Some new developments in google.com

So finally my interweb is back up at home – after a week’s downtime.

 

Last week I was driven into the cold and soulless sanctuary of work while on leave because of it.

 

Inbetween these traipses out West, and into town, I also got first-hand experience of just how restrictive it can be trying to make proper use of a computer in half-hour chunks down at my local public library.

 

God knows how those ‘terrorists’ whose nefarious library use prompted the Patriot Act, get their terrorising done.  They must touch-type to 120 words per minute.

The dumbing down of search…

It is with regret and some measure of guilt that I give laldy with the above Daily Mail-ism.

Especially on the eve of my 100^th post (woo-hoo!).  Frankly though, no other term seems to fit the bill for today’s sermon.  

 

It seems Yahoo no longer provide the full range of Boolean search operators in their search, according to Pandia.

Georgia is a state? So is your sub-editing…

Journalism is better suited to humans than algorithms.

For proof of this blindingly obvious truism, take a look at this ‘In Depth’ piece on the current crisis in Georgia from Sky News.

Scroll down a bit, and take a look in the BACKGROUND box on the right-hand side.

Here’s what it says at the time of writing:

Georgia is a state in the southern United States. Georgia was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution…

Even worse, check the disclaimer beneath the errant entry:

Information generated by Wikipedia. Sky News takes no responsibility for its accuracy

Newsflashr in the pan?

There’s a new news aggregator on the block – Newsflashr.

 

So my first thoughts are: does this sound like the sort of news aggregator you’d like to meet down a darkened alley at three in the morning?

 

Fortunately that’s not usually a question I ask when looking at new sources – and maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong…

 

Nonetheless, the press release, and one or two reviews for this service hint at some real potential in newsgathering.  And although its still in Beta (so everything can still change) I’m going to put it through its paces from a UK point of view.

Delicious re-appraised

Mashable carries a piece on the cult of social bookmarking here.

 

It’s a thorough, and timely polemic covering some of the less agreeable aspects of social bookmarking. 

 

Most worryingly it raises the spectre of a bookmarks arms race, instigated by those who treat Delicious as a popularity contest – only a matter of time, I suppose, given how tempestuous relations between search communities and their services can be.