Sunday, November 27, 2005

Yahoo Mindset, the Intent-driven Search and it allows you to Find the results you like or sort the way you need!

A Yahoo! Research demo that applies a new twist on search that uses machine learning technology to give you a choice: View Yahoo! Search results sorted according to whether they are more commercial or more informational (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources).

Yeah, now put the keywords in Yahoo Mindset 'Net newspaper for kids' and there I (Kidsfreesouls site of mine) stand with results # 1, #2 and # 5 of about 467812 for net newspaper for kids:-) This is fine. But the best part is that the demo provides a slider widget for users to explicitly specify their intent. Leaving the slider in the middle means they want to use the original Yahoo! search result order. Moving the slider to the extreme right means they want the top results to be those which the classifier is most confident are "non-commercial". Putting the slider in between those two positions means a blend -- somewhat faithful to the original ordering but also tending to bring the more obvious non-commercial pages to the top. Similarly, sliding into the left half indicates blending of commercialness confidence vs original ordering.

Complicating? Machine learning...well, thats the way of the web! Read here to explore what exactly Intent driven Search - Mindset is related to with great mind set to Yahoo!

I am still wondering with this Beta - should I tilt the widget towards the right? Or just leave in center as it is? Yahoooo.........please help!

- ilaxi

Friday, November 18, 2005

Google recently announced an exciting change to the Google Print product.The Google Print has been renamed as Google Book Search.

I feel this is user-friendly name and Book search is more a discovery of world books available on the web. More books would be promoted through this program and surfers can judge from the book cover and even get an opportunity to read the contents page, copyright details and a chapter of the book.

I already have the MJ Akbar Books account with google and a click from the website to Google Book search will land you up reading a chapter of the book 'Shade of Swords'. The Author account with google means parterning for the google revenue and of coz, the author's books need to be either transported by courier to google or the book pdfs of details to be uploaded on their server.

Way to go Google......More Publisher may tie up with google and more authors will reflect on searches with Google also planning to add Book Search on its main search.

Ego surfing by authors are sure to bring them great results!

-ilaxi

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Google is Restless!! Every day, you hear Google is upto something new - That's the reason its the apple of my eye;) In my September post, I mentioned about all the galore projects Google is gonna implement but here is a jolt of surprize - Urchin is gonna be Free! Google Analytics offers a host of compelling features and benefits for everyone from senior executives and advertising and marketing professionals to site owners and content developers.

Need I say more? I just love their move as this allows to make profit-generating improvements to advertising and website.Google offers Urchin : Urchin 5 analyzes traffic for one or more websites and provides accurate and easy-to-understand reports on your visitors - where they come from, how they use your site, what converts them into customers, and much more. I've used Live Stats but this one is quite competitive and if you have an Ad Words account, it really allows 5 million user traffic track with no cost and it's absolutely 'Free'! Oh, maybe Google might revise its fee procedure at a later stage as it mentions in its Terms and Conditions but till than, Enjoy!

- ilaxi