Seedic.com goes up!!!!
Seedic.com is a video search engine which also offers video clips from thousands of websites you can
browse using user-friendly categories.
Enjoy it!. www.seedic.com
Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search
Written by Ebrahim Ezzy and edited by Richard MacManus. Ebrahim is lead developer and co-founder of Qelix Technologies, the company behind a search 2.0 contender called Qube. This 2-part series of posts is adapted from Ebrahim’s research material in developing Qube. [update Part 2 is here]
Let’s start be defining what we mean by "search 2.0" vs traditional search.
Traditional Search (TSE):
Traditional search engines are based on information retrieval technologies. They implement operations such as boolean queries, proximity searches, text relevance and link analysis.
Examples: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask
Search 2.0 (S-2.0):
What I’m calling Search 2.0 are actually third generation search technologies. To explain the generations:
- First-generation search ranked sites based on page content - examples are early yahoo.com and Alta Vista.
- Second-generation relies on link analysis for ranking - so they take the structure of the Web into account. Examples are Google and Overture.
- Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.
Examples: Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, Lexxe
The Search 2.0 Companies (Pt 1)
Search is a multi-billion dollar market and a lot of startups want to be ‘the next Google’ So lets take a look at what current hot technologies are shaping the future of search.
Swicki
Swicki is a community-driven search engine that allows users to create deep, focused searches on a specific niche. Search results from a Swicki are more focused than a TSE and can learn and adapt automatically, based on the search behavior of the community.
Key Feature: Pattern recognition and Adaptive filtering
How it is useful compared to TSE?: Sometimes, looking for specific information in huge web indexes is so mystifying that users feel lost. Services like Swicki promise to accelerate the evolution of Search, by providing hyper-contextual (to use Mike Arrington’s term) search results.
Rollyo
Both Rollyo and Swicki pursue a similar goal: community powered, theme-based search. Rollyo allows users to create and publish their own personal search engines, based on websites they decide to include in their ‘SearchRoll’. SearchRoll doesn’t replace a TSE, it’s just a great way to search your favorite things in your favorite places.
Key Feature: Community-driven Search
How is it useful compared to TSE?: It narrows your search down to only a few trusted sources. A welcome retreat from the current in-your-face information chaos of the web.
Clusty
As the name suggests, Clusty is a clustering engine that groups similar items together - organizing search results into folders. It goes beyond simple search and combines the power of clustering with meta-search (i.e. a search of other searches), to provide a productive and flexible search experience. As well as producing organic web results, Clusty also enables searching of shopping information, yellow pages data, news, blog posts and images.
Key Feature: Result Clustering
How it is useful compared to TSE?: The competition has shifted from crawling the web and returning search results, to adding value to the information that has been retrieved. Clusty has a few advantages over Google:
1) You don’t have to come up with your own categories or subjects in order to narrow, or refine, the search.
2) You don’t have to rely on Google’s perceived emphasis on links.
3) You don’t have to guess the keyword, to get to that perfect page you need. Navigate the clusters and sub-clusters, just as you would use eBay, to find that one specific treasure you’ve been hunting for.
Wink
Using the power of social networking, Wink enables users to tag their favorite results, block irrelevant spam and display the best sites - as hand-picked by other users.
Key Feature: Collaborative Search
How is it useful compared to TSE?: Humans can recognize spam better than any automated filter. Social Search battles search manipulation (i.e. Black Hat SEO) by allowing users to block spam directly. However, one issue is that this system can be easily gamed. But if improved, Wink can deliver a leap in value to Web searchers.
Lexxe
Lexxe does what TSE’s already do, but more efficiently. Lexxe is designed to extract short answers on-the-fly, instead of finding the page on which the answer might be located. It emphasizes the processing of language rather than symbols - using the level of words and the meanings associated with them.
Key Feature: Linguistic Search
How is it useful compared to TSE?: Although they claim to be "50% more accurate and relevant than any other search engine, including google", I’m not convinced. However, they do have mechanisms in place to determine fairly accurate answers for short questions, compared to Google. For example: Who was Louis-Nicholas Vauquelin? Compare Google’s answer to Lexxe’s.
Summary
That wraps up Part 1 of our look into Search 2.0. In the next installment we’ll be looking at other notable contenders like Jookster, Gravee, PreFound and Ebrahim’s own company Qube. We’ll also address questions such as:
How is traditional search evolving to Search 2.0? Can Search 2.0 replace Traditional Search, ever?
Update: Part 2 of this series is available now, with more profiles plus an analysis of how traditional search is evolving towards social search.
Froogle replacement discovered
Google announced in September they would have a new search tool to replace Froogle by the holiday shopping season. Unfortunately, searching for products on Google still shows results from Froogle, causing Ina Steiner to ask the question "Google Base, Where Are You?"
Well, Google hasn’t announced anything yet, but I decided to do some investigating myself to see what I could find. I found exactly what I was looking for — so my answer to Iana is: "right here". The inclusion of "/base/s2" in the robots.txt soon after Google’s announcement led me directly to the coming product.
The new search tool has two new result formats to choose from — grid and map — but personally I’m not in love with either of them. They all seem disorganized to me.
If this is supposed to be used to search for products, I’m confused about the inclusion of things like MySpace pages that don’t sell anything. Searching for "iPod" is completely useless if you are looking to purchase one.
With that said, I am sure it’s still being worked on, so I’m not going to give it a thumbs up or down until it is officially launched.
The Ethics of Web 2.0: YouTube vs. Flickr, Revver, Eyespot, blip.tv, and even Google
So there’s an important distinction developing among “user generated content” sites — the distinction between sites that permit “true sharing” and those that permit only what I’ll call “fake sharing.” A “true sharing” site doesn’t try to exercise ultimate control over the content it serves. It permits, in other words, content to move as users choose. A “fake sharing” site, by contrast, gives you tools to make seem as if there’s sharing, but in fact, all the tools drive traffic and control back to a single site. In this sense, YouTube is a fake sharing site, while Flickr, (parts of) Google, blip.tv, Revver and EyeSpot are true sharing sites. Fake Sharing Sites YouTube gives users very cool code to either “embed” content on other sites, or to effectively send links of content to other sites. But never does the system give users an easy way to actually get the content someone else has uploaded. Of course, many have begun building hacks to suck content off of the YouTube site. (On the Mac, I’ve used TubeSock to do that). But this functionality �” critical to true sharing — is not built into the YouTube system. True Sharing Sites By contrast, ever other major Web 2.0 company does expressly enable true sharing. * Flickr, for example, makes it simple to download Flickr images. (See, e.g., here.) * blip.tv explicitly offers links to download various formats of the videos it shares. (See, e.g., here.) * EyeSpot (a fantastic new site to enable web based remixing of video and audio) permits the download of the source and product files. (See, e.g., here.) * Revver (the site that enables an ad-bug to be added to a video so the creator gets paid when each video is played) builds its whole business model on the idea that content can flow freely on the Net. (See, e.g., here.) * And even Google increasingly enables access to the content it creates and collects. Its fantastic Book Search project enables people to download (funnily formatted) PDFs of public domain books. (I know this link used to work, but now that I’m in Germany, Google is obviously not permitting me access to the work because it is so insanely hard to know whether it is in the public domain anywhere else.) And I am told (though I’ve not yet seen how to do it), Google Videos can be download to a machine. This difference, I suggest, in business models should be a focus of those keen to push the values of Web 2.0. Though Tim O’Reilly’s canonical statement of those values implies this freedom is necessary, it doesn’t really expressly say so. The freedom to access the content seems, in my view, related to the Web 2.0 principle that “the service automatically gets better the more people use it.” Or at least the right to access it if the author chooses (another Web 2.0 principle: Some Rights Reserved) seems essential for this ethic to make sense. As O’Reilly puts it, “Design for ‘hackability’ and ‘remixability’” — precisely what hoarding content doesn’t do. If YouTube is a trend, this is a depressing turn. No doubt, that amazing company has a billion things to think through (including what to do with more than a billion dollars). But one thing it really needs to keep in focus is a very important part of its success: That it was seen to respect the ethics of the web. Why post on YouTube rather Google Video? At least some did so because YouTube was “cooler.” Whether it continues to be as cool depends critically on the values it practices. UPDATE: Joi has a fantastically thoughtful followup on this.
from The Ethics of Web 2.0: YouTube vs. Flickr, Revver, Eyespot, blip.tv, and even Google #
China.com Running Google Video Ads
CDC Corporation has launched the integration of Google Click-to-Play Video advertising on China.com; On the English Channel of China.com, Google’s click-to-play video ads will be accessible to both large and small advertisers and will provide brand advertisers with a richer and more engaging format to communicate their messages.
“Google’s click-to-play video ads are user-initiated, so that the quality of the user experience is preserved. As a result, advertisers get more engaged users and qualified leads,” said Johnny Chou, President of Sales and Business Development, Greater China for Google.
“Google’s click-to-play video ads and China.com English Channel working together represent a significant opportunity in servicing the needs of the foreign community in China,” said Mr. Fang Donglei, Acting Chief Operating Officer of China.com Inc. “The introduction of Google’s click-to-play video ads to China.com reflects the success of the first stage of our partnership. We will continue to provide access to the massive China audience sought by Google and in turn, provide the leading technologies from Google and other industry-leading partners in the world to our users.”
On On To Social Marketing An E Biz Theory
The relationship between social networks, search engines, and blogs mirrors what we already know about the word of mouth function in the real world, except it is much more efficient in cyberspace.
Search comes to mobile phones
Mobile phones offer plenty more than just voice these days. They can provide news, video clips, local weather and even restaurant recommendations.
Problem is, many customers can’t figure out how to access all that information. That’s where companies like Google and Yahoo, along with a slew of start-ups such as InfoSpace, JumpTap and Medio, see a big opportunity. These companies are developing tools that allow users to search for content. And they’re starting to test search-based advertising to help generate revenue.
"When there were only 10 ring tones and a handful of other sites on the carrier deck it was simple," said Iain Gillott, an analyst with iGillott Research. "But now there’s 10,000 ring tones and it’s really hard to find what you want. It’s like walking into Wal-Mart with only the aisle numbers to guide you to what you want to buy."
Mobile search and the advertising business models that have been proposed to support the service are sure to be hot topics discussed during the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association’s (CTIA) semiannual trade show here in Los Angeles this week. The CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show begins Tuesday and runs through Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
As revenue from their voice services continues to decline amid pricing pressure, mobile operators are counting on mobile video, music downloads and other data services to make up the revenue difference. But so far, most of the 190 million wireless subscribers in the United States have not downloaded content onto their phones or surfed the mobile Internet looking for content.
Mobile tracking firm M:Metrics said that only about 15 percent of U.S. wireless subscribers, or about 28 million people, downloaded some type of multimedia content during a three-month period that ended in July. And the Yankee Group estimates only 18 percent of wireless users in the U.S. have even tried surfing mobile Internet, with 6 percent saying they consider themselves regular mobile Internet users.
There are likely many reasons that explain why American wireless subscribers aren’t downloading content and surfing the mobile Internet. The services and content may be priced too high. Users may be uncomfortable with the small form factor on the phone. Some experts also believe that people simply cannot find the content they’re looking for quickly.
"Surfing the mobile Internet is still hard," said Eric McCabe, vice president of marketing for JumpTap. "The wired Internet didn’t really start to explode until search tools like Google made it much easier to find things online."
Experts warn that creating search applications for mobile devices is completely different from creating them for the PC. Smaller screens, rudimentary navigation tools and tiny keypads not optimized for typing all make mobile search very different from its wired equivalent.
Users are also more impatient when they’re using their mobile device to access information than when they’re sitting in front of a PC. They don’t want to wait for screen downloads, and they aren’t willing to look through dozens of search results on multiple pages to find what they want.
Controlling the content
But the biggest challenge for mobile search is likely not the technology but figuring out an appropriate business model. In contrast with the wired Web, in the wireless world the operators themselves control what content users can access.
Most mobile operators offer subscribers a menu or "deck" filled with the carriers’ own content that has been supplied through deals they have made with news organizations, record labels, TV networks and other content producers. Carriers generate revenue by charging for subscriptions to packages or premium content. They also get a cut of revenue when users download content from their decks.
Some carriers allow subscribers to leave their decks to surf the mobile Internet and purchase content, but they still control access to outside content.
"At the end of the day, the carriers make the business decisions," Gillott said. "Some will continue to be very restrictive and others will be more open to accommodating outside content and outside brands."
SES 2006: Social Search Overview
Managing editor Mike McDonald of WebProNews filed this exclusive look at the SES 2006 San Jose session on social search.
Chris Sherman opened the session by defining social search, calling it a collection of Internet wayfinding tools informed by human judgment. That judgment takes place in the form of tags, click-through activity, search history, and other actions.
That may be as good as the definition gets for some time. There isn’t a standard definition for social search yet, and a lot of companies big and small would not mind being the ones to shape it.
Sherman credited World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee with being the first to create a guide that was the earliest form of social search. At that point, search engines were inefficient; algorithmic search methods had not arrived yet.
Fast forward from 1990 to 2006. Social search is having an impact. "Increasingly we’re seeing search engines coming out with personalization efforts," said Sherman. "That data is going to be fed back into the loop and impact the general search."
"What search engines are doing is saying, ‘hey lets tap into this huge resource of user brainpower’ to improve search results."
What is Social Search?
One can split up what social search is today into several categories:
Shared bookmarks (Delicious, Furl)
Tag engines (blogs RSS - Technorati, Bloglines)
Collaborative directories (ODP, Prefound, Zimbo, wikipedia)
Personalized verticals (Eurekster, Yahoo Search Builder)
Collaborative harvesters (Digg, Netscape, Popurls.com) that focus on news, etc.
Social Q&A sites (Google Answers, Yahoo Answers, Answerbag)
Social search has hit some problems along the way. The scale and scope of information has grown so much that automation, like Yahoo Search, has had to take the place of the original hand-edited manual directory.
"I’m not sure people, even millions of people, ARE going to be able to keep up with all this information," said Sherman.
The ambiguity of language has led to tagging issues. "On the Web we don’t have controlled vocabulary, even if we did, we aren’t going to use it," Sherman commented, and he is right about that.
Human laziness and search spider dumbness make things difficult, too. But the worst problem comes from those who exploit whatever they can online for personal gain - the spammers.
Maths Patterns
Isn’t this weird?
1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111
9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888
Fun stuff, right?
Now watch this…
1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321
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