December 13, 2004
MSN Desktop Search Beta Available
You heard it here...last.
Seriously, lots of postings that the beta of Microsoft's MSN Desktop Search is now available.
I read the news first on Marc Orchant's great blog. Marc added his own thoughts on how the beta compares to various competitors along with links for more info (including Scoble's lengthy developer interviews which really are interesting and seem totally unscripted -- a VERY refreshing change from PR-managed, tightly controlled, and content-free interviews you usually see when new products are being discussed).
More from Charlene Li on Yahoo!/X1
Charlene Li has a great follow-up on the Yahoo!/X1 announcment that builds on the point she made previously that web search vendors are busy in the desktop search market trying to cement customer loyalty.
December 10, 2004
Forrester: Search Loyalty and Innovation
Speaking of competing search vendors, Charlene Li talks about her research showing the battle to build customer loyalty is driving innovation and specialization.
AOL to use Copernic for Desktop Search
According to Search Engine News, AOL is going to use Copernic technology for their branded desktop search. Great article here: http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2004/12/aol-to-use-copernic-for-desktop-search.html , including:
- speculation that Yahoo will have to trim X1 a lot to make a reasonable download. (I don't know about that: I think the X1 download is about 6MB -- big but not impossibly so).
- speculation that it might be a good idea for AOL to acquire Copernic before a deal with Mamma.com is fully completed (Seems reasonable, but maybe too late now?)
So:
Web - Desktop
AOL - Copernic
Yahoo - X1
MSN - MSN
Google - Google
Ask Jeeves - Ask Jeeves
Yahoo and X1 Join Forces on Desktop Search
InfoWorld has an article today about Yahoo's plans to release a desktop search tool using X1 search technology. It will allow searching through personal files as well as the web (via Yahoo's own search engine). Future versions will include searching Yahoo's email and instant messaging services.
I think X1 is a good product that looks to get even better with the next version (you can test-drive the current beta to see what's coming at www.x1.com). How much of those features ends up in Yahoo's desktop search tool will be very interesting to see. Hopefully, the Yahoo version won't be hopelessly neutered.
Certainly, a free Yahoo-branded version of their product would address one concern: that X1 is priced too high ($74.95) for the current market. I've been suggesting dropping their price in half would be a good start -- but free would really level the playing field.
As usual, Amit Agarwal immediately had an insightful post on Yahoo and X1.
One thing that caught my eye in his post was the mention of separating desktop and web results:
"Both Yahoo and X1 contend it makes sense to maintain a dividing line between hard-drive search and Web search because one quest focuses on recovering old information while the other strives to discover new information."
I couldn't agree more. These tend to be two separate tasks for me -- one retrieval, one research -- and combining them isn't typically useful (any more than if I'm looking through my drawer for blue socks and kept running across advertisements for blue socks or articles about how blue socks and brown pants don't go together...well, actually that last might be helpful <g>).
However, I expect there will always be pressure to blur or eliminate that separation for many desktop search vendors because their revenue model depends on connecting users to commercial information on the web. I wrote a few days ago about this.
I said that X1 could afford to break this model, because unlike competitors, it had a simpler revenue model: selling software. We'll see if Yahoo tries to find a way to make money on its search tool through advertising, or if it is used primarily to strengthen brand loyalty for Yahoo's other services (search, email, IM).
There sure has been a lot of activity in the desktop search market recently, including another update to Copernic Desktop Search with performance and UI improvements and new products coming soon from companies like Ask Jeeves and Microsoft. InfoWorld has more details in an article title "Desktop Search Avalance Set to Hit."
November 15, 2004
RSS Overload Strategies
I've been using SharpReader for a while now to track/read RSS feeds from a few dozen blogs. Works well. But I'm finding it hard to keep up all the new feeds. Here one take on how to deal with the firehouse of incoming information:
November 12, 2004
Microsoft's beta MSN Search
The beta of Microsoft's new MSN Search is out.
Fast and lots of advanced search options. Didn't return as many results as Google does to my sample queries, though, so not a Google-killer yet. Press and the blogger pundits seem interested but underwhelmed.
But that's why they call it a beta, right? Microsoft certainly has the resources to do it right.
Thomas Hawk has interesting advice for Microsoft:
"Now if you want an idea to help you pull search from Google, how about this -- proprietary search results. What do I mean by this? Find sources of content that are not presently indexed by Google and Yahoo! and offer exclusive indexing of this content through your search engine. You could start by working out a deal with the networks to be the exclusive provider of all indexed closed captioned transcripts since they've been collecting them.Now if you want an idea to help you pull search from Google, how about this -- proprietary search results. What do I mean by this? Find sources of content that are not presently indexed by Google and Yahoo! and offer exclusive indexing of this content through your search engine. You could start by working out a deal with the networks to be the exclusive provider of all indexed closed captioned transcripts since they've been collecting them."
Interesting idea -- though good luck trying to pry transcripts from any of the major networks <g>. One of the great things Google did early was to buy and then incorporate a searchable database of all Usenet posts via the Google Groups option. I found the ability to search for information on web pages and also in Usenet invaluable. Usenet's successor these days seems to be the blogsphere -- maybe new and better ways to search/track information there would help MSN Search too. Blog-centric services like Technorati and Feedster exist already, but I've always found them to be slow and to do fairly poor job returning relevant results.
September 22, 2003
Anti-Email Policy?
According to this article in Internet Week, Phones4u CEO John Cauldwell is banning inter-office e-mail at his company.
"Calling internal e-mails a 'trap' that costs more than $1.5 million dollars a year and eats as much as three hours of employee time per day, British telephone retailer Phones4u has banned them, according to press reports Friday."
Mitch Wagner, editor at Internet Week, expanded on some of the downsides of using e-mail in his weblog.
I posted the following comment:
First, I think you have to take it with a grain of salt when a mobile telephone company CEO announces that e-mail is a poor communication tool!
E-mail usage can be a boon to or drain on office productivity, depending on how it's used or mis-used. It's nice to say that by eliminating e-mail workers will save 3 hours each day, but that calculation fails to include the time workers will now spend using alternative communication methods. Will they now spend hours a day checking and sending voice mail, arranging and travelling to face-to-face meetings, etc.?
Overall, I wouldn't give up internal office e-mail or trade it for only IM access. E-mail simply can't be beat for handling non-urgent asynchronous conversations. I like the fact that I respond to other's non-urgent e-mail on MY schedule and can in turn send out questions that others can take time to think about and respond more fully to then they could if we had the same discussion in person, by phone or by IM. Just as importantly, keeping e-mail archives helps me maintain my own "institutional memory" about how and why past decisions were reached. I know there are potential legal and productivity pitfalls, but just banning internal e-mail is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
September 19, 2003
Can't Spam Authors Be More Creative with their Subjects?
I get a lot of spam. On a bad day 75% of my e-mail can be junk come-on's for Viagra, anatomy enhancers, cable TV descramblers, and adult entertainment. I try not to get too worked up about it. After all, I get a lot of junk mail in my physical mailbox too (though none of that is booby-trapped with viruses, worms, spyware, etc).
I know I could apply a lot of technical solutions -- such as e-mail spam filters that are getting a lot better -- but, frankly, I've been doing fine just by keeping up with important operating system patches and anti-virus updates, and ignoring the temptation to even look at the contents of obvious spam (and NEVER opening suspect attachments).
Thank goodness the writers of spam e-mail go out of their way to help me identify their junk immediately by using weird subjects. Here are a few of my favorites:
"I thought this could save you a few bucks smoking the way you do. so"
[I'm already saving quite a bit by not smoking at all. And dangling a word at the end doesn't really tempt me to keep reading. really...]
"Where are you?" "Wish I could be there." "Why did you block my ICQ?"
[I get about 20 "personal sounding" e-mails like this a day that are simply come-ons for spam messages. I don't even look, just hit delete.]
"Want to get a drink? fb3g483tz7q"
[A new trend seems to be including a string of characters at the end of subjects. What's it for? Something to track this message? An attempt to trick filters? I have no idea but it makes it easy for me to spot candidates for deletion.]
"Here's a powerful, effective anti-spam tool."
[Spam advertising for an anti-spam program. How could you go wrong
May 14, 2003
Site specific Google
Like everyone on the planet, I use Google daily to search the web. I've always liked it's minimalist approach and the separate links to search newsgroups (which used to be dejanews.com) and news stories is nice too. But I regularly run across additional tweaks and tips that make my googling even better. Case in point, Chris Sell's blog mentioned there's a Google page dedicated to searching just Microsoft sites at www.google.com/microsoft.html. And a comment by Paul W pointed out that you can always limit a Google search to a specific site using "site:sitename" or exclude a site using "-site:sitename." Makes me want to run out and buy a copy of Google Hacks!
December 26, 2002
Ah, to be young again
From 1985 to 1995, Bill Watterson produced a fantastic comic strip about a mischievous six-year-old, Calvin, and his sometimes real, sometimes imaginary tiger playmate, Hobbes. Though there was a lot of slapstick, most of the humor was clever, wry and very adult. Now that I"m a father of a little guy myself, I find browsing old C&H strips funnier than ever. For a daily dose, check out the official Calvin and Hobbes site (where you can read the strips), or for more info take a look at the Calvin and Hobbes Resurrection fansite.
December 24, 2002
Way, Way Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."
This includes the "WayBack Machine" that has snapshots of the Internet back over the years. Want to see what a particular site looked like two years ago? Check out the Wayback Machine.