Category: Search software

This 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 at tool that lets tablet users safe the web and subscription based content at the same time.

Here are some of the most important search engine news headlines of the week.

Social search is web search aided in some way by social networks. Google (NSDQ:GOOG) launched its own social search this week. Who else is on this scene and how can social search help you find what you are looking for?

What kind of sites came into consideration for this short list of great social search engines? I have not been looking at sites that simply index social networks. I’m not looking for simply for information from social networks. I want search tools for general web search powered by information from social networks.

The sites on this list all search information that has been recommended by someone, and to some degree this recommendation influences the way the search results are listed. This brand of search engine give you search results that appeal to real people, not just search engine spiders.

Twitter adds the possibility of organizing feeds into topic lists. Pandia tests the feature.

Search innovation takes can be found in many places. You don’t have to try a new search engine. You don’t even have to leave the current page of your browser. Try these three great Firefox search add-ons.

A Firefox from the new search engine Duck Duck Go is now out of beta. It blocks 44 million spam domains, 28% of which are found in Google. If you have the toolbar installed and by mistake you type in yotube.com in stead of youtube.com, it will alert you of the mistake and ask “Did you mean youtube.com?” After a few seconds, it will then automatically redirect you to the suggested site.

Search has gone mobile. Smart phones with large screens, decent keyboards, and wi-fi connection finally makes it fun to surf the web from a hand held device. But still, the browser window is rather small. Entering a query and browsing the search results in Safari is cumbersome. Web search apps make this easier and many of them integrate multiple search engines and services. I have tested iPhone web search applications and reviewd our five favorites.

Google launched Google Latitude this week. It is a service that lets you keep track of where your friends are by tracking the whereabouts of their mobile phones. Pandia feels a little queasy.
The Official Google Blog puts it this way:
“Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It’s also an iGoogle [...]