Library and Archives Canada places of Census of Manitoba, 1870 online

The Library and Archives Canada has placed the Census of Manitoba, 1870 online. According to its news blurb of July 11, 02013,

This census was taken shortly after Manitoba joined Confederation.
This census provides the names of more than 12,200 individuals living in Manitoba at that time and contains information such as age, marital status, place of birth, religion, race and name of the father.

You can search the census by keywords, surname, given names and age.

Canadian Feature Film Database at Library and Archives Canada

The Library and Archives Canada has a Canadian Feature Film Database. It appears to have been online since at least May 02010. Here is the blurb from the start page for the database:

The Canadian Feature Film Database is based on the printed Index (Canadian Feature Film Index) begun in 1972.

The Database based on the Index:

• compiles the principal credits of every Canadian feature film from 1913 to 2009

• establishes a list of Canadian feature films from published information up to 2009

• features currently over 4,300 films

Future updates:
addition of post-2009 films is planned for a future iteration of the database

"Searching for the Stars" (the real ones in the heavens) through Searcher magazine

My most recent article for Searcher magazine, "Searching for the Stars: Cosmic Views and Databases", made the cover of the September 2011 issue as you can see below and is available online (just select the hyperlinked article title in this sentence).

Searcher magazine cover, September 2011

Yahoo! Clues, more data about agreggate searching habits

According to an Information Today Newsbreak story by Greg R. Notess on November 29, 02010 about Yahoo! Clues, "Yahoo! Clues presents information about popular searches that have been done by the “millions of people who use Yahoo! to search each day.” Similar to Google Trends and Google Insights for Search, Clues has both similar and unique data points. The data available includes search volume, searcher demographics (age group, gender, and income), searcher location, search flow, and related searches. This free tool can be used to get a sense of the types of data available to advertisers about search patterns and demographics."

The Yahoo! Blog posting about Yahoo! Clues offers a video and the Yahoo! Clues site is here.

The Twittering of the Search World by David Mattison is online

My latest article for Searcher magazine, "The Twittering of the Search World" is available for free online.

Searcher magazine cover, September 02010

Google Real Time Search launches, ho-hum, or, bah, humbug

After being caught out by Google on Google Wave, I can't say I'm all that excited by Google Real Time Search, a new Web site for those who want only "real time" results. According to the Learn more about Realtime Search link below the search field box, "Realtime Search lets you see up-to-the-second social updates, news articles and blog posts about hot topics around the world."

Basically, what this "new" search feature from Google provides is results from the Updates link first, in other words, you're taken straight to the Updates results page instead of the Everything results page. From what I can tell at first glance, this is exactly the same stuff you'd see on a normal Google search of Everything and then clicking the Updates link to see what's there.

Ho-hum, or is it, bah, humbug.

TinEye Reverse Image Search

I have not tried a search with TinEye, "a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for non-commercial searching. TinEye regularly crawls the web for new images, and we also accept contributions of complete online image collections. To date, TinEye has indexed 1,630,532,499 images from the web to help you find what you're looking for." (http://www.tineye.com/about)

Takeaways and Q&A from “Social is the Next Search” Gigya Webinar, 02010 03 04

Takeaways and Q&A from “Social is the Next Search” Webinar, March 4, 02010

Looks like some useful tips here for anyone interested in how to apply social search concepts to their online business.

If you get it, share it, but why are there no sharing tools on the Social Media Club site?

The Social Media Club was founded in 2006 in San Francisco, California, USA, and there are now chapters around the world. The Social Media Club's tag line is "If you get it, share it." Well, I get it, but I'll be darned if I can figure out why the Social Media Club Web site has not a one social media sharing tool in sight.

Go local (news) with OpenBlock

While this new open source software project, OpenBlock, is geared at the moment to news organizations and cities in the United States, here's hoping some Canadian news outlets will also pick up on this most promising innovation. OpenBlock code is based on EveryBlock.com, described as a civic news aggregator or hyper-local news.

Reading the digital ocean

According to this story from the Weekly News Digest of Information Today, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library has, through a partnership with Google, the University of California and the UC San Diego Libraries, digitized and made publicly available around 100,000 volumes of oceanography works from its collection.

Time, Space and Google, Searcher magazine, May 02010

My first post-retirement article for Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals was published on May 1, 02010. It's titled "Time, Space and Google: Toward a Real-Time, Synchronous, Personalized, Collaborative Web." I survey many aspects of Google's service offerings that to me signal Google is beginning to own the Web insofar as it's attempting to define your experience of Web time and space through its services. The article is not online for free but will be available through ProQuest and other full-text commercial databases licensed by Information Today.

Joomla and Drupal for libraries (and archives)

Mark Jordan, head of library systems at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, replied to a question on the WEB4LIB mailing list about the open source content management system Joomla which led to other replies, including ones about Drupal, another popular CMS for library sites. So here are some of the resources about Joomla and Drupal as content management systems for libraries (and archives).

• Joomla Community Showcase of libraries running Joomla


• Joomla in Libraries "started as a conference presentation for Computer In Libraries 2007 hosted by Information Today" and includes a Showcase of libraries using Joomla.


• drupalib is "A place for library drupallers to hang out" with links to Groups.Drupal: Libraries, Drupal4Lib email list and the LITA Drupal4Lib Interest Group


• Library Technology Guides' lib-web-cats directory of libraries using Drupal and libraries using Joomla; this information is maintained by Marshall Breeding and he welcomes contributions

Terrier wags its IR tail on verison 3

From the front page of Terrier, which is now at version 3.0 (02010 03 11):

Terrier is a highly flexible, efficient, and effective open source search engine, readily deployable on large-scale collections of documents. Terrier implements state-of-the-art indexing and retrieval functionalities, and provides an ideal platform for the rapid development and evaluation of large-scale retrieval applications.

Terrier is open source, and is a comprehensive, flexible and transparent platform for research and experimentation in text retrieval. Research can easily be carried out on standard TREC and CLEF test collections.

Terrier is written in Java, and is developed at the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow.

The Experts' Guide to Keyword Research for Social Media whitepaper from WordStream

Here's an interesting whitepaper from WordStream, a search marketing company, called The Experts' Guide to Keyword Research for Social Media.

Google giveth, Google taketh away SearchWiki

According to this Search Engine Land item, Google's killed its SearchWiki feature that allowed signed-in Google Account users to rank and comment on Web search results. SearchWiki has been replaced by Stars or Starred Results. More info at the Official Google Blog announcement.

Wired Magazine: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web by Stephen Levy

From the current issue of Wired Magazine comes this great piece of field research by Stephen Levy, "How Google's Algorithm Rules the Web".

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) blogs

Since I've been doing some writing about Google, real-time and social search engines, I thought I'd list some of the Search Engine Optimization and search marketing blogs that offer useful content:

• Distilled Blog is from the London, England, partner of SEOmoz, which left the SEO business in February 2010.


• Patrick Gavin, Search Engine Optimization Blog. He used to be PatrickGavin.com, and now he's Searchengineoptimization.net.
  


• SearchCowboys.com is a European blog about search engine marketing and SEO.



• SEOChicks, the SEO Blog with Attitude. If it's attitude you want, you'll get lots of that here. The SEO Chicks was founded in 2007.


• SEOgadget is another UK SEO consulting company with a great blog.



• SEOmozBlog from SEOmoz in Seattle, Washington, says it left the SEO consulting business in February 2010, so perhaps this blog won't be around much longer. Check out their Recommended List of SEO Consultants, Experts, Firms & Service Providers.


• SEOptimise is a blog from a UK SEO consultancy firm.

If you know of other super-duper SEO blogs, please leave a comment and some reasons why they should be consulted.

Google Social Search Goes Live (original blog post by David)

According to this SearchEngineLand article by Matt McGee, Google Social Search is now live and contains more features than when it originally debuted in Google Labs in October 02009. Danny Sullivan examined the Google Labs offering in his article "Google Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted 'Social Circle'" (October 26, 02009).

You need to have a Google Account and be signed in in order to take advantage of this new search results option. The announcement on the Official Google Blog is worth reading as it includes a video introduction.

OCLC WebJunction group Google Wave for Libraries

I set up an OCLC WebJunction group called Google Wave for Libraries on January 21, 02010.