Phil Bradley's weblog

Search by filetype

We're all used to searching for webpages, and the data that's found on them, but have you ever considered searching by filetype instead? It's a great way to really narrow down your search quickly and effectively to get exactly what you need. Major search engines support search by filetype and there are some specific filetype search engines available as well. I've written a short 'how to' guide on searching by filetype that might be worth a couple of minutes of your time.

370+ Search Engines to explore

I have been updating my collections of search engines - adding in new ones that I've previously blogged about and removing ones that no longer exist. It's of course not a complete listing - some I simply have ignored as I really don't rate them, others I just don't know about! However, the majority of them are ones that I think are worth looking at in different subject areas. There's more to search than Google. If you have time, please take a look, and consider trying out some new ones. You can access them all via my 'Which Search Engine When' page and pull down menus, but here's an overview.

Key search engines - Free text, Index, Multi, Visual, Categorised, Blended. (41)

Site based engines - Comparisons, Re-ranking, Site information, Similar (30)

News search engines - News, Trending (33)

Types of data - Thumbnails, Overviews, Factual, Hidden, Fileformats, Local (41)

Types of user - Children, Trusted sources, Academic (48)

Multimedia - Image, Sound, Video (63)

People based - People search, Blogs, Forum, Social, Moderated, Bookmarks (82)

Miscellaneous - Spelling, words, really odd (38)

Alternatively, or as well, I have a general collection of 170+ web search engines that is a bit of a miscellany, and most of them are available in the other lists, but not all. If you find any that I've missed, or think I should delete, change, edit or otherwise fiddle with, PLEASE let me know. Also, and this isn't something I ask very often, please do feel free to retweet, blog, or otherwise reference the lists - I don't get paid for any of this and the reward that I get is seeing that other people use and appreciate the work that I put into them. Thanks!

Findthatfile.com

Search for files & free Download. From the site itself: Our mission is to provide the most comprehensive file search on the Internet encompassing Web, FTP, Usenet, Metalink and P2P resources (ed2k/emule) including 47 file types and 555+ file extensions including over 161 file upload services** like RapidShare.

Blekko to 'slash the web'

I've been playing around with a new tool/resource called Blekko which is currently in a closed beta. They seem quite friendly though, so it's worth asking for access (via Twitter seems the best approach). It took me a while to understand what they were actually offering, but it's essentially a slightly different type of customised search engine. You simply chose the sites that you want to include in your universe, create a slashtag and off you go. The social element is to allow others to use your tags if you wish. There are lots of tags already available, so results for say global warming /conservative and global warming /liberal will give very different results; no surprise as they use different data sets. 

It's really not a new concept - we've had custom search engines around for years now, with people such as Rollyo and Google custom search. This is another twist on the same concept, the main difference being that the different custom searches are available for anyone to use. However, it's a pain to try and find them, and then to check to see which sites are in/excluded from the searches. They can't be embedded anywhere else though, which is unfortunate, but this is still only in beta testing, so that may appear later.

There are some useful slashtags, such as /humor or /blogs but overall I'm struggling to find a reason why I'd want to use a service like this, when I can do all of this and more with the previously mentioned custom search engines. It would be a great addon for an existing search engine to provide, and this is problem with Blekko - it's a fantastic feature, but it's not a compelling search resource in its own right.

Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be invited to the press briefing at the British Library to hear about their new exhibition and project: Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research.This is going to be both an exhibition and work of research to see how research is evolving and changing due to the use of new and different technologies.

We started off with an overview of the British Library, which measures collections in millions and kilometres. Questions that need answering include 'what should the future of the library be?' and 'Where are we going with reseach?' The idea is to explore different technologies, such as various types and forms of monitors and screens to see how these can be used within the research environment. Cheering words to hear were that change is necessary in order to remain relevent, so the exhibition will encourage interaction with the tools and also seek feedback. Visitors will have an immersive experience, playing with the Microsoft surface table (which will be displaying the huge Garibaldi Panorama) , and trying out different 'pod' like work stations.

The BL is being partnered in this project with organisations such as HP, Microsoft, Hayworth (furniture manufacturers), Jisc and they'll also have a first ever Researcher in Residence, Dr Aleks Krotoski.

It looks a really interesting exhibition/experiment and will be available from 12th October 2010 until 16th July 2011. The link goes to the website and the twitter hashtag is #blgk

Web Junior (WJR)

Online Web Page Capture Tool. This one is a little bit odd. OK, more than a little bit odd. It calls itself 'a internet (sic) archive - find content from the past, or save content to the minute. Anytime, anywhere, for free'.  It states that you can save pages and share them with anyone on the go, but I don't see anyway of doing that. It also says 'WJR is the only web archive that lets you see web pages exactly as it was (sic) captured'. So the Internet Archive doesn't do that then? It then goes onto say 'We're here to help the environment'. I presume so that you don't have to print pages out, but it's got some sort of pointless statement there.

I did a search for 'library' and got 5 results, so it's not exactly a hip happening resource. Really don't see what gap this is filling that can't be done by the Internet Archive, diigo et al and screenshot softwares.

Bottom line: A pencil without any lead. Pointless.

BBC News - The top 100 sites on the internet

This is a really interesting image map provided by the BBC, based on data from the Nielsen company and covers the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, US and Australia. The figures represent unique users for the month of January 2010.

Thanks to Richard for this.

Finding dead websites

There's is an interesting resource that I found when I was digging around trying to answer a question for my CILIP update column. 'Is it possible to prove exactly what was on a particular webpage at any moment in time?' I found FreezePage which does exactly that. You can type in a web address, add your name, and save it to a folder. The resource will then provide you with a URL of the frozen page, with a date and time that you can refer other people to. It worked reasonably well - I tried it with one of my pages, but it didn't store the menu bar, some of the images, the Google adverts or the social media bar - most of that stuff (but not all) does come from 3rd party sites, but it's still a bit of disadvantage.

Of course, if you don't like that, there's always the Wayback Machine, which stores sites/pages that it chooses to, on its own time scale, but while you can't take snapshots, you do stand a fair chance of finding older pages. Alternatively, you can try the UK Web Archive, which has been going since 2004 and has a specific UK bias.

If that's not helping - try the cache of a search engine. Many search engines will provide you with access to the most recent cached version of a web page that they've got in their database. In Google simply type cache:URL to view a specific page if you want speedy access.

Siri - the next wave of internet search

"Why if you miss Siri you'll miss the future of the Web". This is the title of a piece by Robert Scoble, who rates this resource very highly. There's a nice (quite long) video where he's interviewing the founders that is worth a look if you've got the time. Basically, what Siri does it knit together a bunch of different resources and it's able to talk to them, work out answers and give them back to you - it's a personal assistant rather than a Google Killer.

For example, if you want a nice fancy French restaurant that serves salmon for saturday night for two in Dallas Siri will go off, find out that information and book places for you. Or if you need to get to Atlanta you can tell it (voice if you want, type if you must) 'get me to Atlanta' and Siri will then ask how you want to get there, find you tickets and book them for you. If you're in Paris you can ask Siri what's going on in the city and it can go off to different event services, grab information and give it to you. So Siri is basically a 'to do' engine.

I looked at the demo, which is about 21 minutes into the video if you just want to skip to that, and it does look very clever. Now, the bad news. At the moment it's only available for the iPhone, and it's US only, so the RoW can't see it yet. :( However, that apart, if you want to know where search is going, this is a really nice signpost.

All About Explorers & incorrect data

. As we all know there's a lot of misinformation on the net, but which people will take for granted because it's on the net. No-where is this more true than with children. Sometimes it's necessary to point out that information is wrong, and All About Explorers | Everything you've ever wanted to know about every explorer who ever lived...and more!  is a superb resource to assist in this. It is designed as a safe resource for children, but is peppered with inaccurate information. For example, did you know that St Francis Drake was born in New Jersey? Or that his famous voyage started in 1942?

That's the kind of content you'll find on this site, and it's a really good way to introduce children to the sad fact that they can't believe everything that they read. As the site says of itself "While many of the facts are true or based on truth, many inaccuracies, lies, and even downright absurdity are mixed in indiscriminately."

Certainly worth considering using if you're a school librarian or teacher for a valuable lesson. There's a nice article about the site in the NY Times and many thanks to Ian for bringing this to my attention. You might also be interested in other hoax or spoof websites and there's a collection of them on my site under Fake Websites.