The Five Things That Yahoo! Search Can Do But Not Google

Google is the world’s favorite search engine but there are a some cool things that you can do only in Yahoo!. Here they are:

1. Compose emails from the Yahoo! search box.

Type !mail abc@xyz.com in the Yahoo! search box and it will automatically compose a new email message for you in Yahoo! mail.

2. Get Lyrics of any song or your favorite artist.

Type James Blunt lyrics (for lyrics of James Blunt songs) or Jmaes Blunt 1973 lyrics (for lyrics of a particular song)

3. Specifiy the order of search keywords in queries

Say you want only web pages where word x comes before y but not vice versa, then just put the search query in Square Brackets. An example:[Sylvester Stallone] - will only return web pages where the word Sylvester appear before Stallone.

4. Search your favorite websites from Yahoo! itself.

For instance, type !wiki google in Yahoo! search box to search Google in Wikipedia.com. Other popular shortcuts are !ebay, !amazon, and !flickr. You can also execute these from the Firefox search box without changing the default search engine.

5. linkdomain - An undocumented Yahoo Web search operator.

A quick question - Can you find the number of articles on Wikipedia website that link to CNN.com ? It’s almost impossible to get this data from Google but you can do so quite easily in Yahoo! with the incredibly useful linkdomain operator. The answer is:linkdomain:cnn.com site:wikipedia.org

Or take another example - How many stories on TechCrunch actually link to the PayPerPost, Arrington’s favorite topic. The answer here is:site:techcrunch.com linkdomain:payperpost.com

Technorati Tags: MDI, Research at MDI, Yahoo vs. Google, Google vs. Yahoo, Yahoo Operators.

How About Karaoke-Lyrics plugin unleashed

How about some karaoke! If I'd say that most of the people (at least the ones I know) use Windows Media Player or Winamp. Wouldn't it be fun if you would be able to sing your favorite song as it is playing. Many would say that it's easy, just open a freaking browser window and search for the lyrics. What if I'd say that it's even more easier. All you have to do is to install what is popularly called as lyricsplugin. This is a small but awesome piece of software. As you play your favorite song the lyrics is pulled right into your players window. Here's a snapshot of how it can be integrated with WMP.

Technorati Tags: Lyricsplugin, Lyrics Plugin, MDI, Research at MDI, Information Management Research

I am not going to Boast

I am not going to be boastful, at least not to the extent of being obnoxious. I just realized that I have a PR of 2. For the less tech savvy guys, PR is Google's patent technology to give ranks to the web-pages. One site can have multiple web pages and each of these pages have their own page rank. Let me scrape a few lines from how Google defines it's page rank.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Getting a pagerank of 2 is not a big deal, but getting it without any optimization effort is pretty neat. I am not going to struggle to take it to a higher level nor am I interested in selling posts on my blog and make some cheap money. But I'll keep a close eye on how the PR is making a progress.

Technorati Tags: PageRank, Information Management Research, Research at MDI, MDI, Research

I Need to go

To promote their free online e-accounts, Dutch bank ING had their agency come up with a pretty funny idea: a virtual toilet. In just a few clicks you can have your virtual self release that tension and carry on surfing. What exactly the link is between going to the toilet and opening an e-account seems a bit of a far fetched link from some creatives who’ve spend a little too much time at the drawing board, I guess. But let’s stick with the idea that opening an e-account should be as easy as going to the toilet. Mind you, in real life I’d never take so much time to listen to the toilet lady and even virtually it takes too much time in my [humble] opinion before the link with the actual product is made. The mashed-up fashion brands during the pee-time spent (as a man) is pretty funny though and if you go pee as a girl, and that is truly the biggest gag in the clip, you need to invite a friend because “girls don’t go to the bathroom alone now do they”. Hah ! Brilliant !

Anyhow: Here’s a little timewaster for you: [click to play]

FeedBurner Feeds Are Not in Google Search Results Anymore

Google has removed all FeedBurner RSS feeds from their main web search index. Even RSS feeds that are syndicated via the FeedBurner are no longer available in Google Search. This is true for all feeds that exist on FeedBurner irrespective of the NOINDEX settings that you may have configured through the FeedBurner Dashboard.

Though the XML feeds of Blogger blogs (blogspot.com/feeds/posts/.. and blogger.com/feeds/..) are still indexed by Google, it should not surprise if blogspot feeds also face the Google axe just like FeedBurner feeds.

This is probably an excellent step from Google for two reasons - one, it solves (to some extent) the problem of duplicate content and two, when non-techie users click on search results that point to RSS feeds and not regular web pages, they may not know how to deal with them and quickly leave.

Increasing Retail Impact of Social Networking

According to a study done by Hitwise amount of UK Internet traffic online retailers receive from social networks increased by 153% between December 2006 and September 2007.

Online auction sites, in particular eBay, are the main retail beneficiaries of the social networking phenomenon, receiving 31.4% of all downstream traffic that Social Networks send to Shopping and Classifieds sites. The more traditional retail categories – Department Stores and Apparel and Accessories sites – are next, respectively receiving 1 in 8 and 1 in 9 of all UK retail visits from Social Networks. The close links between social networks and the entertainment industry help Music and Video & Games retailers, which are the fourth and fifth biggest beneficiaries respectively. Combined, these five categories account for 72% of all online retail traffic sent from social networks.

In September 2007, Social Networks accounted for 1 in every 20 UK Internet visits. In terms of Internet visits, Social Networking has grown by over 70% in the UK since last Christmas, and it is starting to have a serious impact on many different types of website. Social Networks are now the fourth most popular source of traffic for Shopping and Classifieds sites after Search, Email Services and other Shopping and Classified sites. And this traffic increasingly reflects British society as a whole. Social networks are no longer just for teenagers and students – between December 2006 and September 2007, the proportion of visitors aged 55+ to our Net Communities and Chat category, which is dominated by social networks, has increased by 63%, while the proportion coming from the 18 –24 age group has decreased by 19%.

In September 2006, www.facebook.com was the 126th most visited URL in the UK, but its market share has increased 30 fold over the last 12 months, from 0.056% of all UK Internet visits to 1.66% in September 2007. www.facebook.com is now the fifth most visited URL in the UK, and it is also the fifth most popular source of traffic for other websites. In the retail sector, www.facebook.com refers 1% of UK Internet traffic to Shopping and Classifieds websites.

Since opening up to the general public in September 2006, Facebook’s growth has been driven by a combination of viral marketing and rapidly increasing brand awareness. A quarter of Facebook’s traffic comes from web-based email services, which is a combination of new invites and alerts to existing members. A further quarter comes from search engines, and an illustration of the site’s brand strength is the fact that ‘facebook’ is now the third most searched for term in the UK.

What I have been upto...

I sometime wonder myself about what I am up to. Seems to the world that I am busy but I am not sure about it. The fact is I should be busy but I am not. I have been up with some assignments. Let me try to put down the assignments that I have been up with. One of the courses that I opted for in the first term was called as BPM (Business Process Management and I took up evaluation of Intalio, an open source BPMS as part of my readings in Business Process Management System. The assignment was pretty unique as I was evaluating the Intalio against the industry norms like BPMN and BPEL.

The second course that I credited was called as "Advances in Marketing Management". I had more than one assignment and all of them were pretty academically rigorous.

Another compulsory course that I has to take is called "Philosophies and Methodologies for Creating Knowledge" and this had two assignment. One of them (fortunately for me) has been submitted. The other assignment that I am working on and is keeping me busy is titled by me as "A Paradigmatic and Methodological Examination of CRM in IS: 1995 to 2007"

Now this is pretty hectic and hence time consuming. Second term is on it's way and I already have 2 very rigor assignments to start.

~May God bless me !

Technorati Tags: BPM, Marketing, AMM, Intaio, MDI, Research at MDI

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It's been a while

I can curse myself or kick but it won't change the things. It's been a while and I have not written anything. I am talking this post as the one to start the good work again. So here we go. Let me write something I am listening to. It's a line from Pankaj Udhas' song.

"Intezar galat hai ke shaam ho jaye,
gar ho sake to abhi daur-e-jaam ho jae,
mujh jaise rindh ko bhi tuney, hashra mein ya rab
bula liya hai toh kuch intezaam ho jaye"