Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up Feb 6

Here are some of the search engine oriented articles we have found interesting this week.

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Posted on Saturday 6 February 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Weekend | Permalink

Google celebrates Sami national day

Google Sami logoIn Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland Google is celebrating the Sami national day with a special logo today.

The Sami people, one of the largest indigenous groups in Europe, lives in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family.

February 6 was the date the first Sami congress was held in 1917 in Trondheim, Norway. This congress sami bride, samisk brud, utsnitt av BrOm's fotografiwas the first time that Norwegian and Swedish Sami came together to find solutions for common problems. Since 1993 Norway, Sweden and Finland (and now apparently Google) have recognized the date as the Sami National Day.

The Wikipedia on the Sami.

Creative Commons License Photo:Sami bride, photo credit: samisknettverk

Posted on Saturday 6 February 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services | Permalink

Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up Jan 31

Laptop and glassesHere are some of the search engine news stories we have found interesting this week:

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Posted on Sunday 31 January 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Weekend | Permalink

Why the Kindle and the iPad may change the way we search

Apple iPadThis week saw the birth of the Apple iPad. In spite of initial skepticism Steve Jobs has decided that the tablet has a future, and he is right. It will also change the way we search. Pandia argues that publishers should support a tool that lets tablet users surf the web and subscription based content at the same time.

There has been a lot of negative comments on the iPad. It doesn’t do this, it doesn’t do that, and nearly all of these comments come from geeks comparing the iPad to a regular computer. This is not a netbook, even if it can do much of what a netbook can do. Nor is it a plain ebook reader.

It is what I for a lack of a better word will call a media reader on steroids.

The reference tool

Back home we have an old laptop lying in a shelf in the living room. We don’t use it much for word processing, heavy calculations or for designing web sites.

We use it as a reference tool. If we watch a movie, we look it up at IMDB. If we need a recipe we search for one using Google. If we want to convert some measures, we find an appropriate tool. We use it for YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. And we use it for reading news.

My wife also uses it for games, and I pretend not to notice.

We do use the keyboard, but not for heavy lifting.

The ebook reader

On another shelf you will find the Amazon Kindle my wife gave me for Christmas.

I love it! I am a parallel reader, and tend to read several books at the same time, fact and fiction. If the book I am looking for is available for Kindle I download it to my Kindle using the Kindle itself or the Amazon store. I use the simplistic interface to switch between the various publications.

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Posted on Sunday 31 January 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services and Search software and The search engine industry | Permalink

Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up January 24

Pandia Weekend Wrap-upHere are the search engine stories we have found interesting this week:

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Posted on Sunday 24 January 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Weekend | Permalink

Test the search engines up against each other

Hakia has launched NoBrandSearch.com, a site where you can enact your own battle of the search engines and find out which one you like the best.

This is what hakia says about the tool:

“NoBrandSearch is an experiment to compare the core competencies of the search engines in the market. (…) Each time you enter a query, each side of the screen is randomly selected from the search engines in the market. Their brands and special features are screened out. All you have to do is to decide which set of results are better.”

Every time you search you will get two anonymized sets of search results side by side. Click on the result set you like the best, and you will get the name of both search engines. The idea is that this will give you an unbiased idea of the search quality of search engine like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and — obviously — Hakia.

Note that No Brand Search only includes the regular organic search results. There is more to the search engine result pages of the major search engines than that, of course.

The real reason for this service is that hakia hopes you will select the hakia search results as often as possible, making you understand that theirs is the search engine for you. We admire their self confidence!

By the way: Do take a look at hakia. It is one of the few serious alternatives to the big three (which are to become the big two when Yahoo! starts delivering Bing results).

See also: Hakia, a meaning-based search engine

Posted on Sunday 24 January 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services | Permalink

The real time web — what’s in it for you?

Apple LaptopThere has been tons of media attention paid to all of the companies that have entered the real time web. And, in addition to all of the new startups, companies like Google and Bing are now mixing real time results into their engines. However, what about the user? What can the user get out of the real time web? In this article, we will touch on some of the things users can do.

By guest writer Evan Britton

Fresh news on your subject of choice

The main thing users can get out of the real time web is information. You can find out what is being said right now about any particluar subject. If you want to see what people think about a sports event, movie, celebrity, or any other breaking news - a real time search will inform you.

You can head to Twitter’s homepage to perform a real time search. Twitter makes it very easy to see what is being said about a respective subject.

It is also interesting to see which links are being shared on the real time web. Sency has built an interesting real time engine which shows you both what is being said, along with today’s most popular links for a particular search term.
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Posted on Thursday 21 January 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) and Online search tools and services and Social media | Permalink

Pandia Search Engine News Wrap-up Jan 17 2010

enter the vikingWe have covered the Web buzz on the China/Google conflict in a separate article. Here are some headlines from the rest of the world of search and search engines.

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Posted on Sunday 17 January 2010
Filed under: All (summaries) | Permalink