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Here are the latest news headlines and articles from Pandia Search World. Go to www.pandia.com/sew/ for the online version of this news service.

The Theseus image and video search project

The Germans will not be left behind in the search engine race, which is why the German federal government is supporting the Theseus search engine project.

Theseus grew out of the French-German Quaero project, but Theseus is now an independent exercise. The Germans apparently got tired of French America-bashing and the idea of developing an alternative to Google.

The future is semantic video search

Theseus is definitely not about developing a European Google. This is a technology-push initiative in which research institutions and companies cooperate to develop search technologies that can be used in various search engines and tools. The main focus is on image and video search.

Theseus is to develop so-called semantic search technologies, where the search engine analyzes the context of the information found in order to determine what it is all about. Given the social nature of today’s Web this should, according to the Germans, be more feasible.

The first prototype is expected to be ready in 2011.

Theseus was presented at a recent Chorus workshop.

The Theseus Content Technology Cluster (CTC)

The project consists of several cases and a cross-cutting Content Technology Cluster.

The Theseus Content Technology Cluster (CTC) was presented by Dr. Ralf Schäfer of the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Herz-Institut. Fraunhofer is one of Europe’s largest public research institutions. Schäfer is coordinator of the CTC.

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Alternative search engine of the year

Search is so much more than “the big 3″ (Google, Yahoo and Live). Charles Knight at AltSearchEngines publishes a very interesting monthly list of 100 top alternative search engines. Now he has nominated 10 search engines for the Search Engine of the Year Award.

AltSearchEngines is a blog about — you guessed it — alternative search engines. The goal is to be the definitive destination for everything related to alternative search engines — over 1,000 of them. You won’t find in-depth info on all 1000 yet, but the blog is still quite young.

On December 3 AltSearchEngines will announce the alternative search engine of the year. Read on for a presentation of the nominees.

AfterVote calls itself a social search engine. It is a metasearch engine that presents results from Google, Yahoo and Live and shows you how each site ranks in these search engines as well as the Google PageRank and Alexa rank. The social aspect is that registered users can “vote up” a site among the result and post comments. These comments become visible in the search results. They will have to have a lot of active users before the social aspect gets really useful, though.

Answers.com is a free one-stop shop with information on over 4 million topics. The results are not lists of links, but excerpts of articles from e.g. Wikipedia, Oxford University press and other reference publishers. Even though the site has too many ads in our opinion, it’s a great source of information with lots of useful features.

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Search Marketing Standard offers anniversary discount

A special two year anniversary offer from the Search Marketing Standard.

Pandia has found the Search Engine Marketing Standard to be an excellent resource for search engine marketing feature articles with advice suited to beginners as well as SEO/SEM professionals.

(See for instance our reviews A magazine for search engine marketing and The best search engine marketing magazines)

Search Marketing Standard is now offering Pandia’s readers a 67% discount. This means that a 1 year U.S. subscription will cost US$ 4.95. For the rest of the world the price will be US $6.60.

To make use of this offer use this link and enter the coupon code: HOLIDAY67

This promotion is for new subscribers and will remain active for two weeks until Dec. 10th.

At that time, Search Engine Marketing Standard will also send a donation check to Toys for Tots - $1 for every subscriber that has used the coupon code during registration.

Just to be clear: This is not a paid link. Pandia is not a Search Marketing Standard affiliate and Pandia will not get percentages of any sales made.

Web 2.0 Fun (Weekend Wrap-up Dec 2 2007)

Web 2.0 is still a hotly debated subject. I have long since decided to let other, more patient, souls carry on the discussion of whether this quickly growing jungle of web tools and services deserve their own numeral or not.

Either way, you can’t help but admire the creativity of some of these sites. A recent favorite of mine (found by Charles Knight) is MizPee, a site that lets you search for clean rest rooms in your vicinity!

Listings contain information about the quality of the facilities, weather a purchase is required, the address and a link that places these facilities on a Yahoo map.

You can also add rest rooms, rate already added rest rooms or browse a list of the worst and best ones in your area. MizPee is now fully Web 2.0 enabled: They recently became available via mobile phone.

If you find yourself wondering “What will they think of next?”, go to Web Two Point Oh where a web application with a bent for sarcasm will generate Web 2.0 business concepts on the fly.

A year ago we reported that Google was experimenting with an online storage service called Platypus.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that a “Gdrive ” launch is imminent. Here at Pandia we have already moved most of our computing online. Microsoft should be very afraid.

More recommended reading from this week

Unofficial SEO Blog Renamed as PageTraffic Blog
The PageTraffic Blog will focus more on how to get more visitors on your site from search engines, social media, link building (Navneet Dec 1 2007)

10 Places to Find Free Images Online and Make Your Content More Linkable
Phil Bradley lists them all (Dec 1 2007)

Would Google’s GDrive be rife with legal problems?
The Gdrive (free online storage) may finally make its appearance in a few months (Google Tutor Dec 2 2007)

Spammers Giving Up? Google Thinks So
The number of spam attempts — that is, the number of junk messages sent out by spammers — is flat (Wired Nov 28 2007)

Straight Out Of Left Field
Google Experimenting With Digg Style Voting On Search Results (TechCrunch Nov 28 2007)

Google working to make Street View anonymous
Google is considering changes to its Street View Google Maps feature that would protect the privacy of those it photographs. (InfoWorld Nov 30 2007)

Music Search Engines Tread Fine Legal Line
Techcrunch takes a look at SeeqPod, Songza and Skreemr. (Nov 28 2007)

Google on Desktop Search and Personal Information Management
Patents for technology tracking all your surfing activities in order to present relevant ads (SEO by the Sea Dec 2 2007)

Google Announces It Will Apply to Participate in Spectrum Auction
The auction is for wireless spectrum in the 700MHz frequency band, which is currently used for US analog TV broadcasts. (Mobileburn Dec 2 2007)

Search Engine Roundtable 4th Birthday Celebration!
Congratulations from Pandia! (Dec 2 2007)

Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank violates our webmaster guidelines. (Google Webmaster Central Blog Dec 1 2007)

Selling links that pass PageRank
A concrete example of paid posts and show why the major search engines don’t want to be affected by links within paid posts. (Matt Cutts Dec 1 2007)

Life Beyond Google: Eight Great Alternative Search Engines
Some interesting options for vertical search (Web Worker Daily Nov 30 2007)

Search Engine Land Celebrates Its First Birthday!
Happy Birthday to Danny & Co (SE Land Dec 1 2007)

Exalead Tailors Search to the iPhone
iPhone users can point their Web browsers to i.exalead.com to access Exalead's search engine. The new software hews to the display specifications of the iPhone screen (eWeek Nov 29 2007)

Remember to use charity search engines by adding them to your search bar
At this time of year, remembering to give to charity comes into the spotlight, and there are plenty of donation-gathering search engines (Shiny Shiny Nov 30 2007)

Two More Social Media Websites: Mixx and myM
Blogger's Blog looks at sites that might become the next digg (Nov 24 2007)