http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher C. Brian Smith, information and knowledge seeker, treads water and still attempts to throw you a lifepreserver in the information maelstrom, highlighting developments in the arena of searching and finding on the Web. He writes for <a href="http://www.cyberskeptic.com/cs/"><i>CyberSkeptic's Guide to Internet Research</i></a>. Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:30:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I just learned a cool Competitive Intelligence (CI) tip or trick: Use Twitter Search to get the skinny or the goods on companies and their products . . . as well as people and their reputations.  Those of you familiar with Twitter know that it is a microblogging service that allows ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/10/twitter-search/ Search Engine Journal has a nifty profile of blog search tools. The usual suspects are covered: Technorati and Google Blog Search. However, I totally overlooked the fact that an RSS reader such as Bloglines can be used to search for not only posts, but also feeds. Duh! Then there's BlogPulse , which ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/10/blog-search-tool/ How did I miss this? - - PC World's  collection of cool tools. You can display the resources by category - - e.g., "Learn Stuff". Also, you can display an A-Z list. Compiler and writer Mark Sullivan describes these websites as "indispensable". No doubt you'll discover new sites as well as rediscover veteran ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/10/100-incredibly-useful-and-interesting-websites/ 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 ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/10/askcom-back-in-the-game/ 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 http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/10/google-image-search-features/ 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 ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/09/hakia/ 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 - - ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/09/reading-the-future-of-web-search/ 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 ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/09/state-of-the-blogosophere-2008/ 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 ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/09/watching-tv-online/ 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: ... http://blogs.nsls.info/searcher/2008/09/google-delineates-future-of-search/