Posts tagged as:

search

Modern confessionals

December 22, 2009

We all know that you can get some funny/interesting responses by typing the first part of a question into a major search engine's search box and letting it suggest the remainder. The NYT has gone so far as to investigate those suggestions themselves. I particularly enjoyed their description of search engines as "modern confessionals:" This [...]

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Search forecasts

September 8, 2009

Google Insights recently rolled out a new feature: 12 month search forecasts. The forecast comes from a relatively simple decomposition of the search volume into trend, seasonal and residual components. The model's out-of-sample performance is tested on the most recent 12 month period; if that prediction proves accurate, then the model is accepted. Here's what [...]

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The million dollar question

August 20, 2009

Straight from GigaOm, emphasis mine: Despite all the hype and excitement around the real-time web, access to real-time information online is hardly a new phenomenon. That fact stuck with me after talking to Chris Cox, Facebook’s product director, last week at the social networking company’s headquarters. As he noted, “Real time has been around since [the [...]

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A Google Reader wishlist

June 24, 2009

Google Reader has become an inexorable part of my daily life. It's the only way I can keep up with the amount of reading I do each day, and as much as I love the service, there are a few things I miss. Here's my wishlist for Google Reader: Intelligent favorites: Right now, I have [...]

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Sponsored by GM

June 1, 2009

I was searching for "GM" (in Bing) and a sponsored ad came up at the top of the results. It said: Official GM Site: www.GMreinvention.com Change at GM is Under Way. Visit the Official Site to See How. I assumed the ad was an outdated one referencing GM's (well, Chevrolet's) "An American Revolution" campaign, and [...]

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Bing me!

June 1, 2009

Reviews of Microsoft's new search engine Bing keep rolling in - and are utterly disappointing. I'm talking about the reviews, not the engine. Invariably, the reviewing site searches for itself followed by a few key words the site finds relevant. The most "helpful" reviews show side by side screenshots of Google and Bing. Forgive me [...]

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Real time and the data society

May 16, 2009

The Times has gone all Twitterish - a new feature called Times Wire displays stories as they are published. It is the latest effort to cash in on the growing phenomenon of "real time search." The new Times page implies very simply that recency = importance, which just isn't the case, but somehow our need for [...]

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Wolfram Alpha is Coming

March 10, 2009

Will this change the world? Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming.

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