May, 2005 Archives | Homepage
Yahoo Beta Testing Mindset Slider
O'Reilly Radar reports that Yahoo Research Labs has a new search demo
online. The demo is for a new search tool called Yahoo
Mindset that lets people use a slider to change search results
from more commerical to less commercial. Moving the slider to the far left will give you commerical products while moving the slider to the far right will give you more research oriented search results.
An entry in the Mindset faq explains how the slider works:
You control the slider to decide how you want the results sorted. The midpoint of the slider represents the default setting. In this position, the order of results matches Yahoo! Search web results. As you move the slider right, toward "researching" or left toward "shopping" the results are automatically re-sorted for you.
Posted on May 31, 2005
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Spurl.net Updgrades Zniff Search Engine
Spurl.net says their Zniff.com search engine has been upgraded. Zniff uses data from Spurl.net, a social bookmarking tool, to find and rank web pages. Spurl.net claims the new version is faster, more stable and allows you to sort results by time and subscribe to query results via RSS. This is beta #2 of the Zniff search engine. When there is not enough data from Spurl.net, Zniff uses results from Yahoo! Search.
Posted on May 26, 2005
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BigClique.com Search Engine Launches
gRock Media Group has launched a a new crawler based search engine called BigClique.com. BigClique.com runs its own crawler (Daisy) and their search listings are made up from their own internal database of submitted sites. BigClique debuts with an index of a several million websites, and a proprietary ranking algorithm that analyzes on-site and off-site criteria including page text, tags, inbound links, and other factors. gRock says it has been building BigClique's search, crawler and database technology since spring of 2003, and has allowed users to submit sites for crawling since March 1st 2005.Posted on May 25, 2005
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Firefox Funny Campaign Creates Huge Traffic
Wired.com reports that Firefox's viral ad campaign called FunnyFox is really working. Firefox has had to add extra servers because of the large numbers of people who want to watch the video ads.The latest tactic for the 100,000 members of the Spread Firefox movement is to make commercials. Funnyfox, three humorous video clips showing web surfers using the browser for the first time, is the slickest contribution to date. Designed to be e-mailed to friends, the videos -- one of which shows a user's head falling off -- have proved so popular that extra servers had to be set up to cope with the load.
Posted on May 24, 2005
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New Scientist Launches Space Website
New Scientist has launched a website for space news and features called NewScientistSpace.com. The new website has sections for space news, space technology, the solar system, human spaceflight, astronomy and special coverage of space research missions.Posted on May 23, 2005
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Google Launches Personalized Home Pages
Google has launched a new personalization feature that looks a lot like Yahoo's My Yahoo feature. Google lets people personalize a homepage where they keep track of email, weather, stock tips, news, directions and movies. Google personal homepage feature can currently be found here. So far it is not linked from the main Google.com page. Search Engine Watch has more on this new Google feature.Posted on May 21, 2005
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Bayosphere Provides Community Coverage of Bay Area
The Bayosphere is a new resource covering California's Bay Area. The site will contain community and citizen journalism tools. The website also includes Dan Gillmor's blog, which has moved to the Bayosphere website. Gillmor's blog is a popular resource covering journalism, technology and Silicon Valley. Dan Gillmor explains the concept behind the new website in a recent post:The promise of the Internet was simple, but incredibly powerful: to be a medium through which we could connect and collaborate, for mutual benefit. It's happening. As the Net matures, we are learning to write as easily and fluently as we read.
At Bayosphere, we're going to create a community fueled by that notion. We will reflect -- and reflect on -- the news, needs and ideas of the San Francisco Bay Area and especially the technology sphere that is the prime economic driver of the area.
Posted on May 19, 2005
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Yahoo Provides Tips on Yahoo Shortcuts
Adam Durfee, the Product Manager at Yahoo! Search has a useful blog entry that explains Yahoo Shortcuts. Adam says, "A Yahoo! Shortcut is a quick way to use web search to get to the information you want, ideally faster than combing through the web results. Shortcuts results appear automatically when they're relevant to your search and link to content on Yahoo! or across the web." The blog post explains shortcuts and given examples of several shortcuts as well as tips on how to make them. Some of the short cuts include puppy pictures and Iraq news. The "pictures" short cut will show you several pictures in your search results -- in the "puppy pictures" example you will see pictures of puppies. And by using "news" as one of your search keywords Yahoo will show you a few news stories at the top of your results page.Posted on May 18, 2005
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Primedia Launches WaveWatch
The Action Sports Group (ASG), publisher of
Surfer, Surfing and SG, has launched WaveWatch, a
Web-based surf camera and surf condition forecasting network.
WaveWatch provides a camera network that allows users to control
the cams to navigate the waves. The service also includes mapping
tools, tide charts and localized surf and weather forecasts, as well
as swell advisories sent by email and cell phone alerts. Posted on May 17, 2005
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Internet Explorer Getting Tabs
The IE tab browsing rumor has been confirmed by the IE Blog. IE7 will have tabs according to a post on the blog by Dean. Tab browsing is a popular feature in the Mozilla Firefox browser. Dean at IE Blog writes:The tabbed browsing experience in the upcoming IE7 beta is pretty basic. Expect additional end-user functionality to come in after the beta.(via Life Hacker)
You can browse with tabs with IE6 (and some earlier IE versions) today in a few different ways. Several third parties, like Maxthon, have built browser experiences with tabs on top of the IE platform. Several third parties have built toolbars to provide tabs within IE as well. MSN's recently released toolbar will also be providing support for tabs within IE when they update it in the coming months.
I think all of these are great! They demonstrate how extensible the IE platform is. They also provide tabbed browsing in IE on top of Windows versions (like Win98) that IE7 will not support.
Posted on May 16, 2005
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Blog Uses Google Maps to See the World
A recently launched blog called Google Sightseeing looks at tourist spots and interesting locations using Google Maps' new satellite tool. Google Sightseeing is brought to you by Alex, James and Olly. As the tagline on Google Sightseeing says, "Why bother seeing the World for Real?" Some of recent discoveries on Google Sightseeing include Mall of America, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Churchill Downs. You can also find specific locations Google Sightseeing has visited using the All Posts by Locality index.Posted on May 14, 2005
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Radar Online Launches
Radar Online is the website for Radar magazine, a new publication providing celebrity and gossip news. The website has features like After Dark, which shows what celebrities are wearing to various events; Fresh Intelligence, a look a few items in the news; and The Wire, which Radar says contains news and notes from all over. If you like reading celebrity and media gossip then you will probably like Radar Online.Posted on May 13, 2005
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Writers Write, Inc. Launches PleasantMorningBuzz.com
Writers Write, Inc., the parent company of SurfersSurf.com, has announced the launch of the newest Blog in our Network: Pleasant Morning Buzz. Pleasant Morning Buzz features light-hearted commentary about current events and items of interest.Posted on May 12, 2005
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Googlism.com Queries Google about People and Places
Googlism.com says it will find out what Google.com thinks of you, your friends or anything. We tried one of its sample options for Bill Gate and Googlism returned items like, "bill gates is darth vader, bill gates is opening windows on world health and bill gates is rich."Posted on May 11, 2005
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Forbes Launches ForbesAutos.com
DriversDrive.com reports that Forbes has launched a luxury car resource called ForbesAutos.com. Drivers Drive says the site will "provide auto information for affluent consumers including articles, reviews, buying guides and news." One of the articles on the news site shows the ten fastest vehicles.Posted on May 10, 2005
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Buzz Going About Backpack Organizer Tool
Backpack is a much-discussed new online storage and organization tool that offers a variety of features including:The price for the service ranges from free to $19/month depending on how many pages you want and how much storage you need. The risks associated with this and any kind of online storage service is that you need to trust the company not to sell your information and trust that the company has excellent security so that your personal, private information is not exposed to the public. There are a lot of blogs discussing Backpack. Click here for links to some of the discussions.
Posted on May 9, 2005
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Webby Winning 10x10 Offers Unique Approach to Finding News
10x10 is an interesting website that covers current events in a very unique way. The site presents each hour of news as a picture window with 100 different frames. When a surfer clicks on one of the windows relevant stories pop up related to the image. 10x10 just won the 2005 Webby Award in the Best Navigation/Structure category.
Here is how the site works (from 10x10's own description):
Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other.
10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds.
Posted on May 6, 2005
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Beliefnet Adds Blog Heaven Feature
Beliefnet has launched Blog Heaven which it refers to as, "continuously updated nuggets from the best blogs about religion and spirituality." Blog Heaven contains links to popular religion and spirituality blogs with information on when these blogs have been updated. Beliefnet also includes two blogs by Beliefnet itself: Loose Cannon and Swami Uptown.Posted on May 5, 2005
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Backfence.com Provides Local Communities
Backfence.com is another citizen journalism type of website. The site allows visitors to post classifieds, share news and photos and publicize events specific their location. So far, the site has communities for McLean, Va and Reston, Va.Posted on May 4, 2005
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InternetWritingJournal.com Launches
The Internet Writing Journal (The IWJ) has a new website as well as a new blog located at internetwritingjournal.com. The Internet Writing Journal is published by Writers Write, Inc., which also publishes SurfersSurf.com. The IWJ has been online since 1997 and has interviewed many bestselling authors over the years including Dan Brown, Neil Gaiman, Marry Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block and Nora Roberts. A complete list of past author interviews can be found here.Posted on May 3, 2005
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Current Focuses on Short Video Content
Current is a new, independent cable and satellite TV network. The company is headed by former US Vice-President Al Gore. When Current launches later this year it will provide 15-second to five-minute video "pods" for several different channels including: Current Soul, Current Gigs, Current Fashion, Current Lies and Current Tech. Here is how Current describes its plans to remake TV:We're rethinking the way TV is produced, programmed, and presented, so it actually makes sense to an audience that's accustomed to choice, control, and collaboration in everything else they do.The website also has a Studio section where people can submit their own videos. The site is currently running a contest for the best video with a $3,000 prize. The contest ends on May 20th.
So, we're creating a network in short form. Whenever you tune in to Current, you'll see something amusing, inspiring or interesting. And then, three minutes later, you'll see something new. It'll be a video iPod stocked with a stream of short segments and set to shuffle.
Posted on May 3, 2005
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New Spyware Blog Launches
Spywaredude.com is a new weblog from Bloglogic.net which provides information on spyware, virus prevention and removal, internet security and spyware and virus removal tools. The blog is updated daily with coverage of spyware and virus news. The site could use a directory of spyware tools and resources.Posted on May 2, 2005
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