January, 2006 Archives | Homepage

Study Finds Internet Can Increase Social Bonds

People spend hours on the Internet are often thought of as being unsocial but a new study says that the Internet can provide a "social glue" for people. A BBC article reporting on the PEW study called The Strength of Internet Ties says the study found Americans often use the Internet for help with illness, careers and financial advice.

"When you need help these days, you don't need a bugle to call the cavalry, you need a big buddy list," said John Horrigan, associate director for research at the Pew Internet Project.

The internet is providing Americans with a path to resources, whether it be dealing with family crises or finding a new job.

The reliance and accessibility of the web is creating a new social phenomenon according to sociologist Barry Wellman.

Co-author of the report, he identifies what he terms as the rise of networked individualism - where users of modern technology are less tied to local groups and increasingly part of more geographically scattered networks.

"This creates a new basis for community. Rather than relying on a single community for social support, individuals often actively seek out a variety of appropriate people and resources for different situations," he said.

Social tools like blogging, forums and social networking services have made the Internet a place where it is often easier to find people to talk to do on just about any subject than it is in the real world.

Posted on January 30, 2006
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Patriot Search Helps Government Collect Search Data

A spoof search engine called Patriot Search (thx Napsterization) has been set up to help the government collect data while people surf.

Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic.

Instead of letting the government waste tax money by going through complicated procedures to get user and search data from Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves or Google, users of Patriot Search make sure their queries end up right where they belong – in the databases of the government and its various agencies.

People's keyword search privacy has come into question as the Federal government has been sending subpoenas to the major search engines including Google. So far Google has refused to comply with the requests. More Google subpoena humor can be found here.

Posted on January 26, 2006
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2005 Finds of the Year Winners Announced

Yahoo UK's Finds of the Year awards have been announced. The awards celebrate the most original, humorous and useful sites. One of the websites called Net Disaster allows you to target a website you hate with coffee spills, meteors, nuclear bombs, worms and other disasters. Here is a list of all the winners.

Best Community Website: Treasure My Text
Best Educational Website: Woodland Grange Primary School
Best Entertainment Website: Liveplasma
Best Innovative Website: Net Disaster
Best TV Website: Derren Brown
Best Travel Website: Transport for London
Best Weird and Wonderful Website: The Cloud Appreciation Society
Best Celebrity Website: Greeting the 500

The people's choice award will not be announced until February 2nd. (Via News.com)

Posted on January 25, 2006
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Wi-Fi Hotspots Pass 100,000 Mark

Computerworld reports that public Wi-Fi spots have passed 100,000 worldwide with the U.S. leading the world with over 37,000 Wi-Fi hot spots. The article cites data from JiWire Inc., a directory of Wi-Fi hot spots.

The number of hot spots soared in the past year, hitting 100,355 last week, up from about 57,000 a year ago, the South San Francisco, Calif.-based company is expected to announce tomorrow.

The U.S. leads the world in hot spots, with 37,073, JiWire said, followed by the U.K. with 12,668. The other eight countries in the top 10 are South Korea, with 9,415 hot spots; Germany, with 8,614; Japan, with 5,951; France, with 3,886; Italy, with 1,767; the Netherlands, with 1,703; Canada, with 1,397; and Switzerland, with 1,295).

The city with the largest number of hot spots is Seoul, with 2,056, followed by Tokyo (1,802); London (1,627); Paris (895); San Francisco (801); Daegu, South Korea (787); New York (643); Singapore (619); Busan, South Korea (617); and Hong Kong (605).

The article says that the majority of the hotspots are free. According to JiWire over 92,000 of the Wi-Fi hotspots provide free access. JiWire says most of the hotspots are in hotels, restaurants, cafes and shopping malls.

The hot spots in the latest survey, which is updated weekly, are dominated by hotels (26,330) and restaurants (19,653). Cafes are a separate category, with 13,815, and are nearly tied with stores and shopping malls, at 13,827. Pubs make up 6,285, while all other locations total 20,445.

The JiWire directory can be searched online or downloaded to your PC or mobile device.

Posted on January 24, 2006
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Track Social Money With BillMonk

BillMonk is a new tool that helps people keep track of money that is owed among a group of people. BillMonk refers to this as social money defined as "informal debts between friends, traditionally noted on scraps of paper affixed to the refrigerator door." It would be a great tool for a small organization, group vacations, sports teams or any situation where multiple people are sharing a cost. You can keep up-to-date with BillMonk with their blog. (Via TechCrunch

Posted on January 23, 2006
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Surfers Use Search Engines to Find Top Internet Brands

People like to enter the top Internet brands into search engines according to recent study by Nielsen NetRatings. The study found that the top ten keywords were all popular brands and that a several of the top keywords searches are websites with search engines. The top keywords were eBay, google and yahoo. The study was unable to indicate whether the searches were being made by savvy or unsavvy web surfers.

"There are two types of online searchers that type a Web site's URL into a search engine rather than into the browser's address bar: Those inexperienced enough not to appreciate the difference between the two, and those that are so experienced they have become habituated to using the search engine as their portal to the Internet," said Ken Cassar, chief analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings. "Whether this behavior is driven by ignorance or savvy, the end result is the same: The search engine is the focal point of the online experience for Internet users across the spectrum."

A list of the top keywords is provided below.

ebay: 13,871
google: 13,301
yahoo: 7,997
mapquest: 7,431
yahoo.com: 6,528
pogo.com: 4,062
walmart: 3,688
ask jeeves: 3,389
msn: 3,166
ebay.com: 3,125

Posted on January 20, 2006
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Rooftop Ads Target Users of Mapping Tools

A post on MIT's Advertising Lab blog discusses how people are finding ads on rooftops that can be seen with satellites and maping tools like Google Maps -- like this strategically placed Target ad.

Advertisers are slowly discovering the potential of Google Maps, and some, like the Target store above (more at Google Sightseeing), are even enjoying some unexpected windfall. Poynter Online talks about realtors tapping into satellite imaging tools. Google Maps Mania is running a log on map hacks, some of them by businesses. Scavengeroogle is an armchair scavenger hunt based on the service - you too can have people looking for your brand landmark (like, again, the Target stores).

The future of advertising may be very different as advertisers try to reach web surfers in new and interesting ways. (Via Adrants and Boing Boing)

Posted on January 19, 2006
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Web Surfers Don't Give Websites Much Time for Error

Reuters reports that a new study has found that people spend only a fraction of a second deciding whether a website is aesthetically pleasing or not.

In just a brief one-twentieth of a second -- less than half the time it takes to blink -- people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an Internet site.

The study was published in the latest issue of the Behavior and Information Technology journal. The author said the findings had powerful implications for the field of Web site design.

"It really is just a physiological response," Gitte Lindgaard told Reuters on Tuesday. "So Web designers have to make sure they're not offending users visually.

"If the first impression is negative, you'll probably drive people off."

The study also found that personal taste means that not all designs will appeal to everyone.

Posted on January 18, 2006
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Happy Blogiversary to Us!

We just recently passed our one year blogiversary. Our first post was on January 12, 2006 about a new drug resource from the Consumers Union. Our sister site BloggersBlog.com blog, which tracks blogiversary announcements, says a blogiversary is the "annually recurring celebration of a blog's start date."

Posted on January 17, 2006
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HelpFirefox.com Raises Money for Firefox

HostSearch.com reports that Loopia, a Swedish web hosting company, and Loopia's founder Sam Nurmi, have launched a website called HelpFirefox.com in a bid to raise money for the Firefox web browser. The website is based on the MillionDollarHomepage.com's pixel advertising concept. Apparently, it is working because a message on HelpFirefox.com reads:

The first 24 hours of this site has been a true success, with more than 13 800 pixels being sold.

We have to take down the site for now but we hope to be back as soon as possible.

ZDNet says the site crashed from heavy traffic.

Posted on January 16, 2006
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Firefox Did Not Quite Make 10%

It was a great year for the Firefox browser. However, Firefox fell just short of its goal to have 10% of the browser marketshare by the end of 2005 according to an InformationWeek news story.

According to WebSideStory, a San Diego-based Web analytics provider, Mozilla's Firefox closed 2005 with 8.9 percent of the browser market, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer wrapped up the year with 87.6 percent.

Last week, NetApplications said that Firefox owned 9.6 percent of the market, and IE accounted for 85 percent.

"Despite making strong gains in 2005, Firefox did not meet its reported goal of 10 percent market share by year's end," said WebSideStory in a statement. "[But] although Mozilla didn't reach its intended goal, the browser still made significant strides over the last year."

Firefox may have come up short simply because many websites are still not Firefox compatible. A Techworld article says there are still many sites that are Firefox incompatible.

Firefox may have ended 2005 with nearly 10 percent of total browser market share, but new users are in for a nasty shock, according to recent research, which claims one in 10 websites don't allow full access to Firefox users.

The research, from UK site testing firm SciVisum, was based on tests of 100 leading UK consumer websites. The firm found three percent turned away users of browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer, while another seven percent used code that could only be rendered in Explorer.

If the popularity of Firefox keeps growing eventually some of the slower-to-convert sites will update their webpages to become Firefox compatible.

Posted on January 12, 2006
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Fooky Search Engine Has Built in Conversant AI

Fooky is a new search engine that in addition to accepting regular text-based keywords or phrases also accepts commands and has a built-in AI so Fooky can converse with web searches. Here are some of the commands Fooky accepts:

search for [keywords seperated by commands]
get headlines for [topic name]
shop for [product/service name]
get weather for [USA zip code]
get stock quote for [stock symbol]
get showtimes for [USA ZIP code]
get traffic for [name of US metropolitan city. example: "Chicago" "Miami"]
get sport scores for [ "mlb" or "nfl" or "nba" or "college football" ]

And here is more about Fooky's AI bot:

Fooky.com has Artificial Intelligence built in to enjoy a conversation with you. Typing in "hello" in the textbox, Fooky.com will return your greeting. If you ask Fooky.com the right question, for example "How are you today?" Fooky.com will engage in conversation. Registered users will have some personalized features such as Fooky.com remembering the registered user name and the topic being discussed.

The AI is an interesting twist on the search engine but as search engines continue to improve AI bots are a likely path for them to take. TechCrunch has an entry about Fooky from last September.

Posted on January 11, 2006
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Google Not the Only Video Search Tool

You may heard about Google's launch of an online video store at CES. Google now offers both free and fee-based videos at Google Video. Search Engine Watch reminds everyone that Google is not the only provided of downloadable videos. Others include Vongo (new service from Starz), iTunes (recent deals with ABC, NBC), CinemaNow, MovieLink, DirectTV and Tivo. There are also services like iFilm which has many short free videos and film clips.

Posted on January 10, 2006
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Yahoo Acquires WebJay

Yahoo has acquired WebJay, a website that lets people create and share playlists. WebJay defines playlists as "playable lists of links to audio (mp3, real etc.) and/or video files, for your media player (Real, Quicktime, WMP etc.)" Yahoo's Music Blog says they were interested in WebJay as well the creator Lucas Gonze who will now be working for Yahoo. (Via Jeremy Zawodny)

Posted on January 9, 2006
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Omgili: Forum Discussion Search Engine

Omgili is a new forum discussion search tool that searches through various online discussion forums. Omgili, which stands for "Oh My God I Love It" was created by Ran Geva.

I decided to create Omgili in order to separate ordinary web pages from information rich discussion forums. The information contained in online forums is typically presented in a "question and answer" or debate style format. How is this significant?

Many times you will have a question that has already been answered. Using Omgili, you can avoid posting already asked questions and quickly find your answer. Unlike ordinary search engines that prioritize articles and edited web pages, Omgili only indexes discussion forums. Using Omgili's advanced search capabilities you can choose to independently search titles, topics or just the replies of a discussion.

You can find other forum search tools in this post from October, 2005. (Via SEW Blog)

Posted on January 6, 2006
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Website Gathers P-to-P Photos

Infoworld has an article about a website called Fitography.com that may be grabbing and showcasing some photos that people don't want seen. Fitography grabs photograph files from shared files used by P-to-P programs.

Fitography.com is perhaps another example of how the Internet can be both prying and surprising. Since it started Dec. 30, reams of searchable photos have been posted, running the gamut from the mundane to the eccentric to the slightly disturbing: an outdoor barbecue, a crowd at a Pearl Jam concert; a group of U.S. Army soldiers posing with actor Denzel Washington, a woman giving birth in an operating room.

In a Thursday news release announcing the site's launch, the webmaster is identified as Brad Gosse of Yourbrain Media Inc., a company based in Orangeville, Ontario. Gosse is quoted in the release as warning users of P-to-P networks such as Limewire and Kazaa to be careful what photos they place in the shared folders of those applications. P-to-P programs typically have a folder that allow remote users to access and download that content, but users can turn off the file-sharing feature.

If photos are in the shared folder "we will probably have them on our site sooner or later," he said in the release, which goes on to say that if someone finds a photo they do not want on fitography.com, it will be removed.

So far Fitography.com doesn't appear to have nearly as many images as some of the popular photo sharing website likes Flickr and Buzznet.

Posted on January 5, 2006
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Are You an Onlineaholic?

Sci Tech Today reports on a new study that finds as many as 10% of Internet users are net addicts.

A growing number of healthcare specialists estimate that 6 to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million U.S. Internet users are addicted.

Dr. Hilarie Cash, who runs Internet/Computer Addiction Services in the city that is home to Microsoft, and other mental health professionals, call such addicts onlineaholics and diagnose them with Internet addiction disorder.

The New York Times reports that these specialists say Internet dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction.

Skeptics argue that even obsessive Internet use does not exact the same toll as conventionally recognized addictions.

There are already therapies and programs to help these "surfing addicts" overcome their addictions. There is even a name for it: Internet Addiction Disorder. Similar addictions have been reported in specific industries: game addiction, generally to the MMORPG types of games, and blog addiction, addiction to blogging. There is likely some truth to what the healthcare experts are saying but 10% sounds far too high.

Posted on January 4, 2006
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Find a Human and Bypass Computer Answering Machines

Many people get tired of calling customer support or customer service and getting one of those computer operated answering machines with no clear way of talking to a live person. Fortunately, Paul English has made things easier with his IVR Cheat Sheet website. The Cheat Sheet lists quick ways to get a human on the line for services like banks, cable companies, phone companies, retailers, insurance companies and government agencies. (Via Law Geek)

Posted on January 3, 2006
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