February 23, 2011
Yahoo Video Drops User Generated Content
Yahoo Video Dumping User Content, By Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld (Feb 22)
Another piece of Yahoo falls away.
Yahoo Video stopped acccepting user created videos in December, and now tells users to download their videos from the site by March 15, 2011.
What's left? "The site will remain up, but it will only contain content from Yahoo and its partners. User-generated content will no longer be part of the site."
Maybe there is no competing with YouTube.
February 22, 2011
Facebook - the search engine
Facebook Organizes Its Search Results, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Feb 22)
"Reflecting the growing number of content types on its platform, Facebook has changed its search results display — the drop-down that appears as soon as users begin typing in the Facebook search box. The new display is organized into different content types, replacing the old version which showed results in a straight list format with no organization."
Search Your Personal Cloud
Greplin Lets You Find Your Stuff in the Cloud , Avi Rappoport, Newsbreaks (Feb 21)
Have a lot of stuff online? Search your personal cloud with Greplin , but read the review first.
"The new Greplin service is like desktop search, only it indexes and makes searchable online social networking accounts—what some people are calling a “personal cloud.” The free version indexes content from accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Google Docs & Calendar, Dropbox, and LinkedIn, while the paid versions add other sources and more index space. Simple to install, Greplin works quickly, not just finding one’s own posts, email, and documents scattered around the various services, but posts and documents shared by friends’ accounts."
Anchor Text important
And further on - "Anchor text is flowing from one site to another–and then to another. Google appears counting the anchor text of links not directly to your site, but they’re counting the anchor text of links that link to pages that then link to your site. This might be one way that they’ve been able to cut down on “google bombing”, by allowing anchor text to flow, just like PageRank."
Dealing with search spam
What Does Blekko’s Spam Clock Really Say About Google Spam?, Jessica Lee, Bruce Clay (Feb 21)
Spam and more spam. Blekko has the clock to show the growth, and Google fights it with changes to its algorithms almost monthly. But is Google winning or losing?
From the article:
"I talked with Bradley Leese, senior SEO analyst here at Bruce Clay, Inc., who offered an interesting perspective on the relationship between Google’s algorithm updates and spam in the results.
“Every time Google makes a change to its algorithm, spam rises to the top. Every update in the past 10 years has shown this same trend. There’s no reason to think that spammy sites that may be showing in results right now isn’t part of this recurring trend.”"
The new Chrome extension for blocking sites will help Google get more clues. Meantime, Blekko presents itself as the spam-avoiding search engine because of its active user base.
Of interest: "“Who’s left as competition to Google?,” asks Bradley. “Yahoo recently announced it would become more of a publication-based website, Bing is losing money and Ask, poor Ask.com.”"
Visualization with Twitter
Two Great Twitter Visualization Tools: Twiangulate & MentionMap, Affiliate Marketing Blog (Feb 17)
Like Twitter? Use visualization tools to follow the activity.
Twiangulate - "They help you see the biggest (or the most influential) followers of any two or three Twitter users, as well as mutual followers and mutual friends, compare lists, and do much more. " -
MentionMap -"Here you can analyze only one Twitter user (or their connections) at a time". Check your own connections with this one.
Windows Live works with Facebook
Facebook chat in Hotmail now available everywhere, Windows Live (Feb 21)
Facebook chat is available throuh Microsoft's Messenger - if you connect your Facebook account to Windows Live. It is now also connected to Hotmail.
From Windows Live - "And while Gmail beat us to bringing their own chat into the inbox, we have now gone a step further and brought both our own chat and Facebook chat into your inbox. Starting now, we will be displaying notifications of this update in Hotmail. "
This could be useful to many.
Sharing options for Windows Live are
- Chat with my Facebook friends in Messenger
- See my Facebook friends and their updates in Messenger
- Share my Facebook status and updates with my Messenger friends
And Facebook:
- Share my Windows Live status message and updates with my Facebook friends
- Let me publish photos to Facebook and tag my Facebook friends in them using Windows Live Photo Gallery
February 20, 2011
Swapping Ebooks
The rise of the e-book lending library (and the death of e-book pirating) by John Barber, Globe and Mail (Feb 20)
One would have thought that digital rights management (DRM) systems would have made this sharing impossible, but not so.
There is an online Kindle Lending Club - "which already has 12,000 registered users making as many as 600 swaps every day. What began as a simple desire to share books with other Kindle users quickly became what [Catherine] MacDonald calls “a crowd-sourced virtual library,” one that functions much like the real thing and is quickly being replicated by similar clubs and startups, all of them inspired by the “lending feature” offered first to users of the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader and then the Kindle. ""
BookSwim's eBook Fling allows sawpping of Amazon and Barnes and Noble ebooks.
Of course, first place to check for loans is the local public library.
"“The increased demand is tremendous, it’s really remarkable,” said Vickery Bowles, director of collections at the Toronto Public Library. E-book lending at the TPL increased 88 per cent in 2009 and 70 per cent in 2010 before going exponential after a Christmas that put millions of new e-readers in the hands of consumers. “E-book lending is still a very small percentage of the whole,” she said, “but that kind of increase in use is obviously very unusual, and a real signal of how things are changing.” "
DRM is at work - it allows the loan but erases the book after 14 days.
Similar Pages to get "more like this"
Discover Pages Similar to the Current One with “Similar Pages”, by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Feb
"More like this" is one of the main search strategies of searchers - and now a tool to make that easier to do in web searching. Ann Smarty describes the application from Similar Pages. An algorithm PageAffinity analyzes page content and linking structure to calcualte a degree of similarity between webpages. SimilarPages offers a Firefox addon.
Watson does natural language
A Computer Called Watson, IBM 100 Icons of Progress (Feb 14)
The week was abuzz with news that Watson, the IBM "Deep QA" computer, bested humans at Jeopardy.
Watson doesn't think. Instead it finds the answer. "Watson does a remarkable job of understanding a tricky question and finding the best answer." ... "“The goal is to build a computer that can be more effective in understanding and interacting in natural language, but not necessarily the same way humans do it.”"
The article invites you to take a trivia challenge against Watson.
Computer crushes competition on Jeopardy! , AP (Feb 16) - has an account of Game 1 of the Man vs. Machine competition on “Jeopardy!”
But Watson blew one question under US cities - picking Toronto (in Canada) as the answer.
The main point is that this has huge significance for search. Do easy digital answers put us in jeopardy? , Ivor Tossell (Feb 16)
Google Bookmarks and Delicious
Google Unveils Delicious Bookmark Importer, Jolie O'Dell, Mashable (Feb 18)
Google invites Delicious users to import their bookmarks (including tags) into Google Bookmarks. This follows Yahoo's announcement of some weeks ago that Yahoo was intending to shutter delicious (later amended to try to find another caretaker).
Before you do this (say I), realize that Google Bookmarks is not at all like delicious.
1. bookmarks are private - unless you create a list and make the list public.
2. you can star items to add to the bookmark list in Google, but that doesn't prompt for label or note. Need to put the bookmarklet on your toolbar (tho need bookmarklet for delicious too.)
3. Google doesn't offer methods to group the tags / labels. Although it does now offer a way to remove and change labels.
4. You can search the public lists with keywords but not pivot on a label (there are none) or on a user (to see what else they collect).
Anyone who has loved delicious for its bookmark management tools and the ability to check what thousands of collectors were finding and adding will be disappointed. Better to look to Diigo for a new bookmark management system (full toolbar, save larger chunks of text), or Xmarks (synchronize bookmarks across browsers and computers - while also anonymously contributing to evaluation of sites and page.
Google Bookmarks is possibly the clunkiest bookmark manager invented. It's handy for quickly starring pages that will show in Google History as of interest to you - and maybe it helps Google personalize results - but it doesn't have the interface or capabilities to make it your main bookmark tool.
February 19, 2011
Peek at Firefox 5
An early look at Firefox 5 , by Seth Rosenblatt, Download.com (Feb 18)
Preview Firefox 5 in this slideshow from CNET.
There is a new thing called the site-specific browser. Firefox (and IE9) will be able to connect to search tools for specific sites - such as finding photos in Facebook. There will be lots of synching - bookmarks, passwords, history across devices for Firefox use (but if you use several browsers, you'll want to keep XMarks). Add-ons may get some attention too - more reminders. One good thing - Mozilla will be keeping the search bar. Google dropped this in Chrome - the one complaint I have about Chrome.
February 18, 2011
Getting New Movie Releases
The Top 10 Websites To Find The New Movie Releases This Week, Saikat Basu, Make Use Of (Feb 15)
Movie buffs will know most of these sites (starting with Netflix, ImDB, Rotten Tomatoes) - good for getting information about films and their cast and crew - popularity, reviews, ratings - and also the very latest on upcoming movie releases.
New Bing Bar
Redesigned Bing Bar Toolbar More Like A “Dashboard, Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Feb 17)
If you're still using a toolbar after all the commotion on how search engines track your activity through them, then the Bing Bar might attract.
"The new toolbar, which is graphically more pleasing to look at than a conventional toolbar, enables users to get lots of different types of information via drop-down windows: news, weather, maps, multiple email accounts, movies, games and so on — in addition to search."
Google and the title tag
Evidence that Google is Ignoring the Title Tag, SEO Blog (Feb 17)
David Malmborg writes - "I have noticed (more then once and with multiple websites) that Google is NOT displaying the title tag in the SERPs. They are ignoring the page title and providing their own title that they may deem to be more relevant."
Postscript Feb 22 - Is Google Ignoring The HTML Title Tag More Often?, Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Feb 21)
More reports that Google is ignoring the title tag on the page and creating its own to use in search results.
Google's Social Search - the next round
Social links get higher billing in Google, Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (Feb 17)
Google aches to get into the social space Facebook has. But will Google users adopt Google's social tools in sufficient numbers to make the new social search features it is introducing pay off?
"Now those results [shared links in Twitter, for example] will appear interspersed with regular search results when you're signed into Google and someone on a social network that you have connected to your Google profile shares a link, with a note under the result telling you who shared the link and where. Twitter seems to be the big winner here, but any account linked to one's Google profile can be featured in results.
Those results won't be displayed to all searchers: you'll see individual results when signed into Google based off of friends and connections within the Google world (Gmail, Chat, Google Buzz) who publicly share sites through those services or externally linked services like Twitter or LinkedIn. Google's also making it possible for users to privately link accounts to their Google Profiles."
General idea is good, but Google users will have to use even more Google tools (chat, email) and build up their account profiles. Sounds like work.
Also: More explanation and illustration from Matt McGee -- Google’s Search Results Get More Social; Twitter As The New Facebook “Like.
Specifically discusses the situation with Facebook:
"However, Google doesn’t receive Facebook data that happens on personal Facebook walls in the way that Bing has been getting from Facebook since late 2009 (if that wall data is shared by their owners with “everyone”). Google also doesn’t appear to have access to non-Facebook pages that people may “Like” across the web."
Postscript: An Update to Google Social Search, Google Blog (Feb 17) - Google's description and video.
February 17, 2011
Stack Overflow Curates for Blekko
Blekko seems to be actively seeking curators to select and maintain the sites listed in Blekko's (topical) slashtags. Blekko and Stack Overflow have announced that the Stack Overflow community of programmers will help curate the tech slashtags. This posting about Blekko and Stack Overflow lists those slashtags.
Full announcement was:
Blekko Taps Stack Overflow Community to Curate Programming, Tech Slashtags
Hand-Picked Programming Professionals and Enthusiasts Edit Slashtags, Creating Relevant and Credible Search Verticals With Zero Spam
Redwood Shores, CA— February 15, 2010 – Blekko, the new search engine that is using human curation to eliminate spam from search results, today announced its partnership with Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A; site built by programmers for programmers.
Blekko has tapped the Stack Overflow community to help improve and maintain programming-related slashtags, curating the very best programming search verticals. Stack Overflow has quickly risen to become the pre-eminent programmer community on the Web and will now help Blekko return only the most relevant programming search results.
Additionally, Blekko has chosen Jeff Atwood, CTO of Stack Overflow and founder of Coding Horror to be editor of such programming-related slashtags. The Stack Overflow logo will appear on each search page where slashtags have been edited by Atwood and team.
“At Blekko, we pride ourselves in returning the very best results in specific verticals by eliminating spam,” said Rich Skrenta, CEO of Blekko. “We turned to the experts at Stack Overflow to help us edit all of these tags and curate the best programming search verticals out there.”
Blekko launched in November promising to create a new kind of search experience that would enlist human editors in its effort to eliminate spam and personalize search. Slashtags -- the magic behind Blekko’s search -- are curated sets of web sites organized around a particular topic as broad as health, money, and autos, and as narrow as gluten-free, college football, and the Grateful Dead.
“Stack Overflow is designed to provide programmers with the best, fastest answers from their peers,” said Jeff Atwood, CTO of Stack Overflow. “We’re collaboratively built and maintained by people who write code because they love it and are thrilled to share this knowledge with Blekko’s community by offering up our most trusted contributors to curate only the best results.”
About Blekko
Blekko was founded in 2007 to pursue innovation in search. The company has raised $24 million since its founding in 2007 from US Venture Partners and CMEA Capital, as well as leading angel investors including Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Jeff Clavier, and Marc Andreessen. Blekko has 25 employees, including former Google and Yahoo! Search engineers.
About Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is the anchor site in the Stack Exchange network of community curated, freely editable Q&A; sites. Founded in 2008 by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, Stack Overflow is now one of the largest programmer communities in the world, and it is regularly branching into new Q&A; site topics every month through the open, democratic site proposal process at http://area51.stackexchange.com.
Google's Aspirations for Travel Search
Google hopes to become hub of online travel, MICHAEL LIEDTKE AND JOELLE TESSLER, AP via Globe and Mail (Feb 16)
Google is seeking permission to buy ITA Software, the purveyor of air flight information and travel search software. Many in the travel industry are worried that Google, if it wins this acquisition, will become that 800 pound gorilla that will force everyone else out.
Google says - don't worry - it won't sell the tickets or do the bookings.
"Google says owning ITA, the brainchild of computer scientists specializing in artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would lead to lower prices and more convenient ways to shop for tickets on the Internet. For instance, travellers might tell Google how much they could afford to spend to visit a warm place on certain dates, and the search engine would turn into a travel guide."
Discussion of this has been going on since last summer when Google announced it's intent. ResouceShelf has background information.
Stay tuned.
February 16, 2011
Primer on Patent Search
Patents 101: A Very Basic Introduction to the World of Patent Searching for Non-Patent Searchers, By Martin Goffman and Ron Kaminecki ,FUMSI (Feb 2)
Some pointers on what patents are, how to search them, resources to use.
February 14, 2011
Filter for SVG at Google Images
Google Image Search Adds SVG Filter & Google Displays Satellite & Terrain Maps by Barry Schwarz, Search Engine Land (Feb 14)
Google Image Search added a filter for scalable vector graphics (SVG).
Personalized Google Search Isn't
Study Asks, Can You Trust Google’s Personalized Search Results?, by Chris Sherman, Search Engine Land ( Feb 14, 2011)
Study into quality of search results done by Martin Feuz and Matthew Fuller of University of London and Felix Stalder of Zurich University of the Arts has some shocking results.
" Despite personalized results, for most people search quality has been declining, results are less personal, reflecting more of a standardized Google-centric view than ever before, and that personalized search serves the interests of advertisers more than searchers—even when looking at organic results and excluding paid AdWords listings on a search result page."
The researchers created three personas based on famous philosophers in each of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and then tested three hypotheses.
"The researchers conclude that personalization is “both taking place to a surprising extent but with relatively trivial results, most likely reflecting that we are in the early stages of the process.” They also note that doing this type of research is difficult due to the dynamism with Google as it constantly changes its algorithms, together with the very nature of personalization itself making it difficult to establish any meaningful universal baselines"
How big is Google?
The Massive Size Of Google (Infographic), An Jay, Smashing Apps (Feb 6)
This HUGE infographic is about the size of Google - lots of data here
+ 1.5 billion images
+ Google aiming at indexing 100 petabytes of information - soon
+ operating income of $8.3 billion
+ and so much more
Yometa
Yometa - new metasearch engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing) with a visual display - somewhat - results show as pins on a kind of Venn diagram map. Difference from other meta-search engines is that Yometa has an algorithm to rerank the results.
"The top 22 results will be displayed as pins on the three intersecting circles. The top 4 results (as determined by the Yometa algorithm) among these 22 pins will display in the form of bubbles with website information, linked to the pin location."
Mentioned in Kartoo Closes and Opens the Door for Yometa by Stephen Arnold.
Of interest: "The company developed its approach based on research that showed that 97 percent of search results by the three search engines(Google, Yahoo and Bing) are different and there is only three percent overlap."
Chrome's Personal Blocklist
New: Block Sites From Google Results Using Chrome’s “Personal Blocklist”, by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Feb 14)
If you use Chrome you can block sites in Google search results by adding an extension.
"While Personal Blocklist is designed to allow individuals to build up their own unique blocklists, Google says it may use the data to influence the search results for others."
February 12, 2011
Chrome Extensions
10+ Google Chrome Extensions For The Newly Converted by Angela Alcorn, Make Use Of (Feb. 4th, 2011)
Well, I'm a convert to Chrome and this is a good list - starting with the Ad-Block Extension. Install a few of the extensions on this list, and you'll never slip back into your old browser.
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