U Rank, oh yes U Do!

October 10th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Innovations, Majors, Verticals | No Comments »

Source: U Rank’s Frequently Asked Questions about U Rank

1. How do I rerank results?
Click on the “move me” link and drag a result up or down to rerank.

2. How do I add a new result to a search?
Click “Add to these results”
Then drag and drop what you want over…
Or, if you’ve already found a search result you like and you want to move it to a different search, click “copy me” and type in the search you want to move the result to:

3. What is being shared?
Changes you make to your search results while sharing will be visible to your friends. These changes include friends include moves, deletions, new results, and notes.

Any changes you make to your search results while not sharing will be hidden from your friends. These changes will stay hidden from your friends even when you turn sharing back on. Of course, any changes that you’ve already shared will remain visible to your friends.

4. How do I control what is being shared?
You can turn sharing on or off through the sharing controls right next to the search box.

You can also go to your history page to see your search edits, and share, hide, or delete them.

5. Are there any formatting controls for notes?
You can *bold* text using asterisks; you can _italicize_ text using underscores, and you can write a {search query} using curly braces.

6. Can I invite others to try U Rank?
Yes, of course! Go invite your friends. Because this is just a research prototype, we are limiting how many people you can invite, but we hope to expand this out in the future.

7. Are there other cool features?
There are a few things that we haven’t mentioned yet.

IM integration: Go to your settings page and click to turn on IM integration. Friends will see your Messenger status next to searches you’ve edited, and can message you if you’re available.

Bang searches: If you want to go straight to the first result of a search, add an exclamation mark at the front of the search. Here’s a tip: move your most frequently visited sites to be the #1 result of a short query. For example, searching “!n” takes me to http://nytimes.com/, and “!msr” takes me straight to http://research.microsoft.com/

8. How do I move a result from the 2nd page of a search to the 1st page?
We haven’t figured out a great UI for this yet, though it’s probably real simple and staring us in the face. In the meanwhile, a work-around is to click “copy me” and type in the same search query. The copy feature moves the specified result to the top of another search (or the same search, in this case).

Turkish search engine Attabot in beta testing

October 10th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in In Beta, Newcomers, News, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Attabot brings together the facilities of Web 2.0 and the functions of search engines, while bringing together services such as e-mail accounts and online dictionaries from the Turkish Language Council and Redhouse.

“We take care of the design, code writing and test periods by ourselves. We work collectively both in the United States and Istanbul,” Seyfi Erol, the founding partner of the portal told TDN.

The users can choose words that describe them on the internet after creating free account, Erol said.  “Under the titles Air, Earth, and water, you can choose the words that describe you and your social life, your likes and career and, in the words of the Attabot team, you create your own world, your virtual self.”

In English:

Attabot – A New Approach to Search

While other search engines are busy refining their algorithms for better search results, Attabot brings in a unique way to make use of the “search” function.

Attabot creates a digital profile for users and connects people who make the same query. Searching on Attabot finds real people rather than finding only websites with other search engines. When you think about what you search for on search engines everyday, it is quite interesting to find not only websites as the search results but also other people who are interested in the things that you are searching for.

Search is a two way highway. Searching with Attabot finds you other people. How about other people finding you? For the queries that YOU select! You can use Attabot to be found by others with the words in your profile or with the queries you have made previously. This feature brings more opportunities to your professional life and may add new friends to your social circle.

Attabot brings internet tools to your daily life that will make life easier and ever more interactive. A new feature called “AttaRez” lets you save your favorite search results and share them with your tags across the online community. This human based search engine can find refined results that are tested by other people not just a computer algorithm.

“Attabot Favorites” lets you take your bookmarks with you wherever you go. Sign-in to your Attabot account and all your bookmarks are ready to take you where you want to go.

Attabot account creates a webpage and an e-mail account which you can use to publish whatever is important for you. E-mail account shows all your incoming messages from different profiles so you don’t have to log-in and out to check your messages for each profile, either social or professional.

Your Attabot profile gets indexed by all search engines so anyone who searches for you can find information about you that you select to publish.

Attabot creates a second life built by your own words. What will you be searching for?

Attabot – Search For More

Attabot is a web portal that combines a search engine with Web 2.0 services. Attabot provides personal web services like a search angine, an e-mail account, online Turkish Language Association dictionary  and a Redhouse dictionary all within the same interface. There’s also a feature  named “AttaSearch” that connects users who makes the same query. Another feature named “AttaRez” gives the user the ability to save selected search results and sharing them with the online community. There’s also a News aggregator service that collects news from different sources. News pages are updated every fifteen minutes.

Co-founder Seyfi Erol describes Attabot as a digital platform that makes life easier. He says that he and his partner Omer Kurt developed Attabot while Erol was researching internet projects in USA. Seyfi Erol also says that “ It’s very important to reach needed information on the Internet and people are making a better use of Internet now because of  Web 2.0. That’s how Attabot was found. Attabot is the platform that can be used in daily life with a lot of  Internet tools. There are twelve people working in our company and we’re implementing concept, design, coding and testing with our team. Two teams are working from both USA and Turkey at the same time by using the advantages of Internet.”

World of Words

When you’re creating your free account on Attabot, you go through an entertaining process  where you choose the words that best describes you. You build up your own “ world” by choosing best matching words about your social life, things you like and your professional life. After this process you’ll have your own Digital ID. Every new query you make on Attabot, is added to your world. People who make the same query or have the same profile properties with you will be able to find you and send you a message.

While creating an account, you enter your real name. On the next screen you create your second profile, which you can use to keep your queries private. Every user have the ability to create ten different profiles. For example, you can use your first profile for your professional life and second profile for sharing your interests and hobbies. After creating these profiles, you will have an e-mail account that runs for all your profiles. E-mail account has unlimited storage and supports POP3.  You can also communicate with other Attabot users with this account.

Attabot also creates a Webpage with the URL: yourname.attabot.com. You can use this page to publish information about yourself. When someone search your name on the Internet, they will see this page on Attabot and Google results. You can create a different  page for each of your profiles.

It’s also suitable for Corporate use

Seyfi Erol also mentions Attabot’s advantages for business use. He says that “Corporate users have the same advantages that personal users have, the ability to be found with selected words. Corporate users can introduce their companies for free by creating an Attabot account. It will be a great platform especially for small businesses. They can introduce their companies on the Internet in a few minutes. Using Attabot, corporate users will take advantage of Web 2.0 . In the future you will be able to buy or sell things using Attabot.“

Attabot is competely free. Seyfi Erol says “ If you’re trying to make lifes easier, you have to provide this service free. That’s why our business model will be mainly based on advertisement.  We will use existing advertising channels and our own product, an innovative web 2.0 ad paltform that uses “AttaSearch” results. Soon we will add new features for finding information about events and flight tickets. We have partnered with Sinema.com and Yemeksepeti.com. We did these because we’re trying to give the best results for internet searches in Turkey. Our aim is to reach every user in Turkey and make them use Attabot.”

Now, Attabot is online with Beta version. It’s Turkish for now but Attabot team plans to roll out the global version in early September. There will be other dictionaries and some other features on the global version of Attabot.

In Turkish:

Attabot Ortak Arama

Ortak Arama internette aramayı değiştiriyor. Google arama motoruyla web siteleri bulmanın yanında o kelimeleri aramış olan diğer kullanıcıları da buluşturan Attabot, interneti daha keyifli ve hiç olmadığı kadar interaktif hale getiriyor.

AttareZ (Attabot Sonuçlarım)

Attabot’ta yaptığınız aramalarda en iyi sonuçları saklayın ve başkalarıyla paylaşın. Aynı kelimeleri bir daha aradığınızda en iyi sonuçlarınızı ve başkalarının en iyi sonuçlarını bir arada görün, aradığınız bilgiye daha çabuk ulaşın.

Attabot Haber

Attabot Haber tüm ulusal basını 15 dakikada bir tarayan haber robotu ile çalışır. Gündemi hiç haber kaçırmadan tek sayfadan takip edebilirsiniz. Haberleri haberin çıktığı gazeteden okursunuz. Haberlerde arama yaparak merak ettiğiniz konu ya da sektörünüz ve rakiplerinizle ilgili gazetelerde çıkmış tüm haberlere ulaşabilirsiniz.

Attabot Sözlük

Attabot aradığınız her kelimenin Redhouse İngilizce – Türkçe sözlük karşılığını otomatik olarak gösterir. Kelimelerin diğer anlamlarını, o kelimeyi arayan diğer kullanıcıları sözlük sayfalarımızda görebilirsiniz. Attabot Sözlük, Redhouse Sözlük Türkiye yayın haklarına sahip olan SEV-YAY – Attabot işbirliği ile sunulmaktadır.

Attabot Posta

En iyi web arayüzü. Sınırsız saklama alanı. Hem Ortak Arama’yla bulduğunuz yeni arkadaşlarınızla mesajlaşmalarınızı hem de günlük e-posta’larınızı gönderebileceğiniz tek sayfadan yönetim özelliği. Otomatik adres bulma.

Sources Attabot,  HotNewsTurkey.com

A Search Engine for Your Memory! Infoaxe

October 10th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Innovations, News | 2 Comments »

Infoaxe is a Search Engine for your Web Memory.  With infoaxe, every page that you see on the Web gets added to your Personal Web Memory and is now searchable.  No more manual bookmarking!  Check out our intro video to get started with infoaxe!

If you have a strong background in Web Programming, Large Scale Systems Engineering and breathe Software Engineering best practices please do send us your resume at jobs@infoaxe.com for the chance to join an early stage startup about to revolutionize Search and Information access on the Web.  Source: infoaxe

Watch the introductory video here:

Innovation: How to search for your username

October 10th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Innovations, News | 2 Comments »

Jon Sykes explains his username search tool:

I thought you might be interested in a little pet project I launched a couple of weeks back, Usernamecheck.com. It’s a site that allows you to enter a username and it checks 40+ of the big or new social networking / web 2.0 sites and informs you whether that username is taken or available.

Initially I built the site so that people could have a way to see where they are and where they aren’t and give them the chance to pick up their usernames to prevent them being signed up by someone who might ruin their online credibility.

But based on the blog posts and twitter posts I’ve been seeing it seems people have been coming up with some very imaginative uses.

Hope you like the site, we’ve had over a 100,000 unique visitors since launch and have a Alexa ranking that is currently better than pownce, brightkite and jaiku (although I never really understood alexa). But it’s been nice to see people enjoying the service.

TigerLogic announces public debut of ChunkIt!

October 10th, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in News, Updates | 1 Comment »


TigerLogic today announced the public availability of ChunkIt!, a new free search tool designed to help people find better information faster on the Web.

ChunkIt! instantly searches for and retrieves the valuable information hidden behind the hyperlinks contained on any Web page, saving users valuable time lost from clicking on lame and irrelevant links. ChunkIt! is available for Firefox (PC and Mac) and Internet Explorer browsers.

ChunkIt! provides users with a one click solution that quickly and easily enhances the search results from any Web site or search engine, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live Search, AOL and Ask. ChunkIt! searches for the relevant “chunks” of information hidden behind the links and extracts them with the keywords highlighted, so users can efficiently find the information they want without clicking through endless links and opening multiple windows.

“Despite improved search algorithms, people spend lots of time clicking on link after link, hoping to find the needle in the haystack. ChunkIt! solves this problem by analyzing and extracting the information you are looking for, eliminating the time wasted clicking on lame links,” said Carlton Baab, CEO of TigerLogic. ”ChunkIt! not only enhances search engine results, it searches and retrieves information behind any link on any Web page, whether you are shopping on Amazon for a digital camera with specific zoom features or whether you are a student conducting research on sites like LexisNexis.”

According to research by Microsoft, roughly a third of Web searches don’t get answered correctly on the first search and first click. Usually searchers find the information they want eventually, but that often requires multiple searches or clicks. A main cause for this problem is that a search result may look promising based on its short description, but instead it turns out to be irrelevant when the actual page is visited. ChunkIt! saves searchers time by exposing the contents of the search results so that they can determine which results best align with their intent.

ChunkIt! helps everyone save time, whether you are a shopper, student, teacher, parent or business professional, by making almost any search task on the Web faster and easier, including:

• Online shopping – ChunkIt! shows the keywords users are looking for in item descriptions and product specifications, saving lots of time in online comparison shopping on sites like eBay and Amazon

• Academic research – ChunkIt! seamlessly previews the valuable contents stored within the links of research sites like LexisNexis, JSTOR, ScienceDirect and Wikipedia

• Searching news sites – ChunkIt! makes it easy to find stories about the specific topics you are looking for on news sites with countless links like the Drudge Report, ESPN.com and Perez Hilton

• Apartment hunting – ChunkIt! lets users dig deep into Craigslist to find apartments with the features they want in a snap

• Analyzing stocks – ChunkIt! takes the hassle out of looking through the countless pages of SEC EDGAR financial reports

TigerLogic also recently launched their ChunkIt! blog with search tips and product updates at http://www.tigerlogic.com/ChunkIt/blog.

For a free download of ChunkIt! or to learn more, please visit ChunkIt!.

Source: ChunkIt!