Phil Bradley's Blog

Saturday, February 28, 2004

 
Very nice article on how to Search the Web More Efficiently. Full of useful stuff, and worth spending a few minutes reading.
Phil 11:29 AM

Friday, February 27, 2004

 
I don't usually refer to Windows, since it's not an area that particularly interests me. However, there's a good article from PCWorld.com - 76 Ways to Get More Out of Windows which is full of neat stuff.
Phil 12:04 PM

 
The Informed Librarian Online is a monthly compliation of tables of contents from over 275 titles - library and information related journals, e-journals, newsletters and e-newsletters. You need to subscribe in order to use the service, but it's free.
Phil 11:45 AM

 
If you're confused by all the options available in the Advanced search page at GooleSoople provides an easy to use drop down interface. It's not owned by Google, but it's very nice and easy to use. Recommended.
Phil 11:42 AM

 
Interesting short article on the dangers of believing what Google tells you. Briefly, it's about how journalists in particular use Google to find information and they just believe it - because Google says so. A little bit scary, and worth a read.
Phil 9:20 AM

Thursday, February 26, 2004

 
The first change to the morse code since before WW II sees the addition of the @ symbol. Do you need to know this? Probably not.
Phil 1:34 PM

 
Taken a very quick look at Freesearch, which is a UK based search engine, "offering the best of web search, picture search and an online dictionary. Searching over 3 billion web pages. This one seems to have come from no-where and is worth a quick search or two.
Phil 9:19 AM

 
Nice article on writing press releases that will get better rankings with search engines. Not an area that's usually given much thought, but this article covers the ground well.
Phil 9:14 AM

 
How To Improve Your Link Popularity With Internal Incoming Outgoing Links
Phil 9:08 AM

 
Link to a nice neat link checker Quick and effective.
Phil 9:07 AM

 
Very interesting article on why the search results from Ask Jeeves are better than Google results. Three different searches are compared, and Ask Jeeves consistently out performs Google. Interesting read.
Phil 9:04 AM

 
Another article bashing Google and pointing out the competition it's currently facing. Nothing particularly new, but a nice short round-up of where we are at the moment.
Phil 9:00 AM

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

 
Interesting article from the Independent on the rise and potential fall of Google. Quite short, with lots of facts, addressing the dangers that Google faces in the future.
Phil 8:16 AM

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

 
The most popular search engines in January are Google (59.3 million unique visitors), Yahoo search (45.8), MSN Search (44.6) AOL Search (23.4), Ask Jeeves (12.8).
Phil 8:37 AM

Monday, February 23, 2004

 
My Powerpoint presentation from Online 2003 on Developments in search engine features and search tools
Phil 9:36 AM

 
I've written a powerpoint presentation on How to drive traffic to your website that you might find interesting.
Phil 9:27 AM

Friday, February 20, 2004

 
Well, as we all knew they would, Yahoo has dumped Google as their search engine. Yahoo now uses results gathered by Yahoo! search technology, based on the Inktomi search engine.
Phil 9:17 AM

 
Google reaches a new milestone - access to more than 6 billion items. That is to say - 4.28 billion pages, 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages and book related information pages. Over to you AlltheWeb...
Phil 9:13 AM

Friday, February 13, 2004

 
I've briefly played around with Furl - Your web page filing cabinet this morning. I've only added one
item so far, but that was sufficient to play. I've added a line to the
bottom of my weblog (btm left hand corner) which is the 'list' of Furled
items that I'll have. It's certainly more useful than a blog in some
ways, since you do have access to the entire text, which is particularly
valuable when it comes to searching for information in pages that you've
added. I've also changed the default categories around a little bit as
well.

The value is more to the person than a group I feel. I can certainly see
that it would be useful for me to be able to quickly 'store' articles,
and the search facility is the killer app. for this without a doubt. It
would also be useful to see what other people have stored, but I'm less
likely to search on those, since I don't know what's in those articles.
It also seems a little difficult to find people who have added stuff,
though you can always take a peep at mine - user name is Philb (there's
a surprise!) The comments section is a little frustrating, because it
seems to indicate that there's a comment when there isn't. There also
doesn't appear to be a way of annotating sections of a page either, so
it misses out on that as well. However, I shall carry on using it, and
see what I think - it should certainly integrate nicely into my weblog
entries.
Phil 1:57 PM

 
Oh, this is a must: Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database. Unless you're not into SF of course, but you're all sane sensible people, so you're bound to be!
Phil 12:33 PM

 
File URL is a new dinky little utility, because it becomes your web page filing cabinet. It works like a favorite, but saves the pages for you, not just the URL, and you can then annotate them or search them to your hearts content. Free at the moment - take a look at it.
Phil 10:28 AM

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

 
I've updated my list of Country search engines and Regional Search Engines and there are currently over 1,600 engines listed.
Phil 1:49 PM

 
My personal news aggregator (Jill, my wife) found a nice script to Protect your email address. Very simple, with clear instructions.
Phil 10:26 AM

 
If you thought the only browser left was Internet Explorer, take a look at Mozilla Firefox - The Browser, Reloaded.
Phil 10:03 AM

Sunday, February 08, 2004

 
This is just THE most amazing photograph. The Helix Nebula, so named for obvious reasons. Do please take a look!
Phil 11:01 AM

 
A very nice New York Times article on Librarians and Google. Google comes off worst.
Phil 10:56 AM

Thursday, February 05, 2004

 
Nice article on Meta Search Engines which doesn't say anything new, but is a nice quick summary, with links to quite a multi search engines.
Phil 10:12 AM

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

 
Nice set of statistics from OneStat which shows that most people (32%) use 2 word phrases, 25% use 3 words, 19% use 1word, 12% 4 words, 5% use 5 words, 2% 6 words and 0.98% use 7 words.
Phil 9:50 AM

 
Another utility that allows you to post to your weblog.BlogJet supports various blog services including Blogger and Movable Type. Personally, I'll just stick to using the Blogger icon in my Google Toolbar.
Phil 9:46 AM

Monday, February 02, 2004

 
Many excellent parodies of Lord of the Rings. Not only literature, but film, tv and musical ones too. Nothing to do with work, but great fun.
Phil 5:58 PM

 
Nice article from Howstuffworks on How Blogs work, with information on what they are, and how to create your own.
Phil 9:55 AM

 
Guide to searching Google looks good, but is quite long. It's on the list of things to read fully.
Phil 9:41 AM

 
Gary Price has listed10 problems with Google which make depressing reading.
Phil 9:39 AM