Many gadgets promise to help you call home when you’re overseas. Just make sure you check the fine print.

DolphinSearch - Searchtools Report Updated
DolphinSearch, with an unusual search algorithm based on neural networks and dolphin research, this search appliance is designed for legal research and corporate compliance, and integrates into an enterprise document management system. (May 3)

Into Thin (MacBook) Air
The MacBook Air is sweet, but it’s not for everyone. Just ask the Apple fans poking, prodding and playing with the new device.

Critique of the Google Custom Search Traffic Report
Edward Tufte would be disappointed in Google. The traffic reports in the Google Custom Search Business Edition are not only insufficient, but somewhat misleading. Below is a picture from a CSBE search for a B2B site that I helped install in August 2007. The fact that it’s a line chart, with no data points given, filled underneath,makes it look active. It seems as though something’s happening, the traffic is making progress, or worse, losing ground. The deep dips look scary, as though the site has done something wrong. The problems come about because it’s the wrong graph format for the content. This is very simple data: one point per day. Look at it as a simple bar graph and it suddenly seems more reasonable. The traffic resolves itself into a rhythm: the dips are on weekends — all the customers are home. I don’t know why they got it so wrong, but it’s worth getting right. Edward Tufte wrote some enlightening books on these topics, including The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which taught those of us paying attention that how data is presented deeply affects how it is received. I highly recommend getting some of Tufte’s books, from Amazon, from Powell’s or from your library (using WorldCat). Please comment whether you agree or disagree. I’m haven’t seen quite this problem in other search engine traffic reports, but I’m wondering what other interfaces might look like, and what you think is best. Tell me your opinions, please!

Google Launches Site Search Service for Business
Google’s Custom Search Business Edition uses the Google web search index limited by site or sites. It provides most of the Google web search features and is very cheap, only $100 per year for up to 50,000 pages, $500 for up to 500,000 pages. More here at my InfoToday article / more at the Searchtools Google Service report page.What do you think of it?

Dieselpoint Faceted Metadata Search and Browse Engine, Report Updated
Dieselpoint is a pure Java search engine that indexes metadata and field attributes as well as text and documents, allowing users to navigate within search results - faceted metadata search and browse. It indexes HTML, XML, pdf (Adobe Acrobat), Microsoft Office, and text files, as well as JDBC connectors for DB2, Oracle, Informix, MS SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Cloudscape, and near-real-time incremental index updating. It can handle up to forty languages and provides stemming for European languages. Additional features include spellchecking, synonyms, special weighting of search results, and extensive search administrator reports and controls. Definitely worth looking at for faceted metadata, at a lower price than most others.

Webetiser (formerly re.s@earch suite) Searchtools Report Updated
Webetiser, which comes in a free version, "Worx", and various paid versions (including those for distribution via CD or other media), runs primarily on Windows NT. It has indexing and configuration wizards using a Windows GUI, and the paid versions read Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Acrobat PDF files (via OLE). It can index local file shares, and offers a reasonable set of templates for results presentation, using a set of JavaScript files. It’s been around for a while as re.s@earch suite, and has some happy customers.

i411 - Searchtools Report Updated
i411 is a faceted metadata search and browse engine, capable of scaling to very large deployments, such as the DexOnline yellow pages site, which uses it for both search results and browse navigation. The most recent version adds a web crawler to the local file and database connectors, a natural language module that can extract entities from queries and provide concept-based spellcheck, more flexibility in the search flow, and a SiteOptimizer analytics and reporting module to expose site dynamics and user behavior.(Disclaimer: I consulted with DexOnline and helped them choose the engine among a very strong field of candidates.)

Google CSE - different results when searching more than three sites
A support document for the Google CSE (Custom Search Engine)and CSBE (Custom Search Business Edition) notes that some results may be different than those found in the same search on Google.com. It attributes this to including more than three sites in the CSE, and says that the CSE is using a subset of the Google.com index. They recommend limiting the CSE to three sites, changing the behavior to ‘Search the entire web but emphasize included sites’, or adding refinements that have the same effect.As of August 16, 2007, the support note says “We’re working to bring more complete results to all Custom Search Engines.”.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Tooling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.