Jalem's Blog.: July 2007

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

A New Twist on Human Powered Search

I grabbed this interesting article from WebMag
Human-powered search, where search results are determined and refined not by computerized algortihms but by people, has generated some buzz lately, including the release of Jason Calacanis' brainchild Mahalo and other, more established systems such as ChaCha and Acoona. Now, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia has ideas on a new approach to human-powered search, and envisions a rival to Google and Yahoo.

"If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers," said Wales. Wales is chairman of Wikia, a service that has helped set up thousands of Wikipedia-style sites on the Web. Wikia recently acquired Grub, a Web crawler to help with the project. The new Wikia search service will combine computer algorithms and human-powered search - the human element will help refine results of search terms that could have multiple meanings. Unlike Google, where search algortihms are a highly secretive formula, Wikia plans to open Grub to developers for improvements or to incorporate the crawler on other sites.

Wikipedia is under constant fire as to the validity of the information presented. It's easy to see that a Web crawler indexing thousands of wiki-style sites will face the same challenge. And as developers will have the option to tweak the search service, there will certainly be concerns of devlopers "gaming" the system to serve their own interests. Even so, the concept of the community shaping search results rather than one central authority is very interesting.

Final BuyCostumes.com Widget is here!

Friday, July 27, 2007

Killer Startups - cool site for trendy new companies.

KillerStartups.com is a user driven internet startups community. Entrepreneurs, investors, and bloggers are staying informed on up-and-coming internet startups using our blog platform, where internet entrepreneurs submit their startup to see what others think about it.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Google Rank Widget - for BC

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Good Widget article

I came across this Click Z article on widgets, worth reading twice.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Creepy Marketing

Just when you thought the Internet was getting safer from creepy stalker types, the folks over at Social Flowers figured out a way to let your secret admirer/stalker send you flowers. Even if they don't know your name, address, or know anything about you, for that matter. While my gut tells me the model is way creepy - my capitalist brain asks why didn't I think of that? Well, at least I can finally send flowers to Rosie O'donnell.

Marketing old school

This old poster reminds me that all advertisments are a form of propaganda. Remember "You can't beat the Axis if you get VD" words to live by, in my book.