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Perennial Searcher

October 6, 2008

Ask.com . . . Back in the Game?

Last time I’d heard about Ask.com they had laid off a hero, Gary Price, and switched their focus entirely. Barely any mention of them - - save for a diss or two - - @ the recent Web Search University conference in DC last month. Now, however, it looks as if Ask.com has upgraded. Ask.com mines questions and answers and will place answers at the top of the search results. Also, a running list of users’ queries appears. Supposedly, download time have increased, too. Be sure to check out the What’s New? section.  Factoid: USA Today reports that - - as of August 2008 – Ask.com garnered 4.8% of all web searches.

posted by Brian at 9:47 am | Comments (0)

October 1, 2008

Google Image Search Features

Just noticed that Google Images has some cool advanced search features. Specifically, searchers and users can limit by “content type”. Currently Google is offering the following options:

• any content
• news content
• faces
• photo content

posted by Brian at 8:58 am | Comments (0)

September 27, 2008

Hakia

Speaking of the future of search, consider experimenting with Hakia. This tool describes itself as a semantic search engine that focuses on extracting and unearthing meaningful results. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, has recently talked about “trustworthiness” on the Web, and, synchronistically (is that a word, Carl Jung?) Hakia brands websites with a trustworthy stamp. The company even solicits help from information and professionals. They can join Hakia and suggest credible websites. Be sure to consult Hakia’s About page.

posted by Brian at 2:53 pm | Comments (0)

Reading the Future of Web Search

Happy Birthday, Google! Google celebrates its 10th. As this article notes, Google has become synonymous with search. It’s in our dictionaries as both a noun and a verb. This piece also highlights other tools and peers into the future of search. “Clustering” engines - - e.g., Clusty - - hold promise, so says the writer. What’s more, the author highlights another trend: visualization of search results. See, for examples, Grokker and Quintura. No mention, though of the Semantic Web (unless I overlooked it). Directories a la Open Directory Project were popular a decade ago. Yet humans can’t keep up with the Web’s exponential growth. Still, some companies are employing human editors. Mahalo is one of them.

posted by Brian at 8:31 am | Comments (1)

September 26, 2008

State of the Blogosophere 2008

Be sure to skim the findings of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report. Blogs have become an important source of information and content. Thankfully tools such as Google Blog Search and Technorati exist to help us scour the collective domain of blogs. Bloggers blog for personal, corporate, and financial reasons. Overall, bloggers are a highly educated brood.

posted by Brian at 9:15 pm | Comments (0)

Watching TV Online

The rise of YouTube has generated interest in online video. This article states that consumer are interested in watching more TV shows and movies over the Web. Some TV networks offer episodes online. Also, specific sites such Hulu help searchers find video content; about Hulu:

“Hulu offers U.S. consumers a vast selection of premium video content, on demand, free and ad-supported: full episodes of TV shows, both current and classic, full-length movies, thousands of clips, and much more.”

posted by Brian at 7:35 pm | Comments (0)

Google Delineates Future of Search?

Search industry giant Google sketches the future of search in this piece picked up by Yahoo! News. So what’s ahead? In short, cloud computing. A heady concept no doubt. Time to read up about this paradigm. Start with the Wikipedia entry. See also these search results for the Google query: “define cloud computing”.

posted by Brian at 5:43 pm | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

Truthiness on the Web

Web founder and pioneer Tim Berners-Lee calls for a standard of trustworthiness on the Web and suggests a labelling system that would weed out unreliable content for users . . . according to this BBC news item. Also of interest is this fact: only 20% of the world’s population has access to the Web.

posted by Brian at 11:28 am | Comments (0)

August 28, 2008

Options Beyond Google

The newsbreaks blog from Information Today features a post by Paula J. Hane. It’s a nice roundup of tools that offer the following: vertical search, social search, semantic web search, and more.  Tools profiled include Hakia,  Scoofers, and Scour. See also this ReadWriteWeb writeup of amost a dozen trends that may disrupt Google.

posted by Brian at 5:22 pm | Comments (0)

August 26, 2008

Google Suggests Graduates

Google Suggest –  the feature that anticipates your keywords as you begin to type - - will graduate from Google Labs this week. Check out the Official Google Blog for the skinny, history, and context. Google claims that this tool will save searcers’ time, correct spelling errors, and offer search guidance.

posted by Brian at 12:40 pm | Comments (0)

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