Twingly inaugurating microblog search

January 19th, 2009 by Guest Author
Posted in Newcomers | No Comments »

twingly-microblog-search-logoThis is it! Today we’re launching Twingly Microblog Search. We’ve been micro blogging for a couple of years now at Twingly. Mostly at Jaiku because it’s been the service of choice for new-media-people here in Sweden but we have our own Twitter and since Twitter is becoming bigger and bigger here in Sweden, we’ve been more active there lately.

When we last summer started to see the microblogging-hype we felt that a search dedicated to microblogs would be a quite natural development for us. We like Twitter Search and been using it a lot, especially at conferences and when news like Mumbai were having the best news source at Twitter. But because we used Jaiku ourselves it wasn’t what we needed in many cases.

Today we’re proud to launch our own microblog search with both Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce (which is sadly closed but we still have a lot of data indexed so we keeped it) and even some local microblogging platforms like the Swedish Bloggy and the German Bleeper.

top-container-rIt’s also therefore we call it the first federated microblog search because our goal is to indexing all microblogs from all services. If you know more microblogging services or run your own, please contact our developers so we could start index it.

To be more clear about how the search works it’s for now quite clean, we would love to hear what features you would like to have in our tech plan, but there’s some really useful tools in there already that could be nice to stated out:

* Like every search result at Twingly.com, it’s possible to get a widget for it to use on your own website or blog.
* Email-alerts so you don’t miss any important reply, retweet or comment dedicated to you or to use like a way to monitor your brands name.
* RSS to keep you updated on what microblogs saying about you, your brand, interest or anything else straight in to your RSS-reader.
* It’s possible to search for hashtags (#tag) and replies (@name)

The true behold of Twingly Microblog Search is of course for many people the possibilities to get a full overview of what’s saying about you, your brand or your interest on not only one service but on all microblogs. Why just search in one service when there’s many other services with active users, too?

Some improvements are still to come. The search is not realtime at the moment, expect about a five minute delay (sometimes more if the result page ends up in the cache). This will be remedied later on so that we can provide a true conversational search. Jaiku comments are not indexed. Bummer. We have been talking to @jyri about ways to accomplish that, hopefully it will be resolved soon. Verbs like save, retweet, reply, comment should be implemented in the search result.

Anyhow, we hope you’ll enjoy our new microblog search as much as we do.

This post was written by Anton

College Prowler: Finding Your Perfect School

January 19th, 2009 by Mark Thompson
Posted in Verticals | No Comments »

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College is four years (for most) that you will never forget. That is why choosing the right college can be a difficult decision. You want to find a school where you can get a good education, but are able to meet some great friends and have a good time in the process.

College Prowler was created to give potential students advice from actual students. Now you can get unbiased opinions about colleges and universities from students that have already experienced the college life. With a database including 258 schools, 40,274 students and 117,600 student reviews, you are bound to find advice, recommendations, and opinions on the schools you are interested in.
Searching for Colleges/Universities

If you are just starting your college search, that’s ok. College Prowler has a number of different ways you can find schools, for factors that are most important to you.

The “College Finder” feature allows you to search for schools and universities that meet the criteria you set. Sort by public or private, size of the school, acceptance rates, cost, school setting, and location. Looking for schools that specialize in education? No problem! Perform a search “by major” and have College Prowler return all of the schools with what you are looking to major in. “College Rankings” allows for you to search schools that are nationally ranked for Academics, Athletics, Greek Life, Nightlife, Transportation, Weather…and many more. Can’t make up your mind about two schools? Compare Colleges side by side to help you make a decision on which school is better.

College Prowler Store
The College Prowler store offers a bunch of unbiased resources that will give you an insiders look at over 280 colleges in the US. If you have narrowed down your school search, try the single school college guides that will focus on that particular school. No matter what schools are you interested in, you can find quotes, grades, stats, and reviews from REAL students.

College Prowler Monthly Scholarship
The College Prowler scholarship is offered to the student that submits the best essay on any topic you choose. The winner will receive a $2,000 scholarship and 10 free College Prowler guidebooks.

reportcard

College Prowler Report Card
Auburn University
If you are looking to get quick information about a school you are interested in, check out the College Prowler report card. Each school will be evaluated on the “College Rankings” topics with the A-F grading system. College Prowler makes it easy for you to find a college or university that fits your needs.

Narrow down your choices by comparing schools side by side, reading real student reviews, and sorting schools by the things that are most important to you.

Your college years are some of the best years of your life, so enjoy!

For the Workplace Vibe, Do the Jiibe

January 19th, 2009 by Rafi Farber
Posted in Job Search, Uncategorized, Verticals | No Comments »

I remember the mid 90’s, the dot com megabubble and local millionaires on every block who were lucky enough to buy 3 or more shares of Amazon® before everything crashed, and sell them for millions of dollars in profit – and no, not Zimbabwean dollars, who, by the way, now have a 100 trillion dollar bill in circulation. These were also the days of the pioneering job site Monster®, where you’d fill out a profile online and companies would supposedly get back to you and such. Meanwhile, you’d pay Monster® money that you don’t have, which is why you’re looking for a job.

Fast forward 14 years to 2009, and now we have Jiibe. The concept is more formidable. Based on the concept of social search, Jiibe puts together a social-feedback-fueled database of companies that get there input from employees. What’s it like to work at X? Advantages, disadvantages, very specific questions, very tightly defined profile created by the members of this alt.

Someone new comes in. He’s looking for the job at the company that fits his personal needs. One where upper management listens to ideas from lower level employees, for example. This is one of the criteria on the 150-responding-to-statements questionnaire. Answers range from very true, to very…untrue. Jiibe then presents a list of companies that match your preferences based on feedback they get from Jiibe users who work at these places. You can then apply to these places.

That’s the idea.

Beyond the service to job seekers, Jiibe sees itself as the future marketplace that will drive the competition for employees. It will become a tool for companies to adapt their culture to employees needs, kind of like an online “pre-labor” union; attract new employees and partners to their culture; and help companies to deliver on their strategic goals. More profit, happier workforce, employees are unhappy, company must answer to Jiibe? Let’s see what kind of influence they can garner. The more people the join, the closer we can get them to that goal of… ultimately both the employee and the company being happier.

VZillion to Utilize Sproose’s Social Search Engine

January 19th, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in News | No Comments »

VZillion, which we recently covered here, and innovator of the virtual Internet, recently announced that it has signed an agreement with search engine Sproose, as VZillion’s exclusive search platform.

sprooseSproose, a pioneer in personalized, user interactive search, will power the community “search” engine on the highly-anticipated 3-D virtual environment, VZillion.com.

“Sproose allows users to determine the best websites and video content on the web,” said Bob Pack, CEO of Sproose. “Sproose is always exploring new ways to enhance the search experience for our users. Inside VZillion’s immersive 3-D environment, users will not only be able to customize their search experience to more accurately and easily find what they are searching, but customize their entire Internet experience as well. VZillion’s focus on providing their users with the best Internet experience possible makes this a natural alliance.”

VZillion is focused on bridging the intelligence of automation and human interaction in a fully navigable 3-D stereoscopic Internet experience. Named “Best New Technology” at the 2008 3-D Film & Interactive Festival, VZillion is customizable for individuals, businesses, education providers, entrepreneurs, and casual Internet users.

One of the ways that VZillion is introducing its 3-D environment is for users to create their own virtual apartments. While inside your 360-degree customizable apartment complete with furniture, wall-mounted flat screens and artwork members can surf the internet from inside their virtual apartment.

Source: Sproose

Bloggers, searching for you, no, the real you.

January 19th, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in In Beta, Innovations | No Comments »

typealyzer
Here’s a novel invention from Typealyzer.com

entj
The analysis indicates that Charles S. Knight, the author of AltSearchEngines.com is of the personality type:  ENTJ – The Executives

The direct and assertive type. They are especially attuned to the big picture and how to get things done.

They are talented strategic planners, but might come off as insensitive to others needs and appear arrogant.

They like to be where the action is and like making bold and sweeping changes in complex situations.

The Executives are happy when their work let them learn and improve themselves and how things work around them. Not being very shy about expressing their ideas and often very outgoing they often make excellent public speakers.

Typealyzer.com is developed by the happy people @ prfekt.se. Illustrations are made by Sol at Accented.

How does it work?
For a long period of time, we have been training our system to recognize texts that characterize the different types. The system, typealyzer, can now by itself find features that distinguishes one type from another. When all features, words and sentences, are statistically analyzed, Typealyzer is able to guess which personality type the text represents.

How can a computer know who I am?
It doesn´t. But with a good amount of text it can make a pretty good guess. In addition, we all have different roles in different situations. By studying how people write, we can get an glimpse of what is on the mind of the person and what is characteristic of the person – or, as in the case of a blog – what is typical of the role/persona used when writing that blog. A person can have several blogs – and often have different roles for the various blogs – perhaps as a way to live out more sides of themselves.

What does a text say about the writer?
A personal text can be likened with the clothes we wear. We all tend to have clothes that we feel the most comfortable with – that we feel communicate something important about ourselves. However, almost all people accept to dress differently in different situations – at work, when we´re on vacation or when we want to make a special impression to someone else. Reading a lot of text over a period of time is therefore more interesting than just reading a few that might be written by a special purpose in a certain situation.

What type is the best?
images3No specific one. Psychological type is about talent. And all people have a mix of different talents. Some of them are more apparent than others, though. Scientists such as Martin Seligman and Katherine Benziger say that the most important thing is to live according to your strongest talents - whether it’s at school, at work, in their relationship, etc.

Try it with your blog!

Source: Typealyzer.com

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