Episode 10 (on Location at Twiistup)

Date: July 31, 2009

Guest: Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix

Topix is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city.

A Top 10 online newspaper destination (comScore, March 2008), the site links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 lively user-generated forums. Topix also works with the nation’s major media companies to grow and engage their online audiences through forums, classifieds, publishing platforms and RSS feeds.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Topix LLC is a privately held company with investment from Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Company.

Special Announcement:

• (43 Min) Is expecting a Daughter Dec. 10^th, he is scared to death, (he has no idea what he is in for, as a first time parent you think you know how things will change but you don’t).  Yes, his career as an entrepreneur is over.

Ask Jason: (07 min.)(Live Questions From Audience)

1. Ben Langfeld, student from Manchester, How far in the future should a startup predict trends? Jason likes to enter a market that is partially developed but not commercialized and figure out the business model that works.  Chris sees the opportunity in improving what has already been created i.e. Google improved search.  Your business model should be able to make revenue within the first couple of years, if not you may be too ahead of the times.
2. Fransisco Dow (sp), producer of Twiistup, Is it inevitable that an internet company will go stale? i.e. Friendster, AOL.  Chris, I think that you have a serious need to get I don’t want to say big but well known as quickly as you can because the newness is a huge part of what the tech business covers the tech business wants to cover new, once you are around for awhile you better have some revenue, eventually you have to substitute buzz for revenue.
3. Don Dodge, Microsoft, What new trend or angle in your companies made you want to pursue them? Chris, they felt they had technology that differentiated them from Google news, more directory and categorization based.  Focusing on being different and more local than Google news proved the most sustainable product for them and then added comments more community based.  Jason, wanted to mix search in a way that wasn’t just algorithmic he wanted to create a combination of algorithm, community, and Q&A based search that would be fulfilling.
4. What do you think is the best way to start a business, do you have a business model first or do you get the audience first then monetize? Jason, depends on your funding, sometimes your funding is only concerned about number of eyes and during a recession they maybe only concerned about monetization.  You should have an idea of the business model but have an incredible product.  Chris, strategy in hearts called “shooting the moon”, if you go for it you win big but if you lose a little bit you lose everything, that is kind of what happenes in startups.  If you look at the biggest guys in web space they were more worried about audience, the key is to create a monopoly.
5. Brady Brim DeForester (sp), What advice do you have on being more worried about your product than your competitors? Jason, you have to qualify your competitors some are noise and some are the real deal.  Both Jason and Chris were very concerned about talent, Jason offered Peter Rojas equity stake in the company.
6. Fransisco, Is it smart to look at 16 or 17 revenue streams or just focus on one, two or three models? Jason, depends who you are talking to, if you go into a VC and say we have X possibilities but recognize only 2 or 3 are possible that is ok.

The News: (57 min.) with Lon Harris

• ATT&T blocked 4Chan forum, Jason, ATT&T sucks
• Lolligift, too much for the office, success may hinge on design.
• Jam Legend, you can upload a song from your library, if you can share it you will be sued even if not you may be sued because it is the music industry.

Dead Pool: (45 min.)

• Yahoo! search

Good move for Microsoft, Yahoo! Had 20 % market share and gave it away.

They syndicated search to Google back in the day and they are doing it again with Bing, history repeats itself.

• Searchme
  • Bad idea, how is a visual interface better than text?  Does anyone flip through iTunes album covers to pick their music?
• Newsgatoronline
  • Never saw the business in RSS readers, it will be built into a browser, mail client what would be the business model?

Notable Quotes:

• (14 min) Chris, I think that you have a serious need to get I don’t want to say big but well known as quickly as you can because the newness is a huge part of what the tech business covers the tech business wants to cover new, once you are around for awhile you better have some revenue.
• (34 min.) Jason, I’m going to rally my entire company around beating him and that can be a very good way to use a competitor.
• (35 min.) Chris, One of the few places where there actually is competition is for talent, that is a place where, that is the one thing I have a lot of friends that are great entrepreneurs, the one thing don’t poach my staff, that is the one place where people are competing.

TWiST Sponsors:

• Ustream
• DNA Mail
• WebSpy

TechCrunch reported today that visual search engine SearchMe is (temporarily) closing its doors.  This is pretty disappointing to us.  From what we’ve heard, SearchMe was a pretty cool product with some real potential.  I find it especially ironic (in a bad way) that the site now redirects to Google.  Search is not a solved technology, and for companies like SearchMe to not be able to find enough traction to keep going hurts the industry in the long run.

We never got the chance to talk to the folks at SearchMe (I’ve tweeted Adams to see if he’d be interested in us as way to cut down on crawling costs, though that seems unlikely since they appear to be re-focusing on a different market), but I’m guessing we could have helped them out.  I found the following quote particularly interesting:

So the plan now (unless a buyer or white knight jumps in at the last moment) is to significantly downsize, take the site down for a while (probably tomorrow) and refocus the tech in a space where we don’t have to have 3,000 servers costing a million a month to run on the back end.

I’m sure most of that 3,000 is not for things like crawling and processing web content, but I’m betting some of it is.  The infrastructure requirements of getting into the search game are so daunting that it makes it very difficult to just to throw your hat in.  I’ve told a lot of people that Google’s main advantage is not its technology, but its operational costs.  It can deliver at a lower cost than anyone else, due to its sheer size.

We’re hoping 80legs puts more than a few dents in that barrier to entry.

Puede algún nuevo buscador ganarle a Google? probablemente no, principalmente porque Google siempre está cambiando y creciendo. Es el buscador dominante con el alrededor del 72% de búsquedas en linea en E.E.U.U. y sus porcentajes son mucho más altos en otras partes del mundo. (Fuente: Hitwise) sin embargo, hay algunos nuevos competidores que buscan sacar un porcentaje de las búsquedas de Google.

Recientemente, ha salido todo un ejército entero de nuevos motores de búsqueda en la web. Si trabajas en el área de Markting en Internet, debes estar al tanto de lo que está sucediendo en la web, especialmente en relación a que motores de búsqueda te dan la mayor cantidad de tráfico.

A pesar de su presencia dominante, Google sigue siendo básicamente el nuevo del barrio. Tenemos que recordar, que han habido muchos motores de búsqueda antes que Google y habrán muchos más después de este. Y que como todo en la vida, tiene su época.

En un artículo reciente de CNN, por John D. Sutter, titulado ” Los nuevos motores de búsqueda aspiran a complementar a Google” el autor examina algunos nuevos motores de búsqueda. El autor habla sobre: Twine, Hakia, Searchme, Cuil, Kosmix, Wolfram Alpha, Topsy, TweetMeme and OneRiot. Cada uno de éstos es diferente, haciendo su búsqueda web más personal, más visual, o conectando su búsqueda con las nuevas redes sociales como FaceBook y Twitter.

Algunos expertos dicen que Wolfram Alpha es el mejor candidato para darle a Google una seria competencia principamente porque Wolfram puede hacer algo que no puede hacer Google; esto es que puede crear contenido e información en lugard e solamente leer y presentarla en la web. Presentará una amenaza sólida para el dominio de Google.

Pero quizás, un rival más apropiado serìa uno ya conocido y con amplio respaldo económico. Estamos hablando del nuevo buscador de Microsoft llamado Bing, el cual, es muy similar a Google en muchos aspectos, pero aun así diferente. Los resultados de Bing son muy similares a Google de muchas maneras, pero Bing presenta los resultados de manera más agradable al usuario, con un botón para la previsualización y relaciona tus busquedas y presenta la historia de la búsqueda en el lado izquierdo. Solamente el tiempo dirá si estaremos Bingueando en lugar de Googleando .

Personalmente este buscador es mucho mejor que el antiguo MSN principalmente porque el Home Page de Bing es muy atractivo y solo tiene la caja de búsqueda en ella, no estás distraído con otros listados como en MSN y Yahoo! Una de las razones principales del éxito de Google, además de una mejor búsqueda, ha sido su simplicidad.

Para mí, el buscador más prometedor y puede dar cierto grado de competencia a Google es Searchme, que presenta una búsqueda visual (como la interfaz de iTunes) donde puedes navegar a través de capturas de pantallas de páginas web en lugar de una lista de enlaces. Searchme, se anuncia como el primer motor de búsqueda multimedia, ha estado en la web desde hace unos pocos años, pero no es tan conocido por los usuarios de Internet. Realizar una búsqueda en Searchme con monitor de 24 pulgadas y 64-bit de Windows es cien veces más agradable que usar el Google Search o Bing. Es cien veces más rápido que Google, principalmente porque se puede encontrar información sin necesidad de dar clic en los resultados.

Quien sabe si Searchme en una alianza con alguien del peso de Microsoft puedan hacer tambalear a Google. La mayoría de nosotros (humanos) somos perezosos, queremos la ruta más fácil y rápida para resolver cualquier pregunta o problema. Searchme nos da la respuesta mucho más rápido que Google y en una forma más sencilla. Principalmente, porque también somos criaturas visuales, y si se da la posibilidad de elegir entre recibir páginas de texto y la visualización de imágenes de los sitios, la mayoría de nosotros tomamos la ruta visual.

No obstante, cualquier noticia de la desaparición de Google se verá muy exagerado, porque Google, como cualquier empresa inteligente y con toneladas de recursos, se ha mantenido cambiando con los tiempos, se adapta rápidamente a las nuevas características como los cambios en el uso de la web. Google ha perfeccionado el arte de permanecer un paso delante de la competencia.

Sure signs of a search engine that hasn’t focused enough on the basics: when I tried Searchme today (after a long absence), and was surprised to find that loading the homepage stalled for dozens of seconds–showing nothing–while the bottom corner of my browser announced that it was loading Google Analytics scripts.

Sure enough, looking at the source for their home page, the first thing that happens in the body is the loading of those Google Analytics scripts.

Response time is incredibly important in search, and I am really surprised that they haven’t done the homework to pin it down.   If you want people to use your search engine a lot, you need to make sure that the homepage renders quickly, and focus is set to the input box really quickly.

Microsoft is back with a Bing

For what seems like an eternity, Google has been ingrained in my browsing life as the natural response to all of my searching stimuli. Never has it even come across my mind that I would need anything else to hunt a piece of information down. And I guess this is the case with everyone else. The fact that the search giant’s name is used more as a verb than a noun in this era shows that they truly have swept clear the playing field with such deftness that ‘Google’ and ‘search’ have long become synonymous to each other. I doubt that any other product out there can come close to claim such an intimate relationship with the word ‘search’. But then the question that comes to mind is: ‘Has Google attained perfection?’. Can our hearts make space for anything else now? Can we put down ‘Google’ as a part of the universal equation of life? Well, maybe not.

One slow afternoon in my limbo period between graduate studies and a job, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail telling me how Microsoft has revamped their search campaign and released their latest brainchild called ‘Bing’. My first reaction, as I’m sure was the reaction of many other people who watch the TV series ‘Friends’, was ‘Bing? That reminds me of Chandler Bing. What a strange name.’ Two weeks later, I don’t think it sounds that horrible though. It’s actually kinda catchy.

Anyways, after reading the e-mail I kind of felt sympathetic towards Microsoft. They had been trying so hard to displace Google’s search market with no avail. Numerous updates to Live Search went unnoticed while Google dominated the arena with a whopping 70% share of the market pie. They even chased Yahoo! to buy them out in an effort to claim the 17% of the market that they had but that pursuit too went down the drain. A fresh start seemed to make sense for them. So, yea, I clicked on the link.

From the first glance, I didn’t see anything special at all. It was pretty much Live Search with a new name. The intro page talked about it being a ‘decision engine’ of some sorts and I was like ‘whatever that means’. I entered some weird search term hoping that Bing would pull out a rabbit from a hat while displaying the search results but I was disappointed again. Nothing out of the ordinary. Sigh. Its just another search engine. Close tab.

A few days later I was playing around with Google Analytics and musing over the horrible statistics of one of my blogs. During the search, I found a link talking about how Bing had started sending traffic to sites with GA plugged in and that Google posted a work around to include Bing as a traffic source in the GA reports. I was curious. Did I miss something? I thought I could spare a few minutes so intrigued, I opened up Bing again and this time started scrutinizing the engine. And boy, did I make some interesting discoveries.

First, I decided to take the ‘Discover Bing’ tour because I wanted to let Microsoft to show me exactly what made it a ‘decision engine’ and not a typical search application. I opened up Google in a parallel tab and thought I’d run a contest. Overall, I found Bing and Google coming up with great result sets but Bing at times had a little more oomph by offering more ‘action-oriented links’. What do I mean by this? Here are some insights:

1. For example, do you want to check whether your friend’s flight is on time? Typically, you would Google up an air traffic tracking site (like flightstats.com) to find that information out. Bing allows you to just type in the flight number and walah – real time status on the search results.

Now, I’ve rarely every used FareCast and MSN Travel to make travel decisions and I’m guessing Bing simply inherits the terrific travel module from those sites. So, want to book a flight? Well, go to bing.com/travel and it pretty much does everything that other fare-hunting websites like Kayak.com would do by fetching the best fares that match your criteria. The 7 day price predictor was slick too as it gave you a crucial inkling (with some confidence) on whether you should nab the ticket now or wait for a bit to let them slide. So, in other words, Bing sort of centralizes your travel functions.

2. The same day I was sitting with my parents and my mom wanted to know about whether some specific food items had cholesterol or not. I Googled the information and it showed a web result that led me to a nutritional site. I ‘Binged’ it up and it actually included the cholesterol content (from USDA) in the search results.

3. Bing also inherits the cashback functions that Live Search had, making it attractive for shopping as well. Search for a camera model and it will include a mini-profile of the product including a picture, a recommended price and ‘ease of use’ and ‘affordability’ evaluations. Click on the summary link and it will list all the outlets that Microsoft has cashback offers with and links to buying them there and then. Although this feature isn’t robust enough to include a wide variety of products, I still feel that it expedited my objective to get the best deal along with a cashback incentive. And besides, it’s still Beta

4. What about Maps? Enter an address in Bing and it will come up with a map of the place. But Google does it better as it will also throw in a ‘start’ bar where you can type the source destination from where you want to get to that place. However, with Bing you can instantly get real time traffic conditions (only for the US though!) which adds a bit more ‘wisdom’ in planning your escapades to the new coffee shop in town.

5. I loved the conversion and mathematics engine that Bing uses. Type in a quadratic (I tried: a^2 + a + 100 = 12) equation in Google and it will spit out a bunch of web sites. Do that in Bing and it will solve for ‘a’! Of course, Wolfram Alpha goes one up on that and gives you graphs to boot.

6. Video Search in Bing seems more “organized”. For example, there is a section that deals with TV episodes on Hulu (which TV addicts will find convenient) and then other sections with results grouped by criteria like ‘most popular’, ‘most recent’ etc. Google Videos just shows you what’s popular right now on its home page. At least that’s what happened when I opened it up.

7. The image search of Bing with infinity pages (also in Live Search) beats the Google experience in my view. Scrolling down is faster than flipping a page.

8. Bing includes a useful search history and has the capability to remember you making it easier to find that site you wanted to visit but realized that the magic keywords that brought it forth had slipped your mind. 

Of course this analysis isn’t comprehensive but in short my conclusion was that Bing effectively shortened the distance between one’s search entry and intended action for a variety of commonly used domains like travel, shopping, health etc. Now I know what it means by a ‘decision engine’

Also, Bing has introduced its own content ranking system called xRank (I wonder if LiveSearch already used this!) which is seemingly aligned to challenge Google’s PageRank which needless to say is the core essence of Google’s search app. I don’t know about the technical details but I love the fact that Bing offers you a convenient way to check out most frequently searched terms, search volumes and other information based on the xRank factor. Now, whether xRank is technically superior (or even different!) from PageRank is something I’m still interested to find out.

Phew. After a long trial run of Bing, I realized that Bing isn’t really ‘another search engine’. Bing seems to have these little tricks in the bag that makes some of your commonplace operations quicker and easier. Microsoft hasn’t focused on throwing in too much eye candy like SearchMe and Cuil did which is a good thing as spirited searchers are more concerned about getting their information-thirst quenched, not whether they get to see an army of pages lined up in flash-coated glass vessels.

Having said all this, to say that Google has serious competition is still like jumping to conclusions. Sure, MSFT has done a good job but getting the word out, convincing people to leave their ‘MSFT is evil’ beliefs and give Bing a chance will require some major marketing effort , rhetoric and personalized love. So, will Bing challenge Google in the upcoming years? I don’t know. I might ‘bing’ the question up in a few years though.

http://www.google.com

O Google Search é um serviço da empresa Google onde é possível fazer pesquisas na internet sobre qualquer tipo de assunto ou conteúdo. É atualmente o serviço de busca mais usado e também o primeiro serviço lançado pela Google Inc.

http://www.cuil.com

Cuil (nome de origem irlandesa que quer dizer “conhecimento”, pronuncia-se kul, igual a palavra inglesa “cool” que significa legal) é um sistema de busca que foi lançado em 28 de julho de 2008.^[1][2] Os desenvolvedores do Cuil planejam que seu sistema supere os já existentes com resultados mais compreensíveis e relevantes. Para se diferenciar de seus concorrentes, Cuil organiza as páginas web pelo seu conteúdo e exibe os resultados das buscas através de pequenas imagens. Ela diz ter em cache um index de página muito maior que qualquer outro sistemas de busca da internet, como o Google, com cerca de 120 bilhões de páginas web. Cuil foi criado e é administrado por antigos empregados da Google ^[3] A compania arrecadou cerca de 33 milhões de dólares de capital de risco através da Greylock e outros

http://www.bing.com

Bing (antigamente Live Search, Windows Live Search e MSN Search), codinomeado de Kumo é o novo motor de pesquisa da Microsoft, designado para competir com os líderes da indústria Google e Yahoo!. Revelado pela Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, em 28 de maio de 2009, na conferência All Things D em San Diego. Bing é um substituto do Live Search, estará totalmente disponível em 3 de Junho de 2009.^[1]

As melhoras notáveis em pesquisas gerais incluem a adição de pesquisas relacionadas (chamado “Explorer painel”, no lado esquerdo dos resultados da pesquisa), baseado na tecnologia semântica de PowerSet, uma companhia de busca da Microsoft comprada em 2008, busca sugestões à medida que você digita, e da capacidade de acompanhar o seu histórico de pesquisas.

http://www.searchme.com

Searchme esse site diferente dos outros, faz pesquisa com miniaturas das paginas no seu real formato. uma especie de livreto virtual de paginas sobre determinado assunto

Did you know that your search results need not be limited to a page full of text identifying relevant sites an links? If you are a visual person, there are other options that might better serve your needs. Pandia Search Engine News lists five of their favorites here. Their top picks include SearchMe (highlighted in the Studio here); Viewzi; EyePlorer; Ujiko; and, NeXplore. SearchMes offer pictures of sites in their results page, rather than text descriptions, with a Cover Flow-like interface. You can roll over the image to get page title and link with a short description of the site. SearchMe also allows sharing on Twitter and Facebook. Finally, you can select and store pages in a stack, which also can be shared or embedded. My personal experience with SearchMe is all positive and the visual interface offers a much faster search experience, particularly for image searches or other queries with picture-friendly results.

I don’t have personal experience with the other options and recommend you hit the jump to Pandia to get their reviews. They provide different tools and options, each being better suited to different uses. Eyespot, for example, offers a circular result with information and responsive links primarily pulled from Wikipedia. Ujiko does something similar, but pulls its results from a broader source. Nexplore and Viewzi offer different views of results, including visual images.

Although it is not itself a search engine, Cooliris has a place here. I am a big Cooliris fan. Cooliris is a Firefox add-on that takes Google Search and responds with a Cover Flow-like result. Searchme and Cooliris are phenomenal for image searching – offering a much faster way to breeze through results with a flick of the mouse or track pad.

As in the real world, the right tool for the right job. These search engines offer different functionality with different strengths. Don’t limit yourself to that Google box: try out some of these other options and make your search results take you where you want to go
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[Caption]

In case you’re wondering why I’m posting this, especially when Wolfram|Alpha was on the front page of WordPress.com today anyway, let me explain. I had the idea to blog about WA (Wolfram|Alpha, wolframalpha.com) earlier this week, as I found out about it just after starting the blog. I thought it’d be an interesting topic as well as (hopefully) a bit of a traffic driver for The Economicist. I also have intended to use this post more to inform about the engine’s general capabilities, instead of going into the technical details as Gowers seems to have done. Hopefully the combination of our posts will help you learn more about this interesting new tool. Below is my original draft, with some more recent edits.

—–

Many people are familiar with the feature on Google that allows them to type in, say “6+6″ and have the answer shown to them separately from the search results. The feature allows for some things besides simple math, but doesn’t go very far. Wolfram|Alpha is a new solution to that problem. Built in partnership with Dell, this tool has some serious power.

Calling itself “the world’s first computational knowledge engine,” which basically means that it is considered to be more intelligent than the competition, WA works very well at what it’s designed to do. It looks pretty, too. The linked page shows the results for a search of “Time in Anaheim.” The search was done from a computer in Michigan, so WA pulled up two clocks for comparison as well as other time-related information. Other queries you can use include company lookups and comparisons, dates (“September 11, 2001″ brings up the basic details of the World Trade Center attacks), and locations. There’s more, but you can see all of that at the website itself. 

Besides the calculator, there are resources that easily put WA head and shoulders above the competition. The information search function is interesting, as it quickly combs through all sorts of data and puts it all in one easy-to-read page. In essence, WA’s search condenses the information you would find on Wikipedia (here’s “Pirates of the Caribbean”) and displays it in the form of charts, maps, animated images, and other visual aids. For the geeks among us, the coolest thing about WA is not that it shows all of that, but that it shows all of that without having gathered the information in advance. Unlike Wikipedia, dictionary.com, and other resources, which must have pages set up beforehand, Wolfram|Alpha gathers its  information after the corresponding search. 

To summarize this whole thing, Wolfram|Alpha is a deceivingly simple, yet amazingly smart tool for anybody looking to gather information and statistics. It’s not a replacement for Google, Yahoo!, or Ask when it comes to abstract or personal searches (you wouldn’t be able to find your friend’s MySpace with WA), or identical terms (“MP3″ showed information on the chemical compound), but it beats them hands-down when it comes to finding a complex group of information in one place. What could take ten minutes to find and read on another search engine takes less than one on WA. Check it out at wolframalpha.com and let me know what you think.

—–

BONUS: Many people have called Wolfram a sort of search engine, though it doesn’t really work like the traditional Google or Yahoo! search. However, along with WA, there are plenty of alternative search engines out there. Some of the ones I’ve found useful are listed below. Both of the socially responsible ones are based on Google or Yahoo!, but the others work with their own programs.
Cuil had a lot of buzz as a sort of Google killer when it first came out due to its privacy policy and number of indexed pages. It’s worth looking at.
SearchMe has a very cool visual search option that displays webpages in an iTunes Cover Flow-style format. Keeping with that iTunes-like theme, it also includes multimedia like music videos in its results.
EcoSearch is a socially responsible search engine in that for a certain amount of searches their website processes, they will donate money to plant a tree. So far, over 2500 have been planted.
Hoongle is a sort of mashup of EcoSearch and FreeRice.com. They are having an issue with donations at the moment, but the idea is that they donate rice for every search.

Baidu, a leading Chinese language Internet search provider, has announced it has entered a strategic partnership arrangement with China Telecom Corporation. It’ll provide wireless search for China Telecom’s 3G mobile phone subscribers. 

Under this agreement, Baidu’s wireless search service will be embedded in China Telecom’s ”Best Tone” 3G phone modules. China Telecom mobile subscribers will be able to use the ”Best Tone” platform to access Baidu products including web search, Baidu Knows, Baidu Post-bar, image search, news search, MP3 search and other useful services.

”We are very excited to provide China Telecom subscribers with wireless search services,” said Xuyang Ren, Baidu’s VP of Marketing and Business Development. ”The cooperation between Baidu and China Telecom leverages each company’s respective expertise and should deliver a convenient and rich mobile search experience to a growing and important user base.”

Among its other initiatives, in October last year Baidu had launched the beta version of its online C2C platform, called “Baidu Youa.” It is an online shopping system through which merchants can sell their products and services at Baidu-registered stores. 

It has also entered into agreements with UiTV, a leading operator of Internet television platform in China. Under these agreements, Baidu decided to contribute assets related to the operation of Baidu Internet TV Channel to UiTV in exchange for an 8.3% stake in UiTV and US$15 million.

As mobile search market is growing, a number of players are offering their solutions to mobile consumers. Among them are Searchme, GazoPa, Nokia, and Truveo.

The 7-O-7 Tech Shop
These are the 7 items that came at the tech shop during the past 7 days, ended May 17. As mobiles galore, MOTO W7 Active Edition is a motion-enabled 3G mobile device from Motorola, Samsung Alias 2 dual-hinge messaging phone is stated to be the first handset in the U.S. to feature E Ink transforming keypad, the Windows Mobile device, Samsung Jack, from AT&T and Samsung is coming, and T-Mobile USA is offering Sidekick LX. Among the mobile apps, Searchme visual search app is available for free on Android Market, USA TODAY application is for Android Mobile users, and Artificial Life brings iDroids for iPhone…More

Featured Topic. Kosmix. Wikipedia. Star Trek. Star Trek fever has reached beyond Trekkies and into the ….. Kosmix Sites. Kosmix » � RightHealth » � MeeHive ». About. About Kosmix » � Contact Us » � Our Team » � Jobs » � Media » � FAQ …[More..]


Kosmix, the universal search engine that dynamically generates guides to search queries using dozens of different content sources, is quickly gaining momentum. According …[More..]

Techno broadcast hosted by Miss Kosmix live from London This edition of Bluster presents a newly welcomed Austrian duo whom will take you by storm with their extreme and celebrated liveset. FLOTEK

voorbeeld exhibit op route (© Tinker)

Wie zoekt, zoekt niet altijd om te vinden, maar soms ook om de bezigheid van het zoeken zelf. Ik wil meestal vinden. Denk ik. Toch kom ik wel tot mezelf op een pagina, waarvan ik niet meer weet waarom ik juist daar gekomen ben. Als ik iets zoek in wikipedia, kan ik na het vinden toch verleid worden om nog even op een link te klikken die me intrigeert. Zo kan ik vervolgens via een aantal hinkstapsprongen een half uur heerlijk aan het ‘zoeken’ zijn. Intussen leer ik van alles, beleef ik vooral veel (niet voor m’n gevoel maar voor m’n verstand) en ben ik telkens gemotiveerd geweest om weer een zijweg te nemen. Wat al met al mijn eigen route is, gebaseerd op mijn keuzes.

Dit was het model dat ik voorstelde bij de grondslag en nieuwe routing voor het nieuwe Industrion in Kerkrade (dat binnenkort blijkbaar Continium gaat heten). Kernwoorden zijn hier: profiel, route, verdieping en de verleiding af te wijken van de route. Dit alles verrijkt het profiel, wat thuis natuurlijk verder aangevuld kan worden en uitgewisseld met andere (potentiële) bezoekers. Zou dat werken?

Een applicatie als StumbleUpon (random websites aangereikt krijgen en bookmarken met een rating en review) maakte dat ‘zomaar ergens op stuiten‘ tot de voornaamste ‘feature’. Je begint met het aanmaken van wat voorkeuren (bijvoorbeeld cultuur, erfgoed) en begint te stumblen. Duimpje omhoog als je ‘t wat vindt en duim omlaag als je ‘t niks vindt (di laatste is in de nieuwere versie van StumbleUpon helaas verdwenen). Daarmee verfijn je al doende je profiel en krijg je gaandeweg meer (en mooier) van wat je al boeide. Zo blijf je ook langer bezig.

Bij het implementeren van software om (gedigitaliseerde) collecties toegankelijk te maken, hopen we doorgaans op een applicatie waarmee de bezoekers alsmaar enthousiast blijven zoeken. Vraag is of die applicaties de charme en ‘single-issue‘ benadering hebben van StumbleUpon (ok, StumbleUpon begint meer en meer een datingsite te worden). Andere vraag is of we dat moeten willen, als we tegelijk ook kennis en verdieping willen bieden. Willen we dat? Waarom?

Misschien moet de vraag als altijd zijn: hoe intrigeren we de bezoeker, hoe voorkomen we dat die afhaakt en juist gemotiveerd blijft ‘zoeken’. Meest recente ontwikkeling op dit gebied is dan niet zozeer de belevingsstrategie, maar de participatie en co-creatie die gefaciliteerd kan worden met behulp van Web 2.0 toepassingen. Mee-maken dus, niet meer en niet minder. En daar speelt visuele verleiding een grote rol. De eerste aanblik moet het doen. Daarom ook kan de erfgoedsector zoveel leren van de makers van tijdschriften, of het nu publiekstijdschriften of special interest magazines zijn. De kunst van het verleiden is dit, en “vinden, binden, boeien”. Wat in dit geval eerder tonen, (ver)binden en boeien zou zijn.

Onlangs kwam ik een paar andere zoek-manieren tegen die vooral ook visueel georienteerd waren. Ik vraag me af of dat dan de toekomst heeft. De eerste, Like (Riya), kun je afbeeldingen met elkaar vergelijken, aan de hand van visuele kenmerken: “Unlike most other image search engines (including Google image search), like.com indexes images based on more than simple metadata and tags. Using Riya’s image recognition technology, like.com can search through a library of products and find ones similar to the look of any selected product. Users can shop for shoes, bags, watches, jewelry, clothes and much more without even typing in search terms if they choose.”

Een andere is SearchMe. Deze laat meteen zien wat je zoekresultaat is: “Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search.” Dat kan natuurlijk de oppervlakkigheid in de hand werken, als we er van uit gaan dat een goed uiterlijk niet meteen ook de beste inhoud heeft. Maar in feite is dat weinig anders dan de preview plugin, SnapShot, die aan dit weblog is toegevoegd. De bezoeker krijgt bij elke link een vooruitzicht. Dat scheelt tijd en wanneer aandacht schaars is, telt elke seconde. Probeer het zelf, met een paar klikken voeg je het toe aan je website.
Nog een andere is Simploos, dat het zoeken in Google of Yahoo visueler maakt. “What you see is what you get,” is hier letterlijk genomen.

Weer meer op de zoektechnologie zelf gericht, is bijvoorbeeld eVision: “Locating images and video is not an easy task, and when there are many files to search through, sometimes the only way to search through them is visually. Now the next generation eVision technology can do just that – find images and video visually.”

Van het ‘kijk en vergelijk’ principe, maar dan met meer dan alleen visuele data, zag ik vorig jaar tijdens MW2008 in het NRC Institute for Information Technology in Ottawa een prachtig voorbeeld: “Nefertiti is a 2D management system that automatically describes the composition, texture and colour distribution of 2D images by applying sophisticated techniques in order to capture the most important features in an incredibly compact descriptor or index. Nefertiti can search the index database in almost no time in order to retrieve similar 2D images by applying a content-based approach and the query-by-example paradigm.
Nefertiti is based on a proprietary technology and is foreseen for applications like cultural heritage databases, 3D models texture databases, forensic and catalogues.” Nefertiti wordt met name geschikt geacht voor erfgoed instellingen.

Dicen los que saben, que si tienes “Google preview” se acaba el chiste de http://www.searchme.com/ pero como todavía no encuentro lo primero me impresionó lo segundo.

Me pareció bacán el diseño de Searchme, el hecho de que tenga categorías de búsqueda. Y sobre todo que me presente las pantallas de lo que me propone, en lugar de solo links. Como que así elijo con más seguridad lo que quiero.
Dice Sandra que un buscador de la web 2.0.

A mí me encantó, lo que no significa que dejaré de buscar en Google.
Creo que mientras más opciones tengamos mejor, así elegimos qué usar y cuándo según nuestras búsquedas.

Dicen también los que saben que searchme es un poco lento, que no va con los que no usan mouse, que cómo harán con las pantallas que cambian a cada rato, y por mi parte, como dijo mi preciosa, ¡está solo en inglés! Disfrútenlo que está en prueba.

I’ve found out about this search engine (http://www.searchme.com/) recently and liked the idea of “flipping through” websites as if flipping through a book. Finally the search engines are becoming more visual in an extremely visualized world. Moreover, another cool feature of this site is that you can submit your wordpress/flickr/deviantart etc url’s by clicking about us>submit your site at the upper right corner. This way you can get more traffic on your page. So this is what this search engine site looks like:

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This has been around a while and a few people have recommended  Quintura to me, I have not actually used it until this week. I was looking for a new search engine that used clusters or the tag cloud concept.

I tried a search on the Middle ages. This is the main era for study for the year 8 history classes. The students can chose an aspect from that era on which they must do some in depth study. Some know exactly what they want to work on and others are less sure. I have spent a lesson with the classes working on refining their searches to achieve the best results.

I also try to encourage the students to define the means and applications by which they are able to employ their sifting and refining strategies. There are many and ever expanding number of ways in which they can explore the digital universe. Many like the visual searches.

iBoogie and Mooter have been used in the past to show clustering and they offered some visual leads to information but Mooter no longer mets our requirements. Many students need help in refining searches or thinking through topics so this is where Quintura can be used. It is a visual search that uses word association to refine search results.

Like iBoogie, Quintura splits the screen with the traditional (google-like) information on the right and a tag cloud on the left.

If the mouse hovers over any word in the cloud search added related terms appear. If you hover for a legth of time or ”click” on the term, it is added to the search bar at the top and a new tag cloud appears.  

Hovered over "middle ages" and it appeared as a phrase in the seaarch bar

This picked up the hundred years war. I like the fact that there are not too many tags on the screen at the one time, so it is less confusing.

Another bonus is that the the query results are very easy to share using email. This can be sent to a teacher as the student is working on his research, allowing the teacher to better understand the some of the searching stategies of the student. It would also be good for group work, where each member of the group might take  a different aspect of the same topic.

The tabbed options at the top also make it very easy to switch to image or video searching without changing the query.

Middle ages - Image search

A different option is that you can easily convert any query results page into embeddable code for display on another web page.

The search results for Quinturawere quite good accuracy wise and it is viually easy to read/use. The searching was a bit like a journey of discovery at times. It was fine but, for myself, I really like to narrow things down right at the beginning of the search and, at times, it seemed to be a little bit slower at searching than some of the other search engines. Students did not find this a major quibble (just me!). Another search engine that is worth informing students about

For the younger researchers, there is also a Quintura for kids with an explanatory video.

It offers similar options to Quintura but you have a short results page with icons and large text. Results here seemed to be accurate, informative and more importantly, age-appropriate.

Searchme, the search engine that gives you visual results has just launched a service called adview which is the visual alternative to adwords. Instead of returning a search as text (like Google does) it returns clickable previews of entire webpages, videos or other visual advertising. Looks pretty neat and they’re giving out free advertising for a month to the first 500 individuals or companies that sign up. Nice ad too…

By Erick Schonfeld

What happens when you make paid search ads both relevant and visual? Searchme, the search engine startup which presents results as a stack of full-page previews that you can flip through, is hoping to find out with the beta launch of AdView. Its first foray into advertising, AdView is SearchMe’s version of AdWords, except that instead of selling of paid text links it will be interspersing into its results clickable previews of entire Webpages, videos, or other visual advertising.

If you are an advertiser and want to try it out, SearchMe is giving a free trial to the first 500 companies or individuals that sign up here. That’s right, you get to run a free ad campaign on SearchMe for 30 days.

To see how this works, search for “Ralph Lauren” and if you flip through to the third result, it will be an ad that shows a landing page for its fall collection. In other words, the Website becomes the ad itself. This approach is similar to what StumbleUpon does, with ads placed in every 20 or so Stumbles. But the ad unit can also be a YouTube video which can be played without leaving SearchMe. For instance, check out the third result when you search for “Mac” (SearchMe inserted one of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads for demonstration purposes).

This could potentially be a very effective form of advertising. It is almost like a magazine ad where the ad is a Website. Advertisers who create visually appealing landing pages I suspect will do better. And it is also a potentially powerful way to target video ads, combining keyword targeting with a TV-like viewing experience. (Check out SearchMe’s own video commercial embedded below, which it plans to run as a TV spot)

SearchMe is not huge by any means, but it provides a nice sandbox to experiment with new types of advertising. Quantcast shows some decent growth over the past six months to about 3 million visitors in the U.S. That is certainly large enough to test the ROI for visual paid search. And its organic growth suggests that the idea could catch on. Certainly, it doesn’t hurt that Apple is training consumers to become comfortbale with the page-flipping metaphor. One of the key features of its just-released version of the Safari browser is a similar Coverflow-like treatment of bookmarked pages and browsing history.

Source: techcrunch

Graphical and visual search engines are always interesting to me as alternatives to Google. I find that for certain types of searches, especially if I’m say, researching new hardware technology, or scanning headlines that happen to come from unusual sources, the extremely text-heavy way in which Google returns results can be sub-optimal.

In this post, you’ll find four good tools that provide useful, offbeat approaches to visual searches.

Last year, I covered Viewzi and Redzee, both of which provide unusual and often useful visual search returns. Viewzi lets you view graphical search results from many different angles. For example, if you search for “netbooks,” you’ll get back screenshots from blogs, news outlets and unexpected sites, and you can toggle to switch your views of the results. Redzee delivers search results in a similar fashion to the Cover Flow view found on iTunes. You get thumbnails of sites with content related to your search, and then you can hover and move your cursor to cycle through them. It’s a good way to sift on a rapid-fire basis through images from many sites.

Since covering these two visual search engines, I’ve become particularly reliant on Viewzi. I find that if I want to write about a topic where it’s useful to see physical examples, such as a new netbook or smartphone, the site’s “Photo Tag Cloud” custom view is very efficient. Here’s a portion of a larger Photo Tag Cloud from Viewzi, where I can use a Zoom tool to get closer looks if I want to, and I can click on the plus sign symbol to keep switching to new images in the photo cloud:

AltSearchEngines has a good video tour up of SearchMe.  This site has been out for about a year, but if you haven’t tried it, do so. The site presents search results as images, and the key to working efficiently with them is to use the blue slider bar at site bottom to flip through the images. With SearchMe, small versions of alternative results queue up next to larger ones, as seen on the right of the search for “iPhone” below:

Finally, one of the best tools in the category of video search that I’ve found is a Firefox extension called VideoSurf.  I covered it on the OStatic blog here.  This extension automatically provides a chronological timeline of shots from any video clip on sites such as YouTube. For example, if you’re watching a software demo video, you can see shots along a timeline that will allow you to jump to targeted parts of the video. Or if you’re writing an online piece about the U.S. Airways flight that landed in the Hudson river, you can use a timeline like the one seen below to gauge where to view relevant images. This is a really handy tool, and it works with Google Video and other sites as well.

Cada vez que nos conectamos a Internet para buscar información, sin pensarlo dos veces, tecleamos la url de Google. Sin embargo, cada vez son más los buscadores que intentan “hacerse un sitio” en la red. Uno de los nuevos buscadores es Searchme . Este motor de búsqueda, que aún está en fase beta, devuelve las páginas encontradas como una imagen. Es una forma rápida de “ver” si la web nos interesa o no. Recuerda un poco a esas películas en las que las pantallas son táctiles y en las que para elegir una opción sólo basta con “tocar” la imagen deseada.

A continuación tienes una pequeña demo:

This search engine www.searchme.com takes a different approach.  The most unusual aspect is the results display which works like flipping pages in a book.  Rather than just getting a hyperlink with a few words of text, you get a screen shot of the entire page and can flip through them easily.  The other cool feature is that it circles the words you are searching for on the page display and still gives textual context at the bottom. At the top of the page it gives you handy categories to refine your search. 

Check it out.