FAA Mobile Web App

• Since it’s a mobile app nothing to download
• Lookup aircraft tail numbers, get airport status, and several tools for aviators
• Learn more
• Direct link to FAA Mobile App

New From The IRS: Exempt Organizations Select Check

• Learn if an organization has tax exempt status or if that status has been revoked
• Data sets can also be downloaded
• Learn more
• Direct link to Database

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

• From the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Use Zip Code for local info
• Learn more
• Direct link to Interactive Map

Interactive Access to CDC’s HIV and STD Data

• Uses GIS Software
• Download/export data
• Interactive charts, graphs, and of course maps
• Learn more
• Direct link to New Interactive Resource

National Archives Transcription Pilot Project

• Crowdsourcing from the Feds!
• Help transcribe about 1000 pages from 300 documents
• Documents date back to late 18th century
• Learn more
• Direct link to Pilot Project

Maplight.org Company Pages

• MapLight is an excellent resource for political contribution info
• New “Company Pages” feature aggregate contribution data, recent articles, positions on legislation and more
• Currently available for U.S. Congress, California legislature, and Wisconsin legislature
• Remember, this is a beta resource. Pages for some companies not yet available.
• Learn more
• Direct link to Company Pages Interface

Global Think Tank Directory

• From the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania
• More than 6500 institutions included in the directory
• Search or browse by continent and country
• Direct link to Global Think Tank Directoryy

It’s kinda like the Google News “Elections” section, but with different filtering options on news content and added data related to this year’s campaigns. The new elections hub has predefined filters for the major U.S. presidential candidates (President Obama along with seven Republicans), as well as some of the primary issues being discussed (healthcare, government spending, etc.)

Google News offers similar filtering options for candidates, like this breakout of Mitt Romney news.

Where the hub gets unique is in its data and localization. With the Iowa Caucuses just a day away, the On the Ground section maps news and video content from around the state.

There’s also a Trends page that lets users compare search data, Google News mentions and YouTube video views for each of the eight candidates.

Google launched a similar hub during the 2008 presidential election, and later also launched a Onebox helping people find their local polling stations.

Postscript: Google has also created a Google+ page related to its politics/elections hub.

Google has now confirmed both to us via email and on a Google Web Search Help Forum thread that all of these specialty search tools are no longer available.

Uncle Sam and the computer specialty search search sites had been available for a at least a decade.

The other specialty search site, USGov.Google.com would have celebrated its fifth birthday next week.

When it launched Google said that the specialty search tool and site would not only offer a single search box allowing users to search federal, state, and local government info but it would also provide government news from a variety of sources. Finally, USGov.Google.com also allowed users to customize the layout of the page.

Google told us:

These services were established many years ago to offer search across a limited index of the web, which in the past was a better way to find this information. For example, google.com/linux was designed to help people find information from message boards and blogs about the Linux operating system. Today, search quality has advanced tremendously, and based on our analysis we’ve found that in most cases you’re better off looking for this kind of specialized information using the regular Google search box, for example by typing [linux fedora upgrade].

We would love to learn more about how the “analysis” and review some examples of searches that don’t not fall into the “in most cases” category.

Uncle Sam and the other specialty search tools that are no longer available were very similar to what Google continues to offer users with Google Custom Search Engines (CSE).

If Google believes that using the regular one-stop search box for all searches is a more effective way to search “in most cases” you have to wonder about what the long-term future has in store for the custom search engine service. What makes a custom search engine that’s focused on hockey or nuclear power any different than what USgov.Google offered?

On a Google Advanced Search help page the company points out that they offer advanced search tools for “extra power” when needed. However, the documentation also says, “Even very advanced searchers, such as the members of the search group at Google, use these features less than 5% of the time.

The elimination of the specialty engines seems to go along with the thinking that simply typing a few words into a search box will almost always produce results that users would be happy with.

We’re not so sure about that and in fact believe that vertical search (aka specialty search) tools are potentially more useful now than in the past and could likely grow in value moving forward.

The biggest issue I have is that Google users at the very least deserve some type of notice about what’s going on changes are made to web search and other search tools.

The company should do a much better job in disseminating the info, preferably before some change is made or moments, after they’re made. Of course, asking for feedback and then listening and responding to it before a change is made would also be very “Google” at least to this point in its history but it’s up to them if they want to take it that far.

In our response from Google we did receive this:

We understand that some users were surprised by this change, so we apologize for not communicating more clearly in advance of redirecting these services to google.com.

The apology is impressive to see and another one is provided in the Web Search Help Forum thread we’ve mentioned before.

As the web continues to rapidly expand and databases grow even larger trying to find what you’re looking for becomes more and more of a challenge for all searchers.

Every useful result can’t always be on the first page and specialty or “limited” search tools, if promoted correctly and used to properly, can continue to save searchers time, aggravation, and help provide focused or “limited” results from the outset.

Why not provide a number of ways to interact with the massive web database? Would doing this cause problems for Google? Of course, these additional ways to interact with the data will not at least at the present time become something that all searchers will use but it doesn’t mean that these types of resources don’t have a lot of value to those who do use them.

Specialty search/verticals have as much if not more value on the mobile web since starting with a smaller universe of focused or limited data can potentially allow users to access focused results from the outset. This can mean fewer click, less to input into the search box, and a large savings of time and most likely aggravation.

Finally, blending algorithmic search with well curated collections of material to be targeted and crawled to create a specialty search tool or vertical would appear to make a lot of sense these days.

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Cablesearch: A Google For Cablegate

Called Cablesearch, it’s a project from the Eccar: The European Center of Computer Assisted Reporting. Gary Price from ResourceShelf tipped us to the new resource today, and he also writes it up here.

I played around with the service a little, trying to search for some key terms mentioned in articles by The Guardian from the leaked cables. I found it hit and miss. This seems most likely due to the fact that Cablesearch doesn’t have all the information that’s come out.

I couldn’t find several items published over the past three days. Going further, I had more luck.

For example, The Guardian had an article about the Bank Of England’s Mervyn King talking critically about Conservative politicians. A search for “meryvn king” found that dispatch:

Another article talked about George Osbourne, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, being reported by some Conservative colleagues as having a “high-pitched vocal delivery.” A search for that phrase finds the dispatch and highlights the exact section where it happens:

Browsing By Topic

Interestingly, The Guardian itself claims to have a searchable index to the cables:

But in reality, you can only search for predetermined topics:

In other words, you can’t enter any term, such as “google,” and discover this as you can in Cablesearch:

Browsing By Topic

Still, the Guardian does make it easy to browse topics (as does Cablesearch), something the Wikileaks site itself promises:

That’s because those topic visualizations aren’t hosted by Wikileaks itself but rather by a third-party, which has since removed them in reaction to call from US Senator Joe Lieberman for organizations not to host the leaked content. The company writes about its move here.

Can You Find Wikileaks?

Finding Wikileaks itself, at least the official Wikileaks website, is becoming more a challenge as it has found its Wikileaks.org domain blocked (technically, the domain name is being prevented from resolving to the Wikileaks IP address).

Currently, an alternative Wikileaks.ch domain operates. The site can also be reached via the IP address of 213.251.145.96.

Both Techmeme and Mediagazer have collections of stories about the Wikileaks website being down due to blocking and moving. The material, of course, is across the internet on many sites including “mirror” sites, at this point.

All this led me to wonder what happens if you try to find Wikileaks on the major US search engines. On Google, currently you get the old address that doesn’t work:

This almost certainly is NOT a reaction by Google to prevent access to Wikileaks. Instead, it’s probably just that Google’s systems haven’t caught up to the new address. I expect the current address will likely be shown within a day.

On Bing, you do get the current working domain:

I thought that was pretty on-the-ball of Bing. It also means that Yahoo leads you to the working site, as well, as Yahoo’s results come from Bing.

Bing might be beating Google because of a human tweak to insert the correct address, the type of change that Google never does. Or, it could be that Bing’s computer-based systems are simply fresher than Google, in this case. Regardless, for those seeking Wikileaks, Bing is the better experience.

For more ways to explore the Wikileaks material, see this other blog post from ResourceShelf that lists a variety of resources.

Postscript: See our continuation and update, Google, Bing & Searching For The New Wikileaks Website.

Call ‘em what you want: strange, cool, unusual, bizarre, you name it. These aren’t your traditional search engines, that’s for sure. Here’s a list of 8 of what we think are the crazy-coolest search engines on the web. (Oh, and with a bonus entry at the end.)

1. Dead Cell Zones

Dead Cell Zones offers a searchable map mashup of user-reported dead cellular zones. It lists U.S. dead spots that have been reported by users of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and some smaller carriers. How many? The site claims to have more than 100,000 submissions from users. There’s also a UK version available at www.deadcellzones.com/uk.html.

2. Things You Saw in a Movie

Yep, it’s a search engine dedicated to the fine art of product placement. So, say you just finished watching the fantastic 2007 film The Kingdom and you really need to know what sunglasses Jamie Foxx wore during the movie, you’d go to Things You Saw in a Movie and type in either “Jamie Foxx” or “Kingdom” and you’ll quickly get your answer.

3. Storm Events

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has an online database called Storm Events that lists all U.S. weather events going back to 1996, and some (like tornadoes, high winds, and hail) going back to the 1950s. You can search for records of dust storms, floods, funnel clouds, wild/forest fires, thunderstorms, and much more. After choosing a state, you can dig down to the county level (or not).

4. Pillbox

While we’re on the subject of government search engines, how about Pillbox from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. What is it? It’s a search engine for identifying unknown pills. For real! The site warns that it’s still in development and not intended for clinical use, and has all the requisite disclaimers … but it’s still one of the most interesting search engine ideas around. You provide the size, shape, color, and other attributes of a pill, and it returns a list of possible matches along with links for more information about the pill.

5. TypoBuddy

If you’re searching for bargains online, looking for misspelled auction items can be a great way to go. TypoBuddy is sort of a meta-search engine that makes it easy to find misspelled products on eBay and craigslist. Type “laptop” (spelled correctly) into TypeBuddy’s search box, and it provides links to look for common misspellings on those two sites. When clicking the eBay link, I’m taken to the results of an eBay search that includes misspellings like “lpatop, lapotp, laaptop, latop” and so forth. TypoBuddy not only helps you find potential bargains, but it also proves there are a lot of poor spellers out there.

6. Filler Item Finder

Amazon.com offers free shipping on orders of $25 or more. But what if you’re buying something that costs $24.77? Filler Item Finder to the rescue! It’s a search engine for low-cost Amazon products that you can filter by category, and the results are automatically sorted by lowest-priced items first. Paper clips for 27 cents? Sold.

7. StorageFront

StorageFront is a site that doubles as a marketing tool for storage facility owners, but on the consumer side it offers a search engine for finding self-storage locations across the U.S. You can filter results by unit size and a dozen features, such as climate control, 24-hour cameras, and more.

8. Soda Finder

Frankly, I’m not sure I’d actually drink a case of soda that was discontinued by the manufacturer 20 years ago … but expiration dates aside, Soda Finder is an online store that offers a search engine for rare, old, and discontinued soda pop. (They don’t have my favorite, Crystal Pepsi, right now — but it was there when I first discovered this site.) And yes, there are disclaimers and warnings all over the old products. But even if you don’t spend a dime, Soda Finder is a bottle full of fun.

So there you go — eight of the crazy-coolest search engines we could find. But you know, there’s one more I should mention. It’s similar to this last one, the soda search engine, but let’s not penalize it for similar/duplicate content. After all, if you’re reliving childhood by looking for an old favorite soda pop, you might decide some candy would be a perfect match. Chocolate usually doesn’t go well with soda, but I’m gonna include this one, anyway.

BONUS: Nostalgic Candy Nostalgic Candy does for chocolate/sweets what Soda Finder does for beverages. Remember Hot Dog Bubble Gum? Remember Mallo Cups? Remember those candy cigarette sticks? My, how times have changed since I was a kid. Again, buying or not, this is a fun search down memory lane.

(Special thanks to GP for some ideas and assistance.)

But now that the election and inauguration are distant memories, how do we search today for news about the important decisions being made in Washington, DC? How do we find out what our local representatives are saying and, most importantly, how they’re voting? Traditional media reports on some of what happens in Congress, and of course there’s information on the official web sites of your local representatives. Some lawmakers use Twitter and YouTube to communicate with constituents. But there’s also a new way to search and find out what’s happening in Washington — a new political search engine of sorts called Legistalker.

Just launched in April, Legistalker covers all US legislators, tracking things like their appearances in traditional news, their Twitter feeds, and videos they upload to YouTube. Legistalker says its database is updated every 20 seconds. You can search for a specific legislator, or see all lawmakers for a particular state or zip code. When you reach the profile page of an individual Congressperson, Legistalker adds tabs to see the person’s votes and even a tag cloud showing the most frequently used words in his/her remarks on the Congressional floor.

To make searching easier in the future, you can add any legislator to a “watch list” — and this doesn’t require creating an account or logging in to the site. (It doesn’t even offer accounts/logins, for that matter.)

All in all, Legistalker is a compelling way to search and find out what’s happening in Washington, DC.

Today is Super Tuesday, which means that voters in 24 states are carefully reviewing their candidate research and doing last minute thoughtful analysis in preparation for voting in the primaries. Well, maybe that’s hopeful optimism, but in any case, the place these voters are turning to for information is increasingly the internet. Makes sense, as after all, the internet continues to play a larger role in how we get information generally.

And in the case of politics, this turn to digital is in some ways bringing back the roots of American politics — when communities got together and discussed the issues in town halls and parlors. The politicians are more accessible than ever before via their online presence — from web sites to Twitter accounts to YouTube videos. And voters can discuss the issues in real time: live blog the debates, exchange ideas on discussion forums, create Facebook groups. Of course, politics have also made their way into online advertising. Government is also going digital. Georgia, for instance, is providing primary results updates via email.

Search engines are even getting into the political fray. Ask is offering political Smart Answers and Google is displaying primary-related Twitters on a Google map.

Below, the results of a recent study on election-related internet use, as well as a general survey of the online political landscape.

According to a recent PEW Research Center study, 24% of Americans get at least some of their information about the 2008 political campaigns from the internet, compared to just 13% during the 2004 election. 42% of younger voters (those aged 18-29) regularly turn to the internet (particularly social networking sites) for political news. Interestingly, the percentage of Americans who get political news from other mediums such as TV and newspaper have remained fairly flat since 2004, so likely the internet providing an addition source of data rather than replacing traditional sources. Only 15% of those surveyed said that they receive most of their election news online. Television remains the most common sources of news, cited by 71% of respondents.

Where specifically are web searchers going for news?

• msnbc.com (26%)
• cnn.com (23%)
• Yahoo! News (22%)

Google News is used at the same rate as Fox News (9%) and considerably more often than newspaper sites (NY Times was cited 6% of the time; USA Today only 1%).

27% of those under 30 and 37% of those aged 18-24 get at least some political news from social networking sites (this number drops dramatically for those over 30). Interestingly, many survey respondents said they didn’t use the internet to specifically seek out political information; rather, they came across it in the course of doing other things online. This speaks to the growing discovery behaviors of web users evidenced by the popularity of sites such as Digg.

Do most people really get their political information from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report? As it turns out, they generally don’t. Those who watch these types of shows are more likely to consume other types of news as well. However, Americans do see the presidential candidates more often due to television appearances (57%) than due to the debates (43%).

Voters are using the internet for discussion, in addition to learning news. 16% (22% of internet users overall) have sent or received emails about politics. Use of social networking sites is increasing as well, although only 30% of internet users polled said they used social networking sites for any purpose. 12% of those who use social networks have added candidates as a “friend.”

What’s new since 2004 in the online political landscape?

Twitter Google has teamed up with Twitter to generate this super cool Google Map that shows real-time Twitters about the primaries. @SuperTuesday is providing real-time coverage throughout the day. Terraminds is useful to see what people are saying about the process or specific candidates, such as this search for Obama or this search for super tuesday. Some journalists are even using Twitter as a kind of reporting tool.

Social Networking Sites, Such As Facebook All types of groups exist, from news groups like this one from ABC news, to organizations like Rock the Vote. A search for Hillary Clinton Facebook groups skews towards anti-Hillary gatherings, although supportive groups are scattered throughout the results as well, which brings up the question of consolidation. While more and more of us are turning to the internet for news and discussion, more of us are also starting web pages, groups, forums, and Twitter accounts for topics, and it can be difficult to sort through it all. Some social networking sites have tried to make clearing through the clutter with focused landing pages, such as this one from Pageflakes.

Nielson has been tracking blogging chatter and top sites. Democrats seem to favor blackamericaweb.com and dailykos.com, Republicans favor rushlimbaugh.com and newsmax.com, and independents are visiting boston.com and bostonherald.com.

Old and new media are coming together with partnerships like CNN/YouTube, MTV/MySpace, and CBS/Digg.

Online Videos The PEW study notes that 41% of those under 30 (and 24% of all Americans) have watched campaign videos online. Services like Truveo are providing tools to easily access political videos online and viral videos are coming into play in the campaigns, probably for the first time (such as this one for Barack Obam, seen 1,357,756 times at the time of this writing). Google is getting in on the video action as well, creating a central location for political videos at YouChoose08. They’re placing videos from across the country on a Google Map to more easily put the videos in a geographical context.

Online Trends You can do lots of fun things with applications like Google Trends and Alexa. Google Trends says Obama might be leading slightly over Clinton:

But Alexa thinks Obama has a clear lead:

As does Compete:

Are the candidates well-versed in search engine optimization? Barack Obama has the number one listing for his name (after the book and news results, but above the Wikipedia listing!), but his home page is entirely in Flash. Hillary Clinton also has the first result (after the news listing) and her home page has some content, although if you turn off images and javascript, her navigation disappears completely.

I found most candidate web sites when searching for their names, but they don’t fare as well in topic-specific searches. And candidates might be disheartened to learn that surfers are accessing news satire sites like theonion.com and thedailyshow.com just as often as candidate sites (11% of internet users for each site type).

Search Marketing Gurus has an entire series that breaks down how each candidate is using the internet that includes SEO critique of their web sites. The post on John Edwards, for instance, notes that he was the first candidate to use the internet (YouTube) to announce his presidency, and was active online in places like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr, and blogging. However, his official site wasn’t optimized for search, he had no PPC campaign, and his team neglected many social networking sites that they initially created profiles for.

What about politicians and online advertising? A report by Borrell & Associates found that online spending will garner just $20 million of the nearly $5 billion political advertising budget. But ad networks aren’t ignoring what’s bound to become a larger wave. Google AdWords announced new policies for political ads, for instance.

How Well Does The Internet Answer Political Questions? A previous PEW/Internet study found that most Americans (70% of those surveyed) expect the government to make information available online. Resource Shelf has a list of online resources, mostly government powered, that provide election-related data. LLRX.com has a roundup of state and federal election resources as well.

But does search satisfactorily answer election-related questions? Not always. This is an opportunity that marketers (those working for candidates, political organizations, and other related businesses) can take better advantage of throughout the election season.

I noted on my blog that I only found the answer to the question “when are the primaries for each state?” at result #13. In that post, I talked about how marketers could take a look at questions that had no good answers ranking on the first page of results and create valuable, unique content for those questions in order to get more search traffic. Case in point, I wrote that post, which contained the answer to the question, on February 3rd. Today, two days later, my blog post ranks #1 for the query.

I tried a few other queries to see how sites are stacking up. I purposely didn’t add keywords that I assume would help me get more accurate results (such as “2008″) since most regular searchers wouldn’t add them either.

“Which candidates support tax cuts?”
youdecide08.foxnews.com ranks first with a story about Republican candidates talking about tax cuts. No candidate sites rank on the first page. If I were running a marketing campaign for a candidate that was pushing for tax cuts, I’d make sure to have a page on the site devoted to this.

“Which candidates support gay rights ?”
Once again, no candidate sites rank in the top 10, and the third result is about the 2004 elections (for cyclical events, make sure to update your content for the next event!). I didn’t click through to any results, but I thought that democraticunderground.com (position #5) did a good job in the title and description of providing text that made me think it was the result that would best answer my question.

I asked several other questions (about environmental issues, the war in Iraq, the economy) and official candidate sites weren’t returned on the first page for any of them. Candidate sites could be well served by a page that talks about the details of each major issue and how the candidate leans. Notably, sites like Yahoo! Answers and discussion forums were returned in the top 10 a lot for these types of queries, so candidates, political groups, and other interested groups could get more visibility by being active on these types of sites.

Overall, there’s a lot of opportunity for smart marketers and candidates and clearly, internet usage for political information will only increase as time goes on. It’s likely that by the 2012 election, more than half of Americans will use the internet as their primary information source and candidates will use social networking tools and online media just as often as they do personal and television appearances. Maybe we’ll even be voting online by then. I won’t hold my breath for that last one.

According to the USGS:

USGS and Google signed an agreement to publish historic earthquake data from the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) catalog as a “built-in” layer, accessible directly from the Google Earth viewer . . . The new layer includes historic earthquakes since 1900, and USGS real-time earthquakes are now accessible as a hyperlink from within Google Earth. If the layer is checked, users will see a sprinkling of dots across the globe, each marking an earthquake epicenter.

To display the earthquake locations in the Google Earth viewer, go to the layers menu, and look in the folder “Places of Interest.” Open the “Geographic Features” folder, and click on “Earthquakes.”

The site will offer geotagged political videos from candidates, users, and various news outlets. The Google LatLong Blog explains: Anyone — from candidates and voters to members of media — can upload videos to YouTube and geotag them so they can be tracked and viewed on a Google Map that resides in the Super Tuesday channel. There will be unique markers for voters, Democratic campaigns, Republican campaigns, and news outlets so that viewers can easily determine the source of the video. The site will feature a wide range of content, from predictions and interviews to personal reflections.

Super Tuesday may determine each party’s candidate because the number of convention delegates being awarded is so large. It’s a very important day in US politics, and hopefully everyone will go out and vote for their candidate of choice.