drawings where you'll be able to view three black and white drawings.
+ Selected images - maybe - showed on first search and not on second. If you don't see any, click on the Images tab.
+ Click on Froogle to shop for prints.

Note that the Book results will only appear with a search for vincent van gogh without " to mark the phrase, and only at google.com - not google.ca or google.co.uk or any other domain.

Movie Trailers

Digital History has a collection of film trailers for educational use. Trailers at this website are " original works of authorship, government records, works for which copyright permission has expired, works reprinted with permission, or works that we believe are within the fair use protection of the copyright laws". View by title or by date.

Digital History is an "online textbook" that presents the history of the United States from the Revolution to the present through various multimedia audio segments.

Mentioned in ResearchBuzz. (Mar 10)

Night at the Oscars (Movies)

Academy Awards Database from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is back online.

From the help page: "There are three search screens: Basic, Advanced and Statistical. The Basic screen allows searching on the five main components of Academy Award data: film title, nominee, award category, award year and song title. The Advanced screen expands the capabilities of the Basic by providing additional searchable fields, indexes and delimiters, and allowing the creation of more complex searches with the use of Boolean operators. The Statistical screen allows one to search for films or nominees that meet a definable set of criteria (e.g. films with ten or more nominations; nominees with three or more nominations in a single year)."

Reviewed in ResourceShelf - Resources (Feb 27) - mentions the creators, Librarians Libby Wertin and Lucia Schultz and Information Systems Coordinator Vionette Sellars. It took 2 years to create this restructured database.

Movie Recommendations

Yahoo can recommend movies at Yahoo Movies. You have to login in because this is a personalized tool. Greg Linden says that the recommendation engine is ChoiceStream that matches on metadata.

Others are Movie Lens which uses collaborative filtering, mentioned in Search Engine Watch Blog.

Also NetFlix, the online rental movie company in the US, has a recommender system.

Celebrities on Ask Jeeves UK

Hello! and Ask Jeeves team up for celebrity searches in Revolution (Feb 18) Hello Magazine in the UK will be supplying information on celebrities to Ask Jeeves UK.

"Users performing a search for a famous UK celebrity will receive a picture and be able to read text directly on the page. They can then click on the More function to read the full profile on hellomagazine.com."

Movies at Google

Google has a new shortcut for finding reviews and showtimes of movies.

Get movie reviews showing short blurb and the rating just by entering the name of the movie. Movies are grouped into positive, neutral, and negative reviews. Sort by relevance, date, and rating. Page also has frequently mentioned terms. US residents can also find showtimes and theatres in their area by entering city or zip code.

If you can't remember the title but can remember some bits of the movie, use movie: ; for example -- movie: underwater cousteau - finds The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (along with others).

Of course coverage of current movies will be best, but there are reviews going back to 1930s and 1940s, thanks in part to the New York Times Movies section.

Movie fans will love it.

MiniLyrics does Karaoke

Singalong music fans will beat a path to MiniLyrics. This is a viewer that will automatically display in time with the music the lyrics of songs being played from MP3 files. Supported players include Winamp , RealOne, iTunes, Windows Media Players, matchbox, Quintessenial Player, Foobar2000. These will be current popular songs. And it's free. Requires Windows 2000 and later. At least watch the demo.

MiniLyrics 3.3.137
http://www.philocode.com/minilyrics/index.htm

Mentioned in Interent Scout Feb 18, 2005

Jacso on Ebert

Another review of a service by Peter Jacso - this time the RogerEbert.com site for movie reviews. Jacso's review provides good overview of the best in film information on the Web -- "Movie fans have been spoiled rotten by the best free databases on the Web, which have been graced by such gems as the widely popular Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and All Movie Guide (AMG) from the early days. The New York Times Movie Reviews database added more than just a venerable collection to the Web for free, it made the Web more respected by conservative, technophobe cinema fans. Then came the lesser-known Rotten Tomatoes site with — among others — superbly consolidated, aggregated and sorted reviews. It, in turn, must have inspired the creation of the fine Metacritic site, which took this idea one level higher by extending the high-brow aggregation and integration of reviews from hundreds of newspaper, magazine and Web site sources beyond movies and into music, software and books." Essentially recommends we use IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes to get Ebert's reviews.

Onion on Google

Now the wonderful satiric Onion is giving Google some press. Google in 2005 (Feb 2)

Free Tool For Online Presentations and Co-surfing

Online Collaboration At No Cost - Advanced Reality's browser plug-in allows two or more people in different locations to surf the Web together. By Thomas Claburn, Information Week (Jan 24) Jybe lets you surf the Web with other people - friends, co-workers, clients. It's a plugin that will work with IE 6.0 and Firefox 1.0 on WIndows 2000 and up or Firefox 1.0 on Linux and Mac OS.

Release 1.0 supports:

* Browse websites in real time
* Chat with friends in real time
* Multiple people browsing at the same time - 2,3,4 etc.
* Present online PowerPoint presentations right from the browser

Limitations:

* Only the first browser window is collaborative
* Popups are not collaborative
* Sites with login cookies will not work
* Collaborative data entry is not supported

More is promised.

Meantime WebEx has also introduced some lower cost options for online conferencing.

WebEx Readies Remote Access App "MyWebExPC service will be available in free and subscription versions." Joris Evers, IDG News Service (Jan 24)

"WebEx's free MyWebExPC lets a user control a remote PC through a standard Web browser. The Pro version, priced at $9.95 a month, offers extras such as remote printing, full color support, and enhanced security, including control over which applications can be accessed remotely. It also has a feature that calls a user when logging in and requires the entry of a PIN on the phone before granting access."

Internet Radio - Clear Channel

Giants' new plans for Net radio by John Borland, Cnet (Jan 7) Clear Channel may compete head on with AOL, MSN and Yahoo for Internet Radio.

"By contrast, Clear Channel can take advantage of both the national and the local strengths of offline and online radio, Harrison said. The 1,200 radio stations owned by the company will serve as independent gateways into a network of online services, each with their own identity and "attitude," he [Eric Ronning, consultant] said."

Yahoo Home Entertainment

Yahoo taking aim at the digital living room Reuters via Mantra (Jan 6) Yahoo plans to "to deliver Web-based content and services to personal computers running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows XP Media Center software, which allows users to play music and movies and to view digital photos via television screens."

"Steve Boom, Yahoo’s senior vice president for broadband access and bundled services, said the Microsoft deal will enable users to access music, movies, photos and Internet-based services from the television using a remote control."

Turning Pages at the British Library

Turning the Pages lets viewers page through manuscripts online. It's being used at the British Library for several collections including Jane Austen's History of England and Leonardo's Notebook. National Library of Ireland has used it for portions of James Joyce's Ulysses. Requires Macromedia 8.5.

Speegle Speaks

Speegle Search Engine Talks to You RsearchBuzz (Nov 5) About Speegle ( http://www.speegle.co.uk), a search engine that speaks with a scottish accent. It also reads the news.

Yahoo Entertainment

Yahoo looking at new arena Delivery of online entertainment may be portal's future Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle (Nov 8) -- Yahoo intends to be ready for the much foreseen shift to digital entertainment. Former chariman of ABC television, Lloyd Braun, "is charged with overseeing Yahoo's entertainment and media properties, including movies, music, gaming, sports, news and finance." Article reviews Yahoo's earlier efforts at this.

"Yahoo's entertainment properties include a movie site that features film trailers and reviews. There's also Launch, a music destination where users can listen to online radio and watch music videos." And it has special content about the Apprentice.

Google bombs

SEMPO: Can't Get No Respect by Andrew Goodman. Traffick (Oct 10) What comes up in the top 10 at Google for coke, bush, kerry, and sempo? SEMPO, incidentally, is parody site about search engine marketing.

Audio Books

Downloading Audiobooks These digital files never go out of stock—besides that, you’re gonna love them! by J.A. Hitchcock Link Up Digital -- Don't cart around cassettes. Use an MP3 player and get audio books and articles from Audible.com. This article will get you started.

MRQE for movie buffs

ResourceShelf recommends the Movie Review Query Engine. . There are over 40,000 titles and 400,000 reviews. Also has lists for New Releases in the US, Most Popular Titles for last week (and other periods), several film festivals (but not Toronto's). Best yet - Top 100 Overlooked Films of the 1990s.

Motion Pictures--Reviews--Search Engines (Aug 5)
Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE)

Online movie reviews

Online Movie Sites Entertain, Inform By Robyn Greenspan (June 15, 2004) Online user reviews of movies influence the success of a movie and may predict it according to a recent MIT Sloan Study. By far the most visited site is IMDB.com - Internet Movie Database.

Encyclopedia of Television

The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago has put online its Encyclopedia of Television. It "includes more than 1,000 original essays from more than 250 contributors and examines specific programs and people, historic moments and trends, major policy disputes and such topics as violence, tabloid television and the quiz show scandal. It also includes histories of major television networks as well as broadcasting systems around the world and is complemented by resource materials, photos and bibliographical information." There is a long essay about Canadian programming and many old favourites here - Wojeck, Beachcombers, Front Page Challenge. Barbara Frum has an entry. Browse by letter. Entries are cross-indexed to other parts.

Masters of Cinema

Masters of Cinema has been picked by the Internet Scout Project as providing "links to information about DVD releases of such films, along with
articles about their technical specifications and clarion calls to the
companies providing such releases. " There is more foreign content than at most film buff sites.

WebEyes for easier viewing

Walter Mossberg at Wall Street Journal has found a way of Making the Internet A Little Easier On Aging Eyes It's a program for Windows called Web Eyes http://www.webeyes.us/ for $ 19.95 US. It can adjust any font and will also reformat a page to book style.

Avatars in Virtual Worlds

My Avatar, My Self Pick a virtual body and hang out in a massive simulated world: it may be the future of online interaction. By David Kushner Technology Review (April 2004) - Avatars and online worlds were once all the rage and then disappeared. Perhaps they'll have a revival to liven up personal interaction. Many virtual worlds have been for gaming.

"The key insight of the new virtual worlds is to allow people simply to share experiences with fellow cyber travelers, without forcing them to perform any particular tasks. Hygiene, in the new worlds, is a personal choice—not a survival skill. Rather than pitting people against one another, Rosedale says, the new software gives them the tools to express their personalities. “What’s interesting is creating a space that can be meaningfully altered to reflect your ego,” Rosedale says."

Best Magazines

The American Society of Magazine Editors have announced the National Magazine Award Finalists (March 17) These are called the Ellies. There is a category for General Excellence Online. Nominees are:

Beliefnet (http://www.beliefnet.com)
The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com)
CNET News.com (http://.news.com.com): Jai Singh, editor-in-chief
National Geographic Online (www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine):
Sky & Telescope.com (http://skyandtelescope.com)
Slate (http://slate.msn.com):

Famous People's Wills

Famous British wills available on-line AP via Globe and Mail (March 17)

The National Archives of Britain has published online about 100 wills dated from 1384 to 1858. Wills of William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth and others are available as colour images. Searching is free but viewing the image costs 3 Pounds. See http://www.documentsonline.pro.gov.uk

Be Tickled

Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know All About Me: Web Personality Tests By SAUL HANSELL. New York Times (March 8) - Tickle.com has a battery of personality tests for free and fee. It has expanded into social networking and dating.

Oscars on Broadband

MSNBC goes to the Oscars with The Big Picture: Your Guide to the Academy Awards. . See clips, make your choices. It's high-powered multimedia - very well done.

Mentioned in MSNBC.com's Latest 'Big Picture' Steve Outing E-Media Tidbits

Recording Internet Radio

Internet radio on the go - Recording software, devices addportability, time shifting By Sam Diaz, Mercury News (Feb 2) -- you don't have to stay by your big desktop computer with high-speed connection to listen to Internet Radio.

Products mentioned:

Appian Technologies has software for "taping" the radio program on a CD for transfer to a mobile device. "Replay Radio (www.replay-radio.com) not only allows listeners of streaming radio to instantly record the streaming audio with a click of the mouse, but also allows users to schedule recordings of favorite programs that stream."

Radio YourWay (http://www.pogoproducts.com/radio_yourway.html) is a portable, solid-state AM/FM radio recorder. It's really a radio but you can record programs and listen to either live or recorded. It operates as a dictaphone as well. It comes with a USB connection for file transfer to the computer.

Ibiquity Digital (http://www.ibiquity.com/) is working with HD Radio that will have TiVo capabilities.

Last word on year 2003

Jack Kapica gets the last word in his ruminations on Google's and Yahoo's reports on most popular searches in 2003. What we look for. Globe and Mail (Jan 2, 2004)

I agree with Kapica's remarks -- "I'm not sure what lists like this can tell us about ourselves, except that we love to make top-ten lists. I'm not sure I like to be part of a society whose primary obsession is a little blond singer, none of whose songs I can remember." People look for entertainment, celebrities and killers - very dismal.

However, Chris Sherman found more "refined" queries at Ask Jeeves' roundup. 2003's Most Wanted Search Terms. SearchDay (Jan 7, 2004)

Google 2003 Zeitgeist

Year-end report on most popular searches at Google in 2003 is in. Rumours fuel top Google searches BBC News (Jan 4)

"When it came to satisfying the British hunger for gossip and rumour, the web was the place to go in 2003, according to Google."

2003 Year-End Google Zeitgeist Search patterns, trends, and surprises.

Google keeps track by country too. Popular queries in Canada are much different to the US total. Iraq is not on the list, but the Loft Story from France is, along with Canada 411 (for phone numbers), several celibrities the Toronto Star and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Popular brands has only three Canadian entries - Air Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and WestJet. These figures will be somewhat distorted since some Canadians will be using the google.com site rather than google.ca.

It is interesting that the same celebrity names turn up in several of the country lists - Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, Christina Aquilera. Searchers in Japan and Italy, however, tend to stay with their own culture.

FunTrivia

Play trivia games at http://www.funtrivia.com/. Pick your category, find a group, form your own group, win a prize.

Blogs and Lists

Lots of lists and "best of" at Fimocolous (http://www.fimoculous.com/). January 2 entry on this weblog lists the top 30 blogs of the year. There is also a complete Year in Review 2003 with nearly 30 categories for lists - books, movies, news stories, tech / science, ideas and more. Rex Sorgatz in Minneapolis picks these up as part of his work watching media and culture.

Predictions

Where the Net Is Heading in 2004 by Alex Salkever. BusinessWeek Online (Dec 23) -- sees everyone gunning for Google. Also believes that the worldwide digital divide of poor to rich nation will shrik.

"The coming year will bring many more changes to the Internet compared to the past few years. That seems inevitable given how many more people will be using it, the key court cases coming down the pike that could affect it, and more capital investments and startups now looking at it as a rejuvenated source of income."

Top Searches 2003

Search Engine Giant Yahoo! Reveals the Year's Top Searches CPU Review (Dec 29)

In a year of war and pestilence people continue to be most interested in entertainment. Top 3 spots were taken by KaZaa, Harry Potter and "American Idol".

Get all the stats at http://search.yahoo.com/top2003

Top Searches 2003

The voyeurs at the search engines will be reporting top searches for the year. Lycos is first out with "The Top 100 items of the year 2003" at Lycos 50. There is an accompanying article to help us make some sense of KaZaA as the number one search. Otherwise it was Iraq, celebrities, sports, health and diet. Lycos 50 also has the 20 top news stories. Iraq War was the most popular (searched for) news story. West Nile Virus was on the list but not SARS.

At Google Zeitgeist the last monthly view available is for September 2003. Year-end figures aren't in sight yet.

Yahoo keeps a Buzz Index too. At this point in time (Dec 17) Paris Hilton in #1 outranks Saddam Hussein in #7 spot.

Google doppelgangers

I had lunch with my Google doppelganger by Robin Pascoe. Globe and Mail (Nov 27) "In this story, we don't see the dark side of globalization. It's a real, human, cross-cultural tale of finding commonalities and letting the rest take care of itself." - Robin Pascoe, reporter from North Vancouver, met her Google doppelganger, also a reporter, in Amsterdam.

Cook's Thesaurus

The Cook’s Thesaurus: Everything You Want to Know About Ingredients
by Roberta Roberti. LinkUp (Nov 15) -- Cook's Thesaurus (www.foodsubs.com) -- "an amazing collection of synonyms and pronunciations for just about every type of food you can think of. "

Paul Otlet and Information Architecture

Forgotten Forefather: Paul Otlet by Alex Wright (Nov 10) Boxes and Arrows - The concepts behind the Web and hypertext are not new. It's not just Vannevar Bush and the Memex machine in the 1940's, but 10 years earlier, Paul Otlet with a design for a scholar's workstation. Article provides a brief history of cataloguing and classification and the problems therein.

Answers to Questions you might have asked

University of Toronto experts answers those questions that we've always wondered about at Ask Us@UofT . - Why do onions make us cry? Are there ghosts at U of T? How did the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 week evolve? (though now we might asked, how was it destroyed?)

Googlewhacking

When Google puts a world out of whack Tom Reilly Guardian Unlimited (Oct 26) -- Googlewhacking is searching for two unrelated words at Google and only getting one page. The two words are a "googlewhack". It's become very popular as an Internet game especially in the UK.

Googlewhack.com is a web site where people can register their whacks. There are some great ones there -- like "ambitextrous scallywags" (this no longer produces one page because so many people have carried the story). The front page of Googlewhack has matched whacks to questions about Enron -- "Googlewhacking is about having fun with words and search, so political commentary can't be far behind! Here are a few recent pure whacks (exactly one result) along with our signature obvious question to enhance the pleasure. " The Whack Stack makes for some fun reading.

Frugal Living

Frugal Fun on the Web by Judith M. Levinton LinkUP (Sept 1) - A webliography of sites that can help you save money.

Desktop Weather

Weather.com has a new desktop application for following the weather. "For the selected city, the application delivers current conditions, 5-day and 10-day forecasts, hour-by-hour forecasts and averages and records for 80,000 locations worldwide in addition to features such as "Feels like" temperature, sunrise and sunset information, chance of precipitation, visibility, UV Index, dew point and more. " 7 day trial - $29.99 US / year

Weather Channel Premieres New Subscription Desktop Application Media Post (Aug 19)

Desktop Weather - Weather.com

Has international cities but only USA maps at this time.

Rex Murphy on Google

Rex Murphy, weekend columnist in the Globe and Mail (Aug 16) - Japes of Wrath - spent part of the power outage in Ontario running searches at Google for the name of the singer of "The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia". (Column is not online.) Some quotes will amuse ---

"No, I only know these things in the sense that I found them on Google, the scratch for every trivia itch".

"And such is Google's readiness and comprehensiveness - it is for our times what the Encyclopedia Britannica used to be when the world wasn't wired - I came away, not enlightened, but more cluttered than when I went in. We don't know more in the computer age; we plaster our brains with sticky notes."

Six Degrees of Separation

Columbia University ran an experiment with email to test the notion of "six degrees of separation" - that everyone can be linked to each other through just six people.

There was a list of 18 people to pick from as targets. 60,000 people participated in 166 countries. Researchers found that it took 5 to 7 email to reach the target.

Email experiment confirms six degrees of separation New Scientist (Aug 3)

New York Times looked at the figures more closely. Degrees of Separation Are Likely More Than 6, Especially in E-Mail Age by Kenneth Chang (Aug 12 )

"Of the 24,613 e-mail chains that were started, a mere 384, or fewer than 2 percent, reached their targets. The successful chains arrived quickly, requiring only four steps to get there. The rest foundered when someone in the middle did not forward the e-mail.

As in most social networks, it is not just a question of who knows whom, but who is willing to help. .. When the researchers asked people why they did not participate, less than 1 percent replied that they could not think of anyone to send the e-mail message to, suggesting that most simply did not want to be bothered."

Netscape has online courses

It may be that Netscape the portal will carry on while Netscape the browser fades away. It does have connections to AOL Time Warner publications. And now it has a learning center with a variety of online courses on computers and technology, entertainment, personal enrichment, relationships, and business. These are done in partnership with Powered Inc. Prices are set at $9.99 to $14.99 US plus materials. Courses run about 4 weeks.

Netscape and Powered, Inc. Collaborate to Launch New Online Education Service,. Press Release (AUg 5)