« March 2012 | Main | May 2012 »
via soundcli.ps
This is great fun. Do you need short and snappy sound effects for a podcast for example? Then try Soundclips. They have a wide variety of very short (10 seconds and less) sound files that you can download and they cover a huge range - science fiction photon blasts, dogs barking, offices, nightingale, waterfalls... this site will keep you occupied for hours as you 'just listen to one more'.
If you're in need of finding flights, it's worth taking a look at Skycanner. Reasonably quick, up to date and it works. It does tend to be slightly literal though - I asked for a flight from Southend to Belfast City, and it found me a couple, but they went via Amsterdam. However to be fair, it did just what I asked for, and once I looked around the screen there was a suggestion that I should go to Belfast International, both quicker and a lot cheaper.
I usually either look at a particular airport for flights or go to a specific carrier, but I will be trying this out when I'm travelling in the future.
There's an interesting little news snippet from Business Insider which is claiming that Microsoft may have tried to sell the Bing search engine to Facebook, with the possibility that this might still come off in the future. Microsoft is losing $2.5billion a year with the search engine and that's a huge amount of money, even in Microsoft terms. According to the article, investors are simply not that interested in search, when all it's doing is pulled Microsoft down when they should be concentrating on the Xbox, touch screen technology and software.
Facebook on the other hand is desperate for a proper search engine. They've already made moves into this area, and I recently noticed that the search box on Facebook now says 'Search for anything on Facebook'. That's a very interesting line - does it mean that users can search for anything that is contained within the Facebook world, or does it mean that while you're in Facebook, you can search for anything that you want to? I suspect this is no accident - while we're currently at the former stage, they want to move to the latter statement as quickly as possible.
All in all, another reason why information professionals need to get up to speed with Facebook - it's not about 'friends' any more.
You have to hand it to Google - even when they do something useful and helpful, they manage to create something of a firestorm which is completely unnecessary. The latest mess is Google Drive which is their attempt to get you to store all of your documents with them, so that you can share them anywhere, on any device. It's rather like DropBox or Microsoft SkyDrive or Apple's iCloud. It's basically a cloud storage service that will provide users with 5GB of free storage space, or more at monthly fees of up to $50 for 1TB. The current hysteria relates to the ownership of your material when it goes into their drive system. According to some reports it's a 'toxic brew' while another report says that it's no worse than any of the rivals.
Google starts by saying "Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours."However, they then go on to say:
"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
via searchco.de
This is a code specific search engine. API documentation, code snippets and open source (free sofware) repositories are indexed and searchable.
Most information is presented in such a way that you shouldn't need to click through, but of course you always can. Makes little sense to me, since I'm not a programmer, but it seems to do what it should do! Any comments, please make 'em.
Search Better. Code Better. This is an engine that some people will just look at blankly, while others will jump up and down in excitement about. It's an engine that - as the name suggests - searches symbols for you. Google's started to expand into this area, but if you want something like === javascript or ruby $$ this is going to make life much easier for you.
SymbolHound has two search modes - the web and code. It also has an advanced search function with the usual suspects. Results are clear - with URL, summary and title. So, if you need to search for symbols like &, %, and π this is one engine that you really need to check out.
I always like to find interesting new search engines and www.websiteslike.org falls into that category. Just type in the URL of a site that you like, and it will find other similar sites for you. There are a few of these products out there now and my favourite remains SimilarPages because of the nifty little app you can get. There's also SitesLike as well. Or, if you prefer Big G, try related: although they've hidden this function now because, well, they don't want to help people find stuff do they.
Anyhow, back to this one. It claims to have listed over 1,000,000 sites and I tried it with a couple that I know and I was happy with the results that it returned. Give it a go next time you're stuck
via www.guardian.co.uk The Guardian is reporting that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is warning against the dangers that both Facebook and Apple bring to the Internet. While it's not a surprise that I don't particularly like Google, he's making a very good point here. Facebook is a walled garden, and what happens in Facebook stays in Facebook - unless you're stupid or transparent enough not to mind if your status updates are available to the world.
I'm firmly convinced that Facebook isn't satisfied with being one of the biggest players on the Internet - it wants to BE the internet. We've recently seen moves to develop a proper search function at Facebook, and the recent acquisition of Instagram also shows quite clearly that the company wants to grab as much mobile traffic as it possibly can. I can easily see a situation in which a newcomer to the net gets told to create a Facebook account, and they find their friends, discussion groups, images, factual data, web pages for companies and organisations - of course they're going to think that it's the internet. As an aside this is why it's a total insanity for any organisation to block, ban or otherwise censor information professionals access to the web. Facebook is now the size that the Internet itself was in 2004, so it's well on its way to achieving that aim.
Then if we take a look at Apple, with the huge number of apps at their disposal - Google can't get at any of that data either. Increasingly I'm finding that when I want something while I'm out, I'll use an app to get it. If I need to know the football scores - there's an app for that. Need to check the price of a product - there's an app for that as well. Need to... well, you get the idea. Given that we're moving towards the mobile era at a rate of knots we have two competing systems, both of which are freezing Google out of the game. No wonder they're running scared. When you then get a killer Facebook app for the phone, it doesn't take a genius to see Google losing it's entire relevance for people.
Of course, we have to look at the other side of the coin as well, and Brin is being ever so slightly disingenius himself. He's busy trying to create his own garden, whereby people stay within the Google fold, but the problem that he's got is the success of Google as a search engine and its almost total failure at everything else (Gmail apart). Google is completely tied to the Web 1 version of the net, with the value and importance of websites as being the place where all the action is. Only of course now it's not. So what does Google do? It injects its own results into the information it provides users, ranking its own G+ data above that of Twitter and Facebook. That reduces their own morale highground to the size of a molehill built on shaky foundations.
Meanwhile the average punter - that's you and me folks, is left being pushed from pillar to post as the cattle the ranchers are fighting over. None of these corporations are your friends, none of them care a jot about you other than what they can make from you. While this is a bleak scenario, the silver lining is the fact that people trust information professionals, and I firmly believe that part of our role is get people to at least understand what is happening on the internet, and to make the point over and over again that if they can't trust Google, Facebook or Apple, they can at least trust their friendly librarian.
Recent Comments