The tuneups before the Australian Open have started ... here is a bit of video, courtesy of tour player Vince Spadea.

My predictions:

1. The mighty "Fed" will win two majors, passing Sampras in this category.
2. Nadal will win the French.
3. No American (male) will win a major.
4. Venus wins the Australian Open.
5. Serena wins the U.S. Open.
6. A. Roddick will remain the top American player, and will reach one major final.
   

Courtesy of altsearchengines ... go to: http://www.altsearchengines.com/2009/01/06/2009-list-of-video-search-engines/. Missing are some of the enterprise search engines like critical mention, but this is a very nice list.

Thought this is worth a mention ... Whostalkin, is a new social search engine (http://www.whostalkin.com/). It searches conversations from many of the major social search engines.

Here's a quick hit for New Year's Eve. Check out URLFan (http://urlfan.com/), a blog search/ranking engine that parses RSS feeds to detirmine the popularity of a website/blog. While not comprehensive, it does a good job at discovering hot trends in the blogsphere ... check out the widget page (http://urlfan.com/site/widget/810.html) for a list of nifty plugins for your website or blog (see below for an example).

Powered by ://URLFAN

 

Overall, this is a useful resource; I can see it having functionality for media montitoring, competitor intelligence and reputation monitoring. I'm still wondering how long Google will wait before adding some of these features to their blog search platform ... or at least open up the API to developers (won't be happening soon in my opinion). 

Happy New Year!

Been busy with life, holidays, and the introduction of a mischievous Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier into our family, thus haven't had much time to post lately.

Anyway, take a look at the following link: http://www.llrx.com/node/2126/print for a huge list of resources on deep web search tools and resources, compiled by Marcus P. Zillman. There is a lot of information in the list; I'll be reviewing some of the resources for later blog posts.

I've listed the main sections of the guide below (headings taken from the guide):

• Articles, Papers, Forums, Audios and Videos
• Cross Database Articles
• Cross Database Search Services
• Cross Database Search Tools
• Peer to Peer, File Sharing, Grid/Matrix Search Engines
• Presentations
• Resources - Deep Web Research
• Resources - Semantic Web Research
• Bot Research Resources and Sites
• Subject Tracer Information Blogs

Certainly a resource to bookmark and return to ... there is a lot of great information contained in the guide!

Check out the link ("The Sorry State of Blog Search Engines") from the Agency Wire site.

I found myself agreeing with much of what the author stated ... that is, blog search simply isn't that good. There is opportunity for some company to improve upon this, but thus far, no company has distinguished themselves. I have hopes for Twingly, and of course Google could always surprise us ... but I just want a search engine that indexes the content, offers me multiple methods of finding AND analyzing said content. Simple!

Twingly, a courageous challenger to Google and others in the blog search area, recently announced some new features and happenings for their service.

• Twingly Blog Rank - Basically, page rank for blogs, primarily using inlinks and other criteria to measure the popularity of blogs. You can check your own Blog Rank by logging into Twingly and viewing your profile. They also have built a widget that you can use to show the world how your blog ranks (See: http://www.twingly.com/blogs/profile?url=blog.twingly.com for an example).
• Twingly now has a top 100 list for blogs (we're not in it! <G>) ... see: http://www.twingly.com/top100 for the list.
• Finall, check out Twingly's partner list (http://www.twingly.com/partners); hopefully they'll be able to get more U.S. companies to jump aboard ... I really would like for them to have success, if only to push Google to improve their search tools at a faster clip.

And media monitoring/reputation management may want to consider some of Twingly's enterprise solutions ... see http://www.twingly.com/enterprise for more info.

 

Viewdle is on my watchlist ... they have technology that recognizes people within videos by using a unique facial recognition technology. Currently only Reuters labs uses their system, but they look to be launching some products in beta very soon. I really like the potential for this technology; couple it with better voice recognition, and suddenly video search becomes much more useful. In addition, if they can somehow leverage the technology to identify marks and logos, you'll see an even bigger improvement in the results.

See the test widget/link below.

Micheal Huckabee

Here is a nice hack to fckEditor's setup that will change how it marks up images in the HTML.

Go to: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/ASP/Q_23393592.html to view the entire article.

Good idea (categorizing videos from academic sources), but YOVISTO (http://www.yovisto.com/) needs to index a great many more videos before it becomes relevant as a major search engine.

Looking to burn some time, and perhaps see how worthwhile the "wisdom of the crowds" opinions are? Checkout the TechCrunch marketplace (http://techcrunch.askmarkets.com/), powered by askmarkets.

 

Should be interesting to search and see who might be on there way to the tech deadpool.

The Saturday quick hit is myON-ID people search (http://www.myonid.co.uk/), a search engine that mines the web and social networking sites to discover what sites are saying about you. Simply type in your name, and the system searches its index for any mentions (you'll need to try different variations of your name ... Larry, Lawrence ... and I'm not quite sure how it handles all of the "John Smiths" out there) of your name, categorizing the results in tabs (Social Media, Social Networks, Web and Media).

This site is still under development, but it could develop into a nice tool to track individuals and their public profiles on the web. 

Check out a (FREE) whitepaper from Thomson/Reuters on techniques to identify KOL (Key Opinion Leaders) in your industry. I've often used academic databases, coupled with citation analysis and other tools (Dialog's RANK command can be useful for this) to find opinion leaders. Click here to access the whitepaper summary (registration required to view the entire article). I've also used tools like the fee-based Scopus and its free cousin Scirus to discover KOLs ... Scopus in particular can be a very powerful tool for this.

Check out an interesting post on the Life Coaching Blog (authored by Dieter Pauwels), 10 Ways to Build a Positive Mental Attitude. Dieter offers 10 valuable points to help you build a better mental attitude, which in my opinion is helpful in dealing with everyday business dealings and stress. I've found that when I'm in a more positive frame of mind, I'm much more effective and I accomplish my goals ... adding to less stress, more business, etc.

You can read all of Dieter's posts by visiting http://lifecoaching.dieterpauwels.com/.

OK, sorry for the awful pun. Knol (http://knol.google.com/k) is Google's answer/competitor to Wikipedia, and while it is currently in beta (like much of Google's other properties), I can begin to see some use in the system. Knol differs from Wikipedia in that you can see the authors of an article. So, if I want to author an article on the life and times of budgerigars, I simply need to create an account and publish. If (and this is the key) my article is seen as authoritive, and receives good ratings from other users, the article will get pushed up on the search results page. Knol also allows comments, so be prepared for some constructive criticism if you author on a popular or well-known subject.

It will be interesting to see how Google eventually integrates Knol into their Universal search results ... will Google end up placing Knol results above other resources, such as Wikipedia?

While Knol is still a work in progress, it may become another valuable resource for searchers. Stay tuned!