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Video Search: Google Videos vs. Veoh

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 22:56)

Introduction

With the continues developments in World Wide Web combined with dramatic increase in the number of users, the demand for video feeds has exponentially grown over the few years. The continual introduction of new features and sites has revolutionized the way in which surfers locate and experience videos online. These improvements have captured variety of ways to narrow the searches to relevant videos, thus making the process more efficient. Some of these features include size of the video, tags, and description searches. Some other forms of search procedures were also developed recently. One of these developments includes deep-video queries, which analyzes the actual video’s audio and contents for relevant results.

As the internet sector grows in size, I thought it would be useful to compare some of the most popular video search tools. In this blog, I will compare and contrast the features of Google Video and Veoh video search tools. I will then detail my experience with each of the sites, and conclude by giving some recommendations regarding the search tools. Throughout the blog, I will be listing some other useful video search tools, which can be accessed by clicking on the links. Please enjoy the blog…

Google Videos (including YouTube)

Background

Google Video was developed by Google Inc. to feature their video archive. With the acquisition of YouTube, Google Videos has captured over 39.6% of the market share (number of videos online), which makes them the dominant leader in the industry. The introduction of embedding feature has allowed Google to grow rapidly and host numerous videos remotely. In 2009, Google stopped users’ capability to upload movies in order to preserve the quality of the search tool.

Features

Google Video

The main page of Google Video has a list of videos that are hot online at that moment and the most popular video is blown-up on the right side. There is an RSS feed for the most popular videos, which can be found the bottom left hand corner.

Once the search has been executed, the option bar shows up the on the left side of the screen. These options help users to narrow their searches to the most relevant data. Some of these features include the length of the video, the source of the content, when the data were posted, and the quality of the feed. There is also a related video section on the right side of the screen where the system scans for similar videos.

YouTube

YouTube is a website where users can share their own feeds. The main site is very similar to Google’s webpage, but there are more categories than Google. They have most popular, spotlight, and featured video sections. There is a huge advertisement section on the main page, which is very annoying.

After the users submit their query, there are some options on the top menu bar, which consist of type of file, time when it was uploaded, and sort level. There is an advance options section that allows users to narrow their searches further. Overall there are not many options for users on this site

Experience

Both Google Videos and YouTube had difficult time retrieving the relevant videos. The ones that were located tended to be low in quality and short in duration. Furthermore, there are not many options for the users who are looking for very specific video. For example, if I wanted a high sized file while the duration is short, users will not be able to narrow the videos by size. In addition, the experience tends to be plain since there are not any unique features other than being able to upload your own files on YouTube.

On the other hand, YouTube and Google Video maintain a large number of foreign and music videos. The sites usually maintain multiple copies of the same video, which helps the users find it very quickly (this could be a drawback since it is kind of annoying seeing the same thing all over the page). As for the foreign videos, the sites maintain a large pool of movies and dramas. However, they tend to be chopped up into pieces, and the users must click on multiple videos in order to view the entire movie or drama. In addition, the qualities of the videos tend to be low in addition to some parts of the movie missing.

Veoh

Background

Veoh is another video search engine that mainly focuses on Television contents, but also maintains large pool of movies and foreign videos. Unlike YouTube or Pod-o-matic, there are not any personal videos (the self shots or self-taped), which makes it a lot easier for users to find relevant contents. As the company grew wildly throughout the late 2007, they shifted the website strategy to focusing the developed nation and banned the service usage in Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe.

Features

Although there are not that many options compared to Yahoo Videos, which maintains variety of options such as type of file and size. Although this site lacks in options, they have a powerful category tool, which helps users narrow down their results. Each video is tagged by its channel and theme such as animation. As a result, users can narrow down their searches pretty easily. However, they do not maintain a section for duration nor size of the videos, which can be downside.

Experience

The experience on this site is not that unique compared to Clicker and Hulu, which offers many exciting homepages and unique graphics. However, since they maintain a large pool of movies and dramas, it very easy to find the relevant videos unlike YouTube. Furthermore, they have a large pool of foreign films, which I enjoyed the most. They also maintain some rare films that users usually cannot find anywhere else such as dramas from the 90’s. I especially appreciated the fact that the videos tend to be full in length and the quality seemed pretty decent for a feed based video tool.

Conclusion/Recommendation

If you are looking for some personally reviews on different products or a personal message I would go with YouTube. However, if you want a movie or some particular episode of a TV show, I would strongly recommend using Veoh. Overall, I had a better experience with Veoh than any other video search tools due to their main focus on films. In addition, I also had a easier time finding things on Veoh than Google. Therefore, I would overall recommend using Veoh than YouTube or Google Videos.

Some Helpful Videos

How to upload videos on YouTube

Google Video Tutorial

How to share videos on Veoh

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blog: How to waste time on Google Earth 101

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 22:56)

Introduction

This morning, I was determined to complete some of my on-going projects for work, but instead I wasted two and a half hour navigating through Google Earth. Wow…Ray, you fail at life…Anyways, I thought it would be nice to talk about the features that make this program sooo addicting and why it has captured many audiences. Therefore, this blog will focus on the different aspects of Google Earth, and conclude with brief summary of why Google Earth is evil…

What is Google Earth?

Google Earth is a program developed by Google Inc. and focuses on the virtual globe aspect. It features a geographical map of the world in 3D while providing articles and photos of different locations. The images were taken through satellites, aerial photography, and GIS 3D globe system.

The program allows users to search for particular location such as Las Vegas or look at particular houses. In the old days, the surfers could only see the oblique angles of the earth, but not there is a 3D feature for most of the locations (does not apply to the entire world). The topography of the Earth looks real as Google has implemented NASA’s radar vision to map out the world. Furthermore, users can contribute to the program by creating their own 3D building models, and submitting them to the site.

With the number of users growing at a drastic rate, Google has introduced numerous version of the software and has also incorporated the program in 37 different languages.

Features/Experience

Internal Features

Google Earth has partnered up with Wikipedia and Panoramio to post their articles and photos on different parts of world. This creates a unique experience compared to other similar programs. I frequently use Google Earth to plan out my trip by examining the location for interesting spots. For example, before I went to Egypt last spring, I carefully looked through the areas of Cairo, Alexandria, and Luxor for some potential tourist attractions that I can visit. Google Earth maintains thousands of photos, which helped me narrow down specific attractions that I wanted to visit. Furthermore, I was able learn different geographical layouts of each area, which helped me tremendously when I had to navigate through the city. By clicking on the wiki-symbol, I had access to the summary of the site I was interested in. Through reading the article, I had a firm understanding of the region, and the information seemed to be reliable.

Besides planning out vacations, there are other uses for Google Earth. Users can plan out their traffic direction through this program by using more the aerial photographs and the traffic map structure. In addition, surfers can just waste time and look at some random stuff (just like what I did – some cool photos of Google Earth seen in a video below). If you are curious about certain areas, you could use Google Earth to virtually surf through that region. The attached photos and Street Views help the user to understand the area in detail.

Some other useful features are locating specific business in a region. Users can also mark the areas they frequently visit or are interested in, which helps them have a quick access to the location. There is also an option to have an internet browser attached to the Google Earth screen so that users can search for different things while examining a certain location.

Interesting Features (for your amusement)

Flight Simulator: This is a hidden feature that can be accessed by pressing Control+Alt+A. Once the feature is unlocked, it will appear as a feature on the tools menu. Currently, the program only supports two types of planes: F-16 Fighter and Cirrus SR-22. I tried out the feature and it is really cool. However, it doesn’t run well on my system, and it seems like the program requires a lot of memory to run this feature correctly.

Street View This feature gives the user 360° panoramic view at the street level. This is an awesome feature since I never get lost anymore. Before visiting a new location, I always examine the Street View to understand where the building is located. After I get familiar with the place, I have no trouble finding it when I leave the house. Users can also virtually be at a location they might have an interest in, which provides a unique experience that no other program offers.

Other Features
Sky Mode – allows users to view the sky from the position they have located.
Ocean View – Google has mapped out the ocean floor, which can be accessed through this feature (it is in 3D)
Historical Imagery – allows users to go back in time and look at certain geographical area from past perspective
Mars View – This feature mapped out the entire mars surface, and the users are able to surf through Mar’s geography
Users can also see the traffic flows and weather of a certain location

Conclusion

Although there has been a lot negative press regarding privacy violation by Google Earth, the program itself has provided both useful and entertaining features for the users. The unique experience and features has attracted numerous visitors everyday. However, Google Earth has been labeled as “evil” as people have wasted so much time navigating through this program (just like me) while satellites have taken inappropriate photos (violating privacy – photographed naked people and secret military facilities). Overall, the negative aspects, in my opinion, outweigh the benefits of the program. Therefore, I would definitely recommend using this program sometime in everyone’s lives.

Google Earth Tutorial

New Features of Google Earth 4.3

Some interesting spots on Google Earth

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Integrated vs. Unified Metasearch Engine (Scour vs. Soovle)

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 22:55)

Introduction

The internet has grown significantly over the few years with over 182 million websites. As a result, search engines were developed to address the need for locating particular set of documents. However, there has recently been a spike in numerous different types of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Ask. These search tools work differently depending on how they retrieve the data or index the web (some scan the entire internet while others just index the title and description). Since these search tools report different results, a result aggregator was needed to create a more accurate and efficient utility. This is where Metasearch comes in to address the need. In this blog I will talk about the different uses for Metasearch and what they are. In addition, I will conduct a detailed analysis on two different types of Meatsearch. Please enjoy…

What is Metasearch?

Metasearch is a search engine that utilizes other query tools such as Google to retrieve relevant data and aggregates them into one location. Since users only have to enter the query once to utilize numerous search tools, it is much more efficient way of conducting a searches. Currently there are two different classes of Metasearches: Integrated and Unified. The integrated search engine such as Scour uses an algorithm to rank the results from different search engines into one list. The other type is the unified search engine where the interface provides divided areas for each of the search engines.

Why use Metasearch?

The most attractive reason for using Metasearch is its time saving capability for the users. Since many of initial searches do not retrieve the relevant documents, the searchers must use other keywords or sites to locate their desirable data. However, with the use of Metasearch, the number of queries could be drastically reduced. Furthermore, the overlapped data could be easily seen while options allow users to narrow the results.

Pros
Saves users time
Provides a unique search experience
Utilizes many different search engines at once
Cons
Some sites are not transparent

Scour

Scour is an example of an integrated Metasearch engine, which was launched by Scour Inc. in 2008. It incorporates three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search while implementing some social aspects on the site (Twitter and Digg). Scour has unique incentive feature for people to use. Currently, the Scour Toolbar keeps track of all the features that users use, and financially compensates them based on points (about $0.004 per point).

First Impression

The homepage of Scour seems to be very active, but it doesn’t seem useful. There is a section community activity where the site tracks what is popular and which sites users are commenting on. Although the section seems to be constantly updating, the sites seems to be full of blog posts and status updates. There is also a section on how many people are using the site at that time and the number of votes that were gathered (this was kind of interesting). Lastly, users can send the site monitors their opinions through the Feedback section.

Experience

The search tool is very effective and retrieves the result in less than a second. Once the site lists all of the sites, the users can narrow their results by articles, images, or videos. There is a related search section, but there is not an advance search option section. As a result, it is very difficult to reduce the results to more relevant set. Furthermore, the ranking system seems to give more weight on Google than any other site. The transparency of the results seems questionable as well. Each link has a listing rank form utilized search engines for transparency, but does not give exact details on how the ranks were calculated. There is a voting and commenting section, which made the experience very unique.

Although it seems like a good efficient tool, there is nothing unique about it. The search seems to be like any other search sites except for the compilation portion. They also maintain a blog, which seems to be unique. However, all of the topics are completely space fillers, and there aren’t many posts to make a difference in this feature. As a result, I would not strongly recommend using this section.

Pros
Saves users time
Fast search tool
One time stop for major searches
Good division between the articles, pictures, and videos
Cons
Experience is not that unique
Lack of user options
Non-effective features (i.e. blogs)

How to use Scour 101

Soovle

Soovle was created to condense all of the major search tools into one area. It is specifically used for users who do not know exactly what to search for. Soovle currently follows seven sites; Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, Answers.com, YouTube, and Wikipedia.

First Impression

The site’s graphics are really cool while providing a comprehensive way to conduct a search. The users can input their keywords in the search bar, and a list of related searches will appear on each of the search sites based on their relevance. The surfer then can choose which one to execute by using the arrow keys on their keyboard. The drawback of this system is that it can sometimes be slow to find all of the related keywords.

Experience

The experience for this site really stinks…With the whole purpose of utilizing Metasearch as a time saver, Soovle actually increase the time of search. This is because once the user executes a search in one tool, they muct go back to Soovle’s main page to execute the same tool for a different search engine. As a result, there isnot much benefit for using Soovle compared to normal search engines. Furthermore, there are no options for the users at all (users can not even separate the results from articles to images or videos, which makes the query more cumbersome).

On the other hand, there are several other features that are unique. Soovle keeps a Twitter account that updates the users on new features and improvements. The site also reports some of the top searches to keep up with the trend, which is pretty cool. The blog is also informative that reports an in depth analysis or demonstration of new features. Although these features are really interesting, they are not that important to the overall experience of the search tool. In my opinion, Soovle tends to be cumbersome and time-consuming to use.

Pros
Cool graphics on the first page
Blog and Twitter feeds keep users up-to-date
Monitors the trend of the searches
Cons
No search options
Too cumbersome to use
Time consuming

How to use Soovle 101

Conclusion

The Metasearch tools tend to be very helpful in reducing users’ search duration. However, there are many sites that do not maintain a detailed transparency record, which makes it difficult for users to locate the originality of the documents. In my opinion, Scour seems to be a better tool than Soovle on overall search capabilities. Through my experience, Scour tended to bring up more relevant information than Soovle since Scour compiles all the results into one section. On the other hand, Soovle requires numerous searches in different tools to obtain the relevant files, making it more difficult to use. I would firmly recommend using Scour for future searches since they do a great compiling all the results even though they do not have detailed transparency.

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Social Sites (Digg vs. Yahoo! Buzz)

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 22:55)

Background

With the introduction of Web 2.0, the internet users were able to interact with the webpage by commenting on posts, voting and uploading contents. As a result, the web has grown significantly in size and activity. To monitor these changes while allowing users to contribute to the content, social news sites were developed. In this blog, I will talk about the history of Social News Sites and what they are. I will also do an in depth analysis of two different Social News Sites: Digg and Yahoo! Buzz.

What are Social News Sites?

Social News Sites were originally created by Slashdot and Fark. These sites allow users to vote, tag, and upload news stories by using links. With the large number of votes, the system is able to rank the stories based on number of votes and duration of uploads. These sites became extremely popular with the introduction of Digg, which combined the power of Delicious and Slashdot’s features. As number of these sites increased, a new form of social sites was introduced, which only aggregated the results of different social sites into one area.

Benefits and Cons of using Social News Sites

Pros
Due to the social vote aspect, the results tend to be very relevant
Provides a unique experience
Cons
Some can be cumbersome to start (need to register…)
Some are complicated to use

Digg

Digg has a lot of things going on in their website, which makes it very interesting and fun to use. The layout of the site is pretty exciting. It is very colorful with thoroughly organized contents. The top menu contains different categories of interest such as gaming, sports, and entertainment. The homepage contains the most popular contents based on votes, and updates itself every five minutes. The link sites tend to be good news source, but sometime have blog posts that are not that relevant.

This site was really useful for me where the news feeds allow me to stay up-to-date while enjoying some of interesting posts. Furthermore, there is a search tool bar, which helps me to locate relevant news. Although there are no search options to narrow the search, users can breakdown the links by source and age of the content. These features were not helpful in my opinion. However, there is a section that monitors the trend of users’ searches, which is neat fun feature of the site.

There is also a Facebook feature associated with Digg, which allows users to post their content through Facebook. This is a really unique feature and a big time saver. Since I do not need to visit Digg in order to contribute, it saves me time by using the Facebook interface. I am a big fan of this tool.

Pros
Good contents
Provides a unique experience
Exciting layout
Cons
Some minor useless contents such as blogs (depends on the purpose of the search)
Lack of search options

Digg Tutorial

Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo! Buzz is very similar to Digg in contents and features. This site is also a Social News Site that allows users to post contents and vote on the popularity/relevance of the article. The first impression of the web-page seems to be more exciting with the colorful layout of the section. The dramatic photos of the articles make it more eye-catching as well. The right section of the homepage lists the new contents that were uploaded onto the site, which updates itself every five minutes. Compared to Digg, Yahoo lacks organization. There is no large category section on their website, and the users must use the small category pull down menu to access the right category. This tends to be cumbersome and annoying.

On the other hand, the contents seem to be scattered around. There are a lot more blog posts here than Digg, and most of the contents look unreliable. Yahoo also has two search bars (one for the Yahoo search engine and the other for Buzz), which is very confusing for the first time users. Furthermore, once the search is executed in the Buzz section, there are absolutely no options for the users to narrow down there search. Granted that the purpose of these sites is to allow users to contribute, searchers must be able to locate very specific articles. As a result, I would not recommend using this site for Social News.

Pros
Good contents
Exciting layout
Cons
Confusing layout
No of search options
Lack of organization

Yahoo Buzz Orientation

Conclusion

Overall, Digg seems to be better social news tool than Yahoo! Buzz based on my experience. It seems like there is more activity on the Digg site than Yahoo’s interface. Furthermore, the search experience for Digg seems to be much better than Yahoo. It locates more relevant results while having more search options than Yahoo. Furthermore, the Facebook connection program by Digg is very useful tool that saved me a lot of time. I would strongly recommend using Digg for Social News Site.

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People Search: iSearch vs. 411 Locate

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 22:54)

Introduction

With the world becoming ever more complex, it has become difficult to keep track of contact information. For me, I cannot ever remember the phone number of my parents work or my sister’s room number (they literally have four different contact numbers). To address the critical demand for contact information, many search tools have been developed for users to quickly locate the people information. Many of these People Search Engines such as iSearch and 411 Locate are effective and efficient in retrieving both business and personal contact information. In this blog, I will review these two personal contact search tools on their effectiveness to locate relevant information.

Privacy concern???

Due to the nature of the topic, there have been a lot of privacy concerns recently. However, most of the sites only compile public information, which do not violate anyone’s privacy. On the other hand, there are some sites that report private information that are extracted from personal websites and profiles (although some of these might be sneaky, they are most likely assessable by any internet user). As a result, there have not been many limitations on how far these sites can go to retrieve relevant data. Although I believe there are some privacy concerns, but the benefits of the tools seems to outweigh the minor privacy violation.

iSearch

iSearch is one of the leading people search engines in the world. Although they claim to have a large number of contact information, I had absolutely no luck with this program. I have conducted twenty different searches ranging from personal friends to famous people, and less than three showed up accurately. This site seems to need a lot more data in order to be effective.

As for the experience, it is not unique or interesting at all. The homepage is very plain with only a search bar and a logo. Although the users can choose the type of keyword they are inputting (Name, Phone, Email, or Screen Name), iSearch cannot retrieve the right information most of the time. If it is able to retrieve multiple results, users can limit the searches by location, career, and school. On the results page, there is a photo of the person on the right side, which only appears once in a while. With all the drawbacks in mind, I would not recommend using this website at all.

Pro
Quick search results
Divided keyword section
Con
Lack of user options
Data retrieval (precision) rate is very low
Not exciting experience

411 Locate

411 Locate is another example of People Search Engine. This one is a lot more organized than iSearch while providing users with more options. The homepage do not have any cool graphics, but has subdivided search options. These search tabs divide the section based on the type of results that the users are looking for such as the map location or business addresses.

The search itself is very simple and takes less than a second to bring up the results. It also seems to maintain a larger database than iSearch. The same searches that were conducted in iSearch were also executed for 411 Locate, and returned five out of ten searches. As a result, 411 Locate seems to be a better search tool. Furthermore, they also maintain variety of different business search engine tools such as Yellow Pages, which makes it easier for the users to search.

As for the experience, the site is very plan. Again, there are no cool graphics or photo decorated web page. However, the searches are pretty helpful and the site can be used mobile. This is the really attractive part especially when I need a contact really fast. The business numbers here are very accurate and the reverse search helps to locate who the caller might be. Overall I would recommend using 411 Locate for people searches.

Pro
Quick search results
Divided by the different method of search
Large number of personal contacts
Con
Lack of user options
Not exciting experience (no photos)

Conclusion

Although the experience for both of these websites is not that exciting or fun, they provide important information on personal and business contact information. After conducting some detailed searches, I believe 411 Locate is a better people search tool overall based on the accuracy of locating relevant contact information. The mobile feature of 411 Locate is also very helpful and could be accessed by phone very easily. It helped me find the location of different restaurants for my meetings. I would strongly recommend using 411 Locate for all your contact information.

Other People Search Engines

Lunar.com

buddyfetch.com (meeting new people by interest and hobbies

EGroupSearch

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Addict-o-matic and Collecta

by aegreen (21 Dec 2009 21:30)

I decided to perform a search to compare two different real time information search engines. After a superficial investigation during class, I agreed with the average rating the class gave two sites: Addict-o-matic and Collecta. On average, the class rated Addict-o-matic the best and Collecta the worst of the real time information search engines. Here, I will delve deeper to determine if my findings support BIT 330's and my initial opinions.

The Search

My term project topic involves major US commercial airlines, so I chose one that I could use in a query to compare these two engines: [american airlines].

Addict-o-matic

Here's the search I used for this lovely tool, which is so much better than Collecta on my query that it's not even funny. Could I ask for a more comprehensive real time search engine? If you take a look at my query, you can see that Addict-o-matic has compiled American Airlines information from so many different sources: Twitter Search, Bing News, Google Blog Search, Friendfeed, YouTube, Digg, Tweetmeme Links, Twingly Blog Search, Bloglines, Ask.com News, Flickr, Truveo Video Search, Delicious Tags, Blinkx Mainstream Vid News, Technorati, Yahoo Web Search, Wikio, and Wordpress.com.

And these are just the defaults! By clicking the link at the top of the page that says "Available Sources," I can check/uncheck boxes for these in addition to Google News, Yahoo Top News Sources, topix, Yahoo News, Newsvine Tags and Google News Images. This feature really allows me to refine my search to return the most relevant and useful results possible.

Of the many sources returned and listed above, I'm impressed that only Yahoo Web Search and Delicious Tags yield no results on the Addict-o-matic home page. In addition, I didn't even know some of them existed! I'm thankful that this search engine has alerted me to real time information sources such as Friendfeed, Digg, Blinkx, Wordpress and Wikio. This site doesn't just give me information that I'm looking for, it also shows me things I didn't know!

Furthermore, there are 80 entries total shown on the home page. Of these, 20 are relevant to my search. For a normal engine, like Google, that would not be the best precision. However, for a query using mostly blog and video sources, I'd say that it's pretty good for a more formal search like mine.

Another feature that I love is the box that pops up when I hover over an entry. It elaborates further on the information within it, allowing me to see if it is something I am really interested in reading more about. In addition, there are helpful sections at the bottom of the site that allow me to see current hot topics by category or browse by category.

Collecta

I performed the same search with this engine. Although I understand my initial reaction to its usefulness, after spending a little more time I now see how Collecta can be useful. First, I will say that for a query like mine, Collecta may not be the best place to look. Because it literally returns the most recent content, the homepage constantly refreshes and shows only about ten results at a time. However, a good time to use this, for example, could have been during the "Balloon Boy" incident. I'm sure that if I just heard about the incident and wanted to learn more about it as it was occurring, I could have searched [balloon boy] and found all the information I wanted to stay updated on breaking events.

I also think it's useful that I can click on an entry and read it on the right side of the page, rather than having to navigate to its site as with Addict-o-matic. Finally, on this site I can also check/uncheck boxes for including/excluding the categories of Stories, Comments, Updates, Photos and Videos. However, note that this is not true for individual sources.

My Verdict

You'll notice that I had a ton more to say about Addict-o-matic than Collecta. This is not to say that Collecta isn't useful, as I pointed out, but it's just not as useful as the latter. Especially when very current information is required, this engine is among the best. However, Collecta is only relevant in certain situations; and honestly, for my term project purposes, it wasn't. On the other hand, I just think that Addict-o-matic is amazing! It can compile so many relevant sources, it really saves me a lot of work. And it has many great additional features that only enhance the experience, as I discussed above. Basically, my conclusion is this: Collecta is good, but Addict-o-matic is just so much better. I still agree with the ratings given by our BIT 330 class, which reflect my findings quite accurately.

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SiloBreaker: A Wealth of Information

by aegreen (21 Dec 2009 21:29)

SiloBreaker is a revolutionary news search, analysis and insight engine that certainly gave me some new insights when I used it. Below is a blog from my own wikidot site, which I wrote analyzing SiloBreaker.

How I Used It

The Search

I could tell that this engine would be useful for staying up-to-date on my term project topic, so I typed [american airlines] into the search bar. First, SiloBreaker brought up a profile and factsheet link at the top right of the page for the US company American Airlines, which is exactly the subject I was hoping to find.

Headlines

The second thing I noticed was all the news headlines down the middle column. I like that the headlines show when they are "first reported" as well as when they are "updated." This makes it easy for me to see if I should re-read an entry based on whether it has been changed.

Videos

Then, I noticed the videos along the top left. These are not too long, so they would provide a great alternative to reading news. However, they seem to be a little less relevant than the middle column headlines. There are four videos, but two of them, like the one below, are not really pertinent to someone looking for news on American Airlines:

In Focus

Underneath the videos is the "In Focus" box, which seems to show news related to American Airlines grouped by categories: people, companies, organizations, keyphrases, cities, countries, topics, industries and publications. This tool would make it really easy for me to, for example, search for American Airlines news in Dallas, Texas or find information on American Airlines' merger with a specific company.

Content Volume

Further down on the right, I see the "Content Volume" widget, showing the volume of American Airlines news items over the past 2-1/2 months divided by media type:

This tells me that the vast majority of recent-ish news items have been in article form, which might tell me ahead of time that if I'm looking for a video, it could be difficult to find.

Network

The next item on my growing list of useful stuff is the "Network" tool. It allows me to see the geographic locations and organizations in which the most American Airlines news is occurring, along with their relationships. I can even see the most popular keyphrases related to American Airlines. This would be very valuable in helping me refine my search. For example, I could type [American Airlines cocaine San Juan] and get more results about very hot, recent news items. I also think the customization options are awesome. If I want to see just keyphrases, I can! If I want to see less organizations and more locations, I can, all the while seeing the many relationships between them. If you want to find lots of information about American Airlines news before actually reading the news, this is the tool for you.

Hotspots

At first glance, this next box seems very similar to the "Network" widget. However, it can be utilized in a different way. While it also displays the geographic locations with the most American Airlines news, it can be narrow by time periods, making it especially useful for news searches in the past or during a very specific window.

Trends

Like "Hotspots," the "Trends" widget is also similar to the "Network" tool, although it seems to deal pretty exclusively with organizations. On this page, I can compare the volume of news on American Airlines relative to Japan Airlines and AMR Corporation, for example. The potential I see in this is that I could find out what organizations are related to American Airlines news with the "Network" tool, then enter those organizations into the "Trends" box and see what happens. This could prove quite useful in discovering to what extent news about American Airlines and other organizations is interrelated.

Blogs, Audio/Video, Quotes, More Content

The last two boxes along the right side, "Blogs" and "Audio/Video," are pretty self explanatory, though still pretty great tools. Viewing American Airlines-related blogs would be ideal for finding out people's reactions to news items, instead of just reading the actual news. The same goes for the "Quotes" section, which can be found in the middle column below the Headlines. Again, this really allows me to see what people are thinking about the news. Finally, the last section underneath "Quotes" is "More Content." This area is a whole listing of more headlines grouped by medium, just in case the plethora of information already displayed wasn't enough. I see over ten pages of this, which could keep me busy for a long while. However, it gives me the ability to search by date or relevance, which makes things a little easier.

Conclusion

Basically, SiloBreaker blows my mind. I could literally spend days and days exploring my [American Airlines] search before really taking full advantage of the knowledge and tools provided by this site. It seems that with SiloBreaker, I could find everything I ever wanted to know about American Airlines news. I can use it to find news that I never thought to search for. I can use it to discover news networks, find hotspots, track trends, view blogs, and so much more. I had no idea that such a comprehensive search engine existed, but now that I do I will be spending a lot more time with it. Hopefully, over the course of the term project, I will begin to get a handle on some of the great power of this news tool.

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Down, Deeper and Deeper...

by aegreen (21 Dec 2009 21:24)

This blog is dedicated to discussing the deep web and its search tools, as well as going in-depth about my favorite, Scirus, and how it can be useful for students.

The Deep Web

This is something I never knew existed! From what I can tell, it is basically pages and pages that are "invisible" to most search engines for various reasons. This is a problem because a lot of academic content is part of the deep web, and thus cannot be found through traditional search engines. So, this is why we have academic search engines dedicated to retrieving content from the deep web.

Search Tools

In class, we looked at a few of these academic search tools, including these deep web tools:

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We also learned that a good deep web academic search tool is:

• Comprehensive
  • Contains lots of different sources about many different things
  • Contains information from a wide time span
  • Contains current information
• Integrated across and into databases
• Transparent about what types of information it does and doesn't possess

Keeping this criteria in mind, I will now discuss my favorite of these tools, Scirus.

Scirus

Based on the criteria we learned in class, Scirus is a great deep web academic search tool! Check out my analysis using the above framework, scoring elements on a scale of 1-10:

Analysis

• Comprehensive (9)
  • Contains lots of different sources about many different things - look at this page to see all the different sources Scirus uses. I'd say that the large amount qualifies it as containing enough sources about enough information. (9)
  • Contains information from a wide time span - in the Advanced Search option, you can choose to return results in any range from before 1900 to after 2010. When I searched from before 1900 to 1900 for author:smith, it returned tons of results, and a quick scan showed that the earliest result was from 1563. I also performed the same search using from 1900 to 2010 and returned 367,460 results. So, I think it's safe to say this engine covers a wide time span. (9)
  • Contains current information - With the same search, setting the date to include only 2009, 20,269 results are returned. And since I'm searching scientific documents, that seems pretty current to me! (9)
• Integrated across and into databases - still a little fuzzy on what this means, but I'd imagine that Scirus is pretty good at this, too. (8)
• Transparent about what types of information it does and doesn't possess - you can look here to read in detail on this subject, but Scirus is very clear on what it does and doesn't index…very good to know. (9)

Overall Score: 8.66/10 - A very good deep web academic search tool indeed!

Now I'm going to talk about some other stuff I discovered while using this tool…

Most Useful Features…

1. When you search you can filter your results by source type, meaning Journal Sources, Preferred Web, or Other Web. Check out the full list at Advanced Search.
2. You can also filter results by document type, meaning HTML, PDF, or Word
3. You can check the box next to results and choose to email, save, or export them
4. You can click the link under a result to show similar results
5. You can sort results by relevance or date
6. Using advanced search, you can:
   • Search the complete document or any part of it, including Title, Author, Keyword, ISSN and URL
   • Use specific search syntax, like [author:] or [car*]. See the full list here.
   • Filter by date subject and information type
7. Scirus provides an About page loaded with useful information about the tool

Final Thoughts

I wish I had known about the deep web and its academic search tools for a lot of the research I did during my first three years at college. It would have been so useful! It seems almost impossible to find academic sources with a general search engine, but little did I know that some engines return only those. And Scirus is not at all what I envisioned an academic tool to be. It is so easy to use and has so many features that let you refine your search as perfectly as possible. I'm going to be spending a lot more time on sites like these from now on!

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Geography Based Sites and My Life

by aegreen (21 Dec 2009 21:23)

During my exploration of the geography-based sites provided in class, I saw some that I already use and love while discovering many that I've never seen before. Some of these will be helpful and interesting to me now, while others have the potential to be indispensable to me this winter because I will be interning in Chicago, a place I have never lived before, for 10 weeks. Below I will discuss what sites I love now, what sites I love now that I know about them, and what sites I plan to fall in love with in January 2010 (and beyond - Eurotrip anyone??).

Which Sites I Love Now…

Google Maps

This site lets me see exactly where I'm going, and I've already used it to check out where I'll be living in January. I love the street view function, which I used to take a peek at the outside of my future apartment building, as well as the surrounding area on my street. And of course, I now know how what route I should take to the office and how long it will take me.

Google Earth

It's so cool! I can see my Mom's house, my Dad's house, my apartment in Ann Arbor, and my future Chicago apartment. I also checked out India and Puerto Rico. It's so amazing to see places I know well from a different point of view, but especially places I've never seen! I love changing the street and 3D building views to really get a feel for a place (especially if I'm planting on visiting). In addition, the traffic and weather features are useful! But I also use it because it's interesting, for example, if I'm curious about the Pacific Ocean or Mars. This program has sucked hours from my life, but I'm fine with that.

Kayak

I recently visited this site to look for a return flight for my Dad when he helps me move to Chicago. First, the "prefer nonstop" filter was helpful, not to mention the "include nearby airports" and flexible dates options (if you're a member - but it's so easy and free to sign up that it's no problem). Next, it makes my job so much easier because I can use the sliders on the left to get a flight at just the right time to fit my Dad's schedule. And, if he was picky, I could eliminate the airlines he didn't like or choose the airlines whose credit card he owns.

Finally (and obviously,) I love this tool because it takes all the work out of my job. Instead of visiting all the discount travel sites (Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and all the airline sites (American Airlines, Delta Airlines, etc.), and then spending time altering all the searches and comparing their price and duration, I can just visit this one site that does it all for me. You have no idea how much time I've saved since I started using it, and for me that's the best feature.

ViaMichelin

I would never have made my way around Europe two summers ago without this handy planning tool! Before I left, I scheduled my flights and then used ViaMichelin to figure out how to get from every plane, train and subway station (it recognizes them all!) to every hostel. I printed the directions and used them, and they actually never steered me wrong. Without this site, I would have wasted a lot more time walking around with heavy backpacks and lot more money on cab fares. There were a couple similar sites at the time, but they were not nearly as detailed or accurate, so ViaMichelin was my lifesaver. I recommend using it for all your European travel needs, and don't worry - you can trust it.

Which Sites I'm Flirting with…

Google Maps Popular Content

In this section, I'm really starting to like the "Find Anything Around You" feature. You can literally type in anything, from pizza to parking, and it finds it for you! And if you know Ann Arbor, you know that those are two very important search items for the area. I also like the SpotCrime tool, especially in light of the amount of Ann Arbor crime that's been happening recently. It helps me stay up on current crime events and reminds me to always be alert on the walk home.

Finally, although it's more cool than useful, I like looking at the lights of Chicago now and dreaming what they will be like when I get there. I feel like I'm preparing myself for the move, even if I'm really just daydreaming.

Google Moon Map

This tool is probably the least useful, but arguably one of the most interesting, tools I've come across. I can't believe how far technology has come that I can actually look at the surface of the moon up-close. I bet someone could check these images against the moon landing ones and settle the whole "hoax" speculation once and for all. In addition, using this tool to look at the moon makes the universe seem smaller - and more possible.

World Sunlight Map

Again, this is one of the less useful but more entertaining sites. I'm loving it right now because it's the perfect distraction from homework. It's the most detailed radar map I've every seen, and it's so cool to see all the clouds over the whole earth. Like the Moon Map, it makes me feel like anything is possible - that things are really smaller than they seem.

Which Sites I Plan to Fall in Love with…

Goby

Not only is this site's mascot, "Goby," the cutest thing I've ever seen, but he's also very helpful! The "what is Goby" and "how to use Goby" buttons get a new user off to a great start. Then, you can literally search for anything you want to do anywhere! And if you don't have any ideas yourself, it makes suggestions for you! The categories help me narrow down what I want to do, and I love the ability to enter any time period, so I can look at different weekends and seasons.

I will definitely be using this in Chicago. I'll be in a new city and I won't know all the great stuff to do and see. But with Goby, I can find anything to do! This tool will help me make sure I don't miss out on anything during my short 10 weeks in the best city in the midwest

Waze

I think Waze is going to be one of the more useful tools for me, judging by the things I've heard about Chicago traffic. During my upcoming internship I'll have to drive to clients in the city or suburbs, and this tool will probably be instrumental in helping me avoid problem areas. Because real people can update traffic information anytime, I'll know about traffic issues long before other websites or news channels will tell me. Plus, since I can search by area, I'll only pick up traffic details that are relevant to me. I'm guessing that this site will be the last one I check before walking out the door.

Google Transit

This tool is perfect for my needs! It worked well for me when I was trying to figure out where in Chicago to live. I could see how long it would take me to get by subway to the office, Wrigley stadium, and other important places in the city, and this affected my ultimate decision. I don't live in Chicago, so without this site, it would have been so difficult for me to get this information. I might have been able to get a map mailed to me, but even that would have wasted so much of my time. Again, I love any tool that saves me time and energy!

Even though I've used it a little so far, I think I'm going to be visiting this site constantly while I live in Chicago. I prefer public transportation because it's so cheap, and since I'll be new in town, I can use Google transit to look up the best way to get anywhere I decide to go. Exciting! (Yet well planned).

EarthTools

Although most features of this site are pretty cool, I can see myself using the time/time zone one the most. I hope I get to travel to other states during my internship, and I might get to work with people in different offices who are in different time zones. This handy tool will help me figure out when I'll really be arriving in, say, Vermont, and what time I should call my coworker in, say, New York.

Moreover, I plan to travel to lots of cool places during my lifetime. As you know, I like to thoroughly plan my trips, and this tool will help me check out what the sun is like in my tropical destinations and plan for the time change. Plus, it's a great excuse to take a break from planning and explore all the facts about the world that EarthTools has to offer.

Final Thoughts

It will be interesting to see which of these sites are still around next year and which ones are replaced by even better tools, as these ones replaced sites before them. I'll miss them, but I'm even more excited to see the improvements that will be made and new capabilities that will be made possible. I only hope that when they do, even though I won't be taking BIT 330 and have so many geography-based sites laid out for me, I'll still be able to find them and use them to, of course, make my life that much easier..

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Travel Site Review: What is the best site to get airline tickets and travel advice???

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 20:36)

Are you a travel fanatic? Well I am one, and have always tried to the best deals for my air tickets. So I have made a list of my favorite websites and some of my experiences with them.

Background

With the recent boom in travel, there has been a lot of new websites that offer cheap airfare tickets. However, are they really cheaper than anywhere else or is it just another false promise? To answer this question, I have conducted an extensive research on different airfare monitors. This project came up because of my long trip to various countries in summer of 2008. I wanted to get the best deal since I needed more than 18 flight tickets. After comparing variety of travel ticketing sites such as Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, I have concluded Kayak to be the cheapest ticketing site.

In addition to air tickets, I had to plan out my trip, which required extensive research of the area. After reviewing through many different travel guide sites such as Lonely Planet and Fodors, I concluded Frommers to be the best travel guide search.

In this blog, I will go in details of how these websites differ from others. In addition I will explain each of the features in detail while going over my experience with each of the websites.

Best Air Ticketing Site: Kayak

What is Kayak and how does it work?

Kayak is basically a travel search engine that helps the users to locate cheap airline tickets, hotel stays, and car rentals. It works very similar to Orbitz where they aggregate travel ticketing prices from hundreds of different travel websites. Kayak then consolidates all of the information and links them its result page. This site makes money by charging per click to external sites (essentially revenue from advertisement). Therefore, the users will not be charged for processing and cannot directly book their flight through Kayak.

Features

There is variety of useful features on this website, but I will only focus on the air flight features. First, users can select what type of travel tickets they are looking for (i.e. one-way, round trip, etc.). Then they are prompted to select dates. Although surfers can specify specific dates, they also have the option to widen their travel date preferences. Furthermore, users can also request for non-stop flights. For convenience, there is a calendar on the right side that shows the consumers what the prices might be on certain dates. There is also an option to compare Kayak’s services to its competitors such as Expedia and Priceline.

Once the search is executed, the users have more options. They now can narrow by flight takeoff or landing times in addition to which carriers users would prefer to take. The users can also narrow the results by choosing layover or trip duration. The most important part for me was the price. Comparing it to other sites Kayak had by far the largest number of flight tickets while being cheaper by almost $50 on average.

Overall, my experience with this site has been very positive. I have never had a problem with booking through their links and I like the fact that I don’t have to pay to utilize their services. In addition, they have many useful options that can narrow my search, which saves me a lot of time.

Pros
Easy to use
Many different features
A lot of search results
Accurate/cheap findings
Cons
Experience isn’t exciting

What is Kayak all about…

Best Travel Advice Site: Frommer’s

Frommers is basically a travel guide publishing business that recently launched its own website. It has a long legacy of creating unique travel books since 1957 and has expanded its coverage to all over the world. The site has many excellent features that aim to help users establish a plan for their vacation and for them to understand the environment of their destination.

I love the wide variety of features that this site has to offer. First they have a specific web-page for each major city and have intense details regarding each location. These details include a section on background, list of tourist attraction, maps of the location, and suggested itineraries.

Overall, I enjoyed their sample itineraries, which I utilized to form my vacation plans. The attraction lists were helpful to establish my interests at certain destination while being able to select different restaurants on the way. There is also a blog section that allows me to talk to other people who have already been there. I was able to get prompt answers for my question while providing me with numerous different perspective on different locations.

Pros
Extensive coverage on different locations
Community posts where people can write about their perspective (blog)
Different option (itineraries, photos, maps)
Helpful guides for each location
Cons
Some aspects of the sites is complicated to use
Few minor cities do not have much coverage

How to utilize Frommers.com Community

Conclusion

If you like to travel are looking for a great deal on flight tickets, I would recommend using Kayak to purchase your ticket. Even before getting to this step, I would recommend understanding the environment of your destination before making up your mind. In order to do this, I would recommend using Frommers, which gives wide coverage of major tourist attraction sites. I really enjoyed using these sites for many years, and I hope you enjoy them too…

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Picture Search: Google Images vs. Pixolu

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 20:32)

This blog deals with two different image search tools and their comparisons: Google Images and Pixolu

Introduction: What is image search?

With the increasing demand for sophisticated image search engines, numerous different technology companies have attempted to address this need through their web search tools. Some of these tools include Ask Images, PicSearch, and Yahoo Images. Although there are many different query systems, I will focus on Google Images and Pixolu (an alternative image search engine tool). This blog will evaluate the key features of each search tool while assessing their effectiveness in locating the relevant images. In addition, I will go over my experiences with these tools, and give you my recommendations based on ease of use and efficiency.

Use

So how can these tools help the users? Well if the users are looking for simple images for their presentation or for their joy, it would be useful to use the Google Images. However, what if you are looking for very specific image… Will Google Images help then… The answer is NO. It will take forever for a surfer to locate a very specific photo since web search tools such as Google Image targets keywords for the query. As a result, it would be more effective to use tools like Pixolu, which scans for similar photos as the ones that users are specifically looking for.

Google Images

Google Images was created by the Google Inc and allows the surfers to search for images throughout the web. The Google Image system works very similar to the original web query system they have in place. The keyword input section helps the Google Image to locate the images based on filename, link text, and texts around the image. Once the search is complete Google archives all of the results in a thumbnail format where the user is able to pick the one they like. Once the image is clicked, there is a small display of the image on the top of the page while the website appears on the bottom. There is a new feature Google Image, which was introduced on October 27, 2009 and helps the surfers to access similar images.

From my experience with the search engine, it seems to do a great job at finding variety of different images from the users query. However, if I am looking for a very specific picture, it has a hard time finding the necessary image. Furthermore, there tend to be very few options for the user to narrow down the search. Although the surfer is able to size, type of image, color, and description, there are no options to find very specific photos. The image quality also seems to be varying without any organization (Some are very high quality while most are very small and low in quality). There is an advanced image search options, but it does not help much. Users can also narrow the image by size but not by quality. Overall, it is a decent image search tool…

Pros

• Very simple to use
• Maintains a large number of images (Good at querying)
• Fast search time
• Results tend to be relevant

Cons

• Lack of options for the user
• Tend to be disorganized in terms of image quality
• Too many steps to get to the image

How to use the advance feature of Google Image

Pixolu

Pixolu is a image search engine that locates similar pictures based on users key selections. Although there are no options for the users, it is an effective site for finding similar photos. My experience with this site has been overall positive. It is somewhat cumbersome to work with this system. The search tool tends to be very slow and requires a fast computer to fully utilize the sites’ capabilities. Furthermore, the system design is confusing. In order to go to the website with the image, the user must click the photo and then click the link on the right side of the screen. However, it was very effective at finding a very specific image. On the other hand, there are many different processes to obtain this image. The user must pick some images that are to their end result and then keep on narrowing the results until the surfer reaches the goal. This is a good website for finding specific images.

Pros

• Great at finding a very specific image
• Unique search engine experience

Cons

• Very slow
• Cumbersome to use
• Requires a lot of memory/fast computer
• No options
• Confusing interface

How to use Pixolu

Conclusion (Recommendation and Comparison)

Overall there are many differences between Google Images and Pixolu. These two tools have different objective use, and therefore I would not recommend one over the other. If the user wants to generic find some images for personal use (i.e. presentations), I would recommend using Google Images since it has a broad range of photos. On the other hand, if the surfer is trying to find very specific pictures or have a picture in mind, I would recommend using Pixolu. Although the query process is cumbersome, the end results are amazing. Therefore, my recommendation is using both websites based on the purpose of the search.

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What are real-time search tools? Is it useful? Scoopler VS OneRiot

by moonpark (21 Dec 2009 20:32)

With the rise of the Web 2.0, the demand for live updates has exponentially increased in the recent years. As a result, some search tools were developed to meet these demands. In this blog, I will give some background and potential use of these tools. In addition, I will compare and evaluate two of these search engines: Scoopler and OneRiot.

Introduction

Background

Real-time search is a technology that enables users to locate data based on time of creation. This is different from web-based search where the query system scans the internet for relevant information, and does not categorize the results by the post time. By utilizing these real-time search tools, the users will not have to scan different sites for updates.

Use

These search tools are very useful when searching for time sensitive information. For example, a user just found out there has been a massive earthquake in Tokyo, and wanted to retrieve some primary information. If the query person used web-based search tool such as Google, then the user would have most likely located out-dated periodicals. On the other hand, if the person used a real-time based search system, then he/she might have found first-hand accounts of the event or some live coverage page. Therefore, these real-time search gadgets are great source for locating time sensitive information. (Be aware: these search engines tend to have a lot of status updates and blog entries due the nature of the query process)

Live-Search Tools

Scoopler

Scoopler is a real-time search engine that scans the web for breaking news, photos, and vides from different resources. Some of these sources include Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and Delicious.

From my experience with Scoopler, it does a great job posting both live feeds as well as popular content. They maintain two columns where the left side has very recent articles that might be relevant to the search query while maintaining live feeds on the right side. These live feeds tend to focus mostly on status updates from Twitter. The nice thing about this page is that everything is organized very well while providing the details of the poster. (Please refer to the screenshot on the right for the layout of the page)

In addition, they maintain some category tabs on the top menu, which makes it easier for the users to locate relevant information. In addition, they have a live feed bar on the top of the page so that the users can see the most up-to-date posts.

Pros
Maintains both live posts and popular post list
News fee at the top of the page
Subdivided categories (easier navigation)
Diverse search resources
Good number of relevant articles
Cons
Boring interface (not much graphics)

OneRiot

OneRiot is another real-time search engine, but mainly focuses on the social network posts rather than articles. They mainly query through Twitter and Digg to locate relevant information. As a result, most of the results tend to status updates and social posts. (Please refer to the video below for instruction on how to use OneRiot)

Using OneRiot was a unique experience, but had limits on relevant information. Since it only uses socially networking sites to search for user’s keywords, the results tend to be useless the user is looking for status updates. In addition, there is no differentiating factor for this website compared to other real-time search engine.

On the other hand, they do maintain trendy topics below the search bar. They also structured the site so that it is kind of exciting, but the results are pretty much worthless.

Pros
Somewhat interesting structure
Easy to use
Cons
Very limited resources (focuses mainly on Twitter and Digg)
Does not have much relevant information

Conclusion (Comparison)

Overall, I would rather use Scoopler to search for live information since it screens more resources than OneRiot. In addition, it tends to bring up more information and is much more organized. I especially liked how they separated the up-to-date information from popular outcomes. Furthermore, Scoopler doesn’t just focus on status updates, but also searches for articles as well as blogs. I believe this is a useful tool for someone looking for breaking news stories or to follow the trend of the internet.

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Digg vs. StumbleUpon

by Wdchen (21 Dec 2009 19:24)

Comparison of two social news sites: Digg and StumbleUpon

There are many different types of social sites available on the web. If you want to find/share current information about what is going around in the world, you can do so through many different venues. Everything is all within a click of a mouse! Today, I'll be focusing primarily on the news aspect of social sites.

Purpose

The main purpose of this blog entry is to help you distinguish and compare two social news sites: Digg and StumbleUpon While many news sites tend to be relatively similar in providing you essentially the same information, I will make an attempt at demonstrating the uniqueness of the two.

Layout

When you first enter into Digg and StumbleUpon, this is what you see:

From a first glance, the difference between the two is already quite apparent. On the left, we have the homepage of Digg and to the right we have StumbleUpon. Digg appears to heavily focus on news items. Right from the start, we already see various news articles and how many "Diggs" or hits, people have ranked it. StumbleUpon, on the other hand, appears to also provide you with news articles, but focuses on other areas as well, such as art, music, photography, etc. From taking a look at the two homepages, this is the first observation that I find to be quite revealing.

Search

Because my term project is on Crime and Violence and news articles definitely encompass a big portion of the work, initially, you would think these two sites would come in handy and be helpful.

Therefore, I conducted a simple [crime and violence news] query for the two.

Digg

• Crime and Violence News

The results from Digg are satisfactory. I would say that 5 out of the first 10 would be worth taking a look at , and perhaps 1 or 2 might be useful for my term project. In order for the news articles to be highlighted and appear in the search, people must rate it through giving it a "Digg". Otherwise, the article may get unnoticed and will not be generated in the results. Essentially, the more "Diggs" an article gets, the more popular it becomes and may continue to get more views, potentially appearing on the homepage, if there are enough "Diggs".

Digg focuses on being a democratizing digital media outlet. Any user is allowed to participate by taking 4 simple steps:

1. Discover
   • Submit your favorite articles, images, or videos online
   • If it is good, determined by the number of "Diggs" it receives, it has the opportunity to make it onto the homepage in its listed category
2. Select
   • Find particular articles, images, or videos that you enjoy and participate by "Digging" them. This contributes to their popularity.
   • If you find stories with bad links, are off-topic, or are duplicates, you have the authority to "Bury" or delete them as well.
3. Share
   • Through the process of inviting friends or making friends on Digg, you can find out what they are "Digging" and vice versa. Doing so, will allow you to build a network.
   • Email
     • Through being a Digg user, you have the ability to email your friends, whether a user or not, the stories that you find interesting.
4. Discuss
   • Part of the entire process is to find stories that you find interesting and talk about them. It is highly encouraged to share your opinions by commenting on stories, images, and videos. This further builds the network and allows the discussions to flow.

Listed below are the topics that Digg highlights:

• Technology
• World & Business
• Science
• Gaming
• Lifestyle
• Entertainment
• Sports
• Offbeat

StumbleUpon

• Crime and Violence News

The results from StumbleUpon seem to be a step below Digg in terms of relevancy. After conducting the same query, the first 5 results are shown at right. From rating the first 10 results, I would say that 0 "good" results were obtained. Although the layout of the results are well placed, with a small thumbnail of the page available, the results are just not good, whatsoever!

As far as user participation goes, StumbleUpon is very similar to Digg in this respect. The entire site focuses on StumbleUpon uses, in the form of ratings. This allows users to establish a collaborative opinion on a particular website's quality. In terms of distinguishing themselves from a regular search engine, StumbleUpon stresses the usability and ease of the rating system. Rather than searching for quality web sites, StumbleUpon members are taken to sites that already match their preferences and interests.

After conducting some searches and exploring the two sites, my initial impression of StumbleUpon has been confirmed. Although StumbleUpon does provide you with news articles, the quality of the articles are not very impressive. It definitely focuses its attention on other aspects of its site and does not place as much importance on being a news provider.

To the right are the categories that StumbleUpon seems to place more emphasis on, as opposed to focusing on news. This is quite an extensive list and would be very interesting to play around with, but because I am doing an evaluation based on the usefulness for my term project, I would have to say that these other functions are not quite as relevant.

Comparison

Overall, Digg and StumbleUpon do provide you with news articles, but both generate results that lack relevancy to my subject, compared to other news sites, such as CNN Crime or AOL Crime. The main purpose of being a social news site, however, is the ability, as a user to participate freely in its site content. For both, you have to authority to rank a particular article or website either by a "Digg" or a "StumbleUpon" to inform other users about its information provided.

In terms of the evaluations, I would rate Digg a 4 out of 10, and StumbleUpon a 2 out of 10. Digg provides a very limited number of articles that are worth looking at, but would not be a site that I would visit on a regularly basis. The results are not good enough to spend much time on it.

StumbleUpon does not provide any relevant results at all! It is evident that their attention is spent elsewhere as opposed to on news sites and therefore, in conducting my research, I would not spend any time on StumbleUpon.

Pros of Digg

• Good layout for a homepage, providing top news for users to easily scan
• Gives users authority to participate in choosing content

Cons of Digg

• Limited relevant results on crime and violence

Pros of StumbleUpon

• Has many different categories for a user to explore
• Good functional layout that is user friendly

Cons of StumbleUpon

• Results for crime and violence are not relevant at all!

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Images:Google News vs. Yahoo News

by Wdchen (21 Dec 2009 19:23)

Finding images on Google News and Yahoo News

Outline

1. Introduction
2. Description of Project
3. Images from Google News
4. Images from Yahoo News
5. Comparison
6. Summary

Introduction

There are a wide variety of tools out on the internet that help you to search for images. The two specific tools that I want to focus on are Google News and Yahoo News. Both of them spur from the search engines that we all regard so highly, Google and Yahoo, and it definitely is not a surprise that they both include image searches from their news section. For these search engines to be successful and continually encourage more users to use their services, these new innovations must occur regularly.

Project Description

The term project that I have chosen to focus on is that of Crime and Violence in the United States. For the most part, I will be creating a tutorial for the new employee demonstrating the current work that I've been doing, followed by steps to make the transition and how to succeed in the new position. I will be gathering various forms of information, from websites, search engines, image sites, simple tools, etc. to help with this process. Currently, I have been collecting ongoing news articles, and occasionally relevant images that pertain to this topic and may be helpful in visually observing to understand what exactly is occurring. The purpose of the blog is to compare two news image sites, Google News and Yahoo News, and to demonstrate the usefulness of each for the completion of this project.

Images from Google News

When you first go to the Google News website, it provides you strictly with the top stories of the day. In order to view the images, you have to click on the images link as shown on the right, which will bring you to Google News Images. From there, if you have time, you could always just scan the photos of the top stories and click on them to read further. Or, if you're on a time crunch and only want to find images that relate to the topic of Crime and Violence in the US, you would create a query and conduct the search. It would appear as if the syntax features from the Google search engine are carried onto Google News as well.

After clicking on the [images] link, this is what the page looks like. A bunch of thumbnails are listed on the screen and if you point your cursor at one of them, you are provided with the title of the article that it is taken from, the source, the photographer(s), and the snippet, or summary of what the story is about. As far as the bottom right corner goes, that little number just acts as a reference to how many other similar images there are related to the picture. This can be very helpful because it provides a quick and easy way to find common pictures without having to expend much effort.

Now, back to the search process. During those moments, where you are on a time crunch, you may not remember to use any syntax features in your query. Therefore, after doing a quick crime search, you will be able to find some images. From the results, however, only 3 out of the first 10 prove to be of much use.

With a bit more time, you could incorporate the use of a syntax, in hopes of refining the search and generating better results. What if we limited the search for only sites with the [edu] top level domain with the query crime site:edu? For Google News, however this doesn't appear to generate any better results. From this query, still, only 3 out of the first 10 are relevant.

One good thing about Google News Images is that it provides you with an archived selection, from which you can pick the time frame you want to search for. At the right, you can see the toolbar that allows you to make this selection. This in a sense, is archiving through the news articles, but with the pictures from the article only shown.

Images from Yahoo News

Similarly with Yahoo News, when you first enter the website, it takes you to many articles featuring the top news of the day. By clicking on the [photos] link on the toolbar as shown to the right, it takes you to Yahoo News Photos, in which you are exposed to photos that are categorized in the following manner:

• Most Viewed Photos
• Most Emailed Photos
• Most Recommended Photos
• Top Stories Photos
• U.S. News Slideshows
• Business Slideshows
• World Slideshows
• Entertainment Slideshows
• etc.

Below is just an example of one of the categories

From there, if you have time, you could always click on a picture to find more information about the situation that it is coming from, or you could conduct your search and be on your way. One main distinction between Google News and Yahoo News however, is that when you conduct a search with Yahoo News, it first takes you to a normal results page, featuring some photos, but predominantly website results. To change the feature and obtain only photos, you must use the cursor and select [News Photos] as demonstrated below.

After doing so, only images appear, but an added benefit is that the description is provided beneath, as opposed to Google News, in which you would have to place your cursor on the picture or click to find out the context.

Conducting a query for [crime] with Google News, we would obtain relevant results for 6 out of the first 10. However, if we wanted to do a comparable search under the query [crime site:edu], Yahoo News for some odd reason will not allow us to do so. We are able to conduct the query for Yahoo and also under Yahoo Images, but not under the News Photos.

Images from Google News vs. Yahoo News

In the meantime, I would say that the major distinction between Google News and Yahoo News is the set-up and page layout. In terms of page layout, I would say that Yahoo News has Google News beat. I like the way that the categories are broken down for Yahoo News because it makes everything a lot easier to locate.
As far as the one [crime] query that was conducted for each goes, Yahoo News seems to have generated better results as well, out of the first 10 results anyhow.

However, the one main issue with Yahoo News is that it is a little bit harder to navigate. After clicking on the [Photos] link, you have to use the cursor once more, to select the [News Photos] option, which is a bit more inconvenient. Also, the query [crime site:edu] did not work with Yahoo News either.

Pros for Google News

• Ability to use syntax features
• User friendly and convenient fo find News Images
• Features that provide you with relevant photos

Cons for Google News

• Only satisfactory results
• Layout could be more appealing

Pros for Yahoo News

• Generates good results
• Appealing page layout featuring photos in various categories

Cons for Yahoo News

• A little difficult to navigate through the page
• Not all syntax options function

Overview

Overall, the distinction between Google News and Yahoo News is not very big. Sure, there are some differences, but in general, it is just a matter of preference on which one you use. Ideally, if you had all the time in the world, you could use them both at all times and always compare and contrast. As far as my term project goes, I will probably jump back and forth. Depending on what kind of results I get will determine whether or not I continue my search to the other image site and vice versa. It is only because I have a bias towards Google that I would start with Google News as my first image site, but you might prefer Yahoo News, and there would definitely be nothing wrong with that.

For images, however, there are many other tools that may prove to be even more useful than the two. Sites like Google Images, Yahoo Images, or Flickr, which although aren't directly limited to news photos, might provide better images. The images from Google News and Yahoo News are only drawn from the articles, and therefore may not provide me with that great of results anyhow.

Due to the variety of the internet and all of its resources, I might never really set my mind to one resource, but use a combination of a couple in order to generate the best results possible.

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Finding Public Information

by Wdchen (21 Dec 2009 19:22)

Useful tools to help you find public information!

Have YOU ever done anything that you wish you hadn't? Do you have something that you don't want people to know about? What does it really feel like to have someone constantly looking over your shoulder?

This is precisely what the internet has become. You are able to find so much information these days, and that includes finding information about other people too. A bit creepy, stalkerish…SCARY?? Possibly, but that's the reality of it today, especially with technology continually increasing every second that we speak.

Purpose

With a blog titled Finding Public Information, and an introduction like that, it's definitely no surprise what I'll be talking about. If you guessed how to find information regarding someone's past history, or more specifically, checking an individual's background, then you would be correct! The purpose of this blog is to discuss and figure out how to conduct searches using two tools: Public Record Finder and Criminal Searches. Please keep in mind, that I am not evaluating or comparing them whatsoever. I am simply taking these tools, which are new to me as well, and hoping to make some sort of sense out of them.

Special Agent Natasha, if you are reading this, then it's much appreciated. At least the time that I'm spending in figuring these tools out can be utilized by someone who can put them to good use. You're definitely at an advantage compared to when I first started because I certainly didn't have this nice and well put together wiki site to help guide me along.

I'll first begin with the Public Record Finder.

Public Record Finder

Intro

When you first start at the homepage, you're given various options. You can:

1. Conduct a search if you know an individual's first, middle, and/or last name and the state that he or she resides in
2. Browse through various categories by state
   • Ex) Alabama's death records, court reports, divorce reports, …etc.
3. Search based on the categories
   • Ex) Birth records, criminal locator, investigation tips, missing persons links, …etc.
4. Conduct International searches (Special Agent Natasha, this one may not prove to be quite as much worth, obviously due to the fact that your job is primarily dealing with US crime and violence, but of course, it never hurts to gain extra information when it's already provided for you)
   • Ex) Info on Canada, South America, Europe, …etc.

Sample Searches

Here, I'll plan on walking you through sample steps on how to utilize this tool. Due to the fun of figuring things out on your own, and due to the lack of time, I'll cover two ways on how to explore this site, but please be aware, that this blog definitely does not do the Public Record Finder site any justice. I simply want to cover the site for your benefit in getting to know more about what it is, and leave you with the rest. Anyhow, let's get started shall we?

For the mere fact that we are at the University of Michigan, I first conduct a search looking up information regarding statistics in Michigan. As you are made aware from the picture at right, the site definitely offers premium sites, in which more specific information is provided for a required fee, but featured below are many categories offered for free as well. For example, suppose you wanted to find information regarding the Michigan Department of Corrections. You could scroll down a little further on the page, and under the Michigan State Departments and Officials section, you would be able to find this link, that would take you to where you wanted. Continuing with the search, say you wanted to find information on Parr Highway Correctional Facility because I had told you that I volunteered there previously through a Sociology 389 Community Practicum course. You would be able to simply pull down a list, select the prison, and be guided to its informational page, finding out that it is a Level I Security Prison.

Furthermore, another method of searching can be started at the category titled Criminal Locator right off the Public Record Finder homepage. After doing so, you would be brought to a page with very many different links to resources that would help you with your criminal search. Listed below are 3 examples of such sites:

• Bureau of Justice Criminal Offenders Statistics
• Crime Spider-The Best Crime and Law Enforcement Site
• Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator

Because I found Crime Spider to be quite interesting, I'll talk a little about that, but before I start, in referring back to the Public Record Finder, you might already be getting the gist of it. Right off the bat, you can conduct an individual search to find more information about one's background, but you can also conduct categorical searches, as I have done in the first, and will demonstrate in this second one as well. Essentially, Public Record Finder connects you as the user, to multiple different informational/search sites, to provide you with a lot of useful information.

Continuing with the Crime Spider search, we first take a look at its homepage. The homepage provides you with a lot of detail about what the site is about, from simply looking at it. You are able to select from a variety of categories, and as I've circled in red, it even acts as a method of keeping up-to-date with the news. This site can act as yet another site to keep you current with the constantly changing news.

Public Record Finder Conclusion

The Public Record Finder can be a resource that enables you to conduct the most basic search of finding an individual's background information, but more so, it ultimately connects you with an abundance of websites that allow you to find information that is relevant to you. So although you may find yourself spending more of your time on the linked resources off of the Public Record Finder, it's this site that acts as a hub for all of the information.

Criminal Searches

Intro

Right as the homepage of Criminal Searches suggests, do you know who these people are: your babysitter, the janitor, school teacher, co-worker, or your gardener? These are people who you interact with on a daily basis, but do you REALLY know who they are?

As I mentioned before, the purpose of this blog is not to compare these two tools, but I will simply mention the fact that Criminal Searches is a relatively simpler tool to use as compared to Public Record Finder. Public Record Finder is a tool that has many more functions.

Sample Searches

Now, in going back to Criminal Searches, you will notice that as the homepage displays above, there really is one main function of the page, and that
is to conduct a person search to see if he or she has a criminal record. Of course, to simply resolve my curiosity, I first searched for my records. As predicted , none were found.

However, say that you wanted to hire a baby sitter, and if you were just that cool to get Paris Hilton. You are already well aware of her previous driving record, but just wanted to double check her record just to make sure everything else checks out. Although this isn't the full comprehensive background check, you come to the conclusion that having Paris Hilton as a baby sitter would completely be sweet, and therefore find her in good graces, even though she may have this traffic offense and may very well have other violations.

Another way that you could quickly identify the safety of your neighborhood would be to conduct a sex offender search. Once again, because we are at the University of Michigan, I wanted to conduct a search in the Ann Arbor, MI area. From the area listed on the map, you are able to see that there are 3 sexual offenders nearby. These individuals could be lurking around who knows where, but it simply means that you should be aware and keep your kids aware. In order to protect your safety, knowing all of this information can help you to become more secure. Ultimately, there is no 100% efficient to make you safe all the time, but you can help eliminate some risk by being informed. This is the primary goal of Criminal Searches. They provide you with the information needed to help reduce your risk.

These hopefully give you a provide you with a good understanding of the functions of Criminal Searches. I know that I did not explain it much in detail, but I believe I have given you the general idea and if you feel that this tool can be useful, then I at least have given you a little head start.

Criminal Searches Conclusion

As you can see from the homepage, this website can be used for multiple functions:

1. Conducting a free criminal search
2. Doing a neighborhood watch to see if your neighborhood is safe
3. Finding sex offenders nearby
4. Obtaing the latest crime alerts
5. Understanding criminal statistics

Unlike the Public Record Finder, Criminal Searches is very focused on keeping you within their own site instead of providing links to others. Its searches are very detailed and it can be used as a simple tool in conducting a quick search. Once again Special Agent Natasha, I would recommend using this tool as a quick way to search an area or to look up someone else in a database. I'm sure that at your offices, you have highly sophisticated and confidential databases that you can scan through, but this hopefully gives you an idea of what is out on the web and how you can search for others.

Conclusion

In terms of using the Public Record Finder and Criminal Searches, I would say that they serve different functions. The Public Record Finder is a tool that links many different pages regarding general public information, whereas Criminal Searches is a database that allows you to search directly for people's statistics. In reality, you can't really even begin to compare the two because they are just that different.

However, as tools for helping with a topic on crime and violence, I would definitely recommend them as sources of information. They help you find information in different, but useful ways!

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The Most Important Aviation News of 2009

by mkeagy (21 Dec 2009 15:25)

Year in review…

Much can change in the commercial aviation industry in a year, and 2009 was no exception. Here are the top 3 news stories (in my opinion) of 2009, brought to you by the search tools demonstrated on this site.

1. Northwest/Delta Merger: SiloBreaker

SiloBreaker has become my go-to site for business news so it is approriate that it provides a wealth of information on the top aviation story of the year. A search for Northwest Delta Merger is a great place to learn about the merger for the first time but there is also enough content to educate even an industry analyst. Some key features to SiloBreaker include:

• Top Stories
• Network

• Geographic Hot Spots
• Company Topic Trends

• Blog Results
• Quotes
• Documents

2. US Airways Flight 1549: Truveo

The "Miracle on the Hudson" is undeniably one of the news stories of the year. Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger became a national hero and household name after safely landing his Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after a birdstrike while departing LaGuardia airport in New York. However, as the wonder of such a "miracle" wears off, the accident brings many industry issues to the spotlight, including commercial pilot experience (or lack thereof), reliability of fly-by-wire technology and the length of pilot duty days.

Truveo is an excellent source of information on flight 1549. The video search engine amalgamates videos from across the web into a simple, well-organized list of search results. Sources include major news channels, as well as user-generated video from sites like YouTube. The advanced search capability allows you to pick and choose which sources to search as well.

3. Continental leaves SkyTeam for Star Alliance: NewsSift

The decision of Continental Airlines to leave the SkyTeam alliance and switch to the Star Alliance has created quite a bit of speculation as to the future outlook of the airline industry. By leaving its alliance with rivals Delta and Northwest and partnering with United, a merger between Continental and United could come fairly soon. Despite a failed merger attempt in 2007, the switch to Star makes a Continental/United merger much more likely in the future.

NewsSift is a great go-to news source for all news regarding Continental and Star Alliance. The search query can be narrowed down to include only news related to Continental and Star Alliance and there are many additional features, including:

• Article Sources
• Top Trends
• Top People
• Top Organizations
• Top Themes
• Sentiment

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Social Bookmarking the Aviation Industry

by mkeagy (21 Dec 2009 15:23)

Access a wide variety of content

Social bookmarking sites are a great source to find information on the aviation industry across the web. By serving as an information community based around the interaction and participation of its users, social bookmarking sites can be a refreshing source of fresh, relevant, and often very interesting information. Here are some of the most useful social sites while researching the commercial aviation industry.

Newsvine

Newsvine is a collaborative journalism site that combines news from users and legitimate sources such as the Associated Press in an easy to find, user-controlled format. Community features include seeding, voting, commenting and conversation tracking. A search query for Airline Industry delivers subtantial relevant results. From an analysts perspective however, as a user-controlled site, relevant industry news is somewhat buried within more "popular" aviation stories like this

Delicious

Despite being one of the pioneering social bookmarking sites, I have found little use in Delicious for performing industry research. As a tag-based site, much of the aviation tags are related to travel tips and not industry performance. "Aviation Industry" Query

Digg

For tag-based sites, Digg provides the most relevant results for an aviation industry analyst. However, the quality of sources isnt as superior as more news-specific sites such as Newsvine. As with most user-controlled sites, there is a prevelance of more "viral" stories that involve travel and not necessarily the industry.

Traffic Comparison

• Orange: Digg
• Red: Newsvine
• Blue: Delicious

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Twitter as a Customer Service Tool

by mkeagy (21 Dec 2009 15:22)

Taking Off

The Airline Industry is a great example of businesses using Twitter effectively (and ineffectively). For the month of August 2009, Social Media guru Brian Solis performed a clever analysis of Twitter usage amongst US airlines. Here I will provide a summarry of Solis' analysis in Twitter Trends: Airline Hotlist August 2009 while including my own opinion as to how Twitter can be used to the Airline's advantage in such a fast-paced and volatile industry.

The Players

The following US commercial airlines
are currently on Twitter:

Carrier	Username	# of Followers
Jet Blue	@jetblue	1,223,459
Southwest	@southwestair	644,533
United	@unitedairlines	34,307
Virgin America	@virginamerica	31,644
American	@aairwaves	13,684
Alaska	@alaskaair	12,240
Delta	@deltaairlines	11,916
Spirit	@spiritairlines	8,179
Hawaiian	@flyhawaiian	4,374
Continental	@continental	3,779
US Airways	@usairways	2,580
Aloha	@aloha_airlines	807
Frontier	@frontierstorm	804

As you can see, the number of followers for each airline is quite varied and not representitive of the carrier's actual size. Noteable oberservations include:

• The top two carriers on Twitter, Jet Blue and Southwest, have more followers than all the other tweeting carriers combined
• Aloha Airlines retains a sizeable following despite shutting down in 2008.

Customer Relations

A great use of Twitter is to improve customer relations, especially with premium business travellers, the the bread and butter of an airline's revenue. Unlike the traditional customer service department, a carrier's participation on Twitter appears publicly as participation in the entire Twitter community. Tweeting also establishes a more personal connection between the traveller and the (often impersonal) airline. In his analysis, Solis also ranked airline's "involvement" in the Twitter community through the number of users the carriers follow, and total tweets tweeted per airline:

"In Social Media, participation counts for everything. It demonstrates willingness to interact with peers and customers, symbolizes intent, and expresses purpose." -Brian Solis

Twitter also serves as a convenient medium for travellers to voice their opinions regarding the airline. Here is the breakdown of personalized tweets directed @airlinename:

Notable Observations:

• American Airlines leads with 6,180 @aairwaves tweets
• Despite being inactive and not tweeting, US Airways recieved almost 5,000 @usairways tweets.

Positive Sentiments in @airlines Tweets

Negative Sentiments in @airlines Tweets

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Social Bookmarking Delicious Vs Diigo

by ranfan (21 Dec 2009 04:32)

In this blog, I will first explain a bit what social bookmarking is, it's pros and cons, then compare two popular social bookmarking sites: Delicious and Diigo.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of meta-data, so that other users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. This could be in the form of a comment, a vote, or tags.

Folksonomy = social tagging, "the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content".

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The bookmarks can be viewed in time order, by its category, tags, or through search.

Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features

Benefits over Traditional Bookmarking

• The human touch - people understand the context/content of the source better than a search engine who tries to use math to determining its meaning.
• Time saver - we learned about the Deep Web in class, so we know that there is a ton of hidden information out there. People can find and bookmark pages not indexed by web spiders.
• Ranking - A social bookmarking system can rank source based on how many other people thought it was important. This is a useful measuring tool.
• Organization - it is an easy way to organize thousands of bookmarks and accessible from any computer.

Negative Side of Social Bookmarking

• No standardized system:there is no clear structure for tags. I may find a great site for Apple Pie Recipe and tag it as "food" "pie" while you may tag it as "applepie".
• Human error: while the human touch is great, it makes mistakes. Often, tags can be misspelled, have multiple meanings, or just unclear.
• Time waster - yes, it seems a bit unconventional for me to call it both a save timer and save waster, but a social bookmarking site does take up a lot of my time. I start browsing all these great sites, then jump to see what other people with similar taste as me have found elsewhere, then go to those… agree with their taste, bookmark it… and repeat the cycle. I love new information, but I don't know when to stop. At least with just the web, I'll get tired of bad results from Google, but with a tool like the ones below, everything I find looks great to me.

Delicious

Delicious (about, video tutorial, help, getting started, search)

I was introduced to Delicious in BIT200 to manage web bookmarks. It is easy to use mainly due to its easy accessibility from browser. Delicious, as a power social bookmarking service, of course allows me to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.

I'm not going to run through all the intricacies of the site, but I do want to give a general overview of how to use it.

Its homepage is fairly simple. it has three tabs: fresh bookmarks, popular bookmarks, and explore tags. Upon signing in, it shows me my bookmarks in listform with tags, my network (what the people in the network have tagged), subscription to tags, etc. Even when I'm exploring my own tags, links to "popular" and "recent" bookmarks are always tempting me to see what other people have just discovered and liked enough to save it. I can also see how many other people on Delicious have also saved the links that I've saved. Based on this list, I can then look at their tags (and all other features like network associated with my own page) and perhaps add to my network should I believe the person to be a good source of future information.

Diigo

Diigo (about, video tour, tour, search, demo)

It has several features including the ones below. I would suggest viewing the demo to gain a better understanding of how to truly use Diigo.

• bookmark
• groups annotation
• search
• send to blog
• diigolet
• enhanced linkrolls

Right off the bat, the difference between Diigo and Delicious is clear. Diggo is MUCH more than just a simple "bookmark tool". It also lets you:

• Add notes and in-page highlights
• Store, Tag (categorize) and Share webpages (via email, RSS, blog, group, etc.) along with your notes and highlights
• Create groups (i.e. private group for team members)
• Subscribe to specific webpages’ notes (i.e. to all notes tagged as ‘funny’)
• Right-click menu option to search for highlighted terms (on websites, on major search-engines, social bookmarking systems, blogs, etc.)

It is suitable for collaboration and Diigo is actually advertised as a social bookmarking AND annotation service.

Diigo Bookmarking Service

While it is hard to displace oneself away from all the other wonderful features of Diigo, I will first compare ONLY the bookmarking service on Diigo then give my overall views / recommendations.

It is a very similar process to Delicious. You click the "Diigo" icon in your toolbar, add tags, and submit (you can also add comments about the page". These are all functions Delicious has. In Diigo, you can also simultaneous save this page to other services.

Diigo Annotation Services

Diigo's annotation services are used in conjunction with its bookmarking. Instead of merely bookmarking a site, you can also post sticky notes or comments anywhere on it. This is a useful feature because many people often forget why a site was important to them in the first place. A second useful function is highlighting texts on the page. For a very lengthy website, this will drastically save time because I only have to read through it once and highlight useful portions for the future.

Recommendations

In terms of JUST social bookmarking. The two tools are the same in HOW to bookmark. However, the ANNOTATION aspect of Diigo makes it a far superior tool because it actually distinguishes itself in a very important way from just the bookmarks in browser with its ability to let you highlight and make comments. This feature goes above and beyond just a few "tags" allowed in Delicious (also used in Diigo of course) to remind yourself of what was important or so great about that page.

To be fair, I felt Delicious was much more "social" in allowing me to browse the bookmarks that other people also subscribed to. Diigo if I went to networking site, I can see who else also bookmarked it. (Engadget.com for instance surprisingly only had 73 other people bookmark it; just to compare, delicious had over 27,000 people bookmark it) From seeing who bookmarked it, I can then go to their individual profile and bookmarks. However, there are many subtle search features that I much prefer in Delicious, its interface makes the ability to browse for similar sites much easier. This feature also exists in Diigo, but is much less intuitive and ineffective. I wanted to find sites similar to Engadget so I clicked on the "technology" tag, which in Delicious, quickly yielded me a very expansive list of other bookmarks with this tag. But doing so in Diigo did nothing.

I would use Delicious to "browse" for other useful sites and participate in the more social aspect of bookmarking while I would use Diigo if I want to be more efficient in my bookmarking in terms of narrowing down the content I am actually saving.

More Information - Follow them on Twitter

Diigo Twitter
Delicious Twitter

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Google Vs Compfight Image Search

by ranfan (21 Dec 2009 04:31)

In this blog, I will compare popular Google Image tool to a less known/used image search tool CompFight.

Some Background Info

Google Image Search

We are probably all familiar with Google Image search, it's part of the Google family, and if you want some more information on recent improvements they've made you can check out my other blog about it here. Because of Google's powerful technology, it is advertised as Google Images. The most comprehensive image search on the web.

While I'm a big fan of Google Images, but I won't spend too much time talking about its features (because you can read my previous blog!). Instead, I want to spend more time introducing you to CompFight.

CompFight

First off, it is a Flickr image search tool. So its primary benefit over a tool like Google Image Search is that there are less concerns for copy rights. I guess to explain that, you'd have to know a bit about Flickr. It is known as one of the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

"Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright." Creative Commons

There are a copy types of licenses that users can chose when they put up their pictures. Some examples include —

• Attribution:You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit
• Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.
• No Derivative Works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

CompFight Search lets you chose between commercially license images, or just creative commons, or both. So You can use Compfight for personal or commercial purposes, and perform various types of searches, making it a very flexible tool useful to a wide range of users.

Features

Compfight allows users to easily find a host of images on Flickr.

The basic search is a keyword search that will look through Flickr tags and return up to hundreds of photos tagged with your keyword.

If your results are weak, you can change to an ‘all text’ search that will also hunt through photo titles and descriptions to find your keyword. Click on any thumbnail result and you’ll be brought to the photo’s original page on Flickr.

A ‘Blue Bar’ underlining a photo thumbnail on the results page indicates that Flickr is holding an original of that photo, and by hovering your cursor over a bar, you can even see the pixel dimensions of the original. You can turn on the Creative Commons feature to find licensable photos, or Safe Search to keep your results free of possibly offensive content.

Why not use Flickr itself?

But there is also a search feature on Flickr itself…

The Flickr search to be slow and lackluster. The regular Flickr search returns very few results per page and shows lots of information about them.

On the hand, Compfight beats messing around with Flickr's advanced settings. While Flickr may have more options, Compfight gives you the most popular advanced settings without the added hassle or confusion.

Compfight displays lots of images quickly, and this allows you to look through hundreds of images in the same amount of time it would take you to look through just a few on the regular Flickr search.

Sample Search & Review

I will talk about the results of my searches first, then you can look at the screenshots below. The intention is to allow you to see the differences in the special features of each search engine (with a focus on CompFight). The table below summarizes what I did and what I found in terms of results returned.

• Google, as expected yields more returns
• In CompFight, text yields more returns than tag
• In CompFight, Creative Commons yields more returns than Commercial
• CompFight images are more "artistic" and look more HD

For instance, a search for [starbucks] yielded mostly just its logo in Google, but in CompFight, because these are photos, they show logo in a real setting. Although Google has a photo only filter, its images are not as "artistic"

I would choose CompFight as a good place to browse for images for presentations because they are more artistic and less conventional. However, for logos company text, images that are already designed in a set manner, I will choose Google Images.

CompFight, despite yielding less results, actually have more images per page, which facilitates browsing. Clicking on an image in CompFight also means that it opens in a new window / tab, unlike Google Images which opens it in the same tab, requiring you to click the back button. In Google, because it shows the image as part of the website, sometimes, the image is a broken link or not what you expected. However, because all pictures on Flickr, not only are they all high quality, you can also click through the photostream of the artist who took the picture. For instance, I really liked this picture, so I also spent a good amount of time browsing through the other photos this particular person took. So CompFight is a good tool for those who enjoy good pictures AND those who are task focused.

What I dislike about CompFight is that it does not have spell check nor does it offer other terms that may yield similar returns. But, I found on several occasions that even if I mistyped, I'll still get results because it is likely the author also made common spelling mistakes.

Search Engine	Search Term	Features	Results
Google	Coffee	All Results	102,000,000
CompFight	Coffee	Tag	475,857
CompFight	Coffee	Text	1,250,350
Google	Starbucks	All Results	11,000,000
Google	Starbucks	Red Filter	653,000
CompFight	Starbucks	Commercial	5,024
CompFight	Starbucks	Creative Commons	22,247

Google Coffee

CompFight Coffee - Tag

CompFight COffee - Text

Google Starbucks

Google Starbucks with Red Filter

CompFight Starbucks- Commercial

CompFight Starbucks- Creative Commons Only

Comparison in terms of data

According to compete.com, in the month of October, 2009 Google Unique Visitors in the US is 146,027,962 while CompFight lags at only 9,113.

Traffic Rank

Alexa traffic rank for compfight.com: 11/11/2009：41,183； 3 month change -10,026

Daily Reach: Percent of global Internet users who visit compfight.com

Time on Site: Daily time on site for compfight.com

You can see some more interesting site data about it here

Conclusion:

Compfight is a perfect tool for bloggers to utilize to find images for their posts. With a vast array of features and great settings for both commercial and non-commercial blogs, You will not be let down with Compfight's results once you find a search term that will give you what you're looking for. In comparison to Google Image Search, you won't have to worry about running into any legal issues down the line. However, from the Alexa data, one can see that Compfight is obviously not a big threat to Google's image search. Even though Google's search may not yield pretty pictures that Compfight finds on Flikr, it is much more functional. Its filter features by color, size, type as well as its superior syntax structure combined with vast database give people more options.

However, I will go to Compfight when I want to find pretty pictures. It is a site on which I want to spend time because the images are of much higher artistic quality than Google's image search.