Computer Chit Chat

Archive for the ‘Search engines’ Category

My oldest son is 12. He is only allowed to connect to the internet using my desktop computer in the living room. It’s one of the ways I try to make sure he doesn’t see inappropriate things, all of the stuff that I think he shouldn’t see. When he knows what site he wants to use he can go directly to it. But when he’s in the mood to explore, I have him start from the KidsClick site.

KidsClick was created by some public librarians in New York trying to ensure that the children using library computers were able to get to age appropriate websites. At first the site was called Kids Tools For Searching The Internet and it was just input boxes that connected to individual safe sites or databases. The site was upgraded in 1997 to be more visually appealing and now functions as a human edited directory designed for children. Something you might not notice at first when looking at the site is the link on the bottom that says “What does this page look like through a Librarian’s Eyes?”. When you click on it the site appears using the Dewey Decimal System Classification. I think it’s really neat.

• How to install Firefox
• You can win a wii if you live in a Charter area
• Google, are you finished with me yet?

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I’ve seen the word Spock lately on a number of blogs and today finally decided to see what it was all about for myself.

Spock is a search engine for searching people. Behind the scenes, Spock’s technology scours the web and collects information on people. It tags them all of the people based on what it finds. On the user side, users can tag people, as well as add pictures, links and information. Information can be voted on, the more votes the more credible the information. Users can search for people by name or they can search by tag to find others with common tags. Once you find the person you’re looking for, you may see photos of them, as well as related links, news, their relatives and other tags they’ve been given.

I searched my favorite Nascar driver, Rusty Wallace. I got back a list of results that included Rusty Wallace the racecar driver, other people named Rusty Wallace and other people tagged with Rusty Wallace. You’ll have a pretty good idea if you’ve found what you’re looking for by glancing at the brief description or if there’s a picture. In the case of my search, the first result was all information about Rusty Wallace from reputable places. I’ve included a screenshot of the Rusty Wallace page below. When you find what you’re looking for, you can even turn it into a widget you can easily put onto your own website. I’ve pasted a Rusty Wallace widget here, it was made with a single click of the mouse right from my search result page.

It’s quite interesting to click around and see who’s related to who. Go try it!

• 10/10/07 News bytes
• SearchStatus Firefox add-on tells you more than rank
• 6 tips to getting your new blog indexed quickly in search engines

Google and gas pump maker Gilbarco Veeder-Root announced a partnership that will bring Google to gas pumps in the US. The pumps will have an Internet connection and will use Google Maps to display maps on a small color screen. It was reported that users will be able to view local landmarks, hotels, restaurants and hospitals selected by the gas station’s owner, and then print the directions. No ads will be shown. Retailers that buy the new pumps will be able to make money by offering coupons on the service. About 3,500 of the pumps are expected to go into service next month.

• 10/10/07 News bytes
• Google, are you finished with me yet?
• Google pagerank update this week

My Alexa rankings changed today, across all of my blogs. The downward trend continues. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Alexa rankings, the bottom line is this. The lower the number the better the rating. The more visitors your site has the lower your Alexa ranking will go. When I started tracking this blog’s Alexa rank on 10/13/07, the blog had a ranking of 2,698,107. After today’s update, this blog has an Alexa ranking of 601,684! Yay! Alexa, I’ll take you over Google pagerank anyday.

• Google pagerank update this week
• SearchStatus Firefox add-on tells you more than rank
• Google, are you finished with me yet?

I watched this blog in the course of a few days go from PR0 to PR1, then from PR1 to PR2, then from PR2 back down to PR1. Finish already Google! I’m glad the blog finally has a pagerank but wish you’d make up your mind already. This is the internet, not the stock market.

• Google pagerank update this week
• Google on gas
• SearchStatus Firefox add-on tells you more than rank

Well it looks like Google has finally gotten around to exporting the updated pagerank this week. It wasn’t pretty. But there is an upside. This site now has a pagerank. I have been blogging on this site on a regular basis since I set it up in mid September. I was glad to see when I turned on the computer yesterday that this site has gone from PR0 to PR1. I am hopeful it will rise with the next update.

• Google, are you finished with me yet?
• Alexa, Ilikea!
• SearchStatus Firefox add-on tells you more than rank

I am continuing to go through the helpful add-ons I’m using for the Firefox browser. The one I am writing about today does a lot. By that, I mean it really does A LOT. When installed, this add-on (located at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/321) displays the Google PageRank and Alexa rank, highlights keywords and no follow links, includes a link report, displays meta tags, has a built in keyword density analyser, displays whois information and shows back links. All of this information sits in a non-descript spot in a place of your choosing. I have mine set to display in the browser status bar. This add-on can tell you a lot about the site you’re on with very little effort by accomplishing numerous tasks while you’re on the site, so it can save you some time and effort. It’s good.

• ReminderFox
• How to install Firefox
• Nice Firefox add-on for handling links

There have been several times that I came across a website that was not in English. Now I took French, German and Latin in high school and college but that was a long time ago and I’ve forgotten far more than I remember. Today I got an offer to trade links. It was a PR5 link being offered, so I decided to check out the site. It was all in French. I hit the internet and found myself a Firefox add-on that will perform translation based on Google translation services. The add-on is found at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/918 and is called gTranslate. I downloaded it and restarted Firefox. I highlighted all of the text on the page offering me the link, right clicked, chose page info and translate page into English. Bam, the whole page appeared in English. Very cool tool indeed. It translates from English to German, German to English, English to Spanish, Spanish to English, English to French, French to English, English to Italian, Italian to English, English to Portuguese, Portuguese to English, English to Japanese, Japanese to English, English to Korean, Korean to English, English to Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Simplified) to English, German to French and French to German

• How to install Firefox
• Nice Firefox add-on for handling links
• How to make a url brief.

I am on the internet a lot. There have been more than a few times where I saw a group of links I was interested in and it took me forever to get them all open. With Firefox this is no longer an issue. I am using a Firefox add-on called Linky. It can be found at addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/425 and it is free. After downloading it you need to close and reopen Firefox and it will be working. All you do is highlight the group of links you’re interested in and right click. On the right click there will be an option for Linky letting you choose if you want to open the links in tabs or windows. It’s very cool.

• How to install Firefox
• How to update Firefox automatically.
• How to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird

Computer and tech related stories you might be interested in.

Ebay is introducing its own social networking area today in an effort to try and keep sellers and buyers alike on the site.

Google brings AdSense to YouTube. The internet giant will be offering specific YouTube videos to the AdSense network. Any AdSense profits would be shared by the web publisher and the video maker. Adsense publishers will be able to specify the types of videos they’re willing to have appear on their site.

Acording to a newly released comscore study which looked at worldwide search engine use, web users perform 1.4 million searches every minute. According to this study more than 37 billion searches were done via Google in August, making them the clearly dominant search engine garnering about 60% of all searches. Second was Yahoo with 8.5 billion. Third was Baidu of China with 3.3 billion. Fourth was Microsoft with 2.2 billion. Rounding out the top five was NHN of South Korea with 2 billion. The data for the study came from 2 million users in over 170 countries.

Disney Mobile will be ending operations in the US on 12/31/07 because the market here is so very competitive.

Verizon Wireless introduced the Voyager as direct competition for the iphone. The Voyager is manufactured by LG. The phone is hinged and opens to reveal a keyboard and second screen. It will have a 2 megapixel camera, a high speed wireless connection and a slot for an additional 8gb of storage. Release is expected before the end of this year.

• 10/03/07 News bytes
• DoubleClick Performics now the Google Affiliate Network
• Spock