Webware

New search engine Goby is launching Tuesday night, and unlike Microsoft's Bing, or Hunch, Goby really is a "decision engine"--enabling users to very quickly find something to do nearby or in a far away place.

Its task-centric search tool is comprised of three boxes--a "what," "where," and "when." You just tell it what you want to do and where you want to do it, as well as some general date (or no date at all), and it goes through its index to find you places or activities that match up with those simple parameters. Oftentimes this results in it finding events that fall during the time period you originally selected, which is a pretty neat trick for a search engine and potentially a huge time saver if you're using it for vacation or business travel search.

The tool does many things to help you fill out its three search boxes quickly, and get straight to the results. For one, it offers up suggestions as you type. You can also cruise through a nested folders of activities in its index for suggestions. In my case, it did a spot-on job at turning "tomorrow" into in real date. It also rolled "beers" into its food and drink category, along with providing other category suggestions like "beer tastings", "breweries" and "bars and pubs."

You tell Goby what you want to do and where you want to do it, and it searches the Web to find events and happening places.

(Credit: CNET)

Along with helping users fill out the beginnings of a search query, it also does a decent job at letting them whittle down the results. For instance, if you want to limit the results to a specific area, you can just grab a pin from the map that sits on the right of the results page, and it filters points of interest down to that vicinity. You can also restart a search query within one or more genres just by clicking on their check boxes.

Goby can also show you things nearby any of the search results in one of three categories. Clicking on any of these starts another search.

(Credit: CNET)

One thing it's missing though (and it's a biggie) is a way to tell you how good any of these places are. If you're used to hitting Yelp to hunt for a new place to eat, or something fun to do on the weekend, Goby doesn't offer any kind of social-rating system or tools of its own.

But it's not going to be like that forever. Goby's CEO Mark Watkins tells me that there will eventually be review links from places like Yelp, as well as mentions on places like Facebook and Twitter--something that should give results some social flavor. For now at least, you're going to have to hoof it over to Yelp, CitySearch, or some other local reviews place to get ratings and reviews for restaurants and other local businesses.

Other things on the way include a personal search history, which will let users save their queries for future searches that will show updated results based on date and index changes. The company is also working on an iPhone app that will be able to automatically fill out the "where" field based on the user's location, however this and the personal search history will not be immediately available on launch.

See also Diddit, a service that launched back in February, that helps people make lists of things to do, as well as discover local lists made by others. There's also Yahoo-owned Upcoming, which provides local events and venues listings.

Update: It should be noted Goby can only be used in Firefox and Internet Explorer at the moment. Support for Safari and Chrome is on the way and "coming soon" according to the company.

Content intelligence searches entire sentences, not just key words, for meaning.

(Credit: NetBase)

It all started with Content Intelligence--focusing on understanding the actual meanings of sentences independent of grammar, lexicon, etc., and creating structured semantic indexes from massive volumes of content to power search experiences.

It wasn't until after the Mountain View, Calif.-based NetBase Solutions developed its content intelligence platform that the company decided to test it out in the world of medicine. Their just-unveiled HealthBase is to medicine what Kayak.com is to travel--the mother search engine of not just content, but other search engines.

Culling through 10 million health articles and sorting search results on two types of data, "conditions" and "treatments," into manageable subsets, HealthBase includes "causes of," "treatments for," "complications of," and "pros and cons of treatment." Content sources are also provided and ranked. And Jens Tellefsen vice president of marketing and product strategy, said it might include user collaboration akin to Digg's voting articles up or down in the near future.

The search engine has some kinks to work out--when I tried to research garlic, HealthBase treated it not merely as a treatment but also as a complication, showing "causes of garlic" and "treatments for garlic."

HealthBase seems to have a few kinks to work out, like treating the search term garlic as a condition instead of treatment.

(Credit: Screenshot by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore/CNET)

But Tellefsen acknowledged by telephone Tuesday that I am not, as a layperson, the target market:

"We see a lot of applications, but this is really a showcase of what is possible to do with our technology. We picked health because it is such an incredible information-overload space; 8 million people per day use the Internet to search on health information. It's something that is very important for people.... But our end customers today are really health publishers and portal providers we'd like to provide information to."

NetBase already boasts several Fortune 500 clients, not to mention the federal government. Having built HealthBase in just two weeks (which is somewhat self-evident), and with plans to quadruple the amount of information it mines, I see tremendous potential here. It already has an edge on Google, although for how long remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, anyone looking for additional information after a doctor's visit, or perhaps in lieu of one (who really wants to see the doc about erectile dysfunction, as Tellefsen points out), HealthBase is your oyster--a search term, by the way, that is neither a condition nor a treatment, at least as of yet.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Yahoo's lame-duck period as a search company is in full swing.

Following a Wednesday morning session on the SEO implications of duplicate content at Search Engine Strategies 2009, technical and marketing attendees crowded three deep around Google's Greg Grothaus and Microsoft's Sasi Parthasarathy, peppering them with questions about the best way to construct their Web sites. A smaller group, unable to get directly to Grothaus, clustered around the search expert seated directly to his left, Yahoo's Ivan Davtchev.

It must be a tough time to be a Yahoo search engineer. Following the company's decision two weeks ago to shutter its search business in a deal with Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo has gone from a respected--if smaller--player in the business of constructing search engines, to an awkward participant in conferences such as these, where Bing representatives like Parthasarathy answer audience questions about the future of Yahoo search technologies.

As Grothaus and Parthasarathy continued to field questions from all sides, Davtchev took a moment to reflect on the situation, noting that there is an awful lot that is still up in the air about Yahoo search. Right after the conclusion of the panel here at the San Jose Convention Center, Davtchev planned to get back on U.S. 101 and head a few miles north to Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., for a series of meetings on how Microsoft and Yahoo will integrate each other's search technologies.

Bing is the trendy word in the search engine business right now, following Microsoft's overhaul of the former Live Search service earlier this year and the generally positive reviews--and traffic--that have followed. However, despite what CEO Carol Bartz has claimed, Yahoo has a rich history in the search field and although it gave up its lead to Google long ago, has continued to advance the field with work on technologies such as semantic search.

What will Microsoft keep, and what will it discard? It's not just a question of technology: the lives of search engineers such as Davtchev could be changed if Microsoft kills their project in favor of its own. The company has promised to hire several hundred engineers, but Yahoo has "way more than that" many people working on search, Davtchev said, and when the three major search players condense into two, somebody's going to get squeezed.

The industry knows this process is being currently debated, and confusion can reign. Fellow panelists Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive and Marty Weintraub of AimClear urged Parthasarathy to save Yahoo's Site Explorer "Site Explorer, to me, is one of the best tools to analyze content," Thurow said. Weintraub brought up a conversation on Twitter Wednesday started by Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo about Yahoo closing certain search APIs.

Parthasarathy, speaking on behalf of Yahoo, dismissed the API discussion as rumors, probably without knowing that they were started by a colleague. But the news about the closing of the Yahoo Term Extraction API was noticed on a public Yahoo message board for search professionals, rather than surfacing as unsourced Internet scuttlebutt.

Yahoo did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Term Extraction.

This kind of confusion is understandable in the early days of any significant merger. It might take years for the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal to wind its way through lawyers and regulators. Indeed, Davtchev said, "for the next year, it should be business as usual" for Yahoo Search.

While that might be true regarding the public face of Yahoo search, it's clear that a tectonic shift is taking place in the search industry. It's hard to imagine that should the deal pass government scrutiny, Yahoo will be back for Search Engine Strategies 2010.

Google is upgrading its search infrastructure and it's being really shady about it.

In a post on its Webmaster Central blog, however, Google engineers Sitaram Iyer and Matt Cutts insist that ordinary users won't even see the difference.

"For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search," the post reads, making it all sound vaguely like some kind of elf workshop. "It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions." The user interface is unchanged.

Developers are encouraged to try out the new technology on a "sandbox" page and then offer feedback by including the word "caffeine" in Google's feedback text field, secret-password-style.

The company acknowledged that "some parts of this system aren't completely finished yet." But the industry buzz is obviously a huge part of it: There's a legitimate new contender in the search engine market, Microsoft's Bing, which is fueled by heavy marketing dollars and has begun to inch its way up in market share since its debut earlier this summer.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives the impression that he isn't particularly worried about Bing. But it's hard to not look at a shadowy blog post about under-the-radar upgrades to Google's search index and not take it as a Googly way of saying, "game on."

If you have trouble finding music on the Web, you'll be happy to know there are search engines designed specifically for finding your favorite tunes. They can help you stream everything from Top 40 hits to classics.

Find your music

MP3 Realm is a music search engine that helps you find MP3 tracks from across the Web. To do so, you'll need to search the site for either an artist or a song. A results page will then give you the option of downloading the track or embedding the tune into your blog. You can also stream the song on your site. All of the songs MP3 Realm finds are hosted on servers across the Web, so download times do vary. It can be quick but can also make you endure a brutally long wait. MP3 Realm is a fine site, but it's not the best music search engine in this roundup.

Mp3 Realm has a fine selection, but download times vary widely.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Project Playlist is one of the most convenient music search engines on the Web. Simply input an artist or track you like into the search engine and chances are that Project Playlist will have what you're looking for. I searched for a variety of titles, including some that are obscure and, in every case, Project Playlist had at least one matching track.

After you find the track you're looking for, you can stream it or add it to your playlist for future listening. If you can't get enough of the song, you can have Project Playlist send it to you as a ringtone. That will take just a few seconds. Overall, Project Playlist is a stellar music search engine.

Project Playlist has a great search engine.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

If you're having trouble finding the right video online, video search engines are a great place to start your search. From professional content from major networks to user-generated clips, they will help you find just about anything you're looking for.

You won't find Google, Yahoo, or Bing in this roundup. The following list of services are designed specifically for those who want to find video. Since the aforementioned search engines will find anything on the Web, they don't fit into that category.

Find your videos

Blinkx: Blinkx is an extremely well-designed video search site that helps you find clips on topics ranging from tech to sports. According to the company, it currently has more than 35 million hours of videos cataloged. Judging by the outstanding selection, I'm inclined to believe that figure.

I liked Blinkx's search. Simply enter a keyword you're interested in and it will search sites like YouTube, Hulu, and major television networks to find what you're looking for. Unfortunately, the search results page is a little confusing. I also didn't like that the site automatically plays the top result when you get to the results page. It's an annoying feature that shouldn't be on by default. Other than those two issues, I liked Blinkx. It's one of the better video search engines on the Web.

Blinkx automatically starts the top video result.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

CastTV: CastTV finds television shows and cool videos on the Web. I was impressed by its selection. From new to old, you're likely to find at least one clip of your favorite show.

Unlike many of the other services in this roundup, CastTV relies heavily on popular video sites like Vimeo, blip.tv, and MegaVideo. Because of that, you might find some clips on CastTV that you won't find on "professional" sites like Hulu. For example, a full episode of "24" is currently listed in the site's search results. If you click that link, you'll be brought to MegaVideo to view it. Also, beware that some videos you click on might ask you to install a toolbar. It doesn't pop up often, but CastTV does require you to download its toolbar for some videos. In those cases, don't do it and move along.

CastTV has a bunch of television shows available.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

My CNET handler called today. He is the man who yanks at the dog lead permanently attached around my throat and croaks: "Write, puppy, write."

My handler said he had been present at last week's Crunchie awards, something to do with giving chocolate bars to fine new Internet companies. And he told me that he heard Google's Marissa Mayer whisper that in these times of infinite woe, more people were googling "recipes" than "restaurants."

The first thought that came into my mind was just one word: raccoon. You see, these brazen, beady-eyed burglars waft around my neighborhood fueled by the desire to eat everything I own. Yes, even my house. And whenever I see them, I wonder what they would taste like barbecued with some roast potatoes and a little broccoli.

Now I discover that raccoon is rapidly becoming the other dark meat. The raccoon apparently had pride of place in the first edition of the Joy Of Cooking in 1931. And here's the good news: you can buy one for between $3 and $7.

With that tiny outlay, one that simultaneously eliminates one of the lower-level civil servants of the animal world, you can feed five people.

Knock my trash cans over one more time and you might find yourself baked with apples.

(Credit: CC Michael Sheltgen)

Please enjoy these words, printed in the Kansas City Star, from Jeff Beringer, a furbearer resource biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation: "Raccoon meat is some of the healthiest meat you can eat. During grad school, my roommate and I ate 32 'coons one winter. It was all free, and it was really good. If you think about being green and eating organically, raccoon meat is the ultimate organic food."

Yes, those varminty scavengers who try to knock over my trash cans have no steroids, no antibiotics, no growth hormones--just my evil thoughts drifting around their systems.

If you are, by any chance, offered a raccoon by a man in a highway rest area, here's the simple test: Trappers chop only three of the raccoon's four paws off. This is simply to prove that the carcass is not that of a cat or a dog.

Thankfully, when you Google "raccoon recipes," the first one that comes up is from Cooks.com. It is, indeed, barbecued raccoon. And it sounds, I know you'll agree, very tasty.

I feel confident that the minute I post this elegy to one of man's favorite little critters, demand for raccoon cuisine creativity will shoot up. Perhaps there will soon be an edition of Top Chef devoted to the furry one. (Can there possibly be such a thing as rack of raccoon?)

I sincerely hope that Marissa and the other steaming brains at Google are fully prepared for a massive change in America's eating habits.

The in-browser search box is now ubiquitous. It can be found in every major browser, and some--like Firefox and IE, allow you to both change which engine you want to search with (from a drop down list), and add more engines from a large directory.

It's fast and easy, but a new Firefox extension called Lookpicking goes one step further, essentially giving you little packs of search engines that you can call up like bookmarks and share with others. More importantly, it lets you swap back and forth between your entire collection by typing in just the first letter or two of the engine you want. If you've ever used Launchy, QuickSilver or any other desktop application launcher, the idea is similar.

This has many potential uses, with the single most one being a shared home computer. If you're on a machine with several people sharing one user account you can have multiple sets of search engine packs loaded up, and whoever is using the browser can simply use their selections.

It's also useful in academic environments. If you're doing Web research in several different disciplines you can swap back and forth between a huge list of search engines. Lookpicking lets you pick from any of the ones you've added once you start typing in the query. Then, once you're on that page you can continue to search from its index before switching off to another site's search.

One thing to note is that this has been classified as an "experimental" Firefox add-on, so if you want to skip the Mozilla user registration to download it, you can grab it here (firefox 2 users click here).

[via Ehub]

Ticked off that the United States gave the Dalai Lama the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal this week, China may be taking out its aggression by "hijacking" American search engines.

There's speculation that the Dalai Lama's recent award from President Bush (their meeting, pictured above) has prompted Net users in China to be rerouted from U.S. search sites to Baidu.

(Credit: White House)

Over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan reports that numerous users trying to access Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft search engines from within China or using Chinese Internet service providers are being redirected to Chinese-owned search engine Baidu.

Sullivan says it's not exactly clear how that process is working, but he cites a news report from 2002 that indicates this sort of thing has happened in China before. At the time, a Baidu official denied having any part in the rerouting.

So is the Chinese government to blame? After all, its extensive attempts at censoring what its citizens view on the Internet have been well-documented.

It's worth noting, however, that the reported redirects may not have any direct link to the Dalai Lama events. The Associated Press reported earlier this week that Beijing has been ramping up its filtering of political sites in an attempt to stifle political dissent leading up to the Communist Party Congress, a meeting in which leaders are selected to serve under the president for the next five years.