Luxembourg-based Talkwalker is a social media monitoring company that has now released its own keyword-based alerts resource. The free service utilizes Google’s Web, news, and blog databases and delivers alerts by email or RSS.

So, are Talkwalker Alerts the Google Alerts replacement many are looking for?

I spent a few hours running several alerts and at this point I’m both optimistic and even impressed.

A few initial impressions follow.

Interface & Registration

The look, feel, and features of Talkwalker Alerts are nearly identical to Google’s alerts service.

Keyword alerts are available for “everything,” news, blogs, and/or discussions. They can be delivered “as it happens” or “once a day.” You can also limit by language and how many results are received:

Simply enter your email and you’re done.

The alert management page also appears nearly identical to Google Alerts. Here you can modify an alert query, grab the RSS URL, delete alerts, and other management tasks.

Overall, the learning curve is minute for those who have use Google’s alert tool. That’s good news for users and Talkwalker.

By the way, Talkwalker also makes it easy to import your current Google alerts.

But Do They Work?

I’ve only been using the service for a few hours, and I need to do more testing, but given the fact that I’ve had issues with the frequency and timeliness of Google Alerts for a long time (long before the current discussion got underway) several of the alerts I created did trigger with new material in a very timely manner.

So, for this reason alone, Talkwalker Alerts are worth being aware of and perhaps taking a look at to see if they meet your needs.

Some Examples

With the alert queries I setup I asked to receive “everything” via email as “soon as it happens.” In one case, I received an alert and learned about two relevant articles (via the Google News database) that were both less than one hour old.

Impressive.

What about new web pages?

In my view, the key to making a usable alert for web content is the ability to make them as specific as possible (if/when required) to avoid irrelevant material caused by language ambiguity, spam sites, etc. This also means taking advantage of advanced search syntax.

Here, Talkwalker is either having some opening day jitters and/or needs some more work. I ran a search for a single keyword and used two pieces of advanced syntax site: and filetype:.

The good news is that Talkwalker found a couple of new items but the advanced syntax was not applied.

So, either advanced syntax does not work (hopefully this will change) or there was a glitch since another alert I created used the site: operator and returned a correct result.

Whatever the case, Talkwalker does need to add some help and documentation as soon as possible.

Nothing Is Perfect

One issue I have with this service is similar to an issue with Google Alerts.  I know I’m not being alerted to material, and in some cases, a lot of material. If you’re tracking yourself, a competitor, an issue important to you, missing something can cause a lot of problems.

Sure, no alert service, even the ones that cost big money are perfect, but trusting you’re seeing all relevant material in a timely manner is crucial. I do my best to solve this by having a number of alerting tools and services working for me.

Trust is likely not an issue for everyone but nevertheless it needs to be considered.

Running a Google search and limiting by time period and sorting by date can clue you into some of this material.

For example, an alert I created should show a steady flow of new material being added all the time. However, the email alert I received only has one result and it’s ten days old.

There are a lot of reasons why this might be happening and hopefully the Talkwalker team will work to improve the service, something that Google hasn’t been doing for a long time.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it’s great to see this service emerge.

While it’s far from perfect (what is?) and given that is has only been available for a few hours, I’m both optimistic and impressed especially when it comes to the news portion of the service. To receive an email with links to relevant and current news stories, in some cases, less than one hour old, is good reason to offer kudos to Talkwalker.

In about three hours of testing, all five of my alerts have triggered for a total of 15 alert messages, some listing multiple relevant and very timely items.

I have been a user of the completely Web-based Newsblur since 2011 and have been nothing but impressed. It’s easy to use, dependable, fast, and gets the job done. Plus, it has a ton of features for those who want them. I use several.

Newsblur is the work of a sole developer based in Brooklyn named Sam Clay and has been online since 2010 with a growing but still small user base. That’s very likely going to change. Newsblur received funding from Y Combinator during 2012.

When I first started using Newsblur, I had a few questions, and Sam answered them in a matter of hours — something that Google is not able to do. My bet is that Sam might need to expand from a one-person operation and hire some staff. If this happens, I hope his commitment to answering user questions and listening to suggestions continues.

Developers might be interested to learn that Newsblur’s code is open source and posted on Git Hub.

Ten Reasons To Choose Newsblur

Here are a few of the reasons you might want to consider Newsblur as you look for a Google Reader alternative.

1. Migrating from Google Reader is easy. Point, click, and in a matter of minutes, your feeds are being checked by Newsblur.

2. Feeds can be viewed in the reader in one of three formats.

3. Save stories to a number of services (Evernote, Instapaper, etc.)

4. Share, annotate, and post stories on your Newsblur blog.

5. iPad, iPhone, and Android apps. iPhone is the primary way I interact with Newsblur.

6. Pricing? As of now, up to 64 feeds are free. An unlimited number of feeds and a few additional features including more frequent checks for new headlines is $1-$3/month.

7. Feeds are polled often (10x more often for paid users).

8. Newsblur can learn (this is an optional feature) what’s most interesting to you and then highlight articles meeting your criteria. Here’s how they describe their ‘training’ feature:

By using NewsBlur’s training filters, you can hide stories you don’t want to see and highlight the stories that interest you. Teaching NewsBlur your preferences (or lack thereof) for certain blogs, authors, and topics cuts down on the noise and connects you with the news that interests you most.

9. Newsblur’s code is open source and posted on GitHub.

10. It’s good to support the work of small companies. (-:

More Reasons To Try

Here are other comments and reviews about Newsblur:

• A new Ars Technica poll about Google Reader alternatives includes a a positive comment about Newsblur by a former editor of the publication.
• Lifehacker’s just published roundup of Google Reader alternative has good things to say about Newsblur.
• Intelligently Browse RSS Feeds With Newsblur (Web.appstorm, 2010)
• NewsBlur is a slick, new RSS reader that intelligently makes sense out of your feeds. (The Next Web, 2010)

As you look for alternatives, make sure to stop by and give Newsblur a whirl. But, if you want further choices, see this article at our sister site Marketing Land: 12 Google Reader Alternatives.

TorrentFreak research shows the actual Pirate Bay website is not listed in the first 100 results when searching on the UK site (independent of location) but continues to appear in the first position on other Google sites like Google.com and Google.com.au.

The UK site currently has a Pirate Bay proxy listed as the first Google result.

We tried several of the searches used in the article and got identical results.

TorrentFreak also explains that searches for terms like TPB and “The Pirate Bay” still have the official Pirate Bay site listed ThePirateBay.se at number one.

Google did not respond to a TorrentFreak request for a public comment about the matter.

Trade organizations representing media companies from around the world have been requesting that Google do more to make material from Pirate Bay and similar sites difficult, if not impossible, to find.

About two weeks ago the president of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade organization told The Telegraph that Google’s efforts were to this point, “ineffective and that unlawful operators were still ‘dominating’ search results.”

At the same time the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) also said that Google was not doing enough.

One of the RIAA’s complaints was that Google’s auto-complete feature was still suggesting pirated sites 88% of the time.

During September 2012, Google removed Pirate Bay results from Google Instant Search.

As you would expect, airlines are busy canceling flights by the hundreds.

These cancellations will provide plenty of headaches around the entire U.S., Canada, and for travelers around the globe.

Two resources that offer near real-time “scoreboards” with flight cancellation info and statistics follow. Both come from two well-known flight tracking services.

FlightAware Live Airline Flight Cancellations Info & Statistics

Find data about cancelled flights organized by airline, departure airport, and arrival airport. Selecting any one of these access points will provide you with a list of all cancelled flights with flight numbers. You can view cancelled flights for the preceding two days, the current day, two days ahead, and also access a list of all cancelled flight for the past week.

Link: FlightAware Live Airline Flight Cancellations Info & Statistics.

FlightStats Global Cancellation and Delay Tracker

As the name of this resource suggests you’ll find both cancelled and delayed flight statistics back 30 days by airline, departure airport, and arrival airport. Plus, a graph to compare cancellations and delays back one month is provided.

The major difference between this resource and FlightAware is that FlightStats Tracker does not provide info about specific flight cancellations. Data about specific cancelled flights can be found elsewhere on FlightStats.

Link: FlightStats Global Cancellation and Delay Tracker.

These resources are available all of the time not just during bad weather periods.

What About Train Travel?

Of course Amtrak.com is the place to head for this information, but I want to point out a little known but very useful database that utilizes Amtrak data to provide near real-time information for all Amtrak trains around the country. I prefer this resource over what Amtrak offers on Amtrak.com.

At StatusMaps.net you’ll find train status information that you can view as text  (with station arrival/departure times and delay info) and on regional maps. Alerts and historical data are also available.

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

Today, a look at “TV News Search and Borrow” (TV News), one of the many services the Internet Archive makes available, such as the incredible Web history archive, The Wayback Machine.

“TV News Search and Borrow” allows you to keyword search and then view online and for free, clips from TV news programs from a variety of U.S. sources. You can view 30 second clips (one at a time) or “borrow” complete programs for a fee direct from the Internet Archive.

While other services are available to search and view TV news, TV News from the Internet Archive is completely free and contains a material back to 2009. I’ll be writing more about some of those other services in a later post.

News Sources

TV News contains material from a number of networks including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNBC, Comedy Central, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, and others. Many of the terrestrial network material is recorded from local affiliates in Baltimore, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. So, for a few markets, TV News also provides access to local television coverage.

TV News contains material from more than 408,000 broadcasts. That’s up 50,000 programs that the service has archived and indexed since TV News first launched last September.

To search, enter keywords, just as you would on any other search engine. TV News runs the search against its index of the closed-captioning that each broadcast makes available. Closed-captioning is far from perfect so be prepared to repeat searches with a variety of different keywords to make sure you find what you need.

You can search the entire database by keyword and narrow to a specific network and/or program and date or date range.

Popular terms from each clip are also provided and are clickable.

Search Results

I have found that searching for a phrase can sometimes be troublesome. In some cases using quotation marks to surround a phrase works well, but in other cases results were poor. So, once again, be adaptable.

Let’s break down this results page for the phrase “Search Engine Optimization”

At the top you’ll spot “sparklines” that allow you to see the number of hits by date. You can move the sliders and create a date range to search interactively.

Directly below, in the search box, you’ll spot options to sort results by date or relevance, as well as to focus your search by selecting “more search options,” including limiting to a specific network or program or by date.

Click on any program “WMAR – ABC2 News at 530PM,” for example, to view/listen to the words spoken and see the closed captioning. You’ll be able to view 30 seconds at a time. To view more 30 second clips from the program or news segment, click the more/borrow button.

Now, you’ll see a page devoted to the specific program together with all of the clips (in 30 second increments) from the show.

Scroll to see a screen shot and link for each 30-second clip along with extracted terms from the clip.

You can also click the “search this broadcast link” and quickly limit your keyword search to the specific program.

Placing your cursor over any screen cap will provide you with the time the clip was recorded.

So, to watch a 3-minute report you’re going to need to click and wait for six videos to load.  For a 30-minute show, you’ll need to click on 60 clips.

Another option to view the entire program is to click the borrow link and borrow the show from the Internet Archive.  A 30-day loan for a 30-minute show costs $25 and is delivered to you by mail on a DVD.

A Keyword Search Option

You might also want to try using a Google site search of TV News to search for clips. To do this, simply add site:archive.org/details/TV to your keyword query. Here’s an example to find mentions of both Larry Page AND “Sergey Brin” in TV news reports. You can also try using inurl:yyyymm to limit your search to a specific month. Here’s an example.

Final Thoughts

TV News from the Internet Archive might not be the easiest resource to use due to all of the clicking you need to do, but its limitations are outweighed by its many benefits. Most notably, it’s one of the few online search tools that can do what it does — and it’s free.

In my next post, I will introduce you to a few other sources for news and public affairs programming, namely the award winning C-SPAN Video Library database along with a couple of tools that can help make TV News easier to use.

In a blog post, archive founder Brewster Kahle announced that The Wayback Machine now provides access an index containing more than 240 billion URLs (about five petabytes of data), with archived pages dating back to 1996.

The amount of newly accessible archived material is huge. Prior to this update, The Wayback Machine provided access to about 150 billion URLs.

Researchers should note that a small amount of the index available in the prior release is temporarily unavailable via the new and larger index. So, the older index remains available using a different interface.

Along with announcing the new release Kahle said the database can potentially access archived pages that were online as recently as early December 2012.

This is also exciting news for researchers since the lag time between the time a page was crawled and indexed and then became accessible via The Wayback Machine could often be six months or longer.

Kahle also mentions that Wayback is now handling more than 1,000 queries per second by more than 500,000 people a day.

All of this news follows a New Year’s Eve blog post by Brewster Kahle announcing that the Internet Archive had just completed raising one million dollars that will allow the organization to purchase four more petabytes of storage. The fundraising continues because the archive estimates they’ll need more than ten petabytes of storage during 2013.

Archive It

Although web pages indexed by The Wayback Machine are NOT keyword searchable more than a thousand collections of archived web pages focusing on wide variety of topics ARE keyword searchable.

These archives are made available by Archive-It, a fee-based service, that’s part of The Internet Archive. These collections are built targeting specific urls to crawl, index, and archive.

Archive-It works with the education community (K-12 and higher ed), libraries, government agencies, non-profits, and others. Many of these groups make their collections accessible to all users.

Here are a Few Examples of Archive-It Collections:

• New Zealand Earthquake of 2011
• Human Rights Documentation Initiative
• NHTSA, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Wisconsin Historical Society
• National September 11 Memorial Museum

Here’s a directory with information and links to more than 1800 Archive-It collections that are keyword searchable.

Yesterday on Toolserver.org, a service of Wikipedia Germany, lists of  the Top 100 most viewed articles for 2012 were released. The data mining was done by Johan Gunnarsson, a computer science student in Sweden. Rankings for 35 different Wikipedias (by language) are available. You can find all of the lists here.

Here’s a look at the Top 10 most viewed articles on the English Wikipedia during 2012.

1. Facebook 32,647,942 Views

2. Wiki 29,613,759 Views

3. Deaths in 2012 25,418,587 Views

4. One Direction 22,351,637 Views

5. The Avengers (2012 film) 22,268,644 Views

6. Fifty Shades of Grey 21,779,423 Views

7. 2012 phenomenon 20,619,920 Views

8. The Dark Knight Rises 18,882,885 Views

9. Google 18,508,719 Views

10. The Hunger Games 18,431,626

The 100th most viewed article “Stephen Hawking” with 7,177,539 views.

Aside from the popular culture of the day (One Direction, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, etc.) it’s likely that the two most viewed articles included many visits from confused users who for one or more of many reasons landed on the page.

Why?

In several of the articles I’ve seen since these lists were released the most likely answer is confused users. I concur.

On AllThingsD, Liz Gannes gets input from Jay Walsh, a Wikimedia spokesperson:

First, that users are typing Facebook into an integrated search engine in their browsers intending to go to the site and end up on Wikipedia (which could be a self-reinforcing habit based on search history).

And second, as Walsh put it, “It’s quite possible that these numbers confirm general, high-level interest and curiosity about top Web properties — their history, policies, background, etc.”

There is tendency for those of us who live and breathe search and information retrieval 24x7x365 to think of these people as simply confused, lost, “out of it”, or as seen in a headline from a news service provided by a major search provider, “dummies”.

A couple of weeks ago Experian announced that the most popular search term of 2012 was Facebook. Some of the other most popular search terms for the past two years include:

• YouTube
• Craigslist
• eBay
• Yahoo

While some or even a lot these “navigational” searches are likely from people who don’t have the page bookmarked (if they even know that you can bookmark) or want enter those same letters into the navigational bar directly I think we’re also seeing some of the same confused users we’re pointing out at Wikipedia.

Nothing New

Being able to identify what are most likely sizable amounts of confused and uneducated users in year-end rankings is nothing new.

For example, seven years ago I wrote that the most popular search terms for 2005 on Dogpile included Google, Yahoo and eBay. What made this even more interesting and illustrated confusion about how search works is that Dogpile included results from Google and Yahoo at that time.

Taking a look back at the most viewed articles on Wikipedia during 2008 and 2009 we also see some of the same articles on this years list.

The most viewed Wikipedia article on the 2008 and 2009 lists was “Wiki”. This year, it’s number two.

• Facebook was the 5th most viewed article in 2008 and 10th in 2009
• YouTube was the 2nd most viewed article in 2008, 5th in 2009, and 12th this year.
• Google was the 21st most viewed article in 2008, did not appear on the list in 2009, and 9th this year.

The bottom line is that what we’re seeing in 2012 is far from new. In fact, it’s a very old issue and confused users should be a concern.

The entire industry and several related professions needs to do more to develop a more web and digitally literate Internet users. It’s not possible to reach everyone but that doesn’t mean we can’t reach some, even a few.

It’s not that nothing is being by the industry along with school, library, and government projects but rather more needs to be done by all of us.

Just taking a few minutes to share a few pointers with your nieces, uncle, or neighbor can make a difference. Everyone is a searcher these days or at least they think they are. Saving people time, effort, and aggravation can turn you into a hero.

By the way, it’s not only the most basic browser, navigation, and search but also, perhaps most important, having some skills to judge the quality (currency, accuracy, source, etc.) of the info people find on the web.

So, next time you come across statistics that show what are most likely confused users try to keep your head shaking and scratching to a minimum and ask yourself how can you contribute to make these people educated to how the web and web tools work.

Specifically, via the Google Crisis Map, you can select these areas for post-Sandy Imagery:

• Beach Haven to Cape May, NJ
• Spring Lake to Harvey Cedars, NJ
• Little Assawoman Bay, DE to Assateague Island, MD

The satellite images can also be downloaded as a KML file to use with Google Earth.

The imagery was captured yesterday (October 31, 2012) by the NOAA-National Geodetic Survey.

The Google Crisis Map also includes handheld photography of Manasquan, NJ.

You can also access the imagery (and what will most likely be a lot more of it) via the NOAA SANDY Response Imagery Viewer. Here you can also search for a location and download the images.

It’s likely we also see some free imagery from commercial satellite providers DigitalGlobe and GeoEye. The DigitalGlobe site does mention that their FirstLook service has been activated.

Keep an eye on the galleries where both companies share this type of material.

• GeoEye Gallery
• Digital Globe Gallery

If the images you’re looking for are not available, check the sites regularly for new material.

A Few Additional Resources

• Microsoft Disaster Response

• Alertnet (From Thomson Reuters) Aggregates Reuters coverage.

• Spreadsheet of Crowdsourced Maps (via Crisis Mappers)

• ReliefWeb Maps and news. Includes coverage of Hurricane Sandy’s destruction in Haiti.

Finally, infoDOCKET has compiled a small collection of post-Sandy maps that might also be of interest. Many of them are powered by ESRI and include power outage, demographics, and other data.

Storm Tracking

• Google Super Storm Sandy Map
• Google Super Storm Sandy Maps: NYC Close-up
• ESRI’s Hurricane Information Map
• Weather.com Hurricane Tracker

Local TV Live Stream

• Boston: CBS
• NYC: NBC
• Philadelphia: CBS
• Washington DC: Fox
• Washington DC: NBC

Radio

• A brief post with details about how to listen live to audio streams of first responders from throughout the affected region
• Listen to live audio streams from all-news stations in Boston, DC, Philadelphia, and New York City.
• NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio (Additional Audio Including Podcasts)

Live Blogs

• NBC News
• New York Times
• Wall Street Journal
• Washington Post / Capital Weather Gang

Imagery

• Searchable database from the NOAA Satellite
• FEMA will add photos of damage and other storm activities to their searchable photo library.

Emergency News

• A list with Twitter streams from emergency management offices from many states and DC.
• Flooding will likely be an issue. NOAA provides real-time feeds of streamflow on rivers around the country. Here’s a direct link to info for the Northeast.
• Twitter’s Sandy resources page

Also see Tracking Hurricane Sandy Through Twitter, our guide to using Twitter for monitoring news and Google Has Launched A Hurricane Sandy Crisis Map, for more about Google’s special Hurricane Sandy maps mentioned above.

The final debate between U.S. presidential candidates Obama and Rommney airs tonight. Until the election next month, a lot of attention will continue to be on the presidential and vice presidential debates.

Here’s an easy and free way to keyword search debate video and then immediately view the video online.

In fact, all of the presidential debates back to 1988 can offer keyword searchable video.

Where do you search and access?

Visit the wonderful, irreplaceable and important C-SPAN Video Library.

I’ll be taking an in-depth look at this resource in an upcoming report but in a nutshell, the C-SPAN Video Library allows you to search (keyword search and/or browse) and view just about everything that has ever aired on the C-SPAN Network since 1987. This means about 194,500 hours of video content as of today.

While C-SPAN is best known for providing live coverage of Congressional activity, you’ll also find political rallies,  book talks, one-on-one interviews, special events and much more like this recent forum on Google and anti-trust.

Quickly and Easily Keyword Search Presidential Debate Video

You can watch the first two Oct 3, 2012 and Oct 16, 2012 debates where President Obama and Mitt Romney debated a wide range of policy issues in nationally televised debates.  Or view the October 11th debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Representative Paul Ryan. You’ll find links to tonight’s final debates on the C-SPAN Video Library homepage or in the Campaign 2012 section of the library.

Direct links to video to debates between 1988-2008 are available here.

In Depth How-To: Searching The 2012 Vice-Presidential Debate

You’ll see a link labeled, “View Full Event (3 Programs)“.

Here you can access both the prologue to the debate (Martha Raddatz talking to the audience, not seen on other networks) and the switched screen feed of the debate (the camera switching between both candidates).

Whichever video you select, they’re all searchable. Let’s head back to where we first landed a moment ago, the “Split Screen” feed. 

Scroll down and find the transcript search box. Make sure it’s marked “text”. Here’s where you enter the search terms.

Enter your search term(s). You can search all speakers or limit to either candidate or the moderator.

Using quotation marks for phrases does not work. So, just enter your term(s). In this case I’m looking for the phrase american people.

Click the arrow or hit return.

Your search term(s) should appear if they were spoken. The transcript you’re searching was mechanically generated using the closed captioning from the broadcast. It’s not perfect so be careful.

To view the video beginning where your terms are spoken simply click the results box where those words are found.

Other Useful C-SPAN Video Features

It’s also possible to browse and view using the text timeline. Select it from the pulldown menu where you selected text transcript. Cursor over each speakers name to see the text of what was spoken.

On the right side of the page you’ll find the “speaker” header. Click here and you’ll find direct links to video of each time the person appeared on C-SPAN.

Below the video box you’ll find the clip and share links. You can quickly share the entire video on Twitter, Facebook or Google. Embedding is also possible. The clip link lets you select a portion of the video to save or share.

I plan to write much more about the C-SPAN Video Library in an upcoming post. Meanwhile, enjoy the debate tonight and viewing the historical archive that this rich repository offers.