If you take one search tool and combine it with another, does it make a better product? In the case of Search Cloudlet and Surf Canyon's new creation, the answer is yes.
On Tuesday the two companies put out a new custom search engine (cloudlet.surfcanyon.com) that uses both technologies, and allows users to do enhanced searches without having to download additional browser extensions. Previously both products required the use of add-ons to augment Google's search results.
The benefits of using this tool over Google alone are numerous. For one, you're still getting Google's standard results. You also get Search Cloudlet's sorting technology, which lets you filter results by domain or keyword from its word cloud. You also get Surf Canyon's related results feature, which can recommend results from pages that appear deeper in a search. In my quick go, this was pulling up results from as deep as 25 pages (or 250 results from the top result) into a search.
Search Cloudlet and Surf Canyon's combined engine tweaks Google results with both tools. All without the install of browser plug-ins.
(Credit: CNET)
Diddit, a site that allows users to share life experiences with others, announced Friday that its "diddits" and "wanna dos" can now be shared with other social networks. Users will be able to deploy new Diddit widgets, showing their lists of what they've done ("diddits") and would like to do ("wanna dos") on their blogs or personal Web sites. With the help of Twitter integration, Diddit users will be able to automatically tweet any of their "diddits" to their followers. Users will also be able to sign in through Facebook Connect.
Search Cloudlet, a Firefox add-on that adds tag clouds to Google results, announced Friday that it has launched the same feature for Twitter. Once installed in Firefox version 2.0 and up, the add-on inserts a tag cloud at the top of Twitter Search results, showing the most common keywords in the results. Users can click a particular tag and filter results based on that keyword. The same cloud feature is also available in individual user profiles.
Online discovery site StumbleUpon is set to launch a URL-shortening service called su.pr, TechCrunch is reporting. According to the report, StumbleUpon will be used to share links on Twitter and Facebook. So far, no launch date has been confirmed, but the service should be available in the next few weeks, the publication says.
Openfilm.com, a video-sharing network for independent filmmakers, announced Friday that it has launched an ad revenue-sharing program for all OpenFilm content providers. According to the company, it will share 50 percent of advertising revenue with filmmakers. Every filmmaker on the site is automatically eligible to participate in the revenue-sharing deal and users will be able to track their earnings through a new reporting interface on the site. All funds will be transferred through PayPal or accepted alternatives that were not disclosed. The revenue-sharing program is live now.
MySpace has launched its second annual MySpace Bracket Challenge, the company announced Friday. This year, MySpace users will able to "go head-to-head" predicting the outcome of the NCAA Basketball March Madness Tournament. Users will need to create their own brackets and choose the winners in each round. The person with the most correct game outcomes will receive $10,000. To participate, MySpace users will need to "friend" the Bracket Challenge profile and create a bracket. They have until Game 1 on March 19 to participate.
Search Cloudlet is a Firefox extension from the International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute (INTSPEI) that gives users a cloud of tags to help modify and focus searches on Google and Yahoo. Once installed it will show up on top of search results and provides a simple way to tweak the original query by offering up keywords pulled from the results.
Words that appear more often in the results appear as bigger, bolder tags that you can click on to re-start the query with that word tacked on. The creators recommend dialing up the number of default search results to 100, which may make your searches slightly slower but result in a much more accurate tag cloud. This can be done from the user preferences in both Google and Yahoo.
In addition to standard Google and Yahoo searches the extension works on Google News both for keywords and locations. It also works for Google Blog search in a really neat way by adding tags for each author that you can click on to filter which posts come up.
Search Cloudlet is an experimental add-on and does not yet work on the latest beta of Firefox 3.1.
Google and Yahoo search results get smart tag clusters that let you narrow down results with Firefox extension Search Cloudlet.
(Credit: INTSPEI)- prev
- 1
- next
