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Vietnam Memorial Goes Online

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Internet,

Once again, we are touched by what the Internet can do. If you never made it to Washington D.C. to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, there is now a free interactive version that debuted this week. Assembled from 6,301 images, Footnote and the National Archives and Records Administration have teamed to create the virtual piece that holds over 58,000 American casualties. You can search it by name, hometown, enlistment type, or service. You can then trace links to the vet’s service record, add photos, and post comments. Be patient, as the site says that loading will be slow due to high traffic.

Wiki and Google Trade Tech

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Google, Internet,

After months of talking and testing, Wikia Search has announced that it will be open to the “general public” next week. Founder Jimmy Wales is sending it the way of Wikipedia, i.e. allowing volunteers to improve on its technology as it develops. The site will open with about 50 to 100 million Web pages indexed, as opposed to other search engines that run in the billions. Interestingly enough, Google is planning to launch its own version of Wikipedia, knol, where authors actually get credit and share in its advertising revenue.

Text It Before You Forget It

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Smartphones, Internet,

kwiry For those who cannot always remember, kwiry is a California-based company that finally understands what it is like to see something when you are out and about, want to make a note of it, and keep it when there is no post-it around to remind you. To receive the service, you sign up, text on your cell phone to 59479 (K-W-I-R-Y,) and once you get home they will send you an e-mail. You can also log into their website and get the message. One more click and it will search for you. Of course, you can always text it yourself, or take a pic of it on your phone, but sometimes we forget that, too. kwiry is a free service, but you may have text message rates that will apply. Umm, what was that number again?

Firefox Plugin Spotlight: Mahalo Follow

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Software,

Mahalo Follow We all know the feeling - you submit a search to a service like Google, and the result you get back are mostly horrible. A lot of it can be considered spam, and it is just impossible to sift through the 3,480,000 results that have just been returned. This is where the new search service Mahalo comes in. They have a large team whose main goal is to put together quality search results by organizing the best links for common search terms. So you get all the good stuff, and none of the spam or other atrocities that have become the status quo. So, the tricky part - people are so used to Google and Yahoo!, so how do you get them to switch over to your service? This is where the new Mahalo Follow plug-in comes in. After installing it, you continue doing your searches in your normal search engine. However, when Mahalo has a result for the search, their results are displayed in a pane alongside them. This allows you to compare the quality of their results with those of your traditional search engine.

We’ve been using Mahalo Follow for a couple of days now, and while we weren’t sure we’d like it at first, it’s grown on us. If you are using Firefox, we suggest you give Mahalo Follow a try. If you do, hit us back in the comments and let us know what you think.

Steve Fosset Search Continues on Google Earth

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Google, Internet, Misc. Tech, Science,

GeoEye Search Adventurer Steve Fosset and his plane still have not been recovered after about 2 weeks. A few organizations teamed up to find him with the use of a GeoEye satellite that is tracking the Nevada territory where he was last thought to be. Using Google Earth, you can get in on the search. You will have to download a KML file and cut and paste the coordinates in the “Fly To” box. Think of the ramifications for finding others missing that using this technology will be able to accomplish in the not so very distant future.

PanImages Search Handles Hundreds of Languages

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Google, Internet,

The University of Washington and its Professor Oren Etzoni released PanImages at the recent Machine Translation Summit in Copenhagen. Instead of searching for photos by text that may not be recognizable, the system recognizes a string of letters in about 300 different languages and looks for them in Google and Flickr. In a recent test of the process, PanImages found 57 times more results than on an average search.

The procedure works by scanning machine readable wiktionaries. As an example, Etzioni said that if you type in the Zulu word for refrigerator (“ifriji’) you would get almost 500,000 results as opposed to 2 on available search engines. While we seem to be over-saturated with images by using English, it is a comfort to know that the Zulus will be able to find appliances with less of an effort now.

Google Desktop for Mac Impressions

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Features, Google, Software,

Google just launched the beta version of Google Desktop for Mac, and we have spent a bit of time getting aquatinted with the new Spotlight competitor. We have put together a full Google Desktop for Mac gallery walkthrough if you just want the visuals, but for those who want our full impressions, read on.

Installing Google Desktop for Mac took a bit more than the standard drag-and-drop affair that most Mac programs boast. Obviously, this is because Google Desktop does a lot of it’s work in the background, under the hood. The good thing, though, is that while you wait, you are able to set various preferences for how Google Desktop will operate on your machine.

Click to continue reading Google Desktop for Mac Impressions

Tellme Beta Review: Voice-Driven Local Search

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Features, Product Reviews, Software,

Tellme We have been trying out Tellme for a few weeks now, and thought it would be appropriate at this point to let you guys know about the service and what we think of it. If you haven’t heard of Tellme, it’s an application that you install on your mobile phone that aims to allow natural voice-riven mobile search. How does it work? Hit the jump for our full review.

Click to continue reading Tellme Beta Review: Voice-Driven Local Search

Google Launches Co-Op Search Engine Service

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Advertising, Design, Revenue,

Now this is good news for those of you who run websites - Google has just launched Google Co-Op. The goal of Google Co-Op is to allow a user to create and integrate a customized version of the Google search engine into their website. You are able to specify which sites you want your Co-Op site to search, which means results will be displayed only for those sites you choose.

Aside from choosing which site(s) you want to include, you also have the choice of customizing the look and feel of the results page, how content in the results should be prioritized, and even if others can contribute as well.

It appears, however, that the home run here is that Google Co-Op gives the options of displaying your AdSense ads in the sidebar, providing the possibility of increased revenue. If you make a large portion of your income from Google AdSense, this becomes a no-brainer. Not only can you incorporate your AdSense into search results, but you can also ditch your current site search tool, as Google will likely do a better job.

Google Co-Op Goes Live

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Google, Internet,