Archive for the 'Internet tools' Category

Bing Social Search Tool

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Ian Smith
on June 11, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith, Internet tools and Web 2.0 Search
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Bing has just unveiled their new tool, Bing Social, in hopes of competing with the vast array of social media search tool.  Bing Social aims to provide users with access to real-time content on Twitter and Facebook in terms of status updates.

By default, Bing Social presents updates within the past hour however; the time frame can be changed to past day and past week.  Figure 1 illustrated the results for the keyword query, “B2B Social Media”

Figure 1: Bing Social Results For “B2B Social Media”

As seen in the screen shot, the results can be filtered on the basis of the following two criteria:

  • Public Updates
  • Shared Links

By clicking on the “Shared Links” tab, users are provided with links on the web that are posted on Twitter with the associated title of the page or article as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Results Shared Links For “B2B Social Media”

In addition, Bing Social will list the tweets that contains the title of the page or article as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Tweet(s) With Shared Links

For more details on Bing Social, please watch the following YouTube clip.

Bing Social is available at www.bing.com/social

Help Build Facebook Answers?

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Ian Smith
on June 4, 2010
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In an effort to take over the internet (little joke), Facebook has launched an initiative based on the knowledge of its users. (You may want to call it, “social media collaborative intelligence”)

Via its website, Facebook is asking individuals to provide answers to questions such as

  • What’s the secret to throwing a great housewarming party?
  • What are the main differences between Google Chrome and Internet Explorer?
  • What are woman looking for in a relationship?
  • What methods has BP tried to clean up the oil spill?

Facebook has not assigned a name to the new service however; it has already build a page in which users can place their answers to the questions online courtesy of a form as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Submission Form For Answers Posed On Facebook

This project is similar to past initiatives by Yahoo with Yahoo Answers and Google Answers.

Only time will tell if Facebook’s initiative will be a success.  The main issue with such as a source is the credibility factor.  As users of information, we should be always evaluating content based on the origin of the data.

To participate in the project, visit www.facebook.com/product_application/

Clustering Search Results With Yippy

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Ian Smith
on May 28, 2010
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One of the tips to searching the web efficiently is taking advantage of other search tools besides Google and Bing.  Lesser known tools may have functions to make life easier for exhaustive search queries.  Yippy is one of these tools.

Formerly known as Clusty, Yippy takes the ordinary list of results from several search tools on the web and clusters (or groups) them based on different criteria.  Figure 1 is a screen shot for the query, “investment attraction”.

Figure 1: Screen shot For The Search Query, “investment attraction”
Click On Image To Enlarge

Highlighted in yellow is the different ways that Yippy clustered results based on:

  • Clouds - Related themes
  • Sources - Search engines, directories, sponsored listings
  • Site - Internet domains (ie., .us, .ca. co.uk, .org)

Figure 2 illustrates the results given by Yippy when the “Alberta” cloud is clicked on.

Figure 2: Results By Yippy in The “Alberta” Cloud
Click On Image To Enlarge

Once the cloud tab is clicked on, a list of “subclouds” will appear for users to browse through to pinpoint information courtesy of Yippy.

Yippy is available at www.yippy.com

Search For Current Information With NowRelevant

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Ian Smith
on May 21, 2010
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Here is a tip for individuals looking to try new research tools.

It was only a question of time until there was a tool that will enable to search for information that has been online for the past fourteen days.  NowRelevant is a search engine that will  allow users to retrieve content that has been published within the past two weeks. Figure 1 is an illustration of the results given for the search query “investment attraction” for content placed online in the past week.

Figure 2: Search results for “investment attraction” on NowRelevant

Using the slider located above the  list of results, users can select how far in the past NowRelevant should go to find information.

NowRelevant is definitely looking to compete with Google’s Advanced Search options to allow users to access real-time content. (Please read, “Google Integrates Real Time Search Results“).  For the fun of it, let us compare the results given above with what Google provides as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 4: Results From Google For The Past Seven Days

Clearly, Google is able to cover much more of the web as seen in thee number of hits: 306 vs 6 for NowRelevant.  Although this is understandable considering that the tool is in the beta testing phase, it would be great to see results from Web 2.0 and information available in .pdf.

NowRelevant (Beta) is available at www.nowrelevant.com/nrbeta/

To learn more, watch, “What is NowRelevant?”

The ipl2 Directory: An Alternative To Searching

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Ian Smith
on May 14, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith and Internet tools
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At times, we can be spoiled when we search the web.  By using Google or Bing, we can simply plug in keywords with a combination of search operators and then we are provided with a list of results that may lead to relevant pages with information.  Before the advent of web crawler search engines, there were web directories.  Web directories are collections of links to sources of information that are organized by subject.  Figure 1 is a illustration at what Yahoo used to look like when it debuted as a web directory on October 17th, 1996.

Figure 1: Yahoo.com on October 17th, 1996

Two of the most well known web directories in the information industry, Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians’ Internet Index (LII) merged to create, ipl2.

This directory provides users with a searchable database and subject-categorized directory of internet resources.  Figure 2 illustrates the results for business statistics when the ipl2 directory is browsed through using the path: Subject Home  > Business and Economics  > Statistics

Figure 2: Results For Business and Economic Statistics From ipl2

First time visitors to ipl2 should take a look at the Newspapers & Magazines section.  As seen in Figure 3, the links to the online newspapers are categorized by geographical location.

Figure 3: Online Newspapers Categorized By Geographical Location

ipl2 is available at www.ipl.org/

Building Twitter Followers With Google Follow Finder

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Ian Smith
on May 7, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith, Internet tools and Web 2.0
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Here’s a tip for individuals looking to increase the number of followers to their Twitter feed.

Last month, Google introduced, Google Follow Finder via their post, “Google Follow Finder: Find some sweet tweeps“.  The application allows users to enter a Twitter handle or account name with the objective of finding related feeds to expand an user’s network.  Figure 1 is a screen shot of the results for a query using the Greater Halifax Partnership Twitter account, Greater_Halifax.


Figure 1: Google Follow Finder Query For Greater_Halifax

As seen in the image, the application will suggest a “Tweep” or individuals that may interest you and  individuals with similar followers.  In the case of Greater_Halifax, the proposed individual is Carman Pirie of Kula Partners and the common feed between Carman Pirie and Greater_Halifax is halifaxchamber, the Twitter presence of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce

To add a follower, users can simply click on the “follow on Twitter button” that is located on the bottom of each result

Google Follow Finder is available here.

Create Your Own Newspaper With NewsCred

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Ian Smith
on April 30, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith, Competitive & Internet Intelligence and Internet tools
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Here is a quick tip for individuals who are tired of browsing through endless amount of irrelevant articles when it comes to searching for news.  NewsCred is a handy news aggregator tool that presents relevant articles in a traditional newspaper broadsheet format.  Figure 1 and 2 illustrates the necessary steps that were used to create, “The FDI Post”.


Figure 1: Naming The Newspaper and Associated Web Address

Once the “Create Your Newspaper” button is clicked on, users will be asked to enter keywords to retrieve relevant content for the newspaper.

Figure 2: Entering Keywords “Foreign Direct Investment”
Click On Image To Enlarge

The end product of the process can be seen Figure 3.

Figure 3: Index Page Of The FDI Post

To add more content to the newspaper, users can either submit keywords or a feed from an external news source.  In Figure 4 highlighted in yellow, are the different sections that were created in The FDI Post.

There are two Web 2.0 functionalities that Newcred offers to its users. 1) The ability to “follow” or be “followed” similar to Twitter and 2) Sharing content

Newscred is available at www.newscred.com

Searching For Past Tweets With Google Replay

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Ian Smith
on April 23, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith, Internet tools and Web 2.0 Search
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As announced in “Replay it: Google search across the Twitter archive“, Google is giving users the ability to find relevant tweets from February 2010 to the present thanks to Google Replay.  In the upcoming months, Google has plans to access and index all content from the social networking tool since its introduction on March 21st, 2006.

Figure 1 is a screen shot of the result page when the keywords, “investment attraction” is entered into Google Replay.

Google Replay Results For Investment Attraction

Figure 1: Google Replay’s Results For “Investment Attraction”
Please Click On Image To Enlarge

As seen in Figure 1, a timeline is available above the results to access relevant tweets by date.  Selecting March 20th, 2010, Google Replay will list the tweet(s) sent on that day illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Google Replay’s Results For “Investment Attraction” On March 20th, 2010
Please Click On Image To Enlarge

Users may visit the advanced search section to filter some of the unwanted results.

Google Replay is available at the following link.

Note: It is recommended that Google Replay should be used with the experimental version of Google search to have access to timeline above the results.  Select the “Keyboard shortcuts” option.

Conversations Searching With Whos Talkin

Published
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Ian Smith
on April 9, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith, Internet tools and Web 2.0 Search
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In our previous posts, “Social Media Monitoring With Radian6” and “Samepoint - A Powerful Social Media“ Search Tool, we highlighted the different functionalities of each tool and the importance of monitoring “conversations” on social networks and Web 2.0 applications.  Whos Talkin (that’s right, no “G”:) is another  search application to add to your toolkit.

The tool will take the keyword(s) entered by an user and group results based on the different content sources on the web such as:

  • Blogs
  • News
  • Networks
  • Videos
  • Images
  • Forums
  • Tags

For each content source, Whos Talkin supplies results from different applications / sites on the web. Figure 1 is an image of the results from Forums for the query, “foreign direct investment” + Canada.

Who's Talkin Results

Figure 1: Results from Forums for the query, “foreign direct investment” + Canada

The results shown in the image are sorted by the discussion group / forum search tool, Omgli.

To compare the information that is available on social network platforms with what is on forums, a query was made by entering the same keywords and clicking on the “Networks” tab.  Figure 2 illustrates the results found on Facebook using Whos Talkin.

Who's Talkin Results From Facebook

Figure 2: Results found on Facebook using on Whos Talkin for “foreign direct investment” + Canada

Whos Talkin is available at www.whostalkin.com

Semantic Searching With Yebol

Published
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Ian Smith
on April 2, 2010
in Author-Ian Smith and Internet tools
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We are all used to searching the web using Google or Bing. Keywords are entered, the “Search” button is clicked on and then we are provided with pages upon pages of results.  With these results, our intuition takes over in trying to access the most relevant information amongst of set of linked documents. Semantic search attempts to remove the “guessing game” in searching the web.  Yebol is just one of the tools that is vying to help internet researchers to find information quickly.

Yebol will take users’ keywords and try to place it into some context to provide results with answers to users’ questions.  The search application presents its results in the form of categorical tree as illustrated in Figure 1 for the results, “foreign direct investment” + Canada.

Yebol Results For "Foreign Direct Investment" + "Canada"

Figure 1: Results For “Foreign Direct Investment” + Canada

Results from Yebol are clustered based on the following categories:

  • Top Sites
  • Related Search
  • Twitter Results
  • Images
  • Search Results
  • News
  • Video

Yebol is available at www.yebol.com