December 31st, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Travel, Verticals | No Comments »
From Tripkick: We aim to take the guesswork out of your hotel experience. Not all hotel rooms are created equal, so we sought to devise an online concept which would deliver more choices. We tell you what to ask for, whether you prefer something quiet, over sized, view oriented or unique. We give you specific room numbers to request.
Haven’t made up your mind about where you want to stay? We’ll help you with that too, and also give you some handy info about each hotel. So, have you found the perfect room? We want you to share! Travelers have the option to share their own experiences, and the ability to upload pictures. We’re starting with 10 Major US Cities, and will announce new destinations monthly. We think you’re going to love our concept.
Tripkick.com is designed to make your hotel experience an effortless one. We prepare you with the little known facts about each hotel room so you can make an educated decision when choosing your perfect room. Each hotel page on our site offers a variety of helpful information. You can use us before you’ve chosen your hotel, or once you’ve already booked your reservation.
First, Choose your hotel by City, Personality or Features. Once you’ve located your hotel of choice, we will provide the following information on 5 Tabs:
* Rooms To Request
* Your Experience
* Compare Rooms
* Hotel Basics
* Transportation
Rooms to Request
This section is divided into different categories based on what room features are most important to you. Quiet Rooms, Corner Rooms, Rooms with Great Bathrooms, Preferred Views and Floors. Rooms Ending In: This Number Represents the Last Two Numbers of the Room Number to Request. IE. “02” could mean 802, 902, 1002, 1102, 1202 etc. Generally, most rooms ending in the same number are identical in layout, only the floor number changes along with the view in some cases. Some floors are better than others. Pay attention to which floors to choose and avoid. Some hotels have opted to renovate specific floors, or add amenities by floor. There are some rooms which you should simply avoid. Why should you avoid them? Well, we have chosen specific factors such as elevator noise, small size and poor location as reasons why to avoid these rooms.
Source: Tripkick.com. Explore the site for more information.
December 31st, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Verticals | No Comments »

From Confusing Words: There are many ways to use Confusing Words. Our goal is to help you find the word you are looking for in the fewest steps whether you know how to spell it or not.
1. Enter one of the two or more words you confuse in the Confusing Word field and hit the Find button or hit return.
2. If you don’t know how to spell the word use wildcard characters for letters you are unsure of:
Confusing Words Groups
Each set of confusables (eg: there, their, they’re) are displayed together as follows:
* Confusing words and their definitions
* Examples: the confusing words used in sentences
* Notes: more information and links to other groups that contain the same words
Note that some words are confused in more than one group and those groups are generally displayed together on one screen. An example of this is the word minimal.
Favlet
Drag the url below onto the button bar on your browser, then, find a word on any web site you’re confused about, select it (highlight it), and click the Confusing Words button. If the word is in Confusing Words, it will be looked up. Very cool.
© 2008 Confusing Words
December 31st, 2008 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Verticals | No Comments »
Flag Identifier is a web tool for identifying different flags regardless of usage, geographic descent or and historical background.
It consists a large database of relevant facts about flags. This version was developed during 2006, and is online since 16-JAN-2007. Data are collected with permission mostly from Flags of the World website, as well as from vexillologic literature. Contents of the database are maintained by FI editors. There are 1018 flags in the database as for today. Source: Flag Identifier

December 31st, 2008 by Guest Author
Posted in Guest Authors | No Comments »

Written by Richard Martin.
With a single dominant player, the Web search market hasn’t exactly been fertile ground for startups and emerging companies with innovative new technologies. But a flurry of venture capital investment, product development, acquisitions, and other industry activity seems to mark the beginning of a new era in search, one in which specialists play a bigger role.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) handles 62 percent of Web search queries, followed by Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), according to research firm Nielsen Online . Behind them is a proliferation of upstarts, promising nuanced forms of consumer-oriented Web searches, arcane new “semantic Web” and contextual search services, mobile search, and search results in other guises, such as NewsGator feeds.
Read the entire article here:
Tags: Hakia, Silobreaker, Surfcanyon, SearchMe, Ask.com, Viewzi, Cuil.
December 30th, 2008 by Rafi Farber
Posted in Reviews, Verticals, Video | No Comments »
When it comes to video search, there’s this little bitty problem that comes up when you’re doing,say, a YouTube search, to pick a name out of the blue. Or maybe not so blue, but anyway. Say you’re looking for videos involving, oh I don’t know…Al Franken, that lovable comedian and possible senator who’s ahead by a whopping 50 votes in Minnesota following a recount of several million.
Try a search for Al Franken on any of the mainstream video searchers. You’ll find some videos that have Al Franken in them, but you’ll also find some news clips that talk about Al but don’t have him in the video, and you’ll even find videos of disgruntled Minnesota voters who don’t like Al Franken and want to declare this to the world by launching their own Anti-Al YouTube channel or something. Or you’ll find Al Franken diehards who love the recount and have launched their own YouTube channel in protest of the other guys. But those, unfortunately, don’t actually have Al in them, either. Just angry people ranting and raving. Or hysterical happy people. Or sometimes just weird people. (This is not a criticism of YouTube itself, but rather it’s internal search capabilities. Just keep that in mind.)
Enter VideoSurf.
As we mentioned in our previous VideoSurf post, the technology behind the innovation searches the actual video rather than text surrounding it. Their newest feature, even cooler, is designed to look for and recognize faces within the images. Point being, if you search for a video with the words “Al Franken” you’ll find videos that actually feature Al himself! How? Because VideoSurf “knows” his face. Craziness.
This comes in especially useful in my case, and my test actually impressed me. Specifically, I have become interested in a man named Moshe Feiglin, an Israeli political figure who is quite controversial. A YouTube search for videos actually featuring him gets annoying, because most of the videos only make oblique references, or show cartoons of him as the roadrunner being chased by Wile E. Coyote, in this case Benjamin Netanyahu. Annoying. I want to see him actually speaking, so I can decide how controversial he actually is. I want to educate myself, not watch cartoons.
So I go to VideoSurf, and type in Moshe Feiglin. And I am overwhelmed by the number of videos (all of them) that actually have him IN THE VIDEO. Thanks VideoSurf!
What fun Fruit Roll-ups® will they roll out with next?
