Posts Tagged ‘search engines’

How can business benefit from Google Wave?

Monday, October 26th, 2009

How can business benefit from Google Wave? wavelogo

“What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?”

That was the question raised by Google when developing the new Google Wave, a real time platform for communication and collaboration which combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, social networking, and project management into one centralized tool. Apart from if it would really replace the conventional e-mail, as was implied in the question, Wave is being greeted with great enthusiasm and interest by people all around the world, and your company should pay attention to that.

At Twitter, Google Wave has been in the trending topic list for many weeks. About three weeks after 100,000 Google Wave’s invitations were released to the public by previous subscription, Stephanie Hannon, product manager for Google Wave, announced last Sunday via Twitter the new round of invitations. Users are crazy to have one of those. Having the opportunity to be one of the first to try out the system has been so difficult that in USA the blogger Hagan Blount promoted a sale for his invitation at eBay. According to the Wall Street Journal, he received offers up to US$27,000. The auction was however withdrawn afterwards, as it did not comply with eBay’s rules.

The excitement surrounding Google Wave can be summarized in one simple word: innovation.

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Google and Privacy

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Google and Privacy google privacy

Google is easily the top dog. There have been some pretty scary statements made about Google and the privacy of search requests recently. You may have heard that Google was nominated for a “Big Brother” award. You may also have read that Google knows everything you ever searched for. Should you be frightened? With Google Toolbar, Google Search, Google Mail, Google Docs, etc., collecting information about users both as a means of revenue with targeted advertising and as part of the search service itself, it is still not clear how Google utilize this information or data collected through various channels?

Relax. Yes, there are privacy issues to be aware of when you do a search at Google. However, these issues are just as much as a concern for other searches engines you visit, as well. More importantly, the fear that you personally could be tracked isn’t realistic, for the vast majority of users, at least by Google itself.

Clearly some people are worried about the privacy of their search requests, be it at Google, Yahoo or any other search engine. Google has taken the most heat over this issue lately, and largely without cause. Nevertheless, a useful thing that the entire search industry might do is to reexamine their privacy policies and consider expanding them to provide more clarifications about what exactly happens with search data on a personal basis.

As for services that do record personal information with searches, I could well see them providing an option to opt-out of this. Or, if they won’t allow an opt-out, they might have to provide better guarantees about how that information is safe-guarded or destroyed over time.

Search Engine Blues

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Search Engine Blues search engines1

Majority of people use a search engine by simply typing a few words into the query box and then scrolling through whatever comes up in the search engine results. It happens quite often that their choice of words ends up narrowing the search unduly and causing them not to find what they’re looking for. More often the end result of the search is a haystack of off-target web pages that must be combed through. You can do better than that, and that’s what this page is about.

Well, just follow these four things, start narrow, Find exact phrases, trim back on the URL, and then look for similar pages. So if you make a habit of using the four techniques described above, you’ll be a much better searcher than 90% of all web-users. It’s just four things, and each will provide you with a better net for information catching.

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