Librarian of Fortune

An info pro's Web 2.0 tool kit

A colleague emailed me the other day to ask me what Web 2.0 tools and resources are critical for research. Following are what come to mind for me... what else would you use for search (not professional development or other non-research tasks)?

• a good blog-search tool like Technorati.com
• a familiarity with Google News Timelines and Google Search Timelines
• a couple of discussion forum search tools, such as Board Tracker and Board Reader
• a trending tool for analyzing buzz over time, like Blog Pulse, and Google Trends and  Google Insights
• a podcast search tool like Podscope or Everyzing
• at least one professional-oriented social network service, such as LinkedIn
• possibly familiarity with and participation in Twitter

RIP Yahoo! Search Builder

According to an announcement on their web site, Yahoo is no longer supporting the well-designed Yahoo! Search Builder. To get the same functionality, you need to use its BOSS (Build your Own Search Service). I haven't had a chance to play around with it but will look into whether it's as easy to use as Google Custom Search Engine. 

SortFix.com

My latest BatesInfoTip newsletter covers SortFix.com, a new search interface for Google (and, to a lesser extent, Yahoo and Open Directory Project). The ability to put search words in a "maybe later" bin just blows my socks off. Imagine... being able to keep track of all your inspirations and alternative search words, off to the side and ready to be dragged and dropped into your search box. Ah, if one of the value-added online services offered this. (Dialog, Factiva, LexisNexis.... please pick up the white courtesy phone.)

The Imposter Syndrome

I wrote a column about The Imposter Syndrome in this month's Info-Entrepreneur Tip of the Month and have already gotten a number of "me, too!" emails. Must have struck a nerve....

Weighting your search terms

I just discovered SearchCloud.net - yet another search engine, but with a few differences.

For starters, you can indicate the relative importance of your search terms by typing the words in a larger or smaller font. So instead of searching  "electoral college" obama mccain as three equal terms, I could specify that the phrase "electoral college" is the key concept by selecting a larger font on SearchCloud.

And the search results have an interesting twist as well. In addition to the "traditional" search result display we're accustomed to, there is a tabular display that shows the first 200-or-so search results and the calculated relevance score for each one. Looking at the results of my example, it appears that, after about the first 20 sites, the relevance drops off.

Like so many other interesting search engines, it's in beta. In this case, that means no help files, no FAQs and no About Us information. It appears to limit search results to under 250 hits. And search results are sometimes a bit squirrely. But it might be just the ticket if you need to weight the relative importance of search terms.

Modest Needs foundation

This is a nice article about Modest Needs, a charitable organization I've been supporting for a while. The idea behind is that, for a lot of people, one-time assistance will keep someone from needing more help later. It's particularly helpful for people who are living one paycheck away from something catastrophic happening to them and their families. The grant goes directly to the need -- a $500 check to a landlord, or $350 to a doctor, or $800 to a garage to keep someone's car running And, tellingly, they claim that 7 of 10 recipients return later as donors. All overhead is paid for through another non-profit, so all donations go directly to the need.

I think it's a great organization and it's one charity where I really feel like my contribution makes a difference.

Waking up in a strange town...

I remember one three-week on-site training gig that had me staying in a new town every night. One morning, I confess that I had to look for a local phone book in the room to remember where I was.

If only I'd had Loki, I would have been in much better shape. This clever little tool bar calculates your exact location by triangulating from the available wifi networks. (Look here for a how-it-works description from Skyhook Wireless, the company behind Loki.)

The Loki tool bar takes the information on your location and lets you identify local stores on Google or Yahoo Maps or see a map of nearby wifi hot spots, info on gas prices in your neighborhood, nearby apartments for rent... even local geocaches.

So, now that I have Loki, I can roll out of bed in some strange hotel, fire up my laptop and let Loki to tell me where the local Starbucks is, what the weather will be, which local FM stations play classical music, and how bad the traffic is. It can't tell me why I'm there or who I'm supposed to be meeting, but I expect that enhancement any day.

The one complaint I have is that Loki doesn't (yet) work with FireFox v3, although it's fine with Firefox v2, IE and Safari.

Beethoven's 9th, over 24 hours

I learned about this from a RadioLab podcast - my latest obsession... Imagine taking Beethoven's 9th Symphony and stretching it out over 24 hours, without distorting the sound. Yeah, it sounds weird, but it's entrancing. There have been several "performances" of this -- imagine sitting through 24 hours of very strange, ambient music.... Save yourself the effort of staying up for 24 hours and listen to a streamed version of the performance here.

Font Conference

As a writer.... OK, let's be honest. As a geek, I love fooling around with fonts. Which one truly reflects the content of what I say? What personality am I striving for?

CollegeHumor.com -- known for its lowbrow humor -- recently screened an amusing take at what would happen if typographic fonts had personalities. I'll never switch fonts again without carefully considering what image I'm projecting.

Google Trends repurposed

I've been touting Google Trends as a research tool for quite a while; now Google has enhanced Google Trends and created Google Insights for Search. It lets you see patterns of search words or phrases over time and within a specific country and related to a particular subject (I'm not clear on how well it does that last feature).

It's a useful way for researchers to see, for example, which countries may be a good market for a new energy drink, which US states are searching for Barack Obama vs. John McCain or even what parts of Australia are more concerned about the ozone layer.

As with Google Trends, you see not only the relative frequency of search terms but also the frequency of those words in the news -- a nice tool to help you figure out why a particular word was being search on more frequently.

Of course, remember that this only looks for search terms exactly as you type them. This means that, for example, you won't be able to use Google Insights to determine which European country is most interested in hybrid cards, since most of the queries from most European countries will not be in English, so looking only for the search word "hybrid cars" won't retrieve queries from France, Germany, etc.