Robs BlogJust links to interesting pagestag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51585472006-09-21T05:16:43ZBlogger
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trueThis is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site.Rob2005-02-19T22:12:00+00:002006-05-03T17:50:03Z2005-02-19T22:13:03Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110885118345088460Filangy Beta First ImpressionsAfter posting about Filangy before, their CEO Chirag Chaman was kind enough to pass me on an invitation to try it out, and to provide me with a lot of detailed information for this review.
The service is currently in closed beta and they are asking for feedback from testers, so I've outlined an introduction and my main impressions below.
There are four main components of Filangy:The toolbarfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/02/filangy-beta-first-impressions.htmlRob2005-02-18T15:21:59+00:002006-06-05T05:38:12Z2005-02-18T15:21:59Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110874011934826621Filangy BetaI noticed a request for invites to a currently closed-beta web service called Filangy on Jeremy Zawodny's blog. Reading through the available info it looks like a browser plugin that records your history and allows you to save the full text of pages in a personal Web Cache set aside for you when you sign up.
It would be cool to have the features of a9.com and Furl combined like this, and fromfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/02/filangy-beta.htmlRob2005-02-16T20:57:00+00:002005-02-17T23:04:25Z2005-02-16T21:32:16Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110858953616898814Google Toolbar Version 3 Beta ReleasedJohn Battelle posts on his Searchblog about the new Beta version 3 of the Google Toolbar, which boasts three powerful new features.
This version of the IE-only toolbar adds a spellchecker for forms, a translation tool and a feature to turn U.S. postal addresses on any web page into clickable URL's, which link to the corresponding page on the Google Maps site.Spellcheck feature of Google Toolbarfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/02/google-toolbar-version-3-beta-released.htmlRob2005-02-16T01:10:00+00:002006-09-03T19:38:39Z2005-02-16T01:12:22Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110851634281571219Y!Q: Yahoo Contextual SearchYahoo keep rolling out the programs for people to try; last week they launched the official Yahoo! toolbar for Firefox, another sign of that browser's increasing credibility, and last month they released their free desktop search based on top technology from x1.com, the treat there was users basically got x1 for free when it usually costs $74.95.
Between those two, they launched Y!Q Beta, a toolfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/02/yq-yahoo-contextual-search.htmlRob2005-02-14T20:33:00+00:002006-08-02T20:47:52Z2005-02-14T20:35:24Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110841332429956475TagsurfI came across this very cool new site that's currently in Alpha status.
Tagsurf is a very interesting new form of message board, that takes the latest and greatest concept for classifying and structuring info on the web: tags, (so called folksonomies, that put the power of classification directly into the hands of the users creating the content) and applies them to the actual message posts.
Thefalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/02/tagsurf.htmlRob2005-01-25T22:11:16+00:002005-01-25T22:45:16Z2005-01-25T22:24:43Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110669188302117507Yahoo/Google Video SearchYahoo added a tab for Video Search to their homepage yesterday, presenting the feature to the millions of regular yahoo users (it was available for some time through the next yahoo page).
This is a fairly decent search tool, presenting video of TV shows from their partnership with TV Eyes, along with clips from around the Web in a familiar search interface that gives users what they expect tofalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/01/yahoogoogle-video-search.htmlRob2005-01-04T19:02:11+00:002005-01-04T19:04:11Z2005-01-04T19:02:41Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110486536134638663Mobdex RSS Serialisation of eBooksI found a nifty experiment by Russell Beattie on mobdex.com; RSS serialisation of public domain ebooks.
Each novel on Mobdex has its own RSS feed, which you can add to your aggregator; Mobdex then delivers you a page of the book at intervals you can customize yourself, so you can read the installments at your own pace:And if you're a speed reader and want the pages to be updated morefalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2005/01/mobdex-rss-serialisation-of-ebooks.htmlRob2004-12-15T22:41:27+00:002004-12-15T23:58:27Z2004-12-15T22:42:11Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-110315053150584842MSN Toolbar SuiteI decided to try out the new desktop search tool from MSN when it was released two days ago.
This tool is billed as the MSN Toolbar Suite, that consists of a search toolbar for IE, one for Outlook and a tool that sits in your taskbar.
I'm having problems with it so far, but from what I've seen of it in action, it seems very useful.
After you install, it begins its indexing cycle - thefalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/12/msn-toolbar-suite.htmlRob2004-11-02T01:06:57+00:002004-11-02T00:07:57Z2004-11-02T00:06:03Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109935396364656397A9.com Firefox Toolbara9 have just released a toolbar that works in Mozilla Firefox on Mac, Linux and windows.
This is the first official toolbar for Firefox by one of the top competing search engines (MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and Google only have toolbars for IE.)
It allows all the functionality of the IE version - recording of the browsing history, access to your bookmarks, the diary lists features and access tofalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/11/a9com-firefox-toolbar.htmlRob2004-10-29T22:00:21+00:002004-10-29T22:06:21Z2004-10-29T22:00:03Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109908720306250059Google BrowserI just read this interesting article about what a possible Google browser might look like (despite the fact they've since flat-out stated "we are not building a browser").
Since Google's new acquisition Keyhole was announced the other day, the article prognosticates a browser that ties all the Google services together into a "world browser".:It would find pages on the Web, of course, but it'dfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/10/google-browser.htmlRob2004-10-27T20:42:40+00:002004-10-27T21:34:40Z2004-10-27T20:42:15Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109890973527512160Google KeyHoleGoogle announced today they had acquired satellite imaging company Keyhole (read the press release here)
This is very slick software that lets you zoom in on any part of the globe (even down to street level in some cases), lets you find businesses facilities and lets you measure distances.
Even though it's a nice piece of software, I was a bit non-plussed as to why Google had bought itfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/10/google-keyhole.htmlRob2004-10-27T19:00:36+00:002006-09-12T18:46:48Z2004-10-27T19:09:56Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109890419660412541Google/Copernic Desktop SearchI've been using Google's Desktop Search (GDS) since they introduced it on 14 October. For the past few months I've also been using Copernic Desktop Search (CDS).
I have compared the major differences I noticed between the two below (yellow is a point for CDS, blue=GDS):File extensions - I frequently jot things down in the program treepad, which uses the unusual file extension .hjt. With CDS I canfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/10/googlecopernic-desktop-search.htmlRob2004-10-23T02:55:29+00:002004-10-23T05:16:29Z2004-10-23T02:55:33Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109850013315410131Free version of X1 searchMe too, I will also bite.
I've already had a glimpse of the cool re-order as you type feature that's been ported over to Snap, but will have to try X1 myself after hearing this: "it blows Google Desktop software out of the water."
Added
Speaking of Snap, I noticed they've recently renamed the default refining columns on searches; popularity and satisfaction have been changed to "No. offalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/10/free-version-of-x1-search.htmlRob2004-10-11T02:34:27+00:002004-10-16T03:11:27Z2004-10-11T03:00:22Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109746362218437560Snap.com First ImpressionsFor the past few days I've been using Snap, the new search engine unveiled at the Web 2.0 conference.
At first glance Snap struck me as cluttered and busy, very different from other SE's.
One of the first complaints I saw was that Snap disables the scroll wheel on the mouse to scroll through the results, but this is missing the point of the new approach in Snap - the old behaviour of scrollingfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/10/snapcom-first-impressions.htmlRob2004-10-05T05:41:21+00:002004-10-05T17:12:21Z2004-10-05T05:41:23Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109695488395459857Personalized Yahoo SearchYahoo yesterday surprise-launched a public beta for a new personalized search site that can be plugged into the recently updated My Yahoo page.
My Yahoo Search allows Yahoo account holders to save, annotate, block and share the results of their searches.
These options appear below each result, alongside the now-familiar "Add To My Yahoo" My Yahoo! Beta Test w/ Big Focus on RSS (28 Sept) falsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/10/personalized-yahoo-search.htmlRob2004-09-28T20:30:14+00:002004-09-28T20:32:14Z2004-09-28T20:30:14Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109640341443991649Put Amazon Ads in Your Feeds with FeedburnerFeedBurner announced today a new service, that allows you to insert Amazon ads into your RSS feeds.
If you use the service, any purchases made through visitors clicking the links will earn you a percentage of the sale, which will be credited to your Amazon Associates account.
I saw recently that another service from WayPath, Blender, allowed the addition of the Amazon ads into your feeds,falsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/put-amazon-ads-in-your-feeds-with.htmlRob2004-09-28T13:51:02+00:002004-09-28T14:00:02Z2004-09-28T13:51:43Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109637950351137694My Yahoo! Beta Test w/ Big Focus on RSSYahoo! have started a beta test for the new version of My Yahoo!, the personalized page that comes with every Y! account.
It includes a much-needed update to the look of the page, and made the content modules easier to edit (clicking edit now gives a drop down menu) as well as some cool looking new skins and colours.
The search box is now more noticable too, but the big update is the newfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/my-yahoo-beta-test-w-big-focus-on-rss.htmlRob2004-09-24T17:10:40+00:002004-09-24T17:28:40Z2004-09-24T17:10:11Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109604581170756910Interview with Copernic Co-FounderVia searchenginelowdown.com
DailyRundown.com has a short interview with Martin Bouchard, the co-founder of Copernic.
When asked what Copernic has in the pipeline, Mr Bouchard saidWithout revealing all our secrets, expect to see things like blogs/RSS indexing, personalization of search results, intelligent information clustering, unified searching, and much more.I haven't tried all offalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/interview-with-copernic-co-founder.htmlRob2004-09-23T19:13:29+00:002004-09-23T19:25:29Z2004-09-23T19:14:42Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109596688290054500More kozoru InformationThe blog at searchenginewatch.com points to an article about kozoru, the search engine start up I posted about last month.
I was very interested when I first read about kozoru; on their technology page they claim "search technology doesn't work", and that they have a new approach to finding the info you're looking for, rather than the keywords Wikipedia Reliability Reduxfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/more-kozoru-information.htmlRob2004-09-23T07:22:34+00:002004-09-23T08:34:34Z2004-09-23T07:22:00Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109592412072440121LookSmart's FurlVia the John Battelle Searchblog
As was bound to happen, Furl has been snapped up by a large corporation.
Two days after the Furl site was quietly redesigned, CEO Mike Giles in a letter to users, said Furl will be joining with LookSmart:... LookSmart acquired Furl for the same reasons you probably use it - it is a great service that works well - and LookSmart has no intention of changing thefalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/looksmarts-furl.htmlRob2004-09-22T17:53:47+00:002004-09-22T17:53:47Z2004-09-22T17:53:47Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109587562776681476Bloglines aims for simplicityA good introductory article to Bloglines, running through the main features.
Something I didn't know, that Bloglines is run out of the home of the founder, Mark Fletcher.
Also released today were some handy new features to Bloglines; the option to keep posts as new, and to view related feeds based on the feed you're currently reading. falsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/bloglines-aims-for-simplicity.htmlRob2004-09-21T15:37:39+00:002004-09-21T16:47:39Z2004-09-21T15:37:24Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109578104461418304Wild Speculation on Google BrowserAn article in the New York Post has started a wave of speculation across the blogging world that Google is planning on making it's own browser.
The main evidence for the idea is the recent poaching by Google of top engineers from Microsoft, as well as hiring Adam Bosworth, (described as a driving force behind the IE browser) and the registering of the domain Gbrowser.com by Google infalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/wild-speculation-on-google-browser.htmlRob2004-09-21T14:01:10+00:002004-09-24T18:43:10Z2004-09-21T14:01:51Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109577531160384976Jeeves Is Back with New FeaturesAsk Jeeves unveiled it's new personalization features today, adding a My Jeeves area to the site.
The changes to the main search results pages are surprisingly discreet, the only difference most people will notice is a "Save" link beside each result.
Clicking these let you save your search results to My Jeeves, where you can also add your own notes to pages; it doesn't require a login andfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/jeeves-is-back-with-new-features.htmlRob2004-09-18T23:45:47+00:002004-09-24T18:46:47Z2004-09-18T23:45:07Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109555110790270021Ask ElvisJeeves has disappeared from his home of the last 4 years, the http://www.ask.co.uk/ search engine.
A link to the explanation tells visitors that 21 September will have an update along with possibly some new personalization features to the search engine.
As a part of the story, you can now choose a guest butler to replace Jeeves, including Russell Crowe, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.
There'sfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/ask-elvis.htmlRob2004-09-16T21:18:19+00:002004-09-16T21:32:19Z2004-09-16T21:18:39Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109536951901435795A9.com Promotion Push Starts(Via webmasterworld.com)
The aggressive marketing campaign for Amazon's recently launched search engine has begun.
If you login to use A9, then go to Amazon.com, the famous Amazon logo is changed to advertise the new Why Use A9? - Official featurelistfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/a9com-promotion-push-starts.htmlRob2004-09-15T05:05:51+00:002004-09-15T12:55:51Z2004-09-15T05:05:38Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109522473837504198A9.com Launches With Major UpdatesAmazon's A9 search engine has gone out of beta stage into official release and now offers a lot more features.
This really is a major update so it's well worth checking out the website or downloading the toolbar to test all the new features.
The new features are:Lists - lets you to grab every link on a page or within a selection and navigate through them from the toolbarOnline bookmarks -falsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/a9com-launches-with-major-updates.htmlRob2004-09-14T20:13:24+00:002004-09-14T20:22:24Z2004-09-14T20:13:44Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109519282401503618Firefox Preview Release Now AvailableThe Preview Release of Firefox version 1 is available now from Mozilla.
It is now the main download file on the Firefox homepage.
This version offers 4 major new features:Livemarks - RSS integration in the browserFastFind bar - Small toolbar allows you various options for finding text on a pageNew Plugin installerWarning toolbar for pop-ups and software installsAs well as some more minorfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/firefox-preview-release-now-available.htmlRob2004-09-11T04:05:59+00:002004-09-11T15:10:59Z2004-09-11T04:05:04Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109487550421563342Lycos Virtual Hard DriveI just noticed this link on Furl; Lycos have a new system in the works for a virtual hard drive:From mid-September, users of the new service will be able to "drag and drop" files from windows directly into a new online file storage drive.
Lycos says the drive can store any kind of file, such as image, music and movie files, as well as Word documents and presentations.
The firm will offerfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/lycos-virtual-hard-drive.htmlRob2004-09-07T14:32:32+00:002004-09-24T18:47:32Z2004-09-07T14:32:53Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109456757327567802Is Google Broken?An article speculating about why the number on Google's homepage of how many pages it's indexed has not been updated for a year:My guess is that in Aug 25, 2003 Google's index was full. Why do I say this? . . .
. . . The database was constructed using a Document_ID that is associated with
each Web page. This document_ID was published as being a 4-byte unsigned
long integer. This means thatfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/is-google-broken.htmlRob2004-09-05T11:19:50+00:002004-09-05T15:05:50Z2004-09-05T11:19:16Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109438315608909801Nick Bradbury: The curse of anonymityAn interesting post on the blog of Nick Bradbury, asking for advice in how to deal with a disgruntled user of his TopStyle CSS Editor.
The user is demanding $1,000 in damages because when he uninstalled the trial version of the program, it was still associated with CSS file types in Dreamweaver and he couldn't edit them. He also threatened a lawsuit and to launch an advertising campaign againstfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/nick-bradbury-curse-of-anonymity.htmlRob2004-09-02T17:49:34+00:002004-09-05T15:06:34Z2004-09-02T17:49:06Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109414734658334514AdSense UpdatesSome new updates to the Google AdSense service:
Publishers can now display three ad boxes per page (previously only one was allowed) Info: Webmasterworld.com AdSense forum - Frequented by an official Google representative, AdWords Advisorfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/09/adsense-updates.htmlRob2004-08-31T18:48:47+00:002004-09-05T15:08:47Z2004-08-31T18:48:58Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109397813814597769Copernic Desktop SearchVia searchenginelowdown.com
Copernic released their Desktop search program today.
Via a search box in the Windows taskbar, it allows you to search easily for:
Slogger Firefox Extension - Archive the full text and media of pages with this browser history extensionfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/08/copernic-desktop-search.htmlRob2004-08-28T12:18:41+00:002004-08-28T14:35:41Z2004-08-28T12:18:13Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109369549356563494Slogger Firefox ExtensionI recently found the Slogger extension menu.
What I like about it is you can set it to save each page automatically and just forget about it, leaving it to quietly save everything until you need something.
It can be configured to only save the text of the pages to save disk space, or you can disable auto save and just click a button on the toolbar to save individual pages.
A good desktopfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/08/slogger-firefox-extension.htmlRob2004-08-26T22:27:21+00:002004-08-26T22:59:21Z2004-08-26T22:27:25Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109355924598841929Yahoo Messenger - Editors ChoiceVia the Unofficial Yahoo Blog
Yahoo Messenger has been picked as Editors Choice by C|NET in a review of the top four instant messenger programs (AOL, ICQ and MSN being the others)
Yahoo pipped the others by having the most customizable interface, and lots of features built in:Yahoo Messenger 6.0 is known as the Swiss Army Knife of free IM clients for Windows. To name a few, Yahoo Messengerfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/08/yahoo-messenger-editors-choice.htmlRob2004-08-26T20:05:30+00:002004-08-27T06:35:30Z2004-08-26T20:05:53Ztag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158547.post-109355075304470542Klipfolio 2.6I noticed a link to KlipFolio from Serence on the weblog of Robert Scoble.
I got the impression from the post it was a new RSS aggregator, and that attracted me to download it and check it out.
But I was mistaken, it seems to be a lot more than that; from the Klipfolio support forums:KlipFolio does so much more than simply read RSS that we are worried users might confuse us with other RSSfalsehttp://www.igniq.com/robs_blog/2004/08/klipfolio-26.html