An awesome list of tools from Mary Ellen Bates:

• Altsearchengines.com – blog of alternative and niche search engines – click the top 100 tab – subscribe to rss feed
• Keotag – search across web 2.0 sites (technorati, delicious twitter and more)
• MSN product reviews – search for a specific brand
• Google’s new n improved timelines – creates a readable page easy to scan and identify trends (find when there was a buzz about a particular topics) – yellow line at the top shows where there was a buzz
• Watch for blended search results – lower precision results, but more long-tail content, esp. for obscure topics – seeing a lot more other search results (products, directions – what for what else appears at the top of the screen) – look at search results with new eyes
• searchCrystal – touchy feeling
• Carrot2.org – clustering on demand with a choice of search engines – let’s your determine how the search results are organized – uses different algorithms
• Loki toolbar – find location-dependent content – based on IP address or nearby wifi signals – tells you where you are not and locates on map – search locally
• Customizegoogle.com – Firefox fix for Google – nice customization – removes ads – infinite scroll results
• Google has experimental search – new way to see results – add view:timeline or view:info to your search query and you see things like dates or images or measurements on the pages – more efficient way to find images on a page
• Searchmash – unbranded Google site – cool interface – why do i care? it’s extremely cool – that’s why! free of ads – lets you see other search indexes on the top right
• google date-limiting – advanced search screen (remember a date search on the web is never a reliable thing) can also roll your own – add +&as_qdr=dn to the SERP (search results page) URL – where n is the number of days (d15 = 15 days) – items spidered in the last n days
• Doubletrust.net – a tool for comparing search results – i prefer more results from Google or Yahoo – trust-o-meter
• I’d prefer this… search.live.com – add prefer:word to query – ranks these search results higher – test search “hybrid car prefer:convertible”
• MSN’s misspelling-suggestion engine – lets you find ways to misspell things since things on the web are not always spelled right
• Ask’s maps – both driving and walking directions – maps.ask.com – takes local topography (san fran – hills=bad) into account (i always use this tool when at conferences – to find out how to walk somewhere)
• Exalead.com – use Exalead’s NEAR/n operator — (solar OR sun) NEAR/3 power
• use search engines’ quick answer features – Ask.com Smart Answers – Google’s OneBox – Yahoo’s Shortcuts – MSN’s Instant Answers (at the top of the search results)
• Gigablast – limit to multiple sites – has all kinds of advanced search features
• SnapSearch – visual search results – lets you preview the page and lets you interact with the page on the search results screen – based on the Gigablast search engine
• Pagebull – metasearch tool – entirely visual – no words – all pictures – good if you remember what the page looked liked and can’t remember name
• Factbites.com – search results deliver small fact-bites – max 30 results – pull factual sentence from the search results
• TextRunner “information mining” looks for statements like factbites
• nationmaster.com – source for national stats – cool tool for presenting graphical info (also a statemaster)
• TouchGraph – find relationship among URLs – finds related books in amazon (uses subject terms) – graphical results
• just a reminder here – check out podcast lectures from yale, princeton, uc berkley, stanford, johns hopkins – all providing lectures online for free
• Kosmix – a vertical search engine on steroids – more than just websites – trusted sources – other concepts/related concepts – videos – yahoo questions and answers
• LOUIS – library of unified information sources – searchable documents from congressional reports
• public.resource.org for the full text of us supreme court cases – incomplete now – but keep an eye on this one – bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/
• librarianoffortune.com

I know this is a very note-like post – but this presentation lended itself to this style. See Mary Ellen’s list of links.

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