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Perennial Searcher

May 27, 2009

Bing

You may have heard the speculation. It’s true: Microsoft will overhaul its approach to search. Live.com, according to Wired’s Epicenter, garners only 10% of all searches. Still, Microsoft thinks it has something to offer and may unveil Bing (code name Kumo) this Thursday @ the All Things Digital conference. Ad Age reports that Microsoft will spend approximately $80-$100 million on promoting Bing.

posted by Brian at 9:50 am | Comments (0)

May 22, 2009

Collecta: Real-Time Search . . . Coming Soon

Caught wind of the upcoming launch of a real-time search tool called Collecta. You must enter your email and sign up to be notified when the site offically goes “live”. Check out these sample search results on the query Obama. Collecta crawls the likes of Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, etc. A metasearcher of the “live Web,” if you will? Here’s the company’s provacative teaser:

“The Web is alive. Why are we still searching like it is 1999?”

Stay tuned!

Now . . . will Google buy Twitter?

posted by Brian at 9:25 am | Comments (0)

May 20, 2009

Taking Wolfram Alpha for a Spin

Wolfram Alpha would like you to know the following: again, it is not a search engine! Take a look @ their FAQ, and you’ll see that the tool is a “computational knowledge engine“(now that’s cerebral, is it not?). What’s the best way to learn how to use this resource? First, creator Stephen Wolfram provides a handy 1-page summary. Second, Wolfram Alpha provides a a useful sidebar (on the right) with examples of sample searches to try. Input, for example, a city and a state. Check out the results from my query on the home of my youth: Carpinteria, CA. Type in two stock ticker symbols . . . or your birthdate. See also the examples by topic. Sample earch queries are displayed in a visual gallery, too. Considering adding the official Wolfram Alpha blog to your RSS reader to stay up to date on its developments. Better yet, participate in the community. Post questions; receive answers. Contribute!

posted by Brian at 9:42 am | Comments (0)

May 19, 2009

Visual Search

Pandia ranks and rates its top 5 visual search tools. If you’re tired of text-based results, give the likes of Ujiko and SearchMe a whirl.

Best excerpt from the Pandia post:

” . . . it is necessary to explore new ways of presenting and interacting with search results.“

posted by Brian at 4:55 pm | Comments (0)

May 15, 2009

Wolfram Alpha Launch WebCast

Nothing better to do on a Friday eve? Tonight Wolfram Alpha will host a webcast regarding its launch.

posted by Brian at 12:45 pm | Comments (0)

Google Search Options

Watch this video about some new Google features — “Google Search Options”:

New ways to slice and dice as well as refine search results . . . by facets, content type, etc.

The video says and illustrates it all; what more could I add?

posted by Brian at 11:46 am | Comments (0)

May 12, 2009

More on Wolfram Alpha

This New York Times piece puts Wolfram Alpha into perspective. In short, it will exist alongside Google and not supplant it. Interestingly, creator Stephen Wolfram dislikes the hype and comparisons of his tool to Google. How come? Wolfram Alpha is simply an animal unto its own:

“WolframAlpha is different. For starters, it does not gather data from the Web. Instead, its “knowledge base” is made up of reams and reams of data — ranging from the kinds of facts you would find in a World Almanac, to highly specialized data from physics and other sciences — that some 100 employees at Wolfram Research have gathered, verified and organized over several years.”

Special thanks to Jeremy Andrykowski for sending me the link to the NYT article!

posted by Brian at 11:53 am | Comments (0)

Google Supplements?

CNN announces a new era of Web search in this article; it’s a good sketch of existign and up-and-coming technology – - from semantic tools such as Twine and Hakia . . . and the much-hyped Wolfram Alpha, which is set to debut on 5/18. In addition, it highlights tools that crawl social networking sites and discusses real-time search experiments (see Scoopler). Here’s the most salient point or takeaway from the piece:

“Instead of trying to be Google killers, these sites have more humble aspirations: to be alternatives to the industry giants.”

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

May 7, 2009

The New Invisible Web

Joyce Valenza, Ph.D. discusses the New Invisible Web in School Library Journal. It is comprised of content from wikis, blogs, video, and microblogging tools. Valenza blazes a trail by highlighting tools to scour this trove.

“These days, when we search, we miss so much of the stuff that appears in new Web formats. the Web 2.0 stuff.”

posted by Brian at 1:31 pm | Comments (0)

May 1, 2009

Google Public Data

Google unveiled a new feature – public data search — on the same day that Wolfram Alpha held a webinar about its computational knowledge engine that will be available to search this May. By the way, BBC has an interesting piece about Wolfram Alpha, which is positioned as being as important as Google (though not a Google Killer).

In the Google search box, enter a term such as “unemployment rate” and a state or county name, and Google will display a chart. Do the same for “population”.

Google actually purchased GapMinder’s Trendalyzer to visually display search results and data.

posted by Brian at 10:11 am | Comments (0)