I have been following the information industry for the past eight years and one thing that I’m tired of is new search tools deeming themselves as the “The Next Google”. The amount of press releases that I received with the same marketing spin is getting pretty annoying and at the same time, amusing. Whenever I am duped into trying these “Google-like” tools, they do not come close to some of the really good search engines on the web in terms of functionalities and the amount of content they index.
Here is a piece of advice for marketers of new search engines: Stop comparing your engine to Google in your promotion material. If you can’t deliver the goods that you are claiming in your releases, users will not be prompted to give you a second thought. Focus on what your tool can bring to users. There is nothing wrong with being different and unique.
Copyright infringement and the web has been a hot topic during the past few months. Google is in the midst of a legal dispute with media giant, Viacom regarding the content on YouTube that was made available without Viacom’s permission.
Today, Google lost in a Belgium court over a claim made by Copiepresse, a copyright protection group representing 18 mostly French-language newspapers. Copiepresse stated that Google breached copyright laws by allowing free access to paid content via its “cache” feature. The cache feature permits users of the internet to access a copy of a online document that is stored on the Google server once it is spider by the search tool.
One has to wonder if this decision will prompt Google to change its outlook on the function. Although Google has given individuals the power to search web easily, access to some premium information might be restricted once other publishers realize how much of their content is really be indexed by Google. It will be up to Google to decide what will be included in their database of free content versus what gets push to Google News Archive Search, a paid search service.
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Trivia time…
Besides YouTube, name another platform that permits you to view video clips on the web?
3.2.1………..Time is up!
If you were not able to come up with one platform, maybe you should consider Searchforvideo.
Searchforvideo is a gateway to access other video viewing platforms depending on theme. The six categories that users can select from include:
- News
- Sports
- Entertainment
- Music
- Movies
- Celebrities
- Business
- Health
The screenshot below presents the results from selecting the Business section of the resource.
What is not seen in the image is the different sources that Searchforvideo utilizes to provide their results such as:
- Wall Street Journal
- ROO TV
- Reuters
- MarketWatch
- Financial Times
I know that I have ranted on broken links before but I need to vent my rage at government websites.
I’m currently working on a research mandate that prompts me to go through hundreds of webpages. You will be surprised on the amount of broken links that I come across. There was one page which mentioned that the information has been removed since 2001. SIX YEARS!!!
I would like to think that individuals who are responsible for making information available to citizens would be proactive when it comes to maintaining government websites with updated content.
Once again, the issue of the future of printed newspapers has been in the news lately thanks to comments made by Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times. Sulzberger went on the record to say: “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either“.
Interesting statement. I really wonder how many other publishers of large newspapers around the world would have the guts to admit the large shift in their industry.
The implications of the shift on the information industry will be huge. Obviously, premium content services will be quick to snap up digital content as soon as it is available and will result in an increase in price of their services.
YouTube, MySpace, Flickr are examples of platforms that can be found on Web 2.0. A few years ago, nobody would have imaged how popular these website would be to users of the internet. As for information professionals, the Web 2.0 has become yet another source that people has not tapped into to find relevant information similar to the “invisible web”.
It was just a question of time before firms that create information retrieval applications were going to hop on the “Web 2.0″ bandwagon and begin to introduce specialized tools. A prime example of this fact is a tool from RocketInfo.
ROCKETresearch is “a turnkey solution provides the products necessary to transform a static Web Site into an active source of up-to-the minute information. ROCKETinfo’s customers can now quickly and easily offer their own clients media monitoring, competitive intelligence, or any other relevant information, in ROCKET’s unique B2B2C sales model. “
Here is a gadget for online marketers who are brainstorming for the keywords that will be placed in the meta tags for their websites.
WordTracker is a free tool that permits individuals to find 100 alternatives keywords based on what users has submitted as their query. Each keywords on the list are linked to a page with another series of keywords that pertains to the tool’s suggestion.Although the tool is free, it is a matter of time before it becomes a fee based application.
Here is a waking up call to individuals that are responsible for classifying infomation and internet researchers who might want to change the way they search the Web 2.0
According to a recent survey conducting to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.”
To read the results of the study, please visit the Pew Internet and American Life Project website to download the document.
This morning, I woke to my favourite radio station to hear that the three co-hosts now have blogs. On my way to work, I browsed through the local daily newspaper to see that a majority of its columnists are promoting their blogs in their articles. As I checked my personal email, my friend forwarded a hyperlink to his new blog.
Has the world gone mad with blogging?
Blog platforms has given anyone with the ability to write to become instant content providers. Can this be good for internet researchers? My answer: Yes…and no.
Yes, having access to blogs with credible information is great. Blogs can bring new content in terms of opinions and links to articles to the web within minutes.
No, having access to too many blogs can lead to information overload. In addition, there is an enormous amount of trash that get indexed to the point that it takes time to weed out the good hits from the poor results.
