August, 2006 Archives | Homepage

Ixquick Promises to Delete User IP Addresses

Most people are familiar with the recent AOL Data scandal (see also here and here). The release of all this data, some of which was personally identifiable customer data, has concerned web users. The Ixquick metasearch engine was quick to jump with a solution. They have promised to delete unique IP addresses and user-IDs.

As digital technology increasingly pervades our world, more and more personal details are being stored electronically, many of them by search engines. While you are searching the internet, these engines register the time of your searches, the terms you used, the sites you visited and your IP address. In many cases this IP address makes it possible to trace the computer, and in turn the household, that carried out the search.

These personal details are often retained for long periods by search engines and are of interest to commercial parties, governments and even criminals. "Many search engines openly use this data for commercial purposes. It seems only to be a question of time before the data gets misused," alleges Van Eesteren. "Therefore we have decided to permanently delete all personal search records. If the data is not stored, users privacy can't be breached".

Ixquick's Meta Search feature enables the user to simultaneously search 11 of the best search engines. However, Ixquick does not share the user's personal data with these individual search engines in any circumstances. In addition, as of this week, Ixquick will delete the users' IP addresses and 'unique user IDs' from its own 'Log Files'.

"Therefore, any user can use Ixquick.com to search in a combination of the best search engines secure in the knowledge that they can enjoy complete protection of their privacy," continues Mr. van Eesteren.

More search engines should follow Ixquick's lead and quit storing IP addresses.

Posted on August 31, 2006
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Light Reading Names Blip.tv Top Video Sharing Website

Light Reading, an online publication for the telecommunications industry, named Blip.tv the number one video sharing website. Light Reading came up with the following list of ten sites after reviewing a total of 45 video sharing websites.

A longer list of rankings with descriptions of each site can be found here.

Posted on August 28, 2006
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Yahoo Integrates Flickr Photos With Yahoo Search

Yahoo bought Flickr last year (see here). Now they have integrated the popular photo sharing website with Yahoo Search results.

Now you can find this experience through Yahoo! Search. Try searching for funny photos and you'll find hilarious and wacky Flickr photos of animals, kids, and signs. Searching for things that people think are funny is a good example of a query where combining what the community knows (and tags) with what algorithms can compute can lead to better search results.

Yahoo lists a few suggestions to try: Funny Photos, Interesting Photos and Nature Photography. Any search with photos or photography after it will work like Frog Photos and Celebrity Photos.

Posted on August 24, 2006
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Del.icio.us Redesign Includes Thumbnails

The popular del.icio.us social bookmarking website has undergone a redesign. The website now shows thumbnails of the webpages people are bookmarking. The update was announced on the del.icio.us blog.

Along with our usual round of backend upgrades, patches, and bugfixes, we've released a new frontpage design that incorporates feedback and ideas from our previous design. The main change is that we�ve added thumbnails for the top links on the hotlist. We've also started showing popular tags again, which we think is a great way to find interesting new links.

It does make the front page of the website look more exciting than before. (via Solution Watch)

Posted on August 17, 2006
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Time Names 50 Coolest Websites

Time.com has selected what they claim are the 50 Coolest Websites. You can see the list here. It includes popular websites like YouTube, Digg and MySpace. There are also lesser known sites like SingShot, Podcast Pickle and HopStop. Time had an entire category devoted to search and services. In the search category these sites included Snap (general search), Accoona (general search), Pixsy (picture/video search), Argali (phone numbers) and Kosmix (health).

The Guardian's Technology Blog slammed Time for selecting website that had little value. However, they did credit them for selecting one good site: Pandora, an online music tool. With an entire section devoted to "time wasters" Time makes it easy to pan their selections.

Posted on August 16, 2006
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Website Gathering Personal Histories From Last 50 Years

A website called The People History has launched. The goal is to create a social history of the past fifty years using personal stories.

The People History is a site dedicated to preserving our memories for future generations Many of the things we accept as part of our way of life did not exist just 30 years ago, and many of the events that occurred before the coming of the Internet are well documented historically but do not have many memories from the people who lived through those events and changes . As each generation passes more memories will be lost and we hope with this site to create a social history from the last 50 years created by the people who lived through those events and changes

Visitors do not need to register or have to include an email address to leave a memory. People History says that all memories are vetted prior to inclusion and it can take up to 48hrs for your memory to be included.

Posted on August 15, 2006
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Del.icio.us Traffic Keeps Growing

del.icio.us, the first bookmark sharing tool to become popular, has doubled since it was acquired by Yahoo in December, 2005 according to data from Hitwise.

Traffic to del.icio.us has more than doubled since Yahoo! acquired it in December 2005. According to Hitwise data from its sample of 10 million US Internet users, the market share of visits to del.icio.us was up 122% from January 2006 to July 2006. This is impressive growth, but social bookmarking has a ways to go before reaching the mainstream - in July del.icio.us ranked at number 6,793 among all sites in terms of visits.

del.icio.us is a great tool and there is no reason the site can't double again in the next six to twelve months.

Posted on August 11, 2006
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Yahoo Search Builder

Yahoo has launched Yahoo Search Builder, which allows people to build customizable search engines for a specific website or a specific subject. The search builder should be a popular tool for webmasters. Here are some of the features available.

Instantly add web search and site search to your site.
Customize the look and feel of search to match your site.
Customize the search engine algorithm to focus on your site's topic.
Engage your users with Most Popular searches, tailored to your audience.

The Yahoo Search Blog has a post about the new Yahoo Search Builder. The post includes a link to this deep sea diving search engine that one website has already built.

Posted on August 9, 2006
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Dabble Searches Hundreds of Video Websites

BloggersBlog.com reports on the launch of Dabble, a video search tool. Dabble will crunch the videos listed on a hundreds of different search websits.

Dabble is a new video search tool that searches video data from over 300 video hosting websites including Blip.tv, Clipshack, YouTube and FrozenHippo. The launch post announcing the new service can be found here. Currently, Dabble can search over 321,000 videos.

This looks like a very useful website especially for people who love online videos. Dabble users can also tag videos listed in the Dabble database and submit their own videos.

Posted on August 7, 2006
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Web 2.0 Dating Sites

TechCrunch has a post about online dating sites using Web 2.0 methods and there are a lot of them.

Online dating is big business, drawing about 4 million U.S. Internet users daily in June 2006 (and 25 million monthly), and they spend a daily average of nearly 17 minutes each on these sites. That adds up to a lot of page views - almost 4.5 billion per month (source: Comscore). And that doesn't take into account the billion-a-day Myspace page views, which many people argue is basically a very large dating site. All told, at least 15% of U.S. Internet users visit an online dating site each month.

Here is a quick list:

Wikia Personals

Plety of Fish may be one of the most interesting of the new sites with over 600,000 listings. It is also free.

Posted on August 4, 2006
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Meevee Provides Online TV Listings

Meevee is a website offering tv programming listings. Meevee includes user-generated content where consumers rate shows as they use MeeVee and get personalized recommendations for other programs. Meevee also offers a real-time programming database that is searchable by keyword, program, actor or topic. For example, here is a search for actress Jennifer Love Hewitt that shows several shows she is starring in. You could run a search for reruns of Friends while you hope for a Friends reunion. Meevee also provides listings for Internet TV channels. Meevee competers with other tv listing services like Yahoo TV, TV Guide and Zap2It.

Posted on August 1, 2006
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