Ask X

Ask.com has just automatically redirected me to what seems to be a test version of a new interface called Ask X. My first impression of the Spartan home page is that I do not like it at all. The menu of search options - news, images, blogs and feeds etc. - that normally appears on the right hand side of the screen has gone. All you have is a single search box. Phil Bradley and I have already argued the case for leaving tabs such as these on the home page with Accoona, who very quickly restored them. As with Accoona, I do not want to have to do a two step process to carry out, for example, a blog or news search. Some of the options for the other resources reappear on the results page, but to have to carry out an 'all' search first annoys me.

Today's Ask X home page

I do like the three panel results screen, though. The left hand panel includes a search box together with links to some of the specialist resources, and the Zoom options (Narrow, Expand, Related Names). It also contains search suggestions that change as you type.

The middle panel contains your search results and on the right panel there are sample results from other types of resources including video, news, images, blogs and encyclopedia. For those who do not think beyond standard web page searching they are a reminder of other, possibly more relevant forms of information.

Ask X results screen

HotFrog Business Directories

Newly launched HotFrog UK is an interesting implementation of a business directory from Reed Business Information. Based on its Australian counterpart, a tag cloud forms a major part of the home page, highlighting the top 50 products/services. There is also an alphabetical index if you wish to browse all the categories. In addition you can browse an A-Z of companies or use the search box to carry out a key word search.

Limiting your search to a region or county is a two step process. You first search on a category and a location box appears on the results screen alongside the companies.

Business owners can add their company to the directory free of charge and can determine how they want their business classified. They can also include brand names in their entries.

There are another thirteen country 'versions' of HotFrog including India, Spain, Germany, France, Thailand and the US, all of which use the same interface. They are easily missed as the links are represented only by a series of flags at the bottom of the home pages.

Lack of overlap in search engines

Greg Notess has come across another example of why we need to use more than one search tool and why Google is not always best. In his recent posting
Page Found at 3 or 6: Not Google he shows that a web page he could not find in Google - a page on a Canadian academic site that has existed since at least 2003 - was indexed by Yahoo!, Gigablast, and Exalead, but it not by Google, Live, or Ask. The article is accompanied by a short screencast.

SLA Europe Information Professional 2007: Call for Nominations

Posted on behalf of Penny Leach, SLA Board

The Board of SLA Europe would like to remind you that the closing date for nominations for the SLA Europe Information Professional 2007 Award (SLA Europe IP 2007) is 28th February 2007.

The goal of the annual Information Professional Award is to recognise outstanding achievement in the information profession amongst those living and working in Europe, so this is a chance to gain recognition for a professional colleague or yourself.

The winner receives an expenses-paid trip to the SLA Conference in
Denver, June 2007. The nominator of the winner will receive a magnum of champagne.

Further information about the Award, including past winners, can be
found on the SLA Europe web site. The from is available in Word and PDF. All you need to do at this stage is complete the form and email it to Penny Leach (penny.leach@gs.com), including a short statement as to why the nominee should be considered (and attaching any relevant information). You do not need to be a member of SLA to nominate or be nominated.

The Award is sponsored by sponsored by Factiva.

RSS, Blogs and Wikis - Woking Library

I am doing a repeat of my Basingstoke RSS, Blogs and Wikis presentation at Woking Library on Tuesday, 20th February. It is being organised by the Surrey Library & Information Group and kicks off at 6 pm. All those who work or have worked in Library and Information services in Surrey and the surrounding areas are welcome.

If you are interested in attending please contact Hilary Ely, Surrey County Council Libraries & Culture, East Area Office, Omnibus, Lesbourne Road, Reigate, Surrey RH2 7JA by Wednesday 14th February 2007, e-mail: h.ely@surreycc.gov.uk Tel: 01737 737687 Fax: 01737 737649.

As an aside, I am delighted to see that the Hampshire and Isle of Wight sub-branch of CILIP's South East Branch, and who invited me to give the talk at Basingstoke library, now have a blog at http://hiow.blogspot.com/

Top 10 Search Tips from Swansea

This week I ran a workshop in Swansea on Internet search and new technologies. The first half of the day was taken up with new and recent developments and participants had the rest of the day to try out search techniques, tools, RSS, blogs and wikis for themselves. The group was made up of HE and health-care information professionals and they were all experienced, advanced searchers. It was hard work keeping up with them! At the end of the workshop they came up their own list of Top 10 Tips on Searching:

1. Live.com - http://www.live.com/. Formerly MSN search and totally revamped by Microsoft, this proved to be very popular and will probably be the main alternative to Google for the workshop participants. They particularly liked the scrolling image results page and Academic Live, which is given a separate mention later. There were some negative comments about Maps, but that area is still under development and worth revisiting now and again to see how it is progressing.

2. Graball - http://www.graball.com/. A tool for comparing the results of two search engines side by side.

3. Allwhois - http://allwhois.com/. Use this to find out who owns the domain name of a web site - an essential part of assessing the quality of information.

4. What does the plus (+) sign before a term do? The major search engines automatically search for all of your terms but they ignore common 'stop' words such as the, of, and. For example, if you are researching a quotation that contains stop words put it all inside double quote marks and precede each of the stop words with a plus sign. They will then be included in the search. In Google, use the plus sign before a word to stop Google stemming it and looking for variations.

5. Google's numeric range search for anything involving a range of numbers - weights, distances, temperatures, prices. Separate the numbers at the start and end of the range with two full stops (no spaces), and include a unit of measurement (optional).

For example:

toblerone 1..5 kg

will look for sites selling massive Toberlone bars. (We assumed that one carves up the 4.5 kg bar with a chain saw!)

6. The link: and linkdomain: commands in Live.com to find pages that link to a known page or site. Use them to find pages that are similar to your known page, or to see who is linking to your site.

For example:

link:www.site.co.uk/library/ will only find pages that link to the specified page on a site.

linkdomain:site.co.uk will find pages that link to any page on the site

7. Remember to use filetype: and/or site: commands to focus your search. Filetype can be be used to limit your search to PDFs, PPT, Excel, Word documents etc. Statistics, for example, are often left in Excel spreadsheets. The site: command can be used to limit your search to a type of site, for example site:gov.uk for just UK government web sites, or to search just one site, for example site:statistics.gov.uk. Perfect for large sites that have poor navigation or useless internal search engines.

8. Alacra Industry Spotlights - http://www.alacrawiki.com/ and click on the Alacra Spotlights link. A collection of overviews on different industries highlighting key publications and resources for each sector. Ideal if you are new to a sector. Although this is a wiki, the Spotlights area is locked so that only Alacra can edit the pages.

9. Academic Live - http://academic.live.com/. "More reliable and trustworthy than Google", and format options for bibliographic management packages such as RefWorks and EndNote. This event was held at Swansea University and there were links in each record in the results list that helped the searcher track down the full paper in the University's own collection.

10. CrossEngine - http://www.crossengine.com/. Dozens of different search tools are grouped under tabs by type, for example web, video, audio, images, news, blogs, reference. Type in your search terms just once and then click on each search engine in turn to run the search. Similar to Trovando.it but more up to date and it has additional features such a file type search options for Google and Yahoo. Great for reminding you of alternative tools and different types of resources that you should be including in your strategy.

RSS, Blogs and Wikis

Copies of my RSS, Blogs and Wikis Powerpoint presentation, and additional support materials, are now available on my
selected presentations page.