Internet News

Using URL Shorteners

A short look at URL Shorteners , Martin Belam, Fumsi (Aug)

We use url shorteners to abbreviate long complicated urls to something that can be inserted to an email or a tweet. This article gives the background, and reminds us that there can be problems in using the shortener.

Tools for exploiting the site: operator

New Awesome Ways to Search within Current Site (Using Google), Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Aug 27)

The site operator at Google and other web search engines is very powerful - dig into individual sites, analyze your own site. Ann Smarty gives us some tools to get more mileage out of site search.

Evernote Crash

Thousands of Evernote users affected by data loss, Josh Lowensohn, Web Crawler (Aug 9)

There is always this risk when you keep notes on a web service - but your hard drive could crash too.

"Online note-saving service Evernote on Monday acknowledged that it had suffered a hardware fault at the beginning of July that resulted in potential data loss for more than 6,000 of its users worldwide."

Of interest - Magnolia, the social bookmarking site that had many nice features but crashed a burned over a year ago, has relaunched as gnolia. But will it recover all its users?

Surf Canyon Learns from You

Where Is Search Going? Surf Canyon’s Mark Cramer by Gord Hotchkiss, Search Engine Land (Aug 6)

Surf Canyon is a search aid for exploring Google's set of search resutls. It responds to what you select to find more on that topic. In this interview, Mark Cramer describes what they set out to achieve and their success in improving user satisfaction.

You can use SurfCanyon on its own at http://surfcanyon.com/

Yahoo Search Assist has current prompts

Yahoo Search Assist Adds Real Real Time Queries, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Jul 2)

Yahoo Search Assist now shows real time information as you type your query. Example given was World Cup soccer teams. On the day that Uruguay was playing Netherlands, the query Uruquay vs ... would show netherlands first.

Create and Share Collections with ClusterAll

Tom Kuhlmann, who writes extensively on designing and creating elearning courses through his Rapid eLearning Blog, gives us this short screenr presentation on using @clusterurl, a Firefox addon, for organizing open tabs into a folder and generating a URL to access that collection later. Tom's example is of a set of tutorials done with sceenr on audio files in Presenter, but we can see this might be used for search queries and examples - or anything you want to keep together.

Sceenr show on using @clusterurl

Cluster Tabs Addon for Firefox -- "Create public cluster tabs around subjects that make sense to you while effortlessly reducing the number of tabs you need to keep open." Clusterurl creates the url which you can use in Twitter, on a web site, in email. No registration!

Using Wolfram Alpha for Dates

Quick Tip: Date Checking and Coordinating With Wolfram|Alpha, ResearchBuzz (June 30)

If you need to calculate dates - number of days to a date or a future date, Wolfram Alpha is the tool to do it.

Encrypted Search at Google

Google’s encrypted search gets its own domain , The Next Web (Jun 27)

Need to keep your searches at Google very private? Use https://encrypted.google.com/

From Google's page -- "With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience."

Online Translators - Which is best?

Public Comparison of Online Machine Translators, Gabble On (May 3)

Of, Google Translate, Bing Translator and Yahoo Babelfish, which is the best? It depends on amount of text and language.

"The final data reveals that while Google Translate is widely preferred when translating long passages, Microsoft Bing Translator and Yahoo Babelfish often produce better translations for phrases below 140 characters. Also, in general Babelfish performs well in East Asian Languages such as Chinese and Korean and Bing Translator performs well in Spanish, German, and Italian."

Google's Web History

Why Google Web History Is Enabled by Default, Google Operating System (June 4)

Reminder - Google personalizes results according to web history even if you don't have an account or you are not logged into the one you have. It uses "up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser's cookie, including queries and results you click."

Google Web History keeps track of Google searches and which results were viewed or bookmarked. [The article doesn't mention that Google will also track, if you agree, all the web sites you visit whether through Google or not.

Google - Sites from Images

Google, in its redesign to show search options in the left rail, dropped "pages with images" and replaced it with "sites with images" - an inferior choice.

Pages with Images showed the image with the text from a page. This made it much easier to assess if the content was going to be relevant.

Sites with Images confuses the matter - image could come from another page. The images are also smaller and displayed in a row, rather than next to the text.

A small change - but significant - there is some loss of usability.

SEO Tools for the Searcher

Enterprise SEO Tools, Part 1: The Browser by Adam Audette , Search Engine Land (May 17)

There are dozens of browser extensions for the SEO analyst. Adam Audette prefers Firefox for its plugin options, with CHrome and Safari as second choices.

Searchers can use these tool to check a site's authority. Consider the following

"SEO Book’s toolbar is a handy one-stop reference point for looking at overall strength of a website, with easy access to key metrics such as inbound links (which it breaks up by type including .mil, .gov, and .edu), cache dates, indexed pages, key directory listings and other basic stuff. To be honest, its metrics aren’t the greatest, but it offers one of the quickest snapshots of a site’s authority and power to rank. Its real strength, however, lies in the data pulled in through other tools. With just a click, you can view the organic and paid search traffic data SEMrush and Compete have on hand, and pull in unique referring domain information from Majestic."

Googles Text to Speech

Google Translate Gets More Text-to-Speech Options, ResearchBuzz (May 12)

Google Translate has a speech synthesizer called eSpeak. The first languages were English and Haitian Creole translations, French, Italian, German, Hindi and Spanish - now there are more.

The English to Greek for building does sound synthesized (rather than like Greek), but the French is recognizable.

SEO Tool for evaulating sites

The SEO Tool That May Make You Switch to Google Chrome, by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (May 10)

This is a reason to switch to Chrome. This SEO-Sites-Tool extension for Chrome delivers a wealth of information that searchers can use to evaluate the authority and status of a site.

+ Google page rank
+ backlinks from Yahoo Site Explorer
+ Alexa traffic details
+ number of results for the site: command at Google and Bing
+ Overview of the Domain Presence in Social Media - delicious bookmarks, stumbleupon views etc.

A warning shows when you install the extension that SEO-Tools has access to your browsing history and private data at websites, but the Privacy Policy from the creator says - "This plugin does not collect any web history or site data... i had to use a few scripts i wrote on my servers but they dont save any data on the urls they analyze"

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-seo-tool-that-may-make-you-switch-to-google-chrome/20672/#ixzz0nqGdVh7G

At Google - Sites with Images

Google Highlights New “Sites With Images” Feature, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 10)

Google in its redesign of the search results page added an option to view "sites with images". This will be most useful for topics that would benefit from graphic illustrations - which is nearly everything. For example - arctic tundra biome.

Barry Schwartz shows what it looks like.

Quick Access to Dictionaries

Aternatives to Google's Dictionary Links, Google Operating System (May 9)

Google stopped linking to Answers.com for definitions of search term, and substituted its own Google Dictionary on single words. Not good enough. This article has other suggestions, tools, and plugins.

If you use Firefox, best bet might be the Answers.com add-on that lets you alt-click any word.

Tools for Homeschoolers and Researchers

100 Amazing Firefox Add-ons for Homeschoolers, OnlineDegrees.net (April 2010)

This list of tools was compiled for homeschoolers, but there is gold here for everyone. All are add-ons for Firefox but you can get the equivalent of most of these for Internet Explorer, and can also use the resource sites directly.

Has categories for:

+ Math
+ Science
+ English Language Arts and Reference Materials
+ Foreign Languages
+ Productivity
+ Research (mainly tools for saving, adding notes, and sharing)
+ Parental Controls and Computer Security
+ Search Engines and Web Browsing
+ Miscellaneous

To this I would add tools for access books online, especially the Internet Archive. And - as it happens - there is one for the Internet Archive. "Search for anything on the archive and it gets sorted by popularity/most downloads. "

You may find others. Run a search at Google for firefox (plugin OR addon) , eg firefox (plugin OR addon) canadian encyclopedia

Google's Show Options

Google’s Search Options Reveal More by Gwen Harris, SLA Courier (Jan 2010)

And since we are sharing secrets, here is my article on making good use of Google's show options to get more from your search results. There are five questions to ask yourself:

1. What kinds of Web content should I be considering?
2. Is there a time dimension? Do I need very recent material or more historical?
3. Am I shopping? Does this question have a product angle?
4. Have I done this search before?
5. Is this a research topic where I will need more information about the page to judge whether it is suitable?

SpringPad for notes

Springpad Takes on Evernote with Semantic Technology, Barcode Scanner, Sarah Perez, Read Write Web (March 9)

Springpad - another research tool for saving bookmarks, ideas, and other stuff - is compared to Evernote.

Springpad is said to "integrate semantic technology to automatically enhance the notes you save with relevant info." Also works with mobile devices.

Google might ask if you want more

Google Gains Try Again Button For Discussion Results. Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Mar 24)

Google is trying new ways to make suggest what else to look at based on what you do. This example shows what happens if you click on a discussion forum and then return to the search results page where Google will ask you if you want more.

Google did not do this for me in Toronto, but it always take time for Google to roll features out to areas outside the US.

Using Google Suggest

Exploring Google Suggest, Google Operating System (Mar 7)

Google suggest - the type-ahead auto-complete lines - that has been built up from actual searches - might reveal more.

Simon Every has been finding patterns - the power of suggestion.

"There are some recurring themes which have emerged as I've been playing with the site during its creation. Among other things, it seems people do rather a lot of searching on the topics of music, religion and relationships.

Sometimes the results are sad, like the people searching for free ebooks on relationships for dummies, and sometimes hopeful like looking for love.

Health is also a recurring theme with the names of medicines, diseases and symptoms appearing over and over again.

Differences and similarities are often highlighted between males and females."

Want to explore? Elvery has built a site - What do you suggest" - where you can explore the suggestions.

You can start with a word - like How - or let the site pick a word, letter, or question. Eg - start with How - and then pick from the lists. Eventually -- how to write a song about your (there were choices - you do it to see what they were.)

Google's Search Stars

Google’s Letting You Star Your Searches, ResearchBuzz (Mar 8)

Being able to star results you like in Google will be a good thing - better than search wiki - but Google is rolling this out gradually and you might not see it yet (I don't). Reminder - to see it you need to be logged into your account and be using search history.

Tara Calashain asks a good question - "Will starring search results change a Web site’s pagerank, or whatever Google is calling it now? If one person stars a page I doubt that will make a difference, but how about if ten thousand people do? Will it change?"

Google Squared - some improvements

The five-minute guide to Google Squared, By Tanya Combrinck, TechRadar (Feb ?)

Google Squared will "arrange data from the web in a neat spreadsheet". It has improved but examine results carefully and don't consider it comprehensive or necessarily accurate.

"Google Squared is useful when you're researching a subject that has a lot of facts or figures associated with it. It creates a table with headings corresponding to the vital statistics associated with a given topic, and uses the web to fill in the data. "

Here's one for oscars best picture.

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.

Google Stars replace Search Wiki

Google Adding Stars to Search to Replace SearchWiki, Mashable (Mar 3)

I'm not sorry to see SearchWiki go - these were the options to demote a result in personal results, promote it, or add comments. Instead we can "star" items - just as we do in Google Bookmark or Reader

"With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant."

Autosuggest at Bing

Bing Adds Search History To Auto-Suggest, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (March 1)

Bing is using your search history in its auto-suggest feature. It will include in the auto-suggest list queries that you have run before over time. Search history will show as purple and other autosuggest will be blue. The auto-suggest box offers options like “Manage History” and “History Off” for searchers who don’t this feature enabled.

Google Show Options

Up Close With Google Search Options, Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Oct 1, 2009)

Very detailed description of Google's Search Options with comments about their value and some shortcomings.

Bing's Auto Suggest

Bing Updates Autosuggest With News & Trending Queries, by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Jan 19)

"Bing’s autosuggest feature now provides more current suggestions as you type a query. Bing says that it’s added “breaking news and hot trending queries” into autosuggest, with updates being pushed out every 15 minutes."

Google's Personalized Search

Personalized Search from Google is explained in this video. Essential viewing - only 1:31 min. [Mentioned by Pandia]

Google

Google Personalized Search - explained in a video. Essential viewing - only 1:31 min. [Mentioned by Pandia]

Google's URL Shortener

Google Rolls Out an URL Shortener, Research Buzz (Dec 17, 2009)

URL shorteners are essential today for short postings. Google has opened a limited service for Google products at Goo.gl

Addendum: Tip: Make Googl URLs without Google's toolbar by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Jan 11) - Firefox add-on - GooglLite.

Translating with Google

How to search the Web in a foreign language, Pandia (Dec 17)

Tips for translation, transliteration and pronunciation: translate a search query, translate a web page, and learn how to pronouce the words. It's mostly about Google - either Google Translate or 2lingual which uses Google.

Social Tools

Social tools and science, Lorcan Demsey, OCLC (Nov 15)

The way we work and relate online really is changing - and if we haven't adopted these new tools, we should soon. This post picks up on a list of social tools being used in the scientific community - part of "open science". They include social bookmarking for reference (connotea), share and discover (Mendeley), threaded discussion (Friend Feed), social networks, wikis, YouTube.

Saving Text from Web Pages

Firefox note-taking add-ons are Web supersavers, Dennis O'Reilly, CNet (Dec 8)

"Firefox add-ons ICyte (also available for IE), Wired-Marker, and Trails let you save all or sections of Web pages and share your snippets with others."

Google Dictionary used in Google Web Search

Real-Time Capability, Google Dictionary Highlight Google Search Updates eContent (Dec 8)

Key piece here is that Google no longer links to Answers.com for definitions of search terms. It has switched to its own Google Dictionary and will only provide the definition on single-term queries.

"For single-word or idiomatic web searches, Google provides a link to a definition for the term next to the number of results. The link, which once directed the user to Answers.com and before that to Dictionary.com, will now lead to an in-house service, Google Dictionary."

Compare the word clean at Answers.com to Google Dictionary.. Google is very good but Answers.com is superior.

On two-term phrases - such as information management, Answers.com will at least get a definition from the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Google web search does not. You can search the Dictionary on your own to get "web definitions". The shortcut to this, as we all know, is to enter define: -- eg define: "information management".

I preferred when Google linked every term in a query to definitions. Searchers are not going to go one-by-one through the terms to see what else they should consider or to broaden their understanding.

Google Translate

New Google Option Translates Search Results by Matt McGee (Dec 3)

Translated search has been available through Google Translate. Now it's on the Search Options panel under Standard Results. True for Google.ca and Google.com.

Online Tools for Saving and Citing Research

Free Online Tools Simplify Research: Zotero and iCyte, ResourceShelf (Nov 30)

Two programs that can be used to capture web pages and create citations automatically

+ Zotero - Firefox extension - capture citations, store pages, and much else

+ iCyte saves the web link and the image of the page itself.

Searchzooka

Searchzooka.com is a new search front end that allows users to create advanced Web searches and launch them on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Digg, Technorati, and Delicious. It handles ORs, excludes, date ranges, site and domain search, words in title, words in url, filetype. Construct the query, save it if you wish, and then run against one of the search engines. Results are displayed in a new window. It worked well with the target engines. It has potential - certainly it is handy to have a reminder of what to consider in constructing the query, and is better than the advanced search offered by most of the target search engines.

Thanks to Mark Nash, the creator.

Changes with Google Translate

A New Look for Google Translate, Official Google Blog (Nov 16)

Google Translate received three new feature according to this blog post.

+ translate text as you type
+ handles non-Roman characters
+ hear the English translation of a foreign phrase - only English available.

But I don't think the interface is as easy to figure out.

If you liked being able to enter English terms, have them translated into another language, and then see the original language and a translated to English version - click on Translated Search.

Tools and Resources is for web site owners to make it easier for foreign language visitors to read the page.

Google drops search term links

When did Google stop linking search terms to Answers.com?

One of Google's nicest features was the way it linked search terms to more information at Answers.com. The links are not there tonight. Is this temporary or another change Google is making without telling us?

There are no links for h1n1 vaccine, but on a simple search for vaccine there is the word followed by [definition] - and it is linked.

Search Preview Addon

How-to: Preview search results in Google, Bing by Jessica Dolcourt, Webware (Nov 4)

Tired of search results all in text? SearchPreview, an addon from Firefox, will insert "thumbnail images of the site's homepage to the left of the text, where your eye naturally goes."

Depends on whether you find the small thumbnails with their indistinct text helpful.

Google Squared - Experiment

Google Squared Adds Some Improvements, ResearchBuzz (Oct 19)

On searches at Google Squared some will work reasonably well, and some won't. These tests show that the "improvements" for extracting facts and data and displaying on a grid haven;t moved Google Squared beyond interesting. This is still very much an experimental app. Try it for fun - but don't count on it for business.

Create your own all-in-one page

43MARKS helps you build a home page of links organized in categories - search tools, movies, travel - probably easier to use than a bookmark list and much more attractive - good for people who like to work from an all-in-one page. You can build on the categories 43Marks has set up and also create your own. RSS feeds can be added to the page too, similar to what you can do with personal portals - myYahoo and iGoogle. As well it will search Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Wikipedia - one at a time. All of this you do from a personalized url of marks.43.com/you

Of course customizing means creating an account. Read the Privacy Policy first. There will be ads.

There is no 'about' page - so nothing to explain why there is 43marks, 44marks, 45marks, 46marks - I quit checking at 46.

Postscript: (Oct 20) Bobby Stark explained that the different domains allow users to create more than one homepage - one for Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. Clever.

Browser Add-ons for Google Search Results

5 Ways to Add a Search Sidebar to Google SERPs by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Oct 12)

Ann Smarty describes five browser add-ons (two for Firefox) that add to a Google search results page another panel of search results from other sources.

The Greasemonkey script for the Google Search Sidebar strikes me as the most useful, since it does what Google should do with its "web" search.

"The script “puts aside “extra things” and get simple and neat Google search”.
Those “extras” include blended search results: Google blog search results. Google image search results, Google video search results, as well as related searches."

Auto Translation at Google

Google adds automatic translation to some search results, Pandia (Oct 5)

"Google adds link to selected automatically translated search results in Non-English versions of the search engine."

Google Squared

Google Squared gets more data, better filters, by Tom Krazit, Webware (Oct 9)

Google Squared, launched as an experiment in May 2009, for showing search results in tables of data, has more data and more tools.

Taking an idea from a set for US Presidents from the welcome page, see what Google Squared can do with Canadian prime ministers. It shows an image, date of birth, place of birth, profession, succeeded by, and party. The Succeeded By is a bit off - Stephen Harper doesn't have a successor yet - and it's too bad Google can't figure out period in office.

Most of the people on the list were prime ministers, but where did Don Ferguson, Max Ferguson, and Bob Robertson come from? They all plaved prime ministers on radio and on film.

You can add more columns from a list. I added Date of Death - some entries were correct, and some entries were missing.

It's a long shot that you'll get a square for a query where you think there should be parameters and data. Use the sample query on the main page to get ideas on what Google Squared can do. For example - lakes in ontario.
Members can save their squares and export.

URL Shorteners

How To Use 3 Social News And Bookmarking URL Shorteners by Greg Finn, Search Engine Land (Sept 22)

Looks at three tools for shortening urls.

"Each of the three largest social sites (Digg.com, Reddit.com and StumbleUpon.com) have implemented a URL shortening service that helps users of the site participate. Here is a breakdown of the three tools."

Language Translation Resources

Please Translate That for Me by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Sept 3)

Paula Hane also picked up the story of more languages being handled by Google Translate, and mentions that Google has built translation into Gmail, webpages using Google Toolbar, RSS feeds in Google Reader, and Google Docs.

To this she adds:

+ Yahoo Toolbar and Babelfish
+ Bing translator and related tools
+ services from SYSTRANet
+ professional translators - WordLingo
+ C&RL article about "Translation Resources on the Web: A Guide to Accurate, Free Sites"
+ NEWSTRAN.COM - "claims to translate 10,000-plus foreign newspapers for free"
+ and more

Google Search Extras

6 Smart Google Tools; Backup IE and Firefox by Steve Bass, TechBite (Agu )

Steve Bass has a new newsletter that can now be somewhat viewed online. It's better to subscribe.

In this issue, a quick overview of "6 Useful things you can do with Google" - calculations, looking up area codes, photos, alerts, special collections. To this add the very useful define: to get definitions from glossaries on the web; eg define: nanotechnology.

Language Translators

Google Translate now speaks 51 languages , Official Google Blog (Aug 31)

Google added nine languages to Google Translate: Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish. This brings Google Translate to 51 languages and 2550 language pairs — including all 23 official EU languages.

Google Translator is well in the lead.

Bing has a translator - http://www.microsofttranslator.com/ with 15 languages.

Yahoo has Babelfish - http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ - 13 languages and 38 combinations.

Postscript Sept 3

Steve Bass has some other tricks for using Google Translator. View newsletter online and subscribe.

"If you regularly need translations from specific languages, use Google's 1-Click Translations button. A better bet, and the one I use when I land on Web sites in another language, is to have Google's Toolbar translate the entire Web page for me. In IE, click the Translate button. In Firefox, click the Translate button's drop-down menu, then select Translate Page to translate the page into your Toolbar's language. (Confused? Read Google Toolbar Help.) "

Tools for watching pages or saving them

AlertBox keeps an eye out for site updates by Josh Lowensohn, Webcrawler (Aug 10)

AlertBox watches for changes on parts of a web page that you select. This is a Firefox 3.5 add-on You might want to use this for things like price changes, or new headlines.

"AlertBox's way of tracking new content is an in-box-style counter down in the bottom of your browser. When clicked, it takes you to a page of Web clippings that are constantly updated with whatever the latest text is of the page elements you had selected."

Page mentions other addons for watching pages.

+ ReloadEvery - reload a page every few seconds or minutes
+ Check4Change - monitor text on a page for changes (but only works on an open tab).
+ Forum Additive - monitor threads in a forum
Price Protectr Toolbar
+ PriceDrop - prices at Amazon

Iterasi is also mentioned in this article. It saves web pages - and can be made to do so on a schedule. This can used on sites where log in is required, and on pages that change as you interact with them. Pages are saved online in your iterasi account. There is a community aspect as well for sharing pages that are designated as public. Iterasi is in beta - and for now it's free.

Super Search Firefox Add-On

Super Search brings search overkill to Firefox by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (July 27)

Firefox Super Search adds 160 search engines in one toolbar. There are about 70 engines that are accessible from the toolbar and a directory to aonother 90.

Taking Notes on the Web

Evernote tops Yahoo for online note-taking , by Anick Jesdanun, AP via Globe and Mail (Jul 24)

Describes usefulness of a web-based note-taking system.

The Web-based note-taking services, on the other hand, let you zero in on specific passages and entries within a website. The programs also let you keep a copy of information in case it disappears from the original site. And the collections are stored online and can be shared with friends.

I can see using them to keep track of summer events, hobbies, nutritional advice and more, replacing my clunky system of e-mailing myself tidbits or storing them on documents I'd never find later.

Began with Yahoo's Search Pad but found limitations in saving results and links. Evernote had much more functionality in file types and notes.

Posted by Gwen at 12:54 PM

Yahoo Research Helper

Yahoo Search Pad: An online notebook that watches you, by Rafe Needleman, Webware (July 6)

Yahoo has a new tool - "to help people organize research they do on the Yahoo search engine. The Yahoo Search Pad will automatically save search results when it notices the user is doing research, which should make it easier for people to come back to a project on subsequent days to do more work. "

Advanced Google Custom Search

Advanced Custom Search Configuration, Google Custom Search Blog (June 29)

Presentation at Google I/O by Nick Weininger on Advanced Custom Search Configuration. [46 minutes]

Key tools for building and presenting - including new features for rich snippets and microformats.

Shows About.com's uses of CSEs on topics. Also - the Google Blogger search gadget for creating a search on the blog's domain of interest.

In last 20 minutes Adobe showed a use case of Custom Search for community help.

Evernote for note-taking

Evernote gets a whiff of wikis by Rafe Needleman, Webware (June 29)

Evernote is making it easier to share notes.

"Evernote, a great note-taking and productivity app and a 2009 Webware 100 editor's choice winner, is getting just a hint of multi-user capability. It has new, basic sharing features that tease at a new direction for the app/online service. "

Building a Custom Search Engine

Bridging the DiGital Divide: Custom Search Engines Put You in Control, by John J DiGillo, LLRX (June 14)

Recommends two tools for creating own search engines of sites you select.

"Imagine being able to specify exactly what sites it should search. Better yet, don’t just imagine it, give it a try! Custom search engines are already available and power searchers are already learning how to harness the power of their focused-searching capabilities for themselves. Google CSE and Rollyo are two fine examples of what is possible."

I agree both are good. Rollyo uses the Yahoo database, and Google - well Google. Rollyo is dead simple to set up. Google has more features but is also more complex.

Yahoo Search Toolbar

Yahoo Releases New Toolbar for IE and Firefox, Softpedia (June 18)

"The latest version brings improved search capabilities as well as faster searches by incorporating some technologies from Inquisitor, a company Yahoo recently acquired. The search box now offers suggestions, remembers sites you've recently visited and you can also search other sites like Flickr, also owned by Yahoo, or Wikipedia. "

Google Shortcuts

Google has created a much better shortcuts page showing the quick things searchers can do to get weather, track packages, look up flights etc. Has images and short videos to show the tips.

See Explore Google Search

Disabling Google SearchWiki

Google SearchWiki: You Can ‘Check Out,’ But Your Results Don’t Leave by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Jun 12)

Users of Google personalized search SearchWiki can turn it off (while still be logged into your account) - but your search history is not erased.

It's really a feature to disable - and one day you may want to re-enable.

Pandia on Google Squared

Google Squared can save you time on complex searches, Pandia (June 5)

"With Google Squared you can search Google and have the results presented in a highly structured way. This experimental search tool is especially useful when the information you need requires complex, time consuming searches. "

Has a video.

Google Sentiment Analysis on Review

Google’s New Review Search Option and Sentiment Analysis, by By Bill Slawski, SEO by the SEA (Jun 12)

Google will do "sentiment analysis."

"For some search results, when you choose the “show options” link after your search, and then the “reviews” link, then in the snippet area for search results you may see quotes from reviews, surrounded by quotation marks. Testing this, I did see some results where the snippets were in quotation marks, and when I visited those pages that quoted text tended to be mostly from actual reviews. I looked at some reviews for restaurants, music, and products."

Translate Shortcut

Bing and Google have instant answers (or shortcuts) for translation. Use shortcut word - translate

Bing - translate - eg translate goodbye - uses Microsoft Translator.

Google will translate foreign words.

Of interest though, enter translate french to english at Google and top result is Yahoo! Babel Fish rather than Google's own Translation tool . The same search at Bing brings up the Microsoft Translator.

What happens at Yahoo? Nothing. Yahoo was one of the first to introduce shortcuts and it doesn't have one for translate. Furthermore,
translate french to english finds freetranslation.com - no Babel Fish, Google Translate, or Microsoft Translator.

Thanks to - Translation: A New Instant Answer From Bing by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (June 11)

Google Search Box for Mac users

Google releases Quick Search Box for Mac, Tom Krazit, Webware (Jun 9)

Mac users can use Google's Quick Search Box "as a universal search tool to find local documents, applications or Web sites featuring a certain term.

Try Google Squared

Google Squared goes live with mixed results by Tom Krazil, Webware (June3)

Google Squared is open for use but don't expect a lot right now. Might be best just to look at the suggestions on the home page.

"Google Squared finds Web pages that have been indexed, just like with a regular search, but presents them in a spreadsheet format that, if the data was relevant, could potentially be more useful to someone doing research on a particular topic."

Also see Google Squared Goes Live at ResourceShelf for review with more examples and some explanation; eg - much of the data comes from Wikipedia.

Browser Search Add-ons for Science Sites

Browser Plug-ins Now Available for Major Science Search Engines, Newsbreaks (June 4)

Add a deep-web federated search to the browser's search bar.

"Deep Web Technologies has developed OpenSearch browser plug-ins for one-click searching of the major scientific information portals, including Scitopia.org, Science.gov, WorldWideScience.org, Mednar.com, Scienceresearch.com, and Scirus.com. Users can easily add any of these portals to their browser's search engine box by going to http://www.deepwebtech.com/open-search.html and clicking on a portal to automatically add it to their search box."

Google's New Search Features

Google’s New Search Features: Google Squared, Rich Snippets, and Search Options by Laura Gordon-Murnane, Newbreaks (May 28)

Report on the three new features that Google introduced at its Searchology event. Google described these as addressing the question "how can we better understand the wide range of information that's on the web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment"

+ Google Squared works on structuring unstructured data. It "looks for facts from webpages, pulls them together, and then organizes them into a table with rows and columns. At Searchology, the example "small dogs" showed a table of names of small dog breeds with descriptions, sizes, weights, and origins. Clicking in any cell reveals the source of the information. You can edit incorrect information, add additional rows and columns, and save results to your Google account."

+ Rich Snippets - "what kind of information will answer the question that is most important to searchers at that moment". Webmasters can use microformats to enhance snippets in search results.

How do they work? Well, if you were looking for restaurant reviews and found a page marked up using the open formats that Google had indexed, the Rich Snippet could reveal, at a glance, the number of reviews, a star rating, and a price range for the restaurant.

+ Search Options - "a new set of features and tools that let you "slice and dice your search results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier."

Google Search Wiki Sharing Notes

Google Enables Simpler SearchWiki Notes Sharing, by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 22)

You can now share notes on Google Search Wiki results with friends. This posting describes how.

Wolfram Alpha on the Side

Firefox add-on puts Wolfram Alpha in your Google, by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (May 20)

Get search results from Google and the new Wolfram Alpha with this Firefox extension that puts Alpha on the side.

Advice: "This makes it a good way to test some of the limitations of the new search engine, as it only covers so many topics. My favorite use for it is to pull up nutritional information for fast food and cast lists for movies. Both are activities that usually require going off the results page to find the information I was looking for, whereas Wolfram simply grabs and displays it in an orderly fashion."

Google Suggest

Google Suggest Improves, Google Operating System (May 1)

More proof that Google uses your search history to make search suggestions. There are quite a few changes - such as:

+ showing recent searches from your search history if you're logged in and Web History is enabled

+ adding the top search result to the list of suggestion for navigational searches

+ showing suggestions on the search results page and home page

Search Add-Ons

3 great Firefox search add-ons, Pandia (May

+ Semantifind - get help in clarifying and refining search queries
+ Hyperwords - take a word and search on it thru several tools
+ KwiClick - move quickly between search tools

Google Search Options

Big changes in Google Search have arrived.

Search Options brings us an entirely new display that shows choices for results from video, forums, or reviews, plus time periods (can we rely on them?), a timeline view (yea), and a wonderwheel (more applause). All you need do is click on the link for Show Options.

The Options

All the options will enrich the search, but especially those at the bottom under Standard View.

Results display is a better implementation of universal. A top News cluster could show - as it does for searchology. Having a link for videos under All Results makes it more inviting than using the one on the top bar. You know that you'll find videos for that search term (and there are several - look for ones with May 2009 date) or use the Time Option.

Google Timeline

This has been brought out of the Labs where it had been part of Experimental Search to be easily accessible. It is a fantastic tool when doing research on a topic to see different events or treatment of the subject. Google mainly uses its num range search to place pages on the timeline.

Google Wonderwheel

Finally we get a display of the related topics. This star design has been around for a long time, but this implementation is attractive because clicking on a word opens a new node while showing the results on the right. Play with this one.

Google has a video tour of the changes in its blog posting - More Search Options and other updates from our Searchology event . This posting also describes the new "rich snippets".

Also - a must read - Tara Calishain's review of the changes and especially her comments about date searching. See Google Goes Searchology, Offers Options, Clusters, and More, ResearchBuzz (May 12)

Inquistor for Faster Search

Speed Up Web Searches with Inquisitor, by Rick Broida, PCWorld (May 11)

Inquisitor is a new add-on for Firefox and IE browsers that will accelerate display of search suggestions. Yahoo owns this now, and Safari users have had it for some time.

"All you do is install it, restart your browser, and then start typing in the search field like you normally do. Now, however, each keystroke brings search results, suggestions, and shortcuts to other search engines."

From Inquisitor:

Start typing and websites appear instantly, along with suggestions to help refine your search.

Inquisitor understands you, learning and tailoring your results as you search. You can also add more search engines with customized keyboard shortcuts.

Embed Quintura Tag Cloud

Quintura has an embed option for saving code that will display a tag cloud and related search.

Evernote - Be Organized

Use Evernote to Organize Your Troubleshooting Efforts by Rick Broida, PCWorld (May 7)

Recommends using Evernote to organize notes gathered during research from the web or any other source. This type of tool does take self discipline to use but can save hours of rework. Rick Broida described how he used it for real benefit in troubleshooting a computer problem. I like the fact that the notes can be synced across desktop, web and mobile device.

Google Search Shortcuts

4 Ways to Add Keyboard Shortcuts to Google Search, by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Apr 28)

If you like to use quick keyboard strokes while searching, Ann Smarty has a set of 4 we can use in Google Search as part of Google's Experimental Search interface.

Google and Yahoo ShortCuts

50+ Google and Yahoo Search Shortcuts Cheat Sheet, by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Apr 20)

"This post is intended as a comprehensive guide to Google and Yahoo search shortcuts providing a cheat sheet of over 50 shortcuts and comparing the two search engines."

Has comprehensive comparison plus how to create own shortcuts in Firefox.

Being Anonymous

How to hide your tracks at work, by Don Reisinger, Webware (Apr 18)

There are several tools described to hide what you are doing from your boss. And there is one for being untraceable on the web.

"Anonymizer If you don't want the IT folks to know what you're up to, spend $30 and get Anonymizer. The software redirects your Web traffic through its servers to not only safeguard your IP from outside sources, but also to get your employer's IT people off your trail."

URL Shorteners

Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use?, by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Apr 4)

There are many services for shortening URLs, now needed more than ever for use in Twitter. Danny Sullivan presents "issues to consider and a breakdown of popular services, including recommendations and services to avoid (the new DiggBar being one of these)."

Concludes with a list of three recommendations for twitter users (bit.ly, tr.im, cli.gs), and a longer list of maybes. Surprisingly, TinyURL, though it is the most used, was so-so.

"TinyURL: The default choice for Twitter, built into TweetDeck and Twitterfeed. But the longest domain of any of the popular services. ZoneAlarm also flagged it as spyware — as with Snipurl, this could cause issues for your visitors."

Software-Free Toolbars

7 sites that use software-free toolbars (and why it matters) by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Apr 3)

Better than sliced bread - software-free toolbars are becoming more common. Digg put many features into a DiggBar; Stumbleupon introduced a small frame that shows at the site you're on; Google, Yahoo, Live, and Ask image searches have a bar for modifying the search. However, these are browser frames - not everyone will love them.

WebReview - Firefox addon

WebReview makes your browser's history, start page smarter by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Apr 2)

Oh sweet - a new addon for Firefox that tracks history better than Firefox does, and show you the pages you have been visiting and make suggestions.

" WebReview is a new extension for Firefox that attempts to make your start page smarter, and more suggestive based on past browsing habits. If you've used Google's Chrome, or have been keeping up with Mozilla's latest efforts to change what users are seeing when they first fire up their browser or open a new tab, the idea behind WebReview is the same."

Google Local Suggest and News

Google Expands Google Suggest & Local News by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Apr 2)

Two announcements:

+ "Google Suggest has been launched internationally, and with it the search suggestions have been localized for local and cultural factors. " In google.ca poutine comes up just as you type pout; on google.com it never comes up.

+ Google Local News has been expanded to India, UK, and Canada. If you used Google personalization features, this change won't be noticeable, though there is a drop down to select Top Stories for Canada English or Canada Francais.

Presentations on Search at CIL Conference

Some presentations from the Computers in Library 2009 Conference are available.

Under Information Discovery & Search

+ A Super Searcher Shares 25 Search Tips/Thoughts by Mary Ellen Bates

+ Searching Google Earth by Ran Hock

+ Searching Conversations: Twitter, Facebook, & the Social Web - by Greg Notess [Not available yet[

+ Information Discovery: Science & Health by Walter Warmick - entering the deep web by using federated search of scientific databases. [Available at site]

+ Seeking Health by Tamas Doszkocs - lists several health search engines and identifies some with semantic search capabilities (medstory, healthline, goopubmed) [Available at site]

Conference also had a track on Search and Search Engines - federated search, mobile search, RSS, emerging search technologies.

Clouds for Visualizing Results

March 2009 InfoTip: My Favorite Clouds by Mary Ellen Bates

We are all too used to long pages of search results that offer little relief in terms of visualizing whether in clusters or images. But it doesn't have to be that way. There are visual aids. Mary Ellen Bates describes two that will present a "cloud" view of the results - where more important words (by some measure) are bigger and bolder.

+ SearchCloud.net lets the user indicate relative importance of words.

+ Search Cloudlet is an add-on for Firefox that will show relative frequency of words in search results.

Read her reviews of both.

There is one point I will quibble regarding how search engines rank results - "They are all weighted (relatively) equally by a search engine, which uses the order of my search words as an indicator of importance; at most, the search engine will assume that the most important concept is nanotech if I put that word at the beginning of my query. "

I'm not sure that putting most important word first applies anymore. Changing the order of the words in the query can make some difference in the ranking of results, though usually it's just a repositioning in the top 20 or so. Google also ranks according to the order and proximity of words - suggesting that natural phrasing could be more effective.

A classic example from the training pages at University of California, Berkeley, is grass snake is different from snake grass. Run both searches at Google and you'll see differences where grass snake gets more snakes, and snake grass finds an article at eHow on how to grow the grass sooner.

However, you can indicate importance by repeating a word. Back to Mary Ellen Bates' example - nanotechnology "renewable energy" Boulder nanotechnology - really raises the importance of nanotech and noticeably changes the ranking.

Sideline Twitter Search

Sideline monitors Twitter, shows off Yahoo tools by Rafe Needleman, Webware (Apr 1)

Another Twitter search tool, this time from Yahoo -- Sideline -- "In addition to showing you which terms are trending on Twitter at the moment (more interesting and relevant than just watching the public stream go by), Sideline lets you create searches that get their own tabs in the interface. "

20 Firefox Addons

Find the right Firefox add-ons by Don Reisinger, Webware (Mar 28)

Bonanza for Firefox users - especially new users - in this organized list of 20 addons . There are four categories: business professionals, shoppers, social-network fanatics, and students.

Google experimenting with search aids

The Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Refinement Features Get Live Test by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Mar 27)

Very interesting post on changes we may soon see at Google for helping searchers refine results. New features could include grouping results by type (news, video, forums, reviews); time periods; views for search suggestions, a wonder wheel (spray of lines for topics), or timeline.

See screenshots in this post.

Also see Google’s Wonder Wheel Experiment, and More by Tony Ruscoe & Philipp Lenssen, Google Blogscoped (Mar 24)

Has javascript code you can use to join the experiment by setting a cookie to show Google that you are participating.

Google in IE8

Google Tests Enhanced Suggestions for IE8, Google Operating System (Mar 20)

Google may have better search suggestions for users of the new IE8.

"Google tests two features that could save a few clicks: displaying the top result for navigation queries, which usually have a single best answer, and showing ads related to the query at the bottom of the list of suggestions"

Firefox Find-on-Page Saver

FindList gives Firefox's search a history by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Mar 20)

If you use Firefox's Find on Page (and it is a good reason for using Firefox over Internet Explorer), this add-on to save your searches will be very useful.

".. FindList. This new, experimental extension gives your search box its own drop down history list. " Saves up to 15 on-page searches.

Google Translation Tools

Cross Language Search: The case of Google Language Tools, by Jiangping Chen, Yu Bao, First Monday (March 2009)

Google Translate is well described and found to be quite good.

Abstract - bolding added

"This paper presents a case study of Google Language Tools, especially its cross–language search service. Cross–language search integrates machine translation (MT) and cross–language information retrieval (CLIR) technologies and allows Web users to search and read pages written in languages different from their search terms. In addition to cross–language search, Google Language Tools provides various language support services to multilingual information access. Our study examines the functions of Google Language Tools and the performance of its cross–language search. The results and analysis show that Google Language Tools are useful for Web users. Its cross–language search service provides quality query translation while the automatic translation of result pages needs further improvement. The paper suggests that cross–language search could be used by different types of Web users. The authors also discuss the strategies and important issues with regard to implementing multilingual information access services for information systems."

Google SearchWiki always on

Why You Should Be Worried About Google Search Wiki by Michael Gray, Graywolf's SEO Blog (Mar 2)

Main message for searchers in this posting is that you can't turn off Search Wiki. If you use Google's web search history, it will always be influencing the search results you get.

Xmarks - New browser utility

Foxmarks becomes Xmarks, does site discovery by Rafe Needleman, Webware (March 2)

Foxmarks, a browser utility for syncing bookmarks and passwords between machines and browsers, will be Xmarks."Now known as just Xmarks, the tool layers in site discovery features. The Xmarks plug-in shows you sites similar to the one you're on, based on what other users have bookmarked and where they've filed those bookmarks. The plug-in also gives you additional information in search results, letting you see site popularity and user ratings on your search hits. "

Does this mean it will be a kind of Stumbleupon? The CEO says not but it does sound like another place for adding and checking reviews or comments about a site.

Idea of finding similar sites to ones you're looking at is interesting but a form of this was done by Alexa many years ago with a Netscape plugin.

Maybe it will make a comeback.

Google Translates More

Translate between 41 languages with Google Translate , Official Google Blog (Feb 26)

"Google Translate recently added Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese, and Galician to the mix. The rollout of these seven additional languages marks a new milestone: automatic translations between 41 languages (1,640 language pairs!). This means we can now translate between languages read by 98% of Internet users."

Google Toolbar for IE

New Google toolbar for IE includes desktop search by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Feb 24)

"Google on Tuesday released a new version if its software toolbar for Internet Explorer. Included is a feature carried over from the company's desktop search product--a search box that runs whether or not you have your browser open. This special box sits next to the Start button on your taskbar, and lets you search the Web, your browser bookmarks, and any files and applications you have on your PC."

Getting Help with Google Problems

Google has a Web Search Help Forum that I haven't noticed before. The questions aren't edifying and it's amazing people trouble themselves to answer, but you might just find something that matches a problem you are having with web search. Be clear about need - there are other discussion forums for all the products - see Ask Other Users.

Google Search Extenders

What Else Would You Like to See on Google Search Results Page? by Ann Smarty (Feb 10)

Here are three add-ons to Firefox that work with Google search results to get other / more information. Whether this is an enhancement depends on your need and point of view.

+ Infoaxe - see your browsing history

+ WebMynd - switch search to another engine, or send tweets. I was amused and intrigued by this -- "send Tweets directly from your search results asking your friends advice related to your search;" -- how many friends would tolerate the interruption? is this something librarians would want to be part of? (maybe), would this work in a search class?

+ Omgili - tap into discussion on that Google search - really? what kinds of searches might those be?

Yahoo MyWeb to close

Yahoo MyWeb bites the dust by Elinor Mills, CNet (Feb 13)

Unlucky Friday for users of Yahoo's MyWeb - it will be closed on March 18. Yahoo was among the first to introduce the bookmarking, saving, sharing service in the early days of social web. It was an admirable product - but then it languished. Yahoo has been pushing users to delicious (which has improved) and Yahoo Bookmarks.

Wysigot captures sites

Browse Comfortably Offline With Wysigot Light Liane Cassavoy, PCWorld (Feb 6)

Wysigot Light will download a site for offline viewing. Could be useful for researchers who need to be sure they can access the material.

"When you launch Wysigot Light, a site capture assistant will guide you through the process of collecting Web pages for offline viewing. You enter a URL and can choose how much of the site to capture: the first page only, the first page and any pages it links to, or the entire site. Wysigot Light then downloads the pages, and displays them in an outline that is viewable in a window on the left-hand side of your screen. You can click on any of the pages, and they'll appear in Wysigot Light's main window."

Hakia's ScoopBar

hakia ScoopBar, Now Highlights Pages Found by Other Search Engines., Hakia (Feb 5)

Hakia's toolbar is non-denomination - it will highlight search results in the opened Web pages that are found by any search engine - not just Hakia.

Buzz on Yahoo's Search Pad

Yahoo tears page from Google Notebook with Search Pad, Ars Technica (Feb 4)

Yahoo is developing a tool for the post-search-results stage at the same time that Google is giving up on its Notebook . If this description is accurate, Yahoo's Search Pad is going to be smarter and better in some respects.

"Perform a search, copy some content from a page, return to Yahoo and perform another search, and Search Pad will prompt you to begin saving the pages and content you found in a JavaScript popup. You can add notes, quote text, and save thumbnails from each visited site to pick them out of a crowd more easily. When you are finished, you can save a session of notes and links as a collection (a kind of notebook as it were) for using or expanding upon later."

Page has demo video.

Downside is that the current design limits use to Yahoo Search results. This is all buzz at the moment - Search Pad is in private beta.

Also Yahoo tests Search Pad to ease online research by Stephen Shankland, Webware

Has good screen shots of Search Pad.

Search Cloudlet

Hone Search Results With Search Cloudlet
Erik Larkin, PC World (Feb 2)

If you like tag clouds and find them helpful in providing the big picture, you could like Search Cloudlet, an add-on for Firefox -- "After installing the tiny (20kb) add-on you'll see a block of keywords above your Yahoo or Google search results. Clicking on any of those keywords (for example, 'accessories' or 'reviews' displayed for a google search for 'motorcycles') automatically adds that tag to your search and quickly re-displays results. More common tags are displayed in larger text to help you choose."

More Like This

SimilarWeb shows you sites like the one you're on by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Jan 30)

"Called SimilarWeb, this small Firefox (and soon Internet Explorer) add-on sits on the side of your browser and pulls up sites that are similar to the one you're currently on."

Posting has a demo video. This is a good idea - but will slow down the browser.

Google's Preferred Sites

Google adds Preferred Sites to web search, Pandia (Jan 20)

Background on Google's personalized search offerings and its new "preferred sites".

Pandia does make clear that preferred sites is only available to "users selected for testing". I'm not one of those users. But if I were, I don't think I would use it - far better to create a Custom Search Engine for a topical area.

Zoho Notebook

Google Notebook Import, New Zoho Notebook Plug-in & more… , Zoho blogs (Jan 20)

Good news for Google Notebook users - can import to Zoho. Has other improvements including new Firefox plug-in.

Preferred Sites to Search at Google

Google wants to know which sites to search by Steven Musil, Webware (Jan 18)

New feature called Preferred Sites lets you identify sites you rely on so that Google Web Search will give higher placement to results from those sites. This is part of SearchWiki and requires that you be logged into your account. Experimental for now.

Replacements for Google Notebook

Seven worthy Google Notebook replacements by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Jan 16)

Google Notebook users will either need to look elsewhere for a similar service now that Google has announced there will be no further development, or will have to cobble together the same function with Google Bookmarks and Google Docs.

See Stopping Development on Google Notebook for Google's suggestions on other Google products to use.

But Google Notebook was a research tool - a place to save the bookmark, clip from it, comment on it, organize in folders and share. To get the equivalent we'll need to look elsewhere. Fortunately the first five tools described in this article will probably suit - and a couple could be even better.

+ Evernote - very versatile - offers an import from Google Notebook - free for 40 MB of monthly uploads - modest price for 500 MB/month.

+ Zoho Notebook - lots of collaboration features - and it's part of a much larger suite of products

+ Clipmarks - good for sharing

+ Ubernote - "Like Google Notebook you can use it to grab bits and pieces of pages you're on, or simply as a storage space for collaborative writing and bookmarking. It also employs tags to let you sort and search through your content."

+ Springnote - has a web editor

The last two are good for social bookmarking and collection sharing but not notes and clippings.

+ Delicious

+ Magnolia - Saves the page as it was when you bookmarked it.

Veoh Search Plug-in

Veoh releases search plug-in, by Rafe Needleman, Webware (Jan 9)

We are moving to a video view of information where people look for answers in the clips rather than the text. Veoh, a video aggregator, aims to help people find more with a new plug-in that that inserts video results into a strip at the top of search pages from Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN Live, and Ask.com.

Available at http://labs.veoh.com/labs/

Contextual Web

Will Google Help Contextual Web Blossom With Chrome? , by Clint Boulton, EWeek (Jan 7)

So, that's what it is called - Contextual Web - "a world in which technologies sit in, bolt on or plug into the browser or Web site, monitor a Web surfer's activity and make recommendations or draw connections for a user who might otherwise be oblivious to them. "

Surf Canyon,, an add-on to Firefox, does this in adding search-result recommendations to Google, Live and Yahoo.

This article shows that there are many initiatives and new products that do even more.

Alex Iskold, founder and CEO of Adaptive Blue, described the direction he sees:

"Iskold's vision is one of a contextual Web where you as the user can mash up the Web your way and personalize it within the context of your actions. That's why he and his team have created Glue, a Mozilla Firefox add-on that sits in the browser and recognizes books, music, movies, restaurants and other items users search for around the Web."

There are others:

+ "Zemanta, a browser add-on for Firefox and Internet Explorer that lets publishers add relevant content to augments their blog posts."

+ "Zentact whose Firefox add-on lets users import e-mail contacts and apply different tags that reflect their interests. Zentact co-browse the Web with users, offering in the browser to contact a person if it deems the page relevant based on the tags"

+ "Lijit, a search technology that lets Web surfers search your blog or Web site, or simply, you in your Web context. The company also makes Re-search, a widget that piggybacks on Google searches to provide additional results. "

+ "Mozilla is arguably the contextual Web king, with efforts such as Ubiquity, which lets nontechnical Web users create mashups"

Of course there is a social element. "Iskold big bet is that the social Web will be where context plays the most in 2009. Services such as Glue will enable contextual social networks within the browser."

Article also speculates on whether (or to what extent), Google will add contextual web extensions to its browser Chrome.

Will contextual web tools live together or will they clash? Interesting times.

Build Your Own Search Engine

3 easy ways to make a customized search engine, Pandia (Jan 6)

Describes Rollyo, Swicki, Google Custom Search, and Live Search Macros. I haven't tried Swicki, but Google Custom Search is very good.

Fun with Google

A little late in finding this but Google had a Countdown to 2009 series with a tip for every day in December leading to the holidays. It's not to late to try them - various applications, alerts, movies, conversions and other tricks.

Zotero - Tool for Researchers

Zotero is a Firefox extension for researchers to use to collect, manage and cite research sources.

Educause Connect has an article 7 Things You Should Know About Zotero

"Zotero is a research tool, developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, that provides users with automated access to bibliographic information for online resources. Zotero “senses” bibliographic information contained in a web page and—when the user clicks an icon—gathers that information and places it in the user’s library of sources, where users can manage and search those sources. By automating the tasks of gathering, managing, and citing online references, Zotero facilitates a more efficient research process."

2Lingual for Language Translation and Search

Do you need to work in more than one language? 2Lingual can help you by searching Google in two languages - it will translate your search terms from one language into another, and show results in a split pane from both. It covers 35 languages.

See http://www.2lingual.com/about.html.

Great tool. Will be very helpful to many Canadians.

Search Cloudlet

Firefox Add-ons: Make Google More Powerful With Tag Filtering by Scott Gilbertson, Epicenter (Dec 16)

Search Cloudlet is a Firefox add-on that will "injects a tag cloud of related words in to both Google and Yahoo search results pages. Then you can use the tag links to quickly and easily filter and refine your searches."

Watch the video. It's done to some rousing marching torreador music. The bull might be Google. If Google is not going to give us grouping aids, other will.

This look like a keeper.

Thumbtack - A Kind of Notebook Service

Microsoft Launches Thumbtack; It’s a Google Notebook Competitor by Adam Ostrow, Mashable (Dec 10)

Microsoft has a new personal search tool called Thumbtack - for keeping and sharing notes and bookmarks from the Web. Adam Ostrow sees some similarities with Google Notebook, but it is like Zoho Notebook as well in the way that you can move around the clips. Microsoft LiveLabs has a short video (2.49 min).

The description of the service on the main page for Thumbtack and the video seem to be hastily done. It could be me being picky, but the description takes up less than 50 words in four points are without capitalization or proper punctuation, and the video has long pauses. This suggests either Live wants to convey casual or this tool is still rough on the edges.

Comments to the posting point to Evernote as a better tool to use, or possibly Diigo. Nonetheless, if you use Live for search this would be a good tool to try out.

Google SearchWiki - Very Beta

Customize Your Own Google Results With SearchWiki by Greg R. Notess, Newsbreaks (Dec 4)

Greg Notess provides a thorough , although lukewarrem, description. I don't think many will be persuaded to open an account with Google to use the SearchWiki - and, to be honest, although I do have an account, I ignore the new SearchWIki features in personal search.

He says that this is still very Beta (though Google has not labelled it as such), and suggests some future directions.

"In what other directions might SearchWiki grow? Comments are not yet searchable. Searchers can browse their own activity to find previous comments they made or to browse a few comments from others. However, Google has intimated that it may well create a way to browse all the comments. At this point Google says the overwhelming majority of use is on the "See all my SearchWiki notes" page rather than the "All SearchWiki edits page.""

He also refers to comments by Mary Ellen Bates in Google tries social search

Key point:

"It's an interesting idea, but my experience has been that any tool that allows for random comments quickly becomes bogged down with garbage. If you frequently search on the same topic and want to ensure that certain pages always appear in the search results, this could be a useful tool. And the ability to add URLs to the search results could be handy."

Google's SearchWiki

Google SearchWiki brings custom search results by Stephen Shankland, Webware (Nov 20)

If you're logged into your Google account you can use Google's new SearchWiki to adjust the search results - and as you adjust, Google learns what you consider to be relevant.

"Google's SearchWiki is a feature that lets people elevate, delete, add, and annotate search results. Google remembers the changes a person made to search results, so repeat searches will show the same customizations and notes."

There is a notes feature also -- "There's also a collaborative element: people can show the collective wisdom of the masses by clicking a "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link at the bottom of each search results page. That shows notes and how people have promoted or deleted pages in aggregate."

Promising. Could be personalized and social at their best.

SemantiFind ready

SemantiFind Search Enhancement Technology Now Available for All Major Search Engines, PR Newswire, AOL (Nov 3)

"Semanti Corp., a Web services provider offering 'find' technology to enhance search engine results, today announced a new version which now works with Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search in addition to Google . The upgrade also has a new, easier-to-use, more intuitive user interface that was implemented in response to early adopters' feedback. SemantiFind leverages a unique ontology and semantic search capability to help users find more relevant results of search inquiries faster than traditional solutions, all while using their preferred search engines and methodologies. "

Get the browser plug-in at http://www.semantifind.com

Snipd for Web Clippings

Clipping via bookmarklet service Snipd launches by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Oct 30)

"Snipd, a Web clippings service we profiled in September, has just opened up to everyone. Its claim to fame is that it lets you clip bits of the Web including text, images, and videos, all without having to download any software or register for an account. The first time you use it via its tiny bookmarklet, it simply creates an account for you, which can be claimed later on"

Two good search aids

Yahoo Search Assist At 1; Google Toolbar At 8 by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Oct 30)

Mix of search aids:

+ Yahoo Search Assist - an excellent way to get search suggestions and see "concepts". Too bad Yahoo hides it behind the drop down button.

+ Google Toolbar - now at 8 years - has added three new features. One of them is to have multiple profiles in Auto-Fill. [ Google post ]

Google will warn about malware

Google Explains Malware Warning Policy & How To Fix Your Site by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Oct 27)

Google is going to be checking pages for the presence of viruses, worms, and other types of malware and when detected will put a warning on the results page - “This site may harm your computer.” That should do it.

Yotify Notify

Yotify: A Social Search Engine, by Stephen Arnold, Search It (Oct 15)

Arnold followed up on an article from MIT Technology Review -- Making Search Social- A new engine can turn a difficult search into a communal quest - about Yotify, a search engine for a mix of social searching and sending out "scouts" to monitor partner sites.

If I'm reading this right - he sees some possibility for it as a consumer tool (but, I ask, how many social scouting tools do people need to buy more things?), but much more if Yotify could be converted into an enterprise system - where (I presume) there would be the networks, common interests, and need to be alerted about products and programs.

"Procurement teams and information technology professionals looking to deploy a search system that works may find the Yotify.com technology applied to a regulated industry like pharmaceuticals just the cure for ails information access."

ChunkIt Search Aid

ChunkIt, A New Information Extraction Add-On, Now Available by Chris Sherman, Search Engine Land (Oct 10)

"ChunkIt is a toolbar that digs deep into the links found on web pages, extracting “chunks” of information from those pages, allowing you to quickly find relevant content without having to click through on the links yourself."

ChunkIt is an addon for Firefox or Internet Explorer. More at http://www.tigerlogic.com/ChunkIt/what.html

Firefox Browser Search Trick

3 Guides to FireFox Quick Searches (Smart Keywords) by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Sept 16)

Shows three ways for creating a smart keyword search (preset the site - and add the keywords) using the Firefox browser.

More from Yahoo Boss

Building with BOSS -- New Products to Share Yahoo Blog (Sept 3)

More examples of people building new search engines based on Yahoo's Search Boss.

+ 123 People for people search in the European market -- "123People.com delivers comprehensive and centralized profiles including images, videos, phone numbers, email addresses, social networking, and Wikipedia profiles related to an individual."

+ buildasearch - use this to build your own - this is very iterative - use BOSS to build a build your own..

Google Suggest

Google rolls out tool that suggests search queries by Heather Havenstein, Computerworld via MacWorld (Aug26)

Google is finally rolling out Google Suggest to its main interface to type ahead with suggestions for the query. It also corrects spelling.

Previously Google Suggest was available through "Google Labs, Toolbar, Maps and Web Search, the Firefox search bar, the iPhone, the BlackBerry and YouTube".

A delicious CSE

Creative uses of Custom Search in Google Custom Search Blog (Aug 18)

"A cool application to create a personalized search over your del.icio.us bookmarks is described in the tutorial Build a Custom Search Engine using your Social Bookmarks. You can export your bookmarks to define a CSE and search across all the stuff you care about"

Yahoo Site Explorer

Site Explorer Gets a Makeover Yahoo Search Blog (Aug 21)

"Today, we launched a new look and feel for Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new) that provides a more dynamic interface to accommodate future feature roll-outs. The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we're also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10."

More information about the site stats by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land -- Yahoo Adds New Site Stats As Part of Site Explorer Redesign

Search Monkey's Enhanced Site Search

SearchMonkey for Site Search, Yahoo Search Blog (Aug 8)

With Search Monkey, developers can create a site search with enhanced results by adding a few parameters. See the instructions - looks relatively straightforward. Entry includes examples.

Evernote

Clip, save and search text and images with Evernote Pandia (July 4)

"Evernote is a cool tool has the potential to become my outsourced brain, a place to store anything I want to remember, tag it, annotate it and make it easy to find when I need it."

Thorough review - has a video overview and points to a tour.

Google Bookmarks

A Better Interface for Google Bookmarks, Google Operating System (Jul 26)

Good news - "Google promotes a new interface for Google Bookmarks, as part of Google Notebook. A similar interface can be accessed directly from Google Notebook if you click on "Unfiled bookmarks"."

Google Notebook Bookmarklet

Google Notebook Bookmarklet Google Operating System (Jul 11)

Instead of the toolbar / extension for adding clips to Google Notebook, you can use Google Notebook bookmarklet -- "You just drag and drop a link to your browser's links bar or bookmark the link. "

SearchMe has visual bookmarking tool

SearchMe Launches Stacks, Gets Serious About Search Relevance Michael Arrington, TechCrunch (June 24)

SearchMe is search for people who like pictures. It now has "new video and image search engines as well as a new visual bookmarking tool called stacks. The main new feature, stacks, allows users to bookmark and group sites and share them, visually, with others. "

Google Notebook gets bigger

Size Does Matter Nadav Savio, UX Designer, Google Notebook (June 20)

New release of Google Notebookincludes the ability to choose a size for the mini notebook!

To do this, open the Notebook as the "pop-in", click on Tools in the top right and select resize.

Sensebot

Firefox addon summarizes Google search results Pandia (May 19)

Sensebot "summarizes Google search results through text mining" and can be installed through a Firefox addon.

http://www.semanticengines.com/plugins.htm

Using Google Trends

Google Trends now works for Web sites too By Josh Lowensohn, Webware (June 20)

Google Trends (now available in the google.ca domain as well) has been interesting for what it can indicate about a topic by picking up search trends for keywords. Now it will analyse a site domain. But you have to run a keyword search first, and then select Websites from the results set. (Odd design).

"Google Trends, a service Google started two years ago to track searched-for keywords, has unveiled a new tool for inquiring minds looking to find out more on any given site. Like tracking services Compete and Alexa which use tool bars to grab user data, Google Trends now lets you pop in specific domains and compare basic traffic information about any .com site (or .tv, .biz, .net, and so on) using nothing more than organic user searches."

For keywords, see activity on "cap and trade", "carbon tax".

For site, try the site for the Environment Canada - www.ec.gc.ca. The analysis of also visited or also searched for hasn't a whiff of global warming, climate change, or carbon tax.

Also - Google Trends Comes To Web Sites: Trends For Web Sites - Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Jun 20)

Points out how SEMs might use Google Trends on websites for getting keywords. But can also be used to find similar sites.

Explains how Google gets this data -- "One thing you should keep in mind is that this tool basis its data off Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. In addition, the search volume numbers are estimates and Google only shows ten search phrases for a domain name."

Mahalo plug-in for Yahoo results

Enhanced Mahalo results in Yahoo thanks to Search Monkey Jason Calacanis (Jun 13)

Here's an example of what a plugin developed through Search Monkey can do to enhance search results in Yahoo from a site - in this case Mahalo.

Related Search at Google

Fresher related search suggestions, Rajat Mukherjee, Google Blog (june 12)

Google has announced some improvements in the algorithm that shows related searches (very occasionally), saying that "Recently, we improved our algorithms to process new information faster, and the result is quite tangible -- you should now see fresher suggestions for queries on current topics of interest."

But will we see them more often?

Clarify then Refine

Peter Morville put his finger on the value of having guided navigation in his posting Clarify and Refine (June 2)

"First, we must clarify the meaning or context. Are we in the right ballpark regarding the searcher's intent? Clarify is all about disambiguation. Then, we're ready to refine or narrow." Comments that Yahoo's two-step approach to Search Assist seems to fit clarify / refine.

Links to a slideshow by Daniel Tunkeland, Chief Scientist at Endeca, who asked Is Search Broken?

A key point, in this presentation was - that in human-computer information retrieval, "de-emphasize the top ten documents; response is a set of documents" and also "support refinement and exploration".

Tunkelang posted more about clarification vs refinement in his blog, The Noisy Channel.

The analogy - if you're dropped into the country and don't know where you are --

"Clarification is the process of finding the road, while refinement leverages the network of relationships in your content (i.e., the network of roads connecting towns and cities) to enable navigation and exploration.

"Did you mean..." is the prototypical example of clarification, while faceted navigation is the prototypical example of refinement."

Searching together

Microsoft Seeks To Bring Collaboration To Search by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (June 5)

"Microsoft has experimentally introduced "SearchTogether," which allows people to use a browser plug-in (IE7 only) to literally collaborate on search. You need a Windows Live ID and Messenger but you can apparently use any search engine you like."

Search Together -- "users can collaborate locally or at different locations, working in tandem or at different times."

Described in detail in the tutorial. - has integrated chat.

Yahoo Search Gallery

Yahoo SearchMonkey gallery now live By Stephen Shankland, Webware (June 6)

Yahoo Search Gallery has some applications developed under SearchMonkey to show enhanced search results for that site - eg WebMD, eHow, Trulia - more.

"SearchMonkey lets developers write software that augments Yahoo's search results, for example offering ratings by movie titles or addresses, phone numbers, and maps next to restaurants. A more elaborate option involves building an "infobar" around the result that can let the user expand it into what amounts to a miniature Web page."

Language Handling at Search Engines

Multilingual Searching: Search Engine Language Tools by Greg Notess, Online (June 1)

Language and translation features at the Google, Yahoo, Ask and Live as well as Exalead and Gigablast.

..."For savvy searchers, the multiple languages and content from distant countries create new opportunities for finding previously buried information resources.

To find these resources, even in languages that you can’t read, the search engines offer a variety of language aids. With language limits, machine translation, translated search, and multiple interface languages, searchers have a variety of increasingly sophisticated tools to harvest information content from many languages. "

Greg points out that Exalead has the largest selection of languages which would seem to make it a leader. But Exalead does not have a French language interface for Exalead Canada.

Google Translate

Major Expansion at Google Translate, Greg Notess, SearchEngineShowdown (May 18)

"Google not only upped the number of possible languages, but every language listed can translate to the other. So depending on how you count, Google Translate now has over 500 language pairs available!"

Google Translate up to 10

Google Translate speaks 10 new languages By Stephen Shankland, Webware (May 15)

"The online translation function now can understand 10 more languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Swedish. That brings the total to 23 languages,..."

Google Translate -- http://translate.google.com/

SurfCanyon for Personalized Search

Firefox plug-in personalises search results, Pandia (May 8)

Pandia recommends a new Firefox plug-in from SurfCanyon for re-ranking search results based on your behaviour. Works for Google, Yahoo, and Live/MSN. Says it isn't intrusive. There is an add-on for IE too.

Get it at http://surfcanyon.com/search/extension.jsp

You'll want to read the privacy notice first. Seems standard -- "We tie your personally identifiable information to information in the profile in order to provide tailored search results and sponsored results for you. We share your profile with other third parties in aggregate form only."

iGoogle Art Work

Leading Artists Create New Themes for iGoogle Information Today (May 2)

Good news for people who use iGoogle - there are some 70 new themes created by artists to choose from to personalize the appearance. "Searchers can sample the artistry of Oscar de la Renta, Jeff Koons, Philippe Starck, Dale Chihuly, Anne Geddes, Akira Isogawa, among others, or for those who can’t pick just one, there’s a sampler theme that rotates through all of the participating artists’ themes."

http://www.google.com/help/ig/art/

Topicle for Custom Search

Custom Search Engines in a Variety of Categories, ResearchBuzz (Apr 12)

"Search engine tool Topicle http://www.topicle.com/ currently has over 1100 user-made search engines to browse through. You may also make your own.

You can search for search engines, browse by recent or popular, or browse alphabetically, from Aad50 to Zivity. The numbers with each search engine indicate how many URLs are being searched. "

Example of Yahoo Pipes

Social Media Firehose is a meta search of social media sites that has been built using Yahoo Pipes. Kingsley Joseph, the creator, describes it as

"This is a big, fat, wide-reaching net of social media searches to alert you every time your brand or product is mentioned by anybody on a slew of social media sites, including flickr, twitter, friendfeed, digg etc. "

If you like it, you can clone it.

Google's Placement of Related Searches

Related Searches Moving Up? by Greg Notess, Search Engine Showdown (Apr 5)

Greg Notess has noticed related searches (try-these-phrases kind of search aid) at the top of search results at Google - and he has screen shots to prove it. Would be nice - I wish Google had done this ages ago. But - it's not showing up for me in Toronto.

Google often shows related searches at the bottom of a page on very broad searches such as Greg's for beatles. Better than nothing - suppose the thought is that people won't think they need to try a new search unless they haven't found anything on the first page.

One of Google's Experimental Search modes was to compare left-hand search navigation ro right-hand search navigation in which Google would show suggested keywords or related searches on the left or right. (See A tour of Google's new Experimental Search. Verdict: awesome (Jan 30)). That's gone now.

Something must be afoot.

ChaCha on the Phone

ChaCha lets you, literally, ask a question by ELinor Mills, WebWare (Mar 31)

You can ask the searchers at ChaCha your question over the phone, and get the answer on the web.

"To use the new service you can call 800-224-2242 (which spells "chacha") and specify the information you want to an automated attendant. ChaCha then sends you a text message with the answer. You can access your questions and answers on the Web as well."

US only.

Google's long search box

Google's Search Box Grows As Needed: Yahoo & Live Search Don't by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Mar 25)

Google's search box stretches to accomodate long inquiries - but only after you hit enter.

Bookmarklets for Search

Updated Bookmarklets by Greg Notess, Searchenginesshowdown (Mar 25)

Greg Notess updated his collection of bookmarklets to make search and related tasks easier. Bookmarklets are mini-javascript programs that can be saved as a bookmark -- then you click on it when you need it. Utilities might be to search for a word, translate a word - there are many possibilities as you will see from Greg's list. He includes bookmarklets that will number search results at Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Personalize through Google Custom Search

Custom Google Search Google Operating System (Mar 22)

"Google has been experimenting with letting users reorder and remove search results. ... The new options allow you to promote some of the results at the top of the page, hide the results you think are not relevant and add new web pages that are missing from Google's results."

Yahoo Search Assist

Taking Search Assist to the Streets Yahoo Search Blog (Mar 21)

Yahoo has rolled out Search Assist to another 15 countries including Canada, the UK, Australia, Mexico, France, Italy.

Search Assist can make search suggestion as you type, and will analyze the top results to identify "concepts" that you might consider in refining the search.

The blog entry states that these are "tailor-made to reflect local search behavior and tendencies."

A search at Yahoo Canada for "great lakes" will show different concepts and suggestions than at Yahoo UK: Canadian version has 3 of the lakes in the North American system - michigan, superior, huron among its results, and the UK lists burundi in Africa

Storm Warnings

Storm Warnings Coming Soon to Google by Jim Loney, Reuters via PCWorld (Mar 20)

People in hurricane areas in the US will be able to go to Google to get information from the National Hurricane Center on risk of a storm surge to their area (street address). This will save on calls to the local emergency numbers.

"Hurricane forecasters will also offer a new color-coded graphic on the NHC Web site this year that will indicate storm surge probabilities for threatened areas, similar to forecasts they now offer on wind-speed probabilities."

Sounds helpful - though people should remember to check NHC too.

Fun with Google

Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Google by Steve Bass, PCWOrld (Mar 11)

Have fun with Google - Steve Bass shows how -- "Calculate complex equations, track shipments, build a Web site, and more--all on Google. Plus, how not to move a palm tree."

Microsoft collaborative search tools

Microsoft Shows Off Collaborative Search Tools Nancy Gohring, IDG News via PCWorld (mar 4)

Microsoft is developing tools for collaboration

+ SearchTogether -- "After downloading a small program, a SearchTogether user will see a sidebar in their browser where they can sign in using their Live ID and invite any buddy to join in a collaborative search. A drop-down menu shows collaborations the user might have in progress."

+ CoSearch -- " Using a cell phone connected to the computer via Bluetooth, students can view the page displayed on the computer on their phones and click on a link to open another page on their phones. They can also send search queries from their phones to the PC, and the queries are listed in a queue in a sidebar in the browser on the computer. Then the students can choose which query they want to explore on the shared PC."

Also Microsoft Research Unveils Three New Search Projects in SearchEngineWatch.com (Mar 5)

There is a 3rd project - "Searchbar is an advanced search history tool that operates as a sidebar in a user’s web browser. Users can save searches in order to return to them later and pick up where they left off. SearchBar organizes the searches in a hierarchical tree format. Users can write notes to themselves to remind them of future searches or any other information they wish to remember about their search queries." Sounds useful.

The Personalized Homepage

The Personalized Homepage War: Who Matters by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch (Feb 24)

Update on personalized homepages

+ "Netvibes and Pageflakes tend to get most of the press attention, and they are certainly pushing the envelope and trying to find new ways to make their services useful to users. But those two services have less than 4% of the market for personalized homepages between them"

+ Portals have versions: MyYahoo, iGoogle, MyMSN and MyAOL. Comscore stats from January 2008 show Yahoo in the lead with 57% market share (down), Google (up) at 26%, MyMsn 10%, and MyAol 3.3%. Netvibes had 3.3 and PageFlakes .2%

+ GlobalGrind - new one to look at - described as "hip hop centric"

Many comments by readers including one that points to a comparison article at Mashable -- 14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature (June 29, 2007) - who would have guessed there were so many?

Get the general idea of how to use these - iGoogle specifically - with this iGoogle Animated Video .

Search Extras from ResearchBuzz

A Few Quick Search Engine Hints Etc ResearchBuzz (Jan 29)

Odds and ends on search tricks

- Bloglines has some RSS feeds on forums
- Google Finance Dow Jones page gives continuous updates (if you can live with the stress).
- get rss feeds from Google News

Use Google Notebooks to bookmark search results

Bookmark Google Search Results Google Operating System (Jan 29)

Hurrah - "An interesting side effect of Google Notebook's integration with Google Bookmarks is that you can now bookmark search results without having to install plug-ins or use bookmarklets. " Has tips on how to use this.

Google's Universal Search

Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Jan 30)

Google has had universal search for over 6 months now. Danny Sullivan describes how it has progressed to provide comparative ranking and blending.

With Universal Search, "Google said that web search results were measured directly against other types of search results, such as images or news. If those results were deemed more relevant than web search, then they'd be added to the page. That's the comparative ranking part.

Google also typically would take away a web search listing, if comparative ranking decided that a vertical search listing should go on the page. That's the blending part. For example, news results might instead be "blended" within the regular 10 listings area, perhaps at position four, or six or wherever, rather than always being put at the top."

Has examples and screenshots.

But has universal search been successful? Are results better? Do searchers find materials they wouldn't otherwise? No answers to these questions. The display of local results at the top is good, but the usefulness of blending and inter-ranking other content types in the main body of results is not known yet. It's nice if a video pops up for a query - if it really is relevant - but searchers should be aware that they need to explore content areas individually and often with different techniques to what they do for a web page search.

Browser Toolbars

14 Popular Browser Toolbars Reviewed - The Worthwhile and the Worthless SEOMoz (Jan 18)

Good description of browser toolbars. Assess the use to "ordinary users" and "web professionals" (ie web developers and Internet marketers). Looks at the search engine toolbars (Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask) and typically assigns a low to medium value to "ordinary users". Google Toolbar was ranked at Medium even though it has many useful functions - select the Google search, fill in forms. I would have assessed it at Medium to High. Surprisingly gives a medium to high ranking for the Stumbleupon toolbar because "possibility of finding amazing new stuff is irresistible." Groowe toolbar got a high as well - it provides quick access to multiple search engines - but so does the Firefox browser.

Inside Google Notebooks

Might Google Notebooks Influence Web Rankings? SEO by the Sea (Nov 18)

"Google published three patent applications on Google Notebook this week, which describe the fundamentals of how the program works, and provide a hint at how notebooks may influence some search results."

Article also links to information about new features of Google Notebooks.

"Some of the newest features that aren’t covered in the patent filings include the ability to turn your notes into Google Documents, the mobile version of Notebooks, an integration with Google Maps and with the personalized home page, and the ability to add labels to notebooks."

Yahoo Pipes Blocked

Google blocks Yahoo's Pipes BigMouthMedia (Nov 12)

Firstly, Yahoo Pipes sounds like an excellent current awareness tool if you are able to identify the sources and keywords, but, right now, Google is blocking access but Yahoo Pipes to the news stories.

"Pipes is a highly regarded product from Yahoo's Brickhouse team. Users are able to collect data from various sources around the internet, manipulate it, filter it, sort it and then deliver it in another format. For example, with Yahoo Pipes a brand team could monitor news aggregators and blog search engines around the web for mentions of their brand and then deliver this research in one single RSS feed. "

Live.com's Language Translator

Live.com Releases Very Simple Page Translation Tool, Read/Write Web (Nov 9)

Add Live.com's translation tool to your web site or just use Translator directly.

Google Carbon Footprint

Google’s cool carbon footprint calculator. SEOhome.co.uk (Nov 2)

This is telling - carbon footprint at Google UK but not Google US.

Here it is Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George Bush - http://www.google.co.uk/carbonfootprint/index.html

Google Web History does Blogs

Blog Searches Now Included In Google Web History by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Nov 2)

Good news - Google's personalized search now captures searches at Blog Search.

Google Notebook Changes

Google Notebook Adds Labels and Bookmarks Google Operating System (Nov 1)

Users of Google Notebook to clip and save parts of web pages along with the url can now add labels to these clippings and select clippings that have that tag for viewing.

Notes can also be sorted by date and label.

There is also an extension by which you can add bookmarks to the notebook.

Hooeey for Web Tracking

De.licio.us + Google Web History = Hooeey Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Oct 15)

Hooeey - new web-based tool with toolbar for tracking what you look at on the web and bookmarking and sharing what you select.

"The goal is to let you centralize your favorites, and make them easier to share with others, while combining some facets of other free tracking services like Google Web History to let you see which services you're visiting the most."

There might be an application for this in research projects where you need a record of what you tried and saw, and a way to select the best - and to put the best bits into a slide show. But, but for day to day one off searches - I think it's too much work.

Best Online Tools

Top 10 Useful Web Tools, Pandia (Oct 13(

"The editors of Pandia share their favorite online tools for blogging, exploring and information management." - great picks. I think Yahoo tools won out over Google overall. I would have added Google Notebook for saving urls and clips.

Review of Microsoft Tafiti

Microsoft Tafiti - reviewed by Karen Blackman (Aug 26, 2007) - describes with words and screenshots Microsoft's beta search front-end to Live Search called Tafiti.

Tafiti is a research tool that sits on top of Live.com and was developed with Microsoft's Silverlight technology . Tafiti is a download - works on Windows XP , Vista and Mac OS 10.4.8+ and several browsers. See Silverlight system requirements.

Also reviewed by Chris Koenig in Microsoft Tafiti - Search on Steroids (Aug 23, 2007)

ON10.net did a demo video on Tafiti before its release that gives the background, shows how to use it, and a little about the future.

It is definitely a new browsing experience.

Google Features

Google Features to Increase your Online Productivity, Jennifer Evans, PCWorld Canada (Oct 3)

Google is much more than web search. This article describes some specialized tools businesses and individuals might find handy.

CustomizeGoogle Firefox Addon

Briefs: CustomizeGoogle New Release; Open Yahoo; Portico News; Tracking Political Buzz in the U.S., ResourceShelf (Sep 14)

Describes CustomizeGoogle V0.63 as "the robust and popular add-on for Firefox.

From the website - "CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam)." There is a 2 minute introduction. This has been around for a while. Two new features of interest are:

+ Stickly Google Preferences - keep your preferences but delete the cookies.
+ Stream Google results pages - never click Next.

Hakia ScoopBar eliminates the second search

You’ve Heard of 2nd Life? Now Here’s Something to Avoid: 2nd Search, Hakia (Aug 30)

Let the Hakia ScoopBar skim documents for you - this "is a browser toolbar that automatically finds the answer of your question on the Web page you’re visiting, scrolling to the relevant position, and visually highlighting the relevant sentence(s)". Can also copy and save the information for reference later. See the flash demo.

Google Custom Search

Briefs: Using More than 3 Sites When Building a Google Custom Search; Zoho’s Powerful Web-Based Notebook Adds More Features, Resourceshelf (Aug 20)

Reports on a discovery by Avi Rappaport that "if you build a search tool using more than three sites with Google Custom Search Engine (and CSBE, Custom Search Business Edition) the results might be different than what’s returned when using Google.com"

Google's Web History

Google knows all with Web History, Bobbie Johnson, Guardian Unlimited (Aug 2)

Google has made the option for tracking all surfing activity (called Web history) available worldwide. It could be handy in retracing your steps on a research project or even something less serious like a recipe you know you saw. But at what cost? Depends on how you feel about privacy.

Windows Live Folders - Beta

Getting Started with Windows Live Folders, PC World (Aug 1)

Microsoft has a beta version of its online storage service, Windows Live Folders. This review points to some promise (sharing is eash) but many significant shortcomings. It's not ready for prime time - don't give up on XDrive or others.

Widgets 4 You

Your Guide to Widgets by Mark Glaser, MediaShift PBS (Jul 19)

History of widgets (small programs that you can use as utilities from a browser or desktop) along with many examples of their use at social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) and personal web pages (Yahoo, Google). Raises the issue of advertising accompanying the widgets. Has links for the widget curious.

Search Suggestions

Yahoo.com Adds Search Suggestions, Barry Schwartz, Searchengineland (Jul 12)

Yahoo offers search suggestions at yahoo.com but not search.yahoo.com. Others such as Ask and Snap have a similar feature - very handy.

Google Translate Dictionary

Dictionary Feature Added To Google Translate, Search Engine Land (Jun 22)

Google Translate lets you pick the meaning you want through a dictionary.

Google Bookmarks

Export Your Google Bookmarks, Google Operating System (Jun 15)

Of interest - "Google Bookmarks is a cool way to bias Google's search results towards your favorite sites..." - use Google Toolbar suggestions.

Managing your iGoogle

Declutter iGoogle, Google Operating System (Jun 1)

What a good idea - organize feeds and whatever else by tabs.

Zoho Notebook is Terrific

Feature-Filled Web Notebook from Zoho Leave Private Beta, Available to All, Resourceshelf (May 23)

Endorsement for the Zoho Notebook to "create, aggregate, collaborate". This goes way beyond Google Notebook - it's a complete work space. Watch the 5 minute video.

eSnips for Saving and Sharing

Web Tools: eSnips Improves Search, Resourceshelf (May 24) - recommends eSnips - "The service has a ton of features, is very easy to use, now, searching your saved content has gotten more robust."

Diigo Research Tool

Diigo does a very good job of searching tags across several sources and presenting results, and can also serve as a collaborative research tool.

On a search for classification it picked up results from del.icio.us, Yahoo MyWeb, Bloglines, Technorati, and Digg - a mix of social bookmarks and blog postings. Google links comes into play when you inquire on a specific article - but the Google backwards link search is known for being incomplete and weak. This information is displayed on the About page for each result along with tags, bookmarking names, postings, and comments -- all in all a very informative page.

But Diigo is more than a metasearcher. It's a collaborative research tool. You can form groups here, and add your bookmarks to Diigo and other services you use. In addition you can clip pages and add stick-notes.

From the Diigo about page - " Diigo (dee'go) is about "Social Annotation". By combining social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, easy sharing and interactions, Diigo offers a powerful personal tool and a rich social platform for knowledge users, and in the process, turns the entire web into a writable, participatory and interactive media."

CNet editors gave Diigo a 7.3 rating in CNET editors' review, Reviewed by: Elsa Wenzel (Sept 28, 2006)

"Diigo is an online bookmarking tool with a twist. Sometimes, merely saving a bunch of tagged Web sites to a list of favorites is not enough. Ever wanted to highlight one cool corner of a Web page? Do you wish you could scribble on various Web sites to collect recipes, plan a vacation, or write a big research paper, then share your notes? Diigo can help you do that."

Hacking iGoogle

Pimp Your iGoogle With These Greasemonkey Hacks— by Stan Schroeder — Mashable Social Networking News (May 11)

Lots of ideas here you could play with to make iGoogle truly yours.

Yahoo Lyrics Shortcut

Yahoo Search Integrates Lyrics Shortcut, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (May 8)

Use the word lyrics to get a shortcut to the new Yahoo Lyrics database. Works for blue moon lyrics. I had no memory of all those "Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba / Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba". Wish there was a link to hear the song as well. Unfortunately Yahoo doesn't have the lyrics to opera arias on its database.

Google Gadget Maker

Inside Google Desktop claims - New Improved Desktop Gadget Designer (May 3) but Garett Rogers at ZDNet says Google Gadget Designer still sucks.

iGoogle Personal

It's not MyGoogle, it's iGoogle! (I'm not sure that lower case i gives the right message - but onwards.) Google has its ducks in a row now for the personalized web search experience.

+ before going any further - personalized is optional, but if you have an account with Google you are also signed up for personal search. Do keep an eye on the top right hand corner of your browser screen to verify that you are or are not logged in.

+ you can keep a record of the searches you do at Google using search history (and the pages you viewed and the bookmarks you want - with everything searchable). This has been available for several months. To this you can keep a record of every site you look at in a day - this is the new Web History.

+ search history is not used for targeting ads. Google has been saying that for many months. They say it again - "iGoogle will remain non-commercial for the foreseeable future."

+ location is important. Search results will be influenced by the location you set as your home base in Google Maps - and of course when you use Google maps it should start from where you live.

+ iGoogle is worldwide now - 40 countries and 26 languages. Canada was one of the early ones.

+ there are 25,000 gadgets (oh my - far too much choice) to choose from to add to the personalized home page. Here's the directory to tempt you.

+ there is a new gadget maker so that you too can create a way to share content with a community. Tools will be for "publishing photos, sending virtual greeting cards or creating personal profiles or lists of favourite songs or films". Resourceshelf compares these to Yahoo Pipes or the Live Macros.

References and reading:

Google expands personalisation with iGoogle by Eric Auchard, Reuters UK (May 1) - press release kind of article.

Google To Merge Personalized Services To "iGoogle" Brand by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Apr 30) - guide to articles and pointers.

Briefs: Google’s Personalized Services Renamed iGoogle, New Features Added ..., Resourceshelf (May 1) - a comparitive and historical perspective. Says that Live Search has always had the geographic searching (but I don't think it worked in Canada).

Postscript: iGoogle, Personalized Search And You, by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land - long article reviewing how iGoogle came about and clarifing points about targeting and privacy.

Assessment

So what's it like? It's cute, attractive, potentially useful, but you need a chunk of time to set up the personal page (and its tabs) and work with the variety of tools; you have to be comfortable with allowing Google to have access to that data and preserve anonymity; you have to be happy with picking Google as your Web centre (I can't see spending all that time also creating a Yahoo centre and a Live centre). Google has done this to keep your eyeballs fixed on it - talk about sticky.

But as a final note, it isn't 100% stable. I was adjusting and fiddling with the new features and suddenly lost all my settings. Is there a way to back this stuff up?

Google Web History

Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History by Danny Sullivan, Searchengineland (APr 19)

People who have been using MyGoogleSearch will be prompted to to enable PageRank on their Google toolbar to have Google remember all web activity. New users may be signed up automatically for web history.

Sullivan tells us this is part of Google's move to delivering personalized results - and the more it knows about a person's interest, the better it can do that. Sullivan has some screenshots on what Web History looks like with seaches and visited sites mixed together and everything with a time stamp. There are some features for "filtering" search out of web sites, and for searching the history (though this needs improvement). You can pause the logging, and also remove pages from the Web History (but who's going to set aside time to do that?).

Does this mean we should worry? Should we yank out the Google toolbar? It's a tradeoff - having a web history would be useful (I've been waiting for a good tool for years), having personalized results might be beneficial (hard to know without proof it works), but how comfortable are

Techmeme is tracking this story and what others say about Web History.

Bill Slawski describes several patents Google has on personalization - Google’s Web History Patent Applications - the end result being a User Information Database with queries, clicks, ads, product events, and derived data.

Some people are going to hold off turning on Web History until we know more. But there is no doubt that Google is set on personalization.

From Danny Sullivan - "Google is big on personalization. Big, big, big. Everyone else can keep their "wisdom of the crowds" stuff. For Google, getting up close and personal with individuals is seen as a big leap forward on many fronts -- and 2007 is the year Google is going all out after it. "

CiteBite for Linking

CiteBite by Cindy Chick, LawLibTech (Apr 18)

Link directly to a passage on a web page with citebite. Cindy Chick describes how by using CiteBite.

From CiteBite - "Paste a chunk of text and the URL of the page containing the text and in return get a link that opens directly to your selection and highlights it."

Google Recommends

Google's Random Site Button Google Blogscoped (Apr 18) -

Google offers a new feature for the toolbar (IE 6 only) that looks like a pair of dice - click on it to have Google recommend a web site to you based on your past searches.

Or you could set up a tab on your personal Google page for recommendations and select "I feel lucky". This I did do. Google has news, gadgets, video, pages, groups - and says why it recommends these.

I'm skeptical. At one time I searched for ontario environment commissioner (I guess - I don't remember), and Google recommends Rogers.com. And because I searched for Seth Godin, it recommends doubleclick, the online advertising firm Google just bought.

If this is personalization, it needs a lot of work.

Also - Google Offers "Queryless Search" & Personalized Recommendations by Chris Sherman, Searchengineland (Apr 18)

Snap Shots from Snap.com

Snap.com Announces Snap Shots, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Apr 16)

"Perfect Market Technologies, Inc., operator of Snap.com, today announced a new web service for delivering contextually relevant content directly to Web users. Called Snap Shots(TM), this new, open platform intelligently delivers related content such as stock quotes, streaming audio or video, product information and more, directly to users as they browse an enabled web page - all in a format that is useful and engaging to users. "

There are several "shots" - PreviewShot, WikiShot, MovieShot, StockShot, VideoSHot, PhotoShot, AudioShot, CompanyNewsShot from Reuters, and ProductShot to pick up Amazon.

There are examples at Snap Shots Showcase , or, in fact, nearly everywhere on the Snap Blog. The shots are marked by little screen-like icons.

Clipmarks to save clips

Clipmarks Announces ClipSearch, A People-Powered Search Engine for the Best Bits of the Web, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Apr 10)

"Clipmarks ( www.clipmarks.com ), the leader in Web clipping technology, today introduces ClipSearch, a people-powered search solution that makes it easy to locate what you or others have already found on the Web. Each time a user clips something from a Web page, they build their own searchable library of Web highlights. By saving clips publicly, users are contributing to a people-powered search engine for the best bits of the Web."

Clip anything - text, images or video from a page or several pages. Save it, blog it, email it.

Available as an add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Flock.

Google Notebook move over.

Online Yahoo! Bookmarks

The New Yahoo! Bookmarks and Toolbar Get a Refresh, Yahoo Search Blog (Apr 6)

"Today, we're announcing the general availability, on Firefox and IE, with a few new updates including integration with popular Yahoo! properties, personalized recommendations for suggested bookmarks and enhanced features for organizing and managing bookmarks."

Yahoo Alpha Search

Yahoo Tests Customizable Alpha Search Engine, Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World (Apr 5 )

Yahoo Inc. is working on a new make-your-own search engine, this one more geared to the non-techie users -- Yahoo Alpha. Users can add, remove and change components.

"Yahoo already provides a service called Search Builder to let Web publishers build customized search engines for their sites based on the Yahoo search platform. However, Yahoo Alpha seems targeted at end users interested in creating a search page tailored to their interests. Users can also share their Yahoo Alpha search pages with others."

Desktop Yahoo Widgets

Web-Watching the Widget Way, Reuters via eWeek (Mar 28)

Widgets seem to be everywhere - certainly at Google, Yahoo, and Live. This article promotes Yahoo Widgets - http://widgets.yahoo.com/ .
Definition: "Widgets allow the user to access information by desktop without opening a web browser." [These are the Yahoo widgets. There are other types that fit into a web page, such as a home page.]

Yahoo: "Yahoo recently launched Widgets 4 and has more than 4,300 widgets, many written by third parties but that include company-branded ones.

Implication: "If you have that application running there (on the desktop) all the time, from an advertiser and a brand's perspective, that's obviously an opportunity to connect with their key audiences," said Brody [Paul Brody, VP desktop products, Yahoo]

A Better Google Notebook

Google Notebook has been dressed up and moved out of beta. This tool is handy for saving clips from web pages, adding notes, and keeping urls in an online space that can be shared. The recent improvements add formatting options to the full page view of notebook contents, a better looking mini-view of an individual notebook, and more options for organizing and managing clips. For example, you can now move a clip from one folder to another.

See Google Blogscoped (Mar 28) - Google Notebook Redesign.

Google's Translate

Google seeks world of instant translations by Adam Tanner, Reuters Canada (Mar 27)

Google is aiming to provide instant translations of documents through statistical machine translation. This is done by determining patterns of translation from examples of translations done by humans. Franz Och, from Germany, hads up the Google's translation effort.

" So far, Google is offering its own statistical machine translations of Arabic, Chinese and Russian to and from English at http://www.google.com/language_tools. Third-party software gives access on the site to German and other languages, Och said.

"So far, the focus is let's make it really, really good," Och said. "As part of a general Google philosophy, once it's really useful and it has impact, then there will be found ways how to make money out of it.""

Will it contribute to world understanding and peace?

Yahoo Shortcuts

March 2007 InfoTip: Yahoo's Personalized Shortcuts by Mary Ellen Bates (Mar)

Use Yahoo's shortcuts or create your own - gives examples of ones Bates has created for herself.

Search Agent Allth.at

Allth.at looks like a search engine but it's really a search agent that will keep searching on your behalf. Cool tool - searches several engines (you can add more), search can be refined (focus on, filter out), and saved, and you can be alerted of new results through email or by subscribing to a RSS feed to Google Reader, Yahoo page and others. I found that although I could add Ask.com and Exalead, they didn't return results. There are three groupings for the meta-search: Web, SHopping, and News - each with a small selection of services.

Allth.at Launches Innovative Search Agents App by Richard MacManus, Read/WriteWeb (Mar 20)

"It's a search agent that allows you to define a search topic, then refine it with the use of filters, and finally subscribe to it via email or RSS. It's similar in many respects to PubSub, the now defunct 'future search' engine that I was a fan of. "

Answer Tips

Answers.com’s AnswerTips Ready to Bubble Up on Web Sites and Blogs by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Feb 26)

AnswerTips has been adopted by several web sites already, including CBSNews.com - double click on a word you don't know and get a definition or description in a popup.

"As to the advantage of offering this free service, Bailey said that it fits Answers.com's strategy of "leveraging content we already have. AnswerTips has two primary purposes; [the] first [is] to spread the word on Answers.com with good branding and exposure. Second, we anticipate that once we give people the snippet of information for a short answer, they will want more and click on the ‘More' button that takes them to our site. Right now we have no advertising in AnswerTips, except on the CBS site with an ad on the bottom, but we may have advertising in the future.""

Google Toolbar Tips

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

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

More Google Tools

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

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

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

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

Making Widgets

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

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

Quick Answers

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

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

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

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

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

There are RSS feeds from Answers.com on topics.

Personalized Google

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google's Custom Search

Google CSE of the Best Reference Sites, Finding Custom Search Engines< Researchbuzz (Jan 21)

+ Recommends a custom search engine (CSE) built to search reference sites -- ALA-RUSA Best Free Reference Web Sites

+ Has a great tip on how to find more (other than by going to Google's list of picks ) -- "The magic search modifier is inurl:cse inurl:coop site:google.com ".

Search Bar

Fast and Easy: Add Just About Any Search Engine to Your Firefox Search Bar, No Coding Skills Required, ResourceShelf (Jan 7)

Firefox and Opera users can easily add a search engine to their search toolbar.

eSnips MicroPortals

Save It! eSnips Officially Releases Subject-based MicroPortals, Resourceshelf (Jan 8)

eSnips is still alive and better. As Resourceshelf points out, Mary Ellen Bates said very nice things about eSnips as a tool for researhers for saving and sharing material. Now it supports more extensive online community sharing. "Look for links to eSnips MicroPortals/Community links in the upper right side of the eSnips homepage as well near the top of the page."

Yahoo Toolbar and Bookmarks

Yahoo Updates Toolbar and Bookmarks by Chris Sherman, Clickz (Dec 27)

"Yahoo recently released a new version of its toolbar with a powerful new bookmarking feature that integrates seamlessly with Yahoo Web search, and features a "radical" new user interface."

Bookmarking is private, supports folders and tagging, and has a keyword search. Get the new toolbar at toolbar.yahoo.com. Appears to be for Internet Explorer.

Addendum: If you have been using Yahoo MyWeb and want to work with the new bookmarks version, go to beta.bookmarks.yahoo.com. Yahoo automatically moves your saved pages on MyWeb to the new Yahoo! Bookmarks and puts everything into the Uncategorized folder. Fortunately, those bookmarks can still be viewed in MyWeb.

Firefox users will need to add a bookmarklet to the browser links bar to add bookmarks easily - the Yahoo toolbar doesn't have the feature.

Wish: Like many others, I wish Yahoo would integrate all these different services - Bookmarks, MyWeb with social bookmarking, and del.icio.us.
There is more information in the Yahoo Search Blog -- Better Bookmarks, Better Toolbar (Oct 24, 2006)

Heirs to Google Answers

"Google Answers is Dead! Long Live Google Answers!" By David Sarokin, Freepint (Dec 2006)

Reflections on the usefulness of Google Answers and reasons for its demise by someone who was one of the researchers. Why did Google not promote GA even as it became clear from the success of Yahoo Answers that people are flocking to these services? YA is free, and GA was not - but people will pay when getting the answer matters.

Mentions some other services to turn too including the Sarokin's XooxleAnswers.

Google's Other Offerings

Beyond Search: Google Specialty Services by
Dennis O'Reilly, PC World (Thursday, December 28, 2006)

Reviews several services from Google:

+ Alerts - web, blogs, news, groups, all
+ Catalogs - from stores. Can look at them, but have to phone to order.
+ Custom Search Engine - build your own or use one built by someone else
+ Specialized Searches - US Government etc.
+ Web Accelerator for broadband users

QnA ratings

Question & Answer Search Engines Ranked, Searchengineland (Dec 28)

Summarizes rankings from MIT Technology Review of some question-and-answer services. Yahoo Answers received the highest score in the Slashdot study of 11 out of 12, well ahead of Microsoft's Live QnA (7 points) or Wondir (4). Article is interesting for the examples of questions and answers.

Yahoo Answers also has the highest market share according to Hitwise (96%)!

Scrapbook for saving pages

Easily capture, manage Web pages in Firefox at Robert Ambrogi's Lawsites (Dec 19)

Ambrogi says Scrapbook, a Firefox extension for saving web pages, is better than Microsoft's Onfolio (part of the MSN toolbar / desktop).

"Among this program's many nice touches is its ability to capture linked pages and linked files along with the captured page. So if you want to capture a page as well as all pages it links to, you can. In fact, you can set the depth to multiple levels of linked pages. Or, if a page links to audio or image files, you can set the capture to include those files."

Google Toolbar for Firefox

Google Toolbar For Firefox 3.0 Adds Great Features, SearchEngineLand (Dec 13) - I think they meant Toolbar Version 2.0. No matter - Google has a new toolbar for Firefox that is also integrated with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It also connects to Google Bookmarks.

Read about the features

Your Google Search History

Making Use of Google Search History, Google Operating System (Nov 10) -- tips for using your Google Search History

Groowe Toolbar

Groowe Toolbar Gets Digg & Delicious Support, SEW Blog (Nov 9)

Danny Sullivan still likes the Groowe Toolbar and now he loves the addition of Digg and Delicious on the version for Firefox 1.5. But what about Firefox 2.0?

Google OneBox

A Closer Look at Google OneBox Results by Brian Smith, SearchDay (Nov 9)

Completes the series on shortcuts and answers from Ask, Yahoo, and Live. Google calls special answers from its information sections the OneBox. It shows first on a page, above the search results, and may include bits from News, Books, Google Scholar etc. The most popular use of OneBox is for calculations and definitions. The kind of information that gets into the Onebox is listed on the page for Google Web Search Features.

Smart Answer for US Elections at Ask

Ask.com Launches Elections Smart Answers by Barry Schwartz, SEW Blog (Nov 2) - US citizens just have to enter elections 2006 to get information on the upcoming mid-term election.

Yahoo Shortcuts

A Closer Look at Yahoo Shortcuts by Brian Smith, Searchday (Nov 1)

Yahoo has many shortcuts - Smith counted 32. He learned that the local and map search shortcuts are the most used -- "Because these Shortcuts work off of local directories like the Yellow Pages, there are an incredible amount of triggers. "

Yahoo staff analyze types of queries and identifies those that would benefit from a shortcut to Yahoo content (music, photos, travel, video etc).

Users may also create their own shortcuts for searches or sites.

Make Your Own Yahoo Shortcuts

More Open Shortcuts!, Yahoo Search Blog (Oct 27)

More on how to create your own shortcuts in Yahoo to find a site or do a search. Essentially, you set up a trigger word and make it do something. Fore example !wiki creates a search at wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org?search=%s
) This page has more instructions but it doesn't really answer the question on how to find shortcuts other people have done. However, as a starting point there is this list or popular shortcuts in the FAQ.

Yahoo Bookmarks Beta

Yahoo Updates Toolbar and Bookmarks by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Oct 25)

Yahoo has introduced a new toolbar that includes a bookmark function. It sounds wonderful - save a thumbnail, optionally save the page, create folders, add tags, add notes, search the collection - but this is a private tool and while one can email bookmarks, there aren't the sharing options of the other two bookmark managers that Yahoo owns, del.icio.us and MyWeb2.0

The toolbar is available at toolbar.yahoo.com. The toolbar has a button for Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta by which you can save, search, and browse your bookmarks.

Yahoo Gears Toolbar, Bookmarks For Social Search, By Nicholas Carlson, Internet News.com

Here it is revealed that social search style of del.icio.us is the ultimate goal, but that mainstream users (20 million users have the Yahoo toolbar) are slow to switch and need to understand tagging first.

Good definition of social search: "Social search is search that asks people, not automated computers, to index the Internet."

Yahoo makes Internet bookmarks ready to share by Eric Auchard, Reuters via Yahoo News (Oct 25)

Refers to the toolbar and to Yahoo Bookmarks.

"The new version of Yahoo Bookmarks at http://new.bookmarks.yahoo.com, offers several improvements on organizing bookmarks into folders to make them easier to find. But it also encourages users to try "tagging," a more modern way of organizing information that relies on users assigning keywords to personally important information to make it easier to search for and find such information again later."

Of interest: "The new bookmark and toolbar products are available in the United States, Germany and Taiwan, with other countries to follow." However, I can access the toolbar with my Canadian Yahoo identity.

What I've noticed:

+ MyWeb2.0 users will see all their bookmarks in the My Bookmarks application as uncategorized (because Yahoo dropped folders when it introduced MyWeb2.0). Tags are there but no tag cloud, an essential navigational device now.

+ The thumbnails of the pages are lovely.

+ There is a tab for Recommended. These match what Yahoo shows as Interesting Today in MyWeb2.0

+ There is a help page - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/bkmks/index.html

I like the new Bookmarks tool but I like MyWeb2.0 more. Will be glad when the two are merged.

Personal Home Page

Getting good vibes at home by Matthew Ingram, Globe Technology (Oct 20)

Another review of Web 2.0 places where you can design your own home page. I'm still with Sympatico but given a few hours to fiddle with settings, I'd try out Netvibes.

Ingram also mentions PageFlakes, Live.com, Google personal page, Protopages, Eskobo, and Webwag.

Live.com Instant Answers

A Closer Look At Microsoft's Instant Answers By Brian Smith, Search Day (Oct 19) -- Live.com wants to "delight" searchers with instant answers. (Flashback to the 1980s when Tom Peters preached wowing and delighting customers.)

This article shows that the answers are good for sports. These come mainly from Fox Sports. Also --

+ reference from Encarta
+ music from MSN Music
+ finance from MSN Money
+ news

The development team gets its ideas for more answers from "a multitude of places: direct customer feedback, brainstorming, Live QnA Beta, looking at what kind of things people are searching for and associated volume of searches, searcher behavior/trying to understand the intent of searches, competition, etc.’"

Live Search Macros

How To Make Custom Search Engine With Live Search, SEW Blog (Oct 12) - links to more information about Live Search Macros.

Smarter Searching

Martin Belam offers instruction in how to "liberate information from the internet" - a four-part series on personal tools. Part one is Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet (oct 9) -- Google Suggest and Yahoo Instant Search, plus a paragraph on Advanced Search.

Canadian take on homepages

There's no place like a home page, by Elsa Wenzel, CNet (Oct 6)

Compares four services for creating a home page that has news and tools: news from mainstream or from RSS feeds (niche news) and even podcasts; and tools for weather, maps, search and a bevy of widgets.

These were the four that Wenzel reviewed. I've added comments from the perspective of a Canadian user.

MyYahoo - I find MyYahoo, at least the Canadian version, rather dowdy. It does have Canadian news and is good for weather. There are many tools and you can set up more than one page.

Windows Live is beautiful to look at but not very easy to figure out. It does have all the communication tools and is probably the best choice for people using Microsoft IM and email. However, for the time being, I'm sticking with My Sympatico.

Google Home (Canadian) is even plainer than MyYahoo. News, which includes Globe and Mail and The Star, has just the title line - no lead. Weather for major cities in Canada is available, but not for the smaller centres even those with weather stations. There isn't a way to add your own bookmarks. You can add tabs if you are using Google.com/ig - not if you have google.ca/ig - one of those many minor annoyances that afflict Canadian users of these portals.

NetVibes is new to me. It's very attractive and the choices are clear. You can even show email from your POP3 account. The Web Search gives you a choice of Google, Yahoo, Live, or Snap (pity Ask.com isn't on the list). There aren't any choices for Canadian content: if you want to Canadian news, you'll need to find the RSS feeds and add them manually. (CNet reviewers reported problems in adding feeds.) It does pick up small Canadian cites through the Weather Channel.

CNet gave Google the top pick with 8 out of 10, but I'd be tempted by NetVibes, and if I were a Microsoft person, I'd figure out how to make Live.com work for me.

Ask.com Smart Answers

A Closer Look at Ask's Smart Answers, Brian Smith (Oct 10)

"This is the first article in a four-part series on the special information sections creeping into general search results, usually at the very top of the search engine results page (SERP). Ask, featured in this article, has Smart Answers. In the next three installments, I will also introduce Yahoo! Shortcuts, Google Onebox results, and Microsoft's Instant Answers. These articles will be brief introductions to the services with a lot of examples for you to explore."

Ask's smart answers roughly break down to "Fact/reference based, vertical search results, and expert/partnership driven".

This is a very worthy article, more so since Ask will not list its Smart Answers. But to the ones mentioned in this article, add simple mathematical calculations such as 24*2, imperial to metric conversions. Ask.com will also return the square root -- sqrt(4) - but you won't find that at the Ask.com help page.

A Google Rollyo?

Build your own Google Search soon, Googling Google, ZDned (Oct 2)

"IndexBench or Search Mashup — take your pick, it looks like Google is indeed developing a service similar to Rollyo. "

Restrict Your Search to Favorite Sites, Soon at Google , Google Operating System (Oct 2)

"So we should expect a similar offering from Google, that will most likely include a way to share your search mashups that combine content from more than one source. Until then you can already do that, albeit not in an elegant way." Gives a tip on how to use a multiple site query to create your own mini-google-search engine.

Google Notebook Handier

Google Notebook, New Features, ResearchBuzz (Sep 27) Google is making the NoteBook more social-search friendly. This page describes the new features . To note: you can share your notebook of clips and sites with friends to be jointly edited, the public, or keep it private.

There is a search tool to go with this -- http://www.google.com/notebook/

I think it is very handy that you can now add the Notebook to your Google personal page and also add a Firefox extension for taking notes.

Clustering from Vivisimo

Shakespeare Sonnets & Dynamic Clustering from Clusty, More Vivisimo Tools and Demos, ResourceShelf (Sep 13) - lots from Vivisimo

Weather at Ask.com

Ask.com Launches Earthquake Info Maps & Enhances Weather Info, ResourceShelf (Sep 28) The weather information is impressive and will work for my favourite - weather in wiarton. Click on Detailed Weather to get a satellite view of weather over Canada. For US cities you see the region around the city: forecast, satellite, and doppler radar.

NYT and Answers.com

NYTimes.com Integrates Answers.com Reference Content, EContent (Sep 22) - "Answers Corporation, creators of Answers.com, has announced an agreement with The New York Times Company for the integration of certain Answers.com reference content into NYTimes.com." - Quite the endorsement of Answers.com

Personalized Search Builders

Your Search, Your Way By Phil Bradley, SearchDay (Sep 19)

There are a few services that let you create and customize a search engine on your topic that searches web sites that you select. Bradley reviews Rollyo, the Yahoo Search Builder, PSS! and Eurekster's Swicki in this posting and tomorrow's. He says, "Although they all claim to do the same job—create a search function for users, they all do it rather differently".

Part 1 has Rollyo and PSS.

Part 2 covers Yahoo and Eurekster.

Tabs (maybe) for Google Personalized

Google Personalized Home Tabs By Tony Ruscoe, Google Blogscoped (Sep 14)

Google Blogscoped has a screenshot of a new feature on the Google Personalized Home page that lets users add tabs for what they want - but this may be for US users only - doesn't show for Google Canada.

Advanced Dork

Here's a new addon for Firefox that will help in running advanced searches at Google from words you highlight from a page. I don't find that much occasion to search on words from a page I'm reading, but the idea of a quick utility to the advanced search functions sounds useful. It's called Advanced Dork.

This was mentioned in Gizmo's Support Alert Newsletter (Sept).

Hyperwords

The Hyperwords Company Makes the Most Useful Tools on the Web Available in a Single Click; Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo!, Translations, Maps, Dictionaries, Share Prices, Shopping, Email, Blogs & More, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Sep 4)

" Our research group at University College London looked at optimal strategies of online knowledge work. We found that an effective approach in getting to grips with such a large volume of data was to make the data more interactive.
The result is the Hyperwords(TM) extension for Firefox. It makes all words on the web interactive. Users can select any word, or selection of words, and choose commands from an intuitive pop-up menu. "

PCWorld called it a "fabulous freebie".

Ask.com gets smarter

New Reference Smart Answers from Ask.com Offer Comparison Pricing for Books and This Day in History Info, REsourceShelf (Aug 2) -- Ask.com recognizes ISBN numbers for finding books, and knows what happened on this day thanks to Infoplease. Type in this day in history to find out.

More Function for Rollyo

Rollyo Adds More Functionality, SEW blog (Aug 3) Rollyo is great for creating your own little search engine on a topic that will search Yahoo's pages of your selected sites. Now it has more to offer.

"They've improved layout, added blog search, added the ability to take an existing Searchroll and edit it to your own taste and added a 'Rollbar'."

Advanced Search Toolbar

New Internet Technology Challenges Yahoo Toolbar Dominance
Feature-packed Online Tool Puts Best of the Internet at User's Fingertips - PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Aug 2)

Keep in mind that this is a press release -- "The Advanced Searchbar located at http://www.advancedsearchbar.com , places the best of the Internet directly at the users' fingertips, providing users with more features than the Yahoo! and Google toolbars combined. Offering the ability to search the Internet using over 100 different search engines, the Advanced Searchbar combines the functionality of different Internet searching tools with the ease-of-use and convenience of a one-click online remote control, creating a unique, all- inclusive toolbar that is considered a digital "Swiss Army Knife."

Google Accessible

Google Now Offering Accessible Search, ResearchBuzz (jul 19)

Google Accessible will rank results that are more easily used by blind or visually impaired users.

Stumbleupon sites

StumbleUpon, Inc. Announces New Internet Explorer Extension; IE Users Can Now 'Stumble' to Discover Internet's Best Websites -- Company Surpasses One Million Subscribers and Adds RSS Support, Expects Millions More With Internet Explorer Release -- PRNewswire via Marketwatch (July 18)

Firefox users have been having fun with Stumbleupon, a way of coming upon interesting sites based on what you say you like or dislike. Now IE users can too.

As well Stumbleupon produces RSS feeds that "enable users to track other users' favorite sites, reviews of any site on the Internet, and finally, new website submissions from the StumbleUpon Community".

Go to www.stumbleupon.com to download the Firefox or Internet Explorer toolbar extensions.

Saving Search Results

Finding That Site Again by Mary Ellen Bates, June 2006 -- Examines three tools for saving search results and findings - Google's Search History, A9.com, and Ask.com's Saved Results. Of these my favourite is Google's Search History.

Google Shortcut for Time

Enter time in Toronto into the Google search box and Google will tell you. I've done this for years and got an answer from other sources. Now Google delivers the time instantly.

Advanced SearchBar

New Internet Technology Challenges Google Toolbar Dominance Feature-packed Online Tool Puts Best of the Internet at User's Fingertips, PRNewswire via Marketwatch (June 7)

"The Advanced Searchbar located at http://www.advancedsearchbar.com , places the best of the Internet directly at the users' fingertips, providing users with more features than the Google and Yahoo! toolbars combined. Offering the ability to search the Internet using over 100 different search engines, the Advanced Searchbar combines the functionality of different Internet searching tools with the ease-of-use and convenience of a one-click online remote control, creating a unique, all- inclusive toolbar that is considered a digital "Swiss Army Knife.""

Certainly has a lot - maybe too much. There are several search engines you may not want on your list. Firefox users may prefer to stick with adding individual search engines to the browser.

Yahoo MyWeb Face Lift

Yahoo MyWeb2 has new colours, new layout, and a new name - MyWeb. Shows top tags, tag cloud for community, and a list of "interesting today" - which surprisingly were actually interesting.

It seems better organized too. Layout is more intuitive - my bookmarks, my contacts, and interesting today. Search of MyWeb will show all results, my results, everyone's results.

Top tags run across the top, and there is a tag finder in the left panel above the cloud. Look for book reviews to get pages tagged with that phrase, a list of people who use that tag, and related tags - such as books, book.reviews, book suggestions etc.

A "did you know" box gives tips on using this improved MyWeb.

Yahoo MyWeb Gets New Look, Easier Browsing & Viewing Features by Danny SUllivan, SearchDay (June 6) - reviews history of MyWeb and identifies the changes.

"Yahoo's given its MyWeb bookmarking service a new look and new features, making it easier than before for people to find what others are saving and sharing on the service."

Weather Answers at Ask

Ask.com's Seven Day Forecast Smart Answer, Resourceshelf (May 21) -- weather and climate info through Ask's Smart Answers.

The most useful to Canadians will be "detailed weather" -- toronto "detailed weather

Google Notebook Review

A Closer Look at Google Notebook by Chris Sherman, Searchday (May 17) - Describes the steps for getting Google Notebook, and the steps for using it (though neglects to mention that according to the Google download page you need Windows XP). Sherman then compares Google Notebook to other research tools, saying that it is probably closest to Furl. His summary is a good roundup of the current offerings.

"The bottom line with Google Notebook: It's a useful, unobtrusive service that will be most useful for quick, informal web research projects where you want to quickly gather up links and snippets of content (for example, I used it in researching this article). If you're looking for something you plan to use heavily, I'd suggest taking all of the services mentioned for a test drive, and pick the one that works the best for your own needs."

Google Notebook

Google Notebook is now available at http://www.google.com/notebook/. This service for clipping content and sharing requires Windows XP or Linux and works with the Firefox 1.5 and Internet Explorer 6 browsers. Content can be saved as private or public and searched. (At present a notice comes up to say that Search will be available in a few days.) There are some screenshots on the a demo page of the notebook. Looks interesting but the Windows XP requirement will block out all the Windows 2000 users. Would be nice if Google could merge this with its Personalized Search.

The blog for Clinical Cases and Images has a worked-through example of using Google Notebook with screenshots - Google Notebook To Save Search Results and More (May 16) - Some people have commented on the post and it's clear that one commenter things Clipmarks is far superior.

Google Suggest Extended

Speaking of Google Clustering: Looking at Lists of Google Suggestions, ResearchBuzz (May 7)

New tool developed by Eric Giguere lets you put in a word or two and see a linked list of Google suggestions. As Calishain says, it's not quite clustering - more like related searches - but it helps one see the possibilities.

Google Suggest Explorer http://www.memwg.com/suggest.html

Yahoo Babelfish

Yahoo Starts Up Yahoo Babelfish at Research Buzz (Apr 29) -- Yahoo has taken the translating tool, Babelfish, that has been at Altavista and finally put up a Yahoo version - http://babelfish.yahoo.com/.This one handles conversions between Chinese traditional and simplified. You can also add the tool to your Yahoo toolbar. See the posting at the Yahoo Blog

Yahoo Widgets

The Scout Report has featured Yahoo Widgets 3.1 saying, "The widgets offered here, [http://widgets.yahoo.com/ ]on the other hand, are small, yet mighty, stand-alone applications that can be used as helpful computer desktop extensions. While the basic widget package includes a small weather-forecaster and a
contacts list, users have submitted dozens of compelling additions to
Yahoo’s widget site, including a bulk coin tosser and one that tracks the
price of gold every 30 minutes. This application is compatible with all
computers running Windows 2000 or XP."

Accoona's Talking Toolbar

Accoona Launches the First 'Talking Search Bar' to Help Internet Users Learn English -- Revolutionary Online Technology to Help Youngsters and Global Web Browsers Learn English; Search Bar Allows Users to Highlight English-Language Online Text to Be Read Aloud by Computer -- PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Apr 20) -- Toolbar is at Accoona - wonder if it works?

Magellan Metasearch

Magellan Meta Search has been recommended by Internet Scout as having a "rather impressive ability in the areas of discovery and exploration".

From the web site: "Magellan Metasearch is a modular meta search engine, enabling users to monitor as many search engines as they want. It provides a complex query language with standard boolean operators, meta-operators, and proximity operators"

Personal Portal at Google

Turn Google Into a Portal by Tara Calishain in WRAL Tech Talk (Apr 8) -- Google has added many features for personalizing access to the Web most particularly the Google personal page at http://www.google.com/ig. This article has instructions on how to set up your own page. Google has added several new content sources, tools, and games. A person can now set up a very serviceable page.

Canadians can create a page with some Canadian content through www.google.ca/ig and then use www.google.com/ig to add items from Fun and Games, Communication, and other categories.

You can also add the URL for a module or feed that you want on your homepage. At Google.com/ig this is through Advanced Options, and on the Google.ca/ig it is called Create a Section.

Yahoo Instant Answers On

Yahoo is offering its Instant Search as an add-in to the Yahoo search page. Instant Answers looks ahead to find the major sites or news items.

The Instant Answers page has an option for adding this to your search.yahoo.com page, but it doesn't work with Firefox. Instead, you'll need to log into your My Web 2.0, click on Preferences, and Edit Display and Layout to Show Instant Search Results.

Yahoo Offers 'Instant Search' by Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb (Apr 11)

Webaroo for Offline Time

Webaroo searches while you're off the Web. It's a software program for downloading content to search and view while offline. Any device will do - laptop, pda, phone - as long as there is enough storage.

Mentioned in Webaroo: Strangeroo, but Useful, Poynter Online (Apr 11)

Google Toolbar V2 for Firefox

Toolbar v2 for Firefox fans, GoogleBlog (Apr 6) - Google has released a new version of the toolbar for Firefox. It will pick up feeds from the Google Personalized Homepage and some other feedreaders. There are some features for GMail users too.

Plum: Collect, share, connect

What to do with search results? 'Plum' 'em

Grab, search and share with Plum. Learn more in this video clip about the new Plum.

"Plum CEO Hans Peter Brondmo tells Bambi Francisco how he plans to get users to organize their search results with his service, which he calls the "then what after you Google," after it comes available April 1."

Basic service will be free. But if you make your collection public, some related advertisements may turn up.

Saving and Sharing Research

"Save yourself! Free resources for organising, maintaining and sharing the fruits of your web searches" by Mary Ellen Bates, Freepint (Mar 16) -- This article reviews methods of saving and sharing bookmarks and pages using services on the Web -- Yahoo's MyWeb2.0, A9, Ask's MyStuff (previously MyJeeves), and Furl.net; as well as Onfolio (now part of MSN) and eSnips.com. There is lots here to get you started with any one of these tools.

Windows Live Onfolio

Microsoft Tweaks Its Toolbar With Onfolio Acquisition -- Microsoft has acquired Onfolio, whose add-in for the Windows Live Toolbar beta is expected to bolster Microsoft in its effort to catch up to Google -- By W. David Gardner, Information Week (Mar 8)

Onfolio was a tool for saving and organizing web pages for research available to users of Internet Explorer and Firefox. No longer - now it will be an add-in for the Windows Live Toolbar.

See the new product site at http://www.onfolio.com/

Pico for web search

Blinkx revamps search application by Juan Carlos Perez, Computerworld (Mar 8)

Blinkx has replaced its desktop search engine of the same name with Pico aimed at improving web searching. Desktop search is an add-on.

"Like its predecessor, Pico "reads" whatever a user has on the screen at any given moment. Pico then compiles on-the-fly lists of Web pages that are relevant to the on-screen text, which can be from a Web browser window, a word processing document or an e-mail message."

The application installs a toolbar of channels for web, blogs, and other sources. Click on the icon for related results.

You can download the Pico application from http://www.blinkx.com/. There is a small demo that explains the channels and background search.

Trail Blazing

Trexy.com — old idea gets new life Pandia (March 3)

The idea of Vannevar Bush's Memex lives on in Trexy.com.

"London based Trexy.com is trying to build the Memex machine, using searches done in search engines like Google, MSN and Ask.com for the search trails. Trexy.com remembers the search terms and the web pages visited on over 3000 engines. Trexy also enables users to follow the anonymous search trails of other searchers."

Tools to Tailor

Mossberg Positive About Rollyo and PubSub, Rollyo Adds New Firefox Search Bar Feature, SEW blog (

+ Rollyo - roll your own search engine for a collection of sites you choose. Can also use others' "searchrolls". SEW points out that you can only enter the top level domain.

+ Pubsub alerts you of new content that matches your keywords. It reads 23 million weblogs, more than 50,000 internet newsgroups and all SEC (EDGAR) filings.

Google Winter Olympics Shortcut

Just in time for the Winter Olympics! Follow countries and athletes through the new Google shortcut - Winter Games Sports Search. Done in collaboration with NBC Olympics.

Try this Google search for Canada figure skating.

Canadians might also go directly to CBC's Torino 2006 to follow the events.

Google Tools on New Computers

Forget browser wars, prepare for toolbar wars, CNet News (Feb 7) "Fighting for icon space on the desktop is so 2001. The new frontier on a virgin PC is the browser, and Internet companies like Google are jostling for space on the browsers of new PCs." That's right - Google is talking with Dell about putting its toolbar, desktop search and a Google-designed Dell home page on new computers. Google already has partnerships with HP, Sony, Apple, Toshiba, and Gateway.

AOL Quick Answers

AOL's "(Quick) Answer" Feature On Web Results Pages in SEW Blog (Jan 29) AOL delivers quick answers from open web sources like Wikipedia, CIA World Factbook, IMDB.

Google 4 Toolbar

Google 4 Toolbar by Davis D. Janowski, PC Magazine (Jan 30)

- Add custom buttons for searching a favourite site.
- Send pages for posting to your Blogger blog.
- Map feature to Autolink a US address to an online map.
- Only for IE 6. Firefox users will have to wait.

Available at http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/T4/index.html

Reviewed in Google Releases Upgraded Toolbar by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Jan 30)

Instant Weather Figures

More Instant Answers from MSN. - comments at the MSN blog about these are the most interesting part. Can get sports scores but not Nobel prize winners?

Weather facts are here now -- "Weather statistics for US states and major cities." However, the instant answers are a bit hit and miss.

- answers for rainfall and snowfall in Toronto but not London Ontario, or for Lisbon, Portugal.
- has average temperature in july in seattle - but not for Toronto or for Lisbon.

But not all is lost. Just phrasing the queries will find pages that have those statistics.

There isn't an instant answer for weather forecast, but the sponsored ads might take you to radio or tv station website that does have the forecast, or the top result will. Enter - toronto weather forecast.

Bookmarks and Meme IDs

Finders Keepers by Bob Doyle, EContent (Jan 3) -- Short report on the project, Keeping Found Things Found, at the University of Washington Information School. Bookmarking is most used and the new tools like del.icio.us and Furl.net are making this more usable and supposedly things more re-findable.

Also mentions the Memetic Web where you can use set of keywords - your Meme IDs - to tag saved pages.

Yahoo Custom Shortcuts

Yahoo Launches Open Shortcuts, Allows Creation Of Custom Search Commands, in SEW Blog (Dec 20) - detailed instructions on how to create these search and save commands to use at Yahoo.

Word Smarts at Ask.com

New word tools from Ask Jeeves that could come in very handy: page translation, definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, synonyms from Rogets Thesauraus, audio pronounciations. These are described in the AJ Blog - Word Up (Dec 10)

Yahoo Widgets

Yahoo! Announces Upgrade of Yahoo! Widgets: Maps, Picture Frame, Search, E-Mail Checker, and Notepad Lead Slate of New Widgets, Business Wire (Dec 12)

New Yahoo Widgets are available to help with maps, photos, search, mail, and notes.

"Widgets are light-weight applications that live directly on a users' desktop and perform a wide variety of tasks, such as checking for wi-fi presence or strength, finding contacts in an address book, updating a user's calendar, or checking their latest e-mail. These small applications are always available, and make it easier for users to directly access the content they care about -- whether it's on their computer or on the Internet -- all without launching specific, single-purpose applications or a web browser."

List of 1,600 widgets are at http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/

Customize Google on Firefox

Pandia Search recommends new extension for Firefox called Customize Google that lets you customize the way Google present results. I use this extension too and like it.

Furl tricks

10 Cool Things to Do with Furl by Amy Gahran, Contentious weblog, June 22, 2005) - ten things and links to postings with more Furl tricks.

Google Personalized Services

Google released an improved version of its personalized service to 38 Google domains. Canadians can use Google's personalized service to set up a personal home page with Canadian news and save their search history at Google.ca.

Using the Google Personalized Service (www.google.ca/psearch) account holders can customize the main search page to include weather in selected cities and news items. Unfortunately, Google Canada does not yet have the complete list of weather reporting centres.

The search component saves a record of Web searches made and the specific results that were clicked on. You can revisit the searches and the sites. Google will use this history to interpret interests and weight search results. If you do a lot of searching for tigers and leopards, Google will weight any search for jaguar to the cat rather than the car.

You can now bookmark a site you viewed by clicking on an asterisk on your search history page.

Google Canada also records searches done for images. The same capability is promosed for News soon.

This is supposed to work with Firefox, IE 4.0+, Netscape 6.0+, Safari, and Mozilla. Make sure you don't have a tool loaded that removes click tracking.

Of course, you must be signed into your account for Google to keep the search history. You may have one already through news alerts or gmail.

See Google Personalized Search help page.

Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Nov 10) Describes several of the features especially those concerning privacy.

"The remove results feature has also been enhanced. In addition to removing single URLs from future results, you can also block entire domains. You can also remove results for a single search or for all future searches."

Google's Personalized Search exits test phase "Service is designed to learn the searching habits of individual users" By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service (Nov 10)

Firefox users Customize Google

Geniuses bowdlerize Google for Firefox users at Passing Notes (Jul 15) - took a while for this notice about Customize Google, a cool extension for Firefox, to show up - Dave lists all the reasons he likes it. It has links to other search engines, blocks spam, and makes dealing with images easier - and there are several other reasons.

Get it at http://www.customizegoogle.com/.

eSnips for web storage

A New Approach to Sharing Web Research by Mary Ellen Bates, Search Day (Sep 21) - recommends eSnips, a "free web-based file storage and sharing tool" developed by Net Snippets. Tool is good for "snipping" bits from pages and capturing screen shots. Works with IE (Firefox promised) and offers 1 GB of storage.

Smart Answers at Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves Unleashes More Smart Answers by Gary Price, SEW Blog (Aug 23) - lists what's new at Ask Jeeves in the way of smart answers, a feature Ask Jeeves added in April 2003.

"One of the things I like about Smart Answers is that in many cases you'll not only get the basic facts listed at the top of a web results page but you'll also find direct links to additional sources of info. These types of links really have the potential to save the searcher time, effort, and aggravation."

Some of the new "smart answers" are for people in the US looking for facts about their states, cities, area codes and television programs. The program CSI will have a profile but not the Canadian Da Vinci's Inquest. Other smart answers include quick facts on World Nations from the CIA World Factbook, ISBN, mammals, planets, periodic table of elements.

MyJeeves 1.2

MyJeeves 1.2 Released, SEW Blog (Jul 29) MyJeeves has enhanced its personal information management tool in version 1.2 to add a tagging function (which rustybrick says isn't as good as MyYahoo's) and to support uploads of personal photos.

Widgets

Why Yahoo Bought Konfabulator by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Aug 10) -Get ready for widgets from Knofabulator that will do dozens of useful little things for lookups, news feeds, system utilities and much more. See the catalog at the Konfabulator Widget Gallery. There are widgets for PC and Macs.

Google personalized homepage

RSS Search & Add Option Now Available For Google Personalized Home Page Gary Price at SearchDay (July 26) - had to fiddle with Google's Personalized service to make it work with RSS.

MSN Toolbar Country Flavours

MSN Search Toolbar rolls out more international versions MSN Search Weblog

Toolbar in all these country flavours:

"Australia, Austria, Belgium (Dutch & French versions), Brazil, Canada (English & French versions), China (Simplified Chinese), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR (Traditional Chinese), India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latin America, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philipines, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (French & German versions), Taiwan (Traditional Chinese), UK, USA (English & Spanish versions), and Global/Worldwide (English)."

Google Shortcuts

Google can handle currency conversion now.

To use our built-in currency converter, simply enter the conversion you'd like done into the Google search box and hit "Enter" or click the Google Search button

Here are some sample queries:

* 3.5 USD in GBP
* currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
* 5 British pounds in Spanish money
* 500 canadian dollars in yuan

See the Help page.

Yahoo tags in MyWeb 2.0

Yahoo My Web Tagging & Why (So Far) It Sucks by Danny SUllivan, SEW Blog (June 30)

Sulllivan thinks the tagging at Yahoo's new MyWeb 2.0 sucks - and he's probably right. Mainly he doesn't see much value in using other people's tags (or categories) or spending the time doing it himself. He prefers keyword searching.

"Tagging will help you keep all your My Web content you're saving organized, right? But what happens when you've created hundreds of tags for thousands of pages? Are you going to browse pages? Everyone largely abandoned browsing directory categories ages ago because keyword search was like a warp drive to zip you to what you wanted, as I've explained."

Alternatively, Yahoo could use some automated clustering technology like Vivisimo.

Interestingly, Yahoo which started as a subject directory doesn't intend to stick with the tags. They expect the trust in social networks to be the means of refining search.

Google Toolbar for Firefox Expected

Official Google Toolbar For Firefox Comes This Week, But Don't Comment! by Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (July 5) - a sceptical Sullivan comments on the about-to-be-released and long-awaited Google toolbar for Firefox. Has some information on other search engine toolbars for Firefox. Maybe we'll see it at the Google Toolbar page on July 7.

Answers.com for Mac

Answers.com Widget Available for OS X "Useful Desktop Utility Provides Instant Answers for Apple Users " - PRNewswire via Marketwatch (Jun 30)

Mac users (OS X) can get answers directly through the Answers.com widget.

"The Answers.com widget provides access to Answers.com content drawn from Wikipedia, American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, Columbia University Press Encyclopedia as well as maps, company snapshots, stock prices, legal, medical, nutrition and more from other high-quality sources."

Yahoo - MyWeb 2.0

Yahoo! trials extended search by Renai LeMay, Silicon.com (Jun 29) -- MyWeb 1.0 from Yahoo was a personal search centre of bookmarks, shared folders and saved pages. MyWeb2.0 adds community in a significant way along with tagging and results ranking based on the community.

"Those with a Yahoo! login will be able to bookmark and cache copies of their favourite websites, label them in certain categories and attach comments in a structured way. Users will then be able to search among their contact's knowledge base with what Yahoo! is calling its MyRank search technology."

"Over time, we envision communities using My Web to build their own search engines to capture and make accessible the knowledge of their community," the blog waxed enthusiastically, giving the example of search engines populated by knowledge from groups of medical researchers or a bird-watching club. "

Chris Sherman gives a detailed description in Yahoo Integrates Personal & Social Search with MyWeb 2.0 [Searchday, June 29]

He makes clear that the community aspect is especially important - you need to have one to make this work. "MyWeb 2.0 is currently bi-directional, meaning you need to invite someone to share your web and they need to accept the invitation. Later, Yahoo plans to make MyWeb unidirectional, meaning you can share your personal web and allow anyone to see it."

MSN Search Toolbar Good

CNet gives MSN Search Toolbar an 8 out of 10 rating and says "MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search turns your Windows 2000 and Windows XP into an Apple Mac Tiger." High praise indeed. This "is a must-have app for die-hard Microsoft fans, adding metadata desktop search and tabbed browsing to IE."

Conquery with Firefox

Contextual Search with Firefox by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (June 6) -- About Conquery, a plugin for Firefox that lets you send a search to an engine of your choice just by highlighting words on the page and doing a right click. Has lots more. I love it too.

Is Amazon Smarter?

Amazon is smarter than Google by Marcel van Leeuwen, Yeald (May 30) - Argues that Amazon's personalization is superior to others and in particular Google's.

"Only a handful of companies have managed to create a successful personalization of their engagement with customers. Amazon personal recommendations and individual composition of the ecommerce site remain the classic example. "

"Because Amazon understands the meaning of its information universe and Google does not, Amazon can help users find what they really want."

The Personalization Trend

From the Stepforth SEO blog some insight into the moves to personalization from Google and Yahoo - Personalize Me - Yahoo and Google Getting to Know You (Apr 27) - following Google's My Search History and Yahoo's My Web.

"Regardless of how consumers personally feel about the concepts of data mining and information personalization, it is now more of a modus operandi than it is a trend in marketing. The major search engines are adopting this method of operation with both Google and Yahoo announcing personalized search features in the past two weeks and MSN presenting information on one they are working on."

Personalization is making more targeted advertising possible from search marketers and advertisers. While there are advantages there, the main motivation could be to anticipate MSN.

"Both Google and Yahoo are responding to a larger long-term threat posed by MSN's long-pending release of their all-encompassing Longhorn operating system."

Changes at A9

A9 has become easier to use with the just released beta version. Rather than being presented with a set of columns for the vertical searches (web, books, images etc), the searcher gets a page for entering the search and selecting the columns at one time. This makes it much better for searching only Books, as an example.

+ It's also much easier to add more custom columns, now listed under More Choices.
+ Your personal tools are placed in tabs for History, Bookmarks, Diary, and Discover.
+ Page loads seem faster.
+ Once you click Yellow Pages a separate local-search box shows at the top of the page.

All in all, a wonderful improvement.

A9 describes these new features and changes (May 17)

Further down the page, note the changes in handling history. You can turn "save search history" off in the A9 toolbar to prevent recording to your personal history, but the information about the sites you visit is still transmitted to A9 (but not with your name). This makes it possible for you to still get site info as well as use the diary and bookmarks on the toolbar.

Regarding the Book Search, you must be signed into your Amazon account to search inside a book, otherwise you may only look inside.

Yahoo Shortcuts

Yahoo! Shortcuts: Find It Fast, at Yahoo Blog (May 12) Tips and examples about using Yahoo SHortcuts from Adam Durfee, Product Manager at Yahoo! Search.

Tag-based communities

Powerbloggers turning to tags, by Alexandra Samuel, The Star (May 16)

How the tagging at del.icio.us as an online social bookmarking service has spread across the Internet.

"Schachter's vision of tagging as a method for collaboration has quickly spread across the Internet, as both websites and Web users embrace tags as a tool for working better together. Marnie Webb of CompuMentor, a non-profit, San Francisco-based provider of technology assistance for community-based organizations and schools, has convinced colleagues to use the "nptech" tag as a way of sharing information about the use of technology by non-profits."

Mentions tagging being adopted at Technorati, a search service for weblogs.

Google Web Accelerator

Pandia has something on the Google Web Accelerator too. (May 2005) - How they do it and why. Is a bit suspicious of worth and motives. "Google won't tell, of course, but it is a good guess that the company will use the service to map surfer habits."

Google Web Accelerator

Google's Accelerator Breaks Web Apps, Security - By Matt Hicks, EWeek (May 6) - trouble already with the Google Web Accelerator for preloading web pages. "Users of some smaller Web forum sites have complained in online postings that they began receiving Web pages which displayed other people's user names after downloading Web Accelerator." That problem was due to cache-control headers and it's fixable, but some other people had problems in loading pages. Web Accelerator may be a good idea, but would be better to wait until other people find the bugs.

Research Management Tools

Search Snippets - Create Your Own Internet Archive - by Genie Tyburski, Law Office Computing (May 2005) - recommends using Onfolio and NetSnippets for managing information found on the Web. She uses both - "Both Onfolio and NetSnippets also offer researchers convenient, essential utilities unavailable in many browsers. They save time and frustration by maintaining a record and index of captured Web pages. They facilitate finding what you stored by making the archive searchable."

Personalized Search - Yahoo and Google

Personalization: Google's Search History vs. Yahoo's MyWeb -
By Lars Våge, Pandia Post (May 5) -- compares the two services and seems to favour Yahoo's My Web for the extras like comments and sharing.

Personal Google v Yahoo

Yahoo! vs. Google Personalization: Leaning Toward Yahoo! - in Unofficial Google Weblog (Apr 29) - Prefer's Yahoo's MyWeb to Google's My Search History mainly because of control. Have to manually turn off Google, whereas can select Yahoo when wanted.

Google's Search History

Google Search Adds History Feature by Jay Lyman, ECommerce Times (Apr 21)

Article has comments from Susan Feldman of IDC. She referred to the personal search as "search in context" and said she thought it "may help users get better results". "However, she also pointed out some issues with the beta service, including the difficulty of dealing with people's different modes -- professional, hobby, family, or other."

There are privacy issues. Google addresses these somewhat by providing users the ability to manage the history and remove records. Users have the option to conduct searches while not logged in to the service.

Google Blogscoped blog says that the privacy issues are not new with My Search History. In Search History Privacy (Apr 29) we learn that Google has been able to connect searches to individual GMail users - but that doesn't mean Google makes these connections unless required for legal investigations.

Concludes: "So does My Search History really change any privacy issue? No. The only thing different now is that the user can see what Google could always see as well. And of course, the incentive on the user’s side to login has increased, so chances are Google can track even those who never log in to any other Google service like Gmail."

MY Yahoo Search Expanded

Yahoo search tools get personal - BBC News (April 27) - "Yahoo has launched a test version of a series of personal search tools".

My Yahoo Search

+ save pages
+ add notes
+ publish in a blog
+ keep search history
+ use toolbar to save any page
+ use toolbar to search collection

Full review in -- Yahoo Launches My Web Personal Search by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Apr 27)

Google Search History

Check Yourself Out on Google in Wired (Apr 20) - suggests that people will be worried about privacy issues in Google's new My Search History service.

"But Li doubts Google's latest feature will have mass appeal. "I don't think this is going to be very important to the average person," Li said. "Most people are kind of paranoid, so they are going to be wondering, 'Why should I give all my information to Google?'""

Personalized Search

Search Engines Roll Out New Personalization Options - by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Apr 25) - good review of changes announced by Ask.com, Yahoo, and Google on personalized search.

"First, Ask Jeeves upgraded MyJeeves, its personal search system. New features include new ways to add data, support for images, and more robust information management capabilities. Then, Yahoo! launched a new beta version of its Yahoo! News that has a streamlined design with easier navigation, plus its “My Sources” personalization feature lets users add news from all over the Web to the front page of Yahoo! News via RSS syndication. Also, Google has just introduced My Search History, a new beta application that keeps track of a registered user’s Web searches and pages viewed from search results."

Search History at Google

Google travels back in search time 'My Search History' offers view of past searches and results - Tom Sanders , vnunet.com 21 Apr 2005

"Google has added a 'My Search History' feature to its online search engine that allows users to view past searches. The technology also lets them search inside the results to quickly retrieve a page they visited in the past."

Learn more about this and sign up at Google - My Search History.

Full review by Chris Sherman, SearchDay - Google Personalizes the Web (Apr 20)

Of interest -- "As you build a search history, Google begins to cluster results from related queries together, making it easier to find conceptually similar results even if you can't recall the exact search terms you used. "We're running some interesting clustering and related algorithms to understand whether you've searched for topics like this in the past," said Mayer."

Also compares service to A9, Yahoo, Jeeves. Expect more from them soon too.

Short discussion that compares Google's search history to A9 in the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Onfolio 2 - new features

Onfolio Announces General Availability of Onfolio 2.0 - eContent (April 19)

"Onfolio 2.0 is a PC solution built into the browser with integrated tools for reading RSS news feeds, collecting and organizing online content, and publishing to email, weblogs, and Web sites. "

Social Bookmarking ReviewedSocial Bookmarking Tools (I)

Social Bookmarking Tools (I) A General Review Tony Hammond and others, DLib Magazine (April 2005)

"This paper reviews some current initiatives, as of early 2005, in providing public link management applications on the Web – utilities that are often referred to under the general moniker of 'social bookmarking tools'. ... A number of such utilities are presented here, together with an emergent new class of tools that caters more to the academic communities and that stores not only user-supplied tags, but also structured citation metadata terms wherever it is possible to glean this information from service providers."

Also discusses "folksonomies" - popular tagging of documents. Views these as "supplemental means to organize information and order search results" and not a "eplacement for formal classification systems such as Dublin Core, MODS, etc.".

Maps current social bookmarking tools on a grid and provides a comparison table.

My Jeeves Enhanced

Ask Jeeves has added some features to its My Jeeves personal service. People with the Ask Jeeves toolbar for either IE or Firefox can add pages or images as they find them to their personal space. The personal space is easier to organize with hierarchical folders. Also it will be easier to share folders with others.

Good tutorial at http://sp.ask.com/docs/mj/1.1/tour_intro.html

Ask Jeeves Introduces New Features for MyJeeves Personal Search System, PR Newswire (April 11)

Aware for Researchers

Aware (http://www.awaresearch.com/) is a new search software package for searching the Web. It operates as a meta-searcher, similar to Copernic Agent, but has a "context-aware search technology" that can learn from what you identify as good or bad and expand the query. This would be most suitable for people who are doing extended research on a particular topic and who need in-depth coverage. Aware saves searches on a topic to a "collection". It also builds a "terms list", "a weighted list of key terms that it thinks best represents your research topic". Users may select sources from a check list and stipulate the "depth ratio". The product web site does not list the sources. This runs on Windows 2000 and up. Free trial available. $79 US to buy.

A9 Open Access

Users of the A9 search engine can add other columns for specialty searches. It's called OpenSearch .

From the A9 information page: "OpenSearch is not a search engine—it is a way for search engines to publish their search results in a standard and accessible format. And because OpenSearch is built on top of standard RSS, existing tools—such as blog readers—can read OpenSearch results natively."

Review the submitted columns. Already there are 109 tools including Creative Commons, Acronym Database, British Library, and various blog search engines including A9's very own Top Blogs Search.

Richard Wiggins describes OpenSearch in Amazon’s New OpenSearch Enables Search Syndication in Newsbreaks (March 28, 2005). Amazon has succeeded in offering vertical (specialized) search by exploiting RSS technology.

"RSS traditionally has been used to feed news or article headlines to a cooperating Web site, which uses an “aggregator” to interpret the XML content and turn it into HTML, formatted as the receiving site sees fit. OpenSearch allows a content provider such as NASA or The British Library to export search functionality to other sites instead of headlines."

Researcher Tools

Onfolio and Thomson ResearchSoft Partner in EContent (Mar 22)

"Onfolio, Inc., an independent software company committed to helping people in business and academics conduct research and manage Web information, has announced a partnership with Thomson ResearchSoft, a business of the Thomson Corporation."

TurboScout in the Firefox Search Box

FireFox browser users can add TurboScout. the meta-search engine with 90 engines, to their search box. That's a good place for it.

Access 90 Search Engines’ Results With Firefox’s Search Box Press release (Mar 15)

Nextaris Dashboard

Surfwax announced the official launch of Nextaris as an integrated set of tools for searching the Web, saving what you find, sharing, and publishing in a weblog. Last fall, Chris Sherman had haled Nextaris as an "integrated Web research dashboard".

Searchers are being given a greater choice in tools to help them manage what they find. My Yahoo Search, A9, and Furl.net are in this category too. However, my experience with My Yahoo Search is that it can collapse under the weight of many bookmarks. Nextaris could be a strong contender in this field.

Nextaris Features are:

+ all-in-one page of 57 search tools
+ save full text of pages from anywhere - don't need to be using the Nextaris search page.
+ save images from a web page easily
+ organize bookmarks and saved pages in folders
+ 100 MB is free. Paid subscribers get 250 MB
+ share folders with groups you can define.
+ publish the contents of a folder (links to other sites) as a web page.
+ create a weblog of your own and publish it as a RSS feed to the web page.
+ get news updates on topics you set up through Newstracker which monitors 4,000 news sources

In all it has promise, but there are still a few glitches for Surfwax to address before this is a full fledged personal productivity tool.

+ can search saved pages in folders but can't search in title of the bookmark.
+ can publish a weblog based on a folder, but although you can share a folder with a group, you can't limit the weblog to that group. The weblog is either public on the web or doesn't exist.
+ display of contents of the web page is odd. Nextaris shows a large @ image for each link - you have to click through to see the page. It would be impossible for Nextaris to set a display that everyone would like but some choice in how items are shown on the page would be appreciated (as images, just as links with citation, down the page or in 2 or 3 columns).
+ in setting up a newstracker you may have to wait a day or more for the page to appear. It's not immediate. Stories will accumulate on the newstracker page until you delete the page. This is good if you have a well defined tracker and you want to keep all articles. It's not as good if many are irrelevant and are cluttering up the page.

Gary Price describes the features in Web Research "Dashboard" Nextaris Formally Launches, New Services Added Search Engine Watch blog (Mar 7)

Get an overview of Nextaris from How Nextaris Helps You Use the Web.

Nextaris is worth a shot as a tool for experimenting with these very interesting concepts. You may find that its page saving and image saving capabilies are just what you need. If you do try it out, you'll want to use the bookmarklets Nextaris provides for capturing pages. Also go to My Account and set your Session On to Always On so that you can use those bookmarlets easily.

Zuggest for Amazon

Francis Shanahan invents with code. Zuggest has been getting favourable reviews. It's a search engine for Amazon (US products only) that will suggest words as you enter letters. Pick the collection you want to search (books, music etc) and start typing - Zuggest will start presenting possibilities. Very useful is you have only partial recall. Display is in thumbnails - very compact.

Reviewed in ResearchBuzz -- It's Like Google Suggest, Only for Amazon (Mar 7)

Weather Shortcuts

Google has a weather shortcut for US cities. Enter weather or can use zip code, or city + state. Get a 4 day forecast from Wunderground.com. Results are only for the United States, even though Wunderground itself can get weather information for other countries.

Yahoo.com is better for Canadians. Enter weather flin flon to get the forecast for Flin Flon Manitoba. Yahoo uses weather.com.

Faster with Browster

Browster is a browser plugin for getting a preview of a web site before actually pulling the page up. It fetches pages in the background -- preloading. Tool is in beta at the moment and works only with IE browser. Final version is expected in April, 2005 and a plugin for Firefox is promised. Browster will likely also delivery small ads.

Downloadable tool gives Web page preview Mercury News (March 7)

Reasons to Furl pages

The New Wave of Bookmarks Mary Ellen Bates, The Virtual Chase (Mar 2005) Describes Furl.net as a social bookmarking service. You can save full web pages or urls, both with notes, 'classify them' by putting them in folders, and get recommendations about other web pages that might be useful to you. Furl works on the same principle as Amazon's recommendations - if several of you like the same book you might be interested in other books that the group reads. Mary Ellen Bates gives her reasons for using Furl. Also comments on del.icio.us, another social bookmarking tool but still in early development.

Tagging is del.icio.us

A Tag Team's Novel Net Navigation -- Tagging is a new way surfers can organize and share sprawling Web content, providing a fast-growing grassroots alternative to traditional search -- by Heather Green, Business Week Online (Feb 28) -- Josh Schachter feels that tagging documents makes it easier to find them. He has created the public site -- del.icio.us -- where subscribers can easily add what they find on the Web into a "social bookmarks manager". You can see your collections of tags and those of others - by topic. There are more than 60,000 subscribers.

Article mentions that tagging is catching on. "Indeed, such tagging is already being adopted by popular startups, including blog search engine Technorati and photo-sharing service Flickr. It has also caught the imagination of well-respected thinkers online, including Dave Weinberger, a research fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, both of whom have written extensively about tags on their blogs. "Del.icio.us is about the most important software launched last year," says Shirky. ""

Purists and critics aren't so sure this will work. There is no standardization of word use for the tags. Design means different things to different people.

"This joint effort, though, is prompting a debate about tagging. Critics argue that tagging could collapse under its own weight because it isn't a standardized system created by professionals. In the free-flowing tagging world, one person might apply the tag "seal" to the animal, while someone else applies it to the musician. Or, as more broad words are used to tag content, such as Iraq or wireless, too much information will be collected to plow through. "

Pluck v Onfolio

Two New Web Information Managers Debut at DEMO@15 by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Feb 21) - Writes up Pluck 1.0 for saving, organizing and storing web pages, and Onfolio 2.0 with RSS feed reading, local capture, and personal Web publishing. "While the products have some similarities, including RSS feed capture in both, the companies are positioning them for different markets and are using different revenue models."

Autolinks in Google Toolbar

Google landgrab raises online ire by Stefanie Olsen, CNet (Feb 18) Google's latest version of the toolbar for IE is being criticized for the autolink feature. Street addresses on web pages are automatically linked to Google Maps, and publisher's ISBN numbers for books link to Amazon - leaving other online bookstores out in the cold.

"Nevertheless, some critics charge that AutoLink takes the liberty of modifying Web pages to direct people the way Google sees fit. Microsoft took the same approach with its Smart Tags feature years ago and eventually pulled it because of trust and trademark concerns."

IE Google Toolbar Update

Tara Calishain writes about Google Updates Its Toolbar (Feb 16) Has spellcheck, translation, and online maps for people in the U.S. See http://toolbar.google.com/T3/ Only for Internet Explorer (argh).

Onfolio

Onfolio Releases 2.0 Econtent Magazine (Feb ) -- "Onfolio 2.0 is a PC solution that's built into the browser with integrated tools for reading RSS news feeds, collecting and organizing online content, and publishing to email, weblogs, and Web sites." Works with Firefox. Will have two editions - professional $99.95 and personal $29.95.

Pluck as an Information Centre

Pluck Launches New Personal Web Information Center Free Web Application Integrates Multiple Web Productivity Tools to Simplify and Improve How Users Consume, Control and Create Web Information -- PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 14)

Pluck 1.0 promises to bring together into one easy interface the tools we use today to be on the Web - browser, RSS reader, e-mail etc - "single source for all web needs" and "anywhere access" as well as "web information management". It even offers synchronization between computers for bookmarks, private and public folders, and RSS feeds".

Post-Boolean Y!Q

Yahoo!’s New Y!Q Service Improves Conceptual Searching by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Feb 14) - describes Yahoo's Y!Q for pasting a block of text into a box and having Y!Q pick out the concepts. Quint finds some resemblence to boolean - ORing the terms, searchers select particular terms - AND them. She writes -- "Y!Q combines the ease of post-Boolean search capabilities (relevance ranking, More Like This, automatic taxonomy checks, etc.) with the control that Boolean-style searching offered."

Try it at http://yq.search.yahoo.com.

New from Yahoo - Context search with Y!Q

Yahoo Offers New Y!Q Contextual Search Tool by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Feb 3) New tool from Yahoo called Y!Q (yes - an exclamation mark!) that will let you select a passage from a page to run as a query. Yahoo determines concepts and context and tries to match these in the results it picks. Of course there is an IE toolbar for this and a couple of extensions for Firefox.

There is a demo of it embedded in Yahoo News. http://test.news.yahoo.com/. Click on "Related search results".

This sounds a bit like a product from 4 or 5 years ago called Webtop that tried to provide natural language searches. It too working at extracting concepts from a passage.

More information about Y!Q at Yahoo Search YIQ

We'll have to watch how this develops.

Personalized Search

Personalized Search By Steve Johnson, ChoiceStream (Jan 27) - good overview article showing relationship of personalized search and advertising (of course), and the types of personalization now available.

Of interest: "A recent Personalization Survey conducted for us last spring by Zoomerang found that more than 80 percent of Internet users want Web sites and services to personalize content for them to make their online experience more relevant, more useful and ultimately more rewarding."

Main announcements about personalization of search so far have been from Yahoo!, Google, Eurekster, MSN and Amazon.

Getting Answers Not Links

Walter S Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal is a big fan Answers.com, previously GuruNet. Unlike Search Engines, Answers.Com Responds With Data, Not Links (Jan 27) He gives an example of wanting information about Seattle: Answers.com provides a well ordered list of basic information about the city; Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves have ads and a mishmash of maps, news, and perhaps the city's official site. He urges everyone to try it.

Search Toolbars

Looking for Mr. Goodtoolbar by Paula MacKinnon, Information Highways (Jan/Feb 2005) - quick survey of the most popular toolbars as well as desktop search tools along with brief mention of Firefox, the browser that comes with search tools.

Three Search Aids

Three Cool Search Gizmos By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Jan 12) - Three good search gadgets - jux2 browser button for running a search at the Jux2 meta-searcher at comparing results, Whois Source for checking on domain ownership, and Printer Friendly for finding the print link on a page. Save time - use them all.

Yahoo Desktop

Yahoo Launches Desktop Search by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Jan 11) - Yahoo joins a crowded desktop-playing field with Yahoo Desktop Search using technology from X1. It indexes more than 200 filetypes. Sherman finds it similar to WIndows Explorer. He found it worked well for indexing files on his computer but that web search wasn't well integrated yet. Also, it doesn't index cached web pages. (That would eliminate it for me. )

See http://desktop.yahoo.com/

Does email and attachments in Outlook or Outlook Express (no other email client!), Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, text, HTML, ZIP and over 200 other file types. Doesn't do Web browser history.

Favourite Search Tools

Free Search Tools From Google, Amazon, and Yahoo PC World's roundup of favorite desktop search tools includes toolbars for A9, Google, Yahoo. Also Copernic Desktop Search and the 550 Access Toolbar for logging into accounts and filling out forms. These are all for Windows and some toolbars are only for IE. The A9 toolbar is available for IE and Firefox.

Faster PDF Pages

Speeding Up Acrobat Reader by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Jan 10) - recommends a utility from TNT-Bookblack.co.uk for speeding up display of pdf pages through Acrobat Reader.

Maps and Directions Online

Overtaking MapQuest a Challenge for Yahoo Chris Gaither, LATimes (Jan 10)

Yahoo has been adding dynamic features to its map service. This is called SmartView -- "SmartView, a free feature that lets users look up addresses, then select categories of services to appear as yellow icons on the map. Clicking on them brings up more information about the business, including the address, phone number and a link to results of a Yahoo Search query on the name."

Although Yahoo's service is attractive, MapQuest (owned by AOL) is well in the lead for number of users.

"While 15.6 million people visited Yahoo Maps in November, up 9% from a year earlier, MapQuest drew 33.1 million individual visitors, a 27% gain over the same period, according to market research firm ComScore Media Metrix."

MapQuest is offering downloads of color maps and directions to mobile phone owners (at $4 / month).

At the present Google uses Yahoo Maps and MapQuest but it may be developing its own too. It "bought a start-up called Keyhole Corp. that uses aerial and satellite photos to let users zoom in on particular places. Combined with Google's local directories, Keyhole could be the next generation of navigation services, analysts say."

Search Advice for the New Year

Chris Sherman made some Search Resolutions for the New Year - SearchDay (Jan 5). I agree that it would be a good thing to purge unused search tools.

Gurunet Morphs Into Answers.com

Answers.com is the lastest version of the answer machine from GuruNet Corporation. This time the instant reference service is supported by advertising revenue on keywords rather than subscriber fees. Answers.com boasts information on over a million topics, "drawn from a database of over 100 reference sources." Wikipedia is one of those sources. Answers.com is accessible on the Web from any browser. It will still be possible to Alt-CLick on any word for instant lookup using 1-Click Answers, a small software download available for Windows and Mac OS X.

GuruNet Launches Answers.com Press Release (Jan 3, 2005)

While it is always nice to get something for free, this change may mean some loss in quality and definitely in features.

+ Wikipedia is not a reliable source of encyclopedia-type of information (though this had been added to GuruNet too).
+ Answers show on one long page at Answers.com rather than the tabbed window set provided by Gurunet.
+ GuruNet had a very handy Directory in the left panel. Answers.com has buried the directory at its web site (Answers Directory).
+ Web search facility for Answers is only through Google. GuruNet also uses Yahoo and A9.
+ GuruNet users could add more search engines to the GuruNet set.
+ GuruNet could translate a page.

Also reviewed by Gary Price -- GuruNet Becomes Answers.com and Is Now Available Free! SearchEngineWatch Blog (Jan 3)

Answers.com will be useful for quick lookup of definitions and facts as GuruNet has been. But I'd like to see a list of the reference sources Answers.com is using. Also, at this point we don't know how annoying the sponsored links will become.

Browsers, Toolbars, RSS

Revisiting Past Technologies By Greg R. Notess, Online (Jan 2005) - looks back at browsers, toolbars, bookmarklets and RSS to note changes over time. Finds Firefox browser tempting but not toolbars. Recommends using either Bloglines of My Yahoo for picking up some RSS feeds.

"While 4 years ago switching browsers may not have been tempting, the current crop from Mozilla have some compelling advantages. Revisiting toolbars, on the other hand, still failed to convince me to make them a regular part of my Internet tools. Bookmarklets have proved extremely useful, greatly speeding up some tasks and making many Web pages much easier to read... Subscribing to some feeds in Bloglines or My Yahoo! is an easy way to sample RSS, and for those who frequent numerous news sites each day, these tools can be a real time saver."

I agree with switching to Firefox browser, but also recommend using some selected toolbars depending on need. Firefox has many extensions that are extremely useful. In the toolbar line, Google Bar is essential and the A9 toolbar is very useful for its online bookmark manager.

Google Scholar OpenURL

Users of Google Scholar will be interested in this Firefox extension to check if your university library has the article. University must have an OpenURL resolver. Tool is written for University of Alberta - must tweak code to make it work for others. Bookmarklet is also available. Google Scholar OpenURLs -- http://www.ualberta.ca/~pbinkley/gso/
Mentioned in EdTechPost, Google Scholar & OpenURL Firefox Extension (Dec 2, 2004)

Google Suggest

Google Labs has a new tool called Google Suggest. As you type Google offers suggestions - pick the one you want. Start with federal government - Google will offer: federal government canada, federal government employment, federal government grants - and many more. Suggestions appear as you type and will include misspellings.

Tara Calishain would like to see it help in handling spelling variations better. Google Has A New One for the Labs -- Google Suggest (Dec 9)

Chris Justus has figured out the inner workings of the javascript -- Google Suggest Dissected (Dec 14)

CiteULike for Scholars

CiteULike Tracks Favorite Citations ResearchBuzz.com (Nov 29) Another tool for scholars. This one lets you create citations to articles and research papers found in sites such as PubMed, HubMed, CiteSeer, and ScienceDirect. Others include Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) portal, American Meteorological Society, arXiv.org e-Print archive, IngentaConnect, JSTOR, MetaPress, PLoS Biology - and more to be supported soon.
It's a bit like Furl.net but it won't save the text. http://www.citeulike.org/

Research Tools for Managing Results

Cindy Chick lists in her blog, LawLibTech, several post-processing research tools that were recommended to attendees at the Internet Librarian conference -- Internet Librarian - Research Tools: Turning Search into Research

Surfulater Ready

Production version of Surfulater is now available. Surfulater is an offline browser that you may use from work and home - save pages offline, search them using the knowledge tree discovery tool. Web site has a page describing research applications. Works with Windows and Internet Explorer. Firefox coming soon.

Yahoo OCLC Toolbar

Gary Price weighs in with many suggestions on searching OCLC WorldCat -- OCLC Launches Co-Branded Toolbar with Yahoo (Nov 15) Suggests that custom-made searches on the COpernic Meta Toolbar or the NeedleSearch one are good alternatives.

Also from Resource Shelf (Nov 10) Subject Headings Now Hyperlinked in Open Worldcat

OCLC - Yahoo Toolbar

OCLC and Yahoo! Offer Joint Toolbar By Barbara Quint. Newsbreaks (Nov 15) "Today, OCLC (http://www.oclc.org) and Yahoo! officially launch a free co-branded toolbar that provides one-click access to Open WorldCat as well as Yahoo! Search’s Web search engine. The free toolbar plugs into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. A whirligig OCLC logo to the extreme left on the toolbar clicks to a subset of Open WorldCat (currently 2 million of the 57 million records available in the full WorldCat, reflecting the holdings of some 9,000 libraries)."

Google Deskbar

Happy Graduation to the Google Deskbar, Googleviewer.com Search Engine Watch blog (Nov 3) - Google Deskbar is ready for primetime, and rumours abound about the GoogleViewer.

Surfulater Saves

Surfulater - new tool for saving web pages or extracts, organizing and managing. Keeps it organized in a "knowledge tree" - similar to a bookmark list of major sections and indented items. Has a full-text engine. Tool is available for free trial right now. See Features and Benefits. Requires Internet Explorer browser. Customer support at Surfulater says that Firefox support is coming soon.

A9 Toolbar for Firefox

A9.com Toolbar Now Available For Mozilla Firefox Press Release Amazon.com (Nov 1) - My wish has been granted - "A9.com users who prefer Mozilla Firefox for browsing the Web can now take advantage of A9.com's full set of innovative search technologies such as Bookmarks, Site History, A9 Lists and the A9 Diary, which are available through the A9 Toolbar."

Get it from http://toolbar.a9.com/ Requires Firefox 1.0 or later.

Be aware, however, that Amazon does collect information. From the end user license agreement:

"A9.COM'S TOOLBAR SERVICE COLLECTS AND STORES FULL UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATORS ("URLS") FOR EVERY WEB PAGE THAT YOU VIEW WHILE USING THE A9.COM TOOLBAR SERVICE. THESE URLS SOMETIMES INCLUDE PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION."

You'll want to read the agreement carefully.

Google Desktop Tips

A Good Source For Google Desktop Tips Inside Google blog (Oct 28) Especially recommends My Google Desktop Search Tips and Tricks by Scott Kingery.

Yahoo and Adobe Blending

Yahoo, Adobe team up for new Web services May Wong, AP via Globe and Mail (Oct 25 2004) -- Yahoo and Adobe are going to put Web search features into Acrobat Reader software. I don't see the value of this. It's easy to have another window open to do a search, or to use a deskbar product to search from anywhere. But maybe they plan some more dramatic blending of features later.

Browser Add-ons for researchers

Beef Up Your Browser by Cade Metz, PC Magazine (Oct 19) PC Magazine reviews several browser utilities for Web researchers who use Internet Explorer. These will help in searching for information, saving it, and sharing. Tools mentioned: Amplify (editor's choice), blinkx, enLighter Retriever (editor's choice), Onfolio (editor's choice), Pluck, p-zoom, webgrabbit, and PC Magazine's own Web Historian.

Yahoo Domain Search Hack

New Yahoo Hack -- Searchroller for Domain Searches Tara Calishain, ResearchBuzz (Oct 13) "Searchroller accepts a list of domains (or folders within domains, like http://www.google.com/adsense/) and rolls them into a bookmarklet that you can use to search that particular set of domains whenever you like."

Net Snippets for researchers

Genie Tyburski recommends NetSnippets as a software tool for capturing, saving, organizing and sharing web research. Manage Your Research with NetSnippets (Oct 12) Standard version costs $79.95 and the Pro is #129.95 - but it captures a variety of formats and helps you create "professional reports". There is a Flash demo.

More on MyYahoo Search

Yahoo starts custom search "Service saves user's bookmarks in online space" By Michael Bazeley. Mercury News (Oct 5) - About Yahoo's MyYahoo Search in beta -- http://next.yahoo.com. Says that " the features of Personal Search will probably be merged into the MyYahoo service, which allows users to create personalized news and information pages." Reviews other developments and directions for personalization of web searching.

Gurunet for Macs

Charles Moore Reviews The GuruNet Answer Engine And GuruNet Client for Mac OS X Beta 0.9.16 AppleLinks (Oct 1) The very popular GuruNet client for doing ready reference online is now available for Mac OS X. This article - after a long preamble that covers the history of web searching - describes the features of GuruNet as an answer engine very well. On the whole, he finds it a useful tool. However using the Mac OS client was not a smooth ride. People are advised to use the Web interface and wait for the production version of the client.

Blinkx 2.0

Search Underdog To Take On Google, Microsoft, And Amazon By Thomas Claburn. Information Week ( Sept. 29, 2004 ) "Blinkx 2.0 promises to proactively and reactively scan the Web, PC applications, and MP3 music files." Says that "Blinkx 2.0 represents a substantial improvement over 1.0 in terms of relevance, document types searched, and ease of use" but that Google's web search results are better.

Eyetide Screensaver

Eyetide has a directory of images for sale and for free. There is a viewer that comes with it for viewing new images, sending out e-postcards, and creating your own screensaver. Now it can be used to search the Web as well through an agreement with MyWay.com.

Eyetide Enables ''Screensaver Search'' Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Sep 29)

Open WorldCat for library books

If you think you'll want to locate library books through Google and its arrangement with WorldCat, this bookmarklet is for you. Bookmarklet is from Library Stuff. Mentioned in ResourceShelf - OCLC (Sept 23)

Search Google's Print Collection

Want to search only Google's print collection - the book titles and excerpts or magazine articles? Tara Calishain has the tool -- Isolating Google's Printed Material in a Google Search Form (Sept 22). When you run the search look in the Google search line to see the query construction Calishain uses. She also offers two bookmarklets, one for monitoring excerpts for a given book ISBN, and the other for monitoring magazine articles for a word.

Furl.Net for Looksmart

Looksmart Acquires Furl.net Chris Sherman. Searchday (Sept 23)
Looksmart is going personal and desktop too with its acquisition of Furl.net, a web page clipping and archiving service .. "you to save the full text of web pages in your own personal archive. You can annotate pages, organize them into folders, and most importantly, search the contents of your archive to locate information that you've saved." Maybe this will breathe new life into Looksmart directory search and WiseNut.

Is Blinkx the tool?

Gord Hotchkiss at MediaPost thinks Blinkx might change the way we search -- David vs. Goliath... vs. Goliath: Blinkx and the Future of Search (Sept 16) Blinkx is a desktop tool that searches your computers email (even Eudora), documents etc, as well as the Web. I didn't like it - took cycles and was a poor tool for searching the web. Author chatted with CTO Suranga Chandratillake.

All Purpose Pluck

Swiss Army Knife Meets the Kitchen Sink by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 15) - Another new all purpose desktop tool for the web surfer-- Pluck. It has search, rss, alerts and trackers, and clipping capabilities. Sherman says "Pluck is one of the coolest web search tools I've come across in quite some time. Even though it's packed with functionality, it's intuitive and very easy to use. Kudos to the Pluck team for building such a useful tool, and for getting it right." Requires WIndows 2000 or XP and IE 6.

GuruNet for Desktop

GuruNet just got better. The new 5.2 Beta will search your files and emails. Not much info yet.

Desktop search with dtsearch

dtSearch has products to search the web, desktop, and network, and supports publishing a searchable database. Web site has a demo. It has announced Version 6.4 of the dtSearch® Product Line -- "dtSearch products instantly search gigabytes (and more) of text across a desktop, network, Internet or Intranet. dtSearch products also serve as tools to aid in publishing large document collections to Web sites or to CD/DVD, with instant text searching."

Nextaris Praised

Nextaris: An Integrated Web Research Dashboard by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 9) Praises Nextaris -- "Nextaris pulls together all of the tools you need to find, save, and share information with others in a single online location." -- says it is "blazing a trail for the next generation of web research tools". Maybe - but I'm not certain people want completely self-contained systems for search, saving pages, sharing, and getting alerts.

Nextaris

Nextaris -- smart search related web application from SurfWax
By Lars Våge in Pandia (Sep 1) Provides a detailed description of the new search and alerting tool from Surfwax - Nextaris. Says, "Nextaris is an advanced web application for information management of many kinds. "

Deskport

Another software package that promises to deliver answers to frequent lookups - finance, phone, flights, weather, definitions. It's Deskport at http://www.deskport.biz/.

More on Blinkx

Blinkx set to challenge Google Claire Oldfield, Daily Mail (31 August 2004 ) Interesting background article on Kathy Rittweger, co-founder of Blinkx, the new desktop search tool that's getting good reviews.

Copernic Desktop Search

Gary Price recommends the new Desktop Search product from Copernic. It indexes Office documents, Wordperfect, Acrobat, text, web pages, music, pictures, video. It will also index Microsoft Outlook mail, IE favorites and IE history. People who use Eudora for mail, or a different browser are out of luck. The search bod sits in the Windows taskbar. Of course, this tool will also search the web.

A New Player in Desktop Search Gary Price. SearchDay (Aug 31)

Also see review in Pandia -- Copernic gives away desktop search tool for free (Sep 1) - Notes that the reason we're seeing so many desktop appliances is that Microsoft has utterly failed to fill the need. How amazing given its resources.

MoreGoogle

MoreGoogle is a new "toolbar" that searches Google and shows Alexa thumbnail shots of pages as well as other ranking data from Alexa. The help page says you won't need the Alexa toolbar if you install MoreGoogle. Requires Windows and IE5 and above.

Chris Sherman reviewed it in Visualizing Google Search Results SearchDay (Aug 30) He also mentions Thumbshots.net if you like tiny, postage-stamp sized, unreadable graphics with your search results.

FaganFinder URLinfo

Gary Price reviewed the new URLinfo tool at FaganFinder. See ResourceShelf Web Resource (Aug 23) Use it to find information about a page, translate it, look at older versions, check if it has been mentioned in a blog. There are several options. Michael Fagan even offers a bookmarklet to sit in the Links bar of the browser.

DeskPort for the day-to-day

Yet another tool for getting quick answers to the day's routine questions - weather, news headlines, whitle pages, dictionary and thesaurus, maps, tv programming. DeskPort (deskport.biz) is a free application that must be downloaded. It sits in the system tray waiting for you to want to look up something. Appears to be for the US market - zip codes, USA Today headlines. Requires Windows 98 or above.

Desktop search tools

Searching for new ways to search Dot.life - where technology meets life, every Monday By Mark Ward BBC News (Aug 16) Much of search is about context - is that a jaguar on the road or in the jungle. This article points to tools that watch what you read to determine if you are more interested in road or jungle. Tools mentioned are Blinkx, Copernic, X1, Enfish - all desktop. They also don't need a browser window. Martin Bouchard of Copernic is quoted as saying, ""If you control the search you control a lot of other things like e-commerce and advertising". Competition with Google, Yahoo, and MSN is expected to heat up quickly.

Seeking a fuller search engine - Firms working on technology that scans Web, desktop Verne Kopytoff, SF Gate (Aug 16) Adds the Hotbot Desktop Search to the list of desktop search applications. Notes that, "Companies are hoping that blending search across multiple platforms will increase consumer loyalty. The winners, analysts believe, could be richly rewarded because of the potential to expand targeted advertising from just Web search results to e-mail and documents. "

Onfolio and HotBot Desktop

Onfolio and Lycos HotBot Desktop are reviewed in eContent Magazine -- Onfolio Professional Edition 1.0 & Lycos HotBot Desktop (Beta): EContent Decision Maker Review -- (July / August 2004)

Onfolio is useful for capturing web pages / sites for offline reading, search, annotation, and sharing.

HotBot Desktop searches the Web but also the desktop - or at least Outlook email, and some local files.

Saving Pages

Chris Sherman has reviewed several tools for capturing web pages. Capturing Your Personal Web SearchDay (Aug 11) Here he looks at ContentSaver - capture, annotate, save and search.

Nextaris for news alerts

Nextaris is a new search and news gathering tool from Surfwax. They call it an "internet information toolkit". Registration is required but free.

- Search - offers a number of search engines of various types. Pick one and enter the query.

- Newstracker - set up searches across 4,000 sources. Save, and wait for the alerts at the Nextaris site or by email.

- Folders - create your own folders of bookmarks - with or without saving the page to cache. Share these folders if you wish.

- Publish findings to a web pages (Nextaris provides the space) or to a blog (Nextaris has the blog).

- Address Book - for sending messages to or sharing folders with.

It has possibilities, especially for a single office or user who doesn't want to deal with a lot of software or options.

Reviewed in Nextaris, Web-Searching Information-Sharing News-Tracking Application Thingie by Tara Calishain. ResearchBUzz (AUg 5)

PassingNotes for researchers

PassingNotes.com is a new combo blog-website for researchers. Dave, the author, says it is "alternative fuel for researchers", and one thing it is not lacking is attitude. The forums are being found by some researchers who are posting messages about research techniques and tools. But mainly the site has a Research Web Guide - selection of resources for searching for people, getting into the Deep Web, using search utilities. People are invited to add their comments on the resources. [Mentioned by ResearchBuzz.]

Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar Adds Keyword Browsing to Internet Explorer By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (July 15, 2004 ) "Google has added a keyword based browsing feature to its toolbar, allowing users to type words rather than URLs into the Internet Explorer address bar and automatically see the "most relevant" site for those terms. " Said to be similar to Google's I'm Feeling Lucky.

Ask Jeeves Zooms

Ask Jeeves zooms in on Web search Reuters (June 20) Ask Jeeves has added binoculars as a site preview tool. Pass the mouse over the binoculars to get a thumbnail image of the site. It might help in deciding if the site will be relevant (except the print is too small to read).

Gary Price covered this change and some additional Smart Search shortcuts in Ask Jeeves Sharpens Its Focus SearchDay (June 21)

Mamma Toolbar

Mamma.Com-The Mother of All Search Engines, Releases Free Toolbar and Explorer Bar to Facilitate Users to Search the Web More Efficiently CNNMatthews press release (June 17) The toolbar works with Window IE 5+ - has the usual search history, popup blocker, and highligher. The Explorer - also IE 5+ - will show Mamma search results in the IE search bar. Both services sound useful if you are a fan of Mamma.

All-in-one Cyberjournalist

Jonathan Dube at Poynter Online created an excellent all-in-one page of search tools for journalists called the CyberJournalist SuperSearch. Has news sites, reference, business, law, US government, people finders, and reporter's sites.

Ask Jeeves does desktop

Ask Jeeves Purchases Tukaroo Inc. "Unique Desktop Search Technologies Add to Ask Jeeves' Proprietary Suite of Consumer Search Applications " PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch.

Ask Jeeves has acquired Tukaroo Inc., a San Jose-based desktop search technology company.

Ask Jeeves' Head Says Tukaroo Important AP via CBS Marketwatch (June 9)

Desktop search is attracting a lot of attention: Lycos has the Hotbot toolbar that will search documents and email, Google has said it has something to release soon, Microsoft has advanced the release of its desktop search originally planned for Longhorn.

AP reports "In January, Tukaroo said it had completed technology for fast searches of files on a user's hard drive, local networks, and the Internet. It said it had developed so-called toolbar software to run on a user's computer. Tukaroo also said it had come up with a new, better way to organize search results and a system to serve up advertisements to users."

FindForward

FindForward -- searches Google but by different parameters (or categories).

- Ask a Question - use natural language
- All-around - get related pages with results
- Search Grid - two word pairs. best search engine would equal "best search" "best engine" "search engine".
- Weblogs and Newsfeeds
- Get questions - be like Gertrude Stein - "I know the answer but what is the question?"
- Person - seems to be using Webquotes. Doesn't return many hits.
- Thing
- Image - get the full picture
- Randomize - word randomly picked is added to the query - might just do the trick to loosen up some creativity.
- Metasearch - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alltheweb, Ask Jeeves, Google Groups, Feedster, Daypop - but only first 5 hits.

Lots more - read the full list at the About page. Was developed by Phillipp Lenssen in Germany.

Reviewed at ResearchBuzz -- FindForward Offers Specialized Google Searches and Some Hackish Stuff (May 27)

More Google

The hackers have been busy making more toolbars for fans of Google.

More Google - yet another toolbar for IE. This one gives more options for searching Google and displaying results - thumbnails, site statistics, older versions, and related web sites. Guess people can remove their Alexa toolbar and go with this one.

ResearchBuzz review More Google with More Toolbars. (June 2)

Yahoo toolbar fights spyware

Yahoo Adds Anti-Spyware Feature to Browser Toolbar Reuters (May 27) Brilliant - "Anti-Spy for the Yahoo! Toolbar, which is being released as a beta, or test, version, allows users to identify potentially unwanted software that creeps into personal computers."

MSN fires back

Microsoft Technology Will Widen Searches AP (May 26) - Microsoft is moving up the delivery date for local search of computers in response to rumours about Google's Puffin. "The system being developed by Microsoft's MSN online division "will, as far as the consumer is concerned, be an end-to-end system for searching across any data type," Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft's MSN division, told analysts at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference in Las Vegas Wednesday."

Dogpile Toolbar

Dogpile.com Upgrades RSS-Enabled Toolbar EContent (May 25) "The Dogpile Toolbar includes a variety of options for locating and accessing syndicated XML content, and now includes functionality that is designed to provide more timely and convenient access to users' personalized lists of RSS and Atom feeds." (http://www.dogpile.com/toolbar.htm)

Gurunet has more free answers

GuruNet Expands Content, Adds Web Access PRNewswire (May 24) Gurunet is an excellent desktop utility for looking up factual reference-type information - dictionaries, zip codes, etc. It has expanded the content it offers for free at its web site and through a new downloadable utility (Windows only). Subscribers get full access to the content from some 150 sources. Cost is $29.99 US / year.

The User's Guide has more information on what Gurunet offers.

Google's Desktop

Google's desktop bet By Stefanie Olsen CNET News.com May 21, 2004 - Examines the implications of Google's expected new product (called Puffin) for searching personal computers. Others have tried and failed - AltaVista among them. Google has not been successful at enterprise search, and web search and local file search are not the same thing. While Google may be pre-empting Microsoft at offering a better search of personal computers, there will likely be flack about privacy and advertising - because it would come with targeted ads. People are sick of adware and spyware - much better to make do with the Windows search as is.

""Google's real challenge will be in adoption: getting people to download and install it," independent analyst Matthew Berk said. "In order to search your hard drive, you need to install something that's pretty intrusive, that can reach deep down into your machine." "

Seruku better for browser history

Gary Price -- "Seruku is toolbar-based application that helps you find and access ANY and ALL web pages that have appeared in your browser. Its simplicity, along with its ability to save the user plenty of time and aggravation, makes it a resource that will appeal to the masses." Quite an endorsement. More at All About Seruku. (May 20 ) Resourceshelf.

Google Alert Bookmarklet

Tara Calishain has created a bookmarklet for setting up Google Web Alerts. A bookmarklet is a bit of javascript that is embedded in a link that can be in a favourites list or on the link bar of the browser. Google Web Alerts watch for new hits on keyword searches. See New Google Bookmarklet for Google Web Alerts

Viewpoint Search Toolbar

Viewpoint is another toolbar to enhance web searching for people who use Internet Explorer and link Yahoo. Distinguishing feature is that it shows thumbnails - as if smaller-than-a-postage-stamp image ever helped anyone assess the worth of the page in one glance. There is a demo of the search at the web site but it doesn't have the thumbnails!

Viewpoint Search Toolbar for Internet Explorer : A class apart (April 30)

Kit bag for searchers

Searching the search engines "BBC ClickOnline's Kate Russell looks at metasearch engines - services that collect results from other search engines and directories. " (May 4) Recommends Dogpile, Searchive, and Ask Jeeves.

Tools to aid search quests (May 5) Mentions a couple more tools for the web searcher: Web Ferret toolbar, Scannery for company information, Watch That Page for alerts, and Search Engine Showdown for staying uptodate.

Startup Page

Good ideas do cycle back. Alexandre Krasne at PC World recommends setting up a start-up page with favourite links. Create Your Own Home Page With Your Favorite Links "Here's GeekTech's guide to creating your own Super Kickstart page filled with all of the Web sites you regularly visit." Krasne lets you download hers as a working copy to modify. You may not like the colours but the functionality is excellent with several small javascript functions to use for searching dictionaries or movie database. There's a rolling news bar for headlines from selected news sources. I think I'll keep this.

Bookmarklets for search

Greg Notess writes about the bookmarklets he uses. These are small javascript functions for web search (and other functions) that can be added as bookmarks for quick acces. Search Engine Bookmarklets at SearchEngineShowdown. (April 24)

Toolbar reviews

REVIEW: Toolbars Offer More Than Searches By ANICK JESDANUN. AP via USA Today (April 19) -- "Search engine toolbars for the Internet Explorer browser have become nearly essential tools online: They can block pop-up ads, alert you to new e-mail, even protect you from scams. " The author tested 11 toolbars - settled on Google and Yahoo for day-to-day use and possibly another for some special feature.

Article mentions GGSearch -- essentially a Google toolbar but with many more options. Tara Calishain also mentioned this tool in her PC Magazine article (March 2) under The Next Small Thing.

Hotbot Toolbar

Chris Sherman reviewed HotBot's New Desktop Search Toolbar SearchDay (April 14) Notes that the new Hotbot toolbar has some similarities to the Lycos SideSearch feature - showing results in left pane of browser. Notable features include indexing files on your computer, the RSS newsreader, and being able to customize the toolbar to access user-defined sites. Of course - requires Windows and IE5.5. Information page about the Hotbot Desktop Toolbar.

See also the WSG Newsletter on Toolbars and Deskbars.

Netscape Desktop Navigator

Netscape has a new desktop tool for Windows users - the Desktop Navigator. It has Google search, weather, news, TV, Movies, Maps and Directions - several handy reference points. It can be customized to a US zip code and can hold up to 5 zip codes including your home/default. Works with any browser. This is in beta and carries the usual warnings about being experimental.

GoogleAlert

GoogleAlert just got a lot better. GoogleAlert will save and run searches on Google and deliver the results through email or an RSS feed. One can view and manage all the alerts on the Web. Searches can be limited by language, country, domain and file format. Results can be filtered to match exact case or punctuation of your search terms.

ResearchBuzz has more -- Google Alert Now Offers New Features, Case/Punctuation Filtering (March 25)

Feedster Alerts

Feedster has a search alert. It will email results for saved searches set up on weblogs it indexes. You don't have to register but you do need to enter a control number into a box - used to prevent bots from setting up searches. http://www.feedster.com/alerts.php

Google Personalized Web Search

Google Labs is trying out Personalized Web Search. To use it you must create a profile of interests based on categories Google presents.

New Gurunet

Gurunet has refreshed itself again as possibly the best answer engine the Web has seen. GuruNet Launches New Answer Engine Next-Generation Search Tools Leaves No Query Unanswered Press Release (March 22) This announcement puts GuruNet back on the Web with topic search from the web site. Subscribers may also use the new IE toolbar, Version 5 of Gurunet desktop, or GuruNet Kids. The deskto application is for Windows only but a Mac version is promised for later this year.

"GuruNet displays authoritative answers, definitions and facts on more than 700,000 topics comprising news, people, places, history, events, and specific industry knowledge. The content is from more than 150 top-quality data sources and live data feeds "

Annual subscription is $29.99 US.

New Toolbars

Search toolbars from HotBot, Dogpile make their debut By Michael Bazeley. Mercury News (March 22) These new toolbars are evidence of a move to desktop searching.

The Hotbot Desktop will do email and local files. Today the toolbar can only search Microsoft mail programs, but Hotbot will be adding Yahoo Mail and Hotmail (no mention of Eudora.) Notes that the Hotbot toolbar does not collect information on you or your searches.

The new Dogpile toolbar, like Hotbot Desktop, will read RSS feeds. It will also show ticker-style what others are searching for. Search voyeurism must still be a hobby of some.

Lycos Hotbot Desktop

Hotbot has introduced a new desktop search. Gary Price and Barbara Quint tried it out in Lycos HotBot Offers Free DeskTop Toolbar NewsBreaks (March 22)

It is the first to support searches of document files on the hard drive, browser history, and e-mail folders for Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. Internet search is based on Inktomi. One can also search RSS subscriptions and view them with the built-in RSS viewers. It comes with text ads. Requires Windows, Internet Explorer 5.5 and above.

More information at http://www.hotbot.com/tools/desktop/

Hotbot also has a deskbar.

Onfolio to gather and republish information

New software tames Web searches, speeds publishing by Eric Auchard. Reuters via CBS Marketwatch (March 14) - Onfolio has software that is said to work like a "a research vacuum, simplifying the collection, annotation and republishing of information found on the Web or in one's own computer. It bridges the gap between a raw information search on Google or Yahoo and the document filing system of Microsoft Windows."

Chris Sherman called Onfolio: A Powerful New Web Research Assistant. SearchDay (March 15)

File Type Finder

Search by File Format at Fagan Finder. Tool is in beta. http://www.faganfinder.com/filetype/

Groowe Toolbar

Mary Ellen Bates calls the Groowe Toolbar "The Mother of All Toolbars". Groowe has Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK and other engines in one toolbar. (March 2004)

ViewPoint Toolbar

New Search Toolbar Adds Visuals to Results by Matt Hicks. EWeek (Feb 24) via Yahoo News. Yet another search-engine toolbar but this one is graphically enhanced. Viewpoint Toolbar will show thumbnails of the top 5 sites. I've never found thumbnails much use but they liven up the page. Viewpoint will hold favourites and block popups. Works with IE. So far ho-hum. Won't be available until mid-March.

Soople

Easy Power Searching with Google By Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Feb 19) -- "Soople is an elegant control console for Google's many powerful advanced features, bringing them all together in a well-designed, easy to use interface."

Grokker and Google

Groxis Plugs Into Google Search at DEMO 2004 PRNewswire via NewsAlert (Feb 17) -- "Groxis, Inc., the leader in visual information management software, announced today the beta release of its long-anticipated Google plug-in, a software module for Grokker, the popular desktop search and personal data-mining tool. Available as a free beta to Grokker customers, the Google plug-in enables users to query and retrieve information from Google and visualize the results in an easy-to-navigate Grokker map."

UCMore Toolbar is not spyware

UCmore Search Engine Tool Cleans Up Image Search Engine Marketing (Feb 16) - UCMore is a search companion utility that can recommend sites based on the one you are viewing - similar to Alexa. Anti-spyware products usually identify it as spyware. But UCMore, according to this entry, has been accepted by a couple of the watchdog anti-spyware organizations.

p-Zoom vs Vivisimo

BIGontheNet has announced the p-Zoom search engine - to be found at ZOOMstation.com. (These people need help with branding). BIGontheNet's p-ZOOM Search Engine Companion Debuts at DEMO 2004 (Feb 16) p-Zoom is a search companion that works with the browser to clusters search results. It claims "p-ZOOM is the only search engine companion that offers more than just refined search results. The user can personalize his search experience and express his moods with an extensive collection of template designs. " The folders show in the Internet Explorer search bar. Price is $39.90 US. 30-day trial. Requires IE 5.5+ and Windows 2000 +

In fact, though, the Vivisimo toolbar and minibar will cluster results at any search site. (Also for IE5.5 + and WIndows).

But the company has two other versions - sponsored and bundled. Advertisers can customize Zoom and offer it as a giveaway - hence sponsored. Search engines can buy the bundled version to sell "topic folder labels as paid keywords as part of their advertising programs. Content-targeted or contextual ads would be delivered based on the content of a folder that is being viewed. In other words, the search engine's ad system sees that the user is viewing a folder about Digital Cameras Reviews; it will deliver an ad listing that is related to Digital Cameras Reviews." Will there be no relief from advertising?

Furl Save

Create Your Own Online Web Page Archive by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Feb 12) - reviews Furl.net, a new service for saving and annotating pages online.

"Furl ("file URL") is a promising new service that's unlike any other I've come across. It solves the "disappearing bookmark" problem -- pages that for one reason or another vanish, making your bookmarks useless. It does this by actually storing a copy of the page for you on Furl's own servers."

Furl saves the pages on its servers. There is a disadvantage. What happens if Furl folds or has to introduce fees?

Copernic Tracker

Copernic Launches Copernic Tracker, an Essential Tool for Effective Web Monitoring Copernic Tracker is software for web-page monitoring. -- "This new tool makes it possible to automatically monitor an unlimited number of Web pages to stay on top of any changes or additions. Copernic Tracker even gives users the option of receiving update alerts by email or cell phone." Price is $49.95 US.

NeedleSearch Toolbar

A Better Search Tool for Finding Needles in Haystacks by Gary Price. SearchDay (Feb 2) - recommends the NeedleSearch Toolbar because it is possible to capture the search functionality of any site and put it into a NeedleSearch rule. However, it works only with Mozilla browser.

Toolbars reviewed

Search Toolbars & Utilities by Danny Sullivan (Jan 27, 2003)
Search Engine Watch lists toolbars and provides short annotations. It lists toolbars from search engines, independent toolbars, and metasearch utilities. There are also references to various recent articles about toolbars.

On the whole it is a good list. However, Copernic Meta Search merits more than 12 words. This is a browser toolbar that provides meta searches against several Web search engines, as well as other category groupings. Among the metasearches is a handy dictionary and thesaurus. Most importantly, it lets you add search engines not on its list. Copernic Meta Search also operates as a deskbar, similar to Google, but easier to activate with a Ctrl ALT Click on a section of text.

Furl.net Page Saver

Furl.net is a new online service for archiving web pages and searching them.

"Furl is a new web browsing tool that lets you save and organize thousands of useful web pages (you know, the ones you want to save for future reference but then can never find again) in a personal "web page filing cabinet". "

Sree Sreenivasan at Poynter Online featured it - Furl it: New tool for surfers (Jan 20).

MSN Toolbar

MSN has joined the party - it will offer MSN users a toolbar for web searching. Microsoft Search Tool Takes On Google DowJones (Jan 26)

Update on Jan 28: Toolbar is at http://toolbar.msn.com/. It does the usual - sits under the address bar, searches the Web using MSN Search, blocks pop-ups (the very same pop-ups for which MSN accepts advertising money), highlights words, links to MSN places. Requires WIndows 98 or later, and Internet Explorer 5.01 or later.

Internet Explorer has always had a fairly good Search Bar for quick searching at MSN or other search engines plus lookups for words and places etc. Guess it never caught on with users.

Google Alert

Google Alert Automatically Tracks Your Favorite Topics by Chris Sherman, Searchday (Jan 21) Google Alert will alert you to new content on Google that matches your search terms. Chris Sherman likes it. Using Google Alert does take work in refining the search, and as in all things Web, there will be junk to deal with.

Google and Yahoo Shortcuts

Google, Yahoo Add New Search Features by Chris Sherman. SearchDay (Jan 13) Sherman describes the five features for tracking by number -- area code, universal product code, flights, vehicle ids, U.S. Postal Service. Also compares Google's flight tracker to Yahoo's and finds Yahoo picks up more airlines. He concludes: "These features are useful and mostly helpful, if you have a Yahoo or Google search box or toolbar handy. But since they simply offer further links to more information, it's probably easier to go directly to the partner sites both are using and do these types of searches directly at the source." Absolutely - go to the source for more choice in search, better display, and help.

Yahoo Flight Tracker

Yahoo has added a shortcut for Flight Tracker. Enter name of airline followed by flight number such as air canada 698. Information comes from Travelocity as part of Yahoo Travel.

It was mentioned in Yahoo Adds Flight Status Search Shortcut, DM News (Jan 13)

Yahoo's shortcuts are described at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/tips/tips-01.html

If you really would like to track a flight, use FlyteComm.com. This has realtime information on flights of all airlines. It will also show flights by arrival and departure airports in North America.

Numbers at Google

New Google Shortcuts Tie Into Paid Listings By Michael Singer, Internet.com (Jan 12) Notes that Google has 5 more shortcuts that will help people look up area codes, Universal Product Codes (UPC), flight tracking information, Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, and U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers.

Google taps into a particular database to get the answers. Other advertisers can make use of this in the adwords they set up.

""When you type in the UPC code, it comes out with a link to Upcdatabase.com but some other information as well," Li said. "It's mining the information that Google has in its example but also information about the product as well. If I'm either the product manufacturer or a competitor, I could go to Google and buy my UPC number."

The Google help page has more information about search by number . It would be helpful if Google identified on the Help page which databases they use for these searches.

These shortcuts are for U.S. data only.

Ask Jeeves has had smart answers, its version of shortcuts, for some time, and Altavista might have been the first to introduce the practice, but Google gets more press.

Web Tips

Sree Sreenivasan at Poynter Online has a page of Web Tips picked from columns during 2003 -- shorten URLs, find personal information, use the Google Deskbar, blow up your bookmarks - and more.

Google Deskbar

On the Google Deskbar by Kieran McCarthy. The Register. (Dec 4, 2003) - Likes the deskbar a lot -- "It has come up with another new, interesting, simple and useful innovation and made its competitors look lazy and sloppy. "

Toolbars

Toolbars: Trash or Treasures? By Greg R. Notess. Online Magazine (Jan 2004) - There is a plethora of toolbars to choose from today. Most are written for Windows and Internet Explorer. Notess reviews the advantages and disadvantages of these and warns that the chief disadvantage is dependence on one search engine. Notess himself rarely uses toolbars.

However, some toolbars support a meta-search and also selection of particular engines such as the new Copernic meta-search. Most importantly they can be a time saver for routine factual questions.

NeedleSearch for Mozilla Users

Gary Price featured Needlesearch, a toolbar for users of the Mozilla browser as the Web Search Tool of the Week. (Dec 18)

Surfwax for Lawyers

Surfwax LawKT (Knowledge Tools) "provides full-text searching of over 50,000 Web-based publications from 280 of the world's leading firms, and searching of major law, Web, and news sites. " There are three versions: Lite - free for one-stop searching, Pro - more sites plus collaboration tools, Enterprise. A Premium version will be available in February 2004 offering alerts and document saving and more meta-search from specialized databases.

Word Aids

Boost the Power of Your Word Processing Program by Reid Goldsborough. LinkUp Digital (Dec 15 2003) - Reviews two programs that can be used with Word to provide additional funcationality.

Word Menu - an idea thesaurus for $39.95 US
GuruNet - really a search aid to finding facts and definitions quickly through GuruNet's online library of resources.

Copernic Meta Search Desktop Bar

Introducing Copernic Meta—Taking Internet Searches to Another Level "This free application lets users search multiple engines in Copernic offers free search toolless than a second directly from their Windows desktop bar."

This new toolbar from Copernic works with Windows 98 and above and Internet Explorer. There is a demo at http://www.copernic.com/meta/web/ that works on the Web and is recommended for non-Windows users or people who can't install software to their computers.

Toolbar supports search of the Web, Images, Audio, Multimedia, News, Shopping.

The Web search uses Yahoo, Altavista, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, About "and more". Copernic doesn't show the source engine for the results. However, results can be sorted by source. A search for "glycemic index" pulled in results from Overture (likely paid placement), Yahoo, Altavista, Ask Jeeves, a "Meta Search Partner Network - which is the Infospace family of engines, Teoma, About.com, Inktomi, Open Directory, Looksmart, Findwhat and Ah-Ha - both paid placement, Alltheweb.

Images come from Fast/Alltheweb and Ditto.
Audio - Fast
News - ABC News and Fast

Shopping is Copernic's Shopping Online and uses PriceGrabber, a comparison shopping search engine that serves mainly the United States.

The toolbar itself has extra features for directly searching on words with Alt+Click, and for creating keyboard shortcuts for particular search engines.

Copernic offers free search tool Globe and Mail Update (Dec 10)

Vivisimo Toolbar

Vivisimo has a mini-toolbar for quick access to Vivisimo clustering either as a meta-search or on particular search engines. Works with Windows 98 and above, and IE 5.5 and above.

http://vivisimo.com/toolbar/minibar-download.html

eBay Toolbar

Even eBay has a Toolbar writes Cory Kleinschmidt at Traffick.com (Nov 30). It offers alerts and a search box. Kleinschmidt has more amusing comments about the toolbar craze.

Deskbars

Fair warning to all - Google Deskbar is still in beta. Sitelines recommends checking Google Groups about the Deskbar (see below) for information on problems.
Google's Deskbar and Microsoft's Plans for Browser-free searching (Nov 20)

Meantime, in the newsgroup google . public . labs . google-deskbar there is mention of yet another desktop tool -- Customalert.com with even more search utilities from the taskbar. Customalert is marketing its product to corporations for use internally. and also to businesses wishing to push "alerts" through the deskbar.

Google Deskbar

Google can be searched from within any Windows application through the new Google Deskbar. Requires Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. Gary Price describes and comments in Web Search Google (Nov 6)

Other articles:

Google tests desktop search by Stephanie Olsen. CNet (Nov 6)

- use the deskbar to search on the Web while in a Word document or e-mail application. Results will be displayed in a small window in the lower right of the screen.
- puts Google head-to-head with Microsoft. "Google could be headed for a duel with the software giant as Microsoft builds new search technology that bridges the needs of its home and business customers and binds its various applications through Longhorn, its next version of Windows."

Research Buzz Google Offers Google Deskbar (Nov 7)

Legitimate Popups Blocked Too

Ads Aren't All the Browser Tool Is Blocking by Lisa Guernsey. New York Times (Nov6, 2003) - Google's toolbar came under criticism for blocking legitimate popups - "like calendar updates, deadline notices and explanations of new navigation features". Popup blockers (the article neglects to name the many other toolbars and freeware programs that can be used) are forcing web designers to stop using the popup window as a tool. What will ads and porn on the Web ruin next?

Create Shorter URLs

Wegblogs Compendium has a list of the services that will shorten URLs. There are quite a few.

Dogpile Toolbar

Dogpile Search Engine Introduces New Toolbar Features EContent Magazine (Oct 10, 2003) --

New features to the Dogpile Search Toolbar include:
- Popup blocker
- Cursor search - search for a word on a web page
- Scrolling news ticker - picks up headlines from ABCNEWS.com

Also has the Dogpile metasearch and access to US White and Yellow pages from Infospace.

As usual, it requires Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP, Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher.

Review of Copernic Agent

Copernic Agent : an information retrieval, analysis and monitoring solution - detailed description of the software at Agentland.com. Says "Originally a ‘simple’ metasearcher, Copernic has over the years added a range of features that have turned it into a very complete solution for information retrieval, analysis and monitoring." (October 2003 ?)

Answer Services - Google v Libraries

Cornell University Library ran a small study comparing the Google Answers service to their own digital reference service. Cornell reference librarians scored higher than the Google service but not dramatically so. Study provides several lessons to libraries especially in the areas of self-assessment and monitoring commercial services.

Google Meets eBay What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers D-Lib Magazine (June 2003)

Making Google the default for IE

There is a way to make the IE browser search Google rather than MSN. PC Magazine has the tip (Put Google in IE's Search Bar ) and also points to an information page at Google - Googlify your browser.

N-Liter for saving pages

Golden Retriever fetches news Globe and Mail (Sep 10) Golden Retriever is an on-line tool that 'photocopies' web pages, supports notes, and searches the Web. Product is from the Toronto company, N-Liter.

Golden Retriever works on Windows 98 and up and Internet Explorer 6.0. There is a tryware version and a 30-day trial. Purchase is $14.95 USD.

More detail with screenshots on how the product works is in the User Manual.

Meta Eureka Toolbar

The metasearch engine offers a desktop tool for Windows 98+ users that will search 40 engines at once. Also does weather, translation and dictionary. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch likes it as does Lockergnome. http://www.metaeureka.com/download.shtml

Altavista Toolbar

Altavista has joined the Toolbar club. (http://www.altavista.com/toolbar/default). Use it to search Altavista indexes, including the large image database, or to search the site you're at. Other functions: translation, highlight terms, lookup facts (dictionary, times, conversion, weather, zip codes). The lookup functions are mainly for US cities and zip codes. Like the Google Toolbar and probably now "de rigeur" it has a popup blocker. Requires IE5+ on WIndows 95+.

Snippy for Research

Snippy is another aid for researchers to save web content and search it afterwards. "Use Snippy to save, organize, annotate and share snippets of useful web content. Simply "drag and drop" text and/or graphics to Snippy and save into a category or project. Snippy date-stamps snippets alongside your comments and the original URL. " 30 day trial No price quoted! (Mentioned in TVC Alert)

http://www.researchagent.com/snippy/

Translation Wizard

Faganfinder offers a wizard for translating chunks of text. Paste it in and select the language. Twenty-nine languages are listed including Latin, Urdu, Welsh. Faganfinder uses a roster of nearly 30 translation tools that includes Systran, the service used by Altavista and Google. Faganfinder makes an International Keyboard available for entering characters not on your keyboard. It's another great service from Michael Fagan.

Fagan Finder Translation Wizard http://www.faganfinder.com/translate/

More at ResourceShelf - Resource of the Week - The Translation Wizard from FaganFinder (Beta)

Research Toolbar

Internet Research Toolbar helps people save, search, and manage information from the Web. Windows and Internet Explorer 5.0+. Cost is $59.95 US, 30 day trial. Mentioned in TVC ALert.

Toolbars galore

Jason Parker at ZDNet recommends three toolbars in Want to speed up Web searches? Here's how (Aug 4) They are Google Toolbar - very popular, Nutshell - several choices in search engine, and for Mac users the Safari Apple Web browser. Where's Hotbot's toolbar?

SurfSaver: If you save web

SurfSaver: If you save web pages to your computer (and you should - they may not be online next week) you'll want to search them. Robin Good Shareware Tidings (weblog) says SurfSaver is a must have to Search the Web pages you have stored on your computer (Feb 14, 2003)