Written on May 12, 2008 – 10:18 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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Here is another Mischievous Monday Morning post with two golden oldies for your amusement. The first is an old but classic geek cake with a birthday message for a Indian geek coded in XML:
And this is Sergey Brin from Google in his pre-IPO days. It was made during a fraternity party where all the guys was dressed up as girls. As far as we know there are no more sightings of Sergey cross-dressing. These kind of photos make you wonder if they will find similar photos of you and me when we become famous one day…
Written on April 22, 2008 – 7:52 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
One of the theories discussed at the Alt Search Engines meeting was that the competition for Search Engines might not just be in different, faster or better search engines but in alternative ways of finding information.
The AllTh.at team
One example is Smart Agents like AllTh.at and Google Alerts. Lots of people use Google Alerts to keep them up-to-date of new information. AllTh.at saves your searches and keeps looking for new results and notifies you via email or RSS. Previously users might have used search engines to find new information. Now there is a continuously updating search query active in the background that notifies us of new results.
Services such as Symbaloo and Netvibes make it easier to manage lots of information. This makes it easier to browse the web and find stuff. For a lot of people Google is THE portal to the web. They don’t use bookmarks or even URLs but simply open a browser, wait for Google to appear and type in what they need. As portal services (like Symbaloo) gain traction people will be less inclined to use Google to navigate the web.
What are the alternatives to Google?
A third example are the vertical search engines. You can use Google to search for words but it is more logical to use a dedicated dictionary search engine like Answers.com and a car search engine like UsedCars.com. The vertical search engines are becoming more popular every day and more verticals appear left and right.
Can you think of more ways to get to information without using Google? WikiPedia is a good alternative to Google is you are looking for specific information. What other alternatives are there?
Written on April 21, 2008 – 10:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
We keep running into people who are making interesting search applications. Like Laurent Baleydier, the CEO of KartOO technologies. Over a coffee at the altsearchengines day, he told us that KartOO specializes in visualizing internet and intranet data to improve the accessibility of search engines. The techniques are developed in the French University Labs in Clermont, France.
Next Web editor Boris and KartOO president Laurent Beleydier
KartOO runs three search engines. KartOO.com - a free Meta search engine that allows you to find your results trough in interactive map -, UJIKO.com - a social thumbs up/down engine -, and KVisu.com - a rather spectacular engine that shows your search data as a land map.
The engines have at least one thing in common: impressive graphics. Whether it’s your style or not, you can’t deny that KartOO understands that you have to spoil the eyes when it comes to visualization. Some other search engines, like Quintura, seem to forget that.
I also like the fact that KartOO uses the engines of Yahoo and Google, since a lot of people are still a bit hesitated to use another engine than Google. The alt search engines are really important, as they are the pioneers who invent our search future. Yet when it comes to a quick search, people still use the search giant. When services like KartOO build on the strength of Google and make it a richer tool, I think they have a better chance to bridge the gap between Google and alternative search engines.
Written on April 21, 2008 – 3:09 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Ernst-Jan and I will be reporting live from the invitation only ‘Alternative Search Engines’ Day‘ event in San Francisco today. The event is organized by altsearchengines.com which is part of the ReadWriteWeb network and blogs daily about search engine news.
They were kind enough to invite us over to their closed event because we have shared a couple of stories in the past and are both eager to find out what the next step in Search will be.
On Monday, April 21st, a unique event will take place as dozens of Alternative Search Engines gather together for one special day organized by them and for them. Panels will be led by HealthPricer, UpTake, SeeqPod, Powerset, KartOO, and AltSearchEngines. There will also be a presentation by GoPubMed. The event is not open to the public - or Google.
What happens when you get dozens of the top alternative search engines in the same room for an entire day? We’ll let you know live and direct from the event!
Update:
Kick-off by Charles Knight, founder of AltSearchEngines.com.
There are 227 alternative search engines right now.
Demo of http://www.sputtr.com/. Multi-Search engine.
Now Symbaloo.com (Dutch Simple Search engine with labels)
Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb on stage too.
Question of the day: ‘Is the status quo fine or do we need a new direction?’
Quote: ‘We are frenemies’. The 227 alternative search engines don’t really compete but all have their own niche.
Nitin Karandikar gives us a summary of his Manifesto for cooperation for Alt Search Engines.
Coffee break!
Now on stage: HealthPricer with Spock and SurfCanyon
Enough updates on Al Search Engines for us today. We are now moving on to the Pownce lunch and after that 2 more events which you will read about more here later. More information about this event on Alt Search Engines and ReadWriteWeb!
Written on April 18, 2008 – 4:18 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Google has just announced another step towards Google Video’s end destination: becoming THE search service for world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted. The first move was including YouTube movies in Google Video’s search results last November. Now they’ve given the video service a face lift to enhance the users’ video browsing experience.
You can choose any of three ways to view your video search-results: a traditional list view, a grid view and, for those of you who like to maximize your video-watching efficiency, a TV view, where you can watch an embedded video while continuing to view your search results next to the video for a more seamless browse and search experience.
But there’s one change that is more interesting: the timeline view on the homepage. You can look up what the most viewed, most blogged, most shared, hottest videos are, and there’s a Movers & Shakers page. This is the most blogged-about video of today:
Improving video browsing is a smart move, if you ask me. Although Google has to put some effort in integrating other video services if they want to gain some street credibility. Yet they’re probably not interested in that, since their large audience couldn’t care less about Dailymotion or Vimeo. That’s just us, Web 2.0 geeks…
Written on April 18, 2008 – 8:30 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
If you follow blogs like The Next Web and Altsearchengines, you might notice that social search engines are booming. Stumpedia, Topicle, AndUnite, you name it. They’re popping up everywhere and at least twice a week, one of the founders sends me a line to tell me why his engine is gonna be the top of the bill.
Geoffrey McCaleb from Nsyght is one of them. He and his team have found a new take on social searching: allowing users to use their bookmarks and their social graph to create a customized search experience. “the real eureka moment came when I thought, how can an algorithm tell me whats relevant when my assumptions of relevancy are going to be different from everyone else.”
McCaleb believes that no algorithm can replace the objectivity of a human being. “We all have different concepts and notions of what we find relevant. So, we wanted to create a search engine that didn’t treat every set of keywords the same. What you find relevant for a search may be different from mine.”
The beta version of Nsyght provides integrations into a number of social services such as del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, simpy, digg, last.fm, twitter, and pownce. “We do a couple of things with the social graph, we preserve friendships across different social networks, and we allow for users to syndicate their bookmarks between these services. The key takeaway point here, the more information we know about a person, the more we can customize the search to make it more relevant to them.”
The holy grail
But the most important question remains, Mr. McCaleb. Why would the public choose your search engine, out of all the other alternatives?
“Well there may be a lot of competition in this space, but I feel pretty strongly no one has approached the problem in the same way we have. The holy grail in search is not having the biggest index, but the one that gets you a relevant result in the shortest possible time. While we are small - a given since we are self-funded - we obviously have a ways to go. But as we gain more users, we will gain more of their bookmarks, and then we will have even more highly relevant sites in which to crawl and index.
Another way to look at it is this. PageRank is a brilliant concept, and still does an incredible job determining relevancy. But fundamentally, even with all the data points probably looks at it still is more concerned about the source and not the content. What we can do is let the user define the sites they feel are relevant, leverage their social network, and over time see their results become highly personalized. So in a way, augmenting the algorithm for their own use and gain.”
What do you use?
The only way to end this article, in my opinion, is to ask you guys whether you really use social search engines? Since you’re probably the most web-savvy crowd out there, you would also be the first ones to adopt a new trend. So tell me, still on Google? Or already switching to the brand new social engines?
Written on April 12, 2008 – 9:56 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Yesterday we reported that Yahoo! is thinking about partnering with AOL and using Google’s Adsense program instead of its own to boost revenue.
It is ironic that today Google AdSense is down with a “The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later. We apologize for any inconvenience” message in 27 languages. AdSense is Google’s ad-placing program. It is the program that puts ads on website and blogs. It seems that ads are being served but the site to monitor and manage them just seems down.
Google Adwords, the ad-selling system where advertisers pay money to advertise on Google or on individual websites, is still up.
UPDATE: It is a scheduled maintenance job:
Site maintenance on April 12 at 10am PDT
Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance tomorrow, April 12th from 10am to 2pm PDT. You won’t be able to log in to your account, but we’ll continue to serve ads to your pages and track your earnings as usual.
Located in a different time zone? Here’s the maintenance start time in a number of cities around the world:
Ottawa - 1 pm Saturday
London - 6 pm Saturday
Hyderabad - 10:30 pm Saturday
Hong Kong - 1 am Sunday
Canberra - 3 am Sunday
My suggestion to Google: put a link to that blogpost on your error page. Not every Adsense subscriber reads the Adsense blog.
Written on April 2, 2008 – 10:33 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I’ve written quite a bit about mobile search on The Next Web Blog and recently called it the ‘Achilles heel of Google’ in a piece about Taptu. Since Google and other major search engines were built for the desktop, they likely lack the kind of thinking that is needed for this complete new way of searching. The new, smaller yet mobile-focused search engines do get that, and therefore get awarded and some good buzzing in blogosphere. The CEO of Taptu, Steve Ives, said: “Mobiles are supersocial devices, so if your service isn’t relevant to you in a social way it won’t get used that often”.
Yet when I read an interesting article by interactive marketing man David Berkowitz today, I noticed that there’s also another battle going on the field of mobile search. Berkowitz describes five predominant ways consumers can search through mobile devices: on-deck, off-deck, applications, voice, and SMS. I’d like to focus on the first one.
With on-deck search, Berkowitz is referring to mobile search and mobile Internet usage on the carriers’ branded portal. According to him, this is the most used form. These portals offer default search engines, powered by mobile advertising companies like Medio Systems and JumpTap. As you can tell by their websites, these companies are both focused on monetizing search and see content as a nasty side-effect. Berkowitz draws a strikingly good comparison:
The deck is exactly like AOL in the 1990s, where AOL focused on bringing brand-name content to the user in its walled garden.
Wow, that’s really great guys, follow the example of AOL. Remember how that ended? Users who had walked around in the walled garden of AOL suddenly discovered that there was a whole new world out there. Ok, not one where AOL was making lots of money, but why would they care? They’re the users! They want good content! Not some fake articles that are just written to sell stuff.
So of course, many users left, even when AOL offered open Internet connection. Everyone associated AOL with the walled gardens. So why are the mobile carriers doing the same thing? Again, we’re at the beginning of a new revolution and again companies start creating portals. Sure, the masses will fall for it the first year, but it’s only a matter of time before they ask for off-deck searching - like Google and Taptu - and other off-deck services. When it comes to technologies that are all about connecting people, a walled garden just don’t work. So, all you carriers executives out there, you’d better think of another strategy before your brand gets hurt.
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