Having had a few more hours to explore Google Instant there are four things that I find seriously annoying about it:
1. The way the suggestions and results are displayed is so messy and busy. AlltheWeb's LiveSearch implementation was so much slicker and easier to follow. A pity that Yahoo did not follow through on that one but they never have taken really good experimental stuff further.
2. You only get 10 results per page regardless of what you have on your Settings page. This is a major problem for me because I have my display set to 100. I don't trust the first results in a Google search to be - er, how shall I put it - unbiased, and I want to be able to quickly scan through at least 30 or 40 to get an indication of whether or not I need to modify my strategy. Having to keep clicking for the next page is going to drive me up the wall. I can understand, though, that allowing everyone to have more than 10 results per page would probably slow down the processing and display of results.
3. The Wonderwheel has gone from Google Instant results. I don't use this feature that often but it does sometimes help me narrow my search or to branch out in a completely different direction.
4. It messes up several of my Firefox add-ons, in particular OptimizeGoogle. Google SearchWiki (now defunct) did exactly the same.
I have now turned off Google Instant. It offers me no benefits that compensate for the loss of features and options.
Many people are also complaining that the ability to turn off query suggestions has now disappeared (thanks to Paul Chapman for bringing this to my attention - see his comment to my initial Google Instant review at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/09/09/google-instant-display-results-as-you-type/comment-page-1/#comment-8637). You can still do it if you use Google SSL at https://encrypted.google.com/ but that is no help whatsoever if you want to use a country version of Google as I often do. To be honest I rarely pay any attention to the suggested queries and most of the time I start my search from the Google Toolbar where I have suggestions turned off. But if you really do not want query suggestions or it causes technical problems, and Google does not reinstate the turn-off option, the main alternatives are Yahoo or Bing. Both still allow you to switch it off.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Google Instant - display results as you type
No, Google hasn't branched out into groceries - yet. Google Instant is not a brand of coffee but a new search and display feature that shows changing results as you type your search. Google says that it is actually display before you type because it tries to predict your full strategy and delivers results for that search. As you add more terms the predictions and the results change:
The list of predicted searches - they are the same as Google Suggest - appears below your search box. If you spot a better strategy you can scroll down the list to select it.
I found that Google does eventually run out of predictions. In some cases it was after only three terms: in others it took seven or eight before Google gave up but carried on changing the results as I typed in extra terms. If you are a more experienced and advanced searcher who uses search commands such as 'filetype:' or 'site:' you are suddenly presented with a blank page. This totally confused me at first and I thought that Google simply did not have any results for my search. In these situations Google reverts to 'old style' search, so just carry on as normal and press enter to view your results.
Note: You have to be signed in to your Google account to see Google Instant.
Not everyone will have Google Instant right now:
I am guessing that IE 6 is not included in the "all geographies and platforms" as Google has already withdrawn support for it in some of its other services, for example YouTube.
The idea is not new. AlltheWeb - owned by Yahoo - was trying out a similar approach with its Livesearch a few years ago. I found it extremely useful because you could quickly spot if you had a gone a search term too far. The progression might go: OK-ish results, relevant, even better, superb, total rubbish. It was then easy to remove the last term you had typed in to get back to your superb results list. When further development of AlltheWeb stopped Livesearch was discontinued.
Another good idea abandoned by Yahoo and later taken up by someone else. Some of you may also remember Yahoo Mindset which gave you a slider bar to change the emphasis of your results to find more shopping or research oriented pages. Google now has a fewer/more shopping sites option in the left hand menu on its web results pages.
My first impressions are mixed. Sometimes the predictions work, sometimes they don't and I don't find it as easy to take in the changing display as I did with AlltheWeb Livesearch. I think that is because Livesearch had the search box on the left hand side of the screen and I find it easier to glance across the page rather than down to monitor what is happening to my search.
Find Google Instant distracting and want to turn it off? Either sign out of your Google account or click on the Settings link in the top right hand corner of the screen. The option to turn it off is at the bottom of the Settings screen.
Further information is available on the Official Google Blog - Search: now faster than the speed of type
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed-of-type.html
"Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful."
The list of predicted searches - they are the same as Google Suggest - appears below your search box. If you spot a better strategy you can scroll down the list to select it.
I found that Google does eventually run out of predictions. In some cases it was after only three terms: in others it took seven or eight before Google gave up but carried on changing the results as I typed in extra terms. If you are a more experienced and advanced searcher who uses search commands such as 'filetype:' or 'site:' you are suddenly presented with a blank page. This totally confused me at first and I thought that Google simply did not have any results for my search. In these situations Google reverts to 'old style' search, so just carry on as normal and press enter to view your results.
Note: You have to be signed in to your Google account to see Google Instant.
Not everyone will have Google Instant right now:
"Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. We’ll also be offering Google Instant to our users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll work to roll out Google Instant to all geographies and platforms."
I am guessing that IE 6 is not included in the "all geographies and platforms" as Google has already withdrawn support for it in some of its other services, for example YouTube.
The idea is not new. AlltheWeb - owned by Yahoo - was trying out a similar approach with its Livesearch a few years ago. I found it extremely useful because you could quickly spot if you had a gone a search term too far. The progression might go: OK-ish results, relevant, even better, superb, total rubbish. It was then easy to remove the last term you had typed in to get back to your superb results list. When further development of AlltheWeb stopped Livesearch was discontinued.
Another good idea abandoned by Yahoo and later taken up by someone else. Some of you may also remember Yahoo Mindset which gave you a slider bar to change the emphasis of your results to find more shopping or research oriented pages. Google now has a fewer/more shopping sites option in the left hand menu on its web results pages.
My first impressions are mixed. Sometimes the predictions work, sometimes they don't and I don't find it as easy to take in the changing display as I did with AlltheWeb Livesearch. I think that is because Livesearch had the search box on the left hand side of the screen and I find it easier to glance across the page rather than down to monitor what is happening to my search.
Find Google Instant distracting and want to turn it off? Either sign out of your Google account or click on the Settings link in the top right hand corner of the screen. The option to turn it off is at the bottom of the Settings screen.
Further information is available on the Official Google Blog - Search: now faster than the speed of type
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed-of-type.html
Thursday, 19 August 2010
China Full Directory Kit discount
If you carry out a lot of research on businesses and industries in China you might be interested in the offer currently available from dataresources. For a limited period they are offering 45% discount on SinoMedia's China Full Directory Kit, which provides information resources required to do business in China. Originally priced at over £1350 the kit is now £750 (+delivery) .
The China Full Directory Kit includes:
The China Full Directory Kit includes:
- China Foreign Enterprise Directory 11th Edition 2010 (CD-ROM)
- China Enterprise Directory 2010 (Book and CD ROM)
- Top Global 500 Companies in China 2009-2010 (CD-ROM)
- China Government Organizations Directory 2009-2010 (Book)
- China MICE Guide 2010-2011 (Forthcoming) (Book)
- China Financial Services Directory 2010-2011 (Forthcoming) CD-ROM
- China Logistics Guide 2010/2011 CD-ROM
- China IT Directory 2010 CD-ROM
- China Manufacturing Directory 2010 CD-ROM
- China Media Directory 2010 CD-ROM
- China Industrial Zones Directory 2010 CD-ROM
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Top Business Search Tips
At the end of July I was in mid Wales running a workshop on business information. There was a good mix of experience and backgrounds amongst the participants and plenty of time for people to try out 'stuff' and share tips with each other. At the end of the day they came up with a list of their top 10 business search tips. Actually it was 11 - the additional one was my own web site, which I used as a starting point for many of the examples. You could say they were virtually brainwashed into including it so I am giving them that one as a 'free' extra! Here is the full list.
1. Marketingfile http://www.marketingfile.com/ Collection of business to business and consumer mailing lists. Free to search and reasonably priced pay as you go purchase options. Buy as many or as few records as you need or as dictated by your budget.
2. Directionlessgov http://www.directionlessgov.com/ Having problems finding information on UK government web sites or on DirectGov? Then get thee hence to this Google custom search engine from the people behind They Work for You (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/), What do they know - make and browse Freedom of Information Requests (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/) and FixMyStreet (http://www.fixmystreet.com/)
Google results are shown on the right hand side of your results screen and you can compare them with the DirectGov results on the left hand side of the screen. There seems to be intermittent problems at the moment when clicking on the Directionlessgov search results; you are sometimes taken to the Directionlessgov home page instead of the page in the results. Nevertheless, still worth using as the results are far superior and you do at least have the details of the web site and document.
3. Companies House http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ The official companies register for the UK. There is a free companies and disqualified directors search available under the Webcheck Service. At the time of writing the link was in the middle of the right hand part of the home page. You can search the database for free and free company information includes name, registered company number, registered address, status, date of incorporation, nature of business, date of accounts, previous names. Documents can be purchased on a pay per view basis.
4. Kompass http://www.kompass.com/ Worldwide directory of products. Search by keywords, company, products, classification codes. Basic search is free of charge. In order to use the advanced search and view full company profiles you will have to purchase a subscription or 'credit units'. The minimum number of 50 credit units costs EUR120 or USD 170
5. StatsWales http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/ Forget about the ONS - if you need data and statistics on Wales this is the place to go. "StatsWales is a free-to-use service that allows visitors to view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales." Email alerts and RSS feeds are available.
6. Business support, information and advice | Flexible Support for Business Wales http://fs4b.wales.gov.uk/ Everything you need to know about setting up and running a business in Wales.
7. D&B UK small business centre for business reports and company financial performance tracking http://www.do-business.net/sbc/. Provides reports on over 3.3 million UK companies. Report content varies depending on whether you need a customer, competitor, supplier or a partner report. Prices start at GBP 7.50 and there are sample reports to give you an idea of what each includes. The supplier report, for example, gives star ratings for overall condition of the business and how it compares with other business in the same industry sector, size of the business, names of the directors, significant legal proceedings/events such as County Court Judgements.
8. FITA http://www.fita.org/ Founded in 1984, FITA "fosters international trade by strengthening the role of local, regional, and national associations throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada". In addition to services for members, there is a very useful collection of Web resources for International trade. There are over 8000 annotated links. Categories include country or region, legal resources, doing business in another country, International market research and business directories. The business directories are subdivided into industry specific, global and country directories. The links are in the menu on the left hand side of the screen.
9. UK Trade and Investment http://www.ukti.gov.uk/ "UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) works with UK-based businesses to ensure their success in international markets, and encourage the best overseas companies to look to the UK as their global partner of choice." There is information on industry sectors and business opportunities in other countries as well as help for new and experienced exporters.
10 LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/ Useful professional networking site for biographical information on people (if they are members) and for identifying contacts within companies.
And the eleventh is Business Information on the Internet (Compiled by Karen Blakeman) http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/, business resources organised by type e.g. statistics, market research, company registers.
1. Marketingfile http://www.marketingfile.com/ Collection of business to business and consumer mailing lists. Free to search and reasonably priced pay as you go purchase options. Buy as many or as few records as you need or as dictated by your budget.
2. Directionlessgov http://www.directionlessgov.com/ Having problems finding information on UK government web sites or on DirectGov? Then get thee hence to this Google custom search engine from the people behind They Work for You (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/), What do they know - make and browse Freedom of Information Requests (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/) and FixMyStreet (http://www.fixmystreet.com/)
"We got so fed up with the general uselessness of the multi-million pound shambles otherwise known as the Direct.gov.uk portal, that we decided to build something better in under an hour. Sadly, we ran catastrophically behind schedule, but we still finished before lunch.
Google results are shown on the right hand side of your results screen and you can compare them with the DirectGov results on the left hand side of the screen. There seems to be intermittent problems at the moment when clicking on the Directionlessgov search results; you are sometimes taken to the Directionlessgov home page instead of the page in the results. Nevertheless, still worth using as the results are far superior and you do at least have the details of the web site and document.
3. Companies House http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ The official companies register for the UK. There is a free companies and disqualified directors search available under the Webcheck Service. At the time of writing the link was in the middle of the right hand part of the home page. You can search the database for free and free company information includes name, registered company number, registered address, status, date of incorporation, nature of business, date of accounts, previous names. Documents can be purchased on a pay per view basis.
4. Kompass http://www.kompass.com/ Worldwide directory of products. Search by keywords, company, products, classification codes. Basic search is free of charge. In order to use the advanced search and view full company profiles you will have to purchase a subscription or 'credit units'. The minimum number of 50 credit units costs EUR120 or USD 170
5. StatsWales http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/ Forget about the ONS - if you need data and statistics on Wales this is the place to go. "StatsWales is a free-to-use service that allows visitors to view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales." Email alerts and RSS feeds are available.
6. Business support, information and advice | Flexible Support for Business Wales http://fs4b.wales.gov.uk/ Everything you need to know about setting up and running a business in Wales.
7. D&B UK small business centre for business reports and company financial performance tracking http://www.do-business.net/sbc/. Provides reports on over 3.3 million UK companies. Report content varies depending on whether you need a customer, competitor, supplier or a partner report. Prices start at GBP 7.50 and there are sample reports to give you an idea of what each includes. The supplier report, for example, gives star ratings for overall condition of the business and how it compares with other business in the same industry sector, size of the business, names of the directors, significant legal proceedings/events such as County Court Judgements.
8. FITA http://www.fita.org/ Founded in 1984, FITA "fosters international trade by strengthening the role of local, regional, and national associations throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada". In addition to services for members, there is a very useful collection of Web resources for International trade. There are over 8000 annotated links. Categories include country or region, legal resources, doing business in another country, International market research and business directories. The business directories are subdivided into industry specific, global and country directories. The links are in the menu on the left hand side of the screen.
9. UK Trade and Investment http://www.ukti.gov.uk/ "UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) works with UK-based businesses to ensure their success in international markets, and encourage the best overseas companies to look to the UK as their global partner of choice." There is information on industry sectors and business opportunities in other countries as well as help for new and experienced exporters.
10 LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/ Useful professional networking site for biographical information on people (if they are members) and for identifying contacts within companies.
And the eleventh is Business Information on the Internet (Compiled by Karen Blakeman) http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/, business resources organised by type e.g. statistics, market research, company registers.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Google Images rolls out (very slowly) Bing-like results
Google has rolled out Bing style results for its image search. If you have never used Bing Image search take a look now. Several people in my latest search workshop loved it so much that they included it in their top search tips (http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/07/16/top-search-tips-14th-july-2010-workshop/). Bing Images results do not do page by page results: Bing Images does continuous scroll. As you move down through the results more images are loaded, and more, and more. There is no click "next page" to distract you. And now Google has copied the style... sort of.
I have several problems with Google's new image results layout. The first thing that struck me was that the images are all crammed in side by side to neatly fill the rows. Have the images been cropped to obtain the desired effect or have they been selected by dimensions, rather than relevance, to fill the 'mosaic'? Bing has four images in each row regardless of their relative dimensions so there is more white space between the images, which is easier on the eye. Google's display makes me feel as though I'm in a jam-packed standard class commuter train carriage: Bing is the more spacious, relaxed first class.
Neither Google nor Bing display by default image information, but you only need to hover over the image in which you are interested to see further details. The information is almost the same in both but Bing has an additional option to look for more sizes. The size option is great if you want to use an image but do not want to have the trouble of re-scaling it for your particular application. But not all images are available in 'more sizes'. It depends on whether or not other web pages have reproduced the image with different dimensions. If you own a particular image with strict copyright protection and you know you have only posted a specific size on one page, this can be a useful tool in tracking down copyright violations.
When it comes to scrolling down through your results, Google seems to have lost the plot. Work your way down through the results on Bing and the display smoothly unfolds. Google's is stop start stop.......start, stop. And it is so sloooooooow. I can almost hear the cog wheels clanking. Another distraction in Google is that batches of images are separated by the text 'page 2', 'page 3', 'page 4' etc. Why? The whole point of continuous scrolling of results is that there are no pages of results.
As a comparison, here are Google's results for an image search of Blackpool Tower:
Here are Bing's results:
I have several problems with Google's new image results layout. The first thing that struck me was that the images are all crammed in side by side to neatly fill the rows. Have the images been cropped to obtain the desired effect or have they been selected by dimensions, rather than relevance, to fill the 'mosaic'? Bing has four images in each row regardless of their relative dimensions so there is more white space between the images, which is easier on the eye. Google's display makes me feel as though I'm in a jam-packed standard class commuter train carriage: Bing is the more spacious, relaxed first class.
Neither Google nor Bing display by default image information, but you only need to hover over the image in which you are interested to see further details. The information is almost the same in both but Bing has an additional option to look for more sizes. The size option is great if you want to use an image but do not want to have the trouble of re-scaling it for your particular application. But not all images are available in 'more sizes'. It depends on whether or not other web pages have reproduced the image with different dimensions. If you own a particular image with strict copyright protection and you know you have only posted a specific size on one page, this can be a useful tool in tracking down copyright violations.
When it comes to scrolling down through your results, Google seems to have lost the plot. Work your way down through the results on Bing and the display smoothly unfolds. Google's is stop start stop.......start, stop. And it is so sloooooooow. I can almost hear the cog wheels clanking. Another distraction in Google is that batches of images are separated by the text 'page 2', 'page 3', 'page 4' etc. Why? The whole point of continuous scrolling of results is that there are no pages of results.
As a comparison, here are Google's results for an image search of Blackpool Tower:
Here are Bing's results:
Bing is so much faster, smoother and slicker.
When it comes to clicking through on an image Google almost wins. Google gives you a background of the web page and superimposed upon that is the full size image. To the right is information about the image with the warning "This image may be subject to copyright".
Bing's does not have the same initial impact, but it does display a scrollable list of thumbnails of your search results to the left of the screen. This is very useful if the image you have selected turns out not to be exactly what you need and you want to review the alternatives.
Who wins? It has to be Bing. It is much faster, easier on the eye, has equally relevant results and has an extra 'more sizes' option. And finally... it just feels right.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
London Workshop: Advanced Google Searching
I am running a series of hands-on workshops this autumn in London, and the first is on Advanced Google Searching. It is being held on September 23rd at Just IT, 7 Sandy's Row, which is near Liverpool Street.
Google is the first port of call for many of us when it comes to searching the Internet, and with more data and services being added all the time it seems the obvious place to start. More information, more search features but not necessarily more relevant results. This hands-on workshop will look at the latest developments in Google and how to focus your search to obtain better results.
Topics covered include:
Please note: this workshop concentrates on Google and does not cover the same topics as my recent UKeiG "Changing Landscape of Search" session.
A booking form is available at http://www.rba.co.uk/training/AdvancedGoogle.htm
Google is the first port of call for many of us when it comes to searching the Internet, and with more data and services being added all the time it seems the obvious place to start. More information, more search features but not necessarily more relevant results. This hands-on workshop will look at the latest developments in Google and how to focus your search to obtain better results.
Topics covered include:
- recent developments and new services from Google
- how Google personalises your results
- how Google is incorporating social media
- essential advanced search commands
- how to use the new options to narrow down your search for more relevant results
- how to access and use the specialist tools
- image, video and news search
- build your own Google Custom Search Engine
Please note: this workshop concentrates on Google and does not cover the same topics as my recent UKeiG "Changing Landscape of Search" session.
A booking form is available at http://www.rba.co.uk/training/AdvancedGoogle.htm
Saturday, 17 July 2010
I write like...Dan Brown, Charles Dickens, David Foster Wallace
Sorry? David Foster Wallace - who he?
Exactly. Not well known in the literary circles we move in. But let's go back to the beginning...
This all started with numerous tweets about "I write like" (http://iwl.me/). Just paste in some text from a blog posting, article or essay that you have written and it tells you who you write like. It told me that one of my blog postings was in the style of Dan Brown, and a second blog posting and an article for Information Today's Online magazine were in the style of David Foster Wallace. Phil Bradley tweeted that his style was reported as being akin to DFW. Like me he had never heard of the fellow (http://twitter.com/Philbradley/statuses/18723367233).
This is where I have to play around with the chronology of events because I want to get the frivolous stuff out of the way before moving onto the seriously worrying aspects of this website. So, first I shall regale you with some more "you write like" pronouncements.
Neil Ford (Twitttername: @neiljohnford) tweeted "just cut & pasted a few paragraphs from A Christmas Carol into "I Write Like" and it told me I write like Stephen King!" (http://twitter.com/neiljohnford/statuses/18769020129).
And thanks to Tom Roper for "I Write like Dan Brown « LRB blog" http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/07/15/christopher-tayler/i-write-like-dan-brown/. Do read the comments as well.
Phil Bradley then tweeted that he had "Pasted in some Hamlet, and told it was like James Joyce." (http://twitter.com/Philbradley/statuses/18769523421). Phil did not say which part of Hamlet he used but I can believe that a computer analysis of the text could come up with Joyce. What is odd, though, is that I would have expected "I write like" to recognise a famous Shakespeare play. I tried paragraphs from A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. They came back with Charles Dickens as I would expect. But would it recognise a lesser known work? I dug out a few paragraphs from The Wreck of the Golden Mary, courtesy of Gutenburg (The Wreck of the Golden Mary http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1465/1465-h/1465-h.htm) and Charles Dickens was transformed into Jack London.
And more great news for me. I pasted in the bullet points from my recent workshop on the Changing Landscape of Search and I am a budding Charles Dickens. I have pasted below the text that I used so that you can all appreciate my true literary worth:
How does this work?
According to the "I write like" blog:
But writing style is more than that. It is the vocabulary, the sentence structure (and that is not just about the number of words, commas and semicolons) and the subject matter. When I told my husband what I was blogging about he confessed that he had tried it out on a couple of his articles. The results were Conan Doyle and David Foster Wallace (him again!). I had a go with two pages of his novel University Shambles and it came back with H P Lovelock. Rather a come-down he thought as one reviewer had described his masterpiece as "very David Lodge", but that was probably referring more to the treatment of the subject matter rather than the writing style.
Harmless bit of fun?
At the top of the "I write like" blog there is a reference to another blog posting "Are you Tolstoy or are you Dan Brown? Ask ‘I Write Like.’ Then disregard answer - Lewis Grossberger" http://trueslant.com/lewisgrossberger/2010/07/16/are-you-tolstoy-or-are-you-dan-brown-ask-%E2%80%9Ci-write-like-%E2%80%9D-then-disregard-answer/ Do read this.
For most of us it is just a bit of fun. We play with it, we move on. But when it has analysed your text and told you how marvellous you are there is a prominent invitation to subscribe to download a free copy of "Short Story Writing: A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story By Charles Raymond Barrett, Ph. B."
Although its says "We respect your privacy: email addresses are never sold, and you can unsubscribe at any time." I decided to play safe and use a disposable Spamgourmet email account. [If you want to investigate disposable emails Phil Bradley has an excellent list at http://www.philb.com/iwantto/email.htm]
I haven't yet read "A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story" - I'll report back later - but it does sound rather learned and dry. Much more exciting and enticing is "Do you want to get your book published?". Of course you do! And the ultimate "Learn how to secure a book publishing contract!" This is it. You are going to be famous. Both of these links take you to "eBooks: Writing a Winning Book Proposal" at http://michaelhyatt.com/products/ebook-writing-a-winning-book-proposal. It looks as though "I write like" is an affiliate of Michael Hyatt's website, which offers two publications on writing "winning" proposals for fiction and non-fiction books. That means "I write like" earns commission when people click on the links on "I write like" and make a purchase on Michael Hyatts publications page.
The ebooks aren't free but neither are they that expensive:
I have no idea if the books are any good, but I'll find out soon. Yes, reader, I have bought them. Watch this space for reviews.
What worries me about this type of set up is not so much that people are being asked to part with money - it is a relatively small individual amount - but that it raises hopes. My husband's first novel, University Shambles, has been published and is doing well. It took him 18 months to write but 3 years to find a publisher. Many in the publishing industry have told us that he was lucky to find a publisher so quickly or at all! It is easy enough to write a formulaic winning proposal but that won't guarantee that it will be even glanced at by the publisher. Most are filed straight away under WPB. We are living in tough economic times and there are bound to be many who will be putting pen to paper or dusting off a manuscript in the hope of hitting the virtual shelves at Amazon or even a real physical shelf at Waterstones. Writing the book is nothing compared with the long hard slog of finding a publisher. The only real winners in this set up is Michael Hyatt and his company Thomas Nelson Publishers.
By the way, this posting is written in the style of H P Lovelock.
Exactly. Not well known in the literary circles we move in. But let's go back to the beginning...
This all started with numerous tweets about "I write like" (http://iwl.me/). Just paste in some text from a blog posting, article or essay that you have written and it tells you who you write like. It told me that one of my blog postings was in the style of Dan Brown, and a second blog posting and an article for Information Today's Online magazine were in the style of David Foster Wallace. Phil Bradley tweeted that his style was reported as being akin to DFW. Like me he had never heard of the fellow (http://twitter.com/Philbradley/statuses/18723367233).
This is where I have to play around with the chronology of events because I want to get the frivolous stuff out of the way before moving onto the seriously worrying aspects of this website. So, first I shall regale you with some more "you write like" pronouncements.
Neil Ford (Twitttername: @neiljohnford) tweeted "just cut & pasted a few paragraphs from A Christmas Carol into "I Write Like" and it told me I write like Stephen King!" (http://twitter.com/neiljohnford/statuses/18769020129).
And thanks to Tom Roper for "I Write like Dan Brown « LRB blog" http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/07/15/christopher-tayler/i-write-like-dan-brown/. Do read the comments as well.
Phil Bradley then tweeted that he had "Pasted in some Hamlet, and told it was like James Joyce." (http://twitter.com/Philbradley/statuses/18769523421). Phil did not say which part of Hamlet he used but I can believe that a computer analysis of the text could come up with Joyce. What is odd, though, is that I would have expected "I write like" to recognise a famous Shakespeare play. I tried paragraphs from A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. They came back with Charles Dickens as I would expect. But would it recognise a lesser known work? I dug out a few paragraphs from The Wreck of the Golden Mary, courtesy of Gutenburg (The Wreck of the Golden Mary http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1465/1465-h/1465-h.htm) and Charles Dickens was transformed into Jack London.
And more great news for me. I pasted in the bullet points from my recent workshop on the Changing Landscape of Search and I am a budding Charles Dickens. I have pasted below the text that I used so that you can all appreciate my true literary worth:
- what’s new in Google, Bing and Yahoo and how to get the most out of the new features
- how social media is being incorporated by the “big three” into their standard search results and does it work?
- why social media is important as a part of the search strategy
- specialist tools for subject/industry searches and the hidden web
- image, video and audio search tools – new technologies, new search techniques
- news services, blogs and twitter
- tools for searching social and professional networks, people search tools
- setting up your own customised search engine
How does this work?
According to the "I write like" blog:
“Actually, the algorithm is not a rocket science, and you can find it on every computer today. It’s a Bayesian classifier, which is widely used to fight spam on the Internet. Take for example the “Mark as spam” button in Gmail or Outlook. When you receive a message that you think is spam, you click this button, and the internal database gets trained to recognize future messages similar to this one as spam. This is basically how “I Write Like” works on my side: I feed it with “Frankenstein” and tell it, “This is Mary Shelley. Recognize works similar to this as Mary Shelley.” Of course, the algorithm is slightly different from the one used to detect spam, because it takes into account more stylistic features of the text, such as the number of words in sentences, the number of commas, semicolons, and whether the sentence is a direct speech or a quotation."
But writing style is more than that. It is the vocabulary, the sentence structure (and that is not just about the number of words, commas and semicolons) and the subject matter. When I told my husband what I was blogging about he confessed that he had tried it out on a couple of his articles. The results were Conan Doyle and David Foster Wallace (him again!). I had a go with two pages of his novel University Shambles and it came back with H P Lovelock. Rather a come-down he thought as one reviewer had described his masterpiece as "very David Lodge", but that was probably referring more to the treatment of the subject matter rather than the writing style.
Harmless bit of fun?
At the top of the "I write like" blog there is a reference to another blog posting "Are you Tolstoy or are you Dan Brown? Ask ‘I Write Like.’ Then disregard answer - Lewis Grossberger" http://trueslant.com/lewisgrossberger/2010/07/16/are-you-tolstoy-or-are-you-dan-brown-ask-%E2%80%9Ci-write-like-%E2%80%9D-then-disregard-answer/ Do read this.
For most of us it is just a bit of fun. We play with it, we move on. But when it has analysed your text and told you how marvellous you are there is a prominent invitation to subscribe to download a free copy of "Short Story Writing: A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story By Charles Raymond Barrett, Ph. B."
Although its says "We respect your privacy: email addresses are never sold, and you can unsubscribe at any time." I decided to play safe and use a disposable Spamgourmet email account. [If you want to investigate disposable emails Phil Bradley has an excellent list at http://www.philb.com/iwantto/email.htm]
I haven't yet read "A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story" - I'll report back later - but it does sound rather learned and dry. Much more exciting and enticing is "Do you want to get your book published?". Of course you do! And the ultimate "Learn how to secure a book publishing contract!" This is it. You are going to be famous. Both of these links take you to "eBooks: Writing a Winning Book Proposal" at http://michaelhyatt.com/products/ebook-writing-a-winning-book-proposal. It looks as though "I write like" is an affiliate of Michael Hyatt's website, which offers two publications on writing "winning" proposals for fiction and non-fiction books. That means "I write like" earns commission when people click on the links on "I write like" and make a purchase on Michael Hyatts publications page.
The ebooks aren't free but neither are they that expensive:
"...I decided to offer these eBooks for just $19.97 each. I may raise the price later, but for right now, I would rather make these eBooks available to as many people as possible at an affordable price. In addition, if you are considering both fiction and non-fiction, you can buy both eBooks for just $29.94—a $10.00 savings!"
I have no idea if the books are any good, but I'll find out soon. Yes, reader, I have bought them. Watch this space for reviews.
What worries me about this type of set up is not so much that people are being asked to part with money - it is a relatively small individual amount - but that it raises hopes. My husband's first novel, University Shambles, has been published and is doing well. It took him 18 months to write but 3 years to find a publisher. Many in the publishing industry have told us that he was lucky to find a publisher so quickly or at all! It is easy enough to write a formulaic winning proposal but that won't guarantee that it will be even glanced at by the publisher. Most are filed straight away under WPB. We are living in tough economic times and there are bound to be many who will be putting pen to paper or dusting off a manuscript in the hope of hitting the virtual shelves at Amazon or even a real physical shelf at Waterstones. Writing the book is nothing compared with the long hard slog of finding a publisher. The only real winners in this set up is Michael Hyatt and his company Thomas Nelson Publishers.
By the way, this posting is written in the style of H P Lovelock.
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