Phil Bradley's weblog

Social Searcher - new search engine

As soon as one search engine disappears, up pops another one. Social Searcher is an interesting multi search engine that creates 3 columns, one each for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ There are a few tweaks - you can choose to focus on a particular country within the Facebook element of search, a location in Twitter and a language in G+.If you're interested in searching for images in Facebook, there's an option for that as well.

The engine can also be used as an interface to search any of those resources directly, and also MySpace and LinkedIn. The section on 'Social Leaks' is also quite interesting in that there are a number of pre-set search links that reveal who is talking about how much they hate their job, what their new phone number is and so on - simply from what people have personally and very publically revealed.

This is a real Swiss Army Knife of a social search engine - certainly one that is worth exploring. And of course, you don't need to have accounts with any of the services in order to use it!

surchur closes

surchur.com 'the dashboard to now' has closed or as they rather sweetly put it "indefinitely paused". It's always a shame to see a search engine close, but in all honesty, this wasn't one of my favourites.

Slideshark for PowerPoint presentations on the iPad

I've mentioned Slideshark before - it's a great resource if you want to share PowerPoint presentations to your iPad. I've been using it for a while now, and I think it's particularly useful. Simply create your .ppt as usual and then upload a copy of it to their servers. Then open Slideshark on your iPad, sync with your account and it will download the presentation directly onto your iPad. You can then edit the presentation to move/drop slides although you can't yet edit the presentation itself. I also like the fact that you can present one thing to your audience, while displaying an entirely different dashboard of information on your iPad - such as time taken, time per slide and so on. Also, by simply holding your finger on a slide the audience will see the red dot, allowing you to emphasis what you're showing them, without fussing with laser pointers.

There's a commercial version, which gives you more space to store your presentations, but you can simply use the generous space provided for free and delete presentations you no longer need. If you have an iPad, and you think you might want to use it for presentations, give Slideshark a try. I have a personal recommendation URL which means that if you apply using it they will give us both an extra 25MB for free. And, in the interests of complete transparency, if you sign up quickly enough, you may (stress may) win us both $20 vouchers for Amazon.

So, give it a go, and take a look. http://www.slideshark.com/r?r=532382

Google improves calculator function

Google has recently improved the calculator function. Now if you type in a calculation the result appears in a 34 scientific calculator. This has a bunch of advanced features, where previously we only got the answer in bold. Unfortunately you have to do a calculation to bring this up onto the screen.

It looks like this:

 

Status People Fake Follower Check

People very often worry about their followers on Twitter. There are good reasons for this of course, but it's one of those situations that I really think just isn't worth losing sleep over. Then of course you get the very sad people who will pay actual real dollars for 'followers' or who will even buy an existing Twitter account and its followers. In all honesty, I pay very little attention to the number of followers that someone has got, since I'm more interested in what they say, how they say it and how often they say it. If I'm getting good content from them, they could be followed by all sorts of unsavoury characters for all I care. 

However, for those people who do worry about such things, there is the Status People Fake Follower Check which is very simple to use. Simple provide it with your Twitter name, allow it access to the account, and it will check up to 500 of your followers. You then get a total return based on 3 variables, Fake, Inactive and Good. Mine came out at 5% Fake, 18% Inactive and 77% good. I'm pretty happy with that result - I certainly know who a lot of the fake accounts are, which is one reason why I haven't followed them back. A fair number of accounts will be inactive, at least partly because people signed up to Twitter on one of my courses and were then unable to use it at work.

Once you've got your own score, you can then start digging through your friends scores as well. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing, and it's a bit like poking around their house when they're not at home. You can also do anyone else that you like as well - I tried @ladygaga and she has figures of 34% Fake, 38% Inactive and only 28% Good. Mind you, that still adds up to a lot more than any I'll ever have!

Anywho, give it a go. It only takes a few seconds, doesn't tweet results without permission and it's quite interesting - certainly on corporate accounts.

Clusty Returns!

Clusty - The Clustering Search Engine has returned. It's not unusual for a search engine to go under - it's all too frequent infact, but they don't often return. However, here's one that has. The search engine that specialises in clustering results has returned from the search engine bit bucket. It had a long and reasonable life, but last year it was taken over and rebadged as Yippy, with a very definate American family friendly nature to it. There is obviously still a very close link between the two, since the 'about' link at Clusty takes you directly to Yippy. However, having done a few 'adult' searches I can confirm that the results are very different to those that you get with Yippy.

If you've never tried Clusty I would suggest that you give it a go. Basically it will return a list of sites for you, as per normal, but down the left hand side of the screen you'll get a listing of 'clusters' (hence the name) which allow you to view your subject in different ways. A search for 'libraries' will get you clusters on Council, Virtual, Public, Ebooks and so on. Some of these can be further expanded to focus your search even more closely. There is a 'Sources' tab that you can use to focus on types or resource as well, such as the Open Directory, though this is rather limited, and again has a tie in with Yippy. A further tab allows users to filter via TLD (Top Level Domain), such as .com or .gov.uk for example, while a final tab allows for a 'time' limitation.

Clusty has an advanced search function, which is none too exciting, but does provide uses with the opportunity to limit the number of results - unlike many engines it pulls back a total of 200 results, but this can be increased to 500. There are separate tabs for News, Images, Maps, Blogs, Wikipedia, Jobs, Shopping and Gov.

It's a good little search engine, and while it doesn't have the reach or the functionality of some of its bigger cousins, the clustering option may be a useful way of working with an enquirer to focus a search, or for those times when you're not really sure where to start. I'd also suggest that it's a good tool to use with schoolchildren, since it can help them learn the distinctions between subject areas.

Pulse on the web

Pulse is one of my favourite news curation tools - it's simple and easy to use, and fits perfectly on the iPad. You can choose a variety of different sources - RSS feeds, blogs and so on and it will create a nice little magazine format for you. They've now brought it onto the web, where it's just as good. It looks a bit like this:

Down the left hand side of the screen you have the sources that you are interested in, split into 5 self defined categories. Simply click on the boxes, read the story directly from the page, rinse and repeat. A nice, fast and effective way to read your feeds.

 

Google feels lucky

Over the holiday weekend Google unveiled their latest exciting piece of news - they're playing around with the 'I'm feeling lucky' button. The idea is that you should be able to hover over it, and get up options such as 'I'm feeling wonderful' or 'hungry' or 'artistic' and so on. Personally I'd like to see 'I'm feeling like getting a good research result for once please' but I think that's a bit too big to go on a button.

Anyways, a bit silly but the annoying thing is that they can't even make that work properly. First of all, it works in Chrome, but try it elsewhere such as in Firefox or IE and it doesn't work. Unsurprisingly really as Google isn't really interested in supporting internet users, just its own self interest these days. Second, it's random - if it had a drop down option that might be a little more sensible, but no. Thirdly, if you start to type something, up pops Google suggestions and whisks the box away from you. So all things considered, it's pretty much entirely useless.

The E-Book In The Library « Radio Litopia

I was invited to take part in a Bookseller podcast the other evening, along with Peter Brantley, director at the not-for-profit library The Internet Archive, Stephanie Duncan, digital director of the Bloomsbury Group, who is responsible for Public Library Online: an initiative that gets around some of these issues by using a licensing model And finally, Tim Coates, founder of Bilbary (or ‘library’ mispelt), who is offering an alternative solution, that could see libraries or patrons pay for each book rented.

The blurb for the show says: "It’s the debate that is well overdue. The issue over how libraries should loan e- books is generating noise all over. The discussion has laid bare the real allegiances across the trade, as it impacts on all parts—-booksellers, publishers, authors, and of course librarians. Consensus has broken down, with some calling for librarians to simply circumvent publishers and digitize books direct. It’s a mess: a job for The Naked Book."

You can follow the link to listen - it's about an hour, or I've got it below.

Via Radio Litopia