Gary Price is a librarian, author, and an online information analyst based in suburban Washington, DC. He is the co-founder and co-editor of INFOdocket and FullTextReports.com and prior to that was founder/editor of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. He has worked for Blekko, Ask.com, and at Search Engine Watch where he was news editor. In 2001, Price was the co-author (with Chris Sherman) of the best-selling book The Invisible Web.
Yesterday, Search Engine Land featured a post about the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine now providing access to more than 440 billion archived web pages back to 1996. As I’ve written about before on Search Engine Land and my infoDOCKET blog, the Wayback Machine is an absolutely essential resource for just about every web user. If […]
A gay slur from the Wikipedia page about the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team made its way into Google’s Knowledge Graph box for a short time this week. The slur has been making news with stories appearing in a number of press outlets. The Cardinals’ Wikipedia page has been home to a great deal of […]
With Google Alerts coming under fire as being broken, an impressive new service has stepped up to appeal to those seeking an alternative: Talkwalker. 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 […]
With the shutdown of Google Reader having just been announced, the Web is full of discussion about where those of us who utilize RSS should turn next. I’m happy to report there’s a solution I already use and love: Newsblur. I have been a user of the completely Web-based Newsblur since 2011 and have been nothing but impressed. It’s easy […]
TorrentFreak is reporting that Google is demoting the rank of the search result for the phrase “Pirate Bay”, the well-known BitTorrent tracker, on the UK version of Google. 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 […]
A major winter storm is moving into the Northeast, New England, and parts of Canada. 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 […]
Most news organizations provide video content on their sites, and aggregators like Google News also offer video clips for some stories. But there are also some excellent search tools that focus exclusively on broadcast television news, and they can often take you to “all the news that’s fit to watch” more quickly and efficiently than […]
The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive, one of the most useful and important Internet research tools, recently reached a major milestone. 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 […]
What was the most viewed article on Wikipedia this year? The one about Facebook. Is Facebook really that popular of a Wikipedia topic? Perhaps, but more likely, confused searchers are getting to the Wikipedia page rather than Facebook itself. Yesterday on Toolserver.org, a service of Wikipedia Germany, lists of the Top 100 most viewed articles […]
Both Google Maps Mania and the Google Earth Blog are reporting that Google has started to post-Sandysatellite imagery showing the destruction in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. 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 […]
Trying to keep up with Hurricane Sandy? Below are a variety of resources which may help. 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 […]
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 […]
Google announced earlier today that version 2.0 of the popular Google Books Ngram Viewer is now available online. What’s an Ngram Viewer? In a nutshell, Ngram Viewer lets you find and visualize how words and phrases have developed and been used over time using the 30 million print books Google has scanned working with libraries located around […]
Looking for facts about consumer product goods in the US? Open source data platform Factual has just launched its Factual Global Products with information on more than 517,000 consumer products. Records for each product include product name, brand, category , size, and UPC. Direct links to images for many products are also included as well as a Factual ID […]
The games of the XXX Olympiad have begun in London. For the next two weeks people around the globe will be viewing the games in person, on television and on the web. There will also likely be record numbers of posts, tweets, pins, etc. from viewers, media and athletes and other participants in the games. […]
At the beginning of the year I wrote about PolitickerUSA, a free tool that allows users to quickly and easily read tweets from members of congress and other political leaders. Today, I want to point out another free service named Politwoops that launched at the end of May. Here, users can access and read tweets […]
April 15th marks the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and there will be no shortage of news coverage (or hype) commemorating the event this weekend. The good news is that if you want even more information, facts, images and history, you can take a deep dive on the web to get to […]
Big news for genealogists, historians and even for people just curious about their own families: the 1940 U.S. Census is now available on the web. Unfortunately, at this point at least, it takes a bit of skill and determination to navigate through the data, though there are many efforts underway to make this incredibly valuable […]
The Khan Academy gets a lot of deservedly favorable attention for its breadth and depth of online video instruction. But there’s another, similar site that I think deserves applause for quality, authoritative online video instruction. It also happens to be a freebie. It’s called WatchKnowLearn.org and it’s being developed for K-12 students and educators. While […]
March Madness (an annual U.S. tradition where virtually all sports fans go crazy over college basketball finals tournaments) is underway. Want to keep track of what’s going on? There are many places on the internet to access statistics and other useful information as the games are played and teams move toward the Final Four games […]
As a librarian, researcher and frequent blogger, I’m constantly coming across incredibly useful online information resources that are most effectively searched using their own site search tools, rather than relying on general-purpose engines to surface their valuable content. I plan to start writing about these on a regular, ongoing basis, using a bullet-point format that […]
Wolfram|Alpha (W|A) is launching a new fee-based service named Wolfram|Alpha Pro. In today’s highly competitive environment, you may wonder why W|A would ask people to pay for what many think should be free. Read on: you may decide to willingly open your wallet when you see what’s available. Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in 2009, I’ve often […]
The U.S. government generates a wealth of useful and interesting information. Despite excellent government-oriented search engines like USA.gov and Data.gov, government information isn’t always easy to find. That’s why if you use government information it’s important to put together your own toolkit of specialized government-related search engines. Here’s a roundup of several new search tools […]
I am a long time admirer of Wolfram|Alpha and I’m happy to report that my admiration continues to grow, as you can now access NFL (National Football League) statistics using Wolfram|Alpha. So, queries like: Tom Brady Joe Flacco Passing Yards 49ers 2011 New York Giants field goal attempts, field goals made Chicago Bears Record 1985 […]
Many U.S. Senators and Representatives are tweeting opinions, updates, images, documents, etc. these days, and Twitter can be a very useful, if not an essential tool, to learn about what’s going on directly from each member, especially regarding controversial legislation such as SOPA. An easy to use but powerful web tool (it’s also free) named […]
JournalTOCS, sponsored by Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh Scotland, is a free service that has been online for many years and provides alerts for more than 17,000 journals published by more than 900 publishers and organizations. Almost 3,000 of these publications are open access so the full text is quickly and directly accessible on the […]
Seemingly every day, more real-time or near real-time data becomes accessible on the internet. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about many different types of real-time resources, but today, I’ll be focusing on real-time flight data—virtually addicting tools for frequent flyers and aviation geeks alike. For example, two weeks ago, Wolfram|Alpha launched a […]
Last week Mozilla released version 8.0 of Firefox and a nifty new feature allows you to search Twitter directly from the Firefox search box. Although I’m a Firefox user, last week’s update was not a big deal for me. Why? I’ve had access to Twitter’s search engine and Twitter’s “who to follow” database from my […]
The Google hearing in Congress is less than an hour away. It’s scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm Eastern. Here’s a guide where to watch (and listen) on television and online. Television The hearing will air on C-SPAN3. It’s available on some cable systems (incl. FiOS and AT&T Uverse) and on Dish Network (Channel 212). […]
The lawsuit over Google Books is back on track for trial but purposely with enough time to allow the parties involved to keep negotiating a settlement. In a New York City courtroom today, Judge Denny Chin heard from Google, the Authors Guild and the American Association Of Publishers about progress in talks. Bloomberg reports that […]
Blekko, the search engine that launched last year and is known for its spam reduction efforts, is introducing a new feature today that will help make previously difficult, if not impossible to find (for free), web data accessible to more searchers, marketers, media, and others. Say hello to Web Grepper. More about the name in […]
Another Google search service has gone missing: the home page for Google News Archive Search is no longer available. It was previously accessible at news.google.com/archivesearch. Google News Archive Search allows you to search through news articles that date back longer than the 30 days that are typically covered by regular Google News. It’s still available. […]
Google has just released a new info discovery tool named Google Related that allows users to find and access content that’s similar to what they’re viewing in their web browser. Before the brief overview below, we need to point out that we’re writing this post without having had an opportunity to actually use Google Related. […]
Several weeks ago we reported that Google had taken the Wonder Wheel service offline. Its removal was a surprise to all its users including the many K-12 educators. A Google spokesperson old us that Wonder Wheel was removed due to the “initial stage” of the Google website redesign but did not share any info when we asked if and/or when […]
A Google spokesperson has informed Search Engine Land that the Google Wonder Wheel feature has been taken offline. The spokesperson said that the search tool was removed due to the “initial stage” of the Google site redesign announced earlier this week. The Google Wonder Wheel along with a number of other search refinements were formally […]
Yesterday, Search Engine Roundtable and InfoDocket both pointed out that Google’s U.S. government specialty search tools, Google-Uncle Sam and USGov.Google.com had been offline for several days. Additionally, Google’s long time specialty search tools Linux Search, Microsoft Search, Apple Search, and BSD Search were also unavailable. Google has now confirmed both to us via email and […]
Today, Brandon Badger, Product Manager, Google Books, announced on the Inside Google Book Search Blog, seven, that’s right seven, new features and tools for Google Book Search users. Here’s a quick look at what has just gone live. First, Google has made it easier, just click and copy, to embed “preview” material onto a web […]
I am a strong believer in the future of mobile search or what I prefer to call mobile access to information. This takes into account not only what we think of search today but also audio, video, text messaging, location based info, and more. This article is part of Local Search Week here at Search […]
I love working for Ask.com as Director of Online Information Resources and also compiling and editing ResourceShelf and DocuTicker. Yes, it’s a busy life but I’m very fortunate to do what I love and even get paid for it. The challenge, as least as I see it, is writing on something of interest for Search […]