“Google it” doesn’t mean exclusively search on Google.com these days.   As search engines and information portals evolve and continue to improve our ability to drill down results within tighter parameters, many effective ”first step” sites have been developed that deliver specific information.  We’ve put together the below list on how to find topics and then more specifically, by discipline, search engines and sites:

I NEED TO FIND:

NOW I NEED TO FIND:

BNI Operatives: Street smart: Web savvy.

As always, be safe.

SEARCH ENGINE TIP:
Are you tired of hearing about the Google vs. Microsoft Bing/Yahoo search engine tug-of-war?  Well, maybe you aren’t yet, but you will be soon.  Do yourself a favor and try Clusty. 

CLUSTY

Just try it for a week or two for your searches and you’ll see what I mean.

See related article here.
See another related article here.

Clusty http://clusty. com/ introduces Clustering 2.0

Clusty is a change from other search engines because it sorts keywords into themed groups.

Just type a word, and the clustered groups are listed in a panel.

Use the tabs to direct your search to results from a particular source, or even to sites with a given extension; useful when looking for information on a government or country specific site.

15 years ago I bought an LP.

It was one that I had been really looking forward to being released. The two singles that had preceded it had whetted my appetite and having devoured the full-length release just once, I immediately phoned everybody I knew to demand that they too go out and buy it. A few of us traveled the length of the country a few months later to hear it live and for the first and only time in my life, I cried at a gig due to its quality.

Of course what happened in the year or so after my purchase, was that gradually it was everywhere (every shop, every TV show) closely followed by a small army of similar closely modeled products, each facsimile filtering out and diluting many of the elements that made the original the artifact what it was. And indeed, still is.

This morning I dug out the LP for its annual single airing, and whilst it spun on the Soundburger, I sat down to catch up on the week’s industry news. Primary amongst this was of course Microsoft’s bi-annual attempt to do mass-market search, ‘Bing’.

Now aside from the curious naming decision, there is plenty in this that many of us in the industry will find strikingly familiar. Indeed, Paul Miller’s blog post sums it up all very neatly; this is technology which is already out there and well proven, and I suppose explains my initial ‘meh’ reaction to the announcement. But in that lies the explanation; ‘…us in the industry…’.

Just because we are familiar with faceted-search, result clustering, semantic keyword analysis et al, doesn’t mean that that anyone outside our little cosseted gang is. ‘Bing’ is supposed to be a mass-market tool, in a way that something like Clusty will never be and Newssift was never intended to be. And as for Wolfram Alpha… that was the answer to a question that nobody actually asked.

So, it’s not about the technology per se in this respect, but the packaging. A good case in point would be Apple.

Now, I’ve been accused in the past of being somewhat anti-Apple. For the record, it’s not the case, I guess I just don’t buy into the Applecult. Whilst I do not see Apple as a technology company at the bleeding edge, I do see them as a hugely admirable and successful product company. What do I mean by this ?

What are Apple held in high regard for ? Macs, iPod & iPhone. None of these were conceptual developments that came from within Apple. I mean they did not invent the idea of the personal computer with a GUI (Xerox would be a better bet – check this at 4:20 for what I’m referring to). They did not invent the MP3 player and they did not invent the mobile telephone.

Now the last one is more complicated. iPhone is not just a mobile ‘phone, but a smartphone. I’ve had an increasingly improving experience as a Windows Mobile user for the last 5 years and Symbian has been around a tad longer than that.

Again, iPhone is not just a smartphone, but an application platform. But that again was not their concept, Nokia got their first by a fairly long chalk. Ok, they screwed up their market advantage with a series of baffling ideas (segmenting the OS to device releases is just one of the boneheaded decisions) and are now dropping marketshare every quarter.

What Apple have done is to package technology better than everyone else. They’ve made products that the mass-market can use out-of-the-box and where there have been shortcomings in the products (it’ll be the 3rd iteration of the OS before iPhone can do what my HTC TyTn II could do 2 years ago), they’ve been almost of background importance to the functioning of the product in the eyes of the consumer.

They work, they look good and they are easy to use. How could I fail to appreciate that ?

With ‘Bing’ the key will not be whether the technology is unique. Not whether you can argue that it has been done elsewhere before. What will be important is whether the best practice demonstrated by a range of small-scale and niche players can be packaged right for the mass-market, but not over-diluted. Whether the execution is perfect.

In short, to suceed ‘Bing’ must not feel like using technology. It must instead feel like using a product.

Matt Mullen is an Industry Consultant at Nstein Technologies [http://www.nstein.com].

“My god so they are killers!”

One of the greatest beats in hip hop with one of the best lyricist what do you get??? Mighty Healthy. This is Ghost best work in my opinion, you can argue with that but its my opinion. The grittiness of the video, lyrical, content, production ,this is truly a rare gem. Ghost established him self in the forefront of Wu with Supreme Clientele, and also as one of the best lyricist in Hip Hop. Good look to Rev for finding this video back in the day and putting me on, here it is once again for the forgotten.“Kill one man or kill ten its all the same, after all they can only hang you once.”

The inspiration for this post Ghostdeini The Great

Para os estressados de plantão, segue uma prévia do que a web oferece.

Antes algumas observações

1- Esse exercício me fez descobrir outros sites de busca, como o Ask, Clusty e DogPile.

2- Percebi que certos resultados se repetem nos sites de busca, e o blog “Lixo tipo especial” mostrou-se o mais popular nessa pesquisa.

3- Em muitos casos, o termo stress é esquecido, dando espaço para anúncios e vendas.

 Google

 - Oferece wallpapers (papéis de parede) para aliviar os sintomas.

- A opinião de um blogueiro (Lixo tipo especial)

- Stress: como combater (explica o termo, sua origem e algumas medidas eficazes)

- Imagem de um cartunista (o que seria uma pessoa stressada)

- O que é stress para um site de saúde

Obs: O Google também exibe links patrocinados, de empresas, clínicas e demais especialistas em stress

Yahoo

- Blog sobre stress (o mesmo do segundo tópico da busca do Google)

- Mais um blog sobre stress e comentários de leitores

- Fórum de discussão sobre stress

- Site sobre técnicas de cura para o stress

- Massagem: técnica para cura

Altavista

A pesquisa do Altavista apresentou resultados semelhantes a do Yahoo (listado acima)

 - Blog sobre stress (o mesmo do segundo tópico da busca do Google)

- Mais um blog sobre stress e comentários de leitores

- Fórum de discussão sobre stress

- Site sobre técnicas de cura para o stress

- Massagem: técnica para cura

UOL

A pesquisa do UOL apresentou resultados semelhantes a do Google

­- Oferece wallpapers (papéis de parede) para aliviar os sintomas.

- A opinião de um blogueiro (Lixo tipo especial)

- Stress: como combater  

- Imagem de um cartunista

- O que é stress para um site de saúde

Clusty

Obs: A busca apresentou sites e páginas em inglês

- Site de um médico (Edwin Riley) que desenvolve técnicas para combater o stress

-  Página com resultados de busca sobre técnicas e medicinas alternativas que combatem o stress.

- A cura do stress relacionado a estudos de astrologia

- (Página fora do ar) : aparentemente relacionava stress e ansiedade

- Estudo sobre astrologia árabe. Algum tópico deve ser relacionado a stress

MSN

- Páginas com resultados de busca por vídeos que tratem a questão da cura do stress

- Anúncio de pousada

- Site que explica o termo stress, causas e como curar

- O poder do limão no combate ao stress

- Anúncio de empresa de turismo

Ask

Obs: apenas o primeiro resultado aponta uma página em Português

- Blog sobre stress (Lixo tipo especial)

- Site sobre técnicas de pescaria

- Página do Yahoo shopping, apresentando um instrumento de pescaria

- Página que apresenta instrumento de pescaria

- Artigo científico (em algum ponto deve tratar o stress, mas aparentemente não parece ser esse o assunto principal).

DogPile

- Página apresenta alguns instrumentos que podem combater o stress e de fácil manipulação

- Artigo: como manter uma vida ocupada sem stress e ansiedade

- Página apresenta tratamento alternativo para stress (terapia)

- Blog (página em português) sobre cura do stress (Lixo tipo especial)

- Página sobre stress, síndrome do pânico e ansiedade e técnicas de combate

New site discovered � Owls….a live web cam � Evaluation � New collage blog on owls � Wiggio..group communication tool including polls � Fora.tv/Videos on a lot of intellectual topics � Visuwords/online graphical dictionary � Clusty …[More..]


There

Es ist erschreckend, was Google alles über den Nutzer weiss, sammelt und speichert.

Infos beim Deutschlandfunk: [1] die Sendung [2] das Podcast.

[1] http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/kulturgespraech/907693/

[2] http://ondemand-mp3.dradio….dlf_20090130_1915_893f72d3.mp3

Alternative zu Google: clusty.com.

Porque no todo es Google en la vida, de hecho pienso que las cosas empiezan a ser quizás demasiado basadas en la misma empresa y sus virtudes.

Cuando una empresa consigue llegar a la cúspide de la torre del éxito, como en este caso el buscador Google, la innovación es un punto difícil de mantener, y es ahí cuando entran en juego otras soluciones, que buscan nuevas funcionalidades para mejorar lo realizado hasta el momento.

El buscador Clusty nos ofrece una búsqueda por “Etiquetas” o por temas, pudiendo navegar por ellos, funcionalidad que me resulta de lo más práctica.

Se integra perfectamente con Firefox/Iceweasel, ya que al entrar en la página, si abrimos la caja de los motores de búsqueda de nuestro navegador, podemos “Añadir Clusty”, pudiéndolo usar en dicha caja sin mayores dificultades añadidas, y para regocijo de los más perezosos.

Después de esta cuestión, comentaros que, como ya sabréis, el buscador por defecto que se usa al introducir algo en la caja de direcciones o urls es Google, pero, como todo en Firefox, se puede modificar.

Entramos en la dirección about:config y buscamos la opción keyword.url. Si la modificamos, por ejemplo, con el buscador Clusty, deberíamos poner en valor lo siguiente:

http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=

Lo mismo con los diversos motores de búsqueda que podéis encontrar por la red de redes.

Gracias a Ana G por mostrarme este interesante buscador.

Back in May, Alex Iskold over on ReadWriteWeb kicked off a discussion of how “semantic search” technologies are doing, and where they’re headed. I came across the article again recently and it prompted me to write this.

Semantic search has often been named as the successor to Google. This is a prediction which I think misses two key points.

You don’t have to be a semantic search company to do it

Extracting and presenting structured data from unstructured or partially structured sources is part of the top-down approach to the Semantic Web (aka. Web 3.0, apparently). The basic idea is that using language analysis, machine learning and databases of entities you can understand content, rather than just processing it statistically like 20th century search engines. This gives you the possibility of a richer and tighter search experience, e.g. an initial search for “bush” could then be easily narrowed to only include articles about the Australian bush rather than George W.

While semantically-driven faceted search is still the domain of Grapeshot, Clusty, etc. the underlying technologies are already in use by mainstream search engines. Even image search engines such as Pixsta use semantic technology to extract structured data from unstructured documents (in our case, the documents happen to be images).

Google will not be killed with minor features

When was the last time you had to click through to the second page of search results? In fact, when was the last time you had to scroll past the fold to the 10th result? Maybe some of you have recently, but I’d bet it doesn’t happen often.

What this says is that for the main search engine use case, text-driven statistical search is good enough. Without a killer feature for mainstream users semantic search engines will not be able to tempt them away from the very simple tool they’ve already learned how to use. I agree with Iskold’s point that these companies need to create a very good user interface… although I disagree that this will be enough to win search market share.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Semantic technology is impressive. If you get a chance to try out a tool like Silobreaker you’ll find some very interesting user interface work and some impressive data analysis happening behind the scenes. In my opinion it’s niches like these (Silobreaker is a semantic tool for news search and political research) where users have enough motivation and specialisation to move away from the top 5 search results on Google/Yahoo/Live.

Today’s browsers are great to help with general searches. Many places and software even load extra search toolbars into your browsers. But, for genealogy searches, don’t stop with that. Become a student of search engines: Find out how you can narrow your search with different engines. Find at least one “engine” that searches more than one. Not used to doing computer searches? Go to ask.com – there you can use a regular sentence to search without being penalized for using words like “and” and “the”. Also consider trying clusty.com – this search engine places your returns by subject. In this way, if you were to look for “Homer Simpson” all the cartoon stuff would be sorted out for you.

Für den Adventskalender der Genderbibliothek habe ich einen Eintrag zu Suchmaschinen mit dem Titel “12.Dezember: Suchmaschinen – mehr als nur Google!” verfasst. Ziel soll es sein Alternativen zu Google ins Rampenlicht zu zerren. Wenn du dich also traust mal auf Google zu verzichten (das geht wirklich!), dann kannst du ja mal nachsehen, welche Suchmaschine dir am Besten gefällt.

Meine Favoritinnen

• Blogsuchmaschine Icerocket – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen) schnelle und übersichtliche Blogsuchmaschine!
• Metasuchmaschine Clusty – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen) hier werden die Ergebnisse in Clustern zusammengefasst.

__________________________________

CC "Little Lupè" via flickr von phunkstarr

12.Dezember: Suchmaschinen – mehr als nur Google!

Die Suchmaschine Google wird vor allem in Deutschland überproportional oft genutzt und ist mit über 90% Markführerin im Suchmaschinengeschäft. Da nur 0,7% der Internetnutzer_innen die Suchmaschine Google nicht kennen gehe ich davon aus, dass viele andere schöne Suchmöglichkeiten im Internet noch nicht entdeckt wurden.

Die nachfolgende Liste soll auf spezielle Suchmaschinen hinweisen, die andere, interessantere und bessere Suchergebnisse als Google bieten können. Die Zusammenstellung ist äußerst subjektiv und kann durch euch im Kommentarteil dieses Blogs erweitert und/oder kritisiert werden!

Eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die Nutzung alternativer Suchmaschinen ist die Einbindung der Suchmaschine in die Suchleiste des Firefox Browsers. Mit der Funktion “zur Suchleiste hinzufügen” kann die Suchmaschine schnell und unkompliziert eingebunden werden. Weitere Suchmaschinen können bei MyCroft Project gefunden werden.

Weitere Anregungen zu Suchmaschinen können im Recherchenblog gefunden werden.

Blogsuchmaschinen

Eine Blogsuchmaschine ist eine Suchmaschine, die speziell Weblogs und RSS-Feeds durchsucht. Die Darstellung und der Umgang mit den Suchergebnissen kann sich je nach Anbieterinnen erheblich unterscheiden.

1. Icerocket – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
2. Twingly – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
3. Rivva
   
4. Google Blogsuche – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
5. Blogato – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
6. Ask – Weblogs und Feeds
   
7. Technorati – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)

Metasuchmaschinen

“Eine Metasuchmaschine ist eine Suchmaschine, deren wesentliches Merkmal darin besteht, dass sie eine Suchanfrage an mehrere andere Suchmaschinen gleichzeitig weiterleitet, die Ergebnisse sammelt und aufbereitet. Dabei können so sinnvolle Nachbearbeitungen, wie Eliminierung von Doubletten, Bewertung der Ergebnisse, Aufstellung eines eigenen internen Ranking und Clustering der Ergebnisse, durchgeführt werden. Die Ergebnisse werden dann einheitlich, wie in einer Suchmaschine, dargestellt.” (Quelle: Wikipedia)

1. Clusty – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
2. Scour – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
3. Intelways
4. Metager – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
5. Scirus (for scientific information only) – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
6. Ixquick – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
7. AllPlus
8. Trovando – (zur Suchleiste hinzufügen)
9. Zuula
   
10. Sputtr
11. Search!o

Diverse

• OpenCrawl – der Minisucher für die Geschlechterforschung
• CC Search by Creative Commons – Suchmaschine für freie Inhalte (Bilder, Texte, Videos und Musik) zur Suchleiste hinzufügen
  
• 123People – Suchmaschine für Menschen
  
• Yasni – weitere Suchmaschine für Menschen zur Suchleiste hinzufügen

Los directorios, los metabuscadores, los multibuscadores, las búsquedas avanzadas y las búsquedas en clusters son herramientas que nos permiten encontrar información de forma rápida y efectiva.

Paseando por cada una de esas herramientas me encontré sitios muy interesantes con relación al cine.

Entre los directorios que visité me llamó la atención lo que ofrece Yahoo Directorio España. Una serie de links con la cartelera, los trailers de próximos estrenos de cine  y  información de películas destacadas.

Por el lado de los Metabuscadores, Buscopio permite encontrarnos con otros buscadores que nos llevan más de cerca a lo que estamos buscando. Al buscar cine, me puso en contacto con buscadores sobre Críticas cinematográficas, géneros cinematográficos, guiones y trailers.

Twingine es el multibuscador que utilicé. Este multibuscador me permitió ver los diferentes links que aparecían tanto en Google como en Yahoo sobre la palabra cine.

Para acotar la consulta mediante diversos criterios se utiliza la opción de búsqueda avanzada. Traté con la opción que me ofrece google y la búsqueda fue directamente al grano.

Sin embargo, cuando busque sobre cine en Vivísimo no encontré nada a la primera y tuve que tratar en clusty, donde si encontré links interesantes. Tanto Vivísimo como Clusty son buscadores que trabajan en clusters o en conjunto, es decir, que devuelven los resultados agrupados en carpetas temáticas.

Todas estas herramientas facilitan formas de llegar a la información que buscamos y de alguna forma u otra de hacer que una página web sea más vista.

Juan Cohen

Kate Kohls, Tommy Bugg, James Mercer

Clusty is a unique search engine because clusters it’s findings into subcategories. This helps us narrow our search. It’s claim to fame is the fact that it clusters and lists sources. It is crawler-based. It uses multiple databases. There is a stop-word list for this engine but the list is not documented. You can search different areas: images, blogs, sources, etc. There is no save search facility. The results are listed- you can limit and edit the search results under ‘preferences.’ There is no translation capability. It is easy to navigate much like google.com. There are not as many sponsors cluttering the search results. However, less results are generated than google.com. The results are very organized thanks to the clustering program.

Task Objective

To gain an understanding of the application of and differences between: search engines, web directories, databases and metasearchers… 

Process

1. Use the most commonly used internet search engine and do a search with words of your choosing.

• record the first hit and number of hits in your learning log

2. Using copernicus or similar, set it up to search at least three search engines (including one that will search the ‘deep web’) and repeat eactly the same search

• record the number of hits in your learning log, and compare to your first search. What differences did you notice? Why? Which search, on first glance gave you the most promising results?

3. save at least the first 5 hits of both searches.

Task Outcomes

First Seach using Google

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,310,000 for Mountain Biking Europe. (0.23 seconds) 

 First five hits:

1. Mountain Biking Europe | Mountain Bike Europe - Spain

   Search for a mountain bike tour or mountain bike trail in Europe. Discover downhillmountain biking, extreme mountain biking and mountain bike treks in …

   www.mountainbikingholidays.net/europe/index.php – 45k - Cached - Similar pages

2. EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails | TRAILSOURCE™

   EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails Source is an adventure travel guide to the best 2000mountain biking trails and singletracks in over 75 countries around the …

   www.trailsource.com/scripts/ two.asp?TYPE=BIKE&CONTINENT=EUROPE - 21k -Cached - Similar pages

3. Mountain Biking in Europe

   The Trento Bike Pages describe rides throughout Europe (mainly in Italy, … Reports onmountain biking in the Trentino region: from Thomas Driemeyer (in …

   mtb.live555.com/mtb-europe.html – 14k - Cached - Similar pages

4. Amazon.co.uk: Mountain Biking Europe (Footprint Activity Guide …

   Amazon.co.uk: Mountain Biking Europe (Footprint Activity Guide) (Footprint Activity Guide) (Footprint Mountain Biking Europe: Tread Your Own Path): Chris …

   www.amazon.co.uk/ Mountain-Biking-Europe-Footprint-Activity/dp/190609831X – 153k -Cached - Similar pages

5. BIKE-ROX - Mountain Biking, Biking Holidays, Biking Europe …

   Romania activity tours, cycle in Romania, Hiking Romania mountains, outdoor tours like Romania mountain bike tour, biking, trekking in Romania, …

   www.bike-rox.ro/ – 36k - Cached - Similar pages

   Next Search using Inquisitor (Meta Search tool)

   Results 1 - 10 of about 3,300,000 for Mountain Biking Europe. (0.23 seconds))

First Five hits.

1. Mountain Biking Europe | Mountain Bike Europe - Spain

   Search for a mountain bike tour or mountain bike trail in Europe. Discover downhillmountain biking, extreme mountain biking and mountain bike treks in …

   www.mountainbikingholidays.net/europe/index.php – 45k - Cached - Similar pages

2. EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails | TRAILSOURCE™

   EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails Source is an adventure travel guide to the best 2000mountain biking trails and singletracks in over 75 countries around the …

   www.trailsource.com/scripts/ two.asp?TYPE=BIKE&CONTINENT=EUROPE - 21k -Cached - Similar pages

3. BIKE-ROX - Mountain Biking, Biking Holidays, Biking Europe …

   Romania activity tours, cycle in Romania, Hiking Romania mountains, outdoor tours like Romania mountain bike tour, biking, trekking in Romania, …

   www.bike-rox.ro/ – 36k - Cached - Similar pages

4. Mountain Biking in Europe

   The Trento Bike Pages describe rides throughout Europe (mainly in Italy, … Reports onmountain biking in the Trentino region: from Thomas Driemeyer (in …

   mtb.live555.com/mtb-europe.html – 14k - Cached - Similar pages

5. Mountain Bike Europe, Trails, Downhill, Cross Country, Touring …

   Free for and By the Mountain Bike Community – Join Our Community and Share your Experience, Search our Information and Ask Your Questions, WebCam, GPS, …

   www.mountainbikeeurope.com/ – 53k - Cached - Similar pages

To be honest I really couldn’t see much evedence of inquisitor in the second search result set – it seemed much that it returned a high volume of results, but of medium to low quality after the first 10 or so. 

I also tried a couple of popular metasearch sites Dogpile and Clusty given I’d had no real success so far… 

Dogpile searches the ‘top 4′ (Google, Ask, Yahoo and Windows Live) combining the results in an easy to use format

Clusty on the other hand searches a number of search engines and directories, but NOT Google or Yahoo. It’s other point of difference is that it displays results traditionally, but also sections them into sub categories like so….

Clusty gave the top 180 results of at least 349,000 retrieved for the query Mountain Biking Europe and I did observe a much higher quality of result compared to the previous 2 searches (which seemed to digress alot to things like singles cycling holidays in Hawaii after about the 10th search result)

Dogpile didn’t provide data on search result numbers, however it did give a very good selection of sites back, including many not previously returned. Like Google after a while relevance started to get pretty loose, but this was less of an issue given that the number of good returns seemed more than anyone could ever want (is that a dangerous statement when disucssing the web or what!!!?)

In conclusion, there dosn’t seem to be any one panacea for me – let alone the millions of other users out there. I think I will definately continue using Dogpile, although I wish that like Google, I could restrict my search to just pages from my local area… ever so handy when you’re just looking for a dentist… 

I think I would use Clusty too, as I loved it’s ‘clustering’ feature for further defining all that noise. Although because it does not search the majors like Google and Yahoo, I’ll need to use it more before I am a total convert. 

I feel that advanced internet users need to have a good grasp of differing search technologies as (presently anyway) in order to properly leverge them, one needs to treat them as a ‘toolkit’. Although not everything I tried did it ‘all’ I definately feel as though I could orchestrate a much better search now. 

As for Inquistor, Acid Search and all the other Mac clients I tried… I’m disspointed they ddn’t work out for me, especially given the rave reveiws that they get. I’ll have to get under the hood and see whether there was perhaps some user error there.

You will remember that yesterday cuil was released upon the world with as much fanfare as possible.  I was unimpressed.  I’ve had a few hits here since then, mostly variations on “Cuil” and “Useless” which express a great deal of the emotion that Cuil engendered.  Maybe because of the lack of Hubris that Cuil showed, maybe because they copped Flickr’s color scheme for their logo.  I don’t care; Cuil is just not that great.

That aside a commenter (John) pointed out Clusty which I promptly checked out; ego surf? Check.  Deep Search on my real info? Check.  Satisfaction?  Check.

Nice One John, I’ll have to keep Clusty on my mind when searching.

Have you noticed how much I’ve been posting?  There’s good reason for that.  M. is on vacation until the end of August, and that leaves me off the hook for running around like a crazy person for 5 or 6 hours a day.  It’s amazing what you can do with an extra 6 hours a day.  I have read a lot of things that don’t come through the mail.  I’ve battled with laptops filled to the brim with STD’s (Dave’s laptop…one too many porn sites…he needs one of those silicone dolls or a girlfriend…who are we kidding? what woman alive could resist the mountain man beard and D-cups!).  I finished my paper.  And, I’ve found time to consider this blog.

I’ve been reading some of the BlogHer conference posts, and I’m intrigued.  I’m not a joiner by nature.  I’m a lone wolf (am too dammit).  I have learned over the years that it’s best if I pretend to be aloof and stay the heck away from organizations of any sort.  There’s just too much pissing of legs going on in most of them for my taste, and inevitably, my “I’d love to help” attitude is considered a threat to the (un)holy order (or maybe it’s my willingness to call a spade a spade…I’ve noticed people don’t care to hear the truth sometimes). 

But, because of the BlogHer posts, I’m starting to wonder where I fit into the blogosphere.  Fussy has links to some BlogHer keynote speakers and a link to a NY Times article on BlogHer which mentions several blogs, and I’ve been peeking in on them (what? wolves circle their prey first…not that I’d prey on anyone…well, not since that last restraining order).  Some of them don’t have any more commenters than this blog has which makes me think I must be neglecting this blog somehow. 

Clusty pumped me up a good bit too when I searched “honeywine” and my blog came up as the #2 hit out of over 6,000!  Go ahead and look.  I’ll wait.  I admit to looking for it a few months back and couldn’t even find it until I added Pascal to the search (I was still about the 8^th hit).  The nice thing was that it was the post about me shaving his butt.  I like a nice opening when meeting new people.  Uhhh…I mean…a nice opening line.

Feeling guilty and thinking about where those other 80 or so daily hits are coming from (it can’t be my commenters looking that often…ya’ll know I don’t post that much), I decided to see what Stumble was.  In case you haven’t noticed the sidebar, I think I screwed it up pretty good.  I’m guessing I’ll have to go whole hog and move up to a domain name and a real professional (i.e.- cash enhanced) blog for it to work on wordpress.  But, should I get my own domain?  Honeywine.com is already taken.  So, I’d have to figure something out. Plus, several of the blogs cited by the NY Times (and I have to believe that you’re pretty hip into the bloggingness if the NY Times talks about you) have blogs that aren’t on their own special domain.  So I’m wondering if that’s just asking for more trouble than its worth? 

I’ve honestly become semi-addicted to blogs (yours especially…ok, so I’m not good at sucking up).  I like being able to write about virtually anything that pops into my head, and it’s nice to look inside other people’s heads and to find out if they think you’re a nutter.  I’m starting to think I would like to add to my readership and up the ante on my writing and just reach out more.  I don’t expect to become rich (well I can dang sure dream about it…we all do…then reality sets in), but frankly, ya’ll have become my online dating alternative.  Other than the blogs, there’s just not much reason for me to fight the dial-up unless I’m working or looking for something specific.  Since M. controls the tv remote like it’s going to triple the size of his manhood if he just pushes enough buttons, it’s kind of nice to live vicariously online.  Living in a jerk water town can definitely add to the loneliness, and it’s nice to have intelligent people to listen in on (hell no, husbands don’t count…I found M. reading this the other day when I came back from the bathroom…he told me he likes to read my blog because “it lets me know what’s going on in your life”….ummm…we spend all but 3 hours a day together!  wth?). 

Am I setting myself up for trouble?  Should I forget about “upgrading” to the cash-blog?  (mind you, it won’t happen for a couple of months at best…until the class is dead and gone)

The more I learn about social media and Web 2.0, the more I think that cyber futurists are getting it wrong.  If we indulge their claim that we’re advancing towards a world in which machines and robots are going to reign, then technology – or at least the web – is going backward.  It’s become less mechanical and more social – and if the popularity of social media is any indication, most of us web users love being on the flipside. 

I’m not just talking about blogs and social networks, but the recent explosion of social search.  New search technologies that provide interactivity, personalisation and dynamism offer a remarkable alternative to mainstream search engines.  It’s time we look beyond Google because it doesn’t have all the answers.

Search 0.0 – 3.0
Search 2.0 developer Ebrahim Ezzy’s explanation of the three generations of search technology helps to understand how search has evolved:

Traditional Search Engines work to retrieve information using Boolean queries, link analysis and text relevance. These first generation search engines, like Alta Vista, rank sites according to page content.
Second generation search (eg. Google) uses link analysis for ranking search results.
Third generation search engines combine the functions of the “old” search engines with new models that take into account “user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialised capabilities that make information more productive”.

I’ve compiled a list (by no means comprehensive) of third generation/social search engines that will make you think twice about declaring Google King of the Search Wars.

Scour is a social search engine aggregator that allows users to vote and rank search results using their own criteria.  It delivers search results from the top 3 search engines  (Google, Yahoo and MSN) after taking into account  user feedback.  Users earn points for each search, vote and comment they make, which can be redeemed for Visa gift cards.

Rollyo is a community-driven search engine that allows users to create their own personalised search engines based on sites they add to their SearchRoll.  Given the information overload that we have to endure on the web, these search engines conveniently allow users to filter and control the amount and quality of their searches.  Swicki works in a similar way to Rollyo, but returns comprehensive text or multimedia searches on a specific topic/theme chosen by the user. 

While Google is great for searching pages, it’s less handy when searching for people.  That’s where Sightix comes in.  This unique service provides users with personalised searches based on their social networks, friends and connections.   While traditional search engines will return the same results to different users, Sightix takes into account the identity of each user and returns unique, personalised and relevant results based on that user’s social graph.    Whozat, SpocK and Zoominfo are other people search engines that are worth a visit, especially if you want concise information on an individual.

A major shortcoming of Google is that it doesn’t index multimedia content and Flash files, but now there are search engines dedicated exclusively to this.  Mediawombat is a search engine for multimedia and Flash files only.  Snipp.tv is another valuable multimedia search engine that can be used for finding video and audio files.

My favourite of the lot is Clusty, which organises search results into folders, making it easier and faster to navigate.  So while a Google search of Nelson Mandela will return millions of page results that you’ll have to wade through to find specific information on his 90th birthday celebration, Clusty returns this impressive, organized  collection of folders ranging from Biography, 90th Birthday Celebration, Nobel Peace Prize, etc. 

Another search engine that will speed up your research is Cluuz, because it goes beyond providing mere links as search results.  It peers into the Web, extracts information, images and tags relating to your search word and presents them to the user so that relevant information can be found faster.

Niche search engines are also on the increase: 5tvs is an Internet TV search aggregator, Metaverselink can be used to search within virtual worlds, Gogooligans is an educational search engine for kids, and Codase and Krugle are every programmer’s dream as they index only source code (Java, CSS etc) and technical information.

Traditional vs. Social Search
Social search may be more innovative and intuitive than traditional search, but it cannot replace traditional search engines.  When used together with mainstream search engines, they can yield powerful search results that can be more productive and valuable for the user. 

One of the problems with community-driven search engines like Scour is that they depend on the participation of users to stay afloat , and are also susceptible to spammers.

While many new Search 2.0 tools are aspiring to be the next Google, it’s not about competition but collaboration.  As Ezzy points out, even the mainstream search giants have realised the potential of social search and implemented some of its features.  Yahoo! has introduced My Web 2.0 and Google offers bookmarking and tagging of search history for users. 

The future of search- and the web at large – is definitely leaning more towards man, not machine.

Die “Wissensmaschine” Wolfram|Alpha kam am 15.05. auf den Markt. Wer damit etwas sucht findet normalerweise nicht das was Google oder seit dem 1. Juni bing ausspucken. Nebenbei: endlich fegt ein frischer Wind durchs Internet und scheucht Google aus dem Gebüsch. Besonders Sergey Brin, einer der Google-Mitbegründer, drängt auf “dringende Upgrades” (cnet). Diese wurden dann wahrscheinlich zur beschleunigten Google-Suche mit dem Codenamen Caffeine, was Google natürlich zurückweist…

Wie heise.de meldet ruft der SuMa-eV zur Google-Abstinenz auf, damit man merkt welch ein riesiges Monopol man unterstützt. Wenn ich mir dann die Liste mit Alternativen zu den Google-Diensten anschaue (und auch ausprobiere) finde ich persönlich nur wenige bessere Anbieter.

Clusty.com - links sind die Cluster

Die Metasuche Clusty.com durchsucht alle Top-Suchmaschinen (laut Heise.de nicht Google, dafür habe ich aber keinen Hinweis gefunden) und kombiniert die Ergebnisse. Diese werden geclustert, also ähnliche Elemente zu einer Gruppe zusammengefasst, die dann nach der Suche links erscheinen. Das Clustering kann auch nach Suchquellen oder Top-Level Domains geordnet werden. Clusty ist, in meinen Augen, eine Suchmaschine die man durchaus als Google-Alternative nutzen kann.

Dann ist da wie schon erwähnt: Wolftram|Alpha. Die Funktionalitäten unterscheiden sich ungemein von der Konkurenz (man bekommt so gut wie nie einen Webseiten-Link ausgespuckt). Anfangs wusste ich auch nicht wirklich wie ich Wolfram nun benutze. Wenn ich dort etwas Suche, wie etwa in Google, führte das nicht zwangsläufig zu einem Ergebnis. Erst als ich dann mal die mathematischen Funktionalitäten genauer untersucht habe hab ich kapiert, was das Teil eigentlich alles kann

Lösen eines Integrals mit Wolfram|Alpha

Neben sehr viel Mathematik (bis hin zu Differenzialgleichungen) kennt sich Wolfram|Alpha auch mit Chemie, Physik, Musik, Geographie, Astronomie, Linguistik, Wetter, Soziologie, Sport, Geschichte und vielem mehr aus. Schaut mal aufs Einführungsvideo um den richtigen Eindruck zu bekommen.

Microsofts bing führt bestimmt kein Nieschen-Dasein. Laut Wolfram|Alpha ist bing.com schon auf Platz 21 im Alexa-Ranking und hat täglich ca. 48 Millionen Besucher. Die Funktionalitäten der Bilder- und Video-Suche sind schon fast besser als bei Google. Bei Web-Suchen werden, ähnlich wie bei Clusty, die Themen gruppiert und ähnliche Suchanfragen angezeigt werden. Auch eine Alternative zum Google-Monopol…das Microsoft-Monopol

Eine Suche mit MS bing

Hier die Screens im Überblick:

kehadiran situs penyedia layanan
search engine versi mobile
yang memang diperuntukan buat
perangkat yang namanya ponsel
dan itu tentu memudahkan kita
untuk mencari sesuatu di dunia
internet saat tak ada komputer
ataupun sejenisnya di depan kita
selain search engine dengan
tampilan mobile dari google
kita tentu juga mengenal mesin
pencarian seperti yahoo dan bing
yang juga mempunyai versi mobile

nah.di bawah ini ada 8 situs
penyedia layanan search engine
mobile yang bisa kita akses lewat
browser ponsel

1. google

2. yahoo

3.ask mobile

4.bing mobile

5. youtube

6.usa.gov

7. technorati

8. clusty

selain yang itu. tentu masih banyak
lagi situs yang menyediakan
layanan search engine mobile
yang tak bisa saya tulis disini.
atau ada yang lebih bagus
lagi selain di atas itu
bisa berbagi
disini .

selamat ber-mobile ria