Librarian of Fortune

Building Stonehenge

I've always been fascinated by Stonehenge -- how the heck did people in 2200 BCE manage to raise the standing stones and lintels? This way-cool video shows a guy who has figured out how to accomplish it using nothing more than the principle of the teeter-totter. My inner geek loves this kind of stuff...

Why searching is like smack

I was recently reading Nina Platt's 5 Reasons Librarians are Better than Search Engines. The blog entry is mostly about how search engines will never replace a skilled researcher, but my eye caught the following:

My sister, while doing some research recently, likened searching on the internet to setting off fireworks.  The search is like an explosion that sends millions of answers off in several directions much like a firework can send fire and color up into the night for all to see.  While reviewing one set of answers, another set of fireworks could be set off distracting you from what you already found and taking you further away from what you need.  There is no one to guide you to the right materials.

While I can see the analogy -- sometimes the info I find does feel as ephemeral as a  fireworks display -- I also saw how a miniaturized version of "fireworks" is what keeps us searching.

You know how it gets sometimes, when you just can't put down the mouse, you keep finding one more web site to answer this research project... I just found a promising site - I have to keep going.... What's actually happening is that, each time you find a good lead or a new resource, you get a little shot of adrenaline - a mini-fireworks display. You click a couple more times and - kaboom - another little adrenaline shot. click, click. kaboom.

We find it hard to end a search because we're constantly getting little buzzes of excitement, and who wants to stop that?

Speaking For Fun 'n' Profit

I'm giving a workshop next month (sign up now! spaces are limited!) on "Speaking for Fun and (More Importantly) Profit: How to Build Your Business and Your Bottom Line Through Public Speaking".  This one's being written from scratch, which is always fun, and I'm realizing how much I can say about public speaking.

As I was reading some resources on speaking, I was struck by a tiny little book, All the World's a Podium, by Matthew Cossolotto, a speech writer I knew way back when we both worked at MCI. IMO, the book's overpriced at $12.95, but it's got some great, solid advice. Check it out at  Ovations International.

One of the sections of the workshop is on the actual process of giving a talk. My bulleted list of stuff to consider sounds more woo-woo than even I realized it would:

• Chat with audience before your talk
• Welcome the adrenaline
• During your intro, look at the people in the room
• Pick four people to talk to
• Watch for non-verbal feedback
• Pause, drink water
• Tell stories!
• Speak with joy
• Be present
• Intend to learn something
• Have fun (fake it if necessary)
• Think Wizard of Oz - you need brains, heart, courage and you have them all!
• Be willing to be admired

I think I'm going to enjoy doing this workshop; it's about something I find rewarding and, dare I say it, fun.

Thinking like an entrepreneur

I usually get overwhelmed when I read the Hello, my name is Scott blog, but I really liked his 98 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur. A lot of good ideas in there...

What's getting me thinking today

I'm digesting two very thoughtful articles on the idea of free content and how it can generate revenue. See Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business in the March 2008 issue of Wired magazine, and Kevin Kelly's essay Better Than Free. I'm ruminating over these for my June column for EContent magazine; bottom line for econtent providers is that people still pay for something that is obtainable for free, but the information "owner" needs to make it worth their while. And, IMO, lots of information providers have missed a lot of opportunities to generate revenue from their content, because they're looking at the content apart from its surroundings.

Your thoughts?

Hurisearch specialized search engine

A colleague of mine in Berlin just pointed me to Hurisearch, a specialized search engine of human rights web sites, maintained by the Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International.

I have a warm spot in my heart for this site, not only for the subject matter but because it's powered by FAST, so the search results page has all the wonderful clustering features we know and love --  by  language, country, organization and keyword.

cool Exalead feature

I'm preparing for a whole bunch of presentations over the next few months, so I'm spending more time digging around in the various search engines.

I finally discovered the OPT feature in Exalead. Don't know how I missed it before. The search syntax is:
first-word OPT second-word
and it translates the search to:
first-word is mandatory, and rank ones that also contain second-word higher

I've known that Live.com supports this (first-word prefer:second-word) but, as far as I know, they're the only two major search engines that do.

Google Advanced Search page

A colleague just pointed out to me that Google's Advanced Search page has changed a bit. The format is a bit less cluttered, IMO, and feels like it's been dumbed down a tad. The most surprising to me is its surfacing of the .. feature, which lets you search a range of numbers. (Great feature if you want to look for products within a certain price range, as it handles decimal points with aplomb. Unfortunately, it doesn't recognize any currency except the US $, which - given the dollar's plummet - doesn't make a lot of sense.)

Interestingly, there are links to "Topic-specific search engines from Google", including Book Search, Scholar, Code Search and News archive, as well as its old standards (Linux, Microsoft, US Govt, universities, etc.).

Keep in mind that there are still plenty of features that remain hidden from the Advanced Search page, including its view:timeline and view:info features, which are explained here.

Ask not what Ask.com can do for you

Well, the other shoe dropped last week for Ask.com, which has been moving inexorably toward something other than a search engine for professionals. In fact, I've quit covering Ask when I give presentations about the hidden features of the major search engines since, well, Ask doesn't have any.

The last CEO, Jim Lanzone, is moving to a VC firm, and Jim Safka, the new CEO of Ask, hails from Match.com. And the new President, Scott Garell, comes from IAC's Consumer Applications and Portals. Then, last week, Ask announced layoffs of 40 people, including the inimitable Gary Price, so that it could focus on its core customers, women in their late 30s in the US Midwest and Southeast, who tend to conduct their search as a complete sentence rather than as single search words.

According to a Reuters story, Safka commented on Ask's shift in focus to those 30-year-old midwestern women by saying:

"You start to see a more human and emotional side to Ask because it's an emotional category. [...] You can contrast that with our competitors. By definition they want to be robotic."

<hurl> I guess I'm just one of those people who'd prefer the robot...

Gigablast Re-launches

I just published my February InfoTip (hey, it's still February in Pago Pago), featuring Gigablast's latest features. They're doing some interesting stuff, and I still think their search syntax options way surpass those of the Big Three.