What other sites share the same infrastructure with your site, or any other? Bing‘s IP search can answer. Do a search by IP number: ip:72.233.127.217 ip:158.136.1.105 ip:72.51.52.15
November 25, 2008
Web Search Re-Imagined: Searchme iPhone App
Re-imagined a bit, anyway. Why browse a vertical list of results when you can flip through them like pages in a book (or album covers in iTunes). Searchme on the iPhone and iPod touch does just that. As you type your search term, icons representing rough categories appear, allowing you to target your search and [...]
October 12, 2006
Cataloging Errors
A bibliographic instruction quiz we used to use asked students how many of Dan Brown’s books could be found in our catalog. The idea was that attentive students would dutifully search by author for “brown, dan,” get redirected to “Brown, Dan 1964-,” and find three books. Indeed, the expected answer was “three.” As it turns [...]
July 19, 2006
OpenSearch In A Nutshell
OpenSearch is a standard way of querying a database for content and returning the results. The official docs note simply: “Any website that has a search feature can make their results available in OpenSearch format,” then adds: “Publishing your search results in OpenSearch™ format will draw more people to your content, by exposing it to [...]
June 21, 2006
Context, Language, Systems
“Bagged products” is little better than “cookery.” I’m gonna bet that no customer has ever asked the sales people for “bagged products,” that nobody’s ever checked the yellow pages for “bagged products,” and without context, nobody would come close to answering a question on what the heck “bagged products” are all about. But we do [...]
March 7, 2006
Talking ‘Bout Library 2.0
Users want a rich pool from which to search, simplicity, and satisfaction. One does not have to take a 50-minute instruction session to order from Amazon. Why should libraries continue to be so difficult for our users to master? — from page 8 of the The University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services Task Force Final [...]
February 23, 2006
Standards Cage Match
I prefaced my point about how the standards we choose in libraries isolate us from the larger stream of progress driving development outside libraries with the note that I was sure to get hanged for it. It’s true. I commented that there were over 140,00 registered Amazon API developers and 365 public OpenSearch targets (hey [...]
December 18, 2005
Ryan Eby’s Pursuit of Live-Search
Ryan Eby gets excited over LiveSearch. And who can blame him? I mention the preceding because it explains the following: two links leading to some good examples of livesearch in the wild. Inquisitor is a livesearch plugin for OS X’s Safari web browser. It gives the top few hits, spelling suggestions where appropriate, and links [...]
November 3, 2005
What’s In A Web Search?
Sometimes the answer isn’t as interesting as the question. Consider this note from Yahoo Buzz: On Sunday, the day before the nomination became official, [searches for] Alito sprang up a sudden 320%. Did searches for Alito spike on tips White House staffers, or were White House Staffers vetting their nominee via the search engines? tags: [...]
October 12, 2005
Findability, The Google Economy, and Libraries
Peter Morville, author of Ambient Findability, stirred up the web4lib email list with a message about Authority and Findability. His message is about how services like Wikipedia and Google are changing our global information architecture and the meaning of “authority.” The reaction was quick, and largely critical, but good argument tests our thinking and weeds [...]
September 29, 2005
Must Read: Ambient Findability
Peter Morville‘s Ambient Findability sold out at Amazon today on the first day of release. There’s a reason: it’s good. Morville’s work is the most appropriate follow-on to the usability concepts so well promoted by Steven Krug in his Don’t Make Me Think and Jakob Nielsen in Designing Web Usability. Findability, Morville argues, is a [...]
September 23, 2005
Ambient Findability And The Google Economy
I’m only just getting into Peter Morville‘s Ambient Findability, but I’m eating it up. In trying to prep the reader to understand his thesis — summed up on the front cover as “what we find changes who we become” — Morville relates his difficulty in finding authoritative, non-marketing information about his daughter’s newly diagnosed peanut [...]
September 14, 2005
Search, Findability, The Google Economy: How It Shapes Us
Just when I was beginning to feel a little on my own with my talk about the Google Economy here, I see two related new books are coming out. The first is Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability. The second is John Battelle’s The Search. Findability appears to ask the big question that I’ve been pushing toward. [...]
It’s a Pity that searchme disappeared… It was better than google…
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