Helpers for Searching the Web
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy --- http://www.eff.org/wp/six-tips-protect-your-search-privacy
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm

Online Free Tutorials in Multiple Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials

Find Free Online Literature --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm 

Lost Titles, Forgotten Rhymes: How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author --- http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/lost/

Find Free Online Music --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm

Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/ 

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications --- http://catalog.gpo.gov/F

State and Local Government on the Web --- http://www.piperinfo.com/state/states.html

Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Links by Logos --- http://www.allmyfaves.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on how experts/scholars search the Web are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

Bob Jensen's threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Threads.htm

Introductory Notes:

When it comes to many questions (products, science, etc.) , I refer people to http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/
This fantastic site now has a new search engine. 

When it comes to encyclopedia-type questions my next favorite referral is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
If you don’t like something in a Wiki module, you can change it yourself from your browser.  If you don’t find a module, you can perform a service for the world by writing a module.

From the Scout Report on June 1, 2007

Pathway 1.0.3 --- http://pathway.screenager.be/download/ 

Sometimes wandering through the wilds of Wikipedia can result in confusion. For Dennis Lorson, his wandering led him to create this handy application. With Pathway 1.0.3 visitors can retrace their own steps through Wikipedia by creating a graphical network representation of article pages. It’s worth a try, and it will work with all computers running Mac OS X 10.4.

Bob Jensen's threads on encyclopedias are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#080512Encyclopedias

CatsCradle 3.5 --- http://www.stormdance.net/software/catscradle/overview.htm 
Many websurfers enjoy going to sites that might be based in other countries, and as such, they might very well encounter a different language. With CatsCradle 3.5, these persons need worry no more, as this application can be used to translate entire websites in such languages as Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. This version is compatible with all computers running Windows XP or 2000. (Scout Report, September 1, 2006)

April 4, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

FREE ACCESS TO SOME FOR-FEE ARTICLES

Congoo, a search engine launched this month and partnered with Google, gives registered users free online access to a selection of publications that normally required a subscription or a pay-per-view fee to read. After downloading the Congoo plug-in and registering, users can get access to "between four and 15 articles per month per publisher." Publications available include the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, Financial Times, BusinessWire, Editor & Publisher, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer and other major U.S. newspapers. Congoo is available at http://www.congoo.com/.

Critics of Congoo note that many public libraries, such as the San Francisco Public Library
( http://www.sfpl.org/sfplonline/dbcategories.htm ), also offer free access to subscription databases. And your own college and university library may also have online subscriptions that you can access at no additional fee.

See also:

"Internet Technology--Going Beyond Google" by Tom Warger UNIVERSITY BUSINESS, August 2005 http://www.universitybusiness.com/page.cfm?p=906

Evaluation of Information Sources --- http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm 

Check whether things you read are true or false 
See Urban Legend helpers at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htm#UrbanLegend 

No A Grades to 83.33% of search engine users.
They say they trust their favorite search engines, but there’s a distressing lack of understanding of how engines rank and present pages -- only 38 percent of users are aware of the distinction between paid or “sponsored“ results and unpaid results.“ And only one in six say they can always tell which results are paid or sponsored and which are not.“  The funny part about this last bit is, nearly half of users say they would stop using search engines if they thought the engines were being unclear about how they presented paid results.
David Appell, "Search Engines," MIT's Technology Review, February 11, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1732&trk=nl 

Scribd Wants to Become the YouTube for Documents --- http://www.scribd.com/categories
It has a long way to go, although it now has over 350,000 archived documents --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribd
There are many tutorials such as those in basic accounting.

"A YouTube for Documents?" by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2762&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Borrowing a page from the popular video-sharing site YouTube, a new online service lets people upload and share their papers or entire books via a social-network interface. But will a format that works for videos translate to documents?

It’s called iPaper, and it uses a Flash-based document reader that can be embedded into a Web page. The experience of reading neatly formatted text inside a fixed box feels a bit like using an old microfilm reader, except that you can search the documents or e-mail them to friends.

The company behind the technology, Scribd, also offers a library of iPaper documents and invites users to set up an account to post their own written works. And, just like on YouTube, users can comment about each document, give it a rating, and view related works.

Also like on YouTube, some of the most popular items in the collection are on the lighter side. One document that is in the top 10 “most viewed” is called “It seems this essay was written while the guy was high, hilarious!” It is a seven-page paper that appears to have been written for a college course but is full of salty language. The document includes the written comments of the professor who graded it, and it ends with a handwritten note: “please see after class to discuss your paper.”

There’s plenty of serious material on the site, too — like the Iraq Study Group Report and an Educause report about the future of technology at colleges.

Bob Jensen's threads on free online documents are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

The easiest way to find definitions is to go to Google Define --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#define
Simply go to Google at http://www.google.com/ or http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
In the search box type define and insert the phrase you want defined in quotations.
For example, suppose you want to define “Grid Computing”
Simply type in define “Grid Computing” in the search box and hit the search button 

Free Video, Movie and Music Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

LocateTV will search over 3 million TV listings across all channels in your area
Type in the name of a TV show, movie, or actor
Locate TV will find channels and times in your locale
http://www.locatetv.com/

Songza
Search for a song or band and play the selection --- http://songza.com/
I tried it for Arturo Toscanini, Stan Kenton, and Jim Reeves.
The results were absolutely amazing!

SpiralFrog.com, an ad-supported Web site with a terrible name that allows visitors to download music and videos free of charge, commenced on September 17, 2007  in the U.S. and Canada after months of "beta" testing. At launch, the service was offering more than 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos for download ---  http://www.spiralfrog.com/

Digital Duo Video
The Differences Between DVRs DVR, TiVo, huh?
The Duo clear up the recorder confusion with a history lesson.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,124109/article.html

Dan Tynan
Finding Online Video Search tools are just catching up
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,122859/article.html

Google Links --- Click Here
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

Yahoo Links --- http://www.yahoo.com/
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo

Searching for PowerPoint ppt files, Excel xls files, and other file types

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Google Open Encyclopedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases

How do scholars/experts search for academic references?

Pandora for finding songs and recording artists --- http://www.pandora.com/

Pixsy's updates on free news videos --- http://www.pixsy.com/search.aspx?cat=12

Zaba Search free database of names, addresses, birth dates, and phone numbers. Social security numbers and background checks are also available for a fee --- http://www.zabasearch.com/

Click Here for Specialized Search Engines (including shopping catalogs)

Searching for Knowledge on the Web
Finding Dulcinea --- http://www.findingdulcinea.com/home.html
Tries to be your "Librarian on the Web"

Searching Library Collections in Facebook

Internet Resources --- http://www.internet-resources.com/writers/wrlinks-wordstuff.htm

Price Comparison Guide
Price Runner --- http://www.pricerunner.com/

The Global Accountancy Search Engine

The Best Way To Search Videos On the Internet

Find Sounds --- http://www.findsounds.com/

Search for Free Patents --- http://www.freepatentsonline.com/
Wiki Patent Review --- http://www.wikipatents.com/

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases

Google History and Features --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

Google is a great search engine, but it's also more than that. Google has tons of hidden features, some of which are quite fun and most of which are extremely useful— if you know about them. How do you discover all these hidden features within the Google site?
See http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=675528&rl=1

  1. Google Is a Calculator
  2. Google Knows Mathematical Constants
  3. Google Converts Units of Measure
  4. Google Is a Dictionary
  5. Google Is a Glossary
  6. Google Lists All the Facts
  7. Google Displays Weather Reports
  8. Google Knows Current Airport Conditions
  9. Google Tracks Flight Status
  10. Google Tracks Packages
  11. Google Is a Giant Phone Directory
  12. Google Knows Area Codes
  13. Google Has Movie Information
  14. Google Loves Music
  15. Google Knows the Answer to the Ultimate Question
  16. Google Advanced Search
  17. Language Tools --- http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
  18. Web Images Video News Maps Desktop more --- http://www.google.com/ 
    Books, Froogle, Groups, Scholar even more --- Click on "More" at     http://www.google.com/
  19. Google Maps  --- http://www.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wl&q= 
    Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Amid the flurry of news over Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and Google's rebuttal, a research announcement by Google went largely unnoticed.
Last week, the search giant began a public experiment in which users can make their search results look a little different from the rest of the world's. Those who sign up are able to switch between different views, so instead of simply getting a list of links (and sometimes pictures and YouTube videos, a relatively recent addition to the Google results), they can choose to see their results mapped, put on a timeline, or narrowed down by informational filters. Dan Crow, product manager at Google, says that the results of the experiment could eventually help the company improve everyone's search experience.
Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, February 6, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20162/?nlid=857
Jensen Comment
You can read more about this experiment at http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

Search for Blogs (Weblogs) ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm 

Google Links --- Click Here

Google Cloud --- Click Here

Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Custom Google Searches

Google Hacks

Google added historic map overlays to its free interactive online globe of the world to provide views of how places have changed with time.
"Google Earth maps history," PhysOrg, November 14, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news82706337.html

Google Earth --- http://earth.google.com/

See Google Maps Features --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps
Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

"Finding Yourself without GPS:  Google's new technology could enable location-finding services on cell phones that lack GPS," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, December 4, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19809/?nlid=716&a=f

As more mobile phones tap into the Internet, people increasingly turn to them for location-centric services like getting directions and finding nearby restaurants. While Global Positioning System (GPS) technology provides excellent accuracy, only a fraction of phones have this capability. What's more, GPS coverage is spotty in dense urban environments, and in-phone receivers can be slow and drain a phone's battery.

To sidestep this problem, last week Google added a new feature, called My Location, to its Web-based mapping service. My Location collects information from the nearest cell-phone tower to estimate a person's location within a distance of about 1,000 meters. This resolution is obviously not sufficient for driving directions, but it can be fine for searching for a restaurant or a store. "A common use of Google Maps is to search nearby," says Steve Lee, product manager for Google Maps, who likened the approach to searching for something within an urban zip code, but without knowing that code. "In a new city, you might not know the zip code, or even if you know it, it takes time to enter it and then to zoom in and pan around the map."

Many phones support software that is able to read the unique identification of a cell-phone tower and the coverage area that surrounds it is usually split into three regions. Lee explains that My Location uses such software to learn which tower is serving the phone--and which coverage area the cell phone is operating in. Google also uses data from cell phones in the area that do have GPS to help estimate the locations of the devices without it. In this way, Google adds geographic information to the cell-phone tower's identifiers that the company stores in a database.

Continued in article

See Google Maps Features --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps
Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

My Location (Beta) --- http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html

Bob Jensen's Search Helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Search for Manufacturers and Suppliers --- http://www.zycon.com/

Search for Music Equipment (Devices) --- http://www.zzounds.com/

ProQuest Digital Dissertations ---  http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/ 

Corporate Reports Now Searchable Via EDGAR --- http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm

The SEC released a new, improved search tool for EDGAR --- http://sec.gov/news/press/2006/2006-190.htm

A full text search of a filing includes all data in the filing as well as any attachments. Other features of the EDGAR Full-Text Search tool include:

The EDGAR full-text search tool is available on the SEC website at http://searchwww.sec.gov/EDGARFSClient/jsp/EDGAR_MainAccess.jsp. The Commission plans further enhancements based on user feedback. Requests, comments and suggestions should be sent to textsearch@sec.gov

OmniFind Business Data Search
IBM and Yahoo try to challenge Google with free data-search tool for businesses

What's the Best Q&A Site?

Bob Jensen's Favorite  Online Encyclopedias

The Dangerous Side of Search Engines

Sex-Filtered Searching: Kid-Friendly Search Engines Filter Content

Google Links --- Click Here  

Google Hacks

Is Google Becoming Skynet? 

LinkedIn and the SemanticWeb

How Faculty Search Electronic Publications

How to tag Websites using Yahoo

Search for Terms on Book Pages:  The Absolutely Fantastic New Search Tools From Amazon and Google 

Google's Scholarly Search Engine

Features (including equation solving) of the Amazing Google 

Tutorials and Books on How to Use Google  

Google Searching by Sending Google Email Messages 

Google Hardware 

Google Directory and Other Key Google Links 

Semantic Web Searching: FactSpotter and AskOnce from Xerox

eBay. Click Fraud, and Other Online Frauds

Search Among Blogs  

Search for Websites 

Search Inside a Given Computer (Google vs. Yahoo vs. Microsoft's Desktop Search)

Search by Name Toolbar 

Cell Phone Search Engines 

Find Cell Phone Numbers

Download the Free Google Deskbar 

Using Google to "define" versus define: words  

GOOGLE expands services for the following:   

Google Lawsuits 

Google Will Generate a Map to An Address From a Telephone Number

Search for Audio, Video, Movie, and Television Show Dialog

The Future of Search

Find Books

Book Finders

Find Rare Books

Trade In Your Books for Other Books

Knowledge Bases

"Social Search:  A new website will offer personalized search results based on the user's social network," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, February 1, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20138/?nlid=848 

People are flocking to online social networks. Facebook, for example, claims an average of 250,000 new registrations per day. But companies are still hunting for ways to make these networks more useful--and profitable. In the past year, Facebook has introduced new services aimed at taking advantage of users' online contacts (see "Building onto Facebook's Platform"), and Yahoo announced plans for an e-mail service that shares data with social-networking sites. (See "Yahoo's Plan for a Smarter In-Box.") Now a company called Delver, which presented at Demo earlier this week, is working on a search engine that uses social-network data to return personalized results from the larger Web.

Liad Agmon, CEO of Delver, says that the site connects information about a user's social network with Web search results, "so you are searching the Web through the prism of your social graph." He explains that a person begins a search at Delver by typing in her name. Delver then crawls social-networking websites for widely available data about the user--such as a public LinkedIn profile--and builds a network of associated institutions and individuals based on that information. When the user enters a search query, results related to, produced by, or tagged by members of her social network are given priority. Lower down are results from people implicitly connected to the user, such as those relating to friends of friends, or people who attended the same college as the user. Finally, there may be some general results from the Web at the bottom. The consequence, says Agmon, is that each user gets a different set of results from a given query, and a set quite different from those delivered by Google.

"We have no intention of competing with the Googles of the world, because Google is doing a very good job of indexing the Web and bringing you the Wikipedia page of every search query you're looking for," says Agmon. He says that Delver will free general search queries such as "New York" or "screensaver" from the heavy search-engine optimization that tends to make those kinds of queries return generic, ad-heavy results on Google. "[As a user], you're always thinking, how can I trick Google into bringing me the real results rather than the commercial results?" Agmon says. "With this engine, we don't need to trick it at all. You can go back to these very naive and simple queries because the results come from your network. Your network is not trying to optimize results; they just publish or bookmark pages which they find interesting." As a consequence, the results lean toward user-generated content and items tagged through sites such as del.icio.us.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's consumer helpers and finders --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm

Bob Jensen's technology finders and helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm

Find home values, reverse phone numbers, animated population growth maps, specialized research sites and more. http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/2960878/999427/103876/2/
The above link was forwarded by Ed Scribner

March 18, 2008 (PC World) If you dig around the Web long enough, you're bound to find things somebody might not want you to know. (Maybe, like me, you hang your laundry out in the backyard.) This week I have a bunch of sites to help you dig up the dirt and do some serious research.

Find the Dirt on Your Neighbor

With two free Web services, I found the address of a neighbor, his first and last name, his phone number and how much his home is worth. If Zillow would only update its images, I could even tell you if he hangs his laundry out in the backyard.

met a neighbor while walking the dogs, and we chatted a while. When I got home, I decided to pop something in the mail. (It was some census tract stuff if you must know.) He lives about two blocks down the road, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember the guy's name or his street address. Okay, sure, I could've just dropped by his house. But what would I have to write about today, eh?

I popped open Zillow and searched on my neighborhood until I found the image of his house, then clicked on it. Zillow told me lots of stuff about the value of his home. What I needed--and got--was his street address.

Now that I had his street address, I went to the Reverse Lookup tab at 411Locate, entered info in the Reverse Address Lookup section, and got lucky. In a second, I had Jess's name. You might not be so fortunate--411Locate doesn't always come up with the right name.

Dig This: Tempted to buy a set of those newfangled color-pencil input devices? Be sure to read the review first--it details advanced features, usability, and, no surprise, bugs.

Trulia's Hindsight: Watch Cities Grow

If you enjoyed Zillow, you might also like Trulia. But there's more to this real-estate site than you might expect. I was poking around the other day and discovered Trulia Hindsight, which shows annual population growth in most parts of the U.S.

Once you're on Trulia Hindsight, click on Plano, Texas. You'll see a city map paint on the screen and a timeline at the bottom of the page will begin to advance. The map begins to populate, showing how the area developed over time.

Use the contrast slider on the bottom right to adjust how much of the background you want to see and the slider on the bottom left to zoom in or out of the map.

Once you get your bearings, grab the timeline slider, move it to the left, then slowly move it to the right. Type a city and state into the search field at the top to find your hometown. Unfortunately, the site doesn't have data for every area. If your town isn't on Trulia's radar, try downtown Los Angeles.

Dig This: You've gotta watch The Front Fell Off. My editor started kvetching that while hilarious, it also looks quite plausible. And she complained that the actors aren't getting credit even though there are lots of clips floating around the Internet. Okay, so here it goes: The guys are Australian comedy team Bruce and Dawe.

Top 5 Little-Known Research Web Sites

AskNow lets you ask a librarian a question. If they ask you where you live, say California. OWL, the Online Writing Lab, lets you look up the whys and wherefores of grammar. The Phrase Finder is a handy thesaurus for phrases. Need a fact checker? Refdesk.com has all the facts--or links to them--you'll ever need. Visiting the LibrarySpot is like walking into the local library and walking into the reference room. The site's part of the StartSpot Network, which includes HomeworkSpot and MuseumSpot.

 

Dig This: Whenever I go to CES in Las Vegas, my first stop is the craps table for some fast action--and maybe a chance to make a couple of bucks. Yet after watching these videos of Texas Hold'em--the game that "takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master"--I may have to find a low-stakes game.

Dig This, Too: Need a change of pace? Try Reel Fishing. You'll need patience and a steady hand.

 

From the Scout Report on October 12, 2007

Dugg-Digg Widget for Dashboard 1.1.5 --- http://web.mac.com/duncankeall/Dugg/Dugg.html 

Digg is perhaps one of the web’s best known sites, and it contains various content submitted by users from all over the world. Dugg 1.1.5 is a tiny widget that can help Digg devotees (and Digg neophytes) search and find content on Digg quickly. Visitors can view stories for specific topics or users and also check out what friends might be “digging”. This version of Dugg is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.3.

Question
What does Walt Mossberg think about the Ask3D search engine?

But Ask's new system, called "Ask3D," is a much bolder and better advance in unifying different kinds of results and presenting them in a more effective manner. It shows, once again, that Ask places a higher priority than its competitors do on making search results easy to navigate and use. Both new systems are now the defaults on the search sites. You don't have to do anything special to use them. Indeed, Google's change is so subtle you may not even notice it for some searches.
Walter S. Mossberg, "Ask.com Takes Lead In Designing Display Of Search Results," The Wall Street Journal,  June 28, 2007; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118298543501150751.html

Ask.com --- http://www.ask.com/

StumbleUpon and Kartoo

Find FAQs Online

Yahoo's Y!Q

Speegle:  Listen to Your Search Outcomes 

Searching for words and phrases at a particular university --- Scroll to the bottom of http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en 

 

 

Google Links

Google (Web Images, Video, News, Maps Desktop, and More) --- http://www.google.com/
Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/
Google Advanced --- http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Google Advanced Scholar Search ---  http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&lr=
Google Maps --- http://maps.google.com/
Google Finance --- http://finance.google.com/finance

Did you ever scroll down Google's Advanced Search Site?
Go to http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en


Google Book Search - Search the full text of books
New! Google Code Search - Search public source code
Google Scholar - Search scholarly papers
Google News archive search - Search historical news

 

Apple Macintosh - Search for all things Mac
BSD Unix - Search web pages about the BSD operating system
Linux - Search all penguin-friendly pages
Microsoft - Search Microsoft-related pages

 

U.S. Government - Search all U.S. federal, state and local government sites
Universities - Search a specific school's website
 

Did you ever notice the links below?  http://www.google.com/help/features.html#wp

Google Web Search Features

In addition to providing easy access to billions of web pages, Google has many special features to help you to find exactly what you're looking for. Click the title of a specific feature to learn more about it.

  • Book Search Use Google to search the full text of books.
  • Cached Links View a snapshot of each page as it looked when we indexed it.
  • Calculator Use Google to evaluate mathematical expressions.
  • Currency Conversion Easily perform any currency conversion.
  • Definitions Use Google to get glossary definitions gathered from various online sources.
  • File Types Search for non-HTML file formats including PDF documents and others.
  • Froogle To find a product for sale online, use Froogle - Google's product search service.
  • Groups See relevant postings from Google Groups in your regular web search results.
  • I'm Feeling Lucky Bypass our results and go to the first web page returned for your query.
  • Images See relevant images in your regular web search results.
  • Local Search Search for local businesses and services in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.
  • Movies Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you.
  • Music Search Use Google to get quick access to a wide range of music information.
  • News Headlines Enhances your search results with the latest related news stories.
  • PhoneBook Look up U.S. street address and phone number information.
  • Q&A Use Google to get quick answers to straightforward questions.
  • Refine Your Search - New! Add instant info and topic-specific links to your search in order to focus and improve your results.
  • Results Prefetching Makes searching in Firefox faster.
  • Search By Number Use Google to access package tracking information, US patents, and a variety of online databases.
  • Similar Pages Display pages that are related to a particular result.
  • Site Search Restrict your search to a specific site.
  • Spell Checker Offers alternative spelling for queries.
  • Stock and Fund Quotes Use Google to get up-to-date stock and mutual fund quotes and information.
  • Street Maps Use Google to find U.S. street maps.
  • Travel Information Check the status of an airline flight in the U.S. or view airport delays and weather conditions.
  • Weather Check the current weather conditions and forecast for any location in the U.S.
  • Web Page Translation  Provides you access to web pages in other languages.
  • Who Links To You? Find pages that point to a specific URL.

And more Google Links --- http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

Blog Search
Find blogs on your favorite topics
Book Search
Search the full text of books
Catalogs
Search and browse mail-order catalogs
Checkout
Complete online purchases more quickly and securely
Desktop
Search and personalize your computer
Directory
Browse the web by topic
Earth
Explore the world from your PC
Finance
Business info, news, and interactive charts
Froogle
Shop for items to buy online and at local stores
Images
Search for images on the web
Local
Find local businesses and get directions
Maps
View maps and get directions
News - now with archive searchNew!
Search thousands of news stories
NotebookNew!
Clip and collect information as you surf the web
Patent SearchNew!
Search the full text of US Patents
Scholar
Search scholarly papers
Specialized Searches
Search within specific topics
Toolbar
Add a search box to your browser
Video
Search for videos on Google Video and YouTube
Web Search
Search over billions of web pages
Web Search Features
Find movies, music, stocks, books, and more

"Google Plans Searchable Text in Images:  InformationWeek reports that Google filed a patent in June 2007 for a technology that could make text in images searchable," by Hurley Goodall, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2642&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

The yet-to-be-developed technology detailed in the patent application carries serious implications for the future of search technology, particularly in regard to the Google Book Search project.

What could that mean for the future of academic research and the role of libraries? In an interview, Wendy P. Lougee, University of Minnesota librarian, frames the would-be technology in the context of “discoverability” — the ease with which an item can be found through a search.

“With respect to images, the challenges have been in the metadata,” or the data that contextualizes items in a database, she says, and the potential technology “could significantly enhance” librarians’ ability to catalogue and retrieve information.

"Searching Library Collections in Facebook," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2642&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A new application lets Facebook users start their library research in the popular social-networking system. The plug-in provides an interface in Facebook for searching the popular Worldcat database, operated by the nonprofit OCLC. The group’s Web site says the index includes more than a billion items in more than 10,000 libraries.

So far the application does not seem to be listed in Facebook’s official directory. But a quick search of Facebook’s other applications shows that more than a dozen other academic libraries have created their own search tools for the social-networking platform. The University of Notre Dame has one, for instance, as does Elmhurst College, Pace University, and Ryerson University. JSTOR, the popular, nonprofit digital archive of scholarly publications, also offers a Facebook application.

One thing I discovered when I invited Wired Campus readers to join my Facebook friend group is that librarians are some of the most enthusiastic nonstudent users of social networks. But can Facebook, known as a place for socializing, become part of the research process as well?

You can read more about Facebook at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

 

How do scholars search for academic references?

Scholarpedia --- http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page

PLoS One --- http://www.plosone.org/home.action

Google Scholar --- http://scholar.google.com/
Not to be confused with Google Advanced Search which does not cover many scholarly articles --- http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Google Knol --- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html

Google Research --- http://research.google.com/

One Million University of Illinois (Free) Books to be Digitized by Google --- http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/PressRelease/LibraryDigitization/index.shtml
Google Digitized Books --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?q=Accounting
For example, key in the word "accounting"
Then try "Advanced Managerial Accounting"
Then try "Joel Demski"
Then try "Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments"
Then try "Robert E. Jensen" AND "Accounting"

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces the availability of a newly-digitized collection of Abraham Lincoln books accessible through the Open Content Alliance and displayed on the University Library's own web site, as the first step of a digitization project of Lincoln books from its collection. View the first set of books digitized at: http://varuna.grainger.uiuc.edu/oca/lincoln/

Microsoft's Windows "Live Search" or  "Academic Search" ---
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?scope=academic&q=

Amazon's A9 --- http://a9.com/-/search/advSearch 

The University of California's eScholarship Repository has recently exceeded five million full-text downloads, according to the university
The eScholarship Repository, a service of the California Digital Library, allows scholars in the University of California system to submit their work to a central location where any users may easily access it free of charge. The idea is to ease communication between researchers. Catherine Mitchell, acting director of the CDL publishing group, says the number shows that both content seekers and creators have embraced the service, allaying concerns among researchers that others wouldn't contribute to the repository.
Hurley Goodall, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2667&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Beginning October 23, 2003, Amazon.com offers a text search of entire contents of millions of pages of books, including new books ---
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/ref%3Dsib%5Fmerch%5Fgw/104-3984945-7813514 

How It Works --- http://snurl.com/BookSearch 
A significant extension of our groundbreaking Look Inside the Book feature, Search Inside the Book allows you to search millions of pages to find exactly the book you want to buy. Now instead of just displaying books whose title, author, or publisher-provided keywords that match your search terms, your search results will surface titles based on every word inside the book. Using Search Inside the Book is as simple as running an Amazon.com search. 

Soon to be the largest scholarly library in the world:
Google Book Search --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search 

Answers.com --- http://www.answers.com/

Carnegie Mellon Libraries: Digital Library Colloquium (video lectures) --- http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/DLColloquia.html

 

Experts vs. Amateurs Searching the Web
The credibility war rages on in the world of Web 2.0. Those who say information provided by Internet research tools needs to be vetted have made their case in several ways. Knol, for example, appears to be Google's answer to Wikipedia. And for now, while the project is under development, authors can contribute content by invitation only. The plan is to let users rank the wheat among the chaff; the highest-ranking articles would pop up first in a Google search. A clear example is Mahalo. It's essentially a search engine run by staff members, who hand-pick links for popular search terms. That's a familiar concept for academic libraries. There is resistance to the idea that experts have lost their place in the indiscriminate, user-generated Web 2.0. John Connell, an education-business manager at Cisco Systems, writes in his blog that experts and laymen can coexist on the Web: "We are not dealing with a zero-sum game of any kind -- the rise of one source of information does not (necessarily) cause the dissipation of another. Why then do those who espouse the ‘cult of the expert,’ for want of a better term, feel it necessary not just to have access to the authoritative information (in their terms) that they seek, but to deny those who want access to the ... trivial information they want? "It is elitism, pure and simple." The question is, do users need someone else to filter information for them? We know from past reports that the "Google Generation" has a hard time sorting the relevant from the trivial. But isn't it better to teach them how?
Hurley Goodall, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2818&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

 

Is banning of Wikipedia/Google for coursework both stupid and wasted effort?
 

Some professors ban their students from citing Wikipedia in papers. Tara Brabazon of the University of Brighton, bars her students from using not only Wikipedia, but Google as well, The Times of London reported. Google is “white bread for the mind,” Brabazon said. “Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments,” she said. “Google is filling, but it does not necessarily offer nutritional content.”
Inside Higher Education, January 14, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/14/qt

 

"The University of Google," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 17, 2008 --- Click Here

Tara Brabazon, professor of media studies at Britain’s University of Brighton, was expected Wednesday to criticize Google and what she sees as students’ over-reliance on the search engine and Wikipedia in an inaugural lecture at the university. She calls the trend “The University of Google,” according to an article Monday in The Times, and labels the search engine “white bread for the mind.” The professor bans her own students from using Wikipedia and Google in their first year of study.

A columnist for the paper responded in a piece that accuses Ms. Brabazon of snobbery. “Curiosity, it seems, can only be stimulated by trawling library shelves or by shelling out substantial amounts of money,” he writes, sarcastically.

January 17, 2008 reply from Derek

Very interesting. I understand Brabazon’s point about students’ over-reliance on Google and Wikipedia, but I don’t know if banning those web sites helps to improve students’ information literacy. I think students need to know how to use these kinds of web sites wisely.

If I can make a plug here, our teaching center just started a new podcast series featuring interviews with faculty about issues of teaching and learning. The first episode, available here, features an interview with a (Vanderbilt) history professor who uses Wikipedia to teach the undergraduate history majors in his class how to think like historians. He’s a great teacher and interviewee, and I think he offers an effective way to use Wikipedia to help him accomplish his course goals.

Episode 1 --- http://blogs.vanderbilt.edu/cftpodcast/?p=4

 

Jensen Question
How will Professor Brabazon deal with the new and authoritative Google Knol?

Jensen Comment
So how might a student find refereed journal or scholarly book references using Wikipedia?

  1. Most scholarly Wikipedia modules have footnotes and references that can be traced back such that there is no evidence of having ever gone to Wikipedia.
    For example, note the many scholarly references and links at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung
     

  2. Don't overlook the Discussion tab in Wikipedia. Here's where some information is turned into knowledge by scholars.
     

  3. If there is not a footnote or a reference, look for a unique phrase in Wikipedia and then insert that phrase in Google Scholar or one of the other sites below:

Scholarpedia --- http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page

PLoS One --- http://www.plosone.org/home.action

Google Scholar --- http://scholar.google.com/
Not to be confused with Google Advanced Search which does not cover many scholarly articles --- http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Google Knol --- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html

Google Research --- http://research.google.com/

One Million University of Illinois (Free) Books to be Digitized by Google --- http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/PressRelease/LibraryDigitization/index.shtml
Google Digitized Books --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?q=Accounting
For example, key in the word "accounting"
Then try "Advanced Managerial Accounting"
Then try "Joel Demski"
Then try "Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments"
Then try "Robert E. Jensen" AND "Accounting"

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces the availability of a newly-digitized collection of Abraham Lincoln books accessible through the Open Content Alliance and displayed on the University Library's own web site, as the first step of a digitization project of Lincoln books from its collection. View the first set of books digitized at: http://varuna.grainger.uiuc.edu/oca/lincoln/

Microsoft's Windows "Live Search" or  "Academic Search" ---
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?scope=academic&q=

Amazon's A9 --- http://a9.com/-/search/advSearch 

Beginning October 23, 2003, Amazon.com offers a text search of entire contents of millions of pages of books, including new books ---
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/ref%3Dsib%5Fmerch%5Fgw/104-3984945-7813514 

How It Works --- http://snurl.com/BookSearch 
A significant extension of our groundbreaking Look Inside the Book feature, Search Inside the Book allows you to search millions of pages to find exactly the book you want to buy. Now instead of just displaying books whose title, author, or publisher-provided keywords that match your search terms, your search results will surface titles based on every word inside the book. Using Search Inside the Book is as simple as running an Amazon.com search. 

Soon to be the largest scholarly library in the world:
Google Book Search --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search 

Answers.com --- http://www.answers.com/

Carnegie Mellon Libraries: Digital Library Colloquium (video lectures) --- http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/DLColloquia.html

 

For example,
Wikipedia describes how Jung proposed spiritual guidance as treatment for chronic alcoholism --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung#Spirituality_as_a_cure_for_alcoholism
Professor Brabazon might give a student an F grade for citing the above link. Instead the student is advised to enter the phrase [ \"Jung\" AND \"Alcoholism\" AND \"Spiritual Guidance\" ] into the exact phrase search box at http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&lr=
Hundreds of scholarly references will emerge that Professor Brabazon will accept as authoritative. But never mention to Professor Brabazon that you got the idea for spiritual guidance as a treatment of alcoholism from Wikipedia.

Also there's a question of how Professor Brabazon will deal with the new Google Knol

"Google's Answer to Wikipedia:  Google's Knol project aims to make online information easier to find and more authoritative," MIT's Technology Review, January 15, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20065/?nlid=806 

Google recently announced Knol, a new experimental website that puts information online in a way that encourages authorial attribution. Unlike articles for the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which anyone is free to revise, Knol articles will have individual authors, whose pictures and credentials will be prominently displayed alongside their work. Currently, participation in the project is by invitation only, but Google will eventually open up Knol to the public. At that point, a given topic may end up with multiple articles by different authors. Readers will be able to rate the articles, and the better an article's rating, the higher it will rank in Google's search results.

Google coined the term "knol" to denote a unit of knowledge but also uses it to refer to an authoritative Web-based article on a particular subject. At present, Google will not describe the project in detail, but Udi Manber, one of the company's vice presidents of engineering, provided a cursory sketch on the company's blog site. "A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read," Manber writes. And in a departure from Wikipedia's model of community authorship, he adds that "the key idea behind the Knol project is to highlight authors."

Noah Kagan, founder of the premier conference about online communities, Community Next, sees an increase in authorial attribution as a change for the better. He notes the success of the review site Yelp, which has risen to popularity in the relatively short span of three years. "Yelp's success is based on people getting attribution for the reviews that they are posting," Kagan says. "Because users have their reputation on the line, they are more likely to leave legitimate answers." Knol also has features intended to establish an article's credibility, such as references to its sources and a listing of the title, job history, and institutional affiliation of the author. Knol may thus attract experts who are turned off by group editing and prefer the style of attribution common in journalistic and academic publications.

Manber writes that "for many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing." But Mark Pellegrini, administrator and featured-article director at Wikipedia and a member of its press committee, sees two problems with this plan. "I think what will happen is that you'll end up with five or ten articles," he says, "none of which is as comprehensive as if the people who wrote them had worked together on a single article." These articles may be redundant or even contradictory, he says. Knol authors may also have less incentive to link keywords to competitors' articles, creating "walled gardens." Pellegrini describes the effect thus: "Knol authors will tend to link from their articles to other articles they've written, but not to articles written by others."

Continued in article

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

NEW GOOGLE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY SERVICES

Google,Inc. recently announced two new services as part of its Google Research University program.

Google Search "is designed to give university faculty and their research teams high-volume programmatic access to Google Search, whose huge repository of data constitutes a valuable resource for understanding the structure and contents of the web." For more information and to register for the service, go to http://research.google.com/university/search/ 

Google Translate "offers tools to help researchers in the field of automatic machine translation compare and contrast with, and build on top of, Google's statistical machine translation system." For more information and to register for the service, go to http://research.google.com/university/translate/.

For an overview of all Google Research activities visit http://research.google.com/

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Open Encyclopedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

"Flickr Taps User Tags to Organize Library of Congress Images," by Scott Gilbertson, Wired News, January 16, 2008 --- http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/01/flickr-taps-use.html

Flickr has unveiled a new project, dubbed The Commons, which will give Flickr members an opportunity to browse and tag photos from Library of Congress archives. The goal is to create what Flickr likes to call an "organic information system," in other words, a searchable database of tags that makes it easier for researchers to find images.

The pilot project features a small sampling of the Library of Congress’ some 14 million images. For now you’ll find two collections. The first is called “American Memory: Color photographs from the Great Depression” and features color photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection including “scenes of rural and small-town life, migrant labor, and the effects of the Great Depression.”

The second collection is the The George Grantham Bain Collection which features “photos produced and gathered by George Grantham Bain for his news photo service, including portraits and worldwide news events, but with special emphasis on life in New York City.” The Bain collection images date from around 1900-1920.

In effect the Library of Congress has become a Flickr user, complete with its own stream and while it’s great to see these image available to a much wider audience, we’re not so sure how much it’s going to help researchers.

If you’re looking for historical photographs do you want to search through comments from self-appointed experts criticizing the composition skills of photography pioneers or adding the ever insightful “wow?” Then there’s the inevitable comments soliciting photos to be added to whatever banal and increasingly inane groups and pools that Flickr members have come up with.

The tagging aspect will no doubt produce something of value, but pardon our cynicism, this may well turn out to be a good test of whether the positive aspects of the Flickr community outweigh the negative.

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

NEW GOOGLE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY SERVICES

Google,Inc. recently announced two new services as part of its Google Research University program.

Google Search "is designed to give university faculty and their research teams high-volume programmatic access to Google Search, whose huge repository of data constitutes a valuable resource for understanding the structure and contents of the web." For more information and to register for the service, go to http://research.google.com/university/search/ 

Google Translate "offers tools to help researchers in the field of automatic machine translation compare and contrast with, and build on top of, Google's statistical machine translation system." For more information and to register for the service, go to http://research.google.com/university/translate/.

For an overview of all Google Research activities visit http://research.google.com/

 

Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Open Encyclopedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases

A professor wrote to me drawing a fine line between information and knowledge. Information is just organized data that can be right or wrong or unknown in terms of been fact versus fiction. Knowledge generally is information that is more widely accepted as being "true" although academics generally hate the word "true" because it is either too demanding or too misleading in terms of being set in stone. Generally accepted "knowledge" can be proven wrong at later points in time just like Galileo purportedly proved that heavy balls fall at the same rate of speed as their lighter counterparts, thereby proving, that what was generally accepted knowledge until then was false. "Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped two cannon balls of different masses from the tower to demonstrate that their descending speed was independent of their mass. This is considered an apocryphal tale, and the only source for it comes from Galileo's secretary." Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa#History

In my opinion there is a spectrum along the lines of data to information to knowledge. Researchers attempt to add something new and creative at any point along the spectrum. Scholars learn from most any point on the spectrum and usually attempt to share their scholarship in papers, books, Websites, blogs, and online or onsite classrooms.

That professor then mentioned above then asserted that Wikipedia and YouTube were information databases but not knowledge bases. He then mentioned the problem of students knowing facts but not organizing these facts in a scholarly manner. He conjectured that this was perhaps do to increased virtual learning in their development. My December 5, 2007 reply to him was as follows (off-the-cuff so to speak).

Although I see your point about information versus knowledge, the addition of the “Discussion tab” in Wikipedia changed the name of the game. As “information” gets discussed and debated and critiqued it’s beginning to look a whole lot more like knowledge in Wikipedia. For example, note the Discussion tab at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Design

And when UC Berkeley puts 177 science courses on YouTube (some of them in biology), it’s beginning to look a lot more like YouTube knowledge --- --- http://www.jimmyr.com/free_education.php

With respect to virtual learning, my best example is Stanford’s million+ dollar virtual surgery cadaver that can do more than a real cadaver. For one thing it can have blood pressure such that a nicked artery can hemorrhage. Learning throughout time is based on models and simulations of sorts. Our models and simulations keep getting better and better to a point where the line between virtual and real world become very blurred much like pilots in virtual reality begin to think they are in reality.

Much depends on the purpose and goals of virtual learning. Sometimes edutainment is important to both motivate and make learners more attentive (like wake them up). But this also has drawbacks when it makes learning too easy. I’m a strong believer in blood, sweat, and tears learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
When I put it into practice it was not popular with students of this generation who want it to be easy.

You note that:  “These students have prepared but it is poorly arranged, planned, and articulated.” One thing we’ve noted in Student Managed Funds (like in Phil Cooley’s course where students actually control the investments of a million dollars or more of a Trinity University's endowment) where students must make presentations before the Board of Trustees greatly improves students “planning and articulation.” You can read more about this at the University of XXXXX (December 4) at http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Note that the portfolios in these courses are not virtual portfolios. They’re the real thing with real dollars! Students adapt to higher levels of performance when the hurdles require higher ordered performance.

I prefer to think of higher order metacognition --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
For specific examples in accounting education see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
One of the main ideas is to make students do their own discovery learning. Blood, sweat, and tears are the best teachers.

Much of the focus in metacognitive learning is how to examine/discover what students have learned on their own and how to control cheating when assessing discovery and concept learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Higher order learning attempts to make students think more conceptually. In particular, note the following quotation from Bob Kennelly at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge

We studied whether instructional material that connects accounting concept discussions with sample case applications through hypertext links would enable students to better understand how concepts are to be applied to practical case situations.

Results from a laboratory experiment indicated that students who learned from such hypertext-enriched instructional material were better able to apply concepts to new accounting cases than those who learned from instructional material that contained identical content but lacked the concept-case application hyperlinks. 

Results also indicated that the learning benefits of concept-case application hyperlinks in instructional material were greater when the hyperlinks were self-generated by the students rather than inherited from instructors, but only when students had generated appropriate links.